Mark Andrews: 'Blokey' Burnham, being banned by Facebook, and stopping the small boats

And how about Bridget Phillipson? I bet she watches netball. And odds-on she’s got a David Cassidy poster over her bed.

Actually, I don’t think that at all, because I’m not a sexist oaf. I only raise the question in jest because it has been reported that Andy Burnham’s advisors were warning him that he came across as ‘a bit too blokey’, spending a bit too much time talking about football and pubs.

Now there are plenty of things which one might wish to take the new prime minister to task over. For the ruthless way he dethroned his predecessor, for going on holiday in his third week in the job, for his daft gimmicks such as ‘No. 10 North’. And most of all for the endless stream of juvenile videos he posts on an ethically questionable Chinese social media platform which no man over 50 should touch with a bargepole.

But one thing he should not be castigated for is being ‘a bloke’.

Unless, of course, this is some very clever form of reverse psychology. Because until I read that, it never really crossed my mind that he was particularly blokeish at all. I assumed all the talk about football, pubs and working-class culture were just the generic affectations of a Cambridge-educated career politician from Cheshire trying to make us think he is one of us.

Talking of social media, it was suggested to me a few weeks ago that I should set up a Facebook account, so that I could interact with readers. To date it has not been especially successful. Within 24 hours of opening the account, it was suspended by the Facebook police on suspicion that I was impersonating a public figure. I’m not quite sure how, since I posted a stock picture of myself, and made it clear that I am a hack from a regional newspaper. And it’s clear from my posts that I’m not pretending to be anything other than an ordinary bloke who likes beer and footba....

Ah, I see the problem.

Nigel Farage says he will use the Royal Navy to escort the small boats back to Calais, deport all foreign crims to El Salvador, and lock up our homegrown ones in prefabricated jails with no colour telly.

I love his optimism, but do you for one minute think he’s going to be able to do just a fraction of that? The Tories spent years fighting the courts just trying to process a handful of asylum seekers in Rwanda, and look where that got them.

But there is one sector of the population whose vote he can be certain to count on. Human rights lawyers.

Not to be outdone, Mr Burnham said he would be ‘relentless’ in his efforts to stop the small boats. And in fairness, it looks like his fighting talk is already yielding results.

Because this week a record 230 people crossed the English Channel to Dover on a single 40ft ‘mega dinghy’, surpassing the previous record, set last month, when a 165 people made their way on a similar craft.

They’ve stopped coming in on the small boats all right. And started sending the big ones.