It was 3.30am, just after the Wigan returning officer had read out Andy Burnham’s 9,231 majority, and a close adviser to Burnham texted: “We will need to be ready a lot sooner than we thought.”
Keir Starmer resigned on Monday before Burnham was even sworn in as an MP. Wes Streeting was out of the race an hour later. Burnham travelled down on the Avanti West Coast – yet to be nationalised – to Euston on a train that was delayed by 21 minutes. But everything else about the transition will be whiplash fast.
