The coronation of Andy Burnham is fraught with dangers. Never will a prime minister have arrived in Downing Street with so little scrutiny of what he wants to do.
After his speech in Manchester yesterday, Burnham declined to take any questions from journalists. And reporters were confined to the balcony to prevent any ambushes. Burnham and his aides wantedeveryone to concentrate on the speech, and not get diverted by questions about Ed Miliband being his Chancellor, or whether he adores Donald Trump.
A big pity, since there were plenty of questions to ask about the speech. The biggest is how he’ll obey existing spending limits when his programme seems committed to tens of billions in extra spending – on the biggest council housing programme since the early 1950s, for example, or awarding of government contracts by social value not just low cost.
Burnham might have struggled with his answers, as he did in the Makerfield campaign when Newsnight’s Victoria Derbyshire asked him what the Treasury’s fiscal rules are, and Burnham said he didn’t want “to go through an exam on the fiscal rules. I know what the fiscal rules are”.
Viewers must have suspected otherwise. It was an excruciatingly embarrassing moment.
