Just one month ago, Andy Burnham was still mayor of Manchester. He had not even returned as an MP as he waited for the constituents in Makerfield to cast their votes in the by-election.
Today though, he is set to be unveiled as the new Labour leader, replacing Sir Keir Starmer in a bloodless coup after emerging in a leadership “contest” as the only candidate for the job. On Monday he will be confirmed as the UK’s new prime minister.
But in that month, Mr Burnham has avoided serious scrutiny despite being elevated to the most important job in the country.
A speech he gave in Manchester when the leadership election was triggered saw no opportunity for the media to ask questions.
And today, when he is unveiled as Labour leader, it is widely expected that he will not take questions from the media.
He will give a second speech today behind closed doors to Labour members somewhere in the south east.
Labour actually tore up the order paper in parliament to prevent the Tories using an opposition day debate to force an extension of parliament into next week to allow MPs to scrutinise the new prime minister.
It means that, with parliament in recess, Mr Burnham has until September to lead the country without facing proper scrutiny, including on major decisions around the direction of his government.
So far he has exposed himself to 15 minutes of friendly chatter with the journalist Andrew Marr on LBC, a discussion about football with Gary Lineker, and answered some carefully curated questions from the public on Reddit.
Rather amusingly, Tory leader Kemi Badenoch gatecrashed the Reddit Q&A just to get a question into him.
Even his appearance in central Cardiff this week, where he took an hour of questions from the public, was cut down to a short clip on his social media channels that didn’t offer any enlightenment on his plans for government.
Instead, Mr Burnham is adopting a strategy being used now by Nigel Farage – who also wants to duck questions about his undeclared donations – of avoiding the press and instead doing direct videos on social media to the public.
He needs to listen to the warning given by Sir Keir’s former director of communications Steph Driver, who has written a report for the Institute for Government (IfG) about the failings of current government communications.
She wrote: “It’s fashionable to suggest prioritising digital strategies, and disregarding legacy media. This is a false choice. government comms now means being everywhere, to everyone, all the time, from TikTok on the bus, to the 10pm headlines, to chasing the front pages.
“To use all these channels well, with quality and targeted content, needs an urgent revisiting of current rules on civil service neutrality, which are holding back thousands of talented potential storytellers.”
Regarding Mr Burnham, there is so much that remains unanswered. Who is going to be his chancellor and why? What changes can we expect to the Middle East policy now he said Labour got it wrong on Gaza? Why did he give a massive loan to a developer in Manchester who failed to build social housing? What exactly does he plan to do with his devolution agenda? If we are tearing up 40 years of economic consensus what is he going to replace it with? Does he still think we should rejoin the EU?
That is just a taster of the questions he needs to answer and it is very worrying that a new prime minister should start his tenure with such an unwillingness to be scrutinised.
Mr Burnham is hoping that he can get by with positive vibes and cheery messages to get him through and continue with a “Burnham bounce” in the polls.
The lesson of Sir Keir and, in fact, Mr Farage, is that positive vibes run out very quickly and public suspicion of those who are not willing to put themselves up to answer questions can grow very quickly.
