Can Andy Burnham put a smile on the British economy?

And does it matter anyway? The economy’s the economy whoever you are and it’s hardly in a great place.

But mood matters for companies trying to make a go of it and persuade consumers to dip into their hardly bulging pockets.

Arguably Burnham’s predecessor as PM Keir Starmer shot himself in the foot by telling us things were even worse than they thought even as he was parading around in suits and specs generously supplied by Lord Alli (his previous salary as director of public prosecutions was £225,000) while proceeding to raise taxes on any business still let standing.

Burnham, a former mayor of Manchester and, before that, a Blairite cabinet minister, buys his own clothes (as far as we know) and connects with the public. Can he persuade business to do his bidding?

The political agenda in the UK is still largely made by a right wing legacy media even while fewer and fewer people buy its products. The Daily Mail is already on Burnham’s tail over possible mansion tax plans (and £1.5m in London hardly buys you a mansion) while trust fund columnists on The Times and its Sunday stablemate wake up foaming at the mouth at the triple lock on pensions. This, indeed, may be unaffordable (and pretty easy to tweak.) These gentlemen (as they mostly are) are hardly likely to depend on the state pension in their dotage.

So what can Burnham do, locked as he is in a fiscal staightjacket? Why what clever politicians have always done of course, change definitions.

He’s allowed to “borrow to invest.” If this means a bonanza of tunnels and tunnelling (please not another HS2) then so be it. At least the Government will be doing something. The only time in recent years the Brits have been proud of their government was the performance of the usually derided NHS in lockdown and the spectacular success of the vaccine rollout: a rare case of the state and business pulling in the same direction. Suddenly things were so bad we had to something right – and quickly. Boris Johnson and Liz Truss – and latterly Starmer and chancellor Rachel Reeves – frittered that away. Poor Rishi Sunak, the only one with the brains to get a grip, had to play catch-up.

Brits are throughly fed up of a world where “nothing works.” If Burnham can harness some of that positively he might actually achieve something.