Andy Burnham – former mayor of Manchester, recent winner of the Makerfield by-election and pretender in chief to No 10 Downing Street – rolled into London Euston on Monday morning on an Avanti West Coast train. He was on his way to be sworn into parliament for a second time having first left office in 2017. This was apparently a moment so seismic, so world-altering, so serious that Sky News followed the journey by helicopter. Here he is, Andy Burnham: the communicator, the everyman, the fixer, the northerner, the silver bullet, the mayor, the winner.

Keir Starmer was the great disappointment. This was the Labour leader who led his party to its second largest parliamentary victory. After 14 years of Tory mismanagement – so goes the refrain – Starmer was ready to clean up the mess, with a giant majority behind him and all the goodwill in the world. Yes Britain was facing a crisis – destabilised, still, by Brexit and facing complex security decisions about Europe’s eastern frontier. But finally – to use the worst phrase in the modern political lexicon – there were “adults in the room”.

Talk about magical thinking. Within moments, it all unravelled – and soon Starmer conspired to make himself among the least popular prime ministers the United Kingdom had ever seen. Perhaps Liz Truss was just never in place long enough. Perhaps it was not all his........

© The Irish Times