Andy Burnham’s coronation as PM is an insult to every Briton – we deserve so much more.TA
OPINION – DUNCAN BARKES: The UK’s latest Prime Minister arrives in Downing Street largely untested with no democratic mandate – it’s not good enough
Andy Burnham projects confidence but Duncan Barkes believes him to be untested (Image: Getty)
In the next few hours, our country will have a new Prime Minister – a man who is untested, has been unchallenged and is still largely unknown outside of his Greater Manchester comfort zone. Andy Burnham’s rise to the top job in British politics is also undemocratic as he has no real mandate to lead the country – he only got into Parliament via a hastily created by-election caused by the handy resignation of a pal.
It’s genuinely staggering how Mr Burnham has ended up with the keys to Number Ten in what has been rightly described as a coup. Other countries must be looking at us and thinking that we have taken leave of our senses. The nauseating and hypocritical sight of Labour MPs last week clapping Sir Keir Starmer after his final Prime Minister’s Questions was enough to almost find a sliver of sympathy for the poor bloke.
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These MPs were so desperate to get rid of him that they have simply anointed Mr Burnham as their new boss and our next PM. Aside from their desperation, it speaks volumes that a political party with more than 400 MPs is so bereft of talent that they could not find even one candidate to stand against Andy Burnham to test his ability and suitability as leader. At least when we endured the chaotic final few years of the Conservative government and their various changes of leadership, there were candidates and hustings.
We got a sense of what Boris Johnson, Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak were about before they became Tory leader and consequently Prime Minister. They submitted themselves to not only hustings organised by the Conservative Party, but also to media interviews and were cross-examined on their thoughts, future policies and how they would run the country. We have had no such luxury with Mr Burnham – a man who seems to hide behind carefully crafted social media videos or very rare and safe media appearances.
The clues were there from the start as he refused to take questions from journalists after his victory in the Makerfield by-election. We then had to wait ten days before we got another glimpse of Labour’s self-proclaimed saviour when he gave a speech at the People’s History Museum in Manchester where he outlined some of his vision including greater devolution and the creation of a ‘Number Ten – North’ – predictably to be based in his Manchester heartland.
This quick peek into Burnham’s plans was welcome but how would any of this work in practice, what would it cost and when would it all be delivered were answers we never heard as once again the media were not allowed to ask him any questions.
Since then, we have had a bizarre and limited mix of media outings by our next Prime Minister. He submitted himself to a question and answer session with online chat-forum Reddit where he said you could ‘Ask Me Anything’ and we got a teeny sense of his thoughts on issues such as HS2, the pensions triple lock and electoral reform.
Again, a useful insight into his thinking but it must be remembered that his aides selected the questions he would answer and none of this was interactive in a way that meant further questions could be asked given his initial answers. Burnham also participated in a radio interview with Andrew Marr which was more ‘cosy’ than ‘challenging’ and last week joined Gary Lineker in an interview for Goalhanger podcasts where we did discover he was prepared to make “difficult” decisions to balance the nation’s finances but without detailing how this might be done.
I think we can safely conclude that at some point we will be hit with a raft of new taxes or some sneaky increases on existing levies designed to swell the Treasury’s coffers. But aside from these brief flashes of what life might look like under a Burnham premiership, Britain’s next Prime Minister has done a terrific job of dodging any real scrutiny by his own MPs, Parliament, the public and the media.
This kind of behaviour shows contempt for the British people. Currently we know very little about the plans of our next Prime Minister and anything we do know has not been properly challenged or explored – I certainly hope this is not the direction of travel he plans to adopt.
He should spend his first week in the job engaging with the public and political journalists across the UK, so we finally get a real sense of what he is about. As it stands, we are heading headlong into the unknown under the leadership of man who seems unable or unwilling to be properly scrutinised – we deserve so much better.
