Good morning. Andy Burnham is minded to make Shabana Mahmood his chancellor, according to three people familiar with his thinking, George Parker reveals.

Burnham’s team insists that no appointment is final until it is final. But for today, some thoughts on why a Mahmood appointment ticks a lot of boxes for Andy Burnham politically, while presenting some risks.

What are the ideal qualities a prime minister needs in a Chancellor of the Exchequer? As it happens, Margaret Thatcher got as close to perfect on paper in 1983 with Nigel Lawson: politically aligned with her on the major issues and challenges facing her government, not in possession of an independent power base and capable of doing the job.

Now, of course, this list of qualities is not a guarantee of success, in that it also applies to, say, Kwasi Kwarteng, and look how that turned out. The nature of governing means that even the closest partnerships between prime minister and chancellor will fray over time (as Thatcher and Lawson did).

But when you look at that ideal checklist, you can see the appeal of Shabana Mahmood to Andy Burnham. At both the Ministry of Justice and the Home Office she successfully drove through her preferred policies, so she ticks “capable of doing the job”. But her time at the Home Office has made her unpopular with both the party’s left flank and its economically liberal wing, so she is not at the moment going to be a rival centre of power in the government.

As for political alignment, Mahmood is no economic liberal and is hawkish on immigration, like Burnham, who even back in 2010 made part of his leadership pitch that Labour had “lost touch” on immigration. She is a long-term supporter of exactly the economic policies that Burnham has floated in his leadership bid.

That question of political alignment is why people like Pat McFadden or Yvette Cooper, both strong candidates on paper, are not being discussed, and why Labour’s internal jockeying concentrates on Mahmood or Miliband.

In policy terms, if you are Burnham, appointing Mahmood gets you a policy mix that is pretty close to what you would get from Ed Miliband — but without the same perception of radicalism. If you are a new administration whose planning for power is visibly half-formed (to be generous), anything that gives you more breathing space over the summer, rather than the more immediately controversial appointment that Miliband would represent, is good news.

There is, however, a big downside risk. There’s a fourth criterion to “what makes a good chancellor” that is worth considering: the ability to persuade your party’s MPs to do things they don’t like. To return to Lawson: one thing he often said was that the hard part of cutting taxes was persuading Conservative MPs to cut spending. And whether it is cutting spending or signing off on tax rises, a good chancellor always needs to be able to sell the parliamentary party things they don’t like.

Mahmood’s immigration reforms face a very tricky passage through parliament and no one could say that she has shown a particular aptitude for selling difficult measures to MPs. A letter signed by more than 80 MPs, according to the i paper, demanded that Burnham change course on Mahmood’s immigration policies, which it said were “expending political capital”. But Burnham’s problem is that the only plausible candidate for chancellor who really has shown that ability to get MPs on side is McFadden. So regardless of which of the available candidates Burnham appoints, he will have to cut his cloth somewhere. As it stands, it appears he has found that the best option is Mahmood.

I went to see Steam Down — listen to their terrific 2025 record I Realised It Was Me here — last night, because I am a plastic patriot who did not believe that England was going to get past Argentina. With truly comic timing, the interval perfectly coincided with Argentina’s equaliser, so it may be that the whole thing is my fault.

• ‘Who do we call?’ | Just days before Andy Burnham enters Downing Street, UK chief executives and advisers complain they are stuck in one-way traffic when it comes to engaging with the incoming administration because there is no dedicated person to lobby on policy.

• Advice for Andy | Increasing VAT would be the UK government’s best option to raise revenue fast if the public finances veered off course, the OECD said. Despite promising in its manifesto not to raise any of the three biggest taxes, it had in effect already raised income tax by stealth, the OECD noted, so going for VAT would be a more prudent way of increasing tax than pushing up national insurance.

• Negotiating body for care pay | Millions of social care workers are to get annual NHS-style pay rises as the government seeks to bring their wages closer in line with health staff, the i paper’s Jane Merrick reports. Care minister Stephen Kinnock said the plans marked one more step towards a National Care Service, something originally proposed by Andy Burnham when he was health secretary 17 years ago.

• ‘She’s bloody good’ | Our team profiles Shabana Mahmood, who has left investors uncertain about what to expect on economic policy.