How much can a Labour government change the country? According to many voters, journalists and politicians, including plenty in the party itself, the answer to that stubbornly recurring question has always been: not that much. Labour governments can’t restructure the economy, radically redistribute wealth, truly empower the disadvantaged or adopt a genuinely ethical foreign policy without upsetting too many powerful interests, from the British rich to the US government to global financial markets.

This endlessly repeated conventional wisdom – internalised by some on the left as well as centrists and the right – has haunted many Labour governments, from the first, tentative ones in the 1920s to Keir Starmer’s diligent but failed administration a century later. Yet conventional wisdom can be wrong, especially in volatile periods such as the current one, when precedent may count for little.

At last year’s Labour conference, Andy Burnham was widely derided for what was seen as a half-launched and clumsy leadership coup attempt. Much of the media and Starmer’s cabinet reckoned his chances of being prime minister were gone for good. Yet, at this week’s unusually packed and perhaps unwisely optimistic gathering, Burnham’s can-do presence was almost as dominant as Tony Blair’s in his early leadership years: a constant point of reference, from the main hall to the merch stands to leftwing fringe events.

Moreover, Burnham appears to want to use his personal dominance – which may well be briefer than Blair’s, given Labour’s more fragile position in a more fragmented politics – to open up an array of huge issues that his party has long been advised to keep closed. Electoral reform, social care, public........

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