If Starmerism sought to present the Labour government as more rightwing than it is, Burnhamism seeks to do the opposite.

The change in rhetoric is certainly stark. Unlike his sulking predecessor, the new prime minister offers both an analysis and a vision. British stagnation and decline, Andy Burnham correctly told the House of Commons, can be explained by a series of “wrong turns” taken from the 1980s onwards: the privatisation of economic power, the deindustrialisation of the country and the ruinous austerity that followed the 2008 crash.

The solution, Burnham suggests, is public control of the essentials, the devolution of power and the rebirth of industry – to rebuild living standards and the economy and give long-abandoned communities a future. Keir Starmer, by contrast, had no vision, relying instead on a technocratic image of competence that was swiftly shattered by one fiasco after another. That left him defined by his opponents, and the electorate baffled as to where his government was headed.

The Starmer project foregrounded all of the government’s reactionary elements and buried its social-democratic features. Stringent fiscal rules, the assault on the winter fuel allowance, the attack on disability benefits, the construction of one of Europe’s most punitive asylum regimes, the arrest of pensioners who opposed Israel’s genocide: all became headline policies by design.

Now consider what they shouted least about: the........

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