, Columnist
A Pub Joke Shows the Doubts About Andy Burnham
Could the real Andy Burnham please stand up.
Photographer: PAUL ELLIS/AFPThere’s an old joke about Andy Burnham, the Manchester mayor whose gamble to become UK prime minister from outside Parliament just might pay off. A Blairite, a Brownite and a Corbynite walk into a pub, it begins. “Evening Andy,” the barman asks. “What’ll you have?”
The reference is to past leaders of the Labour Party — the wealth-friendly liberal Tony Blair, the dour center-leftish Gordon Brown and the hard-socialist Jeremy Corbyn — and Burnham’s tendency to shape-shift, sniff the prevailing winds blowing through Labour at any one moment and adapt accordingly.