Chris Mason: Will Burnham find PMQs as 'nail biting' and 'nerve wracking' as Blair did?

Chris Mason: Will Burnham find PMQs as 'nail biting' and 'nerve wracking' as Blair did? The ritual at the heart of Westminster’s nationalist representation — Prime Minister’s Questions — looms, a brief span of verbal sparring. Prime ministerial memoirs recount how significant a minute it is in the week of any occupant of 10 Downing Street. Sir Tony Blair wrote that "PMQs was the astir nervus wracking, discombobulating, nail biting, bowel moving, panic inspiring, courageousness draining acquisition successful my premier ministerial life, without question". Now, for the first time, it is Andy Burnham's turn to feel those nerves. Yet, curiously, the lunchtime questions may well seem like a minor hold compared to the three and a half hours of questions he faced on Tuesday afternoon. This is because Parliament is playing catch‑up: six weeks into the role, Burnham is confronting the moments that would normally arise in the opening days, the regular scrutiny sessions in the House of Commons. His appointment coincided with the summer recess of MPs from Westminster, so the prime minister had a period that felt more like a soft launch — heatwaves abundant, Commons questions absent. Now many of them are arriving all at once. I watched Andy Burnham’s opening moments in the Commons as prime minister from the Press Gallery. He lingered by the Speaker’s seat awaiting his turn, flanked by Labour’s deputy leader Lucy Powell, who appeared to brush some fluff from the back of his jacket, and Louise Haigh, his inaugural chief of staff.