{"id":89274,"date":"2026-07-24T03:13:20","date_gmt":"2026-07-24T03:13:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/89274\/"},"modified":"2026-07-24T03:13:20","modified_gmt":"2026-07-24T03:13:20","slug":"i-fired-britains-new-prime-minister-andy-burnham","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/89274\/","title":{"rendered":"I Fired Britain\u2019s New Prime Minister Andy Burnham"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tThe last full-time job I had before moving to Robb Report was editing the Evening Standard, London\u2019s preeminent newspaper. We had a circulation of over half a million, and in many ways had been the city\u2019s collective voice for nearly 200 years (it was launched in 1827). I joined as editor-in-chief in 2023, and I inherited a fabulous collection of great columnists, who wrote about national, international, and local politics, from a broad range of ideological standpoints. We had liberals, conservatives, and all breeds in between. They included Ari Emanuel, former Prime Minister Tony Blair, Bryan Cranston<\/a>, Chelsea Handler, Alec Baldwin<\/a>, the acclaimed atheist Richard Dawkins, former Times editor Simon Jenkins, Boris\u2019s sister Rachel Johnson, former Number 10 strategist Guto Harri, and dozens of political experts as well as the internationally famous DJ Fat Tony.<\/p>\n

\n\tWe also had Andy Burnham, who, a few days ago, in case you didn\u2019t know, became Britain\u2019s latest prime minister, replacing the well-meaning but increasingly isolated Keir Starmer (now universally recognized as Britain\u2019s latest forgotten man). Having been afforded the kind of coronation, which is rare in British politics, Burnham takes charge at a time when the national psyche is battered, bruised, and severely overtaxed. In the last six years Britain has had eight prime ministers, which has meant we are now considered to be more politically unstable than Italy, which used to change its leaders every other month or so. Since 2010 we have had\u2014deep breath\u2014Gordon Brown (Labour); David Cameron (Conservative); Theresa May (Conservative); Boris Johnson (Conservative); Liz Truss (Conservative); Rishi Sunak (Conservative); Starmer (Labour); and now Burnham (very Labour). Because we as a nation tend to have an overheated sense of our own importance, the British tend to think everyone is fascinated by the political shenanigans in Westminster, although I think it would be fair to assume many people in the world still think Tony Blair is PM. But we now have Burnham, and the nation is holding its breath.<\/p>\n

\n\tFifty-six-year-old Burnham has his work cut out, trying to appease an electorate who desperately wants the government to move to the center (and to encourage the kind of economic growth promised by\u00a0his predecessor) as well as a party\u2014his party, the Labour Party\u2014who collectively want him to move to the left. There are rumors that, internally, he appears to be blaming the media for the downfall of Starmer, which is not only ridiculous (Starmer was the architect of his own demise), but also dangerous; anyone who starts attacking the media is picking a fight with a group of professionals who don\u2019t take too kindly to being patronized by political newcomers.<\/p>\n

\n\tBack in 2023 he was still the much-lauded mayor of Manchester, an almost beloved local politician who was both popular and successful, overseeing a city which hasn\u2019t always taken kindly to executive oversight. He was also, as I say, one of my columnists.<\/p>\n

\n\tMy days as newspaper editor were unsurprisingly crowded, from a 5:30 a.m. alarm call, to a 7 a.m. start, three morning conferences, two daily editions, and a load of meetings. These would be politicians, journalists, commercials heads, the CEOs of luxury fashion houses, and automobile companies\u2014and, of course, our columnists, most of whom I loved. Every day I would meet with the comment editor and discuss what we had for tomorrow\u2019s paper, anticipating today\u2019s news and poring over columns which had already been filed. Burnham used to file on a Thursday morning for that day\u2019s paper, so the day before I would have a phone call with the King of the North (which is what every national newspaper now seems to be calling him) to discuss what was on his mind, and what he was going to write about. Burnham had one good column in him, but the problem was he wanted to write it every week. I wanted him to write about the tension between the Manchester mayoralty and the London mayoralty, I wanted him to write about Sadiq Khan (the London mayor), and I wanted him to write about New York, and the challenges of steering what is perhaps the most politically complex city in the United States. But no, every week he wanted to write about the internal workings of his Mancunian office, which obviously I felt was as exciting as writing about someone\u2019s Uber history. I would tell him I didn\u2019t want him to write about Manchester again, and he would\u2014very politely\u2014say that he wasn\u2019t interested in writing about anything else.<\/p>\n

\n\tI\u2019d have just\u00a0finished a call with the communications chief of Ralph Lauren <\/a>or Orient Express<\/a> and I\u2019d have the future prime minister on hold, wanting to talk about subsidized buses, cycle lanes, and waste collection. I\u2019d have just finished a meeting with a PR about the possibility of featuring some Hollywood star on the cover of our weekly magazine (there are so many A-listers now living in London that there was always one available, often at very short notice), and I\u2019d be patched\u00a0through to the depths of Manchester to discuss ongoing sewage issues, the legality of a potential wealth tax, social housing, NHS funding pressures,\u00a0and (apparently) miraculous public transport solutions. Burnham was a perfectly charming bloke, if a bit pedestrian at times, but he could never understand why I wanted him to spread his wings a little and write about topics our readers might have actually been interested in. He had made such a success of his time as the mayor of Manchester, and I really wanted him to write about his future political ambitions. He in turn had no interest in doing this because obviously no politician ever does.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tSo in the end I had to let him go, and ended up offering his slot on the paper to the artist Tracey Emin, instead, who was an immediate hit with our audience, writing about the trials and tribulations of her post-cancer trauma and how her illness had affected her painting.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tBurnham obviously had different fish to fry, and instead of becoming one of the star columnists on one of the most famous newspapers in the country, he decided to set his sights on being Britain\u2019s next prime minister.<\/p>\n

\n\tTakes all sorts I guess.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\tAuthors<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\"Dylan\"Dylan<\/p>\n

\t\tDylan Jones<\/p>\n

Chief Content Officer<\/p>\n

Dylan Jones is Robb Report’s chief content officer. A globally recognized figure in publishing with an unparalleled track record of success, he had an extraordinary 21-year tenure as editor-in-chief\u2026<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\tRead More\t\t\t<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The last full-time job I had before moving to Robb Report was editing the Evening Standard, London\u2019s preeminent…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":89275,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[2],"tags":[13,38456,13592],"class_list":["post-89274","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-britain","tag-britain","tag-britian","tag-feature"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@UnitedKingdom\/116972775446580345","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/89274","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=89274"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/89274\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/89275"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=89274"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=89274"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=89274"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}