On Sunday 23 August, Andy Burnham visited Ukraine. And his first trip to the besieged nation has given the UK media the perfect opportunity to once again demonstrate how ridiculous they are:
Call me old-fashioned if you like, but a zip-up polo shirt on a visit to a warzone? What on earth is he thinking? Even Boris worse a suit. Knowing how the Ukrainians like their protocols to be respected, I imagine this will have caused some offence. Surely the FCDO advise PMs on… https://t.co/F4Fr77FWhh
— Iain Dale
(@IainDale) August 24, 2026
Un-suit-able
There’s quite a lot to think about in Dale’s comment, as we’ll demonstrate:
Call me old-fashioned if you like, but a zip-up polo shirt on a visit to a warzone? What on earth is he thinking?
At this point, you’d be forgiven for thinking that Dale wanted to see Burnham in camo and body armour. The next sentence put that notion to bed:
Even Boris worse a suit.
Okay, so what did this suit achieve exactly? It certainly wouldn’t have protected him from the bullets – not unless it was made of a Top Secret material from Q Branch.
The next point from Dale was probably the wildest thing he said:
Knowing how the Ukrainians like their protocols to be respected, I imagine this will have caused some offence.
Famously, Volodymyr Zelenskyy was criticised in the White House earlier this year for not wearing a suit. His sartorial choice was no blip, either; the guy never wears suits. In fact, he notably wasn’t wearing one when he met Andy Burnham:
Burnham to hand long-range missile blueprints to Zelensky as he visits Kyiv https://t.co/73zJ6NqILE
— BBC Politics (@BBCPolitics) August 24, 2026
Dale ended on the following point:
Surely the [Foreign, Commonwealth, and Development Office] advise PMs on things like this?
We imagine they did advise Burnham, and that said advice was: ‘probably best not to dress up given who you’re meeting, eh?‘.
Hysteria
Dale wasn’t the only one to become uncontrollably upset by the image of Burnham’s polo neck; GB News had this to say:
'It's totally performative. It's ridiculous, he's not a man of the people!'
Andy Burnham faces criticism as he arrives in Ukraine for his first foreign visit as Prime Minister wearing a polo shirt. pic.twitter.com/XNql9qno4g
— GB News (@GBNEWS) August 24, 2026
It’s not wrong to suggest the decision was ‘performative’; everything world leaders do in public is a performance. Burnham almost certainly did have conversations about what he wore, and he no doubt anticipated the move upsetting our permanently offended media class.
Actual problems with Burnham
Saying all the above, there are plenty of good reasons to be unhappy with Burnham, as we’ve extensively reported:
- Burnham’s £350k pre-PM donor revelations expose Labour Together continuity op.
- His reported oil plan is an insult to our intelligence.
- Burnham’s actions since becoming PM scream ‘business as usual’.
Featured image via Henry Nicholls
By Willem Moore
