Burnham's potemkin radicalism

Andy Burnham is a wool. To those unlucky enough not to hail from the new home of English power — the North West — “wool”, or “woolyback”, is a gently pejorative term for someone from just outside the limits of the City of Liverpool proper. Imagine softer accents and leafier streets; historic Lancashire mill towns and pit villages in those places radiating out from true Scouseland on the banks of the Mersey. In fact, Burnham is enough of a wool to almost be a Manc: his native Culcheth is near equidistant from the region’s two rival metropoles. If he’d been full Scouse, he probably wouldn’t have been accepted as Manchester Mayor. But now he’s ensconced in No. 10, much of Liverpool will gladly accept him as “one of our own”. “Wool” was once used to divide and exclude, but now Andy has been we