Andy Burnham feels very familiar to me.

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I spoke to him on Monday, and I very much enjoyed hearing your calls put to him and having the conversation myself. But I have known him, in one way or another, for years.

Since my days at Radio Merseyside in my 20s, then at 5 Live in my 30s and 40s, and now at LBC, I have spoken to him often, particularly about Hillsborough. I was at Anfield the day he made that extraordinary statement from Gordon Brown and was then jeered and booed by the crowd. We all know what flowed from that, and the rest is history.

But there is another reason Andy Burnham feels familiar to me. In many senses, we had the same upbringing. We are from the same kind of people.

Irish Catholic, Liverpool, immigrant families, working-class families who did not have much money but were determined their children would have opportunities.

And I heard so much of that in his speech yesterday.

He talked repeatedly about working-class aspiration, and I think he is right that something has changed. Families like his and mine could look at their children and believe that, with hard work, a good education, and the right opportunities, their lives could be better than their parents' lives.

As Andy put it, “We gave Britain hope again. We made working-class aspiration feel real.”

That phrase, “working-class aspiration”, really chimed with me.

When Nick Ferrari spoke to him on LBC, he asked Andy what he meant.

The Prime Minister talked about his grandparents and his mother, and the way each generation wanted the next to have a better life. His gran, he said, “bought her home by walking across........

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