Whether it’s competition or coronation this summer, expect to hear a lot about ‘Labour values’ before (and after) Andy Burnham becomes prime minister. Labour can’t stop telling us about their wonderful values. ‘When we rally around Labour values together, our movement changes the lives of those who need it most,’ Keir Starmer intoned like an adenoidal android during the local election campaign.

What exactly are ‘Labour values’? Late-era Starmer could get quite emotional – as far as he was able to – about them, stating, ‘We’re on the side of communities across our country,’ whatever that means. In his resignation statement, he told us how he’d been ‘building a country where everyone is seen, everyone is valued’. Whatever they are, Labour values always come wrapped in this sickly sermonic goo, suggesting some kind of higher moral calling.

This nebulous cant – trumpeted from that section of the moral high ground occupied by the ignorers of mass child rape, to take just one oversight – is enough to knock you sick. We are constantly told that disagreeing with Labour is not ‘who we are’, that ‘Britain is better than this’. It is done in the tone of a disappointed form tutor reprimanding 13-year-olds for sticking chewing gum on the backs of bus seats.

Empathy and kindness are the wrapper on Labour’s good old-fashioned envy and malice

Empathy and kindness are the wrapper on Labour’s good old-fashioned envy and malice

Under Andy Burnham, this is only likely to get more spew-inducing. At his victory rally, he boasted that his campaign was led by ‘strong northern power women’, adding, ‘I wouldn’t mess with them and I suggest that you........

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