Andy Burnham has found a new way to silence ‘Machine Gun Kemi’

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Kemi Badenoch has just learned the hard way why getting the better of Andy Burnham is a lot harder than getting the better of Sir Keir Starmer.

She regularly trounced Burnham’s predecessor in their weekly Commons clashes in Prime Minister’s Questions.

When Burnham succeeded Starmer and declared he would put an end to the usual “political point scoring” between the prime minister and the Leader of the Opposition, most pundits – me included – rolled their eyes.

We had heard such noble declarations all before, we said. It wouldn’t survive contact with the enemy. Politics is a gladiatorial sport. Burnham would soon get dragged into it, just like the rest.

But his confrontation in Parliament with Badenoch today suggests we cynics may be about to be proved wrong.

True to form, Badenoch threw the kitchen sink at Burnham, laying into him aggressively over defence, welfare, Brexit, Russia, the Manchester City controversy and more, mocking him for his supposed “foot in mouth” habit of sounding off, only to backtrack.

She even tried to ram his “no point scoring” promise back down his throat, claiming he had been forced to abandon it.

Burnham answered each question with the unflappable demeanour for which he is fast becoming known, and which, frankly, is the main difference between him and scratchy Starmer.

But then he went one step further. He did something that few who have stood at the prime ministerial despatch box, their opposite number firing round after round of political bullets at them at point-blank range, have done.

Just when you expected him to react as they all did – Thatcher, Blair, Brown, Cameron, Johnson and the rest – and shoot back with another salvo of his own, he did the opposite.

He reached out the hand of friendship to his assailant and offered her not just his warm support but his praise.

Burnham saluted Badenoch for her response to crude and offensive jibes from elements of Nigel Farage’s Reform Party suggesting that mixed-race children – such as Badenoch’s own three children with husband Hamish Badenoch – are not entitled to call themselves English.

Burnham told her: “I commend her for drawing a line with the party over there [pointing to where Reform MPs sit in the Commons] for suggesting that her children were not British.

“That is wrong in every single respect. She was brave and right to call it out. That is what I want to see more of in the next decade as we move forward.”

It wasn’t quite British and German soldiers coming out of their trenches to play football on Christmas Day during World War One, but it was as close as Parliament gets to a ceasefire.

Behind Badenoch, Tory MPs who had spent the previous five minutes bawling their approval of her as she tore into Burnham were stunned into silence.

It was perhaps just as well for Badenoch that she could not respond, having already used up her allotted six questions to Burnham.

“Machine Gun Kemi” would have had to have shed her steel-plated armour of rhetorical weapons for once and thanked him, acknowledging his magnanimity, and effectively conceded the psychological victory he had skilfully notched up against her.

It was a telling moment. The public has long since made clear its repugnance of the “yah boo” parliamentary antics of MPs, at its loudest and ugliest during prime minister’s questions. But nothing has ever changed it – until now.

So far there has been little difference between the policies of Burnham and Starmer. And yet Burnham’s ratings are considerably better.

For sure, that is partly down to the fact that his political honeymoon is not quite over. But I sense one of the reasons Burnham is proving popular is that he has found a new, softer, empathetic political tone.

Unlike Starmer, who looked and sounded awkward at the best of times, Burnham appears comfortable in his own skin.

He proved in his Labour conference speech, and in his earlier exchanges with Badenoch today, that he is no pushover and can handle himself in the bear pit atmosphere of the political playground. When necessary.

But as he also demonstrated today, he is just as likely to offer to shake hands with a would-be bully – and disarm them in the process.

Fans of Manchester City, the football team at the centre of the scandal that threatens to embroil Burnham owing to his spell as Manchester mayor, occasionally indulge in a bizarre ritual to show their supposed dominance over their rivals.

Instead of answering opposing fans, abusive chant for chant, they turn their backs on the match and dance a merry jig. It has proved an effective way of getting under the skin of opposing supporters.

It is not so different from the way Andy Burnham appears intent on getting under Kemi Badenoch’s skin.

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