Andy Burnham

It’s wrong that people are left arguing for things that are just fundamental, and they’re given in other parts of the country, and the lack of a constitution disempowers places in that situation.

I’ll do whatever I can in all of these different areas just to take a little bit of pressure down.

That just doesn’t seem right to me. I know it’s convenient for the organisations that do it, but how does a young person shine in that situation?

What’s coming through is we’re starting to say that everywhere will have the right to be a strategic authority, everywhere will have the right to retain more of their income tax, business rates.

I think there is a case for a new clear set of principles about how this country should be run and things that should be minimum basics in all parts of the country, related to essentials and connectivity.

We need to have a country where everyone, in the end, can live a comparable life. That should be what we’re working towards.

The idea should never even have been brought forward.

I suppose you think you’ll understand what the job will be like until you actually experience it, and it is intense – but in a good way as well.

That's the way I've always done my politics, and I don't want it to change.

I do feel hopeful. I love this country, every facet of it, and I do feel hopeful about it because I talked about the fragility of the world, but you come into this role, and you just see the amazing strengths we've still got here.

I think rail fares are too high, outrageously so in some instances. So that's something that's in my sights.

It's about looking across the piece. Not giving people false promises, but being honest with them and saying, "Well, I'll do whatever I can in all of these different areas just to take a little bit of pressure down."

People on whose doors I was knocking only about five, six weeks ago... They did get over to me how tough life was.

It's an amazing thing that they do that, and it's just not right is it that people who, in my view, should be the highest paid really in society get treated as they do.

I do want to make sure we get fairness in the rules in relation to people who came here in good faith, and made a commitment, I will make sure that we do that.

The rewiring of the UK had gone to a new level of seriousness and was centred on shifting decision-making outside Whitehall to mayors and local authorities through No 10 North.

In the end, I think it does start to point towards a new constitutional settlement … with that commitment to equivalent living standards.

It will increase the case for a constitution because Britain is changing through this, England is certainly changing through this.

That really is an experience that I’ve never forgotten. My generation of people growing up here, and it’s true of places all over the country, to get on in life you had to leave where you were because things weren’t here.

Above all, it’s about changing the message we send to our kids. Because there isn’t just one future worth preparing them for — there are many.

It’s an incredible privilege. I feel that I do have to try and make this a circuit-breaker, I feel really strongly about that, changing the way we think about politics.

I’m open to a discussion with regional mayors - and I’m sure the Home Secretary is - where local solutions would be better than the situation that we have at the moment.

Britain has got low growth and low investment, and we've had that for a long time. This is about breaking that, breaking that cycle.

No, I'm not comfortable. Because this is not about making them mini Chancellors of the Exchequer, sort of undermining, or rewriting, policy on tax and personal finance.

You are the right person to lead this great city region forward into its best decade ever, because that is what the next decade is going to be.