Peter Cardwell
Peter Cardwell is a presenter on the Talk radio and TV network and a former Conservative special adviser
Authenticity is rare in politics. Andy Burnham, the new Prime Minister, who reminds us frequently he is dead northern, would like us to believe he’s a nice guy who has just happened to get to the top of politics through hard work, integrity and sorting out Manchester’s buses.
But his tedious schtick as a sub-David Brent centrist dad from t’north, dancing awkwardly to New Order, dissolved within moments of the first real scrutiny he has received since being re-elected as an MP. On Friday, the newly-crowned Labour leader could barely keep a straight face when denying to the BBC’s political editor that he had been part of a plot to bring down his predecessor, Sir Keir Starmer. Burnham’s sidekick Louise Haigh, set to become his Cabinet Office enforcer in the reshuffle, has already publicly revealed in a BBC podcast the plot had been going on for a year. Burnham simply wasn’t telling the truth.
At least Burnham actually took some questions from a journalist on that occasion, rather than meaningless TikToks about such major issues as how he likes to put milk in his tea first. Utterly untested in foreign policy and defence, he deemed it appropriate for his first intervention on foreign policy to be a trotting out of anti-Israel cliches on yet another social media video.
