Well, this has gone from "wouldn't that be something" to "blimey, this might actually happen." Andy Burnham, a Culcheth native and former Mayor of Greater Manchester, is still the only Labour MP to declare for the party leadership, which makes the road from Makerfield to Number 10 look surprisingly direct.
Sir Keir Starmer resigned as prime minister last month after Burnham's win in the Makerfield by-election, and Westminster has since done its usual routine - all urgent statements, procedural jargon and the faint smell of panic dressed up as order. It is never allowed to be simple, is it?
Here is the part that actually matters. Labour candidates have until July 15 to gather nominations. Under the party rulebook, they need backing from 20 per cent of Labour MPs. Labour has 403 MPs, so that means 81 nominations. They also need support from at least three of the party's 31 affiliated socialist societies and trade unions, or 5 per cent of constituency Labour parties.
Affiliate nominations open at 6pm on July 15 and close 24 hours later. If a candidate gets the MP support but not the affiliate backing, constituency Labour parties make nominations after July 16. In other words, the system is less a clean democratic process and more a bureaucratic obstacle course designed by people who adore paperwork.
The crucial date is July 16, when Parliament starts its summer recess. If Burnham is still the only candidate by then, there will be no contest. He could then become Labour leader on July 17.
That still does not make him prime minister on the spot. Sir Keir Starmer would first have to formally tender his resignation to the King at Buckingham Palace, and only then would the new Labour leader be invited to form a government. Because of the timing, the constitutional handover would most likely happen on the next working day, July 20.
So yes, the exact date Burnham looks set to become UK prime minister is July 20, assuming nobody suddenly appears waving nomination papers and a messiah complex. For Culcheth, that is not a sentence many of us expected to be reading over a brew.
Credit where it is due, Burnham has the profile, stamina and public touch that national politics often seems to treat as suspicious. He can speak like an actual person, which in Westminster is practically a mutant power. On the flip side, this whole process still relies on Labour's internal machinery, and that machinery has all the elegance of a three-point turn on a busy village road.
There is also the faintly ridiculous timing. Even if he gets the keys to Downing Street on July 20, Parliament is heading into summer recess, so the new prime minister would not really get stuck into the job until September. Very British, really - reach the top, then everyone disappears on holiday.
Still, by the end of next week the picture should be much clearer. Unless Westminster serves up one of its trademark last-minute plot twists, Culcheth Andy Burnham is edging ever closer to the front door of Number 10.