What a strange summer this has turned out to be: no rain and no politics. As we enter what the broadcast media are calling the fifth ‘heatwave’ of the year – a heatwave is what used to be known as a hot day or two – the green, green grass has become yellowy stubble. And the sphere of public life is similarly arid and uncanny.
While it’s usual for the party political world to take a breather in the summer months, the unique circumstances of the switch of prime minister just before the rain stopped falling has given summer 2026 a spooky quality. It feels like we’re all in a dream world. And nobody is further in that dream than Andy Burnham, insulated as he is from the usual processes of scrutiny.
The Burnham comms have been lauded by some commentators, perhaps unwisely. I’m afraid that to me they seem laughably unfit for the seriousness of the moment
To fill the couple of weeks left before the flow of time must inevitably splutter back into gear again, Andy – back from his own holidays – is planning a magical mystery tour of the nation. We are told he will be popping up in various places around the land, in ‘listening mode’, getting to know his subjects. This suggests less the progresses of Good Queen Bess than the Radio 1 Roadshow; an affable moron rocking up in a different town every day to play some awful records and chatter inanely. Like Peter Powell and Simon Bates, Andy will be giving out stingy little prizes to lucky attendees. In his version, these will be policies to ease the cost of living rather than your choice of one of the current top ten singles. Whether Lucy Powell will be featured as ‘Smiley Miley’ – the aide who counted the distance between Radio 1’s stops and gave a tape recorder to whoever came nearest in their estimate – is as yet unclear.
The Burnham comms have been lauded by some commentators, perhaps unwisely. I’m afraid that to me they seem laughably unfit for the seriousness of the moment. If world war three broke out, you’d find Andy stopping off in Allerton Bywater, throwing cheaply printed Labour T-shirts into the crowd and announcing 20p off prescriptions for people with small kitchens.
Yet the strangest thing of all about this mini-holiday from history is that it has been quite pleasant. The removal of Starmer has genuinely felt like a huge weight being lifted off, giving you the same sensation as walking out of school after your last exam. We all needed a break after that.
But by the end of the school holidays, you’d had slightly too much of a good thing. In the back end of August, you’d long for the return of a bit of structure and institutional procedure; I remember taking to my endlessly put-off summer homework in the last week of August almost eagerly. Similarly, I now find that I’m missing PMQs, the normal processes of parliament and the press, and the government being forced to answer questions.
This summer has also provided a peculiar sense of a one-party state, with Andy’s naff videos – the excruciating ‘circuit breaker’ one, the pub snacks one – in place of the sturm und drang of actual politics. Burnham is benefiting from the simple fact that in hot weather nobody can be bothered to care about important things as much as usual. This is, after all, why parliament has a summer holiday. In the heat, our attention inevitably wanders to fripperies and frivolities. The Arday affair has been perfect summer nonsense, despite its very serious side. The comic aspects would, I suspect, not have played half so well in February.
Team Burnham is toiling backstage apparently, preparing the big policy meat for the autumn. But what is being hatched? We’re constantly being told that there are some very odd people in Reform and Restore, but there are some very, very odd characters in Burnham’s backroom. His director of political strategy is Matthew McGregor, former CEO of 38 Degrees and head of campaigns at the egregiously misnamed Hope Not Hate. For all his everybloke bonhomie, Burnham – much like his predecessor – is closely aligned with ridiculous and sinister ideas like net zero, a wealth tax and the crazily homophobic ‘conversion therapy’ ban. These are the results of bizarre and extremist conspiracy theories, quite as dotty as anything on the fringes of the right. But because the correct people believe in them they are not registered as such.
I don’t think this is a secret Marxist masterplan on Andy’s part. I think he is simply too daft to understand, or even really to see, the destructive aspects of progressivism.
Obviously, this radiant interregnum cannot last, for Andy or for us. The autumn winds will blow any day now. Meanwhile, the boats keep arriving, the bills keep stacking up, the prisons are still bursting. Finding solutions to big difficult problems is what we have governments for. Yet the evidence so far suggests that the Burnham regime is as clueless as Starmer’s. You’re supposed to make hay while the sun shines, not footle about on TikTok.
But then, Andy Burnham is a sunny character. And they don’t get along so well when it rains.
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