Ten years ago this week, the Brexit vote delivered an earthquake in Westminster.

When the result was announced, the landscape of British politics shifted permanently.

You can still feel the shockwaves of that seismic moment reverberating in our country today. Sir Keir Starmer, the man convinced he could bring stability after the chaos of the previous years, has limped out of Downing Street with his approval ratings in the gutter.

He is the sixth person in a decade who has proven himself wholly incapable of getting any form of grip on the country.

Meanwhile, rather than face the music at the ballot box, his party is engineering for Andy Burnham to seize power in a manner so brazen it would make commanders of a banana republic blush. 

Having won last week's election in Makerfield, Burnham plans to follow Starmer into Downing Street next month not just without a mandate from the public but without (so far) as much as a cross word from any of his senior colleagues.

Such behaviour just goes to show that for all the post-Brexit upheavals, Labour – like their Conservative predecessors – have failed to learn the lesson of the past ten years.

Because time and again, the will of the people in this country is either overruled or, more often than not, simply ignored.

Make no mistake, the old political certainties are now dead. Six prime ministers in the space of ten years – and a seventh on the way – tells its own story. Andy Burnham has shown he is capable of warm words but the British public is past all that. What we need in this country is truly radical action, something Burnham can't and won't deliver. 

What troubles me most about Burnham becoming prime minister, and I suspect many of you too, is that he will enter No 10 without winning a general election. He wasn't even an MP at the last election, for heaven's sake, and yet here he is about to be shoe-horned into Downing Street as though the job of prime minister is some sort of God-given right.

Instead, he has spent the past nine years as Mayor of Manchester, a largely ceremonial role which, I'm told, involves a lot of ribbon-cutting.

We are constantly informed that he's a popular figure around Manchester and has apparently done one or two good things for the buses. Good for him. But the rest of the nation is completely in the dark as to what kind of person he is and, indeed, what he plans to do to the country.

As for his politics, I've studied Burnham for years and even I haven't a clue what they are.

Observing his political career has been a bit like watching one of those Peter Sellers comedies in which he plays half a dozen characters, each more ridiculous than the one before. One minute he's Blairite, the next minute he's backing Brown. Then he's serving under Jeremy Corbyn and his crackpots.

Even during the recent by-election in Makerfield, Burnham was all over the shop, U-turning on a promise to pay compensation to the Waspi women within a matter of hours.

I'm certainly not shedding any tears over Sir Keir's Starmer's departure. He was an utterly dreadful Prime Minister – incompetent, dithering, totally uninspiring. Worst of all, he blamed everyone but himself.

But for his own MPs to go and dump him in favour of someone who wasn't even an MP just a week ago shows a degree of arrogance even the Tories would have struggled to match.

The truth is, trust in our democracy is already at rock bottom because the political establishment has begun to treat general elections as an inconvenience. You only have to see how the Government behaved earlier this year when they tried to cancel as many as 30 local elections. They probably would have succeeded were it not for Reform UK securing a judicial review which pressured them into backing down.

Now Downing Street's revolving door has spun once more and yet again the public is expected to accept the new occupant without question. It's sickening.

Unless he calls an election, Andy Burnham's government will lack any legitimacy.

We have seen how this plays out before. Rishi Sunak's government failed to deliver radical change because he lacked a mandate from his party and the people.

The country will just steadily decline, all to ensure Andy Burnham gets to live out his dream as prime minister. Britain is broken and the only way we fix it is by giving the electorate a choice at the ballot box.