𝓤𝓷𝓲𝓽𝓮𝓭 𝓝𝓮𝔀𝓼

Andy Burnham doesn’t dye his very dark hair. The reason I can pretty much guarantee that is because I spent precisely 37 minutes staring at the top of his head, just inches away, on a flight to New York this week.

The Prime Minister, who met Donald Trump for the first time while in the Big Apple, had popped back mid-journey to be grilled by the press pack on board. Journalists huddled around him in what we call a doughnut. I took my perch directly behind the 56-year-old PM looking straight down at his Barnet.

At first he appeared slightly uneasy and cautious. Unsurprising as it was his first taste of the Parliamentary Lobby in such a scenario. Burnham is everything you would imagine him to be, perhaps even more so, when you meet him in person – even when flying at 35,000 feet over the Atlantic Ocean.

His Captain Scarlet eyebrows and eyelashes appear darker, his positivity is more pronounced. He dresses in denim trousers and a trendy suit jacket. He is generous with his time and, by and large, he answers journalists questions. He is, dare I say it, the most un-Prime Ministerial Prime Minister I’ve encountered stretching back to the Blair/Brown era..

We grilled the new Labour leader on everything from Trump to AI, Brexit, Welfare and the Middle East crisis. Unfazed, his answers were considered and he actually had an opinion, unlike Sir Keir Starmer who often replied in the hope that he wouldn’t cock anything up. He even took time to poke fun at Danny Dyer, who had recently unleashed an expletive-laden tirade at the PM.

By the time he had finished, the clock on my voice recorder had gone past the 37-minute mark and my notebook actually had some decent stories in it. It was a far cry from the arid aeroplane huddles with former Prime Minister Theresa May which routinely failed to deliver.

While it wasn’t quite the newsfest of Boris Johnson or even David Cameron this was a pretty good start for the King of the North. Burnham’s showdown with Trump on Tuesday, in a tiny room deep inside the United Nations headquarters, was a curious affair. The Prime Minister was clearly nervous, gripping his hands together and shifting in his seat as he sat next to the notoriously volatile US President.

Apart from one big swipe at the government’s plans for the Chagos Islands, Trump was largely on gracious behaviour.

Team Burnham were pleased with how the encounter went and, so it appears, was the Prime Minister himself.

Jetting home on the red-eye that night Burnham, now dressed in his favourite dark-navy t-shirt, popped back for a more informal chat with reporters. The PM told me that he just had to be himself and not try to be anything else when meeting Trump. He then half-joked that the upcoming Labour party conference would be tougher than what he had just experienced.

Again, he was more generous than most with his time. He appears to be a man who wants to be liked. It’s a good job for him that he’s about to spend the next few days in the city he was born, Liverpool, for the Labour Party Conference. This time last year Burnham’s half-hearted leadership coup exploded on the launchpad on Merseyside.

Just 12 months later he is in the job he has coveted for most of his political career. Politics, it’s a funny old game!