Burnham fails to explain what the point of his candidacy is

charles hercock

The key is thst he will pull votes from Ed Milli and hand it to Spock

TrevorsDen

What a terrible misbegotten bunch of candidates they are.

Rhoda Klapp

When you have a party whipped into loyalty on pain of all kinds of punishment, when the glorious leader goes, just about everybody is tainted with his failure. Especially in a party where non-entities have been given office and the capable sidelined.

I wonder whether any other party might care to ponder on this.

Judy

Didn't Gordon Brown try the "perception" gambit in his response to Mrs Duffy's challenge re the East European migrants, ie loftily brushing her off with a reminder that Brits can go and work in the rest of the EU, as if that was an answer to the perceptions she expressed?

Note to Mr Burnham: telling Andrew Marr that the Labour core vote that the Labour core vote has a perception issue re their view of immigration as a problem will not endear him to them.

Paul Danon

Labour needs to decide what it's for. I doesn't presently know. Before, it was just enough to be "new" but, once you're old and out of office, you can't be that. The Lib-Con coalition has stolen new Labour's clothes and doesn't know what it believed either. Labour needs a (wait for it) big idea. It can't be socialism because that loses votes. It can't be centrism because the coalition is about that. It certainly can't be "judge us by our record", as the economic mess unravels.

Moraymint

The problem they've all got is that selling socialism explicitly is pretty difficult these days.

We've had 13 years of Marxism-by-stealth and the UK is now a busted flush. Outside of total war, the UK's finances have never been in such an unholy mess; the key measures of a good, decent, well-educated, industrious and settled society are nowhere to be seen; unreconstructed socialism has failed, yet again.

So, all of the candidates are struggling to find an attractive and engaging message that will appeal to those members of the electorate who are not already dyed-in-the-wool socialists and who would vote for the Labour Party even if the leader was a camel.

It will indeed be fascinating hearing these guys (oh, and Diane of course) go through contortions trying to persuade us that the nation's future should be all about taxing, borrowing and spending to give us a statist future fair for all.

We'll see. Meantime, all hell will be breaking loose shortly, economically and socially. The payback for 13 years of Labour Party gross incompetence in government starts soon.

Tim W

Happily they're all rubbish. Just another point though. If there were 5 black candidates and David Miliand complained that they "all looked the same" would it be called racist?

Tankus

Or .. what's the point of the labour party ?

wrinkled weasel

"But when Marr pressed him on the issue, Burnham didn’t criticse the last government’s policy—for examplel, the failure to put transition controls on migration from the new EU mmeber states—but rather talked about a perception problem."

Sorry to be picky and everything, but THREE typos in ONE sentence? Is proof reading that unfashionable?

Tarkus

Actually the question "What is the point of the Labour Party " is the question they need to answer, Glib answers like "Its the party for the working man" dont wash anymore.

Old Slaughter

Burnham,

You cannot say you are all poor and ordinary and working class and all that, then boast about your ministerial experience and your ambition to be the next Prime Minister, then speak of how people from poorer parts are unable to break into politics.

It is self-evidently BS.

David Lindsay

A working-class background is neither a qualification nor a disqualification, any more than Diane Abbott's blackness or her femaleness. But at least Abbott really is black and female. Burnham is probably relying on the London media's assumption that any Scottish, Welsh, Northern or Midland accent is working-class.

On the question of "diversity", however, this contest is a lot more interesting than most people seem to realise. Two of the candidates are Jewish, one is black, two have Irish Catholic backgrounds (Burnham remains a practising Catholic, John McDonnell does not), so does Jon Cruddas even if he is not now standing, and so does Liam Byrne who has yet to show his hand. Cruddas and Byrne are both Mass-goers. Only Ed Balls is a WASP, with the P strictly cultural, if that. And he is said to be struggling to secure 33 nominations.

Also of note is that all the candidates are English and sit for English seats.

wrinkled weasel

Mr Burnham is known for showing sartorial solidarity with his leftie pals..

http://wrinkledweasel.blogspot.com/2009/02/another-donkey-jacket-moment-for-labour.html

At a sombre moment in February 2009, at the unveiling of the statue of Queen Elizabeth, the Queen Mother in The Mall, Culture Secretary Andy Burnham's wife Frankie was clearly misinformed about the event. In the spirit of the recession, Andy himself was wearing a snazzy three-quarter length mac from The Cat Protection Society Shop and had clearly junked his Corby Trouser Press in order to save the planet.

On Marr yesterday he looked terrified, as if, at any moment, Marr was going to reveal Burnham's former career as a fluffer.