Andy Burnham: Great communicator or TikTok PM?

Frank, let's discuss Andy Burnham and his first month in the job.

There was definitely a burn and bounce when he took office.

The polls are holding up, but the challenges are starting to pile up as well in the form of The debate over the early release of Prisoners, the autumn budget is on the horizon, planned welfare cuts and plans to drill in the North Sea.

How would you assess Andy Burnham's first month in the job?

I think he's done really well.

And he obviously listens to the podcast because he took our advice, hit the ground running in terms of flooding the zone as far as media was concerned.

And I know we're going to talk a little bit about his social media activities.

platform a bit later on but despite the fact that social media is huge these days he's also managed to stay on the front foot as far as the mainstream media coverage is concerned as well And so in that first week, he had a series of announcements to make on some key issues that clearly weren't the biggest in the world, but were all eye-catching, all impacted on cost of living, which is something that he's decided he's going to focus on.

All released at 7 o'clock in the morning as well.

And all released at early doors.

And as we said, Chris, the problem with his predecessor, Keir Starmer, was that he was often reacting to stuff.

So the fact that he's been proactive, he's been able to set the agenda for the day.

Helped, it has to be said, by the fact that Farage was out of the game because he was fighting a bin in that by-election.

So I think he's done well as far as that's concerned.

I think in terms of the perception that people have, certainly that I've spoken to, not just in the north of England, but further afield as well, he's coming across as a human.

Somebody who communicates well, but also somebody who's empathetic to situations that arise.

You've mentioned the early release scheme.

And again, you can imagine the response of Starmer's government to that would have been, well, we're going to have to go through the process.

We're going to have to see what our lawyers say.

You know, Burnham immediately understands and appreciates the political side.

situation around that issue and has come out and said no there's certain people that i don't want to be released and we're going to do everything we can to make sure that that doesn't happen so i think he's showing a political instinct that is positive i think as i say for the news agenda and for the media age that we're in he's doing a good job the one thing i would say that may come back to bite him on the arse when we get into six, nine, 12 months of a government and inevitably he comes across challenges and difficulties and his burn and bounce won't always be in play, is that I thought that the cull of Starmerites from the cabinet was perhaps a little over the top and the removal of darren jones and peter kyle i think was particularly harsh both very able ministers and i think he should have perhaps found a place for them and also a big demotion for bridget phillipson who generally speaking was seen to be doing a good job in education so there may be issues that he's stacked up for himself in the future.

But as far as month one is concerned, I think it's fair to say, as an assessment, it's eight, eight and a half out of ten.

Yeah, I remember somebody said that Starmer didn't have a faction behind him until Burnham got rid of the faction that nobody knew existed.

I think a couple of things I'd say about Burnham.

I think you touched on it earlier, that he's got a political antennae that Keir Starmer lacked.