Isabel Hardman

Are mental health centres in libraries, banks and high street locations really going to make much of a difference? Health Secretary Yvette Cooper has unveiled the new facilities today with a £343 million funding package and a claim that this is ‘the biggest redesign of mental health services in a generation’. In any other healthcare setting, that would be a pretty bold claim to make, but instead it just underlines how little work there has been on making mental health services work within the wider NHS.

Andy Burnham is apparently enjoying his first taste of unpopularity as prime minister, in the form of the furore over the early release of domestic abusers and the killers of PC Andrew Harper. The Prime Minister made his frustration at the limitations of his situation clear yesterday with a lengthy post on X where he said he wanted to go further in restricting eligibility for early release, but couldn’t. In reality, though, this is a very mild taste for Burnham of the difficulties he will really face: more of a whiff of unpopularity rather than anything that will linger in the mouth.

Andy Burnham knows that ‘fixing’ social care will drain political capital away from him faster than a teenager emptying their parents’ bank account. At the moment, he is clearly more focused on funding mechanisms to put the sector on a sustainable footing and the way in which it will or won’t be enmeshed with the NHS. But there’s another longer-term drain on his – or any future prime minister's – capital too, which is the quality of care that’s available. The debate has understandably been focused on the financial aspect, but, for a long time, we have not had an open discussion of what adult social care should actually be like for the people in the system.

To the surprise of very few in Scottish politics, bar apparently himself, Anas Sarwar is stepping down as leader of the Scottish Labour party to take up a peerage and serve as a minister in Andy Burnham's government. Sarwar had ruled out this prospect himself during the Holyrood election campaign, but now that he's past the painful result that Labour got in May, he's off for the new life he said he didn't want.  Sarwar was, of course, the first senior Labour figure to call for Keir Starmer to step down – he held a press conference back in February telling the then prime minister that 'the distraction needs to end, and the leadership in Downing Street needs to change'.

Andy Burnham told his Cabinet this morning that they need to give people a ‘sense that help is coming’. He was largely focused on the cost of living as he addressed ministers, but one of his other big themes in the past 24 hours since taking over as prime minister has been moving power out of Westminster and ‘into every postcode in the land’. It’s the kind of pitch that most new PMs make before they start to realise the limits of their own power, and wonder whether they want to let go of any more of it in the way they’d initially suggested. Burnham is coming into government at a time when the British state seems pretty powerless.

What does Yvette Cooper as Health Secretary mean for the NHS? It's a question no one thought to ask before today, which underlines why her appointment is quite left-field. Cooper does have experience: she was a junior minister in the health department back in the very early days of the Blair government and was part of the team that implemented the Sure Start programme. But it's been a while since those days, and Cooper hasn't talked that much about health since. Like her new boss, Cooper pledged to integrate health and social care when she and Andy Burnham were candidates in the 2015 Labour leadership election. Beyond that, we just have to go on how she has conducted herself as a minister.

Keir Starmer has been quite an irritable – and irritating at times – performer in the Commons as prime minister. His sessions with Kemi Badenoch in particular have been marked by pompous lectures about how she should be conducting Prime Minister's Questions, along with lofty comments about the ‘spirit in which’ the opposition has been behaving. Starmer hasn't seen anything wrong with this attitude because he made the fatal mistake early on of buying his own hype about what a committed and decent public servant he is, rather than being anxious about whether he was actually meeting his own standards. This means that he seems genuinely appalled by any question that suggests he is in fact not meeting those standards.

It's difficult for an outgoing Prime Minister to mess up their valedictory PMQs: there is always more goodwill in the Chamber on those occasions than at any other time in the parliamentary calendar. Keir Starmer managed a dignified and emotional departure today, and was helped along by an upbeat and relatively friendly Kemi Badenoch, who alternated between jokes and comments that came painfully close to being compliments.

Now that he’s officially the Prime Minister in waiting, Andy Burnham is trying to work out how to stop Labour MPs from turning against him in the same way they turned against Keir Starmer. He’s got a letter from nearly 80 backbenchers calling on him to ‘refresh’ the party’s immigration policy, and he has already apologised for the party’s stance on Gaza. Burnham said yesterday: ‘I know many people feel that at the start of Israel’s military action in Gaza my party didn’t get it right and I am sorry about that. The response has too often not been good enough. We need to do better.

By the end of this year, Britain will have had (at least) seven prime ministers in the past decade – and more than 700 recommendations on how to stop the ongoing scandal in NHS maternity services. None of which have – as yet – been implemented. The Ockenden review into maternity services at Nottingham University Hospitals NHS Trust, which was published on Wednesday, adds nearly 100 more. There are many harrowing stories in the report. But one of the most telling is about what was going on above the wards Its findings are appalling and yet familiar, which Donna Ockenden, a senior midwife, knows better than most, given this is the third review she has published on NHS hospitals failing mothers and babies.

Keir Starmer looked visibly emotional as he walked up to the lectern in Downing Street this morning. The Prime Minister then held it together for the majority of his resignation speech – until the very end where he paid tribute to his ‘fantastic wife Vic’ and his ‘beautiful children who are my pride and joy’. It’s difficult for Starmer to say that he led with good grace It’s not unusual for anyone to grow emotional while talking about their family, but it was quite telling that this was the only point where Starmer visibly struggled: even those who have worked closely with him have struggled to work out what really animates him beyond family and football.