Right-wing media watch – The Mail’s Burnham ‘fake running’ stories exposed

The Daily Mail’s seeming fixation with Andy Burnham’s running habits came back to haunt the newspaper last weekend.

The Mayor of Greater Manchester completed this year’s Great Manchester Run, posting an impressive time of 53 minutes and 15 seconds for the 10km course. Sharing his race splits on social media, Burnham took the opportunity to hit back at his critics.

“Have that @DailyMail with your ‘fake running’ stories!” he wrote on X.

The jibe was aimed at a newspaper that has devoted ink space attempting to cast doubt on Burnham’s well-documented enthusiasm for running. In May, the Mail published an article suggesting the Manchester mayor had staged a jog for media attention after he was photographed running amid speculation about his political future.

Under the headline, “Burnham is in the running… but why did the jogging mayor drive home?”, the paper reported:

“After being photographed ‘in the running’ for the Labour leadership on Friday, fitness fan Andy Burnham insisted to sceptics that he had not arranged for his daily jog to be filmed by the media.

“But the Daily Mail can reveal that onlookers were somewhat baffled when – after departing his large, gated Victorian-style home in Merseyside at 12.18pm – Mr Burnham returned 45 minutes later not out of puff on foot, but instead behind the wheel of his VW Golf.”

The article also quoted an anonymous onlooker who claimed the run had been staged, asking how television cameras could have known where to find Burnham if it had not been pre-arranged.

As is often the case, the Mail’s ‘exclusive’ was quickly amplified across the wider right-wing media. GB News presenter Alex Armstrong parroted the accusation on X, writing:

“Have you ever gone for a run, had the national press show up totally out of the blue, then picked up your car up somewhere on the route and drove home? Definitely not all planned.”

Burnham responded directly, explaining that there was a perfectly mundane explanation for the episode.

“It’s part of my regular routine,” he wrote. “I often leave my car at Newton station and do my morning run to pick it up. I did it again today because I had a pint at the match. I would say check it with my neighbours but don’t as they don’t deserve the intrusion on our road.”

The problem with the Mail’s narrative is that Burnham’s commitment to running is hardly new.

He is an experienced amateur runner who has completed two of the Abbott World Marathon Majors, London in 2014 and Boston in 2019, as well as multiple editions of the Great Manchester Run. According to Runner’s World, he completed the London Marathon in 4:26:19, just seven minutes behind the then soon-to-be mayor of London, Sadiq Khan. In Boston, Burnham ran to raise money for charities established in the aftermath of the 2017 Manchester Arena attack.

His performance in this year’s Great Manchester Run provided further evidence that his running credentials are genuine. Fellow Labour MP Clive Lewis responded to Burnham’s race splits with admiration, joking:

“By eck lad, you ‘ad your Ready Brek didn’t you? Stuffed me by a good 3-4 mins on those timings.”

For a newspaper that invested considerable effort in implying Burnham’s jogging routine was somehow fabricated, the sight of the Greater Manchester mayor posting a competitive 10km time was an awkward reminder that sometimes a runner is simply a runner.