Now Andy Burnham is getting involved, to the surprise of no one. Speaking on the Today programme this morning, Burnham said not only that Rayner’s attack on Starmer “should be listened to“, but her claim that Shabana Mahmood’s immigration policies were “un-British” mirrored his own “moral questions“:
“From my point of view I would have a concern about the mandatory checks on people’s country of origin… my feeling would be that could place an administrative burden on a system that already struggles to cope, and in fact doesn’t cope. It is often in chaos… alongside the problem that it leaves some people in limbo, so [that’s] the moral question that I think Angela was pointing to…”
The morning after Rayner appears at an anti-Starmer faction’s party, the King of the North crops up with his own hot take on where the government is going wrong. Who’d have guessed…
In Henry Mance’s piece today for the FT, lunching with Nigel Farage:
“Splendido!” Farage says, when the drinks arrive; I suppose it’s a step to European reconciliation. We clink glasses, and he lights the first of two back-to-back Benson & Hedges. A few minutes later, we’re back downstairs. “Are you drinking? Good.” He orders a glass of Sauvignon blanc for each of us — not a bottle, “because it’s Lent” — followed by a bottle of claret, to have with our meal. They say Farage drinks less than he used to. They say a lot of things.”