Potholes, bus fares and headphone dodgers: will Burnham’s strategy of ‘everyday fixes’ succeed?

The everyday fixes were a central policy strategy from Burnham’s first day in office, one government insider says. Photograph: Christopher Furlong/Getty

In the first episode of Armando Iannucci’s political satire The Thick of It, the hapless minister Hugh Abbot is in the back of a taxi, frantically brainstorming for an on-the-hoof policy he can announce to the assembled national press.

“So you want something sexy and eye-catching, and that is free and universally popular and instantly applicable. No one can possibly object to it,” says the addled junior adviser Ollie Reeder. “Well, really, you should have said something before then, because I’ve got a file about that fucking thick of that back in the office.”