Andy Burnham is set to walk into Number 10 the undisputed heir to Sir Keir Starmer. It doesn’t look good. In fact, Mr Burnham is making the same mistake Sir Keir did before him – by failing to think about how he communicates with the public.

In theory, there’s plenty of time for a new contender to step forward and announce that they want to be a candidate in a leadership contest. But potential candidates have been ruling themselves out. Former health secretary Wes Streeting was expected to stand, but now says he backs Mr Burnham. Keir Starmer’s loyal ally Darren Jones briefly considered throwing his hat in the ring, but has declared that he too will be backing Andy. There’s still Al Carns, the former defence minister, who continues to hint that he might be a candidate. But it looks very much as if there will be no contest at all, and Mr Burnham will get the “coronation” he hopes for.

It’s a mistake. Mr Burnham has been busy running Greater Manchester for the past nine years – an important job, but nothing to do with becoming Prime Minister. He’s won a by-election, which once again is an achievement but doesn’t entitle you to take the top job. Plenty of other MPs have also won by-elections.

The idea that he will just waltz into Downing Street gives the impression that he has a remarkable sense of entitlement. Who is this guy to think he can run the country without any sort of vote – not even a vote within the Labour Party, never mind the country as a whole?

To be fair, I know Andy Burnham a little and he is, in reality, a perfectly decent and humble man (as humble as anyone can be while still becoming a successful politician).

But he’s not coming across that way. If I was him, I would have been tempted to ask Darren Jones or Wes Streeting to stand, so that there would at least have been a leadership contest. The sight of Mr Burnham travelling the country, answering questions and fighting for the top job would make the handover of power far more palatable, even though only Labour activists would actually be able to vote.

Labour MPs aren’t helping. There is an account in this weeks’s edition of The Spectator magazine that illustrates their behaviour.

The magazine reports: “After he was sworn in as an MP, an aide took him to Westminster Hall to meet his fellow Labour MPs. Burnham peered through the door and saw hundreds of them assembled for a photograph. ‘Blimey!’ he said.”

Spectator Political Editor Tim Shipman says a Labour source told him: “Everybody’s texting everyone in Team Burnham saying, ‘I need to see Andy’.”

They all want to be on Team Burnham. But where are the public in all this? Who is explaining to voters why Mr Burnham is the man to be Prime Minister, and what he has done to deserve the job?

When Sir Keir became Prime Minister in 2024, he soon discovered that first impressions count for a lot.

Instead of showing voters that he was changing the country for the better, he delivered a speech warning that things would get worse.

And one of the first decisions made by his government was to means-test winter fuel payments for the elderly – a hugely unpopular move.

It set the wrong tone for his government, and he never really recovered.

Mr Burnham is in danger of making similar mistakes – not echoing the gloomy message, but getting off on the wrong foot with the public.

He needs to improve his comms, stop worrying about fawning Labour MPs and start explaining himself to voters.