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Andy Burnham’s own goal over Manchester City
Downing Street backtracked on PM’s remarks that drew attention to his close relationship with the UAE
Just hours after Andy Burnham sent the Labour Party faithful “into raptures” over his conference speech, his remarks about the Manchester City football scandal triggered a “whiplash mood shift”, said The Mill.
Asked about the Premier League’s conclusion that Man City had broken its financial rules for nearly a decade, the prime minister – and former Manchester mayor – told the BBC’s Chris Mason he would be “really concerned” if the club’s UAE owners decided to sell up. They had been “such a huge partner in the building of modern Manchester”. Within minutes, social media was buzzing with outrage at Burnham’s apparent sympathy for Man City’s situation, and questions about how close he’d become to big-time foreign investors. Downing Street began a frantic back-pedal.
This was Burnham’s “biggest self-inflicted tangle since he arrived in Downing Street in July”, said the BBC’s Mason. No. 10’s “jitters and discomfort about this were there for all to see”. Football-loving Burnham has got himself “caught up in one of the biggest domestic stories of the year, and one that is only just beginning”.
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Relationships between politicians and wealthy foreign businessmen are much “easier to navigate as the mayor of a big city” and “a lot harder when you’re prime minister”, said RTÉ’s Sean Whelan. Burnham now has “a big opposition and noisy, nosey media watching every move”.
There is a wild irony that football, which is “so tightly stitched into Burnham’s own story” is now gripping him with “its great, dripping, bloody fingernails”, said Barney Ronay in The Guardian. He rode the “horse” of “football blokeyness” all the way down to Westminster, and now that horse is “threatening to run right over the top of him”. Yes, he benefited hugely politically from Abu Dhabi investment in Manchester but he needs to “stop thanking the UAE so profusely”. They didn’t do him a favour; it was a “business deal, with something very clearly going back in return”.
Burnham has “tied himself in more knots than when Scotland tried to play out from the back against Brazil”, said The Times’ chief football correspondent Jonathan Northcroft. His “mealy-mouthed” intervention only “muddied the process of upholding” the Man City verdict. Abu Dhabi is reportedly now “threatening to cut billions of pounds of UK investment in umbrage” at the Premier League’s decision. It makes you wonder if “outside elements sticking their spoons into football is the path to salvation after all”.
‘Inseparable’ UK-UAE relationship
This was a “clumsy episode”, said Adam Crafton on The Athletic. It “felt revealing” that Burnham’s “first instinct” was to laud the ownership group, rather than empathise with the “masses horrified” by apparently systematic breaches of football’s financial rules.
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But City and Abu Dhabi are seen as “inseparable”, emblematic of a broader UK-UAE relationship that “is considered crucial across security, investment and trade”. That any subsequent harsh sanctions handed down to the football club by the Premier League could damage Britain’s economic prospects only underlines the “uneasy realities of governing the UK in 2026”: having left the EU, we are “working overtime to entice investments from Gulf nations”.
Burnham was “probably right” to turn attention, briefly, away from mismanagement of a football club and on to the “more important” issue of Manchester and its inhabitants, said Simon Kelner in The i Paper. His remarks were “a welcome change of tone”, countering “the general opprobrium” with an appreciation of how “good” the UAE has been for the city.
As mayor, he had welcomed the “hundreds of millions of pounds Abu Dhabi ploughed into the area around” the Man City ground, turning “one of the most deprived and desolate quarters of the city” into a thriving economic hub. Now he’s prime minister, no doubt he felt he was “being true to his sense of fair play in illuminating” those benefits but, in future, it’s best that he “keeps well clear”.
Will Barker joined The Week team as a staff writer in 2025, covering UK and global news and politics. He previously worked at the Financial Times and The Sun, contributing to the arts and world news desks, respectively. Before that, he achieved a gold-standard NCTJ Diploma at News Associates in Twickenham, with specialisms in media law and data journalism. While studying for his diploma, he also wrote for the South West Londoner, and channelled his passion for sport by reporting for The Cricket Paper. As an undergraduate of Merton College, University of Oxford, Will read English and French, and he also has an M.Phil in literary translation from Trinity College Dublin.
