See more Daily Mail on Google - save us as a Preferred SourceBy QUENTIN LETTS, PARLIAMENTARY SKETCHWRITER Published: 07:16 BST, 5 June 2026 | Updated: 07:22 BST, 5 June 2026
Modest maid Andy Burnham – 'I'm making no assumptions,' he said, touching his heart, 'I'm not someone who gets ahead of himself' – finally admitted he intends to kick the nasal knight out of Downing Street.Mr Burnham's statement of the bleedin' obvious came on BBC TV's rather lopsided Question Time programme.For weeks he had been fluttering those Joan Collins eyelashes and insisting it was all too early to talk about a Labour leadership election. No one believed him.Then a woman in the Question Time audience sighed that politicians could never tell the darn truth. You had to have been 'hidden under a rock to think you aren't going to go for the leadership'. Would Mr Burnham please just come clean?And so, alleluia, he did. 'Wes Streeting seems to have launched a leadership contest, so if that is running, I would seek to join it.' Wes started it, Miss!It was an odd show, and not just because presenter Fiona Bruce couldn't stop grinning. Had she been at the Green Room sherry? The panel consisted of five of the Makerfield by-election candidates: Mr Burnham for Labour plus the representatives of the Lib Dems, Tories, Reform and the Greens. Count Binface and the Monster Raving Loonies were not asked to take part. The Greens' woman did her best to make up for their absence. Bleedin’ obvious: Andy Burnham appears on the BBC's Question Time yesterdayMr Burnham managed to work 'change' into his very first sentence. Reform's plumber, Rob Kenyon, was equally prompt to mention 'career politicians' in his first response.Question Time is a brutally difficult forum. Mr Kenyon did as well as you could expect from someone with no experience of this arena. He got into trouble over some of his past social-media posts about women. Cue panning camera shots of a large contingent of disgruntled Wigan beauties, some with rivets through their noses. One snapped: 'I'd rather have a career politician than a sexist plumber.'Mr Kenyon did not score as many runs as one might have expected when two-tier policing came up. But he looked smart – unlike Mr Burnham, who is still traipsing about in that terrible black T-shirt – and he spoke with a handsome Lancashire accent.He also kept remarkably calm, even when everyone else was shouting at him. And he was the only person to bring up immigration. Right at the end of the show he mentioned HMOs (houses of multiple occupation, in which asylum seekers are often placed). We had the briefest hint of a world not often glimpsed in BBC political debates.The Tories had a fruity old boy, Michael Winstanley, who used to be mayor of Wigan.When Mr Burnham took a chippy swipe at David Cameron for only ever visiting Home Counties flood zones, Mr Winstanley noted that when his own house in Makerfield was flooded he didn't recall Tony Blair ever coming up to visit.The Lib Dems' Jake Austin was straight from Lib Dem nerd central casting. He leaned back on his neck and jabbered confidently from one slack side of his mouth. (From left) Jake Austin from the Liberal Democrats, Michael William Winstanley, Mr Burnham, Fiona Bruce, Robert Kenyon from Reform UK and Sarah Wakefield from the Green PartyJoin the discussionIs Andy Burnham the change Labour and Britain truly need or just more of the same politics?What's your view?The Greens' Sarah Wakefield had wild eyes and was in a state of such perpetual astonishment that she kept shaking her Karen bob. She seemed v. keen on taxing the knackers off us. Asked if the Green Party had a problem with foaming anti-Semites, she shrugged easily and insisted it was merely 'a few handful of people'.Ms Wakefield tried to take on Mr Kenyon over immigration. She came off very much the worse.But it was an easy night for Mr Burnham. Here he was, an ex-Cabinet minister up against four minnows. His best moment came when he said Britain must resist being dragged into American-style political poison. Less good were his claims to be putting 'place' before 'party'.The only person who upstaged him was an eccentric bat in the front row who wouldn't stop talking about Sir Keir Starmer. 'We can't stand him!' she cawed. Biggest cheer of the night.
