The King of the Despatch Box

The cheers that greeted the PM two days in a row were deafening. As Andy Burnham made his first and second commons appearances this week his backbenchers were keen to voice their newly positive feeling. 

Burnham had been away from Parliament for over a decade and the government dispatch box for 16 years. He was clearly keen to make up for lost time. He started his PMQs appearance joking about having made the “longest statement in history.” He even won praise for his stamina from Kemi Badenoch which caused a few schoolboy titters from the backbenches. 

However, not every Labour backbencher was quite so welcoming. Defence Select Committee chair Tan Dhesi MP asked a somewhat pointed question about a timetable for the UK hitting the target of 3% of GDP spending on defence. The Slough MP warned that “Defence is definitely one area where vibes alone just isn’t going to be enough.”

Dhesi is right of course. Government doesn’t just run on vibes and Burnham has a big and challenging inbox. But Commons performance does matter for how the government is perceived. Burnham has established himself over the summer as a master of the short-form video which might have led to some nerves as to how he would fare in the more combative arena of answering questions from all comers in Parliament. These fears were roundly dispelled as Labour’s PM took both performances in his stride. He even got some gentle criticism from the Speaker for his long PMQs answers which Lindsay Hoyle argued would make the session run long. (This felt like odd criticism from the man who usually sees his job as ensuring as much information is elicited from government ministers in Parliament as possible.) Any fears about Andy’s ability to bring his communication to this very different medium were widely dispelled. 

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Were I to be slightly critical I would say that Burnham’s performance when delivering prepared remarks is less fluent than he is when speaking off the cuff. There was a difference in his performance during the reading of his statement and his responses to questions. It wasn’t huge or particularly significant but it will be something for him to consider as he prepares for another of his big set-piece performances – his first speech as leader at Labour Party conference. 

Equally, the vibes were sometimes at odds with each other. The PM returned to his refrain about preferring “problem solving not point scoring”. But this didn’t stop him building up his own points tally when responding to Kemi Badenoch pointing out that her new Shadow Chancellor had served as a Treasury Minister in Liz Truss’s brief but disastrous government.

It’s a fair attack and one that Labour will remain keen to hang around the neck of the Tories. But it wasn’t quite an end to Punch and Judy, point-scoring politics.Will anyone care? Probably not. 

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Dhesi is right that leading the UK is about more than vibes and that hard choices will need to be made. But these choices will also need to be well communicated and sold to both the PLP and the public. Making hard choices and simply saying they are hard is not enough. But an ability to weave together a political narrative and tell the story of the government is an essential part of leadership. Good will is created in all audiences by communicating well with them. As the PM continues to perform well it doesn’t just make Labour MPs feel better about the performance of their front man. It also creates the space for Burnham to continue to make a political argument not just about the hard choices he has to make but the thinking and philosophy behind them. 

The role of ‘explainer in chief’ is one that has long been an essential part of being party leader. So call it vibes or spin or just old fashioned communication, but those who dismiss the central importance of being able to do all of this – at length in the Commons or in brief on social media – are wrong to do so. 

A good parliamentary performance isn’t everything. But it ain’t nothing either and this week Andy Burnham has comfortably passed another test of his leadership. 

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