Keir meets Andy in No10 and shows him his back passage
REAR ENTRANCE: Downing Street as few people see it
Andy Burnham, the Prime Minister in waiting, drops into 10, Downing Street for a catch-up with the actual PM and his Chancellor, Rachel Reeves, and finds it an Oasis of calm reflection… until he mentions the M word.
Keir Starmer: And this, Andy, is the great staircase. Pictures of all the Prime Ministers, of course.
Andy Burnham: Where’s mine?
KS: Yours? But you’re not Prime Minister yet.
AB: No, but I will be by September. Next month if I have my way.
KS: Well, in that case, your portrait will be up there. They go up in chronological order, latest at the top.
AB: What happens when someone new, such as me, takes over?
KS: They’re re-arranged and someone falls off the end. Busy work of late. In recent years, we’ve had a permanent team of picture hangers on standby to pop in and accommodate the new incumbent. Let me show you the Cabinet Room, Andy.
AB: No need, Keir, I was a Cabinet Minister under Tony Blair. I still remember that bloody picture of Walpole staring down at us. By the way, I appreciate you giving me this briefing on the way things are. It’s magnanimous of you, Keir. But let’s concentrate on the economy and the politics, not No. 10. Not being funny, Keir, but the place is bobbins really, innit?
KS: Bobbins?
AB: Yeah, it’s a Manc word, Keir. Means rubbish. How are you supposed to work in this. It’s just a jumble of random little rooms. It’s got mice. Fleas too, since Boris was here with his mutt. Crap showers, smelly bogs. Heating doesn’t work – too hot, too cold. Doors that don’t lead anywhere. It’s like a metaphor for Britain. Small, shabby, completely unfit for purpose. And no money to do it up.
KS: That’s right. I hate it. One of my officials is always moaning about it. He once said: “It’s mad that a G7 country is run from a Georgian townhouse.” I even heard a story about Donald Trump visiting Boris. It was December and the heating was whacked up to full blast. Trump’s orange make-up was dripping off his chin. Now, that’s an image you’ll have trouble blotting out.
AB: Angin.
KS: What?
AB: Never mind, I hear you’ve even got a ginnel. Leads to Whitehall, doesn’t it?
KS: You mean the back passage? Yes, sometimes we have visitors who don’t want to be seen, so they come in that way. Sometimes, WE don’t want to be seen. I was keeping my head down a couple of weeks ago and slipped out through the – what did you call it again, ginnel? – but I got papped anyway. The buggers are everywhere.
AB: Oh, I hope so.
KS: You won’t after a while.
AB: You sound as though you’ve had enough, Keir.
KS: In truth, I have, Andy. My backbenchers hated me – and wouldn’t do as they were told. My senior Ministers told me to my face they had no confidence in me. The voters thought I was a moron. A moron! I used to be a leading human rights barrister. I was the Director of Public Prosecutions. I won a General Election with a majority of 174. How did it come to this?
AB: Is that a serious question, Keir?
KS: Yes, I suppose it is.
AB: Well, it’s because you are – as my old mate Noel Gallagher said of his brother Liam – “a man with a fork in a world of soup”. You can’t go round relying on logic and reason and due process in this game, Keir. Everyone’s busking it. Except you.
KS: I’m a man of integrity!
AB: No one doubts it, Keir. But integrity’s not enough. You have to make the buses run on time. Like me. Manchester’s bus service… second to none! They love me up there, you know. They call me the King of the North.
KS (mutters): Cock of the North, more like.
AB: What was that?
KS: Oh, nothing. Are you honestly keen to grasp this poisoned chalice? It’s not a job, you know, it’s a sentence.
AB: Madferit.
KS: Oh, for goodness’ sake. Stop it with the Oasis nonsense. You’re not even from Manchester anyway. We all know you’re a Scouser.
AB: My heart is in Manchester.
KS: Well, HS2 isn’t. We knocked that one on the head. It was a Gordon bloody Brown legacy project. A hundred billion quid to save half an hour getting to Manchester. Utter madness.
AB: It was meant to be about jobs, Keir. And new infrastructure befitting a modern economy. But it ended up as yet another betrayal of the North. Still, Buckinghamshire got a lovely £100 million bat tunnel out of it. So, mustn’t grumble, eh?
KS: Have you got your team sorted out yet?
A new voice breaks in from the landing above.
Rachel Reeves: Hello, Andy.
KS: Talking of which…
AB: Hi, y’allright, kid?
RR (descending the stairs): Andy – mwah, mwah, congratulations again, by the way – I’m 47, only nine years younger than you. Kid?
AB: Just an expression we use in Manchester, Rach. It’s friendly. Look, we must get together soon. Lots to talk about. What about lunch?
RR: I’m free today, as it happens.
AB: Sorry, I’m having lunch with Ed today.
KS: What, Miliband? That snake ghosted me. Wouldn’t take my calls – and I’m the fucking Prime Minister. Let me tell you, Andy, if you make that man Chancellor, you’ll spook the markets and be out on your ear faster than me.
AB: Right, well, I’ll not mither you any more. I need to peg it if I’m going to get to Simpson’s in the Strand. Ed likes his roast beef and jam roly-poly. Be in touch, Rach.
*****
The Government wants to make “trusted” news sites more prominent online to combat all the fake news pumped out on social media.
It published a Green Paper yesterday called Watch This Space: a new strategic direction for UK media.
Ian Murray, Culture, Media and Sport Minister, says challenging the lies and misinformation out there is vital “for public service media and democracy”.
It is a laudable aim. But who decides what is trustworthy and what is not? If Murray thinks it should be him and his political chums, then that is the thin end of a dangerous wedge.
The only possible arbiter in this is Joe Public – which is to say, viewers, listeners and readers.
When we still had proper newspapers, it was simple. You would pay for a copy and get the prejudices you wanted: Left-leaning in the Mirror, Right-leaning in the Express and Mail.
But the facts would be the same in both. You could trust the people who wrote and edited newspapers of whatever stripe to deliver the truth through the facts.
Then newspapers fell into decline and news went online. The news organisations were slow to catch up, partly because no one wanted to pay for news any more.
So “citizen journalists” were allowed free rein. They had no training, no ethics, no clue. But no one stood up to them. The tech titans were coining it and couldn’t care less about the truth.
Organisations such as Reach, owners of the Mirror and Express titles, decided if you couldn’t beat them, then join them. They chased clicks at the expense of truth.
It has made them morally and ethically bankrupt and will eventually make them financially bankrupt too.
Even the Mail has flirted with this type of infotainment online. Now, at last, it is charging for the better stuff – the accurate, well-sourced stories that used to be the paper’s bread and butter.
The Times, under that great and unyielding newsman Rupert Murdoch, has remained resolutely professional both online and in print. Magazines such as The Economist, The Spectator and The New Statesman have also kept standards high.
We need more trained journalists (not all from Oxbridge) and more news sites that know what they are doing and charge readers for the privilege.
If we let the likes of Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg steal the stories they want and decide what news is, then Murray is right.
We’re done for and so is democracy.
*****
I was both moved and scared by a story in this week’s Sunday Times.
Former Arsenal and England footballer Tony Adams told of his desperate attempts to help his alcoholic son, Olly, 34.
Adams Sr., an alcoholic himself but sober these 30 years, could put away 20 pints of Guinness in his playing prime and still find his way home.
His grandfather would “go to the pub, get shit-faced, come home and take it out on his family”. As a result, Adams’s father never drank but was a “rageaholic”.
There, but for the grace of God, go I and half of Fleet street.
My aunt once told me that she and my father were regularly dispatched on a Sunday lunchtime to fetch my reluctant grandpa back from the pub to the bosom of his family.
Perhaps that’s why my father’s drinking was moderate and measured.
My maternal grandpa was a highly-paid, socially-privileged engineer in the jute mills of Kolkata, who drank a bottle of brandy a day – despite his roots in Dundee – and smoked 100 cigarettes. My grandmother matched him, but with gin.
Hardly surprising, then, that I liked a drink (and it liked me). But life and luck are random and for some reason I never needed a drink. I could take it, which I mostly did, or leave it.
I admire Adams’s resolve and his love for his son, Olly. And the fact that he runs two charities that support addicts.
Adams went to jail after crashing his car drunk.
He has earned his redemption.
RICHARD DISMORE
24 June 2026
