Definitely, maybe: Andy Burnham and the long shadow of the 90s

Andy Burnham walks into Number 10 as the UK’s seventh prime minister in a decade. The commentary so far has focused on the speed of it all. A by-election in June, the leadership confirmed on a Friday, the keys to Downing Street on the Monday. But the more interesting story is not how fast he arrived. It is how long the journey actually took, and where it started.

Because Burnham is, in every way that matters, a product of the 1990s.

He was born in 1970, which means the decade caught him at exactly the right age. He joined the Labour Party at 15, came of age as the party tore itself apart and rebuilt, and spent the mid 90s as a young researcher in the engine room of what would become New Labour. When D:Ream played over the footage of Tony Blair arriving at Downing Street in May 1997, Burnham was a 27-year-old true believer somewhere in the machine. Four years later he was the MP for Leigh. By the late 2000s he was in the cabinet, first as Culture Secretary and then running the NHS, the institution his politics have circled ever since.

Then came the wilderness, the two failed leadership bids, the reinvention in Manchester, the King of the North years. And now, three decades after Cool Britannia, the last child of that era gets the top job.

Which brings us to a Friday night in October at Leeds Playhouse.

What Did the 90s Really Do to Us is one of the centrepiece panels of LIFI26, and the timing has just become unimprovable. Among the panellists is Harriet Harman, who sat in that first Blair cabinet in 1997 and went on to lead the Labour Party twice as acting leader. Both times, the man now heading to Number 10 served in her shadow cabinet. If you want to understand the political DNA of the new prime minister, there are few people alive better placed to unpack it.

She will be joined by Miranda Sawyer, who chronicled the decade’s culture as it happened, superstar DJ Judge Jules, Denise van Outen, the face of 90s breakfast television, and Jason McGann, one of the men behind Rock Star Games in Leeds (and the GTA mobile games). Together they will ask what the era of New Labour and Cool Britannia, Britpop and rave culture actually did to modern Britain, beyond the nostalgia.

It is a question that suddenly has a very current answer. The 90s did not end. They produced a generation of politicians, broadcasters, musicians and clubbers who are still running the country, still shaping the culture, and in one case, as of tomorrow, still moving into Downing Street. Things, as the song went, can only get better. Whether they did, and whether they will, is exactly what this panel is for.

What Did the 90s Really Do to Us is at Leeds Playhouse’s Quarry Theatre on Friday 9 October, 8pm to 9.30pm, as part of Leeds International Festival of Ideas. Tickets are selling fast and are on sale now.