Labour conference begins on Sunday. Keir Starmer is under fire, besieged by all sides. The party’s left think he is a fraud; the party’s right believe him to be incompetent. All agree that he is rudderless and fear he is leading Labour to defeat. So it is with exquisite timing then that Andy Burnham has done a big glossy interview with the New Statesman , who stick him on the front of their cover, four days before the Prime Minister meets with his mutinous members up in Liverpool.

The Mayor of Greater Manchester’s intervention is predictably unhelpful for Starmer. Amid plenty of wistful musings about the joys of Northern England, Burnham signals his discontent with the direction of this government. He suggested that a ‘wholesale’ reset is necessary, if an ‘existential’ defeat to Reform

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