A fairly innocuous tweet from Andy Burnham made a splash on Twitter this morning after a complaint about overpriced public transport in the North. He lamented a simple 20-minute one-stop journey costing constituents an eye-watering £8, and comparing it to London:
Public transport is so expensive in our part of the world.
— Andy Burnham (@AndyBurnhamGM) October 20, 2021
This is the cost of a one-stop, 20-minute journey.
To be levelled up, we need London-level fares.
Accept nothing less. pic.twitter.com/Dug5VOaisC
Labour MP Neil Coyle then, unprovoked, accused the King of the North of making “cheap digs at London”:
A riled Burnham would not hear it and was keen to level up the conversation…
Still not satisfied, Burnham has spent the last hour passively aggressively retweeting his Twitter supporters including one who not so subtly wrote: “I don’t get why some Londoners are upset about this”. Meanwhile red wall voters without transit systems, and just one bus an hour, will no doubt be experiencing broken hearts at the plight of their metropolitan comrades…
Some surprising comments from Andy Burnham this morning, talking to the New Statesman fringe about levelling up, as he took to praising none other than Michael Gove. Burnham says the new Minister for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities is “good news for the levelling up agenda”, saying he’s not interested in making a “pointless criticism”:
“The thing about Michael Gove is at least he does things, he brings an energy to what he does, and you may disagree with him but he acts as a minister, he creates an agenda and he then implements it”.
Time to update the CV references, Mr Gove…
Having mastered the chords to Wonderwall, Andy Burnham has now found a new pastime: kickflipping his way to a herniated disc on a skateboard. He’s had a proper nightmayor…
