Andy Burnham has taken over as Labour leader and Prime Minister, but according to Daily Mail columnist Dan Hodges, he is doing so significantly underprepared for the role. Hodges argues that Burnham's team wanted a longer handover period from Keir Starmer, who announced his resignation four weeks earlier, but Starmer refused to remain in place until the party conference in late September, forcing a much faster and messier transition than Burnham's camp had planned.

Hodges points to several signs of disarray, including a poorly managed "special conference" speech on Friday that was seen as backward-looking and aimed only at the party rather than the wider public, confusion and contradictory briefings over Cabinet appointments (with figures such as Shabana Mahmood and Ed Miliband reportedly jockeying for the Chancellor role), and a policy agenda that appears disjointed, spanning issues from ID cards to North Sea oil and overseas aid without a coherent unifying message. One ally reportedly admitted there was not even a proper grid of announcements prepared for Burnham's first month in office, underlining the lack of readiness Hodges describes.