The trouble with Andy Burnham? Nobody’s listening to him

John Rentoul on the curious plight of ‘Labour’s lost leader’, aka the ‘King of the North’

Andy Burnham was speaking at an event during the Edinburgh Festival Fringe (Andrew Milligan/PA) (PA Wire)

If Margaret Beckett and Frank Field had understood that they shouldn’t nominate someone they believed was manifestly unsuited for a post, Andy Burnham might have become Labour leader in 2015.

He came second, a long way behind Jeremy Corbyn, but if Corbyn’s name had not been put on the ballot paper by Labour MPs, Burnham would probably have cleaned up the anti-establishment vote with his increasingly leftish poses, against Yvette Cooper and Liz Kendall.

Who knows how different politics might have been if Beckett and Field, who had no intention of voting for Corbyn, failed to give him the nominations he needed to scrape into the contest.