Where were you when the balloon went up on Friday evening? I had just finished an outdoor supper in Herefordshire, a dry breeze stirring the treetops, when my mobile telephone emitted an insistent, high-pitched squawk. WAUUUGGGHHH! Not being terribly tech-savvy, I assumed it was a computer virus and switched off the blasted thing to stop the din. Only later did a friend explain that the noise was the Government’s national emergency siren, as used to warn citizens about nuclear attack.

Not that nice Mr Putin was trying to destroy us just yet. This alert was a warning about the danger of barbecues in dry weather. In a statement of the bleedin’ obvious, Nanny State was letting us know flames could cause wildfires. And wildfires are, you see, one of the sudden obsessions of Mr Burnham. Who is NOW IN CONTROL.

To use the Government’s War Of The Worlds-style ‘tin helmets on’ warning system for a lecture about the dangers of grilling sausages al fresco seemed over the top. Is Mr Burnham a bit of a Captain Panicko? Or was something more discreditable at work here? Was this a cynical attempt to stir fear while creating an impression that Eyelashes Andy is a Man of Action? Man of Action or Figure of Fun? The hoo-hah soon took a reassuringly British turn towards laughter. A chap whose hearing aids were connected to his mobile said it would take days for his head to stop ringing. People wondered if the alert was the Government’s reaction to Nigel Farage’s re-election in Clacton.

‘Andy’s found a new toy,’ ran another suggestion. There were references to the fire-drill episode in Fawlty Towers, when Basil loses his temper with the residents and snaps, ‘I don’t know why we bother!’

The internet was quickly full of advice on how to deactivate the alerts on mobiles – ‘settings, notifications, emergency, off’, since you ask. My nonagenarian mother was disappointed that her mobile, which is almost prehistoric, did not receive the alert. Not that she would necessarily have heard it even had it burst into life.

Residents in Wales, and indeed in some parts of England, initially received the shrill alert in Gymraeg, which is ‘Welsh’ to most of us. Those unversed in the noble tongue of Cambria’s druids boggled a bit at their mobiles, which showed a yellow triangle with a big black explanation mark, accompanied by a screed of consonant-heavy text. They did not know what to think.

The noise on Friday evening was the Government’s national emergency siren, as used to warn citizens about nuclear attack

Had the Kremlin gone tonto and fired an intercontinental ballistic missile at Machynlleth? It was several minutes before – with another ear-jabbing WAUUUGGGHHH!, which caused a sheep stampede – they received an English translation of the message and were able to relax.

‘Why wasn’t the warning in Arabic first?’ demanded equal-rights mickey-takers. My church-organist wife was more absorbed by analysing the tone of that WAUUUGGGHHH! She was soon busy recreating its pitch on her piano and concluded that it was a smashing-together of A, B and B flat, not unlike bar 25 of Rimsky-Korsakov’s Flight Of The Bumblebee. Living with a musician, one becomes accustomed to such nuggets of information.

But what of Mr Burnham? What does Friday night’s farce tell us about him and his Government, and indeed the wider ruling class? Maybe it was not a farce, you say. Maybe wildfires are a sufficient threat to our nation’s survival to merit such dramatic klaxons and alarums.

Writing this in the parched Marches I need no reminding of how tinder dry much of our countryside is. Hillsides, fields and even part of a graveyard outside Ross-on-Wye have gone up in flames in recent days. The fire brigades have been doing magnificent work and anything that helps them is surely worth considering, a fair person might argue.

But can any cogent human, even adolescent, be unaware of the foolishness of lighting fires in these conditions? If the experts truly thought this alert was essential, why was it not sent immediately after ministers held an emergency Cobra meeting on Wednesday? Wildfires have been a problem in drought-stricken Britain for weeks. Officialdom only seemed to start taking an interest after parts of Spain and France whooshed up in flames.

Mr Burnham, who had been itching for action like a trigger-happy infantryman, was only too happy to convene Cobra, Whitehall’s emergency committee. It gathers in hours of national peril and takes its name from the Cabinet Office briefing rooms where it assembles. Jolly impressive it must be, too, with sharpened pencils, tip-top security precautions, anti-blast tape on the windows, that sort of thing.

A new prime minister finds such things tremendously exciting.

Has there not been, about Mr Burnham, something of the awestruck youth gawping at all the shiny levers in the engine room of the ship he has just commandeered?

When it became clear that the killers of PC Harper were likely to be released early as a result of his Government’s penal policies, Mr Burnham jumped up and down, made all sorts of pronouncements and told his Justice Secretary to look closely at the matter. With that he strode off to the next hot issue, satisfied that he had showed leadership. What will change? Mostly likely nothing.

Is Mr Burnham a bit of a Captain Panicko? Or was something more discreditable at work here? writes Quentin Letts

A similar pattern developed with his response to the asylum-seekers crisis. Mr Burnham muscled his way into the fray and barked that middle-class areas must take in more refugees. Sorted! That would teach shires Tory toffs who was boss! Or maybe not. His off-the-cuff edict won instant headlines but it may prove unworkable and illegal, and it certainly did not seem to have been given deep thought.

Is that the nature of this unelected ingenu who leads our Government? Is he shallow? After Friday’s alert one hesitates to use a combustive analogy but is he the sort of person who thinks a bonfire can be kept alight simply by throwing a cup of petrol at it?

Aesop wrote of the boy who cried wolf. The same could be said of image-polishing premiers who think a national siren can be used to issue a warning about barbecues. Was it really the best response that Cobra could devise? Or was it more of a spin doctor’s after-thought? Is that why there was a two-day delay before the alert was sounded?

Is Mr Burnham in the market for ‘eye-catching initiatives’, as his sometime boss Tony Blair once put it?

In July 2000 Mr Blair demanded such initiatives in a memo that was later leaked.

‘I should be personally associated with as much of this as possible,’ declared Mr Blair.

Officialdom has created an exciting tool of fear: a shrill siren to let the populus know when Armageddon is at hand. The temptation to use fear for political ends is considerable. Look at how the authorities whipped up the ante during lockdown.

Is Eyelashes Andy, who began as a ministerial special adviser in Blair’s New Labour government, repeating the self-glorifying exploits of the old hoofer?

Downing Street PR wallahs were certainly quick to release words from the PM immediately after Friday’s alarm. Mr Burnham instructed us to ‘take the alert seriously’. The most likely translation of that may be, ‘please take me seriously’.

How can we do so when he uses a nuclear-war emergency system to nag us about the dangers of cooking snorkers?