With less than three weeks to go until he enters No. 10, Andy Burnham has adopted a ‘Ming vase’ approach to public appearances. With victory inevitable, why expose himself to media scrutiny at the risk of binding his hands on taking up office? Since his devolution speech on Monday, the new Makerfield MP has kept his interventions to a minimum, with a planned appearance at the New Economics Foundation cancelled last night. But having declined to take journalists’ questions on Monday, Burnham did decide to submit to a radio interview with Andrew Marr on LBC tonight.
The party is split on whether its current malaise is ‘comms or policy’. Burnham may be an upgrade on the former but not necessarily the latter
It is a format in which Burnham is well-versed, having until recently enjoyed his own regular slot on BBC Radio Manchester. Unsurprisingly, the Labour MP’s style was relaxed, fluent and engaging: a marked improvement on the stuttering performances of the current Prime Minister.
The substance, though, was less convincing. Marr opted to start with some easier ice-breakers before getting into the harder stuff. Much of it focused on the culture of politics in Britain, a subject on which Burnham has often opined. He decried the partisanship of Westminster and spoke of his own work with Conservatives on grooming gangs in Manchester. ‘My generation of politicians has failed’, he admitted. ‘The time has come for a circuit breaker to try something different.’
