“Why don’t you write,” my commissioning editor suggested yesterday, “an optimistic piece on Andy Burnham? Give him a chance, sort of thing?” This seemed, on the face of it, an admirably charitable and fair-minded suggestion. Amid the projectile-vomiting epidemic of demented negativity and hysterical loathing which, as I remarked in this space last week, is the daily stuff of our politics, I thought for a moment, he’s asking me to do something a little bit different.
Here’s the chance, he seemed to be suggesting, to say something as modest as: “How about we don’t condemn this guy as the worst Prime Minister in recorded history, a traitor, a liar, and a candidate for the Tower of London or, ideally, the scaffold, before he has even so much as wiped his shoes on the mat in the Downing Street hallway? He has an English degree, folk seem to like him, he wasn’t a disaster as mayor, and he can even quote The Life of Brian without sounding like a dalek: how bad can it be?”
When it comes to Andy Burnham, I struggle to muster much in the way of optimism
But then I gave my head a wobble, and I thought: “I know your game, pal. You don’t really want a piece arguing that Andy Burnham might not be a disaster because you think there’s a chance he might not be a disaster. You want someone to say he might not be a disaster, in order to tap into the sweet, sweet rage-clicks that come from anyone saying such a thing online, and in particular saying such a thing to an audience of people who, on the whole, will not be too keen to hear it.”
