Boris Johnson has described Andy Burnham is a “mascaraed Mancunian mystery” and said that he sees no evidence of a “clear and coherent programme”.
Speaking exclusively to GB News, the former PM said: “‘[Andy Burnham needs to] get things done quickly! You have no honeymoon, not that you necessarily deserve one.
“And for heaven’s sake, don’t think that just because you’ve got this fantastic personal mandate from the people of Makerfield or the Labour Party, or whatever, the people of Britain understand what you’re about.
“Because frankly, being a successful metro mayor is a very different job and he has to lead a country now that has got £3 trillion worth of debt, that has got taxes higher than they’ve ever been, and a welfare budget that’s completely out of control.
“And he’s got somehow to explain to the Labour Party, who’ve put him in there, that they can’t expect him to take this country further to the left. And what I worry about is I don’t see any real evidence of a clear and coherent programme from him.
“This country needs a proper, adult conversation about the level of public spending and public debt, and we need to start cutting that welfare budget. We need to put more into defence, but also cutting taxes as well, and using Brexit freedoms to cut regulation. I see no sign of any of that.
“He’s a pig in a poke; he’s a mascaraed Mancunian mystery. We do not know what he stands for.
“The public are going to demand some pretty early answers from him. Now, I think that personally, I think you’ll find it very difficult to continue for long without going for a general election.
“If he gets any kind of bounce, which presumably he will do, you can’t predict anything these days, but that’s what he’s got to do. He needs his own personal authority, his commission from the people of this country to do the job.
“I worry very much that he’s going to take us in the wrong direction. I hope there will be an election. I hope Kemi Badenoch will win it, and we’ll have a change of government, because I think that Labour are taking us in the diametrically opposite direction of what this country needs.
“It looks like [the leadership election] is going to be a complete walkover, doesn’t it. Did you see that photograph of him surrounded by all these fawning Labour MPs? Hundreds of them, sycophantically turning up.
“But these are the people only the previous year or previous days, previous weeks, who were all fawning and licking the boots of Keir Starmer. I mean, what a business. What a trade.
“Them’s the breaks, you know. Honestly, I think we live in a time now when MPs are peculiarly vulnerable to mood swings about things, and maybe they’re right, maybe they’re wrong, but they want change.
“I think, you know, going back to that photo, I think a lot of Labour MPs, you know, they’re thinking, well, if we have a new leader, maybe my genius will be recognised. A preferment and maybe I will get a red box and a government driver.
“I don’t feel the quite the same sort of violent antipathy towards Kier that some did. A lot of people seemed very, very hostile. I never felt that and I always had a very civilized relationship with him, actually.
“But I think it just wasn’t his skill set. It turns out that he simply had no idea what to do, and when he did have the right idea his party wouldn’t let him do it. That was the problem.
“We’ve got this absurd situation now, in which Reform is being cannibalised by Restore, and who knows, perhaps there’ll be some more, you know, right-wing groupuscules with yet more anti-immigrant agenda.
“I think that come the election, I think when you look at the scale of the challenges this country faces: the debt, the tax level, the low growth, the talent that Starmer is driving overseas, the hostility to enterprise.
“The solutions to all those problems are Conservative solutions. I think the trouble with Reform in particular, I don’t know about Restore, regurgitate or whatever, but Reform, the problem there is that I think they think that they’ve got to be more left wing.
“They think that in order to win they need to have an expanded welfare state and more money. I think the answers the country needs are Conservative answers and I think Kemi is very good at articulating that. She needs to get out there.
“Who’s been hounding Starmer every week at the dispatch box? It ain’t been Reform, it’s been Kemi. And ever since he put on that pair of Waheed Alli funded spectacles, ever since his very suits were sleaze funded, she’s been on him.
“After the election, as I say, I very much hope that the Conservatives will win. In politics, you never win by trying surgically to enhance your performance like some sort of cosmetic surgery. It doesn’t work by trying to have the mammary glands or bits of other welded on bits of other parties.
“It’s just not going to work. Some Frankenstein Frankenparty of the right is not going to.
“What you need is a one nation Conservative victory, cutting taxes, cutting regulation and making sure that we live up to the memory of the memory of Brexit.
“I’ve got no hostility to other party leaders, but I just think that Kemi has got the right mix, and she needs to go for it.”
