ANDY BURNHAM’S greatest problem as Labour leadership contender is that he peaked early, being touted last year as Ed Miliband’s likely successor.

His bravura performance at Labour Party conference made him the darling of the party, leading Unite general secretary Len McCluskey to comment: “The person who impresses me most at the moment is Andy Burnham.”

This was misread by many in the media to indicate that Unite had anointed Burnham as its candidate in waiting.

This ignores the reality that this decision is one for the membership-elected rank-and-file national executive committee.

Whether Burnham himself believed that the left was sewn up for his candidacy is unknown, but he acted as if this was the case.

Expecting the 35-MP nomination threshold to exclude any candidate to his left, his campaign began with efforts to appeal to Labour’s right-wing parliamentary majority — or the centre as it calls itself.

He told the Andrew Marr show that McCluskey was wrong to urge a more left-wing approach, as was Peter Mandelson in demanding a return to New Labour.

“I am attracting support from all parts of the party,” he boasted.

Burnham admits in today’s Morning Star that he spent the early stages of the campaign focusing on the deficit, immigration and benefits, claiming that these were the “most difficult issues we heard on the doorstep.”

He left out the most frequent criticism heard by election canvassers — namely that “you’re all the same.”

No-one could say this of Jeremy Corbyn who has tapped into a rich vein of hope that was previously submerged beneath thick layers of disillusionment and alienation.

Burnham has realised that there is no future in fighting with the other two Progress supporters over who articulates the austerity-lite agenda most attractively.

So he has veered to the left, calling for higher wages “at the lower end of the pay scales,” echoing Corbyn’s call for investment “in the skills and industries of the future,” allowing councils to build homes again and favouring a “progressive nationalisation of the railways.”

The shadow health secretary has a lot of ground to make up.

He has never backtracked on his support in government for unjust curbs on low-paid public-sector workers’ earnings.

While Corbyn envisages a corporate-tax-funded National Investment Bank to finance modern manufacturing projects, Burnham does not explain where investment would come from.

Similarly, his positive advocacy of a new generation of council homes for rent is untenable without a commitment to end the right to buy and to oppose the Tory plan to force councils to sell off high-value properties.

His reference to a “progressive renationalisation of the railways” has confused many people into thinking that he shares Corbyn’s principle of returning rail to public ownership.

In reality, Burnham has not moved beyond his campaign manager Michael Dugher’s general election plan to permit the public sector to bid against privateers to run rail franchises, which has two major weaknesses.

It would continue the inefficient and expensive franchise system and, given that private consortiums are better at drawing up imaginative tenders than running services for the public, there is no guarantee that public companies would win franchises.

Burnham has spoken out against the personalised abuse directed against Corbyn by Tony Blair and Yvette Cooper, which is welcome.

However, he joined with Cooper and Liz Kendall to accuse Corbyn’s camp of enjoying preferential access to affiliated member lists.

He still seems unsure whether his statements should be dictated by principle or opportunism.