Burnham needs to aim his fire at his real enemy
ANDY Burnham launches his leadership campaign to replace the wooden Sir Keir Starmer with a clever wheeze; attack Nicola Sturgeon over Covid travel restrictions to his part of England (“Burnham anger at Sturgeon over travel ban ‘hypocrisy’”, The Herald, June 21). This guarantees him wide, and sympathetic, access to the unionist media, as any attack on Sturgeon does these days.
The headlines of Ms Sturgeon’s “hypocrisy” contrasts vividly with the broad lack of headlines that any similar complaint emanating from Scotland gets. You get a flavour of this with Douglas
Ross’s nonsensical answers, typically not pursued by the BBC interviewer, over the lack of consultation with the devolved governments on the “Australia deal”. If Mr Ross thinks a five per cent cut in whisky tariffs ($1 off a bottle) will do wonders for the Scottish agriculture sector, then I have a bridge to sell him, courtesy of Messrs Johnson and Jack. So, good luck Andy Burnham:
Labour needs a plucky trier, but you should aim your barbs at your real enemy.
GR Weir, Ochiltree.
■ I DON’T think we need to take Manchester Mayor Andy Burnham’s over-the-top outburst too seriously. There’s a Labour leadership contest lurking just over the horizon, and Mr Burnham’s burning ambition is to lead that party. He’s clearly positioning himself for the tussle ahead.
Last week’s Chesham and Amersham by-election result was of course worse for Labour than for the Tories. By-elections are odd affairs and regularly produce one-off results. They give the electorate a free hit, voting in the knowledge that they won’t change the party in government. Chesham and Amersham will almost certainly go back to the Tories at the next general election.
For Labour, and especially for Sir Keir Starmer, the by-election result was a catastrophe. The Tories lost 17,000 votes compared to the 2019 General Election, and it looks like none of them went to Labour. Indeed, the Labour vote fell by more than 6,000 to a miniscule 622 votes, only 1.6 per cent of the poll. Sir Keir is a smart guy, but it looks like stolid metropolitan lawyers don’t have much appeal outside London.
Labour threw itself down a slippery slope years ago, obsessed by internal power struggles and oblivious to changes in British society. Whether Mr Burnham or anyone else can pull Labour back from its death slide is anybody’s guess, but time is not on their side. Doug Maughan, Dunblane.