That was soggy and disappointing. The moment had come Andy Burnham to make his Commons debut as Prime Minister. The dreaded hour could no longer be avoided.
He came in at 3:34 and looked at the floor. For a few minutes he had to wait in a crowd of greasers near the front seat.
Education Minister Lucy Powell fussed over him and removed the lint from the back of his jacket. Louise Haigh, Prime Minister, stood stiffly alongside. Is it possible that lame Lucy is making Mrs. Haigh itch with annoyance?
Mr. Burnham did not have enough room to stand upright. In the scrum he had to reach back with his left arm to grab the Speaker’s chair for balance. He turned his entire body away from the couch where he was about to sit. The attitude reeked of unwillingness.
Finally, the Foreign Affairs questions ended. Mrs. Haigh urged forward her reluctant protégé, a farmer who poked her goat through a fence.
Other MPs would normally disperse away from a Prime Minister, but Mr Burnham found his path blocked Ed Miliband and even by the young Hamish Falconer. The Prime Minister ceded the site to them. It was somehow not what you expected from the new skipper of our destiny.
At 3:38 p.m., he began with a statement entitled “Direction of Government.” It started well. He coughed up appropriate but subdued words of respect for Sir Keir Starmer, whose decision to resign as MP had previously been announced, to the chagrin and chest-thumping of a grieving nation.
Andy Burnham addressed the House of Representatives as he made his debut in the House of Commons as Prime Minister this afternoon
As Burnham droned on about Sir Keir’s ‘life in public service’, Labor MPs watched closely. They had welcomed his arrival, but not excessively.
Soon he was on his way to Ukraine, claiming that Britain would continue to support Kiev against Russia. His voice got stronger and I thought for a moment: ‘ooh, this could be good’.
That little frisson quickly disappeared. It wasn’t long before the energy levels dropped, the delivery became staccato – almost like a computerized railway announcement, with random emphasis on certain words – and the content was boring.
We heard how pleased he was recently to meet the Lib Dem leader of Cornwall council. The new No 10 North operation would help Cornwall, even though it is in the south west of England. Part of the new focus on mayors would be new ‘visitor charges’. A new tax. Just what we need.
By now such was the fascination on the Labor benches that three Labor backbenchers, Wrexham’s Andrew Ranger, Truro’s Jayne Kirkham and Calder Valley’s Josh Fenton-Glynn, were messing around at the other end of the room, laughing with each other and paying frugal interest to their new leader.
It would be wrong to say he had lost the House, but he was unfazed by it. The performance was not electric. It was enough. Better than the Nose Knight’s. But it felt provincial. It didn’t tingle like it should. As it should be. Perhaps we still have a burden in our hands.
He quickly warmed to Theresa May, promising to ‘develop the triple helix approach to economics by interweaving business, academia and government’. The House: ‘Eh?’
Here he was on his first parliamentary appearance as prime minister, the one day when he could be sure that the House of Representatives and the country would receive him on friendly terms, and he was fantasizing about some kind of triple helix. Was it a step away from gymnastics?
MPs peered in surprise. Mr. Burnham himself was soon squinting, repeatedly removing his glasses. This made his eyelashes more noticeable, but his speech even more vague.
The new Chancellor, John Healey, had a wound on his bald scalp. Mr. Healey spread like a champ. Pensions Minister Pat McFadden had his legs crossed tightly, v. Kenneth Williams.
Equalities Minister Bridget Phillipson, sacked from Education, looked even angrier than usual. The new power scowler is Mrs. Haigh. She has a shark-like intensity, an air of cruelty that her boss completely misses. Prime Ministers are rarely so spongy.
