Andy Burnham has embarked on a tour of the UK where he will champion a “ten-year plan to bring back hope”. This has been the language of the early stages of the Burnham premiership – in his first speech in Downing Street, he proclaimed it the moment when “Britain starts to believe again, the moment we bring back hope”.

Politicians invoking hope are sometimes denigrated as trite and vacuous – as if they are leading people on with empty rhetoric. Even Barack Obama, who used the rhetoric of hope in his 2008 US presidential campaign, was later mocked by Sarah Palin, running mate of Obama’s rival for the White House John McCain, about “that hopey, changey thing”.

Psychologists and philosophers have fleshed out what hope means as a distinct concept. Rather than just expecting the future to be better than the present somehow, hope is about being faced with uncertainty and believing it is possible to make that future better.

Giving people hope is about convincing them that it is possible to pursue that better future, either individually or collectively. For Burnham, a wide body of research suggests there are three kinds of hope in particular that he will – or should – be aiming to rekindle on his tour of the country.

Psychologists make a critical distinction between hope and optimism.........

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