Best Of

If I understood Starmer's speech correctly, he agreed to be a senior shadow cabinet member of a corrupt and morally bankrupt opposition, and in the following six years as leader then PM sorted first the party and then as PM the country so that country and party are on the best possible track; in the process of performing this six year miracle he has lost the confidence of his own MPs to the extent that they have more or less no belief that they can keep their seats with him as leader.

His account makes no sense.

"I was much better than people think I was"

Obviously those people don't think that, hence his departure. Starmer doesn't have to agree.

I can comprehend a PM getting everything right - as he told us - but still losing the confidence of a slightly dim public. But to get everything miraculously right, and your own MPs, who mostly owe their careers to your electoral genius, have no confidence in you and call on you to go makes no sense.

Personally, the moment the PM lost me morally was when he fictitiously blamed a civil servant, who got sacked, for the PMs decision over Mandelson.

This will be my son’s fifth prime minister since he was born - and he’s 6.

https://x.com/jessicaelgot/status/2068964817344266383

Mine has got their second for their second birthday…

https://x.com/PGourtsoyannis/status/2068980810091266392

It'll be my daughter's fifth and she only turned 4 a couple of months ago.

Burham will be the sixth PM since July 2016 so six PMs in 10 years.

Prior to that, we only had six PMs in 40 years.

The point of Brexit was to take back control.

I think all it’s showing is how ungovernable this country is with expectations well beyond reality

One of the more plausible arguments for Brexit was the one that said it stopped British politicians slopey-sholdering things that go wrong onto Europe. One point of sharp accountability. If the Westminster government doesn't deliver what the people want, the Westminster government is responsible and they're out.

What that argument doesn't account for is when the people want things that are impossible. Or impossible without absurd cost or consequences. Or get overtaken by events. Or when the people want multiple things that contradict.

That problem was there before 2016, but it's been worse... much worse... since.

One might say that in that case Brexit has worked exactly as it should. Now we can all see the Emperor (PM) has no clothes, hence the reason we get through them so quickly.

We need a completely different type of PM, one who is not simply managing on behalf of the EU but is actually leading the country and taking responsibility. I don't think any of them have really grasped this concept yet.

Another article in the Atlantic, it's coming thick and fast from them right now:

The world now faces something new and frightening: a psychotic state. The administration is consistently detached from reality; the normal policy process we have seen in past administrations is nonexistent in this one. No one around the president even hints that anything he does is inappropriate, unpopular, or unwise. His Cabinet meetings have become exercises in self-abasement, with one member after another obsequiously groveling, each trying to outdo the next in their adoration. Trump, left on his own without adult supervision, has lurched from blunder to catastrophe.

Late stage Stalin / Henry VIII / Tiberias.

I wonder if anyone would imitate Naevius Macro alongside Vance.

This will be my son’s fifth prime minister since he was born - and he’s 6.

https://x.com/jessicaelgot/status/2068964817344266383

Mine has got their second for their second birthday…

https://x.com/PGourtsoyannis/status/2068980810091266392

It'll be my daughter's fifth and she only turned 4 a couple of months ago.

Burham will be the sixth PM since July 2016 so six PMs in 10 years.

Prior to that, we only had six PMs in 40 years.

The point of Brexit was to take back control.

I think all it’s showing is how ungovernable this country is with expectations well beyond reality

One of the more plausible arguments for Brexit was the one that said it stopped British politicians slopey-sholdering things that go wrong onto Europe. One point of sharp accountability. If the Westminster government doesn't deliver what the people want, the Westminster government is responsible and they're out.

What that argument doesn't account for is when the people want things that are impossible. Or impossible without absurd cost or consequences. Or get overtaken by events. Or when the people want multiple things that contradict.

That problem was there before 2016, but it's been worse... much worse... since.

Before 2016 - there was someone else that could and would take the blame for impossible demands - but we’ve left the organization that governments could claim made the impossible impossible.