The Mail’s Christian Calgie trekked up to Makerfield this week to follow Reform on the campaign trail. By coincidence, he collided with Andy Burnham in a café. It did not go well. Burnham decided to turn it into a lecture on ‘boundaries’ (during an historic by-election in which he’s trying to defenestrate the Prime Minister)…
Calgie writes today:
“He did not seem to want to engage. In fact he appeared furious and fumed: ‘You don’t go into a place like that unannounced! You’re out of order there!’
When I protested that I was merely on Nigel Farage’s campaign trail and that the encounter had not been planned, Mr Burnham raged: ‘I know who you are but you should not do that. You should have boundaries. I’m not going to do a “friendly, matey, this that or the other”. You need to be told.’
I could not understand why he was so angry and asked if he was taking lessons from Donald Trump by launching personal attacks on journalists for doing their jobs.
‘The Press does not walk in like that,’ he responded. ‘If you’re going in with the media and a political party, you do not waltz into a place like that.”
Burnham obviously isn’t getting enough sleep, because he also had a tetchy encounter with the Express’s Aaron Newbury. If he’s this allergic to media scrutiny already, we can probably rule out televised lobby briefings when he’s in No10…
Paula Barker, Liverpool Wavertree MP backing Andy Burnham, told Times Radio there wouldn’t be trouble from the markets under Burnham:
“The markets will have to fall in line.”