Pause here before we rush headlong into the turbulent future. Stop and inhale last week’s rare political triumph, revel in the sunshine of cheery optimism. It was a precious but unfamiliar sensation when life on the progressive side of politics in Britain is so often a litany of hopes dashed and disappointments.

Andy Burnham’s comprehensive victory in the Makerfield byelection, surpassing expectations, was a precious moment. He demolished £5m-Nigel Farage’s party of loathsome Reformers, whose every election candidate seems more repugnant than the last. Hostile hard-right politics in Britain needs defeating time and time again, every time nativists and hate-stirrers – from Enoch Powell to the BNP – erupt in our politics.

No one but Andy Burnham could have stamped out Reform in a part of Greater Manchester where it had just won every council seat only last month. And how heartening it was that not just Liberal Democrat and Green voters but Makerfield Tories too lent him their votes because they understood that keeping out Reform mattered most: forget flag waving, that’s what patriotism looks like. I will relish Makerfield alongside other rare dates; I delivered leaflets before I could vote in the 1964 election which put and end to what Harold Wilson called “13 years of Tory misrule”. Remember where you were the night of Labour’s great 1997 win after 18 wilderness years? Obama night was best of all. I will relish Makerfield alongside those other rare dates.

As Keir Starmer drafts his resignation speech – expected to be delivered on Monday – let’s also recall how he vanquished 14 years of Conservative rule, a triumph after the Jeremy Corbyn wipeout of 2019. But, in truth, Labour’s 2024 general election victory was a freak landslide, won on a paltry 33.7% of the vote. It never felt like a surge of public enthusiasm. The Starmer government struggled from its early days to inspire affection. Why? His........

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