Will he? Won’t he? Do the King of the North’s antics remind you of anyone? | Marina Hyde

As Andy Burnham heads to Liverpool, think back to the Tory conferences of 2017 and 2018. We all know how that panned out“Whenever Westminster has gone into a moment,” Andy Burnham lamented in one of his many interviews this week, “I have somehow been drawn into it.” Yeah, we’re all trying to find the guy who did this. Why is this happening to Andy Burnham, this fevered speculation that Labour’s Iron Throne has his name on it, which is now causing cabinet ministers, the prime minister and maybe even the bond markets to overtly or covertly slag him off? “I think what we’ve got to do,” Andy thought in another interview, “is to stop the sense in Westminster at times that everything is in flux.” Counterpoint: the sense in Westminster is that everything is completely and utterly fluxed. The wider country is considerably less optimistic.Yet is Andy Burnham the answer? The Greater Manchester mayor would certainly appear to reckon so, having worked tirelessly this week to give himself pre-title billing at his party’s imminent gathering in Liverpool. Yup, here he comes – the King of the North, the cock of the conference, the memoji of Manchester – as unafraid to chat shit to those bond markets as he was to give that press conference in that jacket in that pandemic. The worry is that Andy is just one of those things that, during Covid, people thought were very good, but now realise are actually very bad. Like incipient alcoholism or Ted Lasso.Marina Hyde is a Guardian columnist Continue reading...

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