Andies seem to be as gullible, docile and brainwashed as the Moonies. For the country’s sake, let’s hope they snap out of it
Daily Telegraph 28/06/26
Memories were stirred last week of the Reverend Sun Myung Moon, the Korean Christian convert who claimed to be the Messiah. The cult around him appears something of a template for that around Andy Burnham, who unless fate takes an interesting turn will soon become our prime minister.
When Mr Burnham’s media operation (all cults need one) ensured he was photographed at Westminster taking a selfie with legions of Labour MPs behind him, it reminded one of the mass weddings Mr Moon would conduct for his besotted Moonies. The mindless, other-worldly grins on the faces behind Mr Burnham suggested a marriage that the cultists – let us call them “Andies” – must also hope will be made in heaven. But then, if suddenly you thought that you might not after all be facing certain long-term unemployment, you would look happy, too. The Saviour was, indeed, among them.
Mr Moon was chums with great politicians – indeed, he had American presidents on his Christmas card list – and so would have understood the cult of Manchesterism. Andies are as gullible, as docile, and as brainwashed as any Moonie. They believe in Mr Burnham because, after the apostasy of Sir Keir Starmer and his followers, salvation is suddenly at hand. The fact that millions of us outside the cult know that Mr Burnham will soon be as loathed by the general public as much as poor old Sir Keir was, and seems to have few fixed beliefs, are things the Andies, in their bliss and in their ecstasy, wilfully ignore.
More sinister about this cult, even than that of the Moonies, is that the Andies (and a distressing number of insufficiently cynical supplicants in the media), seem to hang not just on Mr Burnham’s every word, but on his every action. They followed his progress around Makerfield after his by-election victory with reverence for every shake of a hand or, for those in a more inner circle of belief, every hug, as though they were the bestowals of blessings. And when he boarded his train to London last Monday to return to the Commons, the excitement his trip generated became nearly incontinent.
Indeed, can there have been so important, so majestic – as befits a King of the North – a journey since that other cult figure of socialism, Vladimir Lenin, took his train from Zurich to Petrograd in 1917? There, he would lead a revolution that history, no doubt, will come to regard as almost as significant as the one Mr Burnham promises.
Lenin’s trip was complicated: he had to pass north through Germany, cross the Baltic, and then through Sweden and finally Finland before reaching the seat of power. Mr Burnham’s train was late into Euston (where a commemorative plaque must surely now be erected), exemplifying the sacrifices he makes for his people. Happily, reporters were there to record every red signal, and how the Messiah stood back to let the working people he pledges to serve disembark down Platform 13 in front of him. His exile was over.
His cult has been engineered, somewhat unthinkingly, by his supporters, and they will come to regret it. We British do not do cults. He should know that, and yet he seems happy to play along with it. When Kemi Badenoch mocked him in the Commons as “a pair of eyelashes and a black T-shirt”, he raced to X, in a T-shirt that will have looked remarkably black to most observers, to present a video in which he announced, messianically: “It’s dark blue, actually.” I presume, to the cult, this proclamation carried biblical force. To the rest of us he just looks a touchy, arrogant Lefty.
Our greatest prime minister of modern times, Mrs Thatcher, had many admirers but no cult, because she challenged herself as much as others challenged her, and had a profound humility. Not least because Labour had been in opposition for 18 years when he reached No 10, Tony Blair had elements of cultism around him, stirred up by the repellent Mandelson; but they dispersed when reality kicked in.
Boris Johnson, a comedy turn who relied heavily on self-parody, had a cult among dupes who thought him “a winner”. Look what happened to him. The Andies may present their leader as a cult figure; but Mr Burnham – if he wants to progress beyond being eyelashes and a T-shirt – had better stop this nonsense, even if the devout cannot. Politics isn’t a game: it’s deeply serious, and especially so now.
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