Best Of

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.

But there’s a process involving constituency parties and trade union affiliates.

https://labourlist.org/2026/05/labour-leadership-election-rules-keir-starmer-challenger/

I don’t see how the party can get what was a six-week process down to less than four weeks, with the added complication that Starmer has a right be included if he wishes to be, which triggers a full contest expected to take three months.

It can be very quick if there's only one candidate.

My point was that there was only one candidate in 2007, and that took six weeks.

The point is that with a coronation rather than a contest it *can* be quick. But it doesn't have to be. I'd put the range between 1 week and 10 weeks. It depends on Starmer and Burnham really. They both have to be ok with it.

Yes, in 2007 both Blair and Brown were content with a long contest.

Blair wanted a long goodbye.
Brown was happy to take a victory lap of hustings knowing he'd be PM at the end of it.

None of it served a purpose, but it fluffed both their egos so it happened.

The question in 2026 is how much of a hurry is Burnham in - and how much once he's resigned has Starmer simply had enough of it all.

It truly is astonishing that just one year and eleven months after winning a historic landslide, Starmer is terminally damaged and has only days left.

This is just a consequent ripple following the astonishing experience of Liz Truss as PM. It will take time for that to work its way out of the political system.

Had Liz Truss not been PM then there's very little chance that Starmer would have become PM, certainly not with a landslide. Nobody liked him enough to make him PM.

We are yet to see whether Burnham has the ability to bring normality back (my guess is no, but I have my moments of hope).

It follows then that we should expect future astonishing events - such as Farage becoming PM when going into the election with only a handful of MPs.

Does anyone understand this problem?

"AI risks triggering ‘catastrophic’ phone network blackouts
Ofcom raises alarm over risks linked to use of automation technology for monitoring networks" (£)

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2026/06/21/ai-risks-triggering-catastrophic-phone-network-failure/

There are two main concerns with AI. One is that it can be used to find bugs in the code that can be exploited by hostile states, terrorists or criminals. Last week, the US Government blocked the export (or any use by foreigners) of Anthropic's latest models on these grounds. Effectively, the US Government is treating these AI models as weapons and regulating them accordingly.

The other concern is about cock-ups rather than conspiracies. If AI is used in routine maintenance of networks and spots a fault, it might take actions to rectify the situation faster than any human could react, and thus keep the network up so no-one notices the problem. The fear is that AI might apply the wrong fix and crash the whole network. You may recall seeing examples from other industries where production databases have been deleted or millions of dollars of trading losses.

The latest Anthropic AI, “Mythos” or “Fable 5”, allegedly managed to crack a whole load of US defence systems within hours, which is what led to the export ban and the company pulling the model from production.

https://x.com/kimmonismus/status/2068605229965234238

It truly is astonishing that just one year and eleven months after winning a historic landslide, Starmer is terminally damaged and has only days left.

Labour are simply repeating the same mistake with Burnham. No policies, no idea of what he stands for, jelly fish principles.

It's a re-run of Starmer getting elected because he's not Sunak. Now it's Burnham in the chair because he's not Starmer.

You may be right, I hope not though.

You can extend the series back further though: Sunak elected because he's not Truss; Truss - not Johnson; Johnson - not May... etc.

Johnson tbf did have a plan: complete Brexit come what may. But beyond that he had neither a plan, nor more crucially the work ethic to succeed.

Truss had a plan but unfortunately it was a bonkers unfunded plan the nearly trashed the economy.

We probably get the leaders we deserve.

https://x.com/politlcsuk/status/2068658704023499000

A Labour source says Keir Starmer feels "betrayed"

"He gave everything to Labour, including sacrificing much of his children's teenage years to help make the party electable. He feels deeply betrayed, especially by those he believed were loyal to him"

By election in Old Holborn and St Pancras incoming?

Yes, there is. It’s because the Greens had someone elected who was ineligible to be a councillor. It’s in the Regent’s Park ward. I’m standing as the LibDem candidate as it’s the ward I work in.

Good luck!

We can agree on very little, but I’ll always support those who put their head above the parapet and actually stand for office.

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.

Yes, Keir Starmer's government has a defensible and in some areas good record. The trouble is people's instinctive, visceral dislike of the man. I cannot put my finger on its cause but nonetheless, it is real and has been widely reported. It may be unfair but as the Greek philosopher wrote: them's the breaks.