Burnham has just revealed his very expensive plans for government

 Squint, and you can begin to see the outlines of an Andy Burnham premiership.

The plans emerged in the speech given by the Mayor of Greater Manchester on Monday and interviews with ITV News and The Mirror over the weekend.

The immediate targets for his pitch are the people of Makerfield, who will decide if he becomes their MP next month – but the wider significance is lost on no one.

“A vote for me will be a vote to change Labour,” Mr Burnham told the audience at the Great North summit in Leeds. For Labour, read Sir Keir Starmer.

Mr Burnham could be prime minister before schools break for the summer holidays, so what he says on the campaign trail in this mother of all by-elections really matters.

What do we know so far? There is a narrative arc, a policy agenda painted in broad brushstrokes – and one vast, unanswered question.

The theme first. Mr Burnham is arguing that Britain has been on the wrong path since the 1980s, a four-decade slide into decline that he is vowing to overturn.

It is a rebuke not only of Thatcherism, which he argues gutted the North via deindustrialisation, but also of New Labour for keeping some of its tenets in place into the 21st century.

Seeking to channel this anti-politics sentiment, Mr Burnham is framing himself as an outsider, ready to take on Whitehall and make it work better for the people.

But how? For one, he is putting up in lights his discomfort with how far Thatcher’s privatisation drive went, linking it with today’s rising cost of living.

Taking whole chunks of the water and energy industry into some form public ownership is part of his solution, as well as rail operators – something that is already under way under Labour.

Another strand of his economic vision appears to be reindustrialising the North. Details are scant, but presumably any proposals involve sizeable amounts of new public investment.

Soaring rents is another area in which the Greater Manchester mayor wants intervention, telling ITV News that chasing increasing rents via benefit payments is driving up public spending.

The policy prescription here is hazy. We know Rachel Reeves, the Chancellor, has been exploring a rental cap. It seems Mr Burnham’s instinct is top-down Government action.

Then there is council housing. There was a plea, via the Mirror interview, for a return to post-war levels of building for new council housing – an aim many, no doubt, would applaud.

History shows the scale of that ambition. In the 1950s, councils built 147,000 homes a year, according to the Local Government Association. In the last decade? A hundreth of that figure – just 1,400 homes a year.

Set aside the question of Brexit for a moment – Mr Burnham attempted to close down that flank by saying now was not the time to rejoin the European Union – and follow the money.

There is a telling silence so far on how, exactly, all of this would be funded. Once, Mr Burnham’s answer appeared to be a borrowing spree.