As Starmer eyes the exit, here’s a vital lesson for Andy Burnham: first impressions are everything | Polly Toynbee (opens in new tab)

If the Makerfield MP is to be our next PM, he needs some immediate and memorable cost of living policies to avoid his predecessor’s fatePause here before we rush headlong into the turbulent future. Stop and inhale last week’s rare political triumph, revel in the sunshine of cheery optimism. It was a precious but unfamiliar sensation when life on the progressive side of politics in Britain is so often a litany of hopes dashed and disappointments.Andy Burnham’s comprehensive victory in the Make...