Andy Burnham must back Home Secretary's migration crackdown or face ruin

Andy Burnham is facing crucial tests on immigration and welfare reform. It is no exaggeration to say that the fate of his Government will hinge on the outcome. On immigration, he must stand with his Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood in her heroic drive to extend the time that foreign nationals have to wait before they can be granted Indefinite Leave to Remain (ILR). At present, the waiting period is just five years, and once ILR is given, the recipient is entitled to the full array of welfare benefits.

Mahmood justifiably feels that these generous conditions act as a draw for freeloaders, so she wants to raise the waiting time to 15 years. Her proposal has provoked outrage in her party, and one of her Cabinet colleagues, Energy Secretary Miatta Fahnbulleh has openly condemned Mahmood’s policy. But that makes it all the more important that Burnham backs his embattled Home Secretary to the hilt. The other vital change is to encourage more people into jobs.

The option favoured by Burnham and Pat McFadden, his Work and Pensions Secretary, is the provision of more support and training rather than the withdrawal of benefits, but there is a danger that the new work programme will be all carrot and no stick, thereby putting up the costs of welfare, which this year will be an unsustainable £333 billion. Burnham’s record in this area is not impressive. He lost the leadership in 2015 to Jeremy Corbyn, partly because he sat on the fence over welfare reform.

Anyone who cares about Britain avoiding bankruptcy must hope that he now has a bit more steel in his spine. Just saying It is an urban myth that in 1977 a market research survey found that the majority of people fear public speaking more than death. The claim was based on a misinterpretation of the survey’s data. Indeed, far from seeming nervous, I am always amazed at the confident articulacy of members of the public in discussion shows on radio and television.

But there was an exception on Nicky Campbell’s 5 Live phone-in last Tuesday morning. During a debate on the labour market, one unfortunate teenage girl fell silent, then confessed that her mind had “gone blank.” I sympathised. I once had a brain freeze live on BBC Radio 4 during an intense political exchange. After that I turned down most requests for media appearances, and if I had to give a speech, I stuck rigidly to a script. Mind you, I was in good company.

In 1904 early in his Parliamentary career, Winston Churchill was speaking extempore in the Commons when his mind went blank, and he had to sit down in humiliating silence. He never tried to speak again without copious notes. Brutally honest It is exactly 50 years since that concrete monstrosity, the National Theatre, was opened at the South Bank Centre in London. Designed by the distinguished architect Sir Denys Lasdun, it was hailed as a brutalist masterpiece by metropolitan sophisticates, but most of the public loathed it and Prince Charles described it as resembling a nuclear power station.

In the subsequent half-century, modern Britain has still seemed incapable of creating buildings that enchant. That failure was epitomised this week by the announcement that the James Stirling Prize, the most prestigious award in British architecture, has gone to a Croydon housing development – which looks rather like a multi-storey car park. Subscription confusion A contributor to an online discussion about the future of the BBC advocates that the broadcaster should become a “prescription” service.

Is that a soporific or an emetic or a diuretic?