Current PM Sir Keir Starmer has been derided as king of the U-turns. By January, the Express had already counted 13 flip-flops and they’ve kept coming ever since. No doubt he’ll keep going round in circles until Burnham shows him the door to No 10. The incumbent may change, but the flip-flops won’t stop because Burnham has picked up exactly the same habit. He’s been U-turning left, right and centre on pretty much everything, and he isn’t even PM yet.

Burnham’s first U-turn was running for PM in the first place. Within days of assuring Greater Manchester he was committed to being its mayor, he triggered a needless by-election that he hopes will take him to Westminster instead. Now the policy U-turns are coming so thick and fast that even Sir Keir is taking notes. Even more curiously, many of these U-turns mirror the same ones Starmer has already performed. On trans rights, for example. Burnham was forced into an embarrassing reverse ferret after previously backing transgender women using female toilets.

In 2022, Burnham dismissed protecting single-sex spaces for biological women as “quite a small minority view”. He’s now backtracked, just like Starmer, who famously got into a muddle over penises and percentages.

Burnham has also reversed on Brexit, calling for Britain to rejoin the EU before realising that view wouldn’t play too well in pro-Brexit Makerfield, the constituency Labour is relying on to get him into Parliament. Bang. Another U-turn.

“Backtrack Burnham” also got into trouble by claiming Britain should stop being “in hock to the bond market”. That immediately sparked jitters over Labour borrowing plans and forced him into another humiliating retreat. He’s also twisted himself in knots over chancellor Rachel Reeves’s fiscal rules and which taxes he might hike in power.

Burnham has even U-turned on immigration. All the talk was that he would ditch home secretary Shabana Mahmood, who’s made a decent fist of the job. Now apparently he backs tighter controls. At least this week.

Sadly, he didn’t make a U-turn when photographers spotted him out jogging in those thigh-revealing shorts. But there’s another U-turn he desperately needs to make, and as far as we know, hasn’t.

Westminster rumours suggest Burnham now plans to dump Rachel Reeves as chancellor and replace her with Ed Miliband. Reeves is a total car crash but Miliband would take the madness to another level entirely, just as he’s done with energy policy. He’s driven up household bills, hammered industry and accelerated Britain’s deindustrialisation. Despite the backlash, Red Ed keeps ploughing on while justifying it with increasingly absurd arguments.

Miliband insists more North Sea drilling won’t cut energy bills, while completely ignoring the many economic benefits it would bring. Jobs. Tax revenues. Export earnings. A stronger pound. Better energy security. Lower emissions than importing fuel halfway around the world.

In Scotland they’re hopping up and down as Milliband arrogantly destroys their oil and gas industry, bringing Aberdeen to its knees. Tony Blair is doing his nut over Miliband too.

Now imagine that thinking applied across the entire UK economy. It’s too terrifying to contemplate. Yet all the chatter suggests Burnham wants Miliband running Number 11. So please, Andy, backtrack on this plan too. This is one U-turn we can all get behind.