𝓤𝓷𝓲𝓽𝓮𝓭 𝓝𝓮𝔀𝓼

Finally, we saw Andy Burnham for what he is this week – a class-A conman, a liar and a 24-carat hypocrite who is willing to peddle sob stories about his family and exploit his father’s death in order to win votes. His conference speech was sickening. Who hawks what should be their own private grief for political gain? Who spews out stories about their family’s hardships in order to beef up their working-man credentials? I don’t care how his Auty Kitty managed to buy a house or that his grandad worked in Liverpool docks. What I care about is how he is going to cut the humongous £330billion benefits bill, fund our ailing military, stop out-of-control immigration and reduce our £3trillion debt – the interest on which is now the highest in 28 years.

But Burnham never talked about any of that. What he did was to thank Kier Starmer – the man he spent the best part of a year trying to shaft. He exposed himself as a liar, announcing he was ending the Triple Lock, having previously stated that if he became PM he would not. When campaigning in Makerfield (a rabidly Leave constituency) he promised that as PM he’d never take us back into the EU: “I am NOT proposing that the UK considers rejoining the EU. I respect the decision that was taken with the referendum.” Really? He also said going back into the EU would mean “we’d be stuck in a permanent rut – constantly arguing and divided”. And that’s exactly the can of worms he opened this week saying: “Yes, we could go all the way and re-join.”

What do you call a man like that – a man who says one thing to get votes and then does another when he’s got them? It’s called lying. It’s called being duplicitous and dishonest. It’s cheating the British people who he begged to trust him but then stabs them in the back because it helps him curry favour with his party most of whom – like him – are Remainers. Why the hell is he even thinking about rejoining a failing, controlling, dysfunctional bloc like the EU which economically is on its backside and has done way worse than we have these last ten years. Why would he want to sabotage the 70 incredible trade deals we’ve done since leaving and which we’d have to give up if we rejoined? Why hitch Britain’s wagon to a bloc that has diminishing global influence and can never hope to compete with China and the US?

The countries we’ve done trade deals with – India, Japan, the Transpacific nations, the Gulf States, Australia and New Zealand – these are the countries where it’s all happening, not the stultified, dead duck that is the EU.

That conference speech might have hit the spot with his slavering acolytes. But the British people aren’t idiots. Many of us had parents and grandparents who bust a gut to buy houses. Both of mine each worked two jobs to buy ours. And yes, too many of us have had parents who’ve died but we don’t use our grief or our personal stories for political gain.

I’m sorry Andy Burnham’s Dad died. I know the pain of it. But I don’t want to see him crying or talking about it at a party conference when, instead of playing to his own fan gallery, he should have been telling us how he’s going to dig Britain out of the terrifying hole HIS party has put us in. But that speech was typical of Burnham who has no solution to the problems threatening to engulf Britain. So instead talks about hope, the good old days and big bad Maggie Thatcher whose reign, he forgets, prompted 30 years of growth and global power for Britain as opposed to 70’s Labour which crawled on bended knee to the IMF for a bailout.

Until this week I didn’t have much time for Burnham. I thought he was just a weak people-pleaser, a man unable to make decisions or tackle the hard stuff. But after that speech I’m terrified, because he’s way worse than that. He’s Jezza Corbyn on steroids – just in a better suit. He’s dragging the party to the Far-Left calling for nationalisation, the seizure of properties. He’s shafting pensioners, threatening to defy Britain’s biggest ever democratic vote and spending billions we don’t have. Like a deranged Bible basher, he preaches about the oppressive destructive socialism of the 70’s. And if he succeeds in taking us back there – it WILL be the end of us!