Why Andy Burnham is overshadowing Sir Keir Starmer in the North and may even end up doing so elsewhere in the country - Jayne Dowle

Burnham, born in 1970 in Aintree, now on Merseyside, to Ken, a telephone engineer and Eileen, a GP receptionist, is not shy about sharing his ideas for turning the country around.

He favours bringing in higher council tax on expensive homes in London and the South East, borrowing £40bn to build council houses, instigating income tax cuts for lower earners and rolling out a 50p top rate for the highest-paid.

We’re a long way from Burnham, who served in Gordon Brown's Cabinet as Chief Secretary to the Treasury from 2007 to 2008, then became Culture Secretary from 2008 to 2009 and Health Secretary from 2009 to 2010, taking the keys to Number 10.

However, whatever happens in Liverpool this week, the North of England should not squander this opportunity to show its mettle. Following the embarrassing debacle that was Angela Rayner, and the unedifying hunt for a ‘Northern working-class woman’ to replace her as deputy party leader, Labour has clearly been struggling with its ‘Northern problem’.

Put simply, there are scores of backbench MPs representing Northern constituencies in which disenchanted voters are drifting alarmingly into the welcoming arms of Nigel Farage’s Reform UK.

Such MPs, defending loyally the government’s corrosive stance on benefit reform, batting off public anger at the failure to stop the ‘small boats’ and aware of a rapidly-accelerating remoteness between Westminster and the rest of the UK, are fearful and frustrated.

He's not a magic bullet, by any means, but Burnham, with his easy laddish air, charisma and chutzpah – his policies, such as the publicly-owned Bee Line bus network, have made Manchester a city that forges ahead but never forgets its people – is proving both a missing link and a dangerous outlier.

A big part of the problem is the fact that Starmer was born and raised in Surrey – as the New Statesmen interviewer, editor Tom McTague puts it, “that most nowhere of counties”. Through no fault of his own, McTague argues, Starmer “has no heartland, no power base – other than north London, which itself appears to be rejecting him”.

Before leaving Westminster and taking charge of Manchester as Mayor in 2017, Burnham twice stood for the Labour leadership. His second defeat, in 2015, was galling. He started as favourite but failed to halt the march of Jeremy Corbyn. Disillusioned, Burnham left Westminster. Now a decade later, all the talk is of another shot.

Rumours and counter-rumours swirl. In an interview with the BBC, Burnham has said himself that Labour MPs had been “in touch with me” to discuss the leadership, and urged the government to develop a “proper plan for the country”.

But in a follow-up, BBC 5 Live conducted a poll last week of 320 out of the 399 Labour MPs currently sitting in Parliament, and reported that whilst they lamented the performance of Starmer, there was little appetite for Burnham to ride to the rescue.

One told the BBC that Burnham “seems to promote himself every time there's a perceived crack in the wall… a bit like Japanese knotweed”. A minister said a “few disgruntled MPs” made up “the Burnham fan club” and the rest just wanted him to “focus on his actual job in Manchester”.

Whilst Starmer writhes in Downing Street, Burnham, even without a Parliamentary seat to call his own, increasingly captures the sway of public imagination in the North. And smart operator as he is, this week in Liverpool will likely only bolster his appeal, and perhaps not just here, but across other disillusioned corners of the UK.

Meanwhile, the sitting Prime Minister, who has famously admitted to not being a big reader of fiction, recently telling puzzled schoolkids his favourite book is 20th century football comic ‘Roy of the Rovers’, could do worse than putting those infamous spectacles to good use.