Allow Andy Burnham to be blokeish, we've missed having something to laugh at

Spitting Image and The Thick of It had recently come to an end and sketch writers were complaining about their work being cut out as politicians of the day were just too perfect.

David Cameron was then a newly elected prime minister and leader of a coalition of well-groomed men and perfectly made-up women.

The Guardian’s cartoonist Steve Bell had tried hard to lampoon Cameron as an octopus and, when that got too hard to draw, as a condom. But Dave didn’t have enough ridges or creases to easily parody. The jokes needed explaining.

American counterparts had an even harder time with Barack Obama. Never had there been a politician more camera-ready. The only slightly memorable joke from the era was a comparison to him as Tigger, but it was only funny when Obama was standing next to the Winnie the Pooh of Xi Jinping.

And for a short time the professor was proved right. I was allowed two questions with Cameron in 2015 when he did some local media stops ahead of that year’s election and I did notice that he was balding more than you could see on TV. But this was only noticeable as we were pressed a few inches from each other in the back room of an office. That year, his polished appearance was considered a factor in his Tory party winning the election ahead of the less airbrushed Ed Miliband and Labour.

Of course, political communication changed dramatically a year later, in 2016. Jeremy Corbyn, Boris Johnson, Donald Trump, and, later, Joe Biden were on the scene, and satirists were complaining that they could again provide nothing as reality was more absurd than anything they could come up with themselves.

So the news this week that Andy Burnham is being criticised for being performatively blokeish feels like a throwback to a more innocent time. The prime minister’s social media is like something of a time capsule to a pre-Brexit era when it mattered to people for their politicians to not look deranged. There’s Andy drinking a pint, and mocking his Chancellor John Healey for his pub order. There’s Andy playing football, there he is enjoying a cup of tea…

Sure, it is cringey and performative, and nobody is really as northern as he tries to put across. (On a side note I would LOVE it, if one day a politician is accused of actively trying to buy into an overly southern image and is pictured with a tote bag, croissant and coffee, in Lycra with their bike at the top of Box Hill).

But while Burnham’s northern bloke efforts are calculated, they are done so brazenly that, for the first time in a long while, he is offering something that can genuinely be parodied.

This is not toxic masculinity, he is not yelling abuse from the terraces, and not ogling women.

We can laugh at the video of him playing the lad in the pub and also consider the message beneath it that he is lowering business rates.

Would we really rather he never stepped foot in the pub and always wore a suit? No, we want to laugh at any attempt for a politician to be a man or woman of the people - as long they are doing an ok job of, you know, running the country.

Leave Andy Burnham alone. Please don’t drag us back to the darker ages of political communication, when a hair out of place could cost an election, or, more recently, when the US president making sexist remarks was just “Trump being Trump”.

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William Mata is a writer and LBC's SEO Editor

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