𝓤𝓷𝓲𝓽𝓮𝓭 𝓝𝓮𝔀𝓼

There will be no PMQs this week, for which Andy Burnham must be relieved and the nation should be grateful. His last two car-crash performances have caused gaffes that required immediate corrections and clarifications from No. 10. Even more worryingly, he also managed to destroy the long-standing consensus that national security and defence of the nation is always the government’s number one priority. Instead he put it behind increasing the welfare budget. I am sure Putin was buoyed to hear such nonsense.

Burnham’s typically vacuous line, on a par with his “hope in every heart” and “growth in every postcode”, that “our national security cannot come at the expense of social security” was evidently prepared the night before and designed to curry favour with his left-wing backbenchers. Saying such a thing may well have pleased the student union politics societies, but we do actually expect Prime Ministers to have the steel and the gravitas to stand up for the national interest and take on the left-wing extremists.

Unfortunately, we have a Prime Minister who needs to be loved and desperately craves the adulation Jeremy Corbyn had from them. If that wasn’t bad enough, No. 10 also had to issue a swift correction regarding Burnham’s openness towards granting a second Scottish Independence referendum saying the Prime Minister “mis-spoke” and it wasn’t “exactly the same” as a border poll in Northern Ireland.

Only the week before in reply to Labour MP Tan Dhesi who told him “vibes” weren’t enough when it came to defence spending, Burnham confirmed that his government would hit the target of spending 3% of GDP on defence by 2030, only for the No. 10 machine to ride to his rescue again to say the the PM had “mis-spoke” and that the PM was referring to the 3.5% by 2035 NATO goal rather than the 2030 timeline. It seems Burnham hasn’t the first idea about what his government is or isn’t doing.

The Prime Minister’s error strewn performances have many of his backbenchers belatedly realising they have backed a dud. His inability to perform or even to take PMQs seriously has got them nervous for the stakes are high in this weekly political jousting.

Tony Blair described PMQs as a “bowel-moving, terror-inspiring” experience, Harold McMillan threw up before performances, whilst Jim Callaghan worried about the unpredictability of the occasion – but none of this appears to have dawned on Burnham who sidles into the Chamber at 11.55am casual and ill-prepared.

Old Labour lags say openly to those of us on the opposition benches that Burnham’s a nice enough guy, just not up to the job. Others call him a windbag with an ego the size of a planet which is why he lost the previous two leadership elections he contested. But what’s clear for all to see, Burnham is a disaster at the Dispatch Box.