In the run-up to his coup against Sir Keir Starmer, Andy Burnham was sold to wavering Labour MPs as the ultimate ‘man of the people’. It was Burnham, his supporters argued, who ‘gets it’ in a way that the out-of-touch London lawyer Sir Keir simply did not. Only Burnham understood the frustrations, fears and hopes of the swathes of voters turning to Nigel Farage for answers. Only he could win back traditional Labour supporters in former heartlands from Reform. Yet Burnham this week demonstrated just how strikingly the reality has failed to live up to the sell.

In an interview with GB News yesterday, the Prime Minister appeared to think it politically savvy to suggest that he would spare working-class communities the burden of illegal migrants by dispersing them to more affluent areas. ‘We cannot have a situation where it’s only the poorest communities in the country that receive all of the dispersal of refugees and asylum seekers,’ he said. ‘I do........

© The Spectator