Best Of

The fact there has been virtually no change in Makerfield between 2024 and now suggests that it isn’t Labour that’s the problem, it’s Keir Starmer.

The underlying problem is the country wants changes that are 1) too expensive for our budget and/or 2) implausible. So any candidate representing the status quo is going to lose to a change candidate for the next decade at least. Policies, values etc are not that important, if we had a Conservative or Reform govt they would be extremely unpopular too.

Burnham has gone too early - he should have taken over in 2027 and portrayed himself as a change candidate in 2028. It will be very difficult to portray himself as a change candidate when he has been there for a couple of years.

I think Starmer would have worked as a change candidate were it not for winter fuel. Everything that came after was downhill but that was the initial destructive act. I supported the policy but it was utterly toxic against the new Labour coalition as to be fair many Labour MPs said at the time.

Mandelson would have been easily survivable by somebody with more popularity.

From a party POV, he should have made benefit reform a confidence issue and then quit then if it hadn’t passed. Letting that go just gave the PLP the magic money tree. Burnham will have to grapple with that too but he will start with goodwill.

Surely the point of the Labour Party is to attempt to solve national problems with policies that match the culture of the Labour Party?

The WFA cut seemed like an attempt of cod-Thatcherism. No Labour MP went into politics to cheer cutting benefits.

You want to reduce the welfare bill, but are a Labour PM? What do Labour MPs like? Benefits targeted to the poorest, perhaps?

So announce all the old age extras are going in a blender. The result will be means tests/taxed, so as to target the poorest pensioners.

Then you sell that to the MPs as a reform that makes the poor better off, while being fiscally prudent.

No labour MP went into parliament wanting to make a difficult decision. They want to open fetes, garden centres, shops, and do lots of feel good social work while not upsetting anyone.

Taz, and make plenty of cash, expenses, second houses. A lucrative business for useless donkeys.

I saw recently that Glenys Kinnock's estate was valued at about £1.5million. Now she was an MEP for 15 years rather than an MP. But given that she was a teacher before entering politics, it is hard to see how she could have amassed such a fortune.

Politics is clearly about money for the politicians.

Have you seen the price of houses these days?

In the Kinnocks Wales?

We have several homes by us in the 1 million region with one seafront home within 400 yards being fully restored and going on the market for 3 million

The Kinnocks represented South Wales as MPs and MEPs and not even Cardiff

But they lived in London. The family home was in Ealing when Neil became LotO. House prices in Ealing from 1983 to today are up approximately 1700%! You want to make money, invent a Time Machine and buy in London in the ‘70s or early ‘80s.

We bought our home in 1975 for £16,000 then extended it over 4 years, and today our children inform us it is worth about £550,000

They do keep an eye on their investment !!!!!!!

My advice to Starmer's wife is to gently tell him it's over and to resign on Monday but offer to stay in office until his successor is appointed

Anything else is frankly cruel and whilst not quite the same, can anyone imagine what would have happened if Jill Biden had taken Joe's hand and quietly said time to pass on the batton Joe

To expose Labour to a very public and probably quite demeaning battle to hold on Starmer would be vilified

I rather disagree. Starmer has a very strong case. If the rabble seek Burnham like change then they should resign as MPs and seek re-election on an Andy-isn't-he-lovely mandate.

Starmer is toxic to the electorate and that was evidenced in spades in Makerfield

His race is over

I shall mark your card as a rabble-rouser

I'm sure you're mostly of Tory blood, as am I. So we're perhaps not the best to comment. Nonetheless Starmer has delivered broadly stable government and Reeves has delivered a broadly stable financial background. I think that in both cases this represents hat-tip like achievement.

The background they had to deal with was shameful. Several Tory PMs really let themselves down.

And so Kemi.

She's doing well, but I have no idea if she really can take the bull by the horns and pre-announce the heavy revision to the state that is long overdue. I hope she can.

My advice to Starmer's wife is to gently tell him it's over and to resign on Monday but offer to stay in office until his successor is appointed

Anything else is frankly cruel and whilst not quite the same, can anyone imagine what would have happened if Jill Biden had taken Joe's hand and quietly said time to pass on the batton Joe

To expose Labour to a very public and probably quite demeaning battle to hold on Starmer would be vilified

I rather disagree. Starmer has a very strong case. If the rabble seek Burnham like change then they should resign as MPs and seek re-election on an Andy-isn't-he-lovely mandate.

Starmer is toxic to the electorate and that was evidenced in spades in Makerfield

His race is over

I shall mark your card as a rabble-rouser

I'm sure you're mostly of Tory blood, as am I. So we're perhaps not the best to comment. Nonetheless Starmer has delivered broadly stable government and Reeves has delivered a broadly stable financial background. I think that in both cases this represents hat-tip like achievement.

The background they had to deal with was shameful. Several Tory PMs really let themselves down.

And so Kemi.

She's doing well, but I have no idea if she really can take the bull by the horns and pre-announce the heavy revision to the state that is long overdue. I hope she can.

Kemi will fancy herself as Maggie Thatcher to Burnham’s Harold Wilson and Starmer’s Jim Callaghan and Sunak’s Ted Heath

That's not bad

It means nothing of course but I have been quite surprised two friends who historically would be solid Labour expressing some enthusiasm for Kemi. (As I only have two friends this is powerful evidence!)

A

One thing I will say in Andy Burnham's favour.

Tuesday is the tenth anniversary of the United Kingdom voting to put economic sanctions on itself and I had planned to do several threads on Brexit but now I'll be doing lots of threads on Starmer being ousted/the Labour leadership contest instead.

Didn't we recently have a very well written series of guest headers explaining how well Brexit has gone? So I believe therefore, Brexit has probably been more than covered.

Those headers probably need to be countered BBC style with something that represents the wide consensus across economists that it hasn’t, actually, been a brilliant success.

It’s moot though for a betting site. Public opinion continues to move firmly against it, which is what matters in this context. The contrast with SINDY is really interesting, where we are in stasis.

I don’t recall that as the thrust of the argument. It was more that those who claimed it was a disaster were overstating their case, and used data to show this. If you want to show the opposite I’d love to read it.

It started like that (and was convincing - I don’t really believe it’s cost the economy as much as that particular study suggested), but when you start suggesting zero or even positive impact you’re in an very small and eccentric group of analysts.

I feel no need whatsoever to show the opposite, in the same way I don’t feel the need to demonstrate that the planet is getting hotter.

you live in Scotland, living proof it is not , still bloody cold and it is nearly July, warming my arse

Perfect weather today, I’m out in the garden watching the goldfinch fledglings (helping with yet another World Cup hangover).

Reflecting on the Makerfield byelection result, I think (as I said) that Burnham was the favourite going in, and never really looked troubled.

Reform would always have struggled, but I think could have performed better if they had developed an effective counternarrative against Burnham, beyond their charge that he was using Makerfield as a stepping stone. That was clearly believed by a lot of people, but it couldn't really go anywhere. I felt where Burnham was weakest was at the point of WASPI - it was an embarrassing f U-turn in real time. But for whatever reason it didn't seem that this was capitalised on.

They also had a problem with the plumber, who I don't think was a terrible candidate, but was undoubtedly damaged, particularly by the Vorderman letter to the women of Makerfield. The letter was an utterly cynical piece of confected outrage, and I think in response I would have issued an utterly cynical confected apology, and gone the 'bad boy forgiven' route. I also might have been tempted to put Kenyon up for an interrogation with someone like Kuensberg so the public could see him sweat it out. High risk, but I think many women might have seen it and ended up with some sneaking sympathy. His line would have been - 'sorry, regret my comments, however do we want a society where the only people who are allowed to hold office are people who have never said anything regrettable on social media?'.

Even with all that, I think Reform's best result would have been to be 'robbed' by Restore. That would have fit their narrative nicely. Sadly they just missed out.

On your last point - I appreciate the short term benefit of that (consolidate the hard-right vote) - but isn’t that an extremely limited strategy?

Having a big argument with Lowe about split votes and precisely how many pogroms to conduct isn’t going to put Farage into No 10. At least this time they aren’t blaming “family voting”, which suggests they’ve learnt the lesson from last time.

Marina Hyde analyses it rather better than does Lucky.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2026/jun/19/reform-candidates-nigel-farage-makerfield-prime-minister
..everything that went wrong for Reform here flowed directly from his personal character, and is going to keep happening in one way or another because people don’t change. Nigel’s gonna Nigel.

Nobody fetishises plain speaking like Farage, so we owe it to him to honour that and observe that Reform really shat the bed. Makerfield is among the party’s top 10 target seats for a general election, and Reform strategists’ decision to field yet another inadequate liability, whose past social media activity they simply couldn’t be arsed checking, seems to have proved something of a turn-off – for example for women, who strangely didn’t feel minded to vote for someone who had said: “I’m sexist, sorry but I am.” Rob Kenyon will no doubt be back on his plumbing rounds next week. So, Makerfield ladies, make sure your husband’s home to be consulted as to whether you really want your sink unblocked. It’ll honestly be cheaper to replace it.

Meanwhile it would take a heart of stone not to cackle at the fact that Reform is now losing votes to an insurgent party to its right. The thing to remember about Restore is that it is a party that genuinely only exists because Nigel couldn’t handle some light strategic criticism from Rupert Lowe. Why? Because Nigel is, and always has been, a diva who has huge fallouts with colleagues and allies...

Yes, if anyone is ever going to get their finger on the pulse of Reform and working class areas like Makerfield it’s Guardian writing upper class tedious Posho, Marina Hyde.

So what exactly that she said is inaccurate;

Reform had a poor candidate?
They didn’t do a good enough job vetting him?
It’s a poor performance in their No 10 target if they are to win power?
Farage can’t take criticism?
Woman don’t like sexism?
Restore are causing them Problems?

Play the Ball, not the Woman!

Peter.

Possibly, but don't forget Reform are going for the sexist vote (or anti-woke, if you prefer)
They increased their vote from the GE. The next election won't be next Thursday and Restore won't be standing against them in most seats. What they do now doesn't have much relevance to 2 or 3 years time. Of course a huge crash might show they are a spent force, but this isn't it.
Restore didn't make the difference anyway
No politician can take criticism, our system doesn't allow it.

It might be slightly sub par but I think what she said is just left-liberal wishcasting. Reform's ascent to power isn't going to be linear in any case, you expect ups and downs.

The biggest issue is the willingness of the non-Reform voter to vote tactically which I am not sure is yet understood

The dynamic will be very different in a GE where the individual candidate matters far less. I have no idea what the Fukkers thought they were doing when they went with that moronic Deano.

Burnham is now clearly the leftwing candidate in any Labour leadership election against Starmer and New Labour Streeting. Whereas he wasn’t in 2015 with Corbyn taking that role nor in 2010 when Ed Miliband and Abbott were the leftist candidates and he was still relatively New Labour.

Burnham might take some encouragement from Ronald Reagan who was beaten by Nixon in the 1968 Republican primaries and narrowly by Ford in the 1976 Republican primaries. As we all remember though Reagan won the 1980 Republican primaries and then the 1980 and 1984 presidential elections. Biden also ran for the Democrats nomination in 1988 and 2008 losing to Dukakis and Obama before finally winning in 2020 the nomination and presidential election

In this particular context what would 'leftwing' mean? Does it mean significantly more than having a particular rhetoric about how you talk politics? How does it relate policy and practicewise to: private enterprise, debt to GDP ratios, deficit, benefits, growth, NATO, overall tax levels, interest rates, migration, student loans, and so on? Unless it means different from Starmer, Tories, LDs, etc in ways that can be articulated, how are we to evaluate?

Burnham’s camp has said he will restore the 50% additional rate of income tax, introduce a land tax, a social care levy etc. It is not just he will renationalise utilities

Policies for which there is no mandate.

Mandates in manifestos don't matter in practice, except that the HOC can't oppose legislation that is in the manifesto.

However the House of Lords cannot block or amend taxation legislation. So a mandate is irrelevant for these measures.

Which gives Kemi an opportunity, as Reform falters after these by election defeats Labour are about to elect a leader committed to tax rises and nationalisations and taking Labour left which it had no mandate for when it won the 2024 general election with Starmer

If Burnham promotes policies that are generally popular then Kemi saying "He doesn't have a mandate" will fall on deaf ears, except for the Tory faithful.

Burnham restoring the 50% additional rate of income tax certainly won’t be popular with the City. A land tax won’t be popular with landowners and developers. His proposal to increase business rates on out of town warehouses won’t be popular with Amazon. While if a rumoured Burnham social care levy hits average home owners that would destroy Burnham’s popularity as badly as the dementia tax did for May’s

The City doesn't vote Labour. Landowners and Developers don't vote Labour (and it seems fair for them them to pay council tax on development land at the rate the finished properties will pay). Out of town warehouse owners and renters don't vote Labour.

Quite apart from addressing inefficiencies which seem built into the system, we just don't seem to be raising enough tax to fund the state we want. Rearmament? We can't even fix potholes.

A land value tax replacing both council tax and stamp duty would seem reasonable to me, levied on all land regardless of owner.

One problem us, of course, is that Burnham will have a maximum of 3 years to do unpopular stuff and wait for the memory to fade, or put anything complex in place, rather the normal 4-5

Taking back control...

Jacinda Ardern: ‘New Zealand will become a republic in my lifetime’

https://www.thetimes.com/world/australasia/article/jacinda-ardern-new-zealand-interview-kkppf03f9

So she says but she never pushed it as PM for a reason nor are the current NZ PM or LOTO

Plenty of New Zealand polls for keeping a constitutional monarch over a politician head of state too

https://newsroom.co.nz/2024/10/22/nz-citizens-keen-to-stay-wedded-to-the-monarchy/

Why anyone would want a professional politician with all the grubbiness and politics that causes (look at burnham and his bothering of an electorate to gain personal power) over a constitutional monarch is beyond me

People in Ireland are genuinely delighted with their new President and her ball-playing skills, and when you have a President with extremely limited constitutional power, as in Ireland, it isn't really that contentious.

I find it odd to elect a head of state if they have very limited powers - why bother then? - but clearly it does work.

I'm happy to stick with constitutional monarchy as i think it too works.

Isn't the common factor very limited powers?
The advantage with an elected one is it's much cheaper and it doesn't sit at the heart of a hierarchy designed to reinforce a backward-looking, sclerotic class system

Yes aren’t US Presidents and Presidential elections very cheap, definitely not billions spent there, oh no. Isn’t the US republic also remarkably equal with its billionaire President its lack of universal healthcare, barely any welfare state and a minimum wage far lower than the UK. While those awfully class ridden unequal constitutional monarchies like Sweden, Canada, the UK, Denmark, the Netherlands, New Zealand and Japan are dreadful places to live…oh wait

Your deranged royalism has not for the first time addled your powers of comprehension. The original comparison was between British and Irish heads of state.

The Irish head of state is a leftist ex politician nonentity, virtually nobody has heard of outside Ireland and who over a third of Irish voters voted against. In any case in a current UK presidential election we might well elect President Farage

She also interferes in politics which heads of state shouldn’t do, calling Israel a ‘genocidal state’

She is merely repeating the Irish Government stance that repeatedly characterises Israel’s actions as "genocidal" and a "human catastrophe" that violates international humanitarian law.

My advice to Starmer's wife is to gently tell him it's over and to resign on Monday but offer to stay in office until his successor is appointed

Anything else is frankly cruel and whilst not quite the same, can anyone imagine what would have happened if Jill Biden had taken Joe's hand and quietly said time to pass on the batton Joe

To expose Labour to a very public and probably quite demeaning battle to hold on Starmer would be vilified

I rather disagree. Starmer has a very strong case. If the rabble seek Burnham like change then they should resign as MPs and seek re-election on an Andy-isn't-he-lovely mandate.

Starmer is toxic to the electorate and that was evidenced in spades in Makerfield

His race is over

I shall mark your card as a rabble-rouser

I'm sure you're mostly of Tory blood, as am I. So we're perhaps not the best to comment. Nonetheless Starmer has delivered broadly stable government and Reeves has delivered a broadly stable financial background. I think that in both cases this represents hat-tip like achievement.

The background they had to deal with was shameful. Several Tory PMs really let themselves down.

And so Kemi.

She's doing well, but I have no idea if she really can take the bull by the horns and pre-announce the heavy revision to the state that is long overdue. I hope she can.

Kemi will fancy herself as Maggie Thatcher to Burnham’s Harold Wilson and Starmer’s Jim Callaghan and Sunak’s Ted Heath

Taking back control...

Jacinda Ardern: ‘New Zealand will become a republic in my lifetime’

https://www.thetimes.com/world/australasia/article/jacinda-ardern-new-zealand-interview-kkppf03f9

So she says but she never pushed it as PM for a reason nor are the current NZ PM or LOTO

Plenty of New Zealand polls for keeping a constitutional monarch over a politician head of state too

https://newsroom.co.nz/2024/10/22/nz-citizens-keen-to-stay-wedded-to-the-monarchy/

Why anyone would want a professional politician with all the grubbiness and politics that causes (look at burnham and his bothering of an electorate to gain personal power) over a constitutional monarch is beyond me

People in Ireland are genuinely delighted with their new President and her ball-playing skills, and when you have a President with extremely limited constitutional power, as in Ireland, it isn't really that contentious.

I find it odd to elect a head of state if they have very limited powers - why bother then? - but clearly it does work.

I'm happy to stick with constitutional monarchy as i think it too works.

Isn't the common factor very limited powers?
The advantage with an elected one is it's much cheaper and it doesn't sit at the heart of a hierarchy designed to reinforce a backward-looking, sclerotic class system

Yes aren’t US Presidents and Presidential elections very cheap, definitely not billions spent there, oh no. Isn’t the US republic also remarkably equal with its billionaire President its lack of universal healthcare, barely any welfare state and a minimum wage far lower than the UK. While those awfully class ridden unequal constitutional monarchies like Sweden, Canada, the UK, Denmark, the Netherlands, New Zealand and Japan are dreadful places to live…oh wait

Your deranged royalism has not for the first time addled your powers of comprehension. The original comparison was between British and Irish heads of state.

The Irish head of state is a leftist ex politician nonentity, virtually nobody has heard of outside Ireland and who over a third of Irish voters voted against. In any case in a current UK presidential election we might well elect President Farage

Not if it is conducted under AV, which it would be. And as it is in ireland.

The fact there has been virtually no change in Makerfield between 2024 and now suggests that it isn’t Labour that’s the problem, it’s Keir Starmer.

The underlying problem is the country wants changes that are 1) too expensive for our budget and/or 2) implausible. So any candidate representing the status quo is going to lose to a change candidate for the next decade at least. Policies, values etc are not that important, if we had a Conservative or Reform govt they would be extremely unpopular too.

Burnham has gone too early - he should have taken over in 2027 and portrayed himself as a change candidate in 2028. It will be very difficult to portray himself as a change candidate when he has been there for a couple of years.

I think Starmer would have worked as a change candidate were it not for winter fuel. Everything that came after was downhill but that was the initial destructive act. I supported the policy but it was utterly toxic against the new Labour coalition as to be fair many Labour MPs said at the time.

Mandelson would have been easily survivable by somebody with more popularity.

From a party POV, he should have made benefit reform a confidence issue and then quit then if it hadn’t passed. Letting that go just gave the PLP the magic money tree. Burnham will have to grapple with that too but he will start with goodwill.

Surely the point of the Labour Party is to attempt to solve national problems with policies that match the culture of the Labour Party?

The WFA cut seemed like an attempt of cod-Thatcherism. No Labour MP went into politics to cheer cutting benefits.

You want to reduce the welfare bill, but are a Labour PM? What do Labour MPs like? Benefits targeted to the poorest, perhaps?

So announce all the old age extras are going in a blender. The result will be means tests/taxed, so as to target the poorest pensioners.

Then you sell that to the MPs as a reform that makes the poor better off, while being fiscally prudent.

No labour MP went into parliament wanting to make a difficult decision. They want to open fetes, garden centres, shops, and do lots of feel good social work while not upsetting anyone.

Taz, and make plenty of cash, expenses, second houses. A lucrative business for useless donkeys.

I saw recently that Glenys Kinnock's estate was valued at about £1.5million. Now she was an MEP for 15 years rather than an MP. But given that she was a teacher before entering politics, it is hard to see how she could have amassed such a fortune.

Politics is clearly about money for the politicians.

Have you seen the price of houses these days?

In the Kinnocks Wales?

We have several homes by us in the 1 million region with one seafront home within 400 yards being fully restored and going on the market for 3 million

Even in our corner of West Yorkshire there are £1m+ properties.

I just think @HYUFD demeaned Wales by his comment as there are million pound plus homes across the country as across England and Scotland

The majority of million pound homes are in London and the Home Counties and those who own them elsewhere are largely corporate executives and lawyers etc not Labour politicians and ex teachers

There are million pound homes in DONCASTER. I passed one for sale only yesterday.

Admittedly rather more house than you'd get in Surrey.

£1m is not a fortune these days. Public sector pensions for anyone in a vaguely professional role must be getting close to being worth £1m.