Count Binface’s manifesto, made for Makerfield and tweaked for Clacton, is a rare point of light in today’s Stygian political landscape. Could there be a more concise satirical takedown than ‘I will cut your taxes and raise everyone else’s’ or a sharper transport policy than ‘Wifi on trains that works; also trains that work’? This weekend offers a last chance for mischief-makers to suggest a matching agenda for Andy Burnham, before the real ragbag of inner-Labour compromise is unveiled over the coming weeks. Here’s my four-point contribution.

First, don’t nationalise anything, not even Thames Water. You – that means we, your taxpayers – can’t afford to buy utility companies, you certainly can’t confiscate them from share- and bondholders, and you know in your Blairite heart that however incompetent the private sector may sometimes be, state ownership was worse. Your much-vaunted Manchester ‘Bee Network’, imposing co-ordinated timetables on private bus operators, looked like nationalisation but wasn’t. That’s your model.

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Second, appoint an enterprise tsar who’s not a Labour donor and definitely not the motormouth green-energy tycoon Dale Vince. Give your tsar an office next to yours (yes, in Manchester as well as Downing Street) with a blue-sky brief to devise policies that will rescue British entrepreneurship from everything Rachel Reeves leaves behind. If you want a home-territory........

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