Can Andy Burnham win an early general election?

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For a leader who had just been deposed by his party, Sir Keir Starmer was attracting a lot of compliments in the hours following the delivery of his resignation statement last Monday. Putting on grave expressions for the broadcasters, assorted sombre Labour MPs and grandees described the outgoing Prime Minister as “honourable”, “patriotic” and “decent” in a manner that suggested some kind of terrible accident had befallen the poor chap rather than a brutal and deliberate whacking at the hands of his treacherous colleagues.

Meanwhile, in Westminster Hall a couple of hundred Labour MPs seeking a job from Andy Burnham, sorry, seeking to offer their comradely congratulations over his by-election victory, turned up to pose for a selfie with the new MP for Makerfield fresh off the train to “that London”. Inevitably, there at the front was the grinning phizzog of Stella Creasy MP, presumably hopeful that finally the party will have a new leader capable of recognising the full extent of her talents by elevating her to high office. If history is any guide she should not hold her breath.

The scene in Westminster a week ago was unseemly and undignified, when Burnham and Labour MPs might have done better to have dialed down the smiling and left the day to Starmer, the man they had just done in. But this is politics, and the reason there is so much excitement is that Labour MPs realise that in Burnham there is at least salvation from the purgatory of life with Starmer as leader, and at best they may even find that Burnham can save their seats and taxpayer funded livelihoods. They are thrashing about drowning and here is Burnham standing at the bow of a lifeboat holding up what looks like a flotation device.

Unless a challenger appears, and it seems unlikely anyone is going to risk standing in the way of the Burnham wave, the outgoing metro mayor of Manchester will become Prime Minister on Monday 20 July.

Burnham’s allies such as Lucy Powell, Labour’s deputy leader, are already being asked if he will call an early general election, which is what she and her colleagues demanded when the Tories were in the middle of their leadership travails and swapped leaders. No early election is required this time because, er, it’s different and we are Labour, seems to be the line from Powell.