In the 1990s, whatever his other flaws, Tony Blair understood the value of a good wardrobe. And if he didn’t, he enjoyed what was perhaps a luxury of the age: someone close to him with the sense and authority to tell him what to wear. Perhaps it is just nostalgia for a time before I was born, but the style of 1990s political dress is rarely matched these days. The looser but still tailored suits that made even Alastair Campbell look seriously cool now languish at the back of your father’s wardrobe, replaced by jackets that often look as though they are about to burst at the seams.
Andy Burnham is no exception. Despite stepping out in a new Oliver Brown suit on his first day in office, the Prime Minister seems to rotate through the same few dreary ties week after week. If these ties signify anything about Burnham, it is that the staleness of the Starmer years still hangs around his neck. From what I can discern, having scoured the photo wires, Burnham owns block-colour ties in burgundy and green, a few in blue and grey, and one godawful white, grey and lilac striped tie that he seems to save for special occasions.
It is this tie for which I reserve particular vitriol, and about which my colleagues on this magazine’s broadcast team hear me complain so often. The tie itself isn’t really the problem. With the right shirt – light pink or purple – it would probably work. But Burnham insists on wearing it with a white shirt, and he made it the centrepiece of his appearance at the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting this week, as well as at his first Prime Minister’s Questions in September.
For a man with such carefully crafted optics and a digital-first approach, it seems insane to me that not one of his young comms staff has pointed out that the tie disappears into his shirt on camera. It looks as though either he threw it around his neck at the last minute for want of anything else, or that he is perfectly happy to look like a plum in public.
I am not alone in my dislike of the Prime Minister’s choice of ties, either. One Burnham acolyte, who tells me she is very particular about ties, commented that ‘Andy has not been on top of his tie game’, followed by a broken-heart emoji. Another observer on X noted that the striped tie is ‘very 80s’. Perhaps that will be all that he needs to motivate a change in appearance.
The Prime Minister is not the only offender when it comes to formal faux pas, however. In the recent cabinet photograph, Burnham, John Healey, Wes Streeting, Ed Miliband and Jonathan Reynolds all sat with their jackets buttoned. Points go to Alex Norris and Pat McFadden for remembering to undo theirs.
All of these problems are easy to remedy. Those around Burnham should feel able to challenge his appearance more freely and take time to read the room before he steps inside. His disastrous arrival in Kyiv in August, in a zip-up polo shirt, to be met by a welcome party almost entirely in suits and ties, should have been lesson enough by now. And with Christmas approaching, I suggest that Marie-France van Heel and the Burnham children head across St James’s Park to Old Bond Street and pick out a few silk ties to fill up Andy’s stocking.
I will concede that the transition must have been difficult for Burnham. It can’t have been easy to have been so violently uprooted from the rural backwater of Manchester and dropped into the spotlight of the big city. But as a former occupant of his new home, who was also forced to renovate his appearance for the sake of the country, once put it: ‘Them’s the breaks.’
Comments