The Westminster Parachutist

I have always admired the unique way our governing classes handle a panic.

If a normal person’s house is suffering from a severely leaking roof, they usually call a roofer. They do not look out the window, spot a man who is doing an exceptionally average job of running a local bus network two hundred miles away, and say, “Quick, drag that man through the hedge and make him the Supreme Architect of the Realm.”

If we reflect for a moment, on that exact point, it reminds me of that famous BBC interview in 2006 where a man had turned up for an interview as a data cleaner, and ended up on National television as a technology expert. It’s a good job it wasn’t in the current day. He’d probably be the Leader of The House of Lords by now.

Yet, this is precisely how we have handled the sudden, rather damp collapse of the Starmer administration. In a frantic scramble that resembled a group of moderately confused teenagers trying to assemble a Swedish flat-pack wardrobe in pitch darkness with nothing but a blunt butter knife, the powers-that-be have parachuted Andy Burnham back into Parliament.

This necessitated his immediate resignation from an actual, functioning job, thereby triggering a secondary, spectacularly expensive administrative circus in his wake, the sort of logistical nightmare involving ballots, clipboards, and a great deal of tea, all so he could stroll into Downing Street. There, he inherited an in-tray so bulging with national crises it has its own gravitational pull, presumably to be solved by the sheer, mystical application of a philosophy he calls “Manchesterism.”

Rumour has it—and in Westminster, rumour is the only thing that travels faster than a bad idea—that he has already suggested Prime Minister’s Questions be conducted entirely in bucket hats and vintage Oasis t-shirts. We can only imagine the Chancellor trying to explain fiscal drag while looking like they’ve just lost their tent at Glastonbury. Furthermore, it is said that any minister announcing a major policy must now conclude their remarks with a hearty, “Madferit!”

If even half of this is true, we have finally discovered the true, bewildering essence of Manchesterism. It’s a bold strategy, certainly, though whether the British public is ready for a government that sounds like a 1994 B-side remains to be seen. Only time will tell.

In the meantime, we are left to ponder the curious efficiency of the “parachutist” approach, a method of governance that involves dropping a man into a disaster zone and hoping his accent is charming enough to stop the bleeding. Perhaps Burnham intends to win hearts and minds by weaponising the Eccles cake, distributing the flaky, currant-filled pastries to a bewildered civil service before folding up his parachute and storing it safely for the next time the nation requires a Messiah.

And as the nation waits with bated breath to see if England can make it to the World Cup final, Mr Burnham is already tackling his new inbox. The word in the corridors of power is that he intends to fix the buses first, largely because he has proven himself adept at making them run slightly more on time than they did before, which in modern Britain qualifies you for legendary status.

There is, in the end, something perversely comforting about the enduring resilience of the British political machine. It is a system that has survived world wars, the loss of an empire, and the invention of the tie-on beard, so it will likely survive the arrival of the Supreme Architect of Manchesterism.

Fuelled by an inexhaustible supply of lukewarm tea and a collective determination to pretend that everything is perfectly normal, the great circus will rumble on. We shall continue to muddle through, largely because the alternative, actually planning ahead, remains too deeply un-British to contemplate.

For better or worse, life will go on much as it always has: slightly damp, moderately confused, and punctuated by the occasional appearance of a man in a bucket hat who is, at the very least, a bit more “madferit” than the previous incumbent.