Barney Ronay has argued that Prime Minister Andy Burnham’s political project is facing an early and unusually football-shaped reckoning. In a Guardian column, Ronay writes that Burnham rode into Downing Street on football populism, football blokeyness and the stylings of the football everyman. That horse, he says, is now snorting around the cabinet room and threatening to run right over him. The immediate trigger is the Manchester City verdict and the political contortions it has demanded of Burnham.
The column arrives against a backdrop in which the FA has warned that the Manchester City verdict carries big integrity implications, while the club have lodged an appeal. Ronay’s central claim is that this is no longer a case of football providing an analogy for politics. When it comes to Burnham and Manchester City, he argues, football is politics. The singularity has happened.
Ronay notes how tightly football is stitched into Burnham’s own story. Abu Dhabi, he writes, provided the seed capital for Burnham’s political point of difference, the ‘Manchesterism’ energy that carried him to power, while football gave him a relatable lingua franca. Ronay describes Burnham as another Etihad academy graduate, the Phil Foden of Downing Street, and says Abu Dhabi basically gave us downtown Andy Burnham.
The column points to Burnham’s two speeches this week. One was kind, soft, generous and seductive, with Burnham talking about restoring balance to society and control to people’s lives, about the little person versus the big person, chatbot life and waiting-list culture. But Ronay says Burnham then said other things that Downing Street has since toned down and walked back. Those included Burnham saying he would be “really concerned to lose them” — a comment Ronay characterises as sympathy for an oppressive monarchical regime throwing money at an effort to escape the rules that bind everyone else. Burnham also said it would be “wrong” to “jump to a conclusion” about the Manchester City case, which Ronay notes is a conclusion based on English law applied by an independent judicial panel, with potential for far more serious sanctions. Burnham added: “They’ve been such a huge partner in the building of modern Manchester.”
Ronay traces the Abu Dhabi connection further. He writes that Abu Dhabi’s investment was the big fast-forward for Manchester after the 2008 financial crisis, nine years before Burnham became mayor, and that Burnham benefited hugely, politically and personally, from the investments of Abu Dhabi United Group. That group, he says, was pumping money into Nolito while also putting a billion into the New Islington transformation and another billion into the Manchester Campus, a place on the Manchester tram map now literally called Etihad. Ronay also notes talk of locals being moved out, unaffordable housing and civic leaders shying away from the human-rights record of their partners.
The column highlights one of Burnham’s first calls as prime minister, to Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, president of the UAE and brother of Manchester City owner Mansour bin Zayed Al Nahyan. Ronay writes that Sheikh Mohamed employed as a key aide one Jaber Mohamed, said to be personally responsible for payments through Etisalat that form part of the alleged cooking of the Premier League books. When Burnham says he is bringing the great Manchester success story to government, Ronay argues, this is an umbilical part of what he is describing.
Ronay argues that Burnham faces a choice. He could stop thanking the UAE so profusely. It is not a favour, Ronay writes, but a business deal with something very clearly going back in return. He points to the “Thank You Sheikh Mansour” banner at the Etihad Stadium and asks what it is for exactly, arguing that fans already thank him by promoting the brand, cheering the soft power and allowing him to own the streets beneath their feet. The wider question, for Burnham and for Manchester City’s fans, is what they want to have and what they want to be.
Billions will come and go, Ronay writes, and there will be hard economic consequences if the UAE takes its ball away. But the rule of law, not rolling over in the face of power, and retaining sovereign assets might feel good too, in a way money cannot buy. That, he suggests, is exactly what the Burnham who spoke of restoring balance was talking about. The alternative is being pushed around in a bath chair and made to dance for cash. The choice sitting in the cabinet room, Ronay concludes, is realpolitik or some sort of stab at real things, real principles.