The Mayor of Greater Manchester is Andy Burnham. And even though he was born in Liverpool, and hatred between our two ‘great’ (?) north-west cities is strong, he was voted mayor and last week was re-elected with a massive majority.

I’ve never been a massive fan of Burnham. Not because he looks like an early Thunderbirds prototype puppet that they decided to abandon and use Scott Tracey instead. And not because he’s a Labour man, because I’ve always been sympathetic to left-leaners, other than Corbyn, who leaned over so far he fell off the end and when they stood him up he was stuck in that anti-democratic wilderness between hard left and hard right where you really can’t tell the difference.

Burnham stood against Corbyn for leadership, obviously failed and then took a career change from his days in Westminster. He became…

A professional Northerner. The great spokesman for The Entire North. And, as a lifelong and dedicated southern softee, a Lundunnna fru’an’fru, I’d just like to define what I consider as ‘the North’ before continuing.

The North consists of, mainly, northern places. But it is not limited to merely this. Because most kids learn their geography of Britain from football, and because most football fans are thick as shit, mere compass points lack proper relevance to show the real contempt which is felt. So obviously the ‘Covid Belt’ is well up north. Liverpool, Manchester, Bolton, Blackburn, Burnley and Bristol. These extend all the way to ‘well up north’ places such as Middlesboro’, Newcastle and Penzance. Go any further and you get to Scotland. Or Wales. Same difference. Bournemouth is ‘south’, mainly because we like Bournemouth, rather than the fact that it happens to be on the south coast. Whereas Portsmouth is ‘up north’, even though its next door to Bournemouth.

So Andy Burnham, as far as I’m concerned, is the president of ‘the rest of England’. Benefit Land. But he’s always trying to claim special status for ‘his people’. More money. More Covid testing. More vaccinations. He complains that whilst every Londoner has now had 5 vaccinations each, the rest of the country has only had 326 between them. I’m not sure what point he’s trying to make.

And now, as Labour degenerates into the nothingness of the Starmer years, struggles to find an identity, never mind vote-ability, there’s talk that Burnham should become their next leader. So that they can once again come second in an election but with some pride.

My worry is that Northerners (see above) love him and as there’s more of them than of us, he could win an election. And turn London into… a Northern City!

Frightening Friday

A xxxx