A brass fanfare; a wide establishing shot of five men in three-piece suits, seated in a library of leather-bound tomes – this is Harold Macmillan doing informal. The scene is from a 1959 party political broadcast, which purports to show a ‘relaxed chat’ between Macmillan and four of his ministers, all of whom he refers to by their cabinet titles. Almost everything about it is artificial (including quite possibly the claim that it took place the day after the parliamentary recess). Watching it now is a reminder of two things, perhaps contradictory. First, that prime ministers have always played a clever and not entirely authentic game when it comes to informality; second, how far we’ve fallen.

Can you imagine the equivalent today? A T-shirted Andy Burnham sits on a high stool around a breakfast bar with Ed Miliband, Louise Haigh and Miatta Fahnbulleh. Through the glass sliding doors to the patio, we can glimpse Angela Rayner in a paddling pool, vape in hand. A manipulated and studied informality may well be the only thing Burnham has in common with Macmillan (though I suppose both of them also knifed their immediate predecessor and then claimed they hadn’t).

Burnham seems to believe that if you address the public in a ‘dressed-down style’, they’ll swallow any old rubbish

Burnham seems to believe that if you address the public in a ‘dressed-down style’, they’ll swallow any old rubbish

Burnham has kept his messaging vague when it comes to energy policy, immigration and the economy. But he has made it abundantly clear........

© The Spectator