QUENTIN LETTS: New PMs usually pulse with power. Burnham came across as an earnest bore
Verdict on Andy Burnham’s first PMQs in the Commons? Gluey. Glacial. He has the dropping consistency of plum-cake batter. Despite those eyelashes, our new premier comes across as an earnest bore.
We will start with the good news. He avoided the common debutant’s mistake of jabbering. Instead he spoke too slowly. A despatch-box dawdler. Exchanges with Kemi Badenoch lasted 18 minutes, almost twice as long as they should have taken. The supposed half-hour session stretched to 44 minutes.
Answers were leisurely and largely inconclusive. He had little to say and took an age to say it.
This was his first Wednesday high noon: people had crowded into the chamber, the galleries over-spilling with visitors and peers. A nation was twangy with expectation yet the House was soon as windless as the horse latitudes. In the days of sailing trade ships those were the subtropical parts of the ocean often so calm that mariners, motionless for weeks, would throw cargo bay horses overboard to save drinking water.
Was it his muddy voice? His ambling, shuffling diffidence? His determination to be liked? A mixture of all those plus, I think, a terror of the snap and smack of command. Egalitarians such as Mr Burnham regard leadership as a distastefully hierarchical activity. They try to dilute that.
His advisers must realise how dangerous the Commons could be to a premier who has yet to reach decisions on most of the big problems. Hence, perhaps, Operation Bore The Pants Off Em.
Mr Burnham burbled through paragraphs of civil service prose. He touched the rim of his glasses and looked up, a little wounded, when the Speaker, Sir Lindsay Hoyle, told him to get a blasted move on. Sir Lindsay’s despairing intervention made no difference. Our new supremo was not to be rushed.
Labour smiles were starting to fade. Rapture was turning mouldy. Even the damp little Lib Dems, who so yearn to be in coalition with Labour, looked crestfallen.
A few Labour MPs sitting on the floor in the gangways started to ease their necks and stretch their legs. At 12.29 a Glasgow backbencher, John Grady, sitting behind Bridget Phillipson, stifled a yawn and gazed longingly at the distant doors. Whole passages of play passed in silence. Had someone accidentally pressed the mute button?
New prime ministers usually pulse with power and radiate a sheen. It is the Westminster equivalent of the Ready Brek child’s orange glow and it comes from the cutting, conquering self-confidence that PMs generally possess. Tony Blair and David Cameron had it. Even Theresa May, to a smaller extent. Mr Burnham entirely lacks it.
Some will say that is to his credit. They will welcome a modest man. But politicians need the ability to project ideas, to convince wavering souls, and you do not do that by being a hand-wringer. A leader too modest may soon be scorned by colleagues who fancy that they are more eloquent and confident. Chris Bryant, Northern Ireland Secretary, sat on the front bench. He was soon drumming his fingers. Wes Streeting, Defence Secretary, crouched on the steps of the Speaker’s Chair. Sniper’s position.
Things had started with this hesitant prime minister shuffling to the despatch box, saying something diplomatic about the Bayeux Tapestry and linking that to a line about Labour’s record on small-boat crossings. It raised surprisingly little reaction. He’d have been hopeless at the Battle of Hastings. His sword would have been blunt.
Soon he was ‘paying tribute’ to a Plaid Cymru MP, promising to pay ‘very close attention’ to her representations on police funding. Here was an alderman’s belief in consensus. The Commons is a crueller circus. It expects a leader to be able to swish the flail and whack the daylights out of opponents.
Mr Burnham agreed with almost every opposition backbencher who spoke. He agreed to numerous meetings. Andrew George (Lib Dem, St Ives) wanted some of his time to discuss a private member’s Bill. Few sane ministers, let alone a PM, agree to discuss a private member’s Bill with its promoter. Certainly not with the discursive George. He is the House’s gulpiest droner, blowier than the Seven Stones reef. Gasbag George! Aides at 10 Downing Street will be slapping their brows in despair. Let Andrew George through Andy’s door and hours will be lost before he has even finished his preamble.
Mr Burnham told Kemi Badenoch that he desired ‘problem solving, not point scoring’. This is one of his catchphrases. Mrs Badenoch, polite but firm, pressed ahead with her courteous scepticism. She wondered how Mr Burnham intended to fund all the promises he has been making. He did not say.
‘A prime minister needs to be a leader, not a people pleaser,’ suggested Mrs Badenoch. Mr Burnham had ‘not said no to a single spending request’. Would taxes rise? He did not say.
As on Tuesday afternoon, at their first encounter, Mrs Badenoch adopted a tone of patient explanation, that of a driving instructor with a gearbox-crunching novice. She patronised him. He did not appear to mind in the slightest. It was as if he wanted to be shown how to find reverse.
Despite his disavowal of ‘point scoring’ he did repeat some Tuesday lines about the Truss government. A few Labour MPs cheered this but Mr Burnham’s tone lacked bite. Is he this feeble with mandarins? With union leaders? What will happen if he ever comes face to face with that shark Putin?
That ‘summer of sex’ woman, Samantha Niblett (Lab, S Derbys) had a go, if we can put it like that. She names various private parts and asked Eyelashes for a meeting. He agreed!
Away from the Commons, in his safe zone, Mr Burnham posted a social-media message saying he was more interested in speaking to ‘the people’ than to their MPs, and so he was going to have a version of PMQs on Instagram. It was going to be pre-recorded, allowing it to be edited by Downing Street. Less scary.
A prime minister certain of his policies – and himself – would not behave like this.
Tony Blair is 33 and a 1/3rd
https://www.dailymail.com/news/article-16100011/QUENTIN-LETTS-Andy-Burnham-earnest-bore-PMQs.html
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QUENTIN LETTS: New PMs usually pulse with power. Burnham came across as an earnest bore...[more]