Before I get going, a quick thank you to all those who got in touch following last week’s Editor’s Note written from my hospital bed. I am happy to report that my gammy thumb (not the correct medical term, I accept) has returned to normal after a worrying few days when the infection seemed to be spreading up my arm. Being hospitalised for a sore thumb was a slightly unsettling experience. What would have happened just a few centuries ago, I wondered? The loss of my thumb? Or my hand perhaps? Or maybe I would just have paid more attention to the splinter slowly starting to hurt.
Since returning to the office I have noticed myself reaching for my coat in the morning before setting off on the school run. It’s always a strange, melancholic time, as the final blissful drops of summer drain away, leaving the empty chill of autumn behind. At this time of year, I often think of a Clive James poem I read at my grandad’s funeral, “Japanese Maple”. “When did you ever see/So much sweet beauty as when fine rain falls/On that small tree,” James wrote, contemplating his death as he looked over his back garden and the shrub his daughter had planted for him. “Come autumn and its leaves will turn to flame/ What I must do/Is live to see that. That will end the game.”
I don’t know what it is about that poem, but I loved it from the moment I heard it on the radio. So much so I immediately jumped on Amazon to order the collection (I know, bad habit). Sometimes, something in poetry just touches you and you don’t need to overanalyse its meaning to enjoy it.
The subject of this week’s Cover Story, Andy Burnham, is – it turns out – another poor romantic soul drawn to poetry about mortality and meaning. I discovered this after recently spending a couple of days with him in Manchester, at the height of the speculation over his Labour leadership aspirations. My profile-cum-interview can be found here, and forms the centrepiece of our bumper Labour Party Conference edition. For those more inclined to poetry than politics, you’ll have to wade through a few pages of the latter before you get to his love of Philip Larkin and Tony Harrison.
Alongside my meetings with Labour’s new prince across the water, Andrew Marr sets out the dangers of red-on-red infighting, Megan Kenyon lifts the lid on the growing challenge facing Keir Starmer to his left and Anoosh Chakelian interviews Labour’s resident historian and Starmer whisperer, Nick Thomas-Symonds. Elsewhere, the deputy-leadership hopeful Lucy Powell writes the Diary, Megan Gibson exposes the brutal reality of Nigel Farage’s immigration proposals and Peter Geoghegan and May Bulman investigate the Tony Blair Institute.
Few people in this country know more about poetry than Richard Holmes, biographer of the great English poets. In the New Society, we interview him about his new study of Tennyson. We also review new novels by the still-prolific Ian McEwan, who turns his mind once again to the climate crisis; the American hipster genius Patricia Lockwood; and a couple of stories about a curious new development in the manosphere: weightlifting English professors.
Returning to Burnham, the politician of the moment: attempting to capture the essence of such men and women in positions of power is something I have spent a lot of time thinking about over the years. This, after all, is the purpose of profile writing.
What is it about a person that makes them interesting; that makes them think the way they do; that makes them act the way they act? The only way I have found it possible to relate such things is to spend time with them up close; to watch how they act with people; to watch their face and to observe their tics. Most of all, I find, you need to find a way to ask them about things they are not used to discussing or which they haven’t had time to mull over and so might – just might – speak openly about.
It is not always easy. With Boris Johnson, I found the only way I could get close to his real character was to force him to stop joking around, even if only for a few minutes. With Keir Starmer, whom I profiled for my first edition as editor of the New Statesman a few months ago, I felt I only really succeeded once I had moved away from politics to talk about his family. With Burnham, the window only really opened up when we began to talk about poetry. What maketh man is a funny thing.
[Further reading: The Booker Prize 2025 shortlist]
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This article appears in the 25 Sep 2025 issue of the New Statesman, “Are you up for it?” – Andy Burnham’s plan for Britain
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