For too long, only the right has expanded the boundaries of what governments can do. Can Burnham change that? | Andy Beckett

The PM might come across as a nice bloke but he is politically ruthless. He will need to be if he is to turn big talk into big changes

How much can a Labour government change the country? According to many voters, journalists and politicians, including plenty in the party itself, the answer to that stubbornly recurring question has always been: not that much. Labour governments can’t restructure the economy, radically redistribute wealth, truly empower the disadvantaged or adopt a genuinely ethical foreign policy without upsetting too many powerful interests, from the British rich to the US government to global financial markets.

This endlessly repeated conventional wisdom – internalised by some on the left as well as centrists and the right – has haunted many Labour governments, from the first, tentative ones in the 1920s to Keir Starmer’s diligent but failed administration a century later. Yet conventional wisdom can be wrong, especially in volatile periods such as the current one, when precedent may count for little.

Andy Beckett is a Guardian columnist