After almost 100 days, Burnham seems little different from Starmer

There is a somewhat contrived expectation that the first 100 days of a premiership will set the tone for the remainder of its lifespan. The date has no real relevance and yet it is one on which many in the political world are fixated. It is too short a period to be certain of anything but long enough to get a sense of what lies in store. Franklin Roosevelt first used the 100-day gambit to persuade US voters that he was the man with the required energy and decisiveness to tackle the Great Depression. Later, president John F Kennedy deployed it to great effect. Since then “the first 100 days” has become the yardstick by which to measure presidential effectiveness and like many Americanisms it has crept over here. On Tuesday, Andy Burnham will have been in office for the fabled 100 days and we can begin to make some assessment of his personality and priorities. He has used the time principally to focus on issues that he rightly thinks are daily irritations, such as parking fines or noise on trains, in order to convince voters he is on their side. He is a different leader from his predecessor, more personable and accessible even if he did engineer a ruthless coup to dislodge Sir Keir Starmer from Downing Street. But he retains the instincts of a city mayor rather than a national leader. He wants to be liked and such a desire is inimical to making difficult decisions. Appearing on the Gogglebox sofa with his friend Steve Rotheram, the Liverpool Mayor, may be a good wheeze but is hardly the stuff of serious politics that the times demand. Moreover, it does not appear to have worked so far. A YouGov poll to mark the 100 days found that just 23 per cent of voters said that the new PM had so far met their positive expectations. They know that the true measure of a leader’s worth is when he or she is tested in difficult circumstances not of their own choosing. They want effective governance, not a prime ministerial pal. Mr Burnham also sends out different messages to different groups depending on the circumstances. During his successful Makerfield by-election campaign that brought him back to Westminster Mr Burnham was asked repeatedly about his past commitments to rejoining the EU. This, he said in a constituency which voted predominantly for Brexit, was not something he wished to reopen. It was too divisive an issue when his ambition was to unite the country. Yet he has spent a good portion of his first 100 days doing precisely the opposite. At the weekend he raised the prospect of signing up once more to free movement of people from the EU as part of an attempt to “reset” the UK’s relationship with the bloc. It is disingenuous of Mr Burnham and his Cabinet colleagues to dismiss this talk as a mere rehearsal of the various options available. This is a deliberate attempt to run the EU flag up the flagpole once again to see who salutes it. If enough do then Mr Burnham is quite capable of nudging the UK back into the orbit of Brussels and the European Court, however divisive it might prove to be. The Prime Minister is fond of talking about the difficulties the country faces, whether it be with eye-watering levels of debt, the scale of the welfare budget , the disintegrating health and social care system, the dearth of new homes or the more than half a million young people living on benefits . But as Kemi Badenoch put it in the Commons last week, talking about something should not be confused with doing it. In his mind Mr Burnham conflates the two. Any decisions on these matters are being deferred until the next Parliament, one in which Labour is unlikely to be the main party. After almost 100 days, Mr Burnham seems little different from Sir Keir, occupying a role for which he is ill-suited and with little obvious idea what he intends to do with the power he possesses. This week’s Budget is an opportunity for the Burnham government to take radical measures that will meet the challenges of the present and lay the foundations for reforms that will give some hope that the future will be better. It is a measure of the poor impression Mr Burnham has made in his first 100 days that no one expects anything other than the usual bland offerings.