Best Of

Regarding Starmer's departure date, if I were him I would push for an exit plan with Burnham taking over sometime between the end of July and early September. That way, on the outside chance that England win the World Cup he'd have the enjoyable honour of welcoming the team back. It may seem a petty thing but Starmer is a committed genuine football fan, I think it would mean a lot to him.

If I were Burnham, I'd let Starmer have the honour, and focus during July on developing a big impacting plan for my Premiership, to hit the ground running.

I really think that would be a mistake.

The public want rid of Starmer and I don't think they would be happy about prolonging the agony.

The longer that Burnham spends as a leader-in-waiting the easier it is for his opponents to define him negatively. He needs to become PM so that he can start defining himself more positively with his actions.

Events. The more time passes the greater the chance of some slip between cup and lip. Get it done and get it done quickly.

The idea that Burnham requires at least a month of notice period before becoming PM, because otherwise he doesn't have a clue what he is going to do, is risible. It might be true, but it's no less pathetic. He cannot credibly say, "I urgently need to take over as PM to fix the country, but give be a couple of months to work out how I'm going to do that before I do so."

This is why I repeatedly said that Labour needed to work out what they needed to do differently, before deciding who they needed to implement that. Doing things the other way around isn't going to work.

The other point is that a prime reason Starmer is being ditched is a failure to just get on with stuff.
In that context, taking more than a couple of weeks at most to replace him would be ridiculous.

Regarding Starmer's departure date, if I were him I would push for an exit plan with Burnham taking over sometime between the end of July and early September. That way, on the outside chance that England win the World Cup he'd have the enjoyable honour of welcoming the team back. It may seem a petty thing but Starmer is a committed genuine football fan, I think it would mean a lot to him.

If I were Burnham, I'd let Starmer have the honour, and focus during July on developing a big impacting plan for my Premiership, to hit the ground running.

I really think that would be a mistake.

The public want rid of Starmer and I don't think they would be happy about prolonging the agony.

The longer that Burnham spends as a leader-in-waiting the easier it is for his opponents to define him negatively. He needs to become PM so that he can start defining himself more positively with his actions.

Events. The more time passes the greater the chance of some slip between cup and lip. Get it done and get it done quickly.

The idea that Burnham requires at least a month of notice period before becoming PM, because otherwise he doesn't have a clue what he is going to do, is risible. It might be true, but it's no less pathetic. He cannot credibly say, "I urgently need to take over as PM to fix the country, but give be a couple of months to work out how I'm going to do that before I do so."

This is why I repeatedly said that Labour needed to work out what they needed to do differently, before deciding who they needed to implement that. Doing things the other way around isn't going to work.

Today's hot offering from Rawnsley, obviously on topic:

It would be unwise to leap to the assumption that the King In The North will now sweep southwards to effortlessly seize the crown jewels of Downing Street.

For his devotees, this was a “proof-of-concept” byelection. Get on with it and put the messiah of Manchester in Downing Street. That will be the siren song of the Burnhamites. [But] Bar superglueing the front door of Number 10, the incumbent has done everything he can to indicate that he will only be dragged out of the building by his fingernails.

Sir Keir has already suggested that, if there is to be a contest for the top job, the battle should not be joined before the people of Greater Manchester have decided who will be their next mayor in the byelection for the vacancy which will now ensue. That can’t be resolved before the very end of July, which is surely one of the reasons for making this suggestion. Sir Keir buys himself more time at Number 10 while increasing the chance that some of the shine will come off his rival as Mr Burnham is subject to elevated scrutiny.

This presents Team Andy with a dilemma. Press on with a near-immediate challenge for Number 10 and his enemies will portray him as a man who is entirely self-centred and too consumed by personal ambition to care what happens to the city he was running five minutes ago.

Camp Burnham would much prefer Sir Keir to agree to set a departure date. It is widely believed that Mr Burnham will urge the prime minister to take this course when they have what will surely be an excruciatingly awkward conversation with each other. Quite a lot of the cabinet favour this way forward. If he continues to spurn that advice, the test...will be whether they are prepared to resign from the government, with all the chaos that would entail, to attempt to bend him to their will. Others in the cabinet fume in opposition to the idea that Mr Burnham should be simply gifted the top job without a proper contest.

[Makerfield voters] have propelled Andy Burnham in the direction of Number 10, but that is not in itself enough to get him over the threshold. What happens next will depend on the feverish calculations made down in Westminster by the most senior politicians in the land.

If Labour want to win the Mayoral election - they can't have SKS leading the campaign - they need Burnham sat in No 10..

The Manchester by election for Mayor is on Thursday 30th July.

So I stick with my forecast that Burnham will become PM on Thursday 17th July, the day before recess.

This allows Burnham to campaign in the Manchester by election as PM with no parliamentary business to distract him. The only date in his diary will be the EU Summit in Brussels on 22nd July.

It took six weeks for Brown to replace Blair in 2007, how do we think the party can truncate the process down to less than four weeks now?

If Burnham can get 330 nominations by Friday then nobody else can stand.

Brown was the same. There were five weeks between Brown having all of the nominations and him being formally elected leader.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gordon_Brown
On 11 May 2007, after months of speculation, Brown formally announced his bid for the Labour leadership. He launched his campaign website the same day as formally announcing his bid for leadership, titled "Gordon Brown for Britain".[86] On 16 May, Channel 4 News announced that Andrew MacKinlay had nominated Brown, giving him 308 nominations—enough to avoid a leadership contest. A BBC report states that the decisive nomination was made by Tony Wright with MacKinlay yet to nominate at that point.[87] Brown replaced Blair as Leader of the Labour Party on 24 June 2007.

Because Blair set himself a fairly long resignation timetable, not because it needs to be that long.

Starmer will take matters into his own hands to avoid the challenge by resigning tomorrow and give himself long enough to hit his second anniversary, which Burnham will be OK with as it avoids any unpleasantness, but there's no need for it to take as long Blair/Brown took.

FPT:

It's curious that the thing that finally pushed Trump into full on gibbering insanity was his crappy pool job.

https://x.com/SethAbramson/status/2068498088038109366

It has to be the absolute peak of Trump Derangement Syndrome, that people are now vandalising national monuments in Washington because they don’t like the man in the big White House who’s trying to clean up the city for the 250th celebrations, egged on by a mainstream media who think that it’s the biggest news story in the world this week.

I can't see any corroboration of Trump's claims of vandalism, just the arrest of an innocent cyclist.
It has to be absolute peak of embarrassment to mindlessly repeat Trump's lies and propaganda.

As I said, peak TDS, people totally losing their minds because they don’t like the guy who’s trying to clean up the city.

And a wonderful job he's making of it!




https://x.com/OccupyDemocrats/status/2068411043378876647?s=20

This is how the fake news spreads. That picture of the reflecting pool full of algae is from 2022.

The other pictures show the ballroom construction that’s ongoing, and the teardown from the UFC event last week, that the UFC paid for entirely and includes restoration of the grass in their budget.

And here’s the ‘innocent cyclist’ who waded in and ripped off a chunk of the sealant from the pool. Note the lack of visible algae in the picture.
https://x.com/real_ames/status/2068405487851163695

This pool has been a nightmare for decades, it’s not a new thing, just people starting with OrangeManBad and working backwards. The pool workers now need to have police protection from the idiots trying to cause disruption.

the difference is your man is the only president who is having a melt down over it

He’s mad because people are vandalising a pool that just got renovated, just because they don’t like him.

Everyone used to agree that cleaning up a city is a good thing, now there’s thousands of people who would prefer it dirty because they don’t like the president.

I'm not sure that they can stand that up ie "vandalism" and "tools". Here's the photo. AIUI bits of the swimming pool lining have been breaking off and floating around.



Report:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2026/06/20/cyclist-arrested-reflecting-pool-denies-trump-vandalism-claims/

To me this looks like normal Trump overreach, and he will run away as soon as challenged on it, as per usual.

Professional swimming pool types are not impressed. This is Swimming Pool Steve. The problem is suggested as being inadequate surface prep, which sounds a very Trumpish thing to do. Like not prepping a floor properly before you tile or paint it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lcwqnDUC4-Q

Many such comments.

..Asked a contractor pal about the $13M paint job peeling off the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool.

Him: I knew that'd happen.
Me: How?
Him: You can't rush that kind of job. The pool bottom has to be really dry or it'll exude water. And you have to clean it like a mofo first...
https://x.com/CharlesCMann/status/2068491523017110000

And Sandpit is going with Trump's midnight ravings.

In the greater scheme of this administrations crimes and blunders, this is comparatively trivial, but it's also a clear illustration of a movement in denial.

FPT:

It's curious that the thing that finally pushed Trump into full on gibbering insanity was his crappy pool job.

https://x.com/SethAbramson/status/2068498088038109366

It has to be the absolute peak of Trump Derangement Syndrome, that people are now vandalising national monuments in Washington because they don’t like the man in the big White House who’s trying to clean up the city for the 250th celebrations, egged on by a mainstream media who think that it’s the biggest news story in the world this week.

I can't see any corroboration of Trump's claims of vandalism, just the arrest of an innocent cyclist.
It has to be absolute peak of embarrassment to mindlessly repeat Trump's lies and propaganda.

As I said, peak TDS, people totally losing their minds because they don’t like the guy who’s trying to clean up the city.

And a wonderful job he's making of it!




https://x.com/OccupyDemocrats/status/2068411043378876647?s=20

This is how the fake news spreads. That picture of the reflecting pool full of algae is from 2022.

The other pictures show the ballroom construction that’s ongoing, and the teardown from the UFC event last week, that the UFC paid for entirely and includes restoration of the grass in their budget.

And here’s the ‘innocent cyclist’ who waded in and ripped off a chunk of the sealant from the pool. Note the lack of visible algae in the picture.
https://x.com/real_ames/status/2068405487851163695

This pool has been a nightmare for decades, it’s not a new thing, just people starting with OrangeManBad and working backwards. The pool workers now need to have police protection from the idiots trying to cause disruption.

the difference is your man is the only president who is having a melt down over it

He’s mad because people are vandalising a pool that just got renovated, just because they don’t like him.

Everyone used to agree that cleaning up a city is a good thing, now there’s thousands of people who would prefer it dirty because they don’t like the president.

I'm not sure that they can stand that up ie "vandalism" and "tools". Here's the photo. AIUI bits of the swimming pool lining have been breaking off and floating around.



Report:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2026/06/20/cyclist-arrested-reflecting-pool-denies-trump-vandalism-claims/

To me this looks like normal Trump overreach, and he will run away as soon as challenged on it, as per usual.

Professional swimming pool types are not impressed. This is Swimming Pool Steve. The problem is suggested as being inadequate surface prep, which sounds a very Trumpish thing to do. Like not prepping a floor properly before you tile or paint it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lcwqnDUC4-Q

Bonus: here's a Buildhub thread about someone who found an old swimming pool halfway under where he was planning to build his house, and what we all suggested he do with it:
https://forum.buildhub.org.uk/topic/7461-theres-a-swimming-pool-under-my-house/

Badenoch rules out a deal with Farage and Reform

https://www.dailymail.com/news/article-15916521/amp/Kemi-Farage-split-Makerfield-Burnham.html

Again she's ruling out a pact, but AFAICS she's not ruling out putting Nigel Farage in power.

Ruling out putting Farage in power would be equivalent to committing to forming a 'coalition of chaos' even if Reform have 300+ MPs. Her position is the only politically sensible one.

No it’s not.

There’s other options.

Such as let Reform run a minority government or have another election.

Kemi telling Tory MPs to abstain in a confidence vote in a hung Parliament is neither making Farage PM nor keeping Labour in office. So her position is correct

After that vote, the Prime Minister would either be NF or AN Other. To not participate would still be to make an implicit choice.

“If you choose not to decide
You still have made a choice”

Rush, “Freewill”, 1980, https://www.rush.com/songs/freewill/

Burnham leads Starmer on “is an experienced leader”, which is clearly nonsense given their respective CVs. Which shows you how much vibes matter.

It's the dirty secret (or one of them) of politics. Vibes win. Beyond a certain point, the don't help once you've won, but that's a problem for another day.

See Boris driving a JCB through that styrofoam wall in 2019.

If people think there's a problem, you have a problem is a big thing in politics. There's no doubt people think Starmer is bad. But a prime minister has an actual job to do. While I would say Starmer has a mixed record and not as effective as I was expecting, I don't think he's done as badly as people think he has - importantly no worse than his predecessors or likely successor.

Badenoch rules out a deal with Farage and Reform

https://www.dailymail.com/news/article-15916521/amp/Kemi-Farage-split-Makerfield-Burnham.html

Again she's ruling out a pact, but AFAICS she's not ruling out putting Nigel Farage in power.

Ruling out putting Farage in power would be equivalent to committing to forming a 'coalition of chaos' even if Reform have 300+ MPs. Her position is the only politically sensible one.

Badenoch's problem is not her answer, but that the question is being asked, and it is being asked repeatedly, drowning out anything else she might want to say.

It's the arithmetic. On current polling Badenoch's only potential relevance is as a junior partner putting Farage into power. Either (1) Reform can win on its own; (2) Labour wins with or without a coalition; (3) Reform wins supported by the Tories. The Tories are only involved in scenario (3).

But scenario 3 is a reason why a lot of voters won’t vote for the Tory party.

Heck it’s a risk I wouldn’t take and our former Tory MP did a very good job and is standing at the next election. Could I vote for him at the moment - nope it’s a risk 2 far in two different ways

1) there is a chance the Tories could let Reform in via scenario 3

2) it’s unlikely that the Tories are the not Reform party around here - Labour is likely to be the better guess

Now with a decent voting system that isn’t a question but it’s FPTP which means pick the least worst candidate the can win rather than your preferred choice