Has Andy Burnham found the key to beating Boris?

They were queuing up to eclipse Keir Starmer this week. Rishi Sunak – already ahead of Starmer in the polls when it comes to who would make the better prime minister – came brimming with barbs designed to make the leader of the opposition look like a chump on Budget day.

In the event, Starmer did that to himself by getting hit with a Covid sicknote and shadow chancellor Rachel Reeves took his place, securing rave reviews from leftist commentators in her leader’s absence.

But the most significant and damaging eclipse of Starmer occurred far away from Westminster and was therefore the least noticed. Greater Manchester Mayor Andy Burnham, the bookies’ hot favourite to be next Labour leader – even though he is not currently an MP ­– audaciously set in train his own strategy for taking on the Tories.

Without even mentioning Starmer during an interview on the Today programme, Burnham ripped up Labour’s traditional (and losing) handbook for fighting the Conservatives and set out an alternative approach that might actually cause them some problems.