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In the run-up to his coup against Sir Keir Starmer, Andy Burnham was sold to wavering Labour MPs as the ultimate ‘man of the people’. It was Burnham, his supporters argued, who ‘gets it’ in a way that the out-of-touch London lawyer Sir Keir simply did not. Only Burnham understood the frustrations, fears and hopes of the swathes of voters turning to Nigel Farage for answers. Only he could win back traditional Labour supporters in former heartlands from Reform. Yet Burnham this week demonstrated just how strikingly the reality has failed to live up to the sell.
In an interview with GB News yesterday, the Prime Minister appeared to think it politically savvy to suggest that he would spare working-class communities the burden of illegal migrants by dispersing them to more affluent areas. ‘We cannot have a situation where it’s only the poorest communities in the country that receive all of the dispersal of refugees and asylum seekers,’ he said. ‘I do believe all parts of the country need to work, to play their part.’
The man who rode into Downing Street on a platform of being connected to the country appears too ideologically blinded to see the obvious
That last sentence was a glaring indication of Burnham’s disconnect from the public mood. Voters do not want illegal migrants sent to already struggling and deprived working-class towns. But nor do they want them housed in plush, leafy villages like Piddington. Working class or middle class, it does not matter: the public do not want them anywhere in this country. With the exception of some out-of-touch Green supporters, they want the arrivals to end altogether.
