Andy Burnham put in a poor performance at today’s Prime Minister’s Questions. He had a slightly plodding delivery, which didn’t help, but the real problem was that he didn’t have anything to say. The Prime Minister ended up asking Kemi Badenoch a lot of questions to try to deflect from his inability to give answers himself. There were just too many of these deflections, though, and he appeared unsure and evasive.
Badenoch opened by ridiculing Burnham’s forthcoming ten-year plan: ‘The Prime Minister entered Downing Street promising a ten-year plan to reverse 40 years of neoliberalism. Is it really true he has so little vision for this country he needs the Boston Consulting Group to write it for him?’
Burnham replied that he did promise a ten-year plan for the country, and that he was ‘determined to give the leadership this country needs’. He added that the government would present this plan to the Commons before it rose for the Christmas recess. Badenoch continued with her ridicule, telling MPs that ‘he is merging the DVLA with the DVSA!’. The Tory leader’s MPs shouted ‘Oooooh!’ theatrically at that, and she giggled, adding: ‘Exciting stuff, Mr Speaker!’ She then described the Budget as a ‘do-nothing Budget’, and asked Burnham to assure the House that the spending review, in which major decisions on defence will finally be taken, would come before next summer.
Burnham didn’t answer that question, and instead ended up asking Badenoch why her party had voted against measures in the Budget. He also once again quoted the Covid Inquiry’s criticism of the previous government’s attitude to social care as an ‘afterthought’, saying that he would be making a proposal for a national care service in the ten year plan. That still doesn’t give us much of an idea of how ambitious or detailed the ten year plan might be, by the way: Burnham has been making that proposal for a national care service for well over a decade. He added that ministers would be presenting the Milburn report on Neets to the Commons next week.
In the next exchange, Badenoch pointed out that Burnham had not answered her question on the spending review, and then joked that the Prime Minister had so much time on his hands that he had attended a speech last night by the head of the civil service Antonia Romeo. ‘He’s supposed to be telling her his plan, not sat in the audience while she tells him hers!’ Badenoch joked. It was another good line feeding into the leader of the opposition’s theme that Burnham promises big, while not really knowing what he wants to do – or how.
The Prime Minister was particularly plodding in this answer to this, trying once again to turn his answer into a question back at Badenoch. But this question was on welfare, and despite it being one of the big tests of his premiership, Burnham still hasn’t quite worked out how to frame his own arguments on benefits. He attacked Badenoch’s proposal to cut £36 billion from the welfare budget, arguing that she would be making things harder for people affected by the cost of living crisis, and that she needed to answer for that. It suggested that Burnham still views welfare reform in terms of the government not taking money away from people – which would, even with very carefully designed cuts, have to happen in order to bring the bill down. It also avoided what Burnham should surely be arguing instead, which is that proper welfare reform is about investing in a system that gets people into good work that covers the cost of living, rather than being trapped on government support.
The way Burnham answers questions is nowhere near as grating as the lofty lectures Keir Starmer used to give, but he should still sort it out
Badenoch pointed out that she had in fact been asking about the decision on Rosebank, and why the Budget had included it in its calculations without the energy secretary having approved it yet. She then made a joke – that some Labour MPs clearly really didn’t like – about Ed Miliband: ‘He called Rosebank climate vandalism. But then he also thought cosying up to Russell Brand would make him prime minister. So I don’t think we need to trust his judgement.’ Burnham once again claimed his government was facing the big issues, and asked ‘when is she going to address the cost of living crisis’, to which Badenoch shot back ‘I ask the questions here and I was asking about Rosebank.’
The way Burnham answers questions is nowhere near as grating as the lofty lectures Keir Starmer used to give Badenoch about ‘the tone of her questions’ – but he should still sort it out, not least because it plays into the Tory leader’s thesis that he doesn’t really know what he wants to do with power. In her payoff question, Badenoch described the government as ‘totally adrift: they need consultants to tell them what to think, they need civil servants to tell them what to do’. She added: ‘Labour MPs want to pretend that Keir Starmer simply walked off into the sunset, when in reality this man knifed him in the back and now doesn’t know what to do.’ Burnham didn’t really have a response to this, and won’t until he publishes that ten-year plan, the welfare reforms and his defence funding plans.
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