Greetings from London, where we are all enjoying, or at least experiencing, the “Burnham Bounce”.
No, it’s not an expensive hairstyle, a dance move, isometric exercise, or body modification. It’s a lift in the opinion polls for the ruling Labour Party.
It’s attributed to the easy, breezy style of its new leader, our new Prime Minister, Andy Burnham, whose relatively jargon-free form of communications has lifted his party out of its former doldrums to the stratospheric-sounding level of 28 per cent support in the polls.
There was a time when the two ‘big beasts’ of the British party system, the Labour and Conservative parties, both cruised along at around 40 per cent in the polls. That left the small fry – mainly Liberals and various nationalists – to fight over the remaining 20 per cent.
But times have changed. These days, 28 per cent is a stellar achievement for one of the two major parties.