The football horse that Andy Burnham rode in on is now bucking his vibe | Barney Ronay

PM’s contortions over the Manchester City verdicts have landed him with an early test of what he wants to stand for. Realpolitik, or real values?

It’s coming for you. It’s coming for you.

Oh Andy Burnham, the hugely problematic relationship between principle and realpolitik in post-cash Britain. It’s coming for you.

We are going all in on football chat these days, aren’t we? Football populism, football blokeyness, the stylings of the football everyman.

That was certainly the horse the prime minister rode in on a few months ago. And right now it’s a horse that’s still very much snorting around the cabinet room, and threatening to run right over the top of him.

Also: fresh plot twists. Previous governments have been thrown into early-term crisis by things such as war, sex scandals and economic meltdown.

But never, and historians will have time to pore over this in the coming decades, by the urgent need to overpay for Jack Grealish. “The ramifications of this are MASSIVE,” the man on the radio said on Thursday morning. And he was right.

There are ramifications here. And the ramifications, well, Clive, they’re massive.

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  The football horse that Andy Burnham rode in on is now bucking his vibe | Barney Ronay