Andy Burnham walked into No 10 on Monday and, within about four hours, walked the Chancellor of the Exchequer and the Deputy Prime Minister out of it. Rachel Reeves: gone. David Lammy: gone. Peter Kyle, Steve Reed, Lord Hermer: gone, gone, gone. In workplace terms, this is the new manager clearing out the entire front office before his desk chair has adjusted to his height. * Now here's how BBC Breaking announced the biggest political cull in the building: Reeves and Lammy were "leaving cabinet." Leaving. Like they'd checked their watches, remembered a thing, and slipped out quietly before the speeches. You leave a barbecue. You leave a voicemail. What happened on a Monday afternoon to two of the most powerful people in Britain is a different verb. * The Guardian's live blog — covering the exact same afternoon — went with "Deputy prime minister and justice secretary David Lammy sacked." Sacked! A word with a subject and an object and a victim. Somebody did this to somebody. To be fair, the Guardian's own top headline softened it to Reeves and Lammy "exit cabinet," which sounds like a yoga move, so nobody's hands are entirely clean here. But at least the blow-by-blow called a firing a firing. * And what was the BBC's front page leading with while the bodies were being carried out? "Burnham promises help with your money. How could it affect you?" Also on offer: "Burnham's policy choices reveal what kind of PM he wants to be," a video of "the day so far," and — genuinely — "Who is Andy Burnham's wife, Marie-France van Heel?" * That's not a news front page, that's a welcome basket. Day one of a new PM is the single easiest day to do access-friendly coverage, and the BBC chose: your money, his vibes, his wife. The chancellor of the world's sixth-largest economy losing her job somewhere below the fold, wearing the word "leaving" like a going-away party banner. * The softening matters because day one is when the frame gets set. If Burnham's cull is "people leaving," then his government starts as a fresh start. If it's "Burnham sacks the chancellor," it starts as a power move with risks attached — which is what it is. A reshuffle where the deputy prime minister finds out he's a former deputy prime minister is a story about power. 'Leaving cabinet' is a story about the weather. * Lammy, for the record, announced his own departure on X, calling it "the greatest privilege of my life" to have served — from "humble beginnings in Tottenham" to Britain's first Black Deputy Prime Minister. Classy exit note. He earned a headline with a real verb in it.