𝓤𝓷𝓲𝓽𝓮𝓭 𝓝𝓮𝔀𝓼

I don’t know about you but I’m already sick to the back teeth of Manchester-ism and the clueless bloke pushing it – Mr Eyelashes, AKA Andy Burnham. The bloke being hailed as the “Messiah” by slavering Labour Party acolytes isn’t even PM yet still he force fed us his blueprint for Britain (for which he has no mandate), and which, despite his calls for unity, involves splitting the country up into devolved little fiefdoms run by a bunch of inexperienced local mayors.

Now what could go wrong? Because devolution has worked so well in Scotland and Wales hasn’t it? “Gimme ten years to transform Britain,” shouted Burnham from the safety of his Manchester podium. Hell, he hasn’t even been an MP for five minutes, yet says he wants to “Rewire Britain” and subject the country to “the biggest rebalancing of power ever” which he reckons will make the economy soar.

It’s all b***ocks, of course. Devolution in Scotland and Wales has reduced both countries to economic basket cases. Thanks to devolution, Wales is now one of the poorest parts of Europe where primary kids are leaving school unable to read or write. And the health service and education in both countries are in the toilet. So, if Burnham wants ten years, how about he drafts a manifesto, calls an election and lets the British people decide whether they want the devolved Britain he’s selling? But, of course, he won’t because he’s too gutless to put his grand plan to the test.

Anyone who’s old enough and who saw Burnham’s speech this week would have realised they’d heard it all before – 30 years ago. Nothing’s changed in his loopy-Leftie manta. The only thing that HAS changed is back then he was actually in mainstream politics as a government minister. However, for the last eight years he’s been faffing about in the wilderness of local politics as Manchester’s Mayor (I refuse to call him King of the North because I don’t believe any Northerner has ever called him that) which is a job that basically involves him giving away lots of money so of course people there quite liked him.

However, Burnham is in no way up the cut and thrust of mainstream politics today, which is probably why he chose to make his speech from Manchester where he feels safe and where his audience was a gang of hand-picked, adoring fans who cheered his every utterance. And yes, it was one of those tub-thumping Labour speeches of old. Trouble is the people who made them back then – people like Burnham – were all mouth and no trousers. And definitely no action. They were talking to the party faithful and so didn’t have to convince anyone of anything. But times and voting have changed. Now people are held to account if they fail to keep their promises. Just as Burnham will be.

But that’s exactly what his big speech this week was – it was just big talk. Mr Eyelashes has no plan, no policies, just lots of big ideas which he hasn’t costed, where there’s no meat on the bones and, even if there was, he has no idea whether or not they’ll work. That speech felt like it was being made by an overzealous sixth former preaching to the enthusiastic students in his year.

His problem is, he had expected Starmer to stay until September which would have given him time to pull together some policies. But Starmer’s rightly said, “stuff you”, which left Burnham rooting around in his “old ideas” box and the stuff he pulled out was the stuff he was talking about 30 years ago – and never managed to pull off then.

This is why he refused to take questions from the press because he knew full well if they drilled down and asked for details of his plans – there were none. It would have become clear he was just spouting hot air. If Burnham really had a big, workable idea and had faith in it, he’d have been desperate to explain and answer questions about it to the media.

But he didn’t – he ran away and hid from them because he knew that if he was forced to reveal details of this Rewired Britain it would become clear he had none.

And of course Team Burnham don’t want him exposed as the stuttering, mumbling, ineffective politician he is before he’s even ensconced in Number 10. As for that speech, why didn’t he talk about the real problems engulfing Britain – like the £3trillion debt (which he has no idea how to fix, because he knows nothing about the economy) or like out-of-control immigration (not a single word about that)? Why didn’t he talk about the £100billion benefits bill and the fact our military has been starved of cash for years?

How is he going to sort growth and the economy when he has no expertise in either? How is his devolved army of mayors going to sort all that out? The short answer is they’re not. And neither is Burnham. How can you rewire a broken country if you don’t first fix the things that are destroying it?

The fact is half the people in this country have never heard of Andy Burnham and the other half remember him from yesteryear and know with absolute certainty that he’s going to cock this up. But how much are his cock ups, his devolution, his fantasy of a Northern Number 10 going to cost? Creating a new arm of government in Manchester hundreds of miles from Whitehall will cost taxpayers billions and it won’t work.

And why in God’s name do we need a No 10 in the North? Our seat of democracy is Westminster and it serves every area, every region of this country. Burnham can’t operate as a part time PM – half-in, half-out. He needs to be fully present and correct in Westminster to be answerable to the Opposition and to all the MP’s who represent the British people. THAT’S the job. Government shouldn’t have to change because he wants to stay in Wigan.

Punting a Number Ten in the North is also Burnham’s pathetic populist attempt to win back the Red Wall. And so, what if he does – what then happens to the people in the South, the East, the Midlands? None of this bodes well. It all shows that, despite the Herculean task ahead of him, Burnham still has a local-mayor, small-town mentality

I predict his honeymoon period will be even shorter than Keir Starmer’s, which is why he’s currently running scared of the press. He is totally unprepared for what’s about to hit him and he won’t cope.

If you want to see how he reacts under a bit of pressure, check out his recent interview with the BBC’s Victoria Derbyshire who threw him a few tame questions, yet still, they reduced him to a stuttering, mumbling fool. And of course, his people don’t want us to see a repeat of that before he gets to Number 10. It’s why they’re keeping him under wraps and only letting him talk from the safety of TikTok where the Andrew Neils of this world can’t rip his throat out.

Burnham says he wants ten years to fix Britain, but the truth is we haven’t got ten months. And the only thing that can save us is a strong, decisive leader who’ll take action right now. But anyone who knows Andy Burnham knows he’s a million miles from being Action Man.