Labour are in Liverpool and, as their conference reached its apogee, I was put in mind of John Lennon. What could an entitled pseud, who preached tolerance and kindness while being intensely venal and malicious in his personal life, possibly remind you of in today’s Labour party, I hear you ask? Well, specifically what came to mind was Lennon’s hatred for particular, mawkish and sentimental parts of the Beatles’ oeuvre which he called ‘Paul’s Granny S***’. Think Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da, Maxwell’s Silver Hammer or When I’m Sixty-Four.

Andy Burnham specialises in mawkishness, mass-produced sentimentality and ‘be kindism’. I actually don’t think Burnham the man – whoever that really is amid his myriad costume changes over the last few decades – is particularly sentimental, but he’s clever enough to pretend he is, whereas his predecessor wasn’t.

He’s clever, because he knows the British like this, just as they like McCartney’s rinky-tinky evocations of suburbia much more than they ever indulged Lennon’s self-centred, narcotic warbling. If anything, they love Paul’s Granny S*** more than they did when it first came out. The contemporary British public would most likely accept a boot crushing their face in........

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