Why 'smug' Burnham's coronation could come crashing down | The Daily T

He's riding a wave of banter, smugglery and self -congratulation.But will Andy Burnham's coronation come crashing down?

Craven cabinet ministers are already sucking up to the man who claims to be the next messiah.Does he have a plan?And why was he once described as serially incompetent?

For him to turn up, as some people said, with kind of cool headmaster vibes, standing in front of hundreds of giddy MPs, all pushing their way to the front, hoping that he recognises them, desperate for a job.It was a classic example of the Labour Party getting high on its own supply.Labour sees itself as the party of the people, and so it thinks if Labour's feeling good about life, Britain will be feeling good about life.and this man is riding in and because he makes us feel happy because he just won an election and we haven't done that for a very long time, the rest of the country must be loving this.

Tim, why am I dressed like this?We're getting on to the weather in a moment.

Because it's a beautiful day.

But why am I in white and red?

I don't know.

What's happening tonight?

I don't know.

England are playing again.Oh, England are playing.England are playing Ghana.Do you think we're going to win this match?

Oh, wow.OK.Yeah, that sounds plausible.

I love asking you about the football.This is like you asking me about, like, chapters of the Bible.

My attention is on Wednesday when Scotland are playing because I might use it as an excuse to wear my kilt.

Yes, it's bloody hot to wear a kilt though.It's going to be 37 degrees on Wednesday.

Au contraire, I find kilts in hot weather to be rather comfortable.

Really, is that because you're not wearing any pants?You little filth bag.How crude.Well, you have to not wear pants with a kilt, don't you?You know I'm crude.By the way, people said that our outfits yesterday in Downing Street were very summery.

They called you the man from Del Monte.

Yeah, I look like an ice cream salesman.I don't mind.That's exactly what I was going for.So why would I complain?

I fished my coolest dress.I mean, cool as in I don't think I'm that cool.I mean, cool as innot hot from the bottom of a, I discovered a load of summer dresses that I'd put away in winter which I've now got out and I'm wearing with great abandon.Can I just say that all of this stuff about let's close schools, let's close everything, oh my god we're all going to die in the heat is a bit over the top.Greenpeace now saying the government must stop winging it.

and implement a comprehensive extreme heat strategy rather than relying on basic advice like drink more water.What advice do you want the government to give?Try and stay cool, drink more water.These people want an entire strategy for coping with a couple of days of 30 plus degrees.

What does this remind you of?Lockdown.

Yes.

And what did we have under lockdown?A combination of the state goes big brother the state also shuts down and goes home.

Yeah.

Schools closed.It's funny, isn't it?

It doesn't make any sense though, does it?

The private sector, no one says to the private sector, you've got to close down and go home and stay indoors and watch telly in front of a fan.But for some reason, public sector, it's always, we can't function past midday.

But look at this advice, remote learning and go home to work if necessary.I'm sorry, but most people's homes are hotter than their offices because they're not air conditioned.

That's true.Yes.

Do you have air conditioning?

No, I do not.I have two large tower fans, but also I live in a basement flat, which everyone should do.I worry at night about my dog, and I actually wake up worrying, is he too hot?But some time ago, I gave him a bedroom in the house, which turns out to be the coolest part of the house.So I keep waking up having daddy fears that my dog is burning up and I go into the room and I open the door and there's this cool breeze going through.

And then you climb into his bed.

I can't believe he's got the best room in the house.

Well, on the theme of thingshotting up, see what I've done there.

Clever.

The Labour leadership might not be quite as straightforward as we thought.Now, yesterday, we left Downing Street with the conclusion that it was going to be a coronation.

Yes.

Because suddenly, as we were recording, Wes Streeting said, actually, he's not going to stand.He's going to back Burnham.And then we thought, well, who's going to take on these guys?If we think this is a kind of dual ticket of Burnham on the soft left, streeting on the blue Labour right, presumably as his next Chancellor, that's all a done deal and everything's going to be fine.

And also Burnham was on his way to London by train, which gave the impression of Napoleon marching into Paris to tell the Directory that it was closed, or Cromwell shutting the Parliament, you know.But there was a strange juxtaposition between the media's intense coverage of a train journey And you could tell from the images, the public had no idea what was going on.

No, I know.Also, there's a load of memes.Who is he?

Is he a celebrity?

Is he famous?There's a load of memes on X at the moment where people are cutting clips from Coronation Street, you know, where people from Coronation Street announce that they're going to London.And then someone says, to London?What are you doing that for?It was like it was such an important moment for Andy Burnham that he managed to change out of his black T -shirt.

I actually remember when Vera and Rita and the girls went to see Cats in London.That's how old I am.But yeah, it was preposterous.But I do wonder if he is riding a wave of smuggery and self -congratulation that will backfire.Because once he arrived in London, and we'll talk about his swearing in, he then went for a photograph with Labour MPs and it was uncomfortable to watch.

Yes.

Because Burnham is being elevated because of crisis in the country, political, economic and social.We've just had riots.People have been going door to door, burning down the houses that have foreigners in them.The country's not in a good place right now.So for him to turn up, as some people said, with kind of cool headmaster vibes, standing in front of hundreds of giddy MPs, all pushing their way to the front, hoping that he recognises them, desperate for a job.It was a classic example of the Labour Party getting high on its own supply.

Labour sees itself as the party of the people, and so it thinks if Labour's feeling good about life, Britain will be feeling good about life.And this man is riding in, and because he makes us feel happy, because he just won an election and we haven't done that for a very long time, the rest of the country must be loving this.

I know, it's ridiculous.Somebody said, posted the image and then said, describe this in one word.And I thought hubris.Yes.And it's actually, there's a degree of continuity starmer about Burnham in many ways, because we had that gaslighting speech from the Prime Minister pretending everything that he's done over the course of the last two years has been amazing.And the country is somehow riding high, which begs the question, well, why have you fallen off your horse then?

And second of all, what do we have in Burnham?We have somebody very similar to Starmer when he entered office.We discussed this somewhat yesterday.Doesn't seem to have a plan.OK, so he's liable to become prime minister and then get pushed around instantly by the civil service because he's coming in on nothing.He's coming in on thin air.

I've asked repeatedly of ministers who come on my GB News show, what is Burnhamism?What are his top three ideological beliefs?

And it all comes down to buses.

It really does, it's all buses and trams.Literally no one can answer the questions.And the other thing is, is that actually when you look back on his history as a minister, and again we touched on this yesterday, he's failed in two leadership bids so far, okay he's succeeded in this one, or he looks like he'sgoing to succeed in this one.Let's see.And we'll get on to Al Kahn's and any potential challenges in a minute.

But he's in the health department that presides over the mid -staffs catastrophe.He was described to me by somebody as, quote, serially incompetent.He doesn't have that many highlights from his time under Blair and Brown.And suddenly, he talks about it, it's all Manchester, it's all Manchester.And we've talked about the fact that you're not really that challenged as a metropolitan mayor, because all you're doing is your civic duty.And there's no difficult decisions to be made.

Let's then get onto the swearing in then, because there is this sense around him that he is quotes the next Messiah.And it was quite funny for him to be heckled with that upon entering the House of Commons.

I swear by almighty God that I will be faithful and bear true allegiance to His Majesty King Charles, his heirs and successors according to law.So help me God.

The mood in the chamber was very odd because on one side you had the Tories taking the mic, like those comments suggest.On the other side, you had probably a couple of hundred Labour MPs, noticeably not ministers, who were clearly delighted to see him.And as a spectator, The difference, the sudden change between Starmer and Burnham was striking, and his witty riposte to that, he's not the Messiah, I'm just a naughty boy, but also when the Tories were taking the mick out of his new suit, he gave them almost a little twirl.

Yes.so he can play the game better than Starmer even on day one.

To be fair, it's not just a game, it's who he really is.He is a man who's very at home in his own skin, who's very relaxed and is happy to take risks.Politicians are trained never to show too much of yourself in case you make a mistake, like Robert Kenyon, someone like that.There are other people who don't have that training.And so their short and brilliant political career is just a litany of mistakes.Burnham, he seems to be able to walk that line between he can play the statesman, but he can also play the human being.

And there was almost a sense of relief that, oh, we've got a human being back in charge.

Yes.Although there was something cravenly self -interested about some of the ministers that attended the Burnham selfie opportunity, but were conspicuous by their absence at Keir Starmer's Sayonara, okay?I mean it's absolutely extraordinary this and actually Kemi Badenock was one of the first to point out the hypocrisy at play inside the cabinet.This is what she said to LBC.

Wasn't it a disgrace that Rachel Reeves, who's 50 % of the reason why Labour has been terrible, wasn't there?Instead she was taking selfies with Andy Burnham.This is what they're like.They won't do the right thing and they won't take responsibility and instead they pretend that they have achievements.

Protecting young people from social media and half a million children being lifted out of poverty because of the choices that I made.our reputation in the world restored.I felt very sorry for Keir Starmer, to be honest.

As a political journalist, Camilla, isn't power fascinating to watch?

It's an aphrodisiac, apparently.

It's never worked on me.

No, quite.

I mean, Gordon Brown.

I know, I find these people actually, they repel me, not attract me.These psychopaths that go for power at all costs, please stop it.

There is a scene in the New York TimesJames Bond movie, Spectre, where Blofeld gathers all the bad guys and two of them fight for leadership.And one blinds the other.It's a horrible scene.And Blofeld says later on, isn't it funny?The moment he lost his eyesight, it's as if he was no longer there.

He's physically alive, but no longer there.Power is like that.Keir Starmer is still our prime minister.He's still got the nuclear codes.But the moment, not just the moment he announced he was going to go in the future, but the moment the NEC allowed Burnham to run for Makerfield, his power not just evaporated, it almost disappeared overnight.And it passes immediately to whoever the crowd thinks is the next man.

That's the nature of power.You're always thinking not about the here and now, but tomorrow.Who in this room do I need to speak to who tomorrow will be able to promote me and give me what I want?And it's so interesting sitting in Parliament, having watched Starmer resign, and then to see the power immediately passed to Andy Burnham, who had been an MP once he had sworn in, for all of two minutes.

I know.

And suddenly, it's as if he already runs the country.

But also, doesn't that explain somewhat people's complete ennui with some of these pickers?This idea that people can just chop and change and go into a different camp.Because what does it say about them?One minute, literally last week, you're on a broadcast round defending Starmer and saying he's got a right to fight another, I don't know, six months.10 years is the case of Peter Kyle, he was suggesting that in May.And then the very next minute, suddenly, right, he's a busted flush.

Let's go on to the next one.What does it say about any of these people?

And I accept the counter argument, we're a parliamentary system, you elect a Labour majority, and it's whoever can commandthe confidence of that majority who then becomes prime minister.And you can change horses midstream, and that's constitutionally totally correct, because they serve the king.We're not a direct democracy in that sense.On the other hand, if the person is not elected by the people, you have to ask, where does their mandate come from?But also, so I come back to why I felt Your word hubris was correct for that photo.

Labour MPs think because we like him, the whole country likes him and that's his mandate.No, we have not elected this man.Do not get excited about someone who the public has not yet had a chance to pass a verdict on.One vote in one by -election does not count.Yes.He is not tested.

He has not been given the public's approval.

Also, it's typically sort of lefty socialist thinking to think to yourself, well, because Burnham wants to do well, because he's a do -gooder, so to speak.Because he's a good person, yes.He will do well.

Yes.

No, no, no.Life isn't like that.Yeah.Also, by the way, the prime minister can't have it both ways.Yesterday was basically kiboshed by streeting, not for the first time, because he gave that speech where he basically wanted to take back control of the timetable, say to the NEC, listen, we'll start all of this on July the 9th and then we'll take it through the summer.by which time I can try and secure some other legacy to dither, delay, and disaster.

Streeting said, well, no, I'm backing Burnham.And therefore, will there be a leadership race at all, which therefore begs the question, well, why are we waiting until July the 9th?If there is going to be a coronation, why don't we do it immediately?And by the way, why have you now, if you want to remain in power for that time, although he's been in office and not in power for many months, frankly, why have you then delegated the G7 summit statement?to David Lammy?He wasn't even there.

You either want to remain as prime minister, and therefore you have to be prime minister, or you don't.Instead, Starmer's going off to farewell drinks at Downing Street.I think that's completely incongruous.

The time between Margaret Thatcher losing the leadership election and the election of her replacement, John Major, was one week.

Well, there you are.

And Margaret Thatcher, was an important Prime Minister at a time when Britain mattered.The idea that he can give himself three weeks within which to swan around the world and enjoy one last appearance at the global buffet and then possibly have a contest.It is partly about narcissism, but yesterday I spent some time in Parliament talking to people and When Keir Starmer said, I have listened to the parliamentary party and they've said they don't want me anymore.And I accept that with good grace.That's nonsense.Keir Starmer is furious.

Yes.He wanted to fight on, but he was told by cabinet members, we will not support you.So you will lose.So he finally realized he had to go, but he would like to do anything which will undermine Andy Burnham because he is so damn angry right now.There is no grace in this whatsoever.So from that point of view, he's given it time.

to find someone else to run against Burnham.And I'm not saying that Keir Starmer is some kind of Blofeld -style genius puppet master here.I'm just saying, from Burnham's point of view, what they really want is actually longer than that.Because they've got to get ready to take over, because Burnham right now is not ready.

I've got this image in my mind of Starmer sitting with Larry the cat, stroking him with an evil look in his eye.But I agree, he's trying to pave the way for Alcance.

To come back to this point about how our parliamentary system is supposed to work, it makes sense if you swap a prime minister outsomeone else who's in the cabinet.

Yes.

Because that person knows how things work.Andy Burnham He's not been in Westminster for 11 years.He's coming straight down from Manchester.He's only just been elected.He's not even had any time as an MP.Does he even know how the Tube works?

His people are starting to say, are we ready in three weeks' time to take over from Keir Starmer if there is a coronation?Newsflash.He isn't ready.They have a choice.They can then transfer their own staff into number 10 and just essentially use the mayoral operation and use it to run the country.Or you go into number 10 and you look around and say, I don't even know the way to the toilet.

Yeah.

I'm just going to take care of staff.

Yeah.

In which case it's just a continuation of the old regime.That's right.And you're stuck with many of the same people.The other thing we're debating right now is who will be chancellor?We're coming around to where's Streeting because it feels like a deal has been done and it was striking that just before the election of Burnham, Streeting had given a big speech about the economy in which he talked about the importance of free markets.He was laying out his stool as I'm a safe pair of hands to the bond markets.

That speech was not for Labour members.

Ed Miliband spooked the markets.

Exactly.He can't do it.It may well be where's Streeting, but if we're talking about rearranging ministries like this, Do they have time?Are they ready?Is Wes Streeting ready to run the Treasury?He has been a health minister for two years.

Why would you take out someone like Rachel Reeves?Telegraph's not keen on her.But again, she knows where the pens are kept.She can put her hands on a stapler.If Britain matters, as politicians keep telling us it does, if the state machinery is so difficult to manage, as Keir Starmer has shown, are we ready as a country in three weeks to just replace all of these people withAndy Burnham and his friends.

Probably not.By the way, people are making comparisons to Boris Johnson, but it's not quite accurate because, of course, he served as foreign secretary in between being London mayor and prime minister.He was in the cabinet.OK, he resigned from Theresa May's cabinet.Yes.But, you know, he had done some of the legwork and had something resembling a team around him.

On Al Khan's, the Telegraph's favourite candidate to replace Keir Starmer.

So that's the scenario if there's a coronation.Sure.But if there is some kind of contest.

Yeah, but we've now got to wait.Al Khan's doesn't need to to make his mind up for another two and a half weeks because of this bizarre July the 9th date.Is he going to go for it now?I'm hearing that the Labour membership is getting increasingly shirty about the idea of not being given a say.Because actually, if you put Al Cairns into the ring, you've then got a soft left candidate versus a blue Labour candidate.I mean, whisper it, he's a Tory, guys, but whatever.

Popular after he appeared on the Daily T last week.Great.Al Cairns might want to do that in order to keep the Labour membership happy, to give them some kind of choice.It does all beg the question, by the way, though, Tim, Why are we vesting so much power in such tiny caucuses of people to choose the next prime minister?You could say this about the Tory membership as well, by the way.We've moved from a system where it used to be in the power of parliamentarians.

Yes, MPs elected their leader.

The membership system may have worked in the 1970s when the membership of political parties was in its millions.I think five million for the Tories, more for Labour because of the inclusion of union members.We've now got about, what, 100 ,000 odd people in the Tory party membership, 250 ,000 in the Labour membership.

Well, actually, you know, it's more recent than that.Labour has only elected its parliamentary leader using the mass membership in the trade union since 1983.The Tories only did it for the first time in 1997 with William Hague.But do you agree that the constituencies were bigger then?

They might be more representative of the country.

We were talking millions of people if you include the trade union block vote in 1983.

We're giving a few hundred thousand people or a hundred thousand people, say over our Prime Minister, over parliamentarians who represent the entire country.At least the parliamentarians.It's not perfect.They're not a perfect voting bloc, but they have been democratically elected.

Yes.And we all know that when the Tories handed the membership the vote in the 90s, it was a disaster because they chose William Hague.Yes.Ian Duncan Smith.They should have chosen Kenneth Clark, whose politics.Should they?

No, I don't share his politics, but my goodness, he would have been far more popular versus Blair than either of those two.So, yeah, I agree with Burnham will walk it, in the same way that Boris Johnson walked it with Jeremy Hunt.It's a waste of time.You may just as well have the coronation rather than a long contest.

Names for Burnham's cabinet, Chancellor as we've discussed, Wes Streeting, John Healey.They're not going to give it to John Healey because that's going to require Burnham to spend money on defence, which he doesn't want to do.Somebody again made this point this morning.You know, Mark said that religion was the opium of the people.The opium of the people these days is government spending.We must spend more.

So no, they're not going to do that.Homosex Shabana Mahmood, although there's talk that maybe Yvette Cooper now wants to go back to the Home Office, wouldn't do that, by the way.Mahmood is the only capable person in the Labour cabinet right now.AndRayner obviously tipped for a top job along with Louise Hagan, a new haircut because she's been the one propelling Burnham to power from the very beginning.Steve Bray playing Ode to Joy.

Lots of lefties have thrown their toys out of the pram about it.

Yeah, they didn't mind it so much when he was drowning out Tory leaders.

Only a few weeks ago, I was at a Brexit conference which had been arranged by a think tank with lots of keynote speakers, including Dan Hannan and Bill Cash and other Maastricht rebels.And Bray was outside pumping music into the venue so that you could barely hear yourself think.I had to chair a panel.No one complained.

No one has ever explained why the police cannot move that on as a public nuisance.

Because it's a peaceful protest, although it's a It makes no difference.

If you were just some kid with a ghetto blaster, they would move you on.

I saw Bray outside Downing Street.I said, why did you play that particular song?And he insisted it was because Keir Starmer had listed it as one of his favourite pieces of music.

He has said elsewhere that he did it to drown out someone who was heckling.So he did it almost as a favour.

But Bray gets to say who's drowned out and who isn't.Yes.I think that's wrong.

Right.

In other news, Tim, Nigel Farage has been on the broadcast round this morning.He's got very chippy when being questioned.about the Christopher Harbourn five million pound donation, had a little bit of a row with Sally Nugent on BBC Breakfast, then had a little bit of a row with Nick Ferrari on LBC.I mean, the questions are coming in from the public.What have you actually done with this money?We get that you say it's a gift to pay for your security, that you accepted it before you were an MP, and that you didn't necessarily know you were going to stand in Clacton at the time.

But then when he's asked, well, how much of the money have you spent on bodyguards and things?Because he keeps on saying, look, I'm the most threatened politician in Britain.He then says, it's none of your business what I'm spending the money on.Yes, it's the subject of a parliamentary inquiry by the Standards Commissioner and we should let that take its course.It's a bit politically damaging for him, this whole, just the aura of chippiness about this, because I thought that he was the man of the people, and he established that reputation, because it was sort of like, I was, he traded in gilts and things, didn't he, in the city, and probably earned quite a lot of money, and the whole thing was, I've given up all that, and I don't really have a, pot to pee in because I've gone into politics because I'm morally obliged to fight for Brexit.And I've actually financially disadvantaged myself.

And that's why you and I can have a pint in the pub.It was the Boris Johnson did a similar thing.You know, he's driving around in a clapped out car with a load of like mouldy brie on the back seat.He's an old Etonian, but he doesn't have any money.He's doing all this for the love of the country.You do squander all that if you've taken five million quid from a crypto billionaire maybe.

Boris always looked like he had money, but he'd probably lost it.

Yes.

The Lib Dems have a poster which is of Nigel Farage laughing like a drain.10 years on, do you feel better off?And it quotes Nigel saying, Farage, I was given five million pounds as a reward for Brexit.Now, this taps into two things.One is there is a remainer conspiracy theory that Brexit was bought and paid for.Yeah.

And it comes out of the idea that...By the Russians, is it?Well, it comes out of the idea that it's so obviously a stupid thing to do.that the public could only have fallen for it if there was dirty money involved, if politicians were paid to lie about it.So there's a conspiracy theory angle to this.But there's also this question, and I think reform would eventually have to confront it, of can you do a rich man's populism?

The issue isn't what was the five million pounds spent on.It's the figure itself.When I get a gift, it's a five million pound gift.

Yeah.

To most people, £5 million is a silly sum of money.

It's unimaginable.It's a lottery win.£12 million has gone to the party in addition to the personal gift to Farage.

Yes.

But we're talking about £17 million altogether, right?

Who has that kind of money to give away?Why would they give it to a political party?I wouldn't give a fiver to a political party.It's an extraordinary thing to do.But if reforms hold messages, we are of the people.How much money do you have to have in your bank account for that to start to sound silly?

And this has always been a problem with right -wing populism, is the people running it themselves are not terribly working class.And you just gotta be, I either gotta own that and be honest about it and flash the cash.And a lot of people, look, Donald Trump, people don't care how much money he's got or pretends to have, but there are gonna be some people in your grassroots who say, you're now so rich, I'm not sure you can understand where I'm coming from.

No, that's right.Bad day for the SNP.Peter Murrell gets sent down for five years.I still want to know what's happening to all that gear.We did the generation game on it.What's happening to the Le Creuset pots and pans and the library ladder?

and the two, I think, Dyson air wraps or whatever for a bald man.What's happening to that?And the second low moment was the swearing in of Lara Bird, the new SNP MP for Arbroath and Broughty Ferry, who took the oath with her fingers crossed, like a big baby.

My chief loyalty will always be to the sovereignty of the true sovereign Scottish people.It's exactly the kind of thing that people say about Brexit, by the way, and she would have laughed at.But she came across like a snootyteen forced to recite a Bible passage at a wedding and saying, I don't want to do this, and I'm going to do it with my fingers behind my back.

I know, it was absolutely pathetic.I said it was an example of the political classlessness.Very clever.Of the average politician.

I would add, if you are so opposed to the existence of the United Kingdom, don't run for the Westminster Parliament.Yeah.Don't show off and behave like that.Run for Holyrood, right?