Do parents make the politician? Find out on the Today programme’s psychotherapy couch | John Crace
Dad’s the word for Andy Burnham, so maybe all party leaders should be seen afresh through a Freudian lens
Is this the sketch my father would have wanted? Not something I have previously given much thought to. He died 15 years before I even started this job. But my guess is that it is. He was the loveliest of men who only ever wanted for me what I wanted for me. He was stupidly proud of even my most forgettable successes. I still see him in my dreams, cheering me on. He’d almost certainly be embarrassed, but secretly pleased, to find himself in the first paragraph.
But that’s enough about my father issues. Time now to talk about Andy Burnham’s. In his emotional and gamechanging leader’s speech on Tuesday – I can’t tell you how refreshing it is to have a politician other than Nigel Farage say exactly what he thinks and believes – Andy told us he wanted to build the country his father would have wanted. It was almost a debt of honour. Burnham was very precise. This was not his vision. This wasn’t the country he wanted to build. It was the one his dad had wanted. Andy was merely a conduit, channelling Roy, who died earlier this month.
