What does Andy Burnham desire or envisage? What are his plans? After his two-hour session in the Commons it was unclear if he himself knew.
He bounced all over the place, a pinball under glass, an autumn bluebottle going mad in your bedside lampshade, deranged by fear of being swatted.
Mr Burnham, in only his third parliamentary week as PM, was at the despatch box for an ‘international update’.
The obvious crisis was Ukraine and President Trump’s latest crass gambit.
The PM did not wish to chew long on that. He fluttered his lashes and moved to proposed EU renegotiations.
Ed Miliband, Foreign Secretary, sat by him, yacking advice out of the left of his mouth. Cabinet ministers had a fight over seating arrangements. Low-wattage Lucy Powell thought she had bagged a good spot but she was told to shift by First Secretary Louise Haigh. Lucy is scared of Louise. Is she being bullied?
Further away sat Europe minister Hamish Falconer, a corkscrew of limbs.
Mr Burnham, in only his third parliamentary week as PM, was at the despatch box for an ‘international update’
Yet further down the bench was another Foreign Office minister, Stephen Doughty, who had had a miserable morning in the broadcasting studios trying to explain Andy’s position on alleged Russian interference in the Brexit referendum. Brother Doughty looked exhausted, his feet splayed at ten-to-two, face white as suet.
Mr Burnham suffers no such anxieties. He breezes about, quite the Ordinary Joe. Before the statement he loitered behind the Speaker’s Chair. An untutored observer would have assumed he was just another junior minister. There is no aura about him.
His opening remarks skated over the Iran and Ukraine stuff and dwelt at greater length on how he was going to cuddle back close to Brussels.
All this from a man who at the Makerfield by-election assured voters that, ‘the last thing we should do right now is re-run those arguments’ about Brexit.
Ah, yes, well, that was then and this was now, when he wants Lib Dem and Green voters to back him before he calls a possible early election. And so he laid out all the customs hassles that he wished to reopen.
Kemi Badenoch smote her brow in disbelief. She remarked that he had just shown the EU his cards. ‘Unbelievable!’ she cried in despair.
Mr Burnham was not listening entirely because he was having a fight with his A4 folder, clipping and unclipping its binder to rearrange his papers.
He doesn’t seem the best prepared of chaps. One sheet looked as if it might be from a telephone directory. On any EU deal, he burbled in his blokeish, airy way, ‘the British people will be the boss’.
MPs wondered if that meant he would hold another referendum. With a certain exasperation he said: ‘No one in the House today is proposing a referendum!’ Yet just a moment or two later he told MPs: ‘We have to look at the options.’ Vicky Pollard was more decisive.
Not all Labour MPs were thrilled. Jonathan Hinder (Pendle) and Melanie Onn (Grimsby) tried to get him to promise there would be no return to freedom of movement and no question of us being made to join the euro.
Ms Onn used the verb ‘capitulate’. Mr Burnham went a bit fuzzy.
The damnable thing about the Commons is that you can’t hide. You must rise on your rear hooves and say things which will be recorded by Hansard.
It is harder to be vague at the despatch box than it is in a television interview or on TikTok or when leaking stories via spin doctors. What about the Ruskies bending the Brexit vote, then? One moment Mr Burnham said Russia had sought to interfere in recent political events and it was ‘inconceivable’ that was the first time.
In another blithe breath he denied outright to Sir Julian Lewis (Con, New Forest E) that he ever suggested Russia altered the result of the referendum.
Dim, dishonest or making it up as he sails. I leave it to you to decide which.