Keir Starmer may be in trouble but Andy Burnham taking the crown is pure fantasy Andrew Rawnsley

It is a symptom of the dreadful pickle the Labour party finds itself in that the man most widely touted to supplant Sir Keir Starmer is not an MP and was passed over on both previous occasions when he applied to be leader.

- Andrew Rawnsley

Andy Burnham makes little attempt to hide his desire to have another crack. The mayor of Greater Manchester is circling the prime minister like a peckish bird of prey eyeing up a rotting hunk of carrion. He is not the only pretender to the throne, but he is by far the most obvious about it. While he's manifestly popular with a lot of Labour folk, admiration wanes when you talk to people in the party's upper ranks. During an earlier period of Burnham manoeuvres, another of Labour's mayors sardonically remarked to me: "If you know Game of Thrones, you'll remember what happens to the King in the North."

For those not acquainted with the sorcery-and-skulduggery epic, the King in the North marches southwards to seize power, only to be ambushed at a wedding and assassinated. With words as their arrows, Starmer loyalists are slagging off the Burnham prospectus for "aspirational socialism" as an opportunistic, naive and dangerous wishlist of leftish fantasies. Even if they have a point, these attacks are misguided because they make the prime minister's people sound rattled and defensive.