QUENTIN LETTS: His policies are as skimpy as his shorts, but after 100 days of watching Andy Burnham up close, this is what I've learned about our Daytime TV Prime Minister

When a batsman reaches a century, cricket spectators stand and applaud. As Andy Burnham today reaches his 100th day as Prime Minister, few may feel the urge to leap up and honour that custom. The only things rising are questions and doubts and debt levels. And, weirdly, Labour ’s previously horizontal poll ratings. Was it really only 100 days ago that unhappy donkey Sir Keir Starmer was led to the glue factory? If the nasal knight already seems ancient history, so do his cronies: Lord Hermer, the squeaky international-law obsessive who was Sir Keir’s Attorney General; Rachel Reeves , the Chancellor Who Cried; David Lammy , the Mastermind contestant who thought Henry VIII was succeeded by Henry VII.

How we miss them. In sauntered Eyelashes Andy, the Manchester mayor with a touch of daytime TV. His adoring mum was in the crowd in Downing Street to greet him. His equally adoring wife Frankie gave up her marketing directorship at an electric-car-charging company to concentrate on supporting her spouse. She was going to be the new Jackie Kennedy. Mr Burnham, once a Cabinet minister under Gordon Brown, had been out of national politics so long that he felt new.

The muddy accent, the brushed-forward Caesar hairdo, the black leisure wear: he was different from Starmer and not as awkward, although possibly less intellectual. The ministers around him were not up to much. Andy Burnham, once a Cabinet minister under Gordon Brown, had been out of national politics so long that he felt new. He was different from Starmer and not as awkward, writes Quentin Letts Right-hand woman Louise Haigh radiated a pub-moll’s menace, not least towards her dimwit colleague Lucy Powell.

Linda and Janine in EastEnders have nothing on these two. And for all the talk about Mr Burnham being trustworthy, it was rum the way he entrusted the Treasury to John Healey, whose resignation as Defence Secretary had helped topple Starmer. Had Burnham and Healey been in cahoots all along? And jeepers, why did he appoint that snaggle-toothed maniac Ed Miliband to be Foreign Secretary? Some said getting Red Ed out of the energy department would allow Labour to drop Net Zero.

Yet the new Secretary of State, Miatta Fahnbulleh, has proved almost as much of an eco-zealot. Red Ed, meanwhile, has been causing diplomatic chaos, shaking hands with an apparatchik from the murderous Iranian regime and imposing sanctions on Israel’s West Bank. The Netanyahu government retaliated by supporting Argentina’s claims to the Falklands. Another Miliband triumph. After winning June 18’s Makerfield by-election – on a promise not to reopen Brexit squabbles – Mr Burnham blithely said it was time for everything to change.

Most immediately that meant a new pair of running shorts. The old ones had shown too much inner (hairy) thigh. After winning, Mr Burnham blithely said it was time for everything to change. Most immediately that meant a new pair of running shorts. The old ones had shown too much inner (hairy) thigh He also took the thrusting decision to open a new branch office of Whitehall in Manchester. This was to be called ‘No10 North’ and it had a splashy opening at which the country’s top civil servant, Dame Antonia Romeo, pawed at Mr Burnham like a hungry spaniel.

Since then ‘No10 North’ has largely disappeared from the news. Its chief contribution to the economy so far has been to generate hefty bills in the form of rail fares to Manchester for London-based officials. With Parliament going into recess as soon as he was in office, the new PM had a long and breezy summer. Two weeks into the new job, off he tottered on a foreign holiday. We were told that he would spend August on a ‘nationwide listening tour’.

There were photographs of him in Sheffield putting a carton of oat milk into a shopping bag marked ‘Feeling Jammy’. After that, the ‘I’m Not Listening Tour’ rather fizzled out. The new man’s policy positions were as skimpy as his running shorts. In his first speech outside No10 (the one in London) he said he would end rough-sleeping. Having walked through central London, Liverpool, Brighton and Birmingham at night in recent weeks, I’d say there is little sign of that.

Mr Burnham has boasted of lowering living costs. Prices have in fact risen since June. He wants to build more homes. The housing market has bombed. He has promised re-industrialisation. In recent days a major AI data centre planned for Loughton, Essex, has been scrapped owing to grid delays. How does he respond to these pratfalls? Ignores them! Sails onwards, fluttering his eyelashes. And it seems to be working. Opinion polls suggest a Labour bounce of several points since Sir Keir was turned into a tube of Uhu.

Polls hypnotise politicians but how accurate a guide are they to election results? Theresa May went into the 2017 general election some 20 points ahead and blew that lead. In general election campaigns, policies may matter more than eyelashes. What, if anything, does Andy Burnham actually think? Exactly how does he intend to get tramps off the streets, minimise planning delays, incentivise manufacturers and cut household costs? No one knows, perhaps not even he.

Aides have briefed this and that but details are always elusive. After the past 100 days we know no more about his costed proposals than we did when he sashayed into the Commons on June 22 to take the oath as the new MP for Makerfield. Maybe that will change tomorrow with the Budget. Don’t count on it. Labour MPs have little appetite for cutting our ruinous welfare spending. One of Burnham’s former economics advisers, Andy Haldane, has said that unless welfare is reduced we could have a re-run of the Liz Truss mini-Budget.

The need for action is intense. Will urgent decisions follow? Or will we instead be told there is going to be ‘a conversation’? On one of his first prime ministerial engagements Mr Burnham visited a care home in north London where we were told his Government would hold ‘a big conversation about national care’. The PM did say in his conference speech – the one in which he cried about his late father – that he would break the triple-lock on pensions.

Mind you, that will not happen until April 2030 at the earliest. Urgency would appear to be lacking. Two days ago, Mr Burnham, having broken his by-election promise and reopened the Brexit question, said he wanted ‘an honest conversation’ about our returning to free movement with the European Union. When a politician speaks of his ‘honesty’, count the spoons. As for ‘conversations’, they are easier than rigorous prime ministerial despatch.

As a parliamentary performer so far he has been unstirring. From my Commons gallery perch I can see behind the Speaker’s chair. When Mr Burnham enters, milling MPs do not recoil or tingle as they have done with earlier PMs. He looks at the floor as he walks. He does not bother much with his briefing notes. Nor does he weigh his words obviously before spooning out responses, writes Quentin Letts He looks at the floor as he walks. He does not bother much with his briefing notes.

Nor does he weigh his words obviously before spooning out responses. It is as if he is unfazed by his high office, little fussed. One of life’s amblers. Domestically in the last 100 days, little has been done. Globally the same period has seen extraordinary upheavals. Donald Trump’s presidency has spiralled towards likely mid-term election defeats. The US President has done a smelly diesel deal with Moscow while his ally Elon Musk, or someone close to him, fiddled about with the Starlink satellites and made it harder for Ukraine to defend herself against Russia’s bombardment of Ukrainian civilians.

The White House also called for Kiev’s President Zelensky to be toppled. The doughty, diminutive Zelensky is three times as big a man as Trump or Vladimir Putin but no one in the Burnham Government had the guts to say so. With the Middle East unstable; oil and gas prices have gone haywire, diesel reaching £2 a litre in Britain, with inevitable consequences for inflation. Argentina, encouraged by Benjamin Netanyahu and an unhinged Trump, has threatened the Falklands.

Moscow has rattled its warheads and snooped on our sea-bed cables. And Europe has burst into flames twice. When summer fires broke out across the Continent our environmentally-pure Government tutted. Then came violent protests in France, Germany, Italy, Portugal and Albania, with city centres smashed and torched. The unrest triggered racism and vigilante fightbacks. Andy Burnham said almost nothing. A shrew makes more noise. When he did have a chance to appear alongside Mr Trump, it did not go well.

The two met briefly at the United Nations in September. Mr Burnham clutched his legs, cast beseeching looks to Ed Miliband and generally looked tiny. In foreign policy, the blokeish Mancunian thing doesn’t work. Rival statesmen just scent weakness. Brussels, listening to Mr Burnham’s prostrate, ill-thought-through come-hithers, must think once-proud Britain has surrendered. Labour supporters don’t mind this. They never liked British sovereign power.

Voters may be more discerning. Why, therefore, do current polls seem to favour this shallow scrutiny-dodger? Well, those eyelashes have been putting themselves about on social media. Mr Burnham has done numerous TikTok videos. He has met – roll the drums, please – teenage influencers and been on something called Gogglebox. He has talked about pork scratchings and Twiglets and football (although he becomes batey if asked about Manchester City and its financial scandal).

He made a video with ‘Bus Aunty’, a woman who is keen on double-decker buses. Mr Burnham is himself a fan of buses, although nowadays he must rough it in the back of an armour-plated Range Rover. He even did podcasts with the football commentator Gary Lineker and with Alastair Campbell. More rigorous interviewers were not granted such access. He has also proved good at slogans. His conference tagline was ‘hope again’, tacit recognition that Labour under Sir Keir became embogged in glumness.

Hope is never a bad thing for a politician to embrace. With the Greens in disarray, Marxist types may be drifting back to Labour now that Mr Burnham has wrenched it Leftwards on Israel and the EU. Labour MPs are happier. The same cannot be said of a country which has never been taxed more. Youth unemployment has soared above European rates thanks to Labour’s tax hikes on employers. Domestic fuel prices are hellishly high, in part thanks to Net Zero.

Business confidence has dropped like a dead snipe. And with Parliament having resumed, Mr Burnham is finding it harder to dodge questions. When Kemi Badenoch harpoons him he wails about his desire for ‘problem-solving not point-scoring’. What happens if the problems, such as employment and energy costs, are being caused by his party’s policies? Perhaps we will learn more tomorrow. Not that Mr Burnham will be to the fore. Budget Day belongs to a Chancellor.

The PM is just a front bench adornment, two set of eyelashes sitting mute; as silent, again, as a Royal Navy submarine under the polar icecap. Down periscope, dive, dive, dive. That’s how it was for the first 100 days. For all the talk, little is likely to change.