The quiet yet intense summer tussle between Andy Burnham and the mainstream media is fascinating. There is genuine anger but also anxiety about the way he has mostly avoided TV interviews and press conferences, instead selling his government directly online. The trouble is, it’s working.
That’s because the media is changing so quickly. You want hard data and deep policy analysis? Go online. Among my sources are, first, the New Statesman website, but also Sky’s economics editor Ed Conway’s essays and David Aaronovitch’s “Notes from the Underground” Substack. Television once offered a different kind of insight: what is this politician really like as a person? That gap is now being filled by Burnham’s social media mini-films, created by his own team.
Paris in the screen time
Drilling for oil while Europe burns
A classic tale for a modern world