Andy Burnham had quite a 48 hours: his first big Commons speech as Prime Minister on Tuesday, his first PMQs on Wednesday, and in between, a bond market doing its best impression of a fire alarm. One sentence of background, as promised — now let's talk about the front pages. * The Daily Mail's splash: "Britain's problems? I blame Thatcher and Brexit." * Notice the pronoun. That's a first-person confession, styled like Burnham stood at the dispatch box, jabbed a thumb at his own chest, and started naming enemies. Petulant. Personal. Backward-looking. The Mail even brought a witness: Kemi Badenoch, accusing him of "living in the past." * Here's what he actually told MPs: from the 1980s "the country took a series of wrong turns" — "political power was centralized, economic power privatized, the country deindustrialized, austerity followed." And then: "Brexit compounded the damage, ushering in a decade of low growth and stalled regeneration." * Agree with that diagnosis or don't — it's a structural argument about forty years of policy. There's no "I" in it, and no finger-jab. The Mail translated an argument it would have to argue with into a tantrum it could simply mock. "I blame Thatcher" isn't a quote. It's a costume. * Then there's the scoreboard the front pages taped to his forehead: 30-year gilt yields hit 5.89%, the highest since 1998, on the very day of his debut. Markets turning on Burnham — tidy story. * One problem. The same day, per Reuters, the "global bond rout" deepened everywhere: Japan's 10-year yield hit 3% for the first time since 1996, the US 30-year climbed to 5.24%, and French and German yields sat at levels last seen in 2008 and 2011. If Tuesday's bond market was a verdict on Andy Burnham's speech, it also convicted Tokyo, Paris, Berlin and Washington, none of whom were at PMQs. * The Guardian, to its credit, kept the two wires apart — its lead had "Burnham tries to calm bond market fears as sell-off threatens crucial first budget," with its reporting attributing the jump mainly to international factors. Burnham's still the protagonist there too, but at least the storm gets named as weather that rolled in over the whole hemisphere, not something he personally summoned by saying "Thatcher" three times into a mirror. * Yesterday we flagged the Mail claiming Burnham was 'finally' facing MPs — while MPs were still on their holidays. Today he faced them, and the Mail's move was to rewrite what he said in the first person. Day two of a premiership, and the paper's already editing his dialogue. * Cover the speech. Fight the argument. Just don't hand the man lines and then review his delivery.