Dan Hodges

and Nigel Farage.

Andy Burnham, rightly or wrongly, this morning across the Labour movement is seen as the Farage Slayer.

Now, whether he is or he isn't, we're going to find out obviously in the next few months and years.

But that's what, to the extent he's going to have a mandate from anyone,

And I personally have written about this today.

I mean, I think there should be a contest within the Labour Party rather than the coronation.

But either way, the extent to which Andy Burnham is going to have a mandate from his party to do anything, it's going to do one thing, and that's to defeat Nigel Farage.

Now, obviously, he's going to have a lot of problems, to put it mildly, dealing with that.

But the majority of Labour MPs understand you do not defeat Nigel Farage by articulating an incredibly liberal view on open borders or by reopening the Brexit argument.

Now, it's not to say there aren't people within the Labour Party who do want to see those arguments articulated.

But certainly for the first six to 12 months of a Burnham premiership, those people will find themselves pushed to the background

if Burnham can present himself as, as I said, someone who can be an antidote to reform.

And what I think part of what he will do, there will definitely be in some sort of areas a shift to the left.

But as we've seen within reform, there are elements of reforms policies, particularly on the economic side, which themselves are quite left wing.

And Kemi Badenoch has obviously done a good job in articulating, critiquing that.

So this idea that Andy Burnham comes in and he's just gonna be another starmer liberal lefty,

That's not going to be his job at the beginning.

His job is going to be save us from Farage.

And there is an appreciation.

Firstly, Andy Burnham appreciates this himself and the people around him do, and also a number of Labour MPs.