QUENTIN LETTS: I am sorry to be beastly but there were moments in this speech when sugar levels were so high, they gave me diabetic twinges
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Despite all those 'HOPE AGAIN' banners, Andy Burnham reduced himself to tears. What a peculiar speech this was. We may be on the cusp of war and economic collapse but family emotion trumped these imperatives.
Divisive policy ideas were eased down the nation's gullet with a passage about the recent death of his father. Our new, unelected prime minister indicated his intention to bugger up Brexit, debag pensioners and rig the electoral system. Nothing less would create a Britain of which his late dad - who died a fortnight ago - would have been proud.
I am sorry to be beastly but there were moments in this speech when sugar levels were so high, they gave me diabetic twinges.
Breakfast television will love the personal touch. The world-weary infantry of the British taxpaying public may feel it was just a little gammony. Crying grabs headlines but it will not puncture inflation.
The hall swooned. Of course it did. Labour activists thought they were cooked when wooden Starmer was their leading man. Now they've got a bloke who can leak tears for primetime telly.
In the 55th minute there was an extraordinary pause, longer than anything even in the plays of Harold Pinter. Mr Burnham stopped talking and just stood there blankly. The delegates presumed he was having a dry, as we luvvies call it. He was teetering. Oh my giddy aunt, I thought, he's going to faint. Or even be sick. Someone fetch a bowl.
Despite all those 'HOPE AGAIN' banners, Andy Burnham reduced himself to tears. What a peculiar speech this was
The hall rose to its feet, willing him onwards, hoping to give him time to recover. 'Go on, Andy!' implored a voice. But it turned out it was just a melodramatic preamble to a passage about his old man.
Some of the delegates gasped at his theatrical audacity. Their hero was by now shouting - sobbing! - about 'the Britain that my dad represented'. Not even Tony Blair would have resorted to such a flourish. Maybe Mr Burnham thinks modern Britain will go for that sort of thing. Maybe he is right. But it won't work with his international counterparts. Next time Donald Trump is unhelpful to Andy, will he simply start blubbing like Stan Laurel?
The speech started with energy and an interesting line about how voters now had a 'sense of the powers-that-be are pulling against the people'. They have done for years. The one person who liberated many of them was the woman he attacked: Margaret Thatcher. One of the biggest cheers of the day came when he announced he was scrapping a Thatcherite privatisation law.
'I've been thinking,' he said, all matey. 'I've been thinking very carefully.' Well, that was good. As a result of these Socratic cogitations he had decided not to give a usual political speech - ie one that was mendaciously partisan. He was going to try something different. Sure enough, the first 10 minutes could have been a sports coach's pep talk. He was going to 'break the mould, say it straight, take a new path' and so forth.
Sir Keir was thanked. That did not take long. Innocents would never have guessed that this 'honest' fellow offering the praise was the very same schemer who assassinated election-winner Starmer.
'The British Right' was biffed for having allowed council house occupants to buy their homes. Mr Burnham had a line about how 'they are the ones who gave away control in the first place'. As he said this he threw his right fist in the air and pirouetted, snarling the words. Yet he later disowned 'point-scoring' politics. In the front row sat that demure princess of non-partisanship, Angela Rayner.
'Altogether now,' said Mr Burnham twice, as if rousing a chorus. He posed as a unifier. And yet he wants to reopen the Brexit wounds.
MPs in the hall did not much like his proportional representation plan. Delegates were also cool to stuff about artificial intelligence. Ending the triple lock, ditto.
But he was hot-button mushy, sappy as a rubber tree, and they reckon that's enough.
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