Andy Burnham is back. After his humiliation at Labour conference, the Mayor of Greater Manchester has returned, hawking his conscience around once more. At last night’s London launch of his new book, Head North: A Rallying Cry for a More Equal Britain, co-written with Liverpool Mayor Steve Rotheram, Burnham attacked Starmer again. He criticised the ‘narrow and shallow’ way the Prime Minister runs his government, citing the handling of the two-child benefit cap rebellion. Though Mr S doubts No. 10 will heed Bottler Burnham’s advice…
‘No one lost the whip under Brown or Blair,’ Burnham complained when asked about the case of backbench rebel Ian Byrne. He then went further, arguing that MPs’ careers were ‘jeopardised’ for ‘saying the right thing.’ With Treasury beancounters keen to take a chunk out of the welfare budget, the groundwork for a second welfare rebellion starts now, comrades. Doubling down on his greatest hits, the Mayor – twice rejected as Labour leader – tried to put even more distance between himself and the London ‘establishment’, in which he happily worked for two decades.
‘The point scoring of Westminster just doesn’t do it for people, does it?’, Burnham told his audience. ‘It looks like politicians are more concerned with the game of it, not the reality of their lives.’ Gee, playing games with politics? Hardly something honest Andy would ever do. After his bruising experience in Liverpool, Burnham took care not to comment directly on his leadership ambitions. But he made a point of pitching to the party faithful by declaring that the Caerphilly by-elections shows that Reform as ‘beatable’. ‘There is an appetite out there to stand up to them’, he added.
Potentially with a sparkly new, gravy-loving, southern-bashing Liverpudlian leader in charge eh?
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