RICHARD LITTLEJOHN: The people of Makerfield (and Britain) deserve better than cynical, self-serving spiv Andy Burnham. We’re in the middle of an anti-democratic stitch-up

Extra, extra, read everything! Andy Burnham is playing a ‘war game’ for the early general election after the ‘honeymoon’ period of becoming Prime Minister.

No it’s not.

For a start, the Labor backbenchers whose support he needs to unseat Surkeir Starmer won’t let him.

We’re talking Bernard Matthews and Noel here. Why would the fourth-rate former teachers, social workers and junior union officials who are heading to Westminster as part of Labour’s loveless landslide agree to redundant themselves after just two and a half years of fat pay and triple the costs?

Or will you miss the chance to turn Britain into an irreversible Maoist case before it is consigned to the dustbin of history?

So why do we have to put up with this nonsense?

On days like these, I feel like I’m living in a parallel universe. While the rest of us wonder how we’re going to pay skyrocketing bills for just about everything, or how to avoid getting stolen for going 22 mph on a deserted two-lane road in the middle of the night, Boys and Girls in the Bubble agonizes about Labour’s internal machinations.

I was planning to keep my powder dry at Makerfield until midterm election week. But the whole circus uses my name. It is a disgrace that it is widely accepted that it is perfectly natural for someone who did not stand up to become Prime Minister in the last general election to be parachuted in.

As the Daily Mail perfectly put it on its front page today: Burnham is already behaving like a Prime Minister-in-waiting.

It was even said that he was preparing his new Cabinet and that he would give a comfortable, lucrative job to the Arslıkhan Deputy who resigned to pave the way. Sickening.

This is not democracy, it is an anti-democratic stitch. No wonder union members are converting to Reformation in droves. Labor is taking the proverbial ‘working people’ – especially those in Manchester and Makerfield, and everyone else who won’t have a say in who will be our Prime Minister for the next three years (with a different agenda that no one votes for).

Because, I repeat, there will be no early elections, honeymoon period or anything else.

Ask yourself this: if a two-bobbed chancer like Burnham (Manchester’s answer to London’s lifelong dictator Genghis Khan) finally achieves his ambition of becoming Prime Minister, why would he risk being sacked five minutes after moving into No 10?

Our survey said…

What makes me sick to my stomach is that the political class treats our tried and tested system of parliamentary democracy – although it is not entirely perfect and is unraveling every day – as their personal plaything.

It was bad enough that the Conservatives changed prime ministers without bothering to consult voters. Or the time Gordon Brown was anointed unopposed and then went on a lap of honor before Tony Blair was murdered and shot by the Labor Party.

The difference this time was that at least Gordon, Mother Theresa, Boris, Fizzy Lizzy and Dishy Rishi were on the ballot in the general election.

Burnham, not so much. He was busy promising the good people of Manchester that he would serve a full term as mayor.

He now claims that his greatest desire is to represent the good people of Makerfield, where he allegedly grew up; just like he did in Gorton and Denton a few months ago.

Presumably, if a safe Labor seat had been found in Surrey, ‘King in the North’ Burnham would also have pledged lifelong allegiance to it; just as Angry Ginge, Queen of the North, settled in Hove Actually, a few hundred miles south of her North West constituency.

(During the Bank Holiday, Ginge was spotted hitting the waters on Brighton beach, not Blackpool as you might expect.)

As for Josh Simons, the expendable Makerfield MP who fell on his sword to clear Burnham’s path in return for well-paid service in Whitehall, I wouldn’t keep him as a pet.

There is no other reason for the circus to come to Makerfield other than to pave the way for Burnham. This is a by-election that should not have happened. Where’s Brenda from Bristol when you need her?

‘I was planning to keep my powder dry at Makerfield until by-election week. But the whole circus uses my name,’ writes Richard Littlejohn. Picture: Andy Burnham went for a walk in Manchester last month

Not anyone else!

But the assumption in Bubble is that all this is unusual. As John Junor, the late, great columnist of this community, said: Give me the sick bag, Alice.

If you believe the polls, which I don’t, Burnham could be ahead by two or three percentage points. How in God’s name does this give him the right to be Prime Minister of all of England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland? Not in a million years.

And as for the falling out between my old pals Nigel Farage and Rupert Lowe, which could start Burnham on its own, I’m frankly hopeless.

(I note there is a traditional kicking competition in Gloucestershire at the weekend. Perhaps that’s the best way for the two to settle things.)

The backstory to this particular feud could fill another column. I have known both of them for over 25 years and I told you weeks ago that begging Rupert to drop the Restore candidate in favor of the Faragistas would only strengthen his resolve further.

You can stand him at the gates of hell like Tom Petty, but he won’t back down.

Although Rupee is a great MP for Great Yarmouth, the only way to stop Burnham in Makerfield and deal another blow to this shameful, useless Labor government is to vote for UK Reform.

Our only hope is that the people of Makerfield realize that Burnham has been deceiving them. They deserve better than this cynical, arrogant, selfish spiv who needs to be crushed before the ‘honeymoon’ period turns into a nightmare in Downing Street.