NEW: Bloomberg Saturday read Is Andy Burnham Labour’s saviour, or is it just… vibes? — The last week has been fascinating. Burnham has had a bumpy start. He’s boxed himself in by committing to the fiscal rules and Labour’s manifesto on tax. It significantly limits his room for manoeuvre to deliver his promise of change. — Some in Labour worry he’s already trapped by the same political and economic constraints that hampered Keir Starmer. While there’s no doubt he polls better and has more energy, they stress he isn’t a messiah who can fix all their problems. — Burnham performed 5 u-turns this week: on rejoining the EU, on the fiscal rules, backing a hardline immigration policy, reversing his trans views, and ditching a 50p top rate of tax. An MP on the left says he looks inauthentic. Another compares it to Starmer’s safety-first Ming vase strategy. — More clarifications are coming. Allies say it’ll be difficult to drop Starmer’s Brexit red lines on the single market and customs union before an election, and that it’ll be hard to fully nationalise energy and water. Ambitions are being scaled back. — A supporter says he’s being sensible and scraping the barnacles off the boat. But it shows he knows he has the same problem as Starmer losing votes both left and right, and he has a similar response: picking policies that appeal to each side. — So what’s different? Tax rises on capital sound likely, but that won’t raise much money and he’s now ruled out touching the big taxes. Some in Labour worry about the impact on growth and investment of a virtue-signalling tax policy. — One MP warns that by loudly promising “real change” but not giving himself the room to deliver it, Burnham could quickly see the public turn on him, just as they did on Starmer. The criticism doing the rounds is that he is just Starmerism with vibes and a northern accent. — There are growing concerns about the lack of serious planning Burnham has done for No10. His policy platform is erratic. His political operation is threadbare and largely consists of Ed Miliband’s team. MPs are appealing to Burnham to quickly expand his circle to avoid the sort of factional warfare that did for Starmer. — Some MPs also worry Burnham might immediately enter an economic downturn and new cost-of-living crisis just as he becomes PM, which the public will inevitably blame him for, preventing a honeymoon period. Some think he made a strategic error going so soon and should have let Starmer take the pain coming in the next six months. — Some MPs also want Burnham to stop getting into fights on Twitter, which he has been doing all week, raising eyebrows. His supporters say he’s a unity candidate who can attract voters from across the political divide. This campaign is already putting that to the test. bloomberg.com/news/articles/…