If football-mad Andy Burnham wins his penalty shoot-out with Nigel Farage on Thursday, the new Labour MP for Makerfield would deserve his chance to play and beat Keir Starmer in a Downing Street cup final.
It remains an "if" despite promising opinion polls, but a Burnham triumph in Make-or-Breakerfield would be a stunning personal achievement.
Fortune favours the brave, and the Greater Manchester Mayor took a huge gamble fighting a seat with a Labour majority less than half of the one it lost to the Greens in nearby Gorton and Denton three months ago.
With Makerfield 18th on Reform's Labour target list and 29th on the hard-right party's overall Westminster hit list, a buoyant Burnham could legitimately pose as the striker who trounced Farage and Reform.
Of course, he's enjoyed strokes of luck. Farage picked a dud candidate in Richard Kenyon and the vengeful kamikaze Rupert Lowe's Restore Britain, with its openly racist supporters, has split the opposition.
But Burnham will have earned his bid for the top job and cheerleaders in Parliament want him to move fast, tackling wearying Starmer straight away. The hope is that an overwhelming show of force would persuade the PM, who is almost certainly doomed, to quit – while simultaneously intimidating potential rivals such as Wes Streeting to sue for peace and a Cabinet post.
Burnham in No10 might prove more of a fresh vibe than a dramatic change of course, when he too is talking of welfare cuts and increased defence spending, and is another who wouldn't put money where his mouth was for Waspi women. What Labour certainly requires is a far more compelling storyteller than Spreadsheet Starmer to sell successes (work rights, tenants, minimum wage, extra jobs, reviving the NHS, breakfast clubs, childcare, rail renationalisation, saving steel, keeping out of the Iran war).
The party should not be defined by its failures (winter fuel, Mandelson and initially Gaza, before recognising Palestine as a state) and should paint a more attractive vision to entice back home alienated natural Labour voters.
The World Cup Final of British politics is the next general election, which may be as far away as 2029.
If, and it is still "if", Burnham is elected to Parliament on Thursday then becomes Prime Minister, he would have up to three years to revitalise Labour's fortunes.
Burnham taking credit for Starmer's achievements would be rough justice for a former Director of Public Prosecutions branded a dud by too many voters. But politics is, always has been, always will be, a tough game.
Lose Thursday's clash with Farage and it'll obviously be a very different outcome for Burnham – but, I suspect, not for Starmer.
