One should not pray for anyone’s defeat. But if Andy Burnham is beaten in the Makerfield by-election on June 18, I will give thanks to the Lord and rejoice.

In a bleak political landscape there will be a shred of hope if this overrated, scheming, opportunistic charlatan is despatched by the voters on whom he has foisted himself.

Joy may be short lived, though. For if Burnham loses it will be a huge fillip to his main rival, Wes Streeting, who is no less of an overrated, scheming, opportunistic charlatan.

In that event we can only hope that the Labour Party will come to its senses and repudiate Streeting – plus any other prospective prime ministers crawling out of the woodwork – and rally around Sir Keir Starmer.

I freely admit that I have written many harsh things about our beleaguered PM. But in recent weeks I have also suggested that, if he goes, what comes next will be far worse.

The more I see of Burnham and Streeting, the more convinced I am that either of them would precipitate a disaster which would make us look back on Starmer’s stint in No 10 almost with fondness and longing.

The same can be said of tax-lax Angela Rayner, Net Zero zealot Ed Miliband, and a presumptuous junior minister called Al Carns, all of whom would fancy their chances if Burnham were rejected by the worthy burghers of Makerfield.

Yes, Sir Keir Starmer may be the worst Prime Minister of my lifetime. He does not appear to have any consistent political beliefs, which explains why he has executed so many U-turns.

He has tried to give away the Chagos Islands to Mauritius for £35 billion even though we already own them. He sucked up in a cringe-making fashion to Donald Trump, all to no avail. He has stalled on raising defence expenditure, though an announcement of extra cash is reportedly imminent.

In the long list of his errors and shortcomings we must include endorsing Rachel Reeves’ £75 billion in tax increases, as well as his querulous refusal to deal with rocketing welfare spending.

But for all his many sins he cannot properly be described as overrated (since we have the measure of him) or particularly adept at scheming or unusually opportunistic. Nor would I describe him as a charlatan.

If Starmer were by some miracle to survive as Prime Minister until the next election, we may be reasonably confident that he would hand over a country still in one piece and potentially salvageable. The same can’t be said of his would-be usurpers.

Bumptious Andy Burnham gives us no hope that he would address the problems of our age: low growth, uncontrolled immigration, and spiralling welfare.

These are tribulations that certainly concern thousands of voters in Makerfield. Burnham’s lack of any credible solutions will count against him.

Last year he did supply a terrifying glimpse into his economic thinking when he stated we shouldn’t be ‘in hock to the bond markets’. Britain is in hock to them in the sense that a spendthrift is in hock to an increasingly uneasy bank from which he is asking to borrow ever more money.

Burnham is a man of the Left and full of daft ideas. But whereas some of his ideological predecessors were substantial and impressive politicians – people such as Tony Benn or Michael Foot – he is a slight figure, comically miscast as ‘King of the North’.

The man interviewed on the hoof by BBC News on Saturday was both strikingly unkingly and inarticulate. He burbled on about the need to ‘save Labour’ and said his party should ‘get closer to these communities again’. What about saving the country?

Yet for some bizarre reason many Labour voters respect him, if polls are right. Part of the explanation is that, having been Mayor of Manchester for nine years, he hasn’t been tainted with the public failures of Westminster politicians.

People forget, or may not know, that his brief spell as Health Secretary from 2009 to 2010 was a damp squib. He underplayed the shameful deaths of up to 1,200 patients in the mid-Staffs NHS scandal, and exaggerated the dangers of swine flu to humans.

Nor has his tenure as Mayor of Manchester been as stellar as his acolytes claim. He wasted £100 million of taxpayers’ money on a scheme for a ‘clean air zone’ that was abandoned after it met foreseeable opposition.

Meanwhile, in a civil case beginning on June 9, it will be claimed that Burnham unfairly subsidised the building of skyscrapers in Manchester and had too close a relationship with the developer behind the projects.

Doubtless he has had some achievements. I don’t accuse him of being a total failure, only of being far from the political genius he is cracked up to be. Besides, being a city Mayor with limited powers is not comparable with being Prime Minister. Why do people assume he can do it?

If Burnham succeeds in pulling the wool over the eyes of the electors of Makerfield, it will be curtains for Starmer – and for Streeting, who is much less popular in the party than his rival. But if Burnham is beaten by Reform UK’s candidate, Wes’s day could finally come.

Streeting is decidedly Machiavellian, having imbibed the dark arts at the feet of Peter Mandelson. Now that Mandy has become the most toxic man in Britain, Wes has deleted pictures of the two of them together.

On Saturday he airily declared that Brexit has been a ‘catastrophic mistake’ and said he would support Britain rejoining the EU. This is outrageous. Are the votes of 17.4 million people in the 2016 referendum to be so casually set aside?

Streeting wasn’t only expressing his belief. This was a Machiavellian gambit. He knows that Burnham also said last year that he would like Britain to rejoin the EU. But that is not something that can be easily repeated in Makerfield, where 65 per cent of voters backed Brexit.

If Burnham avoids the subject, Streeting can sell himself within the widely pro-EU Labour Party as the true champion of rejoining. If Burnham admits he deplores Brexit, he increases his chances of defeat in the by-election – clearing the way for Streeting. Machiavelli would be proud of him. Mandelson is.

Last week Streeting represented himself as a man of principle while displaying as much integrity as the practitioner of a three-card trick. He succeeded in creating a huge kerfuffle without having the support of the 81 MPs he needed to challenge Starmer.

By the way, there is no evidence that Streeting was a successful Health Secretary. If the NHS is slightly improved, it’s because tens of billions of extra pounds are being pumped into it. Waiting lists have fallen a little, though partly because of a statistical sleight of hand.

Andy Burnham and Wes Streeting aren’t capable of being the saviours of the Labour Party or of Britain. Streeting may offer a smidgeon more in economic competence but would be even more divisive over Brexit than Burnham.

We may have an irritating, third-rate Prime Minister. Many are enjoying his fall from power. But in comparison with these two over ambitious pygmies, Sir Keir Rodney Starmer is a political giant.