Framing Andy Burnham

Too northern? Too left-wing? Too much of a flip-flopper? Just keep it plausible

My grandpa loved to tell stories, and I enjoyed letting him. But with four sons, a dozen grandchildren and several hundred close, personal friends, he struggled to keep on top of which story he had regaled to which confidant. Consequently, I heard a lot of the same ones. Of course, I never called him on it.

First, because he was paying for supper and it seemed churlish. And second, I entertained myself by keeping track of how each story evolved in the retelling. Some remained identical right down to the hand gestures, while in others the protagonist switched gender or location and, on one memorable occasion, died.

So I was rather perturbed when, sitting at our regular table in the corner of the Hawksmoor, Spitalfields and sharing one of my own thoroughly charming anecdotes, my grandpa informed me by way of interruption that he’d heard this one before. The chutzpah!

So, yes, the story I’m about to share I’ve told more than once. In my defence, I’ll stop sharing it when history stops repeating itself.

Keep it plausible, darling

Plausibility is to politics what productivity growth is to economics: it isn't everything, but in the long run, it’s almost everything. In his memoirs, A Journey¹, Tony Blair set out why his criticisms of successive Conservative leaders were all fairly low-wattage. So, John Major was “weak”, William Hague “better at jokes than judgement” and Michael Howard an “opportunist”. Blair explains:

Any one of those charges, if it comes to be believed, is actually fatal. Yes, it’s not like calling your opponent a liar, or a fraud, or a villain or a hypocrite, but the middle-ground floating voter kind of shrugs their shoulders at those claims. They don’t chime. They’re too over the top, too heavy, and they represent an insult, not an argument.

Something for opponents of Britain’s next prime minister, Andy Burnham, to ponder as they refine their new attack lines.

This will require spurning the boost to short-term ego of denouncing Burnham as a communist, a megalomaniac or a threat to national security. But staying silent isn’t an option either. Whether Conservative, Reform, Liberal Democrat or Green, each must try to provide public opinion with an early lead on how to think about Burnham and hope, should one stick, that the public comes to believe they got there independently.

Only a Northern Song

Burnham is that great ablative — by, with and from the North². This is a source of political strength, but it is also a potential line of attack. The north may be a state of mind, but it is also very much a place, and therefore has the potential to alienate the millions of voters not fortunate enough to call it home.

And not just those living in London, the south east or the Midlands. In my experience, the shibboleth that Manchester is the ‘capital of the north’ annoys non-Manchester northerners more than anyone else. This is why Tory and Reform strategists are already trying to argue that Burnham’s northern focus — there is talk of moving parts of Number 10 to Manchester — is a potential liability³.

Moreover, May’s local elections demonstrated that Labour’s stranglehold on the actual capital is already under threat from the far-left populism and sectarian politics of the Greens.

Likelihood of sticking: 8/10