Burnham’s First Team
Last shot to end the Reform threat
An interesting choice. He’ll be laughing at the pundits who insisted it would be either Mahmood or Milliband, and given his reason for resigning from Starmer’s government I wonder what Healey's spending plans are. If a further increase in defence spending is kicked off at the cost of say disability benefits, add that to Burnham’s pledge to increase oil & gas drilling in the North Sea and he starts out by shedding progressive voters. Speaking of which:
Mahmood is a sop to Reform which won’t benefit Burnham any more than Starmer. It’s an idiotic move and a signal that the new PM hasn't learned a thing from his predecessor's indulgence of the far right, whose voters simply won't go for fascism-lite in the next General Election. I wondered before Burnham took power whether or not he'd understand that the positions he took to win his seat would not transpose to a winning platform as PM. Now we know - he hasn't.
Mahmood not enough proof? Try keeping Lisa Nandy, who had the power under Starmer to tackle the deeply corrupt politicisation of the BBC and the far right news bias that even the staunchest BBC News supporter can detect in their sleep. She did nothing, she didn't reform Ofcom, who've just given GB News yet another free pass, and made no move to bring about Leveson 2 and begin reform of the feral news media in the UK. Keeping her suggests Burnham doesn't see any of that as a threat. He's wrong.
Wrong again to keep Bridget Phillipson as Equalities Minister. She's responsible for the recently drafted Trans Guidance which threatens to embed anti-trans bigotry into British life in a way akin to Section 28 for LGB people more than a generation ago. Burnham says he wants to do things differently as PM - this is a signal that he's gaslighting us all. The problem with Starmer was not that he was a poor messenger - his appalling position on Gaza is proof of that alone, the problem was he was illiberal, mendacious and power hungry, ready to throw the weakest of us under the bus. If Mahmood, Phillipson and Nandy don't change their behaviour, if Burnham continues to allow weapons exports to Israel (which Starmer did), you'll know precisely what his intentions really are.
