Poor Andy Burnham. This time last year the Mayor of Manchester was riding high in the Labour leadership stakes, having cruised to re-election with a whopping 67 per cent of the vote, as Sir Keir Starmer struggled to cut through in Westminster. Now the fortunes are reversed: Starmer is 20 points ahead in the polls, while Burnham – the onetime ‘king of the north’ – would be forgiven for looking enviously on at his rival’s kingdom down south. Having clashed with Sir Keir in recent months on picketing and voting reform, there are perhaps some indicators that Burnham is feeling slightly bruised from being out of the action in SW1.
The ever-online Andy has taken to patrolling social media to respond to his critics – including last night when he picked a bizarre fight with the New Statesman’s Kevin Maguire over a rather good joke in the latter’s gossip column: ‘A Blairite, a Brownite, a Milibandite and a Corbynite walk into a pub. “Hello, Mr Burnham,” says the barman.’ Burnham opted to magnify this minor slight to his 566,000 Twitter followers, responding to the minor insult by retorting:
Maybe this is because I’m party-first rather than faction-first? And might Labour be in better shape if a few more people went about things the same way? Just a thought.
As one Labour insider pointed out to Mr S, the current polls suggest Labour is, er, actually in pretty good shape under Starmer, thank you very much. Amusingly, it’s not even the first time Burnham has opted to respond to this very joke, having previously done so to a different account with 706 followers just a fortnight ago. Too much time on his hands, perhaps?
Still, the next time there’s a Richard Burgon fundraiser, at least Andy will be there to show his party-first credentials.
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