For readers outside the UK, Andy Burnham is a candidate for the leadership of the British Labour Party. He has a video on Youtube touting his credentials as Mr. Everyman. It is said he is entirely made of plastic, a sort of man for all reasons. There's more info in this article in the Guardian.
Here is Irish poet Kevin Higgins' contribution to the Burnham saga.
This is not the gas
I’d hoped to be passing here today.
I wish I was able to tell you
a government of me
would starve useless
eaters of bacon butties
and deep fried Cadbury’s Cream Eggs
in Dundee and Sunderland
just a little more slowly than this government
is so brutally doing at present;
that under me
every old age pensioner,
like the old lady across the road
who died last year of the winter, will receive
their own personal nuclear submarine.
Sadly, recent polls
have rendered such dreams
politically impossible.
As things stand, for half a vote
I’d happily come around and polish
your baby’s bottom;
play hide and seek
with your pet hippopotamus;
tell you no student should have to pay
for university by going on the game
more than five nights a week;
mow your lawn;
nationalise the railways; or cure
your husband’s baldness.
Between now and elect-me-day
if you need someone to plant
slobbery kisses on your elderly uncle’s
surprise third buttock,
anything you want, I am it.
