The cost of living, public services funding, productivity, inequality, high streets, housing, the electoral system, and the climate are all agreed to be in crisis.
Continuing with the status quo is an enormous risk.
Yet over the past decade, whenever a government or potential government has proposed major change, a consensus quickly forms that the proposals are reckless and impractical: too vague, too expensive, too disruptive.
John McDonnell and Jeremy Corbyn's plans for a more equal economy, Theresa May's 2017 social care reform, Boris Johnson's levelling up promise, Liz Truss's tax-cut growth plan, and Ed Miliband's clean energy jobs plan—all have been dismissed as fantasies or warned against as profoundly dangerous.
Some plans were less thought out than others, but the breadth of hostility to reform has been revealing.
The speed with which recent prime ministers have become derided figures is striking.
Much of the country is desperate to be rescued but can't stand anyone who tries to do it.
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For Andy Burnham, this is an ominous dynamic.
After a decade and a half during which living standards have languished, many voters are so angry that their outlook verges on nihilism: rejecting government proposals, demanding a different government, and then turning against that government within months.
Alongside this restlessness is a slower, older, conservative impulse, particularly strong in the rightwing press, that says the country is in decline and little can be done.
