Department Of Musical Chairs

Harvey Goldsmith, the U.K.’s Concert Promoters’ Association, the National Arenas’ Association, Glastonbury chief Michael Eavis and everyone else foresworn to set up a remote penal colony exclusively for ticket touts now have a new man to lobby.

The secondary market buck should now stop with Andy Burnham, Labour MP for Leigh, who stepped up to become secretary of state for the Department for Culture, Media and Sport on January 24th. He is the third to hold the post in the last seven months.

He’s already served a stint as parliamentary under-secretary of state at the DCMS and has now got the top job because James Purnell, who took over from Tessa Jowell on June 28th of last year, has moved on to replace Peter Hain as secretary of state for Work and Pensions.

Hain, who’d stood for election to the deputy leadership of the Labour party in June 2007, resigned January 24 because it was discovered that he overlooked to mention a £100,000 donation he received toward that election campaign.

After spending a few days trying to explain that it was a mistake, and a perfectly understandable one for a busy politician, he chucked in the towel when the matter was handed over to the Metropolitan Police.

With the exception of Eavis, who appears to prefer instating his own apparently tout-proof initiatives rather than lobbying the DCMS, the anti-secondary market lobbyists may well be thinking they have only a slim chance of getting Burnham to take a serious look at their continued pleas for legislation.

In August, Burnham embarrassed the government when he attacked a Conservative report on "Economic Competitiveness," then later admitted he hadn’t actually read it.