NOW we know for sure. When Keir Starmer took over the machinery of government, he didn’t even know where to find the steering wheel.
Ex-Downing Street guru Morgan McSweeney, Starmer’s so-called “political brain”, admits his boss walked into No10 without a clue how to run the country.
Cocky Andy Burnham risks spinning off track just like Starmer did
Our cocky hero has waltzed into Parliament as Britain’s self-appointed new leader Credit: Getty
“We hadn’t done enough to prepare for government,” he told the BBC’s Nick Robinson.
That’s like sitting a learner driver in the cockpit of a Grand Prix Ferrari . . . and being surprised when he spins off the track and bursts into flames.
Which is precisely what happened to Slow Gear Keir in a brief but calamitous career which left him wheels-up in a ditch.
Now we are about to watch the same car-crash movie all over again, this time with Andy Burnham on the grid.
Grand Theft Auto North, starring Blairite has-beens James Purnell, Ed Balls, David Miliband and his knife-wielding brother Ed.
Our cocky hero has waltzed into Parliament as Britain’s self-appointed new leader.
It says a lot about this useless Labour regime that the job was his for the taking.
None of its other 402 MPs — male, female or non-binary (Andy has, bizarrely, been hailed as “Labour’s first female leader”) — has the guts, conviction or numbers to mount even the pretence of a legitimate contest. Shame on the lot of them.
We are now lumbered with a new PM who simply wanted the role and refuses to answer questions or explain why.
What’s worse, he is flirting with schemes to gag a rightly inquisitive press by forcing newspapers to accept a government veto on journalism for the first time since 1695.
Screen luvvie Hugh Grant and comic Steve Coogan also want him to make newspapers pay all the costs of any libel claim, however frivolous, even if they win.
This is the kiss of death to a free press, the priceless gift of free speech and indeed democracy itself. And it’s the kiss of life for two-tier policing, censorship and rough justice.
If you don’t like that, you must lump it for the next three years unless there is an early general election.
To that end, Burnham is threatening to move the electoral goalposts, scrap first-past-the-post voting and introduce proportional representation. Coming on top of votes at 16, this is nothing less than ballot box vandalism.
When Keir Starmer took over the machinery of government, he didn’t even know where to find the steering wheel Credit: Alamy
If ‘Red Ed’ Miliband wins control of HM Treasury, get ready for real rob-the-rich austerity Credit: Getty
PR voting would offer a whip hand to fringe parties like the loopy Greens and Limp-Dems, entrenching the sort of coalition we endured under David Cameron and Nick Thingy. This stitch-up will return to haunt Britain’s newly-unelected Prime Minister.
Attempts to strip power from Westminster and Whitehall have proved a costly failure down the decades under both Tories and Labour.
We paid dearly for handing UK sovereignty to the unaccountable European Union. Devolution landed us with corruption and enduring bitterness in Scotland. The Welsh referendum was decided by a paltry 25 per cent of all voters.
We couldn’t even make a success of locally-elected police and crime commissioners.
Voters don’t like it and they don’t want it — as the late John Prescott learned when they blew a raspberry at his regional assembly plans by a resounding 78-22 per cent margin.
For any chance of success, these huge changes cost shedloads of cash to palm off vested interests. And, as ever under Labour, there is no money.
Since Burnham is ruling out welfare cuts for the millions on Benefits Street, this means higher and higher taxes for the few and fewer still working for a living.
If “Red Ed” Miliband wins control of HM Treasury, get ready for real rob-the-rich austerity.
Like 1970s Labour Chancellor Denis Healey, he will “squeeze until the pips squeak”.
Tory leader Kemi Badenoch, who has turned PM’s Questions into a blood sport, wants Burnham to come out of hiding and start explaining himself.
Andy has promised sweeping “change” since being sworn in as an MP, but refuses to face the press and only takes questions from tame audiences.
Hapless Keir Starmer paid dearly for seizing power without telling us what he planned to do with it. His silent usurper now risks similar disappointment.
The “Burnham Bounce” has so far not materialised.
Nigel Farage is still ahead, with Reform on 24 per cent and Labour and the Tories tied on 20 per cent.
That’s bad news for the Great Pretender, who hoped a honeymoon snap election might give him legitimacy a few weeks after establishing No10 North.
But it’s good news for the Tories, who now have time to turn Kemi Badenoch into a real Prime Minister-in-waiting.
A POLITICIAN seeking to be our Prime Minister should be judged by the company he keeps.
Nigel Farage may be perfectly innocent, but he refuses to explain a £5million gift from a rich donor or links with a cryptocurrency tycoon.
Now, we learn he is so close to ex-jailbird and wire fraudster George Cottrell that this self-confessed gambling addict calls him “Daddy”.
The Jattvibeday Times scoop justifies at a stroke why we desperately need a free press.
