One week on from Keir Starmer’s resignation, Britain finds itself in a state of both certainty and ambiguity. It is almost guaranteed that Andy Burnham will be prime minister by the end of the summer, bar sudden scandal or meteorite. And yet, whether Burnham gets his expected coronation or not, the infancy of his return to Westminster coupled with the speed of Starmer’s exit timetable has created a remarkable situation: a figure who was not even an MP until a fortnight ago could soon enter Downing Street without anyone knowing what policies he will implement, other than the obligatory buzzword of “change”.

We are watching a political project being conceived in real time, where the nation’s major unions are fighting about who Burnham’s chancellor – and therefore what his economic programme – should be before he has actually been appointed prime minister.

This isn’t to say that Burnham’s plans will not become clearer. On Monday, he gave the first of what will reportedly be a series of speeches setting out his priorities, beginning with devolution and his pledge to set up a “No 10 North” in Manchester with the purpose of shifting power and growth to “every postcode”.

But it is a sign of the scale of the political and social turmoil of the past decade, and deep-seated displeasure with Starmer, that it seems quite normal – rational, even – to take a punt on someone to run the country who hasn’t even had to pitch for the job, all on a vague feeling that he will be a bit better than the last guy.

The Burnham wave is effectively an act of collective projection. Various groups are........

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