Labour leadership: Not true to you

Never mind Yvette Cooper's sudden realisation that, actually, she always hated Ed Miliband and everything he said, or did, or thought, or liked, or touched, or tasted, or loved, or licked, or coloured-in, or flirted with, or smelled, or drilled, or folded, or applauded, or arrested, or fed from a packet of seed he kept in his pocket, or folded, or bought, or proposed, or endorsed, or Googled, or polished, or filed away for safe keeping, or sang to, or wrapped.

As John Rentoul has reminded us, last year Andy Burnham went cold on The Smiths. In an interview, Burnham talked about how Morrissey changed his life, but:

[But it hasn’t lasted?] I feel that. I play it to my kids [13, 11 and 8] and the only song that they will really relate to is “How Soon Is Now?” And it has a vibe, or a beat, a bit more of the reverb thing going on, but the jingly-jangly yodelling-type lyric does feel a bit trapped in Eighties indy-land.

When you see those early Top of the Pops performances it’s like a historical curiosity. Did they really do that back then? I’m also – a bit predictable again – a huge Stone Roses follower. I was younger when I liked The Smiths and then the Stone Roses came along, ‘89, ‘90, and I was 19, I was old enough to follow them around. I went to the Heaton Park thing in Manchester when they reformed last year and they’ve also got a film out recently. One thing you notice about the Stone Roses is that they are more Everyman. They are less an introverted sixth-form thing, and they are much more the lads in hi-vis jackets, they are everyone’s band in the way that The Smiths never were. The Smiths were always, I’m a student therefore – The Stone Roses [has] a more timeless feel to it, more relevant.

Also, Morrissey's position on thresholds for strike ballots is so anti-business.