Andy Burnham may end up supporting Harman’s line on welfare bill anyway

Andy Burnham has been vociferous in his opposition to the Welfare Reform and Work Bill, and made his views clear at a stormy meeting of the Shadow Cabinet this morning. He followed that meeting with a speech to the press gallery about his candidacy to become Labour leader in which he repeated his opposition to that legislation.

He even went so far as to lump Harriet Harman in with George Osborne in one of his jokes, which won’t stop sniping from some sections of the party that Harman is behaving in a ‘Tory’ manner (this comes as a great surprise to anyone who has paid even the slightest attention to Harman’s legislative victories and personal projects). He spoke facetiously about his wife always borrowing his mascara and his working class credentials, about Leigh being the ‘place where the M6 turns to cobbles’. Then he said:

‘While it’s been good on the whole, good natured on the whole, inevitably things get said in the course of a contest, inevitably they do, and tests get set for the candidates.