Absolutely Not The Daily Troll-o-Graph

  The Prime Minister’s Jekyll-and-Hyde personality masks a ruinous socialism that threatens to bankrupt us Daily Telegraph 22/0 Don’t be fooled by the strange case of Andy Burnham, a Jekyll-and-Hyde politician par excellence . There are two contradictory sides to his personality: one reassuringly conventional, affable rather than ideological, the other darkly terrifying, committed to persecuting the petite and haute bourgeoisies of southern England. The first facet, on prominent display for the benefit of the financial markets, is that of the inoffensive tinkerer, the Dr Jekyll of the North, the fake outsider, the establishment Leftist who speaks a good game, wears T-shirts but is ultimately a standard non-player character, an instant captive of the Blob, a rearranger of deckchairs who will damage but not ruin Britain. Ten-year gilt yields are up, but have yet to explode. Burnham’s “big” ideas, so far, have been strikingly underwhelming and unoriginal for a man committed to “e...

  If our new PM really wanted to put more cash in our pockets, he’d cut the green levy on energy bills, not the VAT that saves just 86p a week Daily Telegraph 21/07/26 Sometimes it’s the small things that reveal how tough times are. On Saturday, I went to pick up a suit from the dry cleaner. I asked the owner, a charming smiley man, how business was and he gestured glumly towards a long rail of clean garments in their plastic sheaths. “They’ve been here for weeks. People aren’t coming to collect their stuff,” he said. “They haven’t got the money.” Ours is supposed to be a prosperous market town so it’s a pretty clear sign that all is not well with the economy when picking up the dry cleaning becomes a luxury rather than a necessity. Hard-up people used to default on the mortgage, now it’s a Phase Eight cocktail dress. Cutting the 5 per cent VAT on electricity (not gas) bills, as Prime Minister Burnham just announced , will save struggling consumers a grand total of 86p a week – not...

  Being a skilled communicator is not enough. The incoming prime minister needs a clearer political direction Daily Telegraph 19/07/26 There is something peculiar about the coronation of Andy Burnham. It is not just that his ascension is without historical parallel. Or that it has occurred against the backdrop of a prime minister falling within two years after winning the third-largest majority in over a century. It is that we are about to get a prime minister and yet know very little about what we are getting. To be fair to Burnham, he did give a speech early on returning to Westminster. He has talked about rolling back “40 years of Thatcherism”. We hear much about “Manchesterism”. There’s a promise for “growth in every postcode”. However, journalists didn’t get the chance to ask him questions. And there’s not much in the way of detail. Clive Lewis – one of his earliest public supporters – has criticised U-turns made by Burnham. Positions on Waspi, rejoining the EU, immigration ...

Even given the low bar set by recent prime ministers, it was a shockingly poor speech from Labour’s new leader Daily Telegraph 17/07/26 Was that it, then, the great reveal, the sum total of Andy Burnham’s plan for a more hopeful Britain? A paean to Neil Kinnock, of all people, the failed socialist Labour leader turned Eurocrat extraordinaire ? An almost dementedly egotistical claim that his own coronation, and the death warrant to “neoliberalism” it supposedly entails, heralds “the most significant change moment in our politics for 40 years” – apparently more momentous even than the supply-side revolution, Big Bang, Blairism, 9/11, devolution, the rise of the Blob, the financial crisis, the expenses scandal, Brexit, Covid and the emergence of populism? If that might be dismissed as just a little presumptuous, what about our incoming Prime Minister’s explicit repudiation of the 1980s, and thus of the consumerism, individual liberation, social mobility, mass home and asset ownership and ...