'Vibes won't keep the lights on!' Andy Burnham accused of having 'no substance' after becoming Prime Minister

Tom Slater has launched a withering attack on Andy Burnham, branding him a "political windsock" whose entire appeal amounts to little more than being marginally more approachable than Sir Keir Starmer.

Speaking to GB News, the Editor of Spiked argued that the new Prime Minister's rise has been built on personality rather than policy, describing it as a campaign driven by "vibes and political expediency".

Joining GB News contributor Will Kingston, Mr Slater argued that beyond coming across as someone you could "actually hold a conversation with, unlike Starmer or Rachel Reeves", Mr Burnham offers nothing of "real substance".

He argued: "At the end of the day, vibes are not going to keep the lights on, vibes are not going to stabilise the geopolitical position that we find ourselves in.

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"And I think the reason he's led so much on vibes, is partly because I guess that's his selling point, this sense that unlike certainly Keir Starmer and even Rachel Reeves, he seems like someone that you could have a conversation with.

"It's a very low bar, but nevertheless, it's one that we have, unfortunately. But I think it also portrays a real lack of substance."

Mr Slater expressed astonishment at how readily the political media classes have been won over by Burnham's arrival.

He told GB News: "I'm quite struck by how easily impressed I think a lot of the media and political class are.

"Andy Burnham comes in, and purely because, unlike Keir Starmer, he appears to have a pulse, he can speak without a lectern, he doesn't sound like the sort of adenoidal robot we've come accustomed to representing us on the world stage, everyone's terribly excited.

"But I think even now that the scrutiny is starting to come in, now that questions are starting to be asked about policy, I think people are starting to realise that Andy Burnham is what Andy Burnham was always doing, which is a sort of quite mid-ranking Labour politician who never really made it at the top spot."

Mr Slater went further, arguing that the new Prime Minister exemplifies the emptiness at the heart of Labour's soft left.

He described this faction as one built on "virtue signalling" and a "vague commitment to welfarism", but ultimately willing to bend whichever way the political winds blow.

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He said: "I think it also portrays a real lack of substance. If we think of Andy Burnham, broadly speaking, as certainly the leading exponent now of what many people call the soft left of the Labour Party, I think what it's demonstrated is the soft left of the Labour Party has really no substance whatsoever.

"These are people who, broadly speaking, are running on a set of virtue signalling Labour values, they can shift in the wind. If the Labour Party is being run in a more kind of Blairite direction, they're happy to go along with that up to a point. If it's being run by the Corbynistas, they're happy to go with that."

Mr Slater described Mr Burnham as a "political windsock" who is trying to pose as a "warrior against neoliberalism".

He said: "He's a sort of political windsock. He's been trying to pose as this sort of warrior against neoliberalism recently, using a lot of the script to the left.

"But this is a man who, when he was in post in Blair and Brown's Government, voted for the Iraq war, presided over the marketisation of the NHS - these are heresies within the modern Labour Party."

Mr Slater acknowledged that people are entitled to evolve in their thinking, but argued that the sheer speed of Mr Burnham's ideological shifts points to opportunism rather than genuine conviction.

He concluded: "So people can change their minds, of course, but the speed with which he does it, and particularly on even some of the more recent controversial issues that we might get into, I think does suggest that this is largely about kind of vibes and political expediency.

"But that's not, particularly with all of the crises that are confronting us almost all at once at the moment, that's surely not good enough."

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