How Burnham broke his promise in one cabinet shuffle

Can somebody please explain to me how Wes Streeting has just been put in charge of defence of our country?Andy Burnham says his government is the biggest change to British politics in 40 years.Then the cabinet list came out.Ed Miliband, Yvette Cooper, John Healey, Angela Rayner, Pat McFadden.Come on, some of these people were in government before the iPhone even existed.And let's have a proper look at it.

Ed Miliband was leading the Labour Party over a decade ago.He's now Foreign Secretary.Yvette Cooper served under Blair and Brown, then did Home Secretary and Foreign Secretary under Starmer, and now she's been handed the Health Department.That's her third big department in about two years.John Healey, another Blair and Brown veteran, walked out of government after a row with the Treasury over defence spending.So what does Burnham do?

Well, he puts him in charge of the Treasury, the exact department he fell out with.Now he's running it.And then there's Angela Rayner.She resigned over her tax affairs and the sale of her house.That was a proper scandal, not a small one.And she's now back in cabinet doing housing, the exact brief she walked away from, out the door one year, back through the same door the next year.

But the one that really tells you what's going on is defense.Wes Streeting is now in charge of Britain's armed forces.

No military background, no defense experience.

halfway through sorting NHS waiting lists, and the man everyone expected to get it, Dan Jarvis, an actual former soldier, got passed over.Why?Because Streeton is a close ally of Burnham.That's the qualification.Not service, not experience, just being pals with the new Prime Minister.Now, the defence will be that these people are experienced.

They know the departments.You can't run a country with beginners.Fine.There is something in that, I suppose.Nobody wants a cabinet of people who cannot find a building.But you cannot have it both ways.

You cannot stand there promising the biggest shake -up in 40 years while handing the big jobs to the same names who've been at the top table since the 90s.And giving defence to your mate over a soldier?That is not a change.That is musical chairs with a bit of favouritism thrown in.And it is exactly that.The music stops, everyone shuffles one seat to the left and we all get told it's a new era.

Normal people know exactly what this is because we've seen it all before at work.The right person for the job loses out to the person who knows the gaffer.And let us not forget that the gaffer himself was not democratically elected by anyone in this nation.apart from 25 ,000 people in Makerfield, and the person he appointed as his second -in -command is a convicted fraudster.Oh, my days.