Andy Burnham is about to do an ‘ask me anything’ Reddit interview, which may shed some light on his plans, but if it’s anything like the interview he gave to Andrew Marr on Thursday evening we are still at the vibes stage of Burnhamism. So let’s talk about the personnel, rather than the policy, where things seem to be a bit clearer – and it was who would be up and who would be down which sucked up most of the oxygen at The Spectator summer party on Wednesday.

Labour’s version of the golden generation (apt given the number of football fanatics it includes) is back

Labour’s version of the golden generation (apt given the number of football fanatics it includes) is back

Burnham, we are told, wants a balanced cabinet and team, and since many of his senior advisers are women, attention continues to fall on some of the men he is apparently tapping up from Labour’s class of 2001 – the generation of New Labour spads who became MPs that year and went on to become ministers. Two of their number have become leader and it might have been more.

If you had asked pretty much any contemporary politico or journalist who knew them well at the time to rank David Miliband, Ed Miliband, Ed Balls, James Purnell and Andy Burnham for brains or the likelihood that they got on in politics, they would – in those days – have put Burnham fifth of the group. But it is an interesting feature of politics that other members of that clan now acknowledge that Burnham was the first to understand the politics of the post-2007 crash world and better positioned........

© The Spectator