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.

An estate of £1.5 million, including property, is a healthy amount, but it’s not exceptional. Let me quote a website…

Figures released by HM Revenue & Customs have revealed that the number of deceased estates valued at more than £1 million has risen by over one-third in five years.

In 2013-14, there were 8,340 estates worth over a £1million, whilst in 2018-19 the number stood at 11,210.

Inflation since then has been high. £1 million in 2013-4 is basically £1.5 million now. G Kinnock was working as an MEP. She presumably inherited from her husband, who was at the top of UK politics. If they bought property in London in the 1970s, they would’ve benefited from the property boom. This seems a weird example to claim politicians are just in it for the money,

A professional working couple reaching near the top of their careers, of that age, should comfortably be millionaires.

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’

I’m reluctant to intervene since you’ve reached the chuntering to yourself stage, but which rule book says heads of state shouldn’t interfere in politics? Since you crowbarred Trump into the conversation I fear I may have some bad news for you on the interfering in politics front.

Trump is also head of government ie the equivalent of the UK and Irish PMs NOT just head of state. Those who are ceremonial heads of state alone and not head of government too or executive head of state should not interfere in politics

Surely that's a false dichotomy. Head of Government vs Purely Ceremonial. Presidents can have political/constitutional roles in between those extremes. For a start, your King doesn't have a purely ceremonial role which as an ardent monarchist you would realise.

Effectively he does. The King has never vetoed a law passed by Parliament, never proposed a change to UK tax or spending to Parliament other than what the PM’s government had proposed and never sent troops to war either. The PM and Parliament now do all that

Although the King doesn't exercise a veto these days, there is a convention that requires Parliament to seek the monarch's formal permission before even debating any bill that affects the private property, hereditary revenues, or personal interests of the Crown. This has occasionally resulted in governments altering the text of draft legislation behind closed doors.

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.

£1.5m is not very much. I'm surprised it wasn't more.

A friend of mine ours was an engineer at power plants. He built a bungalow himself in the 1950s as he didn't have a lot of money at the time. I don't think he ever earned a vast amount.

When we saw him he was always wearing stuff from charity shops and never showed any sign of having a lot of money. He always used public transport to get about and we'd give him a lift to wherever it was we were going.

He died in rather tragic circumstances and as he had no descendents left his estate to charity.

Despite the house needing demolition and the land not being terribly valuable he had about £1m in cash...

[Welcome to Yorkshire!]

If you don't have an extravagant lifestyle you can save quite a lot of money on a normal income [a lot less than an MEP gets].

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.

Not that I noticed during 13 years in Parliament - it's not that I deliberately refrained from making money, but I can't even think of an opportunity that MPs have to make it, though they're much better paid than when I first applied (£98K vs £39K IIRC). Perhaps Glenys inherited money?

I think MEPs might be better paid than MPs. An MEP today is on 135k Euros. Her husband was Leader of the Opposition, not just an MP, for many years, so on a higher salary, and he’d be on a Ministerial salary before that,

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.

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?

I think it is Burnham's willingness to take strategic monopolies such as Thames Water into public ownership.
Starmer is very reluctant because it looks too left wing, even though it is very popular with electors.

If that's all I'm left wing too, especially if Thames Water's value is £0 and its debts don't fall on the tax payer. Otherwise, it can't be done because the government's bank balance is minus £3 trillion.

I am pretty pragmatic when it comes to public ownership but in my view if something has obviously failed in the private sector who can’t we just accept it and move on. It’s this weird idea that it can only be temporary that is terrible for long term planning.

There is nothing left or right about natural and essential monopolies being outside the private sector. The essence of private enterprise is free and open competition. With water this cannot happen, so you have to invent a regulator who (not very well) governs activity and profits. That is more like rentierdom.

If water were in the public sector now it would not occur to right or left to privatise it any more than they plan to privatise the M1.

Well my point. We tried it and it has failed. Just accept some things are better nor in private ownership and call it a day. Why does the UK always decide to operate outside of every other country in Europe?

Water industry is nationalised in China, mostly privately owned now in France

The water industry in the United States is predominantly in public ownership. Publicly owned municipal water utilities serve 87% of customers in the US. It's not just China.

One reason why water was privatised was because a large amount of expensive work was required that couldn't be justified / placed on government borrowing.

Given that Thames Water has been going bankrupt now for 2 years hopefully we have a plan where bond holders who have bought debt designed to pay Thames Water's owners dividends are left holding the can.

And yes that does mean there are some teachers in Canada about to lose a tiny bit of their pensions.

“Given that Thames Water has been going bankrupt now for 2 years hopefully we have a plan..”

It’s been going bankrupt for longer than that.

Plus there’s a tiny flaw in your sentence. “Hopefully we have a plan”.

About a third of Thames Water's income goes to paying interest on its debt. Incredible.
Remove the debt (because it's bankrupt) and suddenly it's profitable and cash generating.
Its investors will argue that makes it a valuable company and they should receive massive compensation.
£100b has been mentioned!

But because the company's debts far exceed its assets, existing shareholders cannot "walk away" from the debt while keeping the underlying value of the pipes and treatment plants.

If Thames Water goes bankrupt and enters the government's Special Administration Regime (SAR), its existing equity is legally wiped out and treated as completely worthless.

So there is the plan. Do SAR and its cash generation can finance better environmental protection, mend leaks, perhaps a reservoir, and hopefully a reduction in consumer prices.

Just ignore the special pleading from the Private Equity vultures which Starmer seems unwilling to do.

Will Burnham grasp the nettle ?

If the private shareholders don't like it, they could prevent administration by paying off the debt themselves, of course.

June 5th - "Thames Water should be nationalised, says Andy Burnham"
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2026/jun/05/thames-water-should-be-nationalised-andy-burnham

The net debt is about £18 billion. I doubt that private shareholders will pay that off!

I doubt so too, but that is what should be suggested to them when they complain.

I'm aware of Burnham's statement; I'm most interested to see if he actually does it.

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

We need social care sorting. It is a disaster area at present. If he manages to tackle it successfully he'd be far likelier to get my vote than at present, even if it involved paying.

If popularity depends on avoiding reality then PM Farage or Polanski it is...

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

Not that I noticed during 13 years in Parliament - it's not that I deliberately refrained from making money, but I can't even think of an opportunity that MPs have to make it, though they're much better paid than when I first applied (£98K vs £39K IIRC). Perhaps Glenys inherited money?

Hardly a big number for Glenys. However overlapping your time NP would be Mandelson. Did it never strike you as odd that he funded his lifestyle so easily?

MPs don't particularly socialise (your time is divided between office and constituency, with maybe the odd dinner with colleagues), so I never had a view about Mandelson's wealth or otherwise. My only contact with him was as a Minister, in which he was fairly effective and (not all that common) had interesting ideas.

MPs do read newspapers though. There must have been at least a vague sense of it being odd?