QUENTIN LETTS: Voters might look at Kemi and think 'she seems a bit more clued-up than Eyelashes Andy'

There is something rubbery about Andy Burnham. It encases him. Turns him into a dodgem car. He can crash into things and not worry.

Maybe he just leaves that to others.

Five minutes before noon, our new prime minister bumbled into the Commons for PMQs. He ambles about Westminster. Doesn’t stride along the cloisters with manly purpose. Doesn’t trail a wake of bustling flunkeys. People are happy to see him. They coo and smile but they do not flatten themselves against the wall, as happened when Sir Keir came roaring past, or when Blair or Brown or Cameron was PM. Gordon used to waddle so fast that it took a second before the draught from his hunched shoulders hit you.

Mr Burnham loitered beside the Speaker’s Chair, passing the time of day with Sir Lindsay Hoyle. When Speaker Hoyle lost interest, Mr Burnham supposed he had better lope to his bench. Labour MPs yelled their devotion. Eyelashes Andy gave the lightest of smiles, as if quite used to adoration.

He did not look nervous. Other PMs, in my experience since Mrs T, have clearly brimmed with preparation. They have raced into the chamber as if to the toot of Shakespearean ‘alarums without’, amid dust from horses’ hooves, a clamour of slapped gauntlets, whinnies and the shouts of ostlers.

Mr Burnham slides into the chamber with no more urgency than a late riser entering his kitchen to light the kettle and drop a slice of Hovis into the toaster.

In some ways this is refreshing. Watching him go about his easy business, one does not feel a knot of anxiety. What is missing from his approach, mind you, is a sense of majesty, of the importance of high office. Being so laid-back about small print has its disadvantages, too. Does he think before speaking? Has he taken advice from aides?

Nigel Farage (Ref, Clacton) was given one of his occasional PMQs slots. He asked about young Iranians coming into the country and wondered if the PM saw that this was a national security emergency. Mr Burnham’s reply was strikingly friendly, unlike anything we heard in Sir Keir’s day. He noted that there had been threats against Mr Farage’s safety and he acknowledged that it had been ‘a hard time for him and his family’.

This civilised change of tone was refreshing, even if some on the Labour side looked puzzled. In his remarks – which were clearly planned – there was, however, an unfortunate howler. Mr Burnham talked of ‘the individual responsible for the murder of Ann Widdecombe’. He should not have done so. No such responsibility has been established in a court.

A prime minister should not make such mistakes.

Kemi Badenoch had earlier gently asked: ‘Does he ever get tired of putting his foot in his mouth?’ She reminded him that the head of MI5 ‘slapped him down’ over his barmy comments that Russia influenced Brexit. Had he ‘opened his mouth and said the first thing that came into his head?’

Mr Burnham, whose attachment to facts, while not yet Trumpian, is unusually elastic, blithely insisted that the head of MI5 had not criticised him. He did this in his usual slow manner and apparently believed it, even though it seemed to sit directly in contradiction of the truth. Along the way he accused Mrs Badenoch of not reading documents properly. ‘I will lead this country forward,’ he said ploddingly, ‘with positivity, unity and hope in the next decade.’

An entire decade, no less.

On his right sat the First Secretary, Louise Haigh, in a pink jacket as oversized as a circus clown’s outfit. On his left was that other intellectual titan Lucy Powell.

Our new PM may appear a more genial proposition than his worry-worn predecessor but you would not propose him for membership of Mensa. Voters do not necessarily dislike dimness. They might, however, look at Mrs Badenoch and think, ‘she seems a bit more clued-up than Eyelashes Andy’.