Comment
Ian Forsyth/Getty
Burnham’s “radicalism” is nothing new
Andy Burnham portrayed himself in his conference speech as a “heretic”, says Bagehot in The Economist. He was an “outsider”, he said, willing to “break the mould” of British politics. Don’t be taken in. The prime minister’s supposedly big ideas are in fact “wearily familiar”. His promise to “take back control” with interventions in energy, housing and markets was made “in the same hall” by Keir Starmer two years earlier. He said his economic priority was reindustrialisation (Britain’s “fourth industrial strategy in a decade”) and promised to tweak procurement rules to “Buy British”, just as Starmer and Boris Johnson promised before him. There was the now-obligatory paean to apprenticeships, and the claim that areas like his Makerfield constituency have been “forgotten” by Westminster – when, of course, for the past decade party strategists have “thought of little else”.
The truth is that, “like his predecessors”, Burnham has deferred all the genuinely hard choices. Electoral reform won’t happen until after the next election. Nor will his plan to “adjust” the triple lock to fund social care reform – another issue not nearly as overlooked as people claim. Theresa May destroyed her premiership over it; Johnson tried to address it with a new payroll tax. As for rejoining Europe, ministers have spent the past decade bouncing between the imperatives of sovereignty and growth “like wasps in a jam jar”. Is another cabinet debate over “the merits of the Turkey model” really going to resolve that dilemma? Of our recent PMs, the real “mould-breaker” was May. In an “epic over-correction” to Brexit, she pushed back against what she called the “untrammelled free markets”, and brought in interventionism and price controls. Basically every prime minister since has stuck to this “post-liberalism” orthodoxy. Burnham is no different.
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Heroes and villains
Francesca Yorke/Getty
Hero
Nigella Lawson, for taking no prisoners in her new role as a judge on The Great British Bake Off. When one contestant, Danni, refused to taste her own “Snickers Snickerdoodle” cookies because she is vegan, Lawson responded firmly: “It’s impossible to know what you’re baking if you don’t taste it.”
Hero
Princess Anne, who told England rugby coach and charity fundraiser Kevin Sinfield that there’s no such thing as a “fun run”, calling it a “contradiction in terms”. Quite right, says Carol Midgley in The Times. As an oxymoron, it’s right up there with “working holiday”, “pleasure cruise” and “Radio 4 comedy”.
Instagram/@Shannon_leigh_litt
Hero
A runner in New Zealand who has completed an ultra-marathon every day for 1,000 consecutive days. Shannon-Leigh Litt, 47, has managed at least 50km every day since 1 January 2024, smashing the previous record of 200 days and working her way through more than 90 pairs of trainers. The criminal barrister says she is now taking a well-deserved rest: dropping down to a daily marathon.
Villains
“Female politicians”, the “elderly”, “mothers and fathers”, “homosexuals” and “youngsters”, according to the Green Party’s new guidance on “unacceptable” language. The Orwellian glossary of “Inclusive Terminology”, produced for the party’s conference this weekend, also disapproves of “able-bodied”, “sex-change” and “sexual preference”, and recommends replacing “gendered job titles” with gender-neutral terms: “chair” rather than “chairman”, for example, and “police officer” instead of “policeman”.
Life
Rantzen in 1983. Chris Ridley/Radio Times/Getty
Esther Rantzen, who has died aged 86, drew in 20 million viewers a week for much of her 21 years hosting the hit BBC show That’s Life!, says The Guardian. Though she championed plenty of worthy causes – campaigning for child seatbelts, encouraging organ donation, exposing conmen and dodgy businessmen – she also brought a light-hearted side. Features included a horse that could count, a woman who cooked meat in the engine of her car, a dog that could say “sausages”, and rude-looking vegetables including a famous “phallic parsnip”. Rantzen was an early adopter of “power dressing”, presiding over the show in trouser suits with huge shoulder pads, but never shied away from making a fool of herself – she was once arrested for obstructing the pavement while handing out samples of bat soup. “Taxi drivers used to ask, ‘Is your show meant to be funny or serious?’” she recalled. “And I said, ‘Yes.’”
The Knowledge Crossword
Global update
“Russian Westerner” Alexandra Jost. Instagram/@sashajost
The Westerners paid to promote Russia
In the past few years, says Andrew Ryvkin in Air Mail, Vladimir Putin has been working hard to shift the perception of Russia from a country at war to a “bastion of traditional values”. In 2024, the Kremlin launched its “anti-woke” visa programme, offering residency to Western citizens from Ukraine-supporting countries who “yearn for a simpler time” of “no feminism, homosexuality or dark-skinned immigrants”. The process is “streamlined and friendly”, with no requirement to take the normally mandatory Russian-language test. Russian press outlets have established propaganda-pushing “journalism schools” in other countries, and state-run RT even has an online academy that teaches participants how to cover the Ukraine war the “right” way.
Helping this effort is a cohort of disillusioned European and American bloggers who flocked to Russia and are now paid to promote it as the “best decision of their lives”. There’s the charismatic Italian pianist with millions of followers and “improbably fluent Russian”, and the American YouTuber who praises Russia and trashes the US in equal measure. The most prominent “Russian Westerner” is 27-year-old Alexandra Jost, who hosts an RT-funded YouTube show called Sasha Meets Russia, in which she travels across the country exploring regional cuisines, trying on traditional attire and interviewing locals to “showcase Russia’s charm”. Although the Kremlin makes out that Russia is welcoming swarms of these “ideological immigrants”, there has been no such mass migration – “most people are sane”. But those who have been mad enough to make the move have likely found that the claim to “traditional values” doesn’t really hold up: most Russians swerve church, the divorce rate stands around 70% and the nightclubs are “some of the wildest east of Berlin”.
Weather
Quoted
“By the time you’re 80 years old, you’ve learned everything. You only have to remember it.”
American comedian George Burns
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