There’s something disarming about the emotional tenor of this Government. In the background, it is composed of pain, asphyxiation and horror. But in the foreground, it is an all-singing, all-dancing, carnival of optimism. It is like going round to the house of someone who has just lost his job and finding them in a tip-top mood. It is disturbing. It makes you more worried for them than you would have been otherwise.

Andy Burnham has been handed a terrible political inheritance. He has to deal with the failures of Tory rule – a stagnant economy, battered public services, a neurotic bond market operating at the limit of its sympathies – and all the failures of the outgoing Keir Starmer premiership on top.

Rachel Reeves’s worst present for her successor is the spending review, due next summer. The former chancellor front-loaded a load of spending increases and backloaded the savings required to fund them to the end of the Parliament. To make the sums add up, she assumed spending would fall by 2030.

Burnham and his Chancellor John Healey now have to figure out how in God’s name they can make that happen – and this is just to pay for what has already been spent. Any new spending would require additional savings. This is a very severe problem, because Burnham wants to implement lots of new spending – on defence, social care and the cost of living.

The natural response is to borrow more money, but Burnham has also been left with a hypervigilant bond market. It became acutely concerned about the UK during the Liz Truss episode and was never fully placated by Reeves, because she often operated effectively within the margin of........

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