𝓤𝓷𝓲𝓽𝓮𝓭 𝓝𝓮𝔀𝓼

Andy Burnham has not yet finished his first week as Prime Minister, but he has felt the wrath of Kemi Badenoch. The Conservative leader staged a rooftop press conference just along the Thames from the Houses of Parliament to give her verdict on the new Labour leader.

She wants to turn Mr Burnham’s greatest strengths into liabilities – and when she went on the attack, she did not pull her punches.

Mr Burnham used his time as mayor of Greater Manchester to present himself as an alternative prime minister, a leader who can help a great city prosper while looking after the least well-off; a dad who likes to have a good time but who can handle a pandemic-grade crisis. Mrs Badenoch wants to make his years focused on Manchester a problem for the new PM.

Standing in the strong July sunshine, she said: “He is behaving like he’s still the mayor of Manchester. He is now the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. He needs to start acting like it.”

She is unimpressed by his announcements so far on cheaper bus fares, action on electricity bills and help for pubs and clubs.

“Andy Burnham’s ambitions for Britain are too small,” she declared, chiding him for coming forward with “mayor of Manchester ideas”.

Portraying him as a policy wonk who is not ready to defend Britain, she said: “Russia will not be deterred by more devolution.”

Most audaciously, she compared him to former Conservative prime minister Liz Truss, whose time as PM came to a crashing end after her mini-Budget.

“Four years ago, a prime minister announced policies without making savings to pay for them, and it didn’t end very well,” she said.

A Tory leader would only make such a pointed attack if she felt supremely secure in her position, and Mrs Badenoch has confidence in spades. She is now the one casting herself as a PM-in-waiting, presenting Mr Burnham as a “nice guy” who “dances well enough” but who offers “small answers to big problems”.

“When you’re the mayor of Manchester,” she said, “you are handed a big pot of someone else’s money, and you decide where to spend it. I’m sure this is great fun – it can make you very popular, but it is not the same as being Prime Minister. A mayor doesn’t have to fund the army. A Prime Minister does.”

Mrs Badenoch wants to convince Britons living beyond Makerfield that Mr Burnham does not understand their lives.

“He is not governing for the whole country,” she said. “He’s governing just for his constituents because he didn’t have a plan beyond his constituency casework.”

Her scorn for the Labour MPs she stares out at during Prime Minister’s Questions is real. She described the Cabinet members as “terrifying” because they are “not the people that are going to turn the country around” – pointing to backgrounds in charities, the public sector and trade unions.

Labour MPs spared Mr Burnham the hassle of a leadership election by pledging their allegiance to him in droves. If he had faced a contest, none of the barbs thrown his way would have been as sharp as those deployed by Mrs Badenoch on a rooftop near the Savoy.

Mr Burnham may grimace at the thought that this is just the start of her onslaught. It will continue all the way through to the next election.

If he starts talking about his years as Manchester mayor a little less, we will know that he is worried.