I have spent part of the past week thinking about imposter syndrome, and how we might be able to give it to more people. In an interview this week, Andy Burnham’s best friend Steve Rotheram, who happens to be the Mayor of Liverpool, said that our latest Prime Minister had struggled with imposter syndrome ‘for many years, like most people from working-class backgrounds’.

All of which leaves me slightly baffled. Surely, whatever your origins, if you have made it to Cambridge University in your late teens, got a job in Westminster in your early twenties, become a Member of Parliament in your thirties, have become a mayor, are best friends with a mayor and are now Prime Minister, it might be time to stop with the feeling of ‘imposter syndrome’? Unless, of course, you are an imposter, in which case you should have a huge dose of the syndrome, acknowledge it and remove yourself from public life. Which I am sure is not the case with Andy Burnham.

Ever-so-slightly chippy people have a superpower in life if they use their chip in the right way

Ever-so-slightly chippy people have a superpower in life if they use their chip in the right way

Such talk is yet another example of the medicalisation and pathologising of what we used to call ‘life’. Do some people feel that they are in positions, or even rooms, in which they should not be, or in which they feel vaguely out of place? Of course. It is a syndrome commonly associated with the teenage years. But any sensible person updates their mental........

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