How Andy Burnham's school teacher inspired him to believe in himself

Image caption, Stephen Harrington was Andy Burnham's teacher in the late 1980s and persuaded the now-MP to apply to Cambridge University By Georgie Docker , Paul Burnell , North West  and  Jonny Humphries , Reporting from in Warrington Published 2 minutes ago "He needed a lot of persuading to apply because he felt that as a working-class boy, going off to Cambridge wasn't for him. He didn't believe in himself, but he did it, and the rest is history." These are the words of former English teacher Stephen Harrington on the advice he gave to a 16-year-old Andy Burnham in 1986 at St Aelred's Catholic High School in Newton-Le-Willows, Merseyside. The man, now widely tipped to win any Labour leadership contest and become prime minister, has credited his former teacher with boosting his confidence at that pivotal time in his life. "My son has been saying to me 'you've changed history Dad', but he likes a good phrase," Harrington said. Image source, Getty Images Image caption, Burnham said his former English teacher "lifted him" to achieve more than he thought possible Burnham returned to Westminster last week as MP for Makerfield, after a by-election was triggered by the resignation of the constituency's Labour MP Josh Simons. Following Sir Keir Starmer's announcement on Monday that he would step down, Burnham is currently the only candidate running in a leadership election in the Labour Party . Burnham grew up in Culcheth, a quiet commuter belt village in Cheshire, near Warrington, having been born in Liverpool. He was entering his first year of sixth form at the local Roman Catholic comprehensive, when he joined Harrington's A-Level English class. Harrington described him as "really pleasant" and a "bright lad", who was modest. "Here he was playing cricket for Lancashire Schoolboys, which is a very prestigious thing to do in this area, and he never mentioned it to me. "He was never sort of showing off or anything like that, he actually kept that to himself." To play this video you need to enable JavaScript in your browser. This video can not be played Figure caption, Burnham's ex-teacher on encouraging him to go to Cambridge Spanish and maths were the other subjects Burnham was studying at St Aelred's, and he told people he was considering taking a linguistics degree at university. But Harrington said he remembers convincing him to study English instead. "He was so interested in the poet Tony Harrison. So I gave him a lot more material, including a cassette recording of one of Harrison's latest poems, called V." Tony Harrison was a poet and playwright born in Leeds in 1937 who was famed for his controversial work. Published in 1985, the poem contains obscenities and references to the 1984-1985 UK miners' strike and union leader Arthur Scargill, with a reference to the division between the political left and right. V was later broadcast by Channel 4 in 1987, and caused such a reaction that a group of MPs called for a debate about it in the House o