𝓤𝓷𝓲𝓽𝓮𝓭 𝓝𝓮𝔀𝓼

Andy Burnham has been warned the public will “turn quite quickly” if he continues to criticise Margaret Thatcher. Former Liberal Democrat leader and deputy prime minister Nick Clegg said Mr Burnham’s “retro Labour” rhetoric of taking aim at Britain’s first female PM could anger the electorate.

Mr Clegg warned voters could view Mr Burnham’s digs at The Iron Lady as an attempt to boost Labour’s bleak position in the opinion polls, rather than improving the fortunes of the nation. Mr Burnham has made a series of references to Baroness Thatcher and her Conservative government’s legacy during his campaign to reach Number 10. Mr Clegg identified Mr Burnham’s language and body language as one of his “overwhelming impressions” of the PM’s initial hours in Downing Street.

Speaking to The Spectator’s Tim Shipman on Monday — the same day Mr Burnham became PM — Mr Clegg said: “This whole going back to the sort of good old hits of ‘Maragaret Thatcher in the 1980s’ and that was the ‘crucible of all our problems’.

“It just feels super retro to talk about Margaret Thatcher more than artificial intelligence.

“He gave a whole economic speech where I don’t think he mentioned AI once.”

Mr Clegg added: “But I think if that persists too much, I think voters sense that and I think voters will turn quite quickly if they feel that what they have is someone in Number 10 who is there basically to sort of try and resuscitate the flagging opinion poll ratings of the Labour party rather than resuscitate the country as a whole.

“One is not the same as the other.”

In a video launching his Makerfield by-election campaign, Mr Burnham said growing up under Baroness Thatcher’s government was a key reason for deciding to join Labour.

He said: “The deindustrialisation, the draining away of economic, social, political power, it left places like Makerfield behind and Britain has been on that path for the last 40 years.

“And it was the sense of injustice I got about the way this country is run that took me towards politics.”

He then renewed his criticism of Thatcherism in his first speech as Labour leader, saying Britain took “a series of wrong turns in the 1980s” when “political power was centralised and economic power privatised”.

Mr Burnham then echoed this sentiment days later in his maiden address as PM, pledging to the “biggest changes in the last 40 years” with “a new political model and a new economic model”.