I keep getting struck by disturbing similarities between myself and Andy Burnham. I don’t mean this in a positive way - for either of us. You wouldn’t want me anywhere near Downing Street. We’re the same age, and we both seem to suffer from our generation’s principle sickness: the desire to be cool. It’s a vain, pointless, embarrassing affliction. But at least I admit it.

Gen X has spent its time on Earth labouring to be hip. When we should have been sandbagging our lives for a stormy future, we were dropping ecstasy - paid for by unlimited credit - during the great holiday from history that was the 1990s. Many of us are still footing the bill, in more ways than one.

We let time slip through our fingers. Now the world is falling down around our ears and we’re panicking because somehow we’re finally in charge. Burnham’s response is to promise a great ‘rewiring’ of Britain.

To rewire, however, you must have a talent for DIY - you need to know how pipes and plumbing work, what goes where, how to avoid electrocuting yourself and blowing your home to smithereens.

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When it comes to Burnham, he’s about as capable at the DIY of statecraft as I am at the DIY of plain old home-improvement. I’m banned, by my wife, from using anything more complicated than a hammer - even then she supervises me. I’ve been known to collapse walls, explode plugs, start fires, open veins and fall through windows.

I’m the Frank........

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