We are at the phony war/silly season stage of the Andy Burnham ascendancy and there’s a lot of nonsense flying around. A lot of decisions have not yet been made – and some of them remain highly problematic – but, in descending order of confidence, this is what I’m hearing:

1) Is Mahmood edging ahead of Miliband to be chancellor?Burnham makes his big speech on the economy and devolution in – where else? – Manchester on Monday, but the steer from senior members of Team Andy is that we should not expect the battle to be chancellor, which comes down to Ed Miliband against Shabana Mahmood, to be resolved next week. ‘It won’t be for a while,’ one says. Unite and the GMB are opposed to Miliband, while Unison is backing him, but the interesting thing is that even quite left-wing members of Burnham’s inner circle don’t seem sold on the Energy Secretary. ‘The fact that Louise Haigh is regarded as a more market-friendly pick than Ed is really quite........

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