Read More One week on from Keir Starmer’s resignation, Britain finds itself in a state of both certainty and ambiguity. It is almost guaranteed that Andy Burnham will be prime minister by the end of the summer, bar sudden scandal or meteorite. And yet, whether Burnham gets his expected coronation or not, the infancy of his return to Westminster coupled with the speed of Starmer’s exit timetable has created a remarkable situation: a figure who was not even an MP until a fortnight ago could soon enter Downing Street without anyone knowing what policies he will implement, other than the obligatory buzzword of “change”.We are watching a political project being conceived in real time, where the nation’s major unions are fighting about who Burnham’s chancellor – and therefore what his economic programme – should be before he has actually been appointed prime minister.This isn’t to say that Burnham’s plans will not become clearer. On Monday, he gave the first of what will reportedly be a series of speeches setting out his priorities, beginning with devolution and his pledge to set up a “No 10 North” in Manchester with the purpose of shifting power and growth to “every postcode”.But it is a sign of the scale of the political and social turmoil of the past decade, and deep-seated displeasure with Starmer, that it seems quite normal – rational, even – to take a punt on someone to run the country who hasn’t even had to pitch for the job, all on a vague feeling that he will be a bit better than the last guy.The Burnham wave is effectively an act of collective projection. Various groups are putting their – often competing – hopes on to the former Greater Manchester mayor, on the possibility he might just deliver them.To know what a Burnham premiership could really look like, it’s worth spending less time imagining the future and more digging through his past. With a 16-year career in Westminster before his mayorship, Burnham’s former ministerial briefs and voting records cover almost every major issue he will now face as PM.Take welfare reform. Back in 2015, when George Osborne was ushering in sweeping austerity reforms, Burnham followed the then-interim Labour boss Harriet Harman’s order to abstain on the welfare reform bill. At the time, Burnham said the legislation was “unsupportable”, but that as a cabinet member he didn’t rebel because – and you can practically hear the manifesting here – he would expect collective responsibility from his MPs if he was leader.Fast forward a decade and Burnham inherits fresh pressure from the rightwing media to curb “the bloated welfare bill” and a cohort of Labour backbenchers who successfully rebelled against Starmer’s bid to slash personal independence payments last summer. What might the new leadership do? During the Makerfield campaign, Burnham commented he was “not squeamish” about reducing benefit spending, but that instead of implementing “crude cuts” he fa
