There’s a short answer when people ask what our latest prime minister brings that his predecessor did not. He’s good at communication. We have little idea what Andy Burnham stands for and no sense of where he plans to lead the country. But we have glimpsed a lively, optimistic man who seems more cheerful than the costive figure who was there a moment ago. If politicians must be regular guys nowadays, Mr Burnham seems like a regular guy.
His fall will come, explain the sages, when he submits to real-time interrogation from an experienced journalist of the traditional school. That’s not going to happen, because he doesn’t have to. There is no constitutional imperative that politicians report to national television for extended interview. They are free to go where they believe they will find their voters. For him, that is social media and video vignettes – Andy meeting admirers, Andy being northern, Andy making a joke. TikTok, Instagram, X – he’s there, often holding the phone himself, quick with a football or music reference.
Not all fall for his folksiness. Many suspect vacuity. Where’s the substance? We laugh at comedians’ online parodies of his Mr Normal turn. So, to his credit, does he, leaving us with an impression of informality, energy and humour. If we are starting to believe things might not be so terrible after all, why change that mood by submitting to half an hour with Andrew Neil, disciplinarian disciple of an analogue broadcast faith? Better to talk to Gary Lineker, for a podcast that naturally turns to Everton, to Elizabeth Day, when his advisers worry he is going too blokey, or to Jimmy’s Jobs of the Future, with a host who managed to advise both Theresa May and Boris Johnson, so is unlikely to turn hostile on a prime minister.
And why suck up to a print industry in decline, that rails to an audience that is not his? A rigorous kicking each morning from the Daily Mail becomes less painful with the calculation that it now sells only 600,000 copies a day, to readers who do not vote Labour. With declining circulation, goes falling influence. The days when the Mail scared the BBC into following its news agenda are gone. The prime minister will have expected the paper’s daily barrage on policy – “BURNHAM TO DRAG US BACK TO THE 1970s” – and taken in his stride its fury at his failure to wear a suit to meet President Zelensky. We suspect only the page-length revelation of an incipient beer belly – at odds with the video clips of the morning run – will have been truly upsetting.
Rather, his team have supplied a daily diet of initiatives – bus fares, heating bills – that demand to be reported. The impression is that stuff is being done. He has latched on to something Keir Starmer did not, which is that taking questions after announcements serves only the agenda of reporters, who turn to the subject of their choosing, rather than convey the messages the politician had in mind. Speak and leave.
The clever thing is not to ignore national media altogether, but to work with broadcasters in a way that serves him and them. Mr Burnham’s appearance in front of Laura Kuenssberg for BBC Panorama infuriated an older generation of editors and interviewers once the BBC broke whatever tension was promised by trailing clips before the broadcast, celebrating its behind-the-scenes access to Downing Street. The BBC reached an audience that would not have come for Panorama. Mr Burnham achieved more of that “reasonable guy” schtick.
Does all this render mainstream irrelevant? Not, as we head into autumn, once the realities of life return. So does the House of Commons, where the prime minister faces tougher questions. The newspapers will go to town on early release of prisoners, boatloads of migrants and the rising cost of welfare, whether Mr Burnham speaks to them or not. He’s not the first prime minister setting out to do media on his terms – Boris Johnson tried the same tack, until he was forced back on to the BBC by Covid.
Nor does all that digital impact and popularity guarantee political success, as Kamala Harris discovered when she fought Donald Trump. She made young American voters feel good but never told older ones what she would actually do. Mr Burnham must soon address substance. That is a subject on which social media has its limitations.
KF