I have just one question to these MPs urging Burnham to challenge Starmer – politicalbetting.com
I have just one question to these MPs urging Burnham to challenge Starmer – politicalbetting.com
Can you explain to me the plausible route(s) Andy Burnham becomes a member of parliament before the next general election? Until you can then I will continue to lay Andy Burnham in the appropriate markets.
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Challenging Starmer when Burnham holds none of the cards all seems very unwise.
Then the MPs are stupid.
And so is Burnham for saying this. There are a lot of barriers to his getting the top job, not the least of which is that he has tried before and failed. All this does is add pressure on a beleaguered PM and government. Do people like Burnham really want this government to fail? Would he prefer a Reform government?
Well, not exactly a McSweeney because he’s crap.
So Burnham's popularity is something of a mirage - though that doesn't mean people won't believe what they are seeing. If Starmer carries on as he is as the moment you can see why Labour members and left-leaning voters will become increasingly desperate, despite the drawbacks TSE details above.
To the extent im copyrighting my new phrase to describe the Burham Boosters and the man himself - all a bit Mayory-Fairy
What Labour politician thinks it's a good idea to launch a leadership campaign in the Daily Bleeding Telegraph?
Given how southern Labour's actual (as opposed to imagined) coalition is, how the hell does his agenda help?
Apart from that, 10/10 no notes Andy.
Maybe Lab MPs should be Mayory-wary based on what @TSE is saying?
Mayory Mayory, quite contrary (how does your ambition grow?)
Powell loses deputy leadership. Resigns her seat saying 'she's done with politics'. Her mate Andy gets the nomination and wins the by-election. He forces a leadership vote by getting 80 MPs to sign for a contest. Andy wins leadership. Powell is given her reward in form of a peerage and a place back in Cabinet. Starmer immediately resigns his seat and the seat is lost in subsequent by-election to Green-Corbyn Alliance candidate immediately plunging Burnham's new administration into crisis. The bond markets meltdown.
I've done the maths on a flat council tax rate and you'd be surprised by how few London properties would actually see their bills go up. The current system is so unfair it's really only £1 million+ properties that would see an increase, while 10s of millions of households across the rest of the country would see significant tax cuts. In somewhere like Middlesbrough you're talking 80%.
I live in Edinburgh, one of the most expensive parts of the country, and my council tax bill would be slightly less than it is now at 0.5%.
'Burnham is a w*****' rings around Anfield
Now children, let me tell the tale of President Alan Garcia. He was elected Pres. of Peru. Even by Peruvian standards his term in office was considered interesting. Corruption, incompetence, economic collapse.
Even Alan Garcia admitted he had been a disaster.
Some little time later, Alan Garcia ran for President again. He proposed that he had learnt his lesson. That he had changed. The Peruvian people - bless their cotton socks - with forgiveness and pity - relegated him.
Guess what happened, children?
To this day, it is harder to find people who admit to voting for Alan Garcia a second time, than it was to find Nazis in 1946.
I see no path for Burnham to PM, but what this is doing is creating division and angst within labour and no 10
Their conference is going to be all about Burnham and Farage, and the media will be entirely focused on their perceived 'gotchas'
In fairness to Burnham he has been an excellent mayor for Manchester, and he is a Northern MP challenging the London centric labour
It's what keeps Johnson going too...
Here’s the reality check - it almost doesn’t matter if it’s Burnham or not. We have all moved onto who replaces Starmer and how it happens.
Starmer is done.
Dominic Grieve, Theresa May, and David Cameron are also very popular with Liverpool fans.
Change that to Professional Londoner and you have a point
Get Morgan part 598
You are telling us that NATO has command of the air," Alekseyev said.
"No, they do not. Neither side does. Our surface-to-air missiles deny them the ability to control the air over the battle line, and their fighters--helped by their surface-to-air missiles, and ours!—deny it to us. The sky over the battlefield belongs to no one." Except the dead, the Air Force General thought
Of course MPs would have to make this change and would be damaging their own closed shop if they allowed non-MPs to be PM, so it won't happen. And it's certainly not worth it for the trivial, if any, gain to the country in changing one incompetent Labour dud for another.
However, the ambition still burned with the fire of a thousand suns. And the press loved him for providing a story on a quiet day. And the party in the country loved him for telling them what they wanted to hear.
So he half-wrecked his party in order to get the leadership. And then (because he wasn't really up to the job, which is why he crashed and burned in the foothills) he fully wrecked his party while he had the leadership.
History, tragedy, farce and all that.
It does make you wonder if landslide victory is a good thing
And in today's political climate @rottenborough who knows ?
https://www.itv.com/news/2025-09-24/boris-johnson-accuses-nigel-farage-of-extremely-dangerous-stance-on-ukraine
Boris Johnson accuses Nigel Farage of 'extremely dangerous' stance on Ukraine war
Meanwhile, Farage is repeating the Eastern Europeans eat swans thing.
Burnham gives her a peerage and Cabinet post and Powell says she has done all the campaigning she needs to do now.
I'm assuming the Deputy doesn't actually have to be an MP?
Is this grammar?
It is convention which dictates the PM should be an MP. Not the law…
They are getting high on their own supply, they are acting like they have the support of the majority in the country, when if there were an election tomorrow, Farage would likely end up with a lower vote share/votes than Starmer in 2024.
Either the Russian pilot made a mistake, and strayed within range of Ukrainian air defences, or the Ukrainians improved their air defence coverage. If it's the latter it might mean that Zaporizhia is now protected from these guided bomb attacks, which would be great.
Reform are supported by various groups, including what I now dub the Plastic Patriots. These are the English version of the cybernats- loud, all over social media, projecting that they are the majority. They are not.
When the flags come down - and they will - there will be an inevitable deflation of the plastic patriots. At which point people start to look at what Farage is saying and think “hang on”. We’ve seen the start of that this week.
But as long as the government continues to be shit and the Tories continue to be a sham this is going to continue, succour given to Farage and the plastics and the bigots.
Suggests nothing much has changed since May and the very stable polling is where public opinion genuinely sits at this time.
In a GE, Reform would take SW Norfolk easily on about 40%. LabCon would be on about 20% each based on last night. The Truss shadow has not departed yet. I would expect Con to claw their way back to 30% here but right now I cant see them winning this back
https://x.com/thenewarea51/status/1970886670334709902
The "again" is a little unfortunate.
They would be attacked from all sides. From Labour because they are their competition for leading the next government. From the Tories because they face an existential threat of being replaced as the main party of the right. From the Lib Dems because they are diametrically opposed on nearly everything and it plays well with their supporters.
Anti-Reform voting means 30% of the vote could be 350+ seats as electoral calculus predicts, but it could equally be 150. It all depends on how efficiently the others parties' vote is concentrated.
Currnetly Im not doing anything much but sit on my cash and assume the worst.
How that prat Reeves can once again stop all economic activity for three months is lamentable.
In case you're not following French news, the economist who's influencing the left wing tax thinking and program is advocating for a 8% wealth tax.
https://x.com/jeuasommenulle/status/1970802535268339828
Send every house in country info on how much they pay now and what they would pay in future. Make sure that 75% will see lower tax bill.
Tories and Reform will inevitably oppose and 75% of people will see that Labour lowered their tax bill.
It's made worse this year as the Budget is one month later than last year!
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c62nv0xx32go
Pb scooped the BBC (and the government?) by a week or so.
What a shame that Radio 3's morning programme is becoming more and more indistinguishable from Classic FM's. Under Tim "Pepsi" Davie, BBC Radio's distinctiveness may start to go the way of BBC TV's.
I think the government needs to give much more serious consideration to cyber attacks, both in prevention and amelioration when they occur. We have seen a few major UK companies very badly damaged by this already. It is unlikely to stop. The economic effects are sufficiently large to engage the national interest.
Not least because it's timed just right to avoid the R4 trailers for their own programs.
- SAM trap. Provide an inviting target. The Ukrainians kept the search radar off, and fired a SAM on a lofted trajectory. They used other sensors to detect the SU-34. Either the missile homes in using its own active radar, or the Ukranians switched on the missile battery guidance radar at the last second.
- The max range of SAM missiles varies by versions. A newer version of Patriot than they previously had?
- They got an SA-5 working ( very long range)
- Mix of the above plus cobbling together a bigger booster stage on the missile to throw it further.
From 2003
Missing swans may have been stolen for food, say police
https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2003/jul/04/markoliver
From 2013
Police hunt swan killers over fears birds are 'being stolen to eat'
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/crime/9800839/Police-hunt-swan-killers-over-fears-birds-are-being-stolen-to-eat.html (£££)
As I suggested yesterday, this is side of the bus stuff rather than a gotcha that will kill off Farage's chances. Sure, he has got the details wrong but ordinary voters will vaguely remember these stories from the past, or find them if they search. For them, Farage speaks the truth, or at least the truthiness, while his opponents prevaricate.
The idea for JLR is to pay the suppliers to stockpile parts. That's not a thing which would be practical for more than a few weeks at most, and risks leaving them with a glut of stock which they'll then struggle to sell.
I think the reality is that there's no great way to mitigate a very lengthy disruption to a large company's business, other than to prevent it.
The tier 2s could easily diversify.
Burnham also is offering a platform eg build more council homes, higher council tax for the most expensive homes and restore the 50p additional rate of income tax for the highest earners designed to appeal to voters Labour has lost to the Greens and potentially Your Party under Starmer. Even if economically they may not be so beneficial
Perhaps more relevantly its pretty common to see people openly flouting 'no fishing' signs on park lakes.
Which would add into the general social breakdown meme the BBC is reporting on:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c0q751vlxw1o
“ Keir Starmer has hit out at the “ridiculous, chaotic circus” of the Conservative leadership contest, as he pitched Labour in contrast as the party of sound money.”
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2022/oct/23/keir-starmer-hits-out-ridiculous-chaotic-circus-tory-contest-leadership-labour
“"The Tory leadership race hasn't even officially begun yet but the arms race of fantasy economics is well under way."
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-62122230
“ Starmer barely needed to come up with his own attack lines, relying almost entirely on the bitter criticism directed by Tory leadership candidates against their own colleagues.”
https://labourlist.org/2022/07/pmqs-starmer-seizes-on-tory-infighting-to-further-discredit-the-partys-record/