There will be no PMQs today, for which Andy Burnham must be relieved and the nation should be grateful.    He’s a dud at the despatch box. His last two performances have been a car crash and caused gaffes that required immediate corrections and clarifications from Number 10.    Even more worryingly, he also managed to destroy the long-standing consensus that national security and defence of the nation is always the government’s number one priority.  Instead he put it behind increasing the welfare budget. I am sure Putin was buoyed to hear such  nonsense.   Burnham’s typically vacuous line, on a par with his  ‘hope in every heart’ and ‘growth in every post code’, ‘our national security cannot come at the expense of social security’ was evidently prepared the night before and designed to curry favour with his left-wing backbenchers.   Saying such a thing may well have pleased the student union politics societies, but we do actually expect Prime Ministers to have the steel and the gravitas to stand up for the national interest and take on the left-wing extremists.  Unfortunately, we have a Prime Minister who needs to be loved and desperately craves the adulation Jeremy Corbyn had from them.   If that wasn’t bad enough, Number 10 also had to issue a swift correction regarding Burnham’s openness towards granting a second Scottish Independence referendum saying the Prime Minister ‘mis-spoke’ and it wasn’t ‘exactly the same’ as a border poll in Northern Ireland.   Only the week before in reply to Labour MP Tan Dhesi who told him ‘vibes’ weren’t enough when it came to defence spending, Burnham confirmed that his government would hit the target of spending 3% of GDP on defence by 2030,  only for the Number 10 machine to ride to his rescue again to say the the PM had ‘mis-spoke’ and that the PM was referring to the 3.5% by 2035 NATO goal rather than the 2030 timeline.  It seems Burnham hasn’t the first idea about what his government is or isn’t doing.   The Prime Minister’s error strewn performances have many of his backbenchers belatedly realising they have backed a loser. His inability to prepare or even to take PMQs seriously has got them nervous.   Tony Blair described PMQs as a ‘bowel-moving, terror-inspiring’ experience, Harold McMillan threw up before performances, whilst Jim Callaghan worried about the unpredictability of the occasion - but none of this appears to have dawned on Burnham who sidles into the Chamber at 11.55am casual and ill-prepared.   Old Labour lags say openly to those of us on the opposition benches that Burnham’s a nice enough guy, just not up to the job.  Others call him a windbag with an ego the size of a planet which is why he lost the previous two leadership elections he contested.   But what’s clear for all to see, Burnham is a disaster at the despatch box.

The BBC commentary of York’s INCREDIBLE 105th-minute title clinching goal at Rochdale…goosebumps 🤯

If you're as angry as I am that @BBCStokeSport has gone back on their promises. If you think that today was deliberate + malicious to prove a point that our opinions don't matter. This is the BBC complaints procedure. I suggest we all fill it in, en masse bbc.co.uk/contact/complaints…

What a way to win it in the 91st minute! 😱 Matus Holicek causing absolute scenes with this late winner for Crewe @crewealexfc | @EFL

From the 26/27 season, the #SkyBetChampionship Play-Offs will be expanded to six teams. Read more: efl.com/news/2026/march/05/e… #EFL

Saturday 13th December 17:36 Tranmere 3-0 Crewe “Soft goals Graham and we couldn’t string a pass together, we’ve got to be better and it’s my job to iradicate it before Walsall. I know I sound like a broken record but that’s it” It’ll be something along those lines #Crewealex