Andy Burnham’s one-man mission to Make Labour Normal Again has taken a step forward. The quiet part has finally been said out loud: he’s running in Makerfield so that he can launch an assault on No. 10. “If I get your support,” the mayor of Greater Manchester finally admitted last night to a BBC audience who already knew anyway, “then I would seek to represent you at the highest level and give this constituency maximum power and influence.”

Vote Labour to get Keir Starmer out is an extraordinary sell in this most extraordinary of by-elections, the dynamics of which will never be replicated. Politics is in a period of bizarre suspended animation while the results are awaited on 18 June. Starmer is even more of an irrelevance than usual, a lame duck whom nobody expects to be in office by the year’s end, doddering around Downing Street aimlessly awaiting his fate.

But sadly, save for the revelation of Burnham’s blatantly obvious ambitions, last night’s Question Time special did not meet the gravity of the moment. If this is a contest not merely about finding a new local member of Parliament, but in fact about the elevation of a new leader of the country, then surely some heavy interrogation is in order.

And yet we learnt precisely nothing about our PM-in-waiting. Instead, Burnham ably maintained the broad-brush everyman act which forms a core part of his appeal. Greater Manchester’s 6 Music Dad batted away the awkward audience questions from Wigan’s Facebook mums about DEI and two-tier policing. Unlike his main rival, Robert Kenyon of Reform UK, he managed not to embarrass himself. He was somehow able to convey a message of “fundamental change” without committing to any specifics whatsoever.

Already, the Burnham camp has promised to stick to the Chancellor’s fiscal rules, as well as backing her commitment not to raise income tax, VAT or National Insurance. Without any adjustments either way, it’s difficult to envisage much diversion from Britain’s current trajectory.

But perhaps we shouldn’t be surprised. Burnham has the impossible task of appealing to at least three (and possibly four) discrete interest groups simultaneously. First, there are the people of Makerfield, a seat with a Brexity, old-fashioned political median. Then, there are the Labour selectorate and MPs, who represent the heights of urban professional progressivism. In addition, he must also assuage the bond markets to prevent immediate fiscal crisis upon entry into the corridors of power, without disappointing the hopes and dreams of spendthrift colleagues and fellow members. Finally, there’s also the small matter of keeping the country at large onside if he wants to get a personal mandate at the next general election.

It’s no wonder, then, that Burnham’s answers were vague last night. The purpose is less to set out a manifesto, and more to keep the show on the road. In that, he succeeded.

Kenyon, meanwhile, seemed unprepared for any scrutiny of the long list of lurid remarks he’s previously made online. Cue much shaking of audience heads as he struggled to defend his anti-abortion posts on the basis that he was “raised by women”. It’s probably better for his sake if he loses by a narrow margin on polling day, so as not to subject himself to any more of these accountability rituals.

His best moment came when explaining to Green candidate Sarah Wakefield that having an additional 10 million people in the country would have a significant impact on housing. That’s a statement of common sense for most. But it was met with all the exasperated faux-incredulity we have come to expect from that particular breed of Leftist for whom any engagement with the immigration debate, or indeed the basic laws of supply and demand, represents an affront to civilised values. Burnham sat back, keeping his counsel.

But the Greens, along with the Liberal Democrat and Conservative candidates, will struggle to keep their deposits. This was the Burnham vs Kenyon showdown and Burnham, without exactly providing an energising vision for change, won handily.

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Jonny Ball is a Contributing Editor at UnHerd. He formerly wrote under the name Despotic Inroad.

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