‘Prolier-than-thou!’ Burnham accused of ‘desperate’ attempt to play up working class roots by novelist

Andy Burnham has been accused of being “prolier-than-thou” by using his working class roots to win votes. Political novelist Robert Harris, a lifelong Labour supporter, has told The Independent he deplores attempts by the prime minister to appear more ‘proletarian’ than he is. Harris called it a “prolier-than-thou” attitude - political slang based on the phrase ‘holier-than-thou’ - a hypocrite who claims they are more authentically working class than others.

Since entering No 10, Burnham has talked often of his background as a working class Catholic Northerner and feeling “an imposter” at Cambridge University as a result. Harris, brought up in a council house and who also studied at Cambridge, said he “hated” it when politicians like Burnham “turn on the system that created them” and claimed to have had an “awful” background. Labour statesmen of the past like 1960s Home Secretary Roy Jenkins had far more genuinely poor origins but never used it to boost their popularity, said Harris.

He also argued Burnham’s “desire to be liked” risked making him look “facile and glib” and forecast public “disillusion” in him could set in soon. In an in-depth interview with The Independent editor-in-chief Geordie Greig for Independent TV, Harris spoke for the first time of his “painful” rift with Britain’s former ambassador to the US Peter Mandelson after he was forced to resign over the Jeffrey Epstein scandal. Watch Geordie Greig’s full interview with author Robert Harris below He reveals that he and Lord Mandelson, godfather to one of Harris’ children, had had no contact of any kind since shocking details of Mandelson’s links to paedophile Epstein emerged earlier this year.

The fact that neither had reached out to the other “speaks volumes”, says Harris. He discloses a hilarious ‘Fawlty Towers’ style ‘don’t mention the war’ incident at dinner with Tony Blair and wife Cherie at No 10 when Harris fell out with Blair over the 2003 Iraq War. Harris tips home secretary Shabana Mahmood to become Labour’s first female prime minister - and suggests Burnham’s surprise choice of “malleable” John Healey as chancellor may have been because “formidable” Mahmood intimidates him.

Harris, author of Fatherland, and Conclave, was speaking in the run up to the publication later this month of his latest novel, Agrippa, about the right hand man to Roman Emperor Augustus. Explaining why he objects to the way he says Burnham and Starmer have played up their working class beginnings Harris says: “Andy Burnham (has) talked about… (he was) very prolier-than-thou about his Labour roots - like Keir Starmer going on about his toolmaker father and all of this rather desperate stuff.” British statesman Roy Jenkins, former Labour minister who served as president of the European Commission, was born to a miner father who was jailed for his political views - but Jenkins never tried to capitalise on it, states Harris. He adds: “I went to Cambridge from a comprehensive school.

The system worked for me as it did for Burnham. I hate Labour politicians turning on the very system that's created them. Harris fears Burnham’s administration will “soon run into problems”.