STuCK IN A RuT

THE NEW CABINET IN WAITING…..

What’s in a name?

If callers to talk-radio are anything to go by, quite a lot. Already Andy Burnham’s plain Andy. A familiar, lovable, cuddlesome lad, a million miles from the brick-hard, over consonantal Sir Keir Starmer.

So my tip to parents politically ambitious for their children is the following: -

The ‘Sir’ you can’t do much about, but if you want your child to be unreservedly loved don’t call him Keir. Yes, you named him after Keir Hardie the founder of the Labour Party, but that cuts no ice with those whom, post austerity, we seem to be calling ‘ordinary’ voters again. Enoch Powell gained little from sharing a first name with the prophet Enoch, son of Jared, speaking of whom, ask yourself how well, as far as public esteem goes, that forbidding patriarchal name has served Donald Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner. Donald himself, meanwhile, is Donny to his friends and can do no wrong.

Like Donald, Andy presents no obstacles to familiarity. For most ‘ordinary’ voters, Andy will conjure up the beloved children’s TV marionette Andy Pandy - see above, complete with shy, vote-for-me eyes, kiss-me-quick lips, and dithering Bambi eyelashes. In this iconic group portrait he is joined on the sofa by Angela Rayner and Wesley Streeting. (The jury is still out as to whether sharing a name with the great Methodist preacher and evangelist JohnWesley has advanced Streeting’s career.)

I, should I encounter Andy, will look away from those Siren eyes and call him Mr Burnham. This, notwithstanding my being a fellow Northerner with equally flat vowels. And if there’s plenty in a name, there’s even more in a regional vowel. In his first public speech since carrying all before him in Makerfield, Mr Burnham showed just how unapologetic a man of the people he is. The United Kingdom was ‘stuck in a rut,’ he declared. If there’s one phrase I’ve never had the courage to lower myself into the dark mine of uncouth northern usage to repeat, it’s ‘Stuck in a rut.’ Embedded in old habits, I’d have said instead. Or Confined to worn out ritual and custom . . .

Believe me when I tell you that, rather than have those brutal Hyperborean u’s sticking to the roof of my mouth like squares of cheap chocolate, I go to any lengths of wordiness and circumlocution. ‘Good luck,’ for example, has always defeated me. Never in my life have I been able to wish anyone Gud Luk. ‘May the gods of kind fortune smile beneficently on you. my boy,’ I told my son before he took his 11 plus exams. As I watched my father wheeled into an operating theatre I called to him the warmest greeting I could devise. ‘Let no maleficence of chance or medical mismanagement come between you, my father, and a benign outcome.’

Not a Manchester u to be heard. That he survived the operation was nothing short of miraculous. But he found it hard to look me in the eye thereafter.

I was taught a cruel lesson. The world and my family would have loved me more had my vowels been as flat as tarmac and my name been Howie. But it is too late to be loved now.

Too late for me and too late for Sir Keir. Yesterday’s men. Afraid to sound uncouth. Stuck in a rut.

End