Good day to be Andy Burnham, who by all accounts just gave the best speech of any prime minister since Tony Blair. And not just according to the party – it was reluctantly admitted in the Daily Telegraph and the Spectator, too.

Meanwhile one pundit said it was the best performance he’s seen “in [his] lifetime” while another emoted on his podcast: this was an “absolute vindication” of the new leader. Whereas the recently ousted Keir Starmer was “a Reliant Robin”, Burnham was more akin to a “Jaguar”.

I have never seen such rapturous credulity – even from a group of journalists and columnists relatively prone to it.

They all moved against Starmer at the same time: first he was a safe pair of hands, then a wooden freak and, finally, an existential threat to Britain if he did not cede office.

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Burnham, meanwhile, went from a charming if folksy communicator to Britain’s greatest rhetorician since Winston Churchill overnight (please). There is nothing wrong with a........

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