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The media and many Labour MPs might end up reading too much into a clear Burnham victory .

The circumstances are unique and should be viewed with that in mind .

The result makes no difference at all to the most interesting question for the country, more or less never asked: What are the compelling reasons for the belief that Burnham will be an excellent PM in each respect that excellence is required?

No-one, literally no-one is going to be an excellent PM in these conditions. An adequate one is realistically hard to find.

The evidence is he will be far better than Starmer at comms and a bit worse on delivery. Probably a small win for the Labour party and a small loss for the country.

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On the riots in Belfast and the failure to tackle Loyalist groups: https://www.thehandbasket.co/p/elon-musk-belfast-pogrom-lee-hurley

But the Peace Process is so wonderful!

Yes it is with some reasonably obvious caveats. Would you want to return to the car bombs exploding outside the Europa Hotel every five minutes?

So race riots are an acceptable price?

Or should we risk a certain amount of disorder to clamp down on criminal behaviour?

I added provisos but I stand by my evaluation.

Perfect is the enemy of good.

Which is the kind of reasoning that has been used to avoid dealing with gangsters running the streets.

The belief that any kind of law enforcement against them “risks the peace process”

But most people think that's not the case and we could have a bit more law enforcement without any jeopardy to the peace process. Whereas you appear to think that the entire peace process was a mistake.

Which is exactly wrong - I think the Peace Process can survive more law enforcement. And without law enforcement it isn’t a peace process. Just giving criminals control.

It’s the governments in London, Dublin and Stormont who don’t agree with that.

Well, then, try to express yourself more clearly!

OK

Let’s fix the Peace Process

Relative of mine did that. Dealt with the various bombs and devices. Got a medal for it. How he managed to have the coolness to do it we can't work out but we're glad he did and survived.

Now Work with veterans, a lot of whom were in NI. And after all this time, the mental scars are still there. God knows what the average person in NI is like, if the veterans are like they are.

They range from boringly normal to Fucked In Da Head.

Mainly a function of how close they were to events.

Most people saw nothing apart from a few riots and army patrols. And those were in specific areas.