Working Class Zeroes 19 - Andy Burnham

The essays in both Working Class Zeroes and Middle Class Holes are never intentionally topical. I’ve mentioned before how real-world events sometimes have an uncanny knack of pushing the week’s subject up the news agenda. And occasionally I’ve shifted the schedule about a bit to catch the moment. But this is the first time I’ve deliberately chosen to write about a person because they’re in the headlines at that particular time.

This is, indeed, a unique moment. As I write, Andrew Murray Burnham - floppy hair, sad eyes, gormless ‘work experience boy’ expression - is making his way to London to accept the Labour crown and become Prime Minister. What rough beast, we might wonder, slouches towards TUC headquarters to be born? The very peculiar interregnum of his accession, following his victory in Makerfield, is finally coming to its end - even if he won’t be seen in Parliament until it returns in September, which is another strangeness on top of the strangeness.

Andy is barely getting started, so I could have waited to catch more of his doings as they are done. But there’ll be plenty of time for that in the 1,125 days before the last possible date of the next general election. Today is about the last chance we’ll have to pause before the Burnham Era begins, so I think it’ll be interesting to consider him now, just prior to the anointing.

And, of course, if you’re reading this entry later, it will be worthwhile to look back on, I hope. You can see if I got my forecast right, or if there’s egg all over my big fat face.

Andy Burnham was born in January 1970, in the Liverpool suburb of Aintree (famed for its racecourse and its iron). His dad was a telephone engineer, his mother a GP’s receptionist. It is my regrettable but inevitable duty to have to inform you that he joined the Labour Party when he was 15 years old. He has a Roman Catholic background, but then this shouldn’t really surprise us, as so much of progressivism is homily and responses - no thought at all.

A lot has been written about him lately, and he has certainly talked at great length, but very little information has been imparted. He is like a book that you’ve forgotten you’ve read. You recall the cover, the sensation of turning the pages, but nothing about the story.

As you will know he appears to be a very ordinary man, and in fact almost painfully well-adjusted in his demeanour. Ordinariness should be a virtue in a Prime Minister, particularly after the run of freaks and geeks we’ve had over the last decade. But it is not. And actually, he is stranger than we think; not in himself, no, but in the aura he creates, and its curious effect on others. He is a very weak flavour of a man, which makes his elevation to saviour by Labour MPs all the more depressingly baffling. It’s like being tied up awaiting a terrible fate when the door bursts open and you cry ‘Thank heavens, it’s Superman!’ when in fact it’s the bassist from the Inspiral Carpets. Labour MPs seem to rate his modestly impressive achievements as mayor of Manchester rather higher than they deserve.

Now, I normally resist making political predictions. The words freeze in my mouth, or I get halfway through typing a sentence and think better of it. A lot of pundits prophesy as often as they break wind. But it seems to me a mug’s game, as you’ll either be very wrong or very right; if the former then people will cavil and quote tweet you with a snarky ‘This aged well’, if the latter they won’t even notice, and you’ll have to repost your forecast yourself, which will also make you look a twit, if of a different kind.

So no, I don’t publish predictions in public, but like everybody else I certainly mutter them in private.

When Starmer came to power, even though I was certain it would mean disaster and would end pretty much the way that it has (though sooner than I anticipated), I kept schtum. The same was true of the previous three PMs, who I at least wanted to believe in.

And I couldn’t help doubting myself. Maybe I’ve judged this wrong, I thought.

Remember, at the dawn of Starmer, all those articles by folk supposedly in the know about those ruthlessly efficient, pragmatic political masterminds Morgan McSweeney and Sue Gray? Reading those, I pondered that perhaps I’d overlooked something. And it would be a mistake to underestimate the intelligence and acumen of your political opponents, wouldn’t it?

This fair-mindedness has now become far harder to sustain. It is very difficult to compose a thought along the lines of ‘Perhaps the mighty brains of Lucy Powell and Chris Bryant know something I don’t?’ I find that there are limits of Pollyanna-ishness which I cannot cross.

This time round I feel so confident in my prediction that I’m going to put it on paper. Here it is.