Claire McNabAndy #Burnham has chosen his #Blairite former colleague #James Purnell as his chief of staff. 🤮
No surprise that the Blairism is winning out over his #Manchesterism. But still, 🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮
zbrown@2legged I sware it's like they *want* us to get into conspiratorial thinking sometimes.
Like, did Burnham make this decision or did Blair? Do they really expect us to believe Burnham is even slightly new or lefty even whilst replaying 2001 on a loop? What's Purnell been up to lately?
Even the most innocent explanation, that they've simply remained friends since first become Labour MPs in the same election, only serves to demonstrate the rot that is New Labour.
@zbrown #JamesPurnell has been chief executive of the lobbying firm Flint Global since 2024.
So he's just another everyday northern lad living in a redbricked back-to-back, with an anorak and a ferret and a crap haircut, driving his tired old Ford Fiesta to a few pints with t'lads down t'workingmens club of a Friday. 🤮
So how long until Burnham's unpopularity beats #Starmer's record? 6 months? 6 weeks?
@2legged assuming he manages to make it to September (and thus actually being PM) with any sort of popularity, I think he might make it to the new year.
Probably not Valentines though.
@zbrown So, somewhere in between #LizTruss and #AndrewBonarLaw on the list of tenures https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_prime_ministers_of_the_United_Kingdom_by_length_of_tenure 😅🤣😈
@2legged speaking of, did you know she, in effect, has a deadname?
Bonar Law also. He *never* went by Andrew.
@zbrown I know, but I find that one a bit weird, because the 1920s PM's eponymous grandson is the (now v elderly) charmingly eccentric father of a 1970s school friend of mine. In the family I knew, the word "Bonar" was sometimes used, but often omitted.
@2legged as in the grandson had the same name but favoured Andrew?
I suppose that makes sense, ‘Bonar’ is a slightly unusual name, and it's probably not entirely fun to share a name with a random PM!
@zbrown Yes, grandson also Andrew Bonar Law.
A hard-line unionist Brit PM from civil war time was not a great connection in 1970s Dublin, so the Bonar was shelved. Andrew was lovely, few clues if you didn't know about the Bonar.
@zbrown The current Andrew Bonar Law (born 1933) is a bit of a polymath, but is best known as Ireland's greatest collector of maps and prints. Organised about a decade ago by his daughter, now in the National Library of Ireland; https://www.gov.ie/en/department-of-culture-communications-and-sport/press-releases/bonar-law-collection-acquired-by-national-library-of-ireland/
@2legged I actually did a thing about this the other day, looking at the 26 PMs (Balfour to Starmer) who've entered office since 1900.
A full half of them didn't go by their first given name, most of them kinda-Scottish-style using a second name instead, whilst Blair and Douglas-Home went for contractions. Asquith publicly went only by initials, which kinda a power move ngl.
And then there's Liz, unique in using a contracted second name, reportedly hating her birth name.
@zbrown That's interesting. My da was the 2nd generation Irish-born of a v Scottish family. He alternated between 2nd forename for family & friends, and initials for formal use. The 1st name was so rarely used that I wasn't conscious of it until my teens, and was bewildered by ppl who asked for him by abbreviated 1st name. "No such person here", I insisted.
U promoted me to look at another aspect of the lists. 8½ of the 26 could be labelled as Scots. 1 definitely Welsh. Unimaginable now.
@2legged Lloyd George is unfortunately a one-off, a couple more Cymro PMs could do us a lot of good I reckon, but yeah Scots are almost *over* represented historically?
Law is again an interesting case being specifically Ulster Scots yet wasn't born in Ireland or Scotland, no no, he's from what's now Canada, only moving to the UK/Scotland when he was ~13.
Isn't that just kinda wild? Helps that he was white of course, and that was an era of free movement, but he was basically an immigrant!
@2legged and yeah Scottish naming conventions can be fun like that, it's one I like to bring up in the ‘falsehoods programmers believe’ type context — you don't need to come up with ‘exotic’ examples of Korean-style names, or names with accents, to show how quickly assumptions around so-called legal names and first names fall apart: Scotland is right there.
@zbrown Law's history is an example of the permeable nature of the concept of British identity. In my lifetime there were 2 empire-born politicians who could have made PM: Bryan Gould & Peter Hain, both of whom had most of the ingredients for a PM.
Whereas Kinnockio failed mostly cos he was too Welsh.
The Scottish thing is a strange quirk of Scots being the engineers and managers of empire. For a period, almost British. Even Broon now feels v v long ago.
@2legged Brown was at least ‘identifiably’ Scottish. Blair meanwhile I just sorta subconsciously assumed was from Bucks or something. Quite what says about me vs him I'm not sure 🤷♀️.
An awful lot more fuzzy grey in our history and identities than really most political stripes — one way or another — would have us beleive, and I think it's a shame this isn't explored more.
@zbrown Blair was a sort of Anglo-Scot without the Scottish half of the accent. Echoes of the Dic Siôn Dafydd. Such a stark contrast with Broon that it's a wonder they didn’t actually kill each other.
Chris Brooking@2legged I don't know how much of a Chief of Staff's role is influential and how much just functional. I'm hoping that the appointment is just a token appointment, and not an indication that Burnham has become centrist establishment.