Week one done.

Our new Prime Minister’s first five days in the job saw him announce a slew of meaningless gimmicks but Andy Burnham saved the best for last.

He promised to end rough sleeping, cut VAT from domestic energy bills, cut business rates for pubs, clubs and live music venues, and cap bus fares.

Taken together they will cost taxpayers £1.5bn.

But on Friday the self-styled King of the North, or Messiah without a Mandate to the rest of us, worked from home in his branch office in Manchester.

Our Andeh says his satellite office will create a sense of a more balanced country and “that big things can be done from here”.

The Liverpool-born, Everton Football Club supporting PM – parachuted into office without winning a general election – declared it the “best day of my life”.

Defending the move he hit back at his “London-based” critics, saying it’s better to have “a north pole that balances the south pole. At least it creates that sense of a more balanced country, and that big things can be done from here”.

It’s just pure coincidence his family still lives in… Manchester and he hates Britain’s capital city.

We’ve heard little else from backstabbing Burnham, who staged a coup to dethrone hapless Keir Starmer, other than he single-handedly transformed the city during his time as its mayor.

He promised its people he would never abandon it, and pledged to serve a full third term after his re-election in 2024… until he did precisely that when something bigger and better came along.

The Mancunian Messiah has adorned the walls of his satellite bureau with corny nods to his northern roots – including a gold disc of The Queen Is Dead – just in case, heaven forbid, the public he represents but who did not vote for him ever forgets where he comes from.

This is all for show.

And how do we know? Because, unlike Manchester, there are plenty of down at heel places in the north that could do with money, inward investment, transformation, and exposure.

Barnsley, in South Yorkshire, for example where more than one fifth of its neighborhoods fall into the top 10% most deprived areas in the country.

At the local elections in May, Labour lost control of the council in the proud former mining town – whose famous sons include Michael Parkinson and Dickie Bird – after 50 years.

Labour council leader Sir Stephen Houghton – who held his seat by just 23 votes – said he would “pick up the pieces and represent my residents the best way I can”.

Sir Steve, who led the council for 30 years and is one of Labour’s longest serving councillors in Britain, said he was “absolutely gutted” but defeat had come as little surprise.

In an assessment that should shame Burnham, who dropped the people of Manchester like a stone, he said Labour needed to “wake up and deal with the problems in left-behind communities now”.

He said: “We need to bring them back to life and restore faith in those communities.

“This is not just about this government, previous governments have ignored the problem too, but there will be even more losses like this coming soon.”

Up the road in Wakefield Labour had 57 of 63 councillors but now has just one.

Across the Pennines in Wigan – held by Labour since 1918 – Reform won 24 of 25 seats.

And there are plenty of other places up north crying out for investment, funding, and financing – forgotten towns that were once beating hearts but are now struggling to survive.

A sceptical public might have bought into Burnham’s drive to devolve power from Westminster if he had set up shop in, say, Blackpool, Middlesbrough, Kingston upon Hull, Darlington or Scunthorpe.

And if in the North, why not a branch office in the East and West?

Devon and Cornwall are largely forgotten counties, cut off from the rest of the country.

And what about Wales? It was once the very essence of Labour, a fiercely proud and patriotic country of working class men.

Indelibly linked to its industrial communities and coal mining valleys the country that produced Aneurin Bevan, the founder of the NHS, and Neil Kinnock, turned its back on the party and ran into the arms of Plaid Cymru and Reform UK when votes were cast in May.

The biggest surprise was that these results were no surprise at all because Labour has betrayed the very people it promised it would never abandon.

No 10 North is, ironically given the birthplace of New Labour and Burnham’s loathing of Sir Tony Blair, currently located in the New Islington area of Manchester.

The preposterous idea is a gimmick, especially when illegal immigration and the cost of living top the list of people’s priorities, but Burnham is expected to work like this every week.

After two years of misery under a failing Labour government people want real, workable solutions to the myriad of problems facing this country, not ego-stroking vanity projects that make it easier for Burnham to get home for a couple of pints of Boddingtons.