Al Gore never quite recovered from claiming, in 1999, that ‘I took the initiative in creating the internet.’ The former vice-president spent the rest of his life protesting he didn’t mean he’d actually created it, but never managed to escape the thousands of what were not then called memes showing him discovering penicillin, winning peace between the Israelis and the Arabs, and scoring the winning home run for the New York Yankees.

Bus policy is not in the same league, I know. But for someone committed to new, honest politics, Andy Burnham has a nasty habit of claiming credit for things which were not his doing, or where the credit truthfully belongs to other people as well as to him.

Andy Burnham has a nasty habit of claiming credit for things which were not his doing, or where the credit truthfully belongs to other people as well as to him

Andy Burnham has a nasty habit of claiming credit for things which were not his doing, or where the credit truthfully belongs to other people as well as to him

On Wednesday, for instance, when reporters put it to him that his new £2 fare was ‘bringing back Boris Johnson’s policy,’ he replied that it ‘was actually my policy originallyas mayor of Greater Manchester, but I worked with Boris to take it national.’ I was Boris Johnson’s No. 10 transport adviser at the time, and I can say that this statement, like many other statements Burnham has made about his buses, is untrue.

From early March 2022, in Downing Street, we started working up a set of cost-of-living measures to mitigate the rise in prices caused by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. At my and the PM’s behest, they included a £2 flat bus fare. Part of my job was to hold civil servants to strict timelines for delivering policy and policy advice. Looking back at my appointment diary, where I recorded the dates promised and whether they were met, I can see that I received the first official advice on 8 April 2022. The........

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