The autumn political season has well and truly begun, with Andy Burnham facing his first parliamentary tests and the Reform UK conference having just happened.

Listen to this article

I’ll come to Reform’s travails in a moment, but let’s first have a word about Andy Burnham.

No one could accuse the prime minister of ducking questions when he came to Parliament to make a statement on the future direction of the government. He answered 126 questions from MPs over three hours. He certainly deserved his gravy on his chips after that.

Having said that, did any of us emerge any the wiser about his policy direction? I don’t think so. There were lots of people/MP pleasing moments, but scant little about actual meaningful policy.

The next day he faced Kemi Badenoch again for PMQs. It’s interesting how divided opinion was about his performance. He didn’t do badly, but frankly the whole thing was quite boring, as evidenced by the lack of cheering from the Labour benches.

Having told us he wanted to do politics differently, he did the exact opposite with repeated jibes towards the Conservatives, and particularly the new shadow chancellor, Andrew Griffith. Apparently, as the No 3 minister in the Treasury under Liz Truss, the mini-budget was entirely his creation! I mean, who knew?! Kemi Badenoch treated him quite gently on his first outing, which was wise. He shouldn’t count on that........

© LBC