This is the danger zone. The period when one prime minister leaves office and the next takes over can inspire either dread or delight: a few days in which the country forms a gut reaction to the new government.

One week on, Andy Burnham has well and truly ditched the slow fatalism that marked Keir Starmer’s early days in power, in favour of the message that help is on the way: from cost of living support to a pledge to end rough sleeping and Monday’s commitment to fix the social care system.

But listen closely, and what’s striking about Labour 2.0 isn’t how quickly change may come or even what it might entail – it’s the idea that change is possible at all. While Starmer responded to an era of social and economic crises with the futile pessimism of a man who appeared not to realise he was in fact prime minister, Burnham has spent his first week in Downing Street challenging the orthodoxy that certain problems are just too big to solve. As he pointedly said about rough sleeping in his first email to Labour members as PM: “This is something a government can fix if it chooses to, and today, on day one, I’m choosing to.”

As political oratory goes, that’s a pretty brave window to open, and once ajar it is hard to close. Unequal capitalist societies – and many governments, for that matter – survive on the premise that certain things are inevitable. Millions of people in a rich nation will always struggle to afford to eat regular meals, even after they have worked all day, the story goes. Some people just have to sleep on the streets, while others get spare mansions. When you’re old or sick, unless you........

© The Guardian