Andy Burnham thinks his critics need a new joke about him. The old one about a Blairite, a Brownite and a Corbynite walking into a bar (‘Hello, Mr Burnham,’ says the barman) is about to be eclipsed. On Monday, it won’t be a barman offering good wishes – it will be the Cabinet Secretary, Antonia Romeo, when Burnham walks into No. 10 as Britain’s 59th prime minister.
Before that, on Friday, Burnham will accept the leadership of the Labour party, unopposed, at the headquarters of the Trades Union Congress. The speech he will give is still being worked on, but Burnham is ‘holding the pen himself’, aides say. And one idea he wants to land with his party is the same point he has been making in private over the past week in the corner office in Portcullis House, where the preparations for his premiership are being drawn up. ‘I’ve heard him talk about that joke in the last week,’ says one key team member. ‘He says, “That joke says more about the people that tell it than it does about me.” Because he’s not a factional person. He wants a broad church.’
In his acceptance speech, Burnham will acknowledge that Labour has been abandoned by many of its traditional supporters. He will draw on the history of the Labour party, its birth in Wales and the labour movement and formative episodes of its development, in an effort to reconnect his party with the voters it has lost around the country. ‘He will talk about the origins of the party and all of these places along the way that made it the movement that it is and then how that links into his views,’ says a source familiar with the developing text.
