From Blair to Burnham, jogging as political metaphor has just run and run

Andy Burnham outside his house in Warrington, Cheshire. Politicians, as we know, love a metaphor. But do they have to be so literal? No sooner had the Greater Manchester mayor, Andy Burnham, announced that he wanted to run for parliament than … Look! Out he popped from his house on Friday morning in jogging gear, because he’s full of energy and on the right track and hitting the ground running and … oh, do keep up.What is it that persuades a 56-year-old man who is leading every news bulletin in Britain and knows there is a throng of photographers outside to put on some terrible shorts and a 1979-80 Everton strip and expose his paunch and Lancashire tan to the world?Could it be the certain knowledge that by mid afternoon the pictures would be dominating every major news site in the UK – including The Guardian – as feverish discussion continued over whether he could eventually depose Keir Starmer as prime minister? “Burnham off to a running start,” said The Times. Better than a PB.Friends that run together – work together 🇬🇧 🇦🇺 🇪🇸 🇳🇿 Great to join @jim_chalmers_mp, @carlos_cuerpo and @nicolawillismp this morning before @the_imf meetings kick off. Photograph: @rachelreevesmp/InstagramBurnham, to be fair, is a regular runner who completed the Boston marathon in aid of the victims of the Manchester Arena bombing. No one could begrudge him taking a break from political scheming on Friday for a few minutes of sweaty lumbering alongside a Cheshire dual carriageway while being shouted at by members of the public.Ed Miliband and George Osborne jogging. Composite: Alamy, ShutterstockAnd he is certainly not the first politician to conclude that the path to power in Britain might best be negotiated in leisurewear. John Major may have been more of a cricket man, but from Tony Blair’s government onwards rare has been the leading politician not seen with their legs in Lycra for the sake of political advancement … sorry, I mean for the sake of their health.“I couldn’t do this job unless I kept a certain level of physical fitness,” said a youthful, vigorous Blair shortly after running a mile for Sport Relief in 2006.Tony Blair takes part in a mile run with the Welsh athlete Colin Jackson to raise money for charity in 2004. Photograph: Michael Stephens/AFP/Getty Images“I take a lot of exercise now and I make time for it,” commented a healthy, energetic Blair while dressed in a shell suit and promoting a good diet the same year.Gordon Brown, Blair’s successor as prime minister, may not have been principally known for his love of athleisure-clad photoshoots, but even he succumbed, photographed jogging in a London park in 2009.Brown does go jogging when he has the opportunity, a Downing Street spokesperson told reporters. “We didn’t set it up.”David Cameron runs along the Blackpool seafront. Photograph: Stefan Rousseau/AFP/Getty ImagesDavid Cameron led his security detail on a twice-weekly run around London parks so full of tourists that he was rarely recognised. Just another “middle-aged, slightly overweight” jogger “trotting past”, he said, with great modesty.Cameron’s favoured attire was black shorts, to the extent that an appearance in black tracksuit bottoms earned him concerned pieces in the Daily Telegraph. Michael Gove was pictured more frequently out for a jog as his own prime ministerial ambitions sharpened, but in hoodies or polo shirts, he never quite looked the part.Michael Gove out for a run in London in 2019. Photograph: Tolga Akmen/AFP/Getty ImagesThen came Boris Johnson, who dressed for his jogs like a man who had rummaged through the full depth of the laundry basket, sporting brightly patterned Bermuda shorts, beanie hats and, on occasions, dress shoes. A business shirt with shorts and black shoes, you say? Why not?Boris Johnson waves at photographers as he runs near his Oxfordshire home in 2018. Photograph: Peter Macdiarmid/LNPIn her Downing Street tenure, Liz Truss was said to enjoy early morning circuits of the nearby Lambeth Palace grounds, to which she would invite key advisers. “The invitations to the runs are coveted and feared in equal measure,” a source told the Daily Mail.Liz Truss jogs over Brooklyn Bridge in New York in September 2021, a year before she became prime minister. Photograph: Simon Dawson/Downing StreetThere have also been running refuseniks. She may have once, naughtily, run through a field, but Theresa May liked walking holidays. Kemi Badenoch prefers the gym – while her ministerial driver waits outside.Theresa May, the then prime minister, acting as a race steward at the Maidenhead 10-mile Easter fun run in 2018. Photograph: David Hartley/REX/ShutterstockStarmer isn’t much of a jogger either, though he has tried, even while in Downing Street, to keep playing weekly in the same five-a-side team he has been a member of for decades.“Unless I’m irreparably injured, I intend to do it for as long as I possibly can,” the prime minister has said. The football, that is. But then politicians do like metaphors.