Everybody knows that there is a lot of pressure on Andy Burnham, whose honeymoon period as Prime Minister must surely be at least approaching the departure lounge. But why is there none on Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch?

Burnham is the only available antidote to Britain’s post-Brexit populist paroxysms and his predecessor provided an object lesson in how hard it is these days for a Labour Prime Minister to recover from early missteps and mistakes.

The post-war order is reeling under the influence of Donald Trump’s self-enriching cocktail of absurdity and obscenity while, at home, the sense that political wildfires will break out next time Reform UK leader Nigel Farage decides to weaponise a crime by a person of colour will sustain long after this year’s season of actual wildfires has passed.

From health to defence, social care to young people not in education, employment, or training (NEETs), the country faces deep and abiding problems that can only be meaningfully addressed, never mind alleviated or solved, with substance, realism and determination. This is, in other words, a period that demands political seriousness, proper scrutiny and, therefore, effective and intelligent opposition. The sharpness of Burnham’s premiership will in many ways be defined by the whetstone of substantive opposition.

And thanks to Badenoch, he currently doesn’t have any. Farage is, and always has been, ridiculous and dangerous in equal........

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