Farrukh Dhondy | A Stormy Reign Ahead for Andy As ‘King of the North’ Crowned

Andy Burnham is now Prime Minister of the UK and his assumption of the role has been reported, or parodied in all the media as a coronation. Calling him the “King of the North”. He came to London via a much-televised train journey, talking incessantly about shifting power from Westminster to the North and the regions.

He may consequently spend much of his prime ministerial time journeying to the North and to the regions?

Even now, his security team are saying that they won’t allow him to travel to these places by train. So, how’s he going to get to the devolved seats of power? By helicopter? Wouldn’t that transgress his -- and a good number of his MPs’ -- net-zero convictions?

Then again, Andy has taken to wearing shorts and T-shirts instead of suits and ties. This may certainly be because that’s the natural way he wants to dress, but has been seen as tailoring his image to seem a man of the people rather than of “The Establishment”. So, what will he wear when he meets Donald Duck -- sorry, Dump -- who said he was dismayed when Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelenskyy came to meet him without wearing a tie?

Oh, the perils, the hazards, the obligations of PM-ship!

More seriously, on the relationship with the American Orangeboob. Andy has appointed Ed Miliband as his foreign secretary. Now, it’s a well-worn cliché that the US and the UK not only share the word beginning with “U” -- Unity in diversity? -- but have a historical “special relationship”. Ed is an ardent advocate of net-zero and was, as environment secretary in the previous Cabinet, the person who banned fresh drilling for oil and gas in the North Sea. Donal-ducking-the-issue-of-losing-to-Iran, on the other hand, is a “drill, drill, drill” propagandist and supports fracking. So, wither the “special relationship” -- even though Ed Miliband does wear ties?

Another policy, whose progress is worth watching, is what John Healey, the newly-appointed chancellor of the exchequer, will do about the defence budget. Under the last chancellor, Rachel Reeves, Mr Healey. who was secretary of state for defence, had resigned, claiming that Ms Reeves and then PM Keir Starmer were not providing the funds necessary for the proper and adequate defence of this sceptred isle.

He now has the job of providing those funds himself and will have to either borrow large sums of money, cut welfare spending or raise taxes from some sector of the population to do it. Any of those options will send opinionated tremors through different sections of the Labour Party, though again, they will please Orangeboob, who has demanded that European nations spend at least three per cent of their GDP on defence as their contribution to Nato.

You can’t please all?

Yet, Andy certainly has set out to please the considerable number of “nationalistic” voters by appointing Mr Healey, who will be expected to boost defence spending. His other popular move is to keep Shabana Mahmood at the Home Office. She was widely tipped to take over the chancellorship, but, as home secretary in the last Starmer government, has built a reputation for being tough on the influx of legal and illegal immigrants to the UK. Her presence and policies were designed to challenge (imitate?) the extreme right-wing parties such as Reform whose central appeal was the blocking and deportation of refugees, asylum-seekers and possibly already-resident “immigrants” to this country.

The right-wing weekly, the Spectator, edited by ex-Tory minister Michael Gove, sported an editorial before the new Cabinet was announced urging Mr Burnham to keep Shabana Mahmood in place – an endorsement from across the floor which Mr Burnham has, for reasons that Mr Gove supports, taken into account.

Mr Burnham, till he resigned to contest his seat for Westminster and glide into the premiership unopposed, was the mayor of Manchester. One of the directions he would take -- short of a policy statement -- was that he would “Manchesterise” UK’s national politics.

The meaning and the prospect are vague. He must mean that he will do for the country all the great things he did for Manchester as mayor? He added that decisions should not be made by an establishment cabal of ministers and civil servants in London, but that he’d institute measures and legislation to devolve power. That will mean handing over some powers to the local councils where the neo-fascist (or at least imperio-nationalist) Reform Party has control -- 24 councils where it is the largest party -- and 10 others.

Very many of these Reform councillors are anti-Semites, Islamophobes, racists and xenophobes and some of them are proven thugs, all to the right of Hermann Goering in their thinking.

Be careful to whom you devolve power? I would, gentle reader, prefer the much-reviled civil servants of Westminster to be, even in their reputedly bureaucratic overreach, in charge, than these Reform goons.

According to me -- though no one has ever taken any notice -- Mr Burnham should immediately nationalise the railways to reduce the exorbitant fares that the foreign-owned rail companies charge travellers, nationalise the water industries, which pour sewage into Britain’s rivers and canals, and pay their directors and share-holders eye-watering dividends, control the profiteering of petrol and gas companies who make zillions by boosting prices in the wake of the US-Iran Mideast war… (Dream on --Ed).