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The prime minister has lifted the spirits of the public and party members, and must use that goodwill to push through change
He bounded into the packed rally, a spring-heeled intruder whose very presence announced a coup at last year’s Labour conference. And so it was. Andy Burnham spoke with ebullient self-confidence, yet without aggression or a barrage of insults. They tried to stop him with a bogus constitutional fix barring him from standing in Gorton and Denton. But those Labour hierarchs lost it without him. His subsequent Makerfield victory proved their mistake and opened the door right into No 10 without dispute.
At that standing-room-only rally on proportional representation he made a pitch-perfect noteless speech of personal passion about the failure of politics to connect, the decline of Westminster, the public’s distrust and the risk of this lost public belief in democracy. His hands were clean, he never benefited from the monster majority that first past the post had delivered so unfairly to Labour MPs: he wasn’t there at the last two elections. He quit out of despair, returning to repair.
Polly Toynbee is a Guardian columnist
