On days like this you have to ask yourself one question: is it me who is going mad? Or has our politics just taken yet another turn through the looking-glass? How can we be sure that anything is real when all the old certainties are shattered?

Picture the scene. After a weekend down in Chequers sticking pins into his Wes Streeting and Andy Burnham dolls, Keir Starmer re-emerged in Labour HQ to give one of his trademark demotivational speeches to the staff. And towards the end, he promised to offer his 100% support to the Labour candidate in the Makerfield byelection. To do whatever was necessary to beat Reform.

Now think this one through. During the recent local elections, time and again Labour canvassers found people who said they wouldn’t vote Labour again while Starmer was prime minister. They didn’t trust him, they didn’t like him. For many the feeling was visceral. They actively hated him. Even if they couldn’t always say why. They just did. They weren’t interested in whether they were being fair or not. That ship had long since sailed. They just wanted someone else.

So imagine Keir in Makerfield. Doing his best to get Burnham elected. “Vote Labour. Because you hate me. Because you want a completely different Labour party. Because you want a new prime minister.” “Vote Labour to get rid of me.” “Vote Labour. To change Labour. You know it makes sense.” It sounds nuts.

But that’s precisely the message Team Andy want voters in the constituency to hear. Forget the last two years or so. That’s just been a false start. We’re starting again with a blank slate. You know Keir has been a bit rubbish, I know Keir has been a bit rubbish. The only person who doesn’t know he’s been rubbish is Keir. But trust me. He will be gone by the end of the summer.

What else can Starmer do? The reality is that the only reason Burnham is standing in the byelection is because he wants Starmer to go. He isn’t planning on giving up his role as Greater Manchester mayor just so that he can sit on the backbenches. He’s run for the Labour leadership twice before and he’s hoping that this will be third time lucky.

So the only useful purpose Keir can play in this byelection is as a target. To be the focus of everything that voters had disliked about Labour in government up till now. He might as well wear a sign around his neck. One that says: “I’m a failure. Kick me.” Because telling people in Makerfield that they have got it wrong, that he is basically the good guy who will be bringing in the change they want is a ship that has long since sailed.

Or maybe Starmer will decide the best way he can help Burnham’s campaign is to stay in London and pretend it isn’t happening. I guess that’s no madder than Kemi Badenoch insisting the Conservatives didn’t lose any seats at the local elections. It’s not clear what happened to the nearly 600 seats that went missing. Perhaps they were only mislaid. Or fell out of one of her pockets.

There’s a third possibility. One that is even more deranged than the rest. That Starmer has no idea his time in office is coming to an end. Is mystified why Wes resigned as health secretary last week and why Angela Rayner declined the opportunity to take his place. Imagined that something dreadful must have happened to Josh Simons to force a byelection and has yet to realise that the Andy Burnham who is standing is the same Andy Burnham who was Greater Manchester mayor. Or somehow thinks that Andy will lose, Wes will melt away and he can continue for ever and ever. The incremental date with destiny.

That certainly seemed to be the case when Keir popped up to do a brief TV clip later in the afternoon. Here he declared his premiership was not over, he was not going to set out a timetable for his resignation and he was going to take Labour to another crushing victory at the next general election. Whatever questions the country was facing, he was the answer. What we all needed was not to see less of him, but to see even more of him. To unleash the real Keir. Starmer on speed. Sometimes denial is the only defence mechanism that works.

Meanwhile, the Great Pretender himself was in Leeds to give a speech to the Great Northern Investment Summit. Though in truth it was rather more the opening shots in Burnham’s bid to win the Makerfield byelection. Over the years it’s often been hard to get a firm grasp on what Andy really believes as he’s morphed from Blairite to Brownite to Corbynite to Starmerite.

So it remains to be seen if we are now seeing the real thing. The day Burnham became a Burnhamite. But he certainly knows how to hold an audience even at a relatively low-key event. And if leadership is mainly charisma then he’s more than halfway to No 10. He reaches people and parts of the country that Starmer never could. And never will. Not least because people are still awake by the time he comes to the end.

Big changes were needed, he said. That’s what Makerfield had demanded. He tried to frame this as a battle of ideas rather than personality. Keir was not mentioned once. The north had been neglected for 40 years. Trickle-down economics had failed. It was time to decentralise more power. That was the reason he was standing in the byelection, he insisted. Not sure that was the only reason, mind. He wanted us to forget he had one eye – if not two – on Downing St.

And yes, he did want closer ties with Europe. Hell, that had even been in the king’s speech. So he wasn’t getting out of line. But he wasn’t suggesting rejoining the EU any time soon. Besides, it’s not even clear if the EU would have us while Reform are in with a shout of government. Brexit had been damaging but we would just have to live with it. He wasn’t about to piss off the voters in Wigan. Though he might have disappointed Labour voters elsewhere.

This was all about a transfer of power to the people. And to him, natch. A vote to change Labour. Even Keir must have heard that.