There was a cautious cheer for Andy Burnham as he stood up for his first PMQs. MPs were perhaps cautious of a repeat of the day before when Burnham delivered the longest opening statement of modern times. Or maybe the PM’s summer of lying low just meant that some of the more intellectually challenged members had forgotten who he was.
I think we have found the new ‘my father was toolmaker’ and it’s Andy’s patented Ena Sharples tribute act
It may have been 16 years, but Mr Burnham was at his ease as he rose for the first question. Clearly circumlocution is a bit like riding a bike – it’s the preferred way to get anywhere in the Labour Party. In a classic example of the genre, Burnham managed to turn a perfectly reasonable request to apologise to those who thought the murderers of their loved ones were being released early into a chance to shower glory on his own listening skills.
When Kemi Badenoch rose to speak there was a flurry of smut as MPs chose to read filthiness into her congratulation of the PM ‘for his stamina’. ‘Three hours!’ she cooed. Mr Burnham, not for the first or last time, turned red. Mrs Badenoch then continued by asking him – with regard to the night before – ‘whether he ever said no?’ Just before a speedo clad Charles Hawtrey popped up from the Lib Dem benches (where else), Mrs Badenoch turned specifically to spending requests from backbenchers.
There then followed the repetition of the theme that is inevitably going to dog Mr Burnham at least until the Budget – where is the money coming from? Mr Burnham had claimed that scrapping digital ID would pay for it all; before Mrs Badenoch quoted Darren Jones, who played Igor to Sir Keir’s Dr Frankenstein as the pitchfork-wielding mob was gathering, and who was on the record as saying that no money was ever allocated to digital ID. ‘You can’t cut things that don’t exist’, Mrs Badenoch told him. I expect that this basic rule of existence will prove a hard lesson for the government to learn.
Mr Burnham reached for his failsafe line about how he turned around Greater Manchester. I think we have found the new ‘my father was toolmaker’ and it’s Andy’s patented Ena Sharples tribute act. He then repeated one of Labour’s golden rules: any economic turbulence under them is due to ‘global markets’, while any attempt to even mention the economy by the Tories can be silenced by shouting ‘Liz Truss’. The unlamented former MP for North West Norfolk is currently fulfilling her real vocation as a member of the Looney Tunes somewhere in the USA, and yet she is invoked, as if she were Our Lady of Perpetual Help, again and again by ever more desperate Labour MPs. Again, in this regard Burnham shows no change.
Mrs Badenoch pointed out that rather than being a villain, Liz Truss appears to be a role model for the Burnham government: after all she loved nothing more than announcing uncosted spending promises. She then pointed out that her shadow chancellor had more private sector experience than the entire front bench put together. Louise ‘Phones 4U’ Haigh just shrugged at this, showcasing Labour’s general attitude to business. As the markets tumble, there’s more knowledge on the front bench of pleading guilty then there is of gilts.
Other things hadn’t changed either. Sir Ed Davey used Burnham’s reference to Brexit in the Commons on Tuesday as an excuse to relitigate the last decade, and, inevitably, to pose a toadying non-question to the Prime Minister. Pleasingly, Burnham appeared not to know where Davey’s constituency was – presumably because it’s within the M25.
The backbenches were a delight as ever. One Labour MP made the case for psychedelic treatment of PTSD, which explains a great deal about how his colleagues make it through the day. Samantha Niblett, who bafflingly still insists on being taken seriously, gave us a live update from her ‘summer of sex’ campaign, making sure that her speech included the words ‘penis’, ‘vagina’ and ‘vulva’. Burnham laconically observed that she’d had a more interesting summer than his.
Burnham reached for his failsafe line about how he turned around Greater Manchester
There was a return from the Grim Leadbeater, asking what the Prime Minister was going to do about lonely old people. This was delivered without a sense of irony: a zombified version of her bill to bump them off returns to the Commons on Friday under the even less impressive guidance of Lauren Edwards. Croydon East MP Natasha Irons asked a question about rail infrastructure and the expansion of Gatwick Airport. Burnham promised that No. 10 North would ‘make contact with her’, and deal with this very specifically London-centric problem, rather than No. 10 itself.
We had the standard craven contributions from shouty back-benchers. In a question which seemed to congratulate the current administration for the Bayeux Tapestry, Helena Dollimore asserted that its return was a sign of cooperation between Britain and Europe. One wonders whether the French would be interested in us lending them depictions of Trafalgar, Blenheim, Waterloo or Agincourt? ‘Hastings has often been at the centre of historical events, but we have not felt the benefit.’ What this was supposed to mean is anyone’s guess. Which were the benefits Hastings was meant to receive from the invasion of Caesar, the Norman Conquest and the Battle of Britain? Did she think these would magically result in more Sure Start centres? Are we supposed to be asking the Normans for back-payments for failing to provide breakfast clubs post-1066?
Despite some exceptions, there was noticeably less bottom-crawling than in the past, though that will surely come in due course. Burnham also took longer to answer the questions, eschewing the petulant monosyllables of his predecessor. Sir Lindsay Hoyle even went so far as to congratulate him on this contrast, but also to warn that time wasn’t limitless. The question that arises from this first PMQs is whether Andy Burnham realises that money isn’t either.
