"Burnham's Too Young to Recall the Real Britain of the '70s—No Need for a Time Machine!"

GREAT Scott! In just a few hours, Andy Burnham will become Prime Minister and we’re yet to learn which direction he’ll take us in.

All we know for sure is that he has one destination in mind — and that’s straight back to the 1970s.

Andy Burnham is far too young to remember what Britain was REALLY like in the 70s – we don’t need a ride in his time machine Perhaps Burnham is yearning for a return to his idyllic childhood in a leafy Cheshire village Credit: Getty

Perhaps he’s yearning for a return to his idyllic childhood in a leafy Cheshire village, a golden age of pop music or the halcyon days when his beloved were winning trophies.

But the misty-eyed nostalgia we’ve heard from him over the past month is no basis for running the country.

Nor is taking the nation for a ride in a time machine.

Burnham, 56, is far too young to remember what Britain was really like before walked into .

Back then, we were paralysed by militant trade unions, blighted by failing nationalised industries and punished by income tax rates that reached an eye-watering 98 per cent.

Rubbish piled high in the streets, there were regular power cuts and we became known around the world as “the sick man of Europe”.

Crippling hit 27 per cent and — the last born-and-bred Northerner to become PM — had to go cap in hand for a bailout from the International Monetary Fund.

If he were a time-traveller like , Burnham would soon leap back into his and yell: “We’ve got to get back to the future.”

Today’s challenges bear little resemblance to 1979, as Britain wrestles with a flatlining economy, mass immigration, £3trillion national debt, threadbare military forces and a million-strong army of .

Yet Crash and Burnham seems determined to turn the political clock back.

His answer to almost every modern problem seems to be: “Blame Thatcher”.

Harping on about the past won’t fix the problems we face today any more than dwelling on “60 years of hurt” will win England the .

Burnham’s first duty when entering No 10 today will be to ditch the vague, vacuous vibes of the past month and deliver a real, forward-looking plan.

Barely a month after being elected MP, he was anointed as leader without a manifesto or a mandate in the swiftest rise to power since the office of PM was created in 1721.

The only scrutiny he’s undergone so far was a soft-soap interview with — a Labour luvvie and one of his Everton heroes.

Even then, we were left with a clearer sense of the former footballer’s politics than of our next PM’s. In fact, we know more about what joke by- election candidate would do in power.

Burnham seems to be getting cold feet about installing eco-zealot Ed Miliband as Chancellor Credit: Alamy Talk of promoting Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood instead has calmed the markets Credit: Getty

We will soon learn whether there’s more to the Manchester messiah than his passion for sport, dad dancing and eating chips and gravy.

Yes, his cheerful and charismatic nature is a breath of fresh air after the dull, technocratic style of his predecessor.

But it will quickly dawn on our people-pleasing PM that running the country is much tougher than being mayor.

It will hit him the second he gets an ultra-secret national security briefing and is tasked with writing “letters of last resort” for the crews of our Trident nuclear submarines.

Big decisions will come in thick and fast after that.

The first major test will be naming his top team.

Many of the 379 Labour MPs who nominated him as leader will be hoping for a front bench role.

He seems to be getting cold feet about installing eco-zealot as Chancellor.

Talk of promoting Home Secretary instead has calmed the markets.

But it would simply be a sop to Labour’s Left, who would be glad to stop the tough cookie’s asylum crackdown in its tracks.

The rudest awakening for our seventh PM in ten years will come when he grapples with the two biggest headaches — spearheading economic growth and reacting to global events in an increasingly unstable world.

Our time traveller must learn to deal with .

Crash and Burnham seems determined to turn the political clock back and blame it all on Thatcher Credit: Getty Joke by-election candidate Count Binface Credit: PA

And he must spell out his economic game plan, and fast.

His plan for a “No 10 North” will please the Manchester “mafia’” of Labour activists.

But hopping between offices 200 miles apart and giving more power to regional mayors and assemblies won’t help cut illegal migration, deport foreign rapists, slash the £334billion welfare bill or rebuild Britain’s threadbare defence capability.

All the same, Burnham will be swept into Downing Street by a wave of enthusiasm from Labour MPs and staff.

But his big ambitions bring with them high expectations.

And without a , time is not on his side.

Once he’s outlined his masterplan, he must decide how he will fund it — by squeezing over-taxed workers and businesses or taking the axe to the bloated welfare bill.

Only then can he move on to renationalising water companies, building council houses, cutting energy bills, rebuilding confidence in the police, and tackling our crumbling roads.

“Roads?” as Doc Brown might ask. “Where we’re going, we don’t need roads.”

Which is just as well, as most of them are littered with .

ON Friday, King of the North Andy Burnham vowed to be a leader for “the North, the South, the East and the West”.

His soundbite was remarkably similar to W.H. Auden’s poem Funeral Blues, brought to a new generation in the film Four Weddings And A Funeral.

It says: “He was my North, my South, my East, my West.”

Let’s hope our new PM hasn’t written his own eulogy before entering Number 10.

BACK in September, this column revealed a joke doing the rounds in the bars of Westminster about Andy Burnham.

Since then it has been quoted widely by political pundits, rival columnists and on BBC Radio 4’s flagship Today programme.

Even the newly crowned Labour leader referred to the joke in his acceptance speech on Friday.

For those who missed it, the gag goes: “A Blairite, a Brownite and a Corbynista walk into a pub. The landlord says: ‘Good evening, Mr Burnham’.”

But it’s not just the political shape-shifting of our new PM that has been the source of humour, but his changing identity as a Northerner.

Liverpool-born Mr Burnham has a bee – the symbol of Manchester – tattooed on his right arm, and recently told the people of Makerfield that he was proud to have been brought up in the area.

So here’s a new variation currently circulating “oop” North.

“A Scouser, a Manc and a Wiganer walk into a pub . . . ”

I think you can all work out what the punchline is.

First with the news – and the jokes.

You heard ’em here first!