Minnie’s Musings

One can view our Mr Burnham from up t’North as a straight up bloke who does a good job up in Manchester where he is making a name for himself doing presumably good things. He is popular as a metropolitan mayor.

Good for him. Long may he carry on doing good things as Mayor of Manchester.

He is also doing a good job of garnering himself a whole lot of attention. He did it at the Labour Party Conference in the Autimn. So much so that several of his colleagues got to the point of muttering that he Gould pipe down and stop causing so much distraction.

He has done the same this weekend by waiting until the very last minute to proffer himself as a candidate for the newly vacant seat in Manchester, supreme in his confident that he can keep it from the dastardly clutches of Reform. Hmmmmm

My first thought was that his confidence may be misplaced. He no doubt had a host of reasons as to why he lost his seat previously all of which may ignore the fact that he didn’t do a good enough job as an MP to get reelected.

My second was that he has had a fine old time with positioning himself as the victim of Starmer’s allies who have now blocked his ambitions. After all he promised to work with this much maligned group rather than undermine them. Yeah, right.

He has made a calculated move to ensure that he either benefits from being a voice of disruption inside The Commons, ready to launch his power bid. Or a victim of political machinations who can grumble vociferously from his still powerful and high profile position as leader of England’s third city(though Leeds might squeak “fourth”). All with a stolid good bloke Northern accent that marks him out as one who is down with the common man. Unlike his target who – however many tools were fashioned at the mill – still sounds like an export reject from Hampstead.

Win , win for our Andy. Lose, lose for that Kier bloke.

Unfortunately for this floating voter (and we floaters are the ones whose x on the ballot paper is needed
person that our Mr Burnham reminds me of the most is BoJo.

Bear with me…

After all who made a bigger name for himself as mayor of a major city and then zipped back into being an MP at the first available opportunity (when it was worth a punt).? And whose political machinations got him into the highest office while trampling on friends and colleagues along the way.

And then look how he behaved…

There is a fundamental problem with overwhelming ambition. It messes with your priorities. And coupled with an overestimation of one’s own abilities and sense of popularity it can lead to a mighty downfall.

Andy is also falling into the trap of being too quick to unleash himself from the trap. Who remembers Heseltine? He shot his bolt way too early and never got the high office he had his eye trained on despite the open goal created by Margaret Thatcher.

Meantime there are plenty of us who want the focus to be on pulling the country back from the economic brink. Not to mention the abyss that Europe and the World is currently faced with…