You can’t say he hasn’t got a wiggle on. Every day since he got the job our new Prime Minister’s pulled yet another rabbit out of the hat. Each aimed at easing cost of living pressures. People pleasing with knobs on. But, as our Political Correspondent Peter Spencer reports, what isn’t quite so clear is who’s going to pick up the tab for it all.
You see him here, you see him there, you see him everywhere.
Before he’d even popped in on the palace for the royal get-go Andy Burnham was dishing out food for homeless people at a centre in London. This was linked to his promise to end homelessness.
Later he was pulling pints at a local in Essex. To underscore his pledge to cut business rates for pubs, clubs and music venues.
And, come Friday, with points in between, he was working from his newly fashioned Number Ten North in Manchester. Designed to spread the jam across the nation.
Interestingly, it echoes a scheme set up by a Prime Minister he once served, Gordon Brown, to help weather the storm created by the financial crash back in 2008.
This crisis made not in Downing Street but Wall Street, is arguably the source of much of the discontent on display to this day.
The subsequent Tory-led government responded with an austerity programme that’s now widely regarded as an overreaction.
And practically every bane in everyone’s lives, from potholes in the roads to crumbling care services, dates back to those times. Make do and mend only works until the fabric gets threadbare.
At this point every Prime Minister’s only fit for the scrapheap. Witness that we’re now on our seventh in ten years.
Covid, Brexit and the energy price spike gifted us by the Kremlin have also cost us dear. But we were already on the back foot.
Which explains the doubts about whether Burnham’s fairy godmother wand really will turn pumpkins into carriages.
All his tasty goodies will after all cost. And, as well as the pubs and rough sleeping thing, there’s the capped bus fares and lower lecky bills.
It’s been estimated that that little lot alone will cost nearly two billion. But he’s been a bit fuzzy about when and how he plans to find it.
Seeing as he’s promised not to spook the markets by spending what he hasn’t got, and there really is precious little to spare, he’s going to have to prise the money out of existing budgets.
And, as his other former boss Tony Blair once pointed out – it’s easy saying yes to people, saying no’s the hard bit.
Not like there isn’t a whole heap of other begging bowls kicking around, associated with stuff he’s promising to fix.
After the outcry about two of the men who killed a policemen being let out early, under the system aimed at easing prison overcrowding, Burnham said he’d pause the whole thing.
Problem being this’d mean they’d simply run out of spaces within a few months. Collapsing the entire system.
The scheme was only introduced by Labour as an emergency measure. Jails take around seven years to build and during their near decade and a half in office the Tories didn’t get around to it.
Their bad, Burnham’s problem.
That and so many others. Meaning alongside the smooth, the feather-ruffling rough stuff is inevitable.
Cue an expected announcement on drilling, er, baby, drilling in the North Sea.
Word is he’s minded to do so in a gas field that the last Energy Secretary, Ed Miliband, said would be ‘climate vandalism’.
Given the crazy weather we’ve had to put up with lately, and its barely disputed connection with human activity, this new move might not play so well with everyone.
That said, it will create jobs and might even help to bring down the cost of living a teeny bit.
Could even make Miliband’s life a little easier in his new role as Foreign Secretary, given the extra bright orange glow it’ll paste onto Donald Trump’s chops.
Actually, Ed needs all the help he can get on that front, seeing as the Prez hasn’t forgiven him for describing him a few years back as a: ‘Racist, misogynistic, self-confessed groper.’
The poor chap might now wish he hadn’t put it quite like that, even if it does chime with British public opinion.
With knobs on, incidentally, now that the Donald’s doling out yet more gruesome gruel in the form of ongoing import taxes on British goods. And probably whacking up pump prices with yet more grief in Iran.
But, closer to home, there are still more amber lights flashing in Burnham’s direction, as, what almost feels like a lifetime ago, he chucked out more than a third of his predecessor’s chosen and loyal top team.
Thus, having promised to reign back backstabbing among his own people, he created a complete cadre of enemies. Someone in the know put it bluntly: ‘The bitterness is going to be hell.’
Still, help seems to be at hand from an unlikely source. None other than Labour’s would-be nemesis, Reform leader Nigel Farage.
When Keir Starmer quit what seems like several lifetimes ago, even though was only a few weeks back, Nige and his chums were positioned in the polls seven points ahead.
But the latest YouGov survey has now whittled that lead down to just two. Partly doubtless because our Andy’s just as good at the geezer in the boozer bit, but likely just as much to do with sleaze.
The slew of stories about the multimillion wedge stuffed into Farage’s pocket, now under parliamentary scrutiny, plus other goodies passed his way by a convicted fraudster, is clearly cutting through.
Certainly his personal popularity’s plummeted to its lowest level in the last ten years, putting him behind Starmer when he really had got his tail between his legs.
Nonetheless there’s a cautionary thought for the whole lot of them. Especially Burnham.
Journalists asking voters what they thought of Sir Keir in recent months found that he wasn’t just regarded as a bit of a fail but as someone to hate. A strong word, but it came back and back.
And the reason? The digital age, that’s turned every day into a sort if referendum. And a singularly grumpy one at that.
Meaning the punters aren’t satisfied with promises of better times ahead. They want them now. Or, better still, last week.
Goes without saying this is an impossible demand. Prime Ministers can’t just magic up a spangly new world overnight.
Burnham’s brimming basket of goodies does at least promise slightly better times in the not too distant future. And it’s clearly bought him a bit of time. But only a bit.
He might have announced as he opened his new Number Ten North office that this looked to be: ‘The best day of my life.’
But all his recent predecessors would tell him that, on balance, a Prime Minister’s lot is not a happy one.
Certainly, spotted in the pub with his former team just after he formally threw in the towel, Starmer looked a whole lot happier than he had in a long time. Funny, that.
Watch Peter’s report at peterspencer.org
Peter Spencer has 40 years experience as a Political Correspondent in Westminster, working with London Broadcasting and Sky News. For more of his fascinating musings on the turbulent political landscape, follow him on Facebook & Twitter.