See more Daily Mail on Google - save us as a Preferred SourceBy QUENTIN LETTS, PARLIAMENTARY SKETCHWRITER Published: 15:16 BST, 17 July 2026 | Updated: 15:39 BST, 17 July 2026
Andy Burnham marked his unopposed election as Labour leader with a speech at London’s Congress House, that retro temple to union power. In the 1970s, TUC bosses such as Vic Feather and Jack Jones liked to be filmed striding through its doors as they held the nation to ransom. Ford Cortinas. Beer and sandwiches. Economic ruin.Eyelashes Andy declared himself ‘ready’ for power. Three times he said it. Perhaps he felt we might have our doubts. This halting, uninformative speech will have done little to soothe them.Lucy Powell, reportedly our next deputy prime minister, opened proceedings with a few babyish words. She felt the midday gathering was ‘like the last day of term’. ‘Maybe we’ll go and have a water-fight later round the back,’ she trilled. Good grief.Mr Burnham arrived with his wife Frankie, demure, unsmiling. I preferred her seriousness to dingbat Lucy’s frivolity. The PM-in-waiting was also accompanied by Shabana Mahmood. Was her presence at his side a signal that she will indeed become Chancellor? Not necessarily. She was there because she chairs Labour’s national executive committee.After Ms Powell ‘paid her respects to Keir Starmer’ – which made it sound as if the poor old boy had croaked – we heard from the election’s under-worked returning officer and from Ms Mahmood, who was at her most aquiline, all beak, black hair and gleaming eyes. If she’d spotted a dormouse on the floor I swear she’d have swooped and gobbled it in one.She said she was going to name the new leader. ‘It’s hardly a nailbiter, folks.’ Yet when the moment came, Mr Burnham still seemed emotional. Frankie was embraced twice. The audience whooped. ‘Thank you so much, friends,’ gasped Eyelashes Andy once he had made it to the lectern.The following speech, which lasted 25 minutes, was amiable, anecdotal, sentimental and terribly dull. It contained no policy disclosures. Tax, defence and foreign affairs went unmentioned. Instead he trotted through five nebulous commitments to build ‘a new politics’. They always say this. Andy Burnham's acceptance speech, which lasted 25 minutes, was amiable, anecdotal, sentimental and terribly dull, writes Quentin Letts Andy Burnham is congratulated by his wife Frankie after being confirmed as the new Labour leaderThree Labour old-timers were thanked for making him the man he was: David Blunkett, Margaret Beckett and Neil Kinnock, the last being these days rather bear-like and hairy. When Mr Burnham mentioned Lady Beckett she was so overcome that her eyes fluttered as fast as the wings of a humming bird. Lord Kinnock became weepy. A larky Lord Blunkett did his best impression of Blakey from ‘On The Buses’.How the room swooned. How they clapped and whooped and dabbed their eyes. The wider nation may have found it all a little self-indulgent.Mr Burnham’s speaking style is on the gluey side. Under more capable direction he could have shaved ten minutes off that speech’s length. When not grabbing the lectern with both hands he occasionally stabbed a chipolata forefinger at the audience. His lips were pursed for leaden emphasis. He luxuriated in his own brilliance, recounting his magic formula for knowing what the voters thought. He’d go to Greggs or the pub and would listen to conversations. ‘I hear things,’ he said, as if such a method had never occurred to anyone else.Has it not dawned on him that as Prime Minister he will find it harder to drop in on the local pie shop to eavesdrop on punters?All points of the compass were laboriously covered when he averred he would be a leader for ‘north’ (pause), ‘south’ (pause), ‘east’ (pause) and ‘west’. Yes, yes, mate, we got it. Just please speed it up. He intended to ‘bring’ (pause) ‘back’ (pause) ‘hope’. Jeez, the pace was glacial. ‘I won’t change,’ he insisted. Some of us hoped he might at least change gear, out of first.When the speech finally ended he started boogying to a 1980s pop song, True Faith by New Order. The audience was cock-a-hoop. Outside, a street preacher shouted about Jesus Christ. The only divine insight that struck me was the unwelcome suspicion that Labour has lumbered us with another thudding bore.
