In 1974, Harold Wilson circulated a memo around the Labour cabinet titled Little Things Mean a Lot. The idea was to draft a list of low-intervention policies that would improve the day-to-day of the average British voter. He was concerned with things like the cost of pints and whether Britain needed another morale-raising bank holiday.

It is not the first thing that comes to mind when Wilson comes up – the British prime minister who famously said “the Labour Party is a moral crusade or it is nothing”. But Andy Burnham – who longs to inject the ethos of the 1970s into contemporary Britain – appears to have spent some time thinking about it. On Monday morning he announced a national campaign to crack down on antisocial behaviour on public transport – not violent crime or anything so serious but “headphone dodging”.

He is right to have identified an area of public life that has materially worsened in a short few years; if you are a commuter you will know how maddening it is when other passengers blare music or TikTok videos out loud from their phones. You will also be aware of how prevalent the habit is. I don’t remember that happening, say, five years ago.

Fine. Good thing to fix. But is this really the policy area for a prime minister to be pronouncing on? Ought it not be a little beneath his office? Well, the first thing to note is........

© The Irish Times