Andy Burnham shows he is the bravest Labour leader in a long time

Sir Keir often liked to fudge things and speak in vague platitudes.

Mr Burnham could not have been anymore different.

He tackled so many key topics which successive Labour leaders and PMs of any part have not wanted to address: The pensions triple lock, the national care service, proportional representation and Brexit.

These are all taboo subjects which Mr Burnham rightly said politicians “usually avoid”.

But they are also areas which need solutions. He did not shy away.

Many politicians have debated scrapping the triple lock. It is a huge cost to the taxpayer and is almost definitely unsustainable.

But they do nothing because they know pensioners vote in numbers and could boot them out of office.

Not Mr Burnham. He said its current form, which guarantees increases in line with the highest of inflation, earnings or 2.5 per cent, will be gone from 2030.

From then on, there will be a double lock. The state pension rise in line with inflation or 2.5 per cent.

The point of this is to create a national care service.

Social care has been widely acknowledged as a problem issue for the country.

But no one - other than Boris Johnson, to be fair - has wanted to take any measures to raise the money to sort it.

Now Mr Burnham has announced an NHS-style National Care Service in England. The groundwork will be laid now and it will be introduced in the next parliament.

He vowed to fight the next election with a pledge to change the electoral system and announced a new commission on reform.

This is an area Labour often talks about in opposition, but goes quiet on when it is in power.

On perhaps the most toxic topic of all - Brexit - he did not mince his words.

He said that “Brexit has done more harm than good” and then vowed to set out options for a closer relationship with the European Union.

He delivered a blistering defence of the United Kingdom and had a swipe at John Swinney.

The Labour leader said that the First Minister claimed he would be the UK’s last Prime Minister on the day his dad Roy died.

He said he was not telling the story because he wanted “sympathy” or to “criticise” the SNP leader.

Mr Burnham said: “I relay it because I want you to know how it made me feel. Utterly determined to prove him wrong.”

He went on to say that he believed in a country which was “a union of nations that gave trade unions and the cooperative movement to the world, the National Health Service, a country that stood up to fascism, a country of solidarity, not separation.”

He added that “we will always be stronger facing a changing world together, rather than separating.”

And he vowed to “use this job to build the kind of Britain my dad wanted to see, and fight with everything I've got to keep it together.

“Not the last prime minister of the United Kingdom, rather the first to rewire it to make it work for all people and places.”

It was the best way anyone had argued for Scotland saying in the UK since Gordon Brown.

Mr Burnham said at the start of his speech that people may not agree with him in the measures he announced.

But he warned that “we need to be bigger and have the courage of our convictions”.

Too many before him have failed on that front and the country has paid for it as a result.

Fortune favours the bold. This speech will go down in history.