“He couldn’t be more thankful towards me,” Harrington said, adding that Burnham had even travelled from London to attend his retirement from St Aelred’s in 2003.
He said he was flattered by his former pupil’s praise, but he did not want to overstate his own importance.
That journey took Burnham to Westminster for the first time in 2001, when he won a seat in Leigh in that year’s general election.
He held the seat until 2017, when he left to stand in the first Greater Manchester mayoral election.
He first served as a junior minister under Prime Minister Tony Blair, but joined the cabinet as chief secretary to the Treasury, before moving to culture secretary and health secretary, under Blair’s successor Gordon Brown.
It was as culture secretary that Burnham was heckled at a memorial service marking the 20th anniversary of the 1989 Hillsborough disaster.
The heckling spurred him on to raise the issue in cabinet, contributing to the launch of a second inquiry into the disaster.
He also lost two Labour leadership election, coming fourth out of five in a contest Ed Miliband won in 2010 and then losing to Jeremy Corbyn’s first-round victory in 2015.
Burnham’s critics have branded him a weather vane, whose views have blown with the political winds to give him the best chance of success.
He served in Corbyn’s shadow cabinet, as shadow home secretary, despite being seen as on the Blairite centre-right of the party, and his views have moved increasingly to the left, backing the nationalisation of water and energy.
He was not one of those who resigned in protest at Corbyn’s leadership in 2016.
