LONDON—Furious following his first appearance in the Commons since becoming British prime minister, detractors of Andy Burnham accused him of being correct after he blamed Brexit and former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher for the UK's ongoing economic decline.

"He is living in the past and he wants to take us back to the 1970s," said Tory Leader Kemi Badenoch in response to Burnham during his first Prime Minister's Questions. "His diagnosis is completely wrong. His theory of growth is completely wrong. He thinks that Thatcherism helped fuel the current housing crisis, regional inequality, and the long-term de-industrialisation of the working class. That is pure, fantastical facts-spitting. His assertion that Brexit has reduced Britain's GDP by 6% or more is rooted in nothing but economic tracking and expert analysis. How dare the prime minister use something as ridiculous as verifiable data to make his asinine point."

Backlash to the prime minister's statement came almost immediately after PMQs concluded, with lesser news outlets like GB News, The Daily Mail, TalkTV, and The Sun running stories accusing Burnham of maliciously using economic estimates and historical data points to support his arguments that Brexit and Thatcherism contributed to the UK's decade of slow growth. Pro-Brexit campaigners and Thatcherites went further, claiming that the PM was secretly working for "big data and big facts."

"The year is 2026. Yet the prime minister said in his statement that everything has gone wrong since the 1980s, still complaining about Margaret Thatcher, which is factually correct," continued Badenoch in the House of Commons. "I may not look it, but I’m 46 years old. He is talking about a woman who became prime minister before I was born. And as we all know, we cannot learn about things that happened before we were born. The prime minister must understand, my feelings do not care about his facts."

At press time, the Tories urged Burnham to apologise for his "100% correct" statement, claiming that "bringing objective reality into the realm of British politics is most certainly unseemly and against the ethos of the House of Commons."