Question Time Andy Burnham Special 26th June 2026
The Panel:
Emily Thornberry (Labour)
Kevin Hollinrake (Conservative)
Zia Jusuf (Reform UK)
Stephanie Flanders (Journalist)
Venue: Kettering
Just when you thought it was safe to announce to Puffins that QT had finished for the summer, the BBC drops everything and interrupts the World Wendyball Knockout Invitation Shield to bring you an Andy Burnham Question Time special.
A week is a long time at QT Review HQ. Manchester mayor Andeh won the Merkerfield by-election on 18th June. Prime Minister Keith Starmer resigned on the 22nd, with the emergency QT being held on the 26th. Meanwhile, Puffins were being lulled into a false sense of security by not reading this humble author’s gap-filling Post-Brexit Review — it being the tenth anniversary of the aforementioned.
Fiona Bruce, however, was being dragged away from watching Wimbledon on the iPad in a boiling-hot Islington back garden, thrown into a BBC taxi and rushed to Kettering to be (still in her summer dress) plonked in front of a carefully selected audience and wedged beside Lardy Emily Thornberry.
Question one: Burnham may not be the messiah, but might he be the saviour of the Labour Party and the country? Rather than anything practical, the questioner’s hoped-for vision was simply ‘hope and vision’.
Lady Emily Thornberry (Labour) was bedecked in a green dress with a black foliage motif. Coiffured and wearing too much make-up, she looked like a substantial cloud-topped cliff face rising from a jungle. She started badly, reminding the audience of Burnham’s life in nothing other than politics. Real-world experience? Lacking.
Up in Manchester, he’d been a great success. Muslim rape gangs? Murdered Jews? Sectarian voting? Police beaten at Manchester Airport? Piccadilly Gardens, a drugs hell? Lardy was showing her lack of real Manchester experience.
Keith is decent but not a politician: ‘There’s a skill to being involved in politics,’ she said, ominously hinting at witch-doctory within the rainforest.
Kevin Hollinglake (Conservative) finds Burnham more personable — i.e. photogenic and a provider of nicey feelings to London bubble dwellers. But the job of a mayor is different from that of a prime minister. He kept on saying ‘defence of the realm’ and pointing to a £28 billion funding shortfall therein — the cumulative effect of 14 years of Conservative government, he forgot to add.
A Belgian spoke from the audience. Keen on the EU, she hoped Burnham was too. Speaking of the audience, it wasn’t very diverse. There were no black men (perhaps they’re all away playing football?) and only one black woman — who was allowed to monologue despite her poor English, meaning we couldn’t understand what she was saying.
Stephanie Flanders (economist and Bloomberg journalist) said we wouldn’t know of the presence or otherwise of a macarered messiah until next Monday’s speech — which is now last Monday’s speech. And, a week being a long time in politics as well as a long time at QT Review HQ, Stephanie now knows that Burnham stands for continuity uncosted, Keith-max, leftie word-soup empty promises.
“Policies have to be better,” she continued. “How much wriggle room is there?” queried La Bruce. Investors want purpose, persuasion, courage, and fulfilment. “Room for manoeuvre?” persisted Fiona. Stephanie saw the welfare budget as a big problem, but said there is some wriggle room in the fiscal rules if Burnham can convince the markets that extra borrowing won’t be misspent.
Zia Yusuf (Reform) couldn’t believe it: another career politician who has never had a proper job in his life is being foisted upon the people of Britain. Not so much the King of the North, more the King of U-turns — on immigration, on gender, on the EU.
An audience member despaired that all the parties just take notice of their donors and victimise the elderly and the sick with ‘cuts’.
Hollinrake interrupted to say that low-level anxiety isn’t sickness and that sufferers should be at work.
He claimed he could save £23 billion by chopping payments to those with low-level anxiety and ADHD. He then changed the subject and criticised Zia for never having stood for Parliament — as if being in the House of Liars and Thieves is somehow a good thing.
Zia hinted he had put his name forward but hadn’t been selected as a candidate — contrary to the type of cronyism you get in the Tory Party, he added with relish. Aiming at Lady Emily, he added that Reform had never stood down to unseat a sitting prime minister.
La Bruce was triggered and insisted on knowing if he’d volunteered to be a Reform candidate or not. “You mean they wouldn’t let you?” sneered multi-millionaire and hereditary barrister Big Em.
Question Two: Is Britain becoming ungovernable? One of those questions expecting the answer “Brexit”; a heavy hint was provided by the inclusion in the question of the words “since Brexit…”.
Stephanie took the bait, but pre-empted her Brexit ramble with the caveat that blaming Brexit let Keir Starmer and his predecessors off the hook. She also blamed social media, but made no mention of the likes of the pandemic, wars in Ukraine and the Gulf, net zero, tax and spend, et al.
The elite had a kick in the teeth during the EU referendum — a good thing, perhaps — but they lost their confidence, and it scrambled the machinery of government. Interestingly, again, rather than engaging with the real world, Stephanie’s frame of reference lies restricted to the London administrative bubble.
A loon in the audience, unable to organise a collar and tie — or a shave and a haircut – let alone a continent-wide union, obsessed his Brexitphobia. He accused Farage of being the architect of Brexit, rather than Mr Cameron and the EU through their inability to renegotiate our relationship with Europe to the satisfaction of the voters. He based his case on ‘war on the continent’ (between two countries, Russia and Ukraine, which are not in the EU) and ‘recent studies’.
Zia Yusuf accused him of blaming the voters. Rather, it’s successive governments’ failures on, for instance, immigration, non-manifesto policies, and endless U-turns — not to mention scandals involving Lords Mandelson and Ali. Labour and the Tories do the opposite of what they promise, and then you blame the voters!
Fat Em blamed social media, Brexit, Covid, and Ukraine — in fact, everything and everyone not in power in Westminster. She read directly from loose-leaf notes and also had a sizeable notebook open in front of her. She read out her trump card: ‘And we’ve had Trump.’ Pronounced TRUMP!!!
She became hot and bothered and pointy, and warned that the ‘populist right’ will ruin the country.
A teacher spoke from the audience. She has a Greek partner (also a she) with a master’s degree, who can’t get sponsorship for a job here. So what?
Not ungovernable if you make the difficult decisions, according to Hollingrake. Burnham won’t make them. Hollingrake returned to Zia not having stood for Parliament, and then ranted about Farage through a game of “he said he would, then he said he wouldn’t”. Again, he was reading from notes.
Zia reminded us of what the Tories did in 14 years of government — a long and grim list, whose punchline was that most of Hollingrake’s colleagues lost their seats at the election.
This segued into the next question: should the political right collaborate at the next election?
Stephanie was struck by the assumption that Reform, just because they’ve been ahead in the last three hundred opinion polls, would win a general election. The system is not equipped for five parties. Still obsessed with Brexit, she announced that we have become more European, with more parties and less economic growth.
Bruce wanted to hear from Reform supporters in the audience. Zia pointed out a non-representative shortage, as few present raised a hand. Fiona said the audience was representative. Zia replied he would just have to take her word for it. Fiona was triggered, claimed to be scrupulous in audience scrupulousness, and said she wasn’t lying.
Zia took a look at recent by-elections. The Tories lose their deposits and are nonentities. Reform, with the addition of Conservative voters, wouldn’t be a bigger political force.
“Aberdeen South,” replied Kevin, again reading from notes laid beside an A4 pad, highlighting pen and biro.
Fat Em thought Reform had peaked and that people were seeing through them. She obsessed about populism and became so annoyed that she leaned to one side and crossed her legs in a temper — like Miss Piggy in that awkward edition of The Muppet Show when Kermit the Frog was caught dribbling over a young Linda Ronstadt.
The final question was about recent high temperatures and the attendant, even greater imperative of climate change. A week is a long time for the weather, especially during an English summer. Last week’s boiling continental high-pressure heat dome has been replaced by cold and wet.
Not to worry, all of the panellists, including Reform’s Zia, committed to television’s Albert Sustainable obliged man-made global-warming narrative — caused by the terrifying 0.04% of the atmosphere that is carbon dioxide. Perhaps they are unaware of that other cautionary political catchphrase, ‘Events, dear boy, events’.
© Always Worth Saying 2026
The Goodnight Vienna Audio file
