Andy Burnham has been in politics long enough to know that the largely friendly media coverage he’s received so far would turn hostile once he was inside Downing Street. And, within hours of becoming prime minister, some familiar predators were circling as they tried to decide whether to attack him for being too leftwing, too insubstantial or simply offering more of the same.

The Mail accused him of embarking on an unfunded “spending spree”, the Sun highlighted a series of “embarrassing” and “humiliating” moments that marred his first days in office, while the Telegraph declared he stood for nothing except “gimmicks” and “rehashing failed ideas”. Much of this, of course, goes with the territory of being a Labour leader.

But this grim process, one I have witnessed both as a political “lobby” journalist and as a communications director for Labour, has accelerated and become ever more gory as new adversaries emerge online. Orderly old methods of managing the news cycle with “a grid” of stories for newspapers and broadcasters have been replaced by the mayhem of a zombie movie. Keir Starmer was demonised out of all recognition and beyond reason by platforms such as Elon Musk’s X. And AI-generated images that purport to show Burnham promising that his new constituency of Makerfield will house more asylum seekers, or completely false claims that he once gave a public contract to his wife, have already circulated widely on social media.

In private, the new prime minister is intensely critical of this toxic and sometimes terrifying media environment. Over the nine years he spent away from Westminster as mayor of greater Manchester, Burnham is said to have watched – with a sense of dismay, disorientation and maybe dread – how social media algorithms fuel an individualist briefing culture that portrays politics as a shallow game of “who’s up and who’s down”. This has infected the mainstream press, which, by consistently........

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