It was a washout: fighters pulled their punches in Question Time's Makerfield match-off. John Crace reports on Andy Burnham taking round one of the big byelection bout, while Reform's Rob Kenyon took aim at himself.
Seconds Out
In the left corner, the middleweight King of the North, Andy Burnham. In the far-right corner, the total lightweight, Rob 'The Plumber' Kenyon. On the undercard, three nonentities: Mike 'The Tory' Winstanley, Sarah 'The Green' Wakefield, and Jake 'The Lib Dem' Austin. If you think these three are dopey, you should see some of the other candidates in the Makerfield byelection who were not invited.
Thursday night's edition of BBC Question Time had been billed as the great showdown between Burnham and Kenyon, with three no-hopers hung out as a veneer of impartiality. But no matter how much presenter Fiona Bruce tried to hype up the programme as television gold, the excitement never really got started. The showdown was that the showdown never happened.
Andy's Strategy
Andy had clearly decided on a policy of non-aggression. He would not attack Rob personally, no matter the temptation. He would not attempt to score cheap points by pointing out Kenyon's shortcomings and contradictions. He had quite reasonably decided it would be much easier to win friends in the audience, in Makerfield, and at home, if he let Rob do that for himself. Andy was happy to win on a technical knockout. The technical bit being that Rob knocked himself out.
As for Kenyon, he just looked terrified. A rabbit in the headlights. Completely out of his depth and his comfort zone. His mind seemed to be constantly working overtime, desperately trying to remember the party lines the Reform media team had been prepping him with for the last few days. He was the least relaxed person in the north-west by some distance. Come the end, he would need a lie-down badly. Probably wishing he had never heard the name of Nigel Farage.
Career Politicians Irony
There was a deep irony in the first question being on the curse of career politicians. Because Burnham, a career politician to his core, had dressed to make himself look like Joe Bloke. Mr Ordinary. Someone with whom you could have a pint. A chilled-out black T-shirt under a black jacket. Shades of the Milk Tray man. Meanwhile, Kenyon, whose whole shtick up till now has been that he is just a local man of the people, had squeezed himself into a shirt and tie and was wearing a sharp suit. Looking every inch an ersatz career politician.
Andy got to go first. He was not a career politician. He was a carer politician. If he had a fault, it was that he cared too much. About Makerfield. About Manchester. About everything. He wanted to change things, which was why he had left Westminster in 2016. That is odd. I could have sworn that he had left Westminster because he had lost the Labour leadership election to Jeremy Corbyn and could see that the party would be dead in the water for years to come.
Various audience members, egged on by Fiona, mentioned the elephant in the room. The only reason there was a byelection was because the sitting MP had stood down so that Andy could challenge for the leadership. Time and again, Andy demurred. He did not want to get ahead of himself. He was here to serve Makerfield. The response of the classic career politician. Finally, realising he was making himself look a bit of a halfwit, Burnham came clean. He fancied being prime minister. One member of the audience almost wept. She said she could not stand Keir Starmer a moment longer.
Kenyon's Struggles
Then the attention turned to Kenyon. Fiona asked him about some of the sexist comments he had made on social media over the years. Including one in which he admitted he was a sexist. 'Allegedly,' he said. But you did say them, did you not, asked Fiona, sounding a bit confused. Rob looked confused. He had thought that if you said 'allegedly' it somehow negated all the things you had said. Wiped the slate clean. Some members of the audience started to laugh. They did not mind that Rob was clearly not very bright. But they did not want someone who was a bigot.
'I cannot be a sexist,' Kenyon pleaded. He knew this because his mother and sister were women. In RobWorld, to be a sexist you cannot know any women. It is just that he would not want to get in a car that either of them were driving. Just a joke. Typical women. Cannot have a good laugh.
Andy retained his Trappist vow of silence throughout, but Sarah Wakefield took Rob on. Would he like to apologise for the remarks he had made about Carol Vorderman? Kenyon's eyes bulged with panic. HELP! He decided he would not. Because commenting approvingly about a disgustingly sexist post did not count. That was sexism once removed. Again, the laydeez should chill out a bit.
At which point Fiona took pity. She was not going to pick Kenyon up on his other problem areas, such as Brexit and Russia. Rob was already on the ropes. So she turned to the undercard. They were as surprised to be there as we were to see them. Sarah said she was on maternity leave and was only standing because the original Green had withdrawn and no one else wanted to do it. Mike the Tory was even more confused. He thought the byelection was pointless and did not want anyone to vote for him. Not that they were going to.
The Rest of the Hour
The rest of the hour was reassuringly dull. Andy gave passionate and reasonably coherent answers to most questions but was determined not to land even the softest of punches on Reform. Even when the subject was the murder of Henry Nowak and two-tier policing. Andy is now the nation's self-appointed healer. Bringing people together. And we could all do with a bit of that. Even if the modesty sometimes feels a bit contrived.
Rob, though, continued to have a bit of a nightmare. Fiona wondered if Nigel Farage's call for 'pure cold rage' was the response that Henry's father had called for. Kenyon tried to persuade himself that Nige was a latter-day saint and had only been calling for the most peaceful of reactions and had done nothing to incite the violence. He certainly did not seem to persuade most of the audience.
This seemed to unnerve Rob and he then went into a prolonged brain fade. Openly admitting he had no idea what Reform's policies were or how they were going to be implemented. 'That is a problem for Zia Yusuf,' he said when asked where he was going to recruit 30,000 extra police officers from. Like all of us, Kenyon ended the evening none the wiser. Much like any other edition of Question Time.
