I told you the bookies always give the best indication of the likely outcome of an election. As it happened, Labour’s Andy Burnham won by an even bigger margin over the Reform candidate (who seemed hopelessly out his depth) than even they predicted.

It is now looking increasingly likely that Andy Burnham will challenge for the leadership of the party and the momentum he has will secure his ambition to become our next Prime Minister.

Perhaps it is fanciful to imagine that the Labour party’s fortunes will change markedly under a new leader. The Conservatives tried it a number of times without any success. This suggests that it is really good policies and performance that gets rewarded, otherwise, people are going to vote for “change”.

Would an Andy PM likely scrap the very unpopular local government reorganisation ? Very unlikely… but you never know. Even if he did, I doubt whether it would encourage many local people here to start voting for the red team.

Clearly, there are bigger fish to fry….. getting businesses to thrive and the economy moving…. sorting out how social care is to be properly funded….. the defence of our Nation and an improved relationship with the EU would all likely come first, along with some tough decisions on how much we can expect from an NHS.

Of course, as a Lib Dem, I would particularly like to see a better social contract between government and the people…. meaning for a start off that we have a voting system that encourages everyone to vote and that every vote does count towards the government we then get.

I am not holding my breath on this last one…. the Labour membership supports a proportional voting system and successive Leaders and wanna-be leaders have talked up the possibility….. but Labour never actually deliver on it.

As always, would like to read what you think….