…we’d all cast nets, they used to say, Now all we hear in the Westminster bubble are the odds on the gravy-trainers lobbying for jobs in the new Burnham government and the echoes of the media pundits on the direction that the ‘King of the North’ will take when he moves into Downing Street. A lot of the speculation is, of course, inspired directly by the Burnham team, who hope their leader’s ‘coronation’ will lift Labour out of the pit of despair in which Starmer left the party after his two years of misrule ended this month.

Burnham is an ambitious politician who did little during the Corbyn and Starmer years to hide his ambition to lead the Labour Party and the country. Now his time has come with a ‘Burnham bounce’ that has given Labour its first lead in over a year in the opinion polls amid talk of “Manchesterism” and a “new vision” for the future. But what actually is on the Burnham table?

The answer is that nobody knows. Burnham is talking about launching the biggest council house building programme since the Second World War. He hasn’t given a figure but last year he talked about building half-a-million “social homes” by 2030. If he ends the “right to buy” and the restrictions on council borrowing that have been upheld by successive Tory and Labour governments since 1979 that will drastically cut the shameful UK homeless figures and create more work for the younger generation throughout the country. Vague promises to return the water industry and the power utilities to public ownership have not been followed up with concrete plans to restore part of the public sector and talk of more power to the councils and the regions is all very well – but it’s meaningless unless these local authorities are given the power and the funds to provide the social services that people so badly need.

Burnham’s people are talking about electoral “reform” that would get the Greens and the Liberal-Democrats on track for a tactical vote alliance at the election. Your Party may be dead in the water as far as a national party is concerned but nevertheless they look likely to keep the five parliamentary seats they hold at the next election. It could even sway the Corbynistas, if only Burnham could swallow his fear of bringing Jeremy back on board.

But all this is meaningless without a social programme – a genuine commitment to implement the union agenda, restore the welfare state and the public sector we once had.

That’s what the unions have got to fight for and that’s where the struggle has only just begun.