As the next GE gets closer it seems clear that the question will distil into a fairly simple one of 'Reform government or Not Reform Government', and that this is really the subtext for non activists, who are mostly not very political social democrat centrists with better things to do than post on PB.
For the majority who don't want a Reform government this will become a more urgent than usual question. Reform is tied up with Trumpism, dog whistle ethnocentrism, noisy nationalism, 'ICE UK', plutocratic cash from abroad, people who post vile stuff on X and scapegoating. In addition offering belief in simple answers to complex problems. It is different in kind from the older knockabout of Tory v Labour etc.
Avoiding Reform government at this stage involves other more or less house trained parties getting strong support. Refinements come later.
Burnham, who I don't personally care much for, looks like being the best prospect of Labour beating Reform in actual seats, such as mine.
The greatest danger if he succeeds in the current project is a repeat of the ludicrous messianism we have seen before with Boris, Corbyn, Truss and of course Farage.
I am still of the view that Reform only looks popular because of Starmer.
We know Labour has the total capability to poll 32 to 40%. Their vote is currently split but how much of that is genuine hatred of Labour or just “get Starmer out”?
Labour just won a landslide GE at 33%. I don't think they can poll anywhere near 40% in the next few years. Indeed 28-29% may be enough for a majority if the others split nicely.
FPTP victors at those levels are always going to be very unpopular once in charge, whichever party wins.
There’s definitely something in the idea that Manchester choose to elect a Manchester man for the PM. That will be very appetising IMHO.
Green vote already looks like it’s on the way to collapse. So Burnham needs to make a push on immigration.
Your regular reminder that Makerfield != Manchester.
But your point arguably still holds - That-vague-bit-of-small-towns-between-Wigan-Warrington-and-St-Helens elects a That-vague-bit-of-small-towns-between-Wigan-Warrington-and-St-Helens man for PM.
Burnham will struggle to make a push on immigration. It is one of his blindspots.
Burnham - really? Twice leadership election loser, mixed (at best) record in government. Doing well/ok as a mayor is not quite the same thing. If Labour can't do any better then it's not a great advert for the 2024 intake.
Better than Starmer? Possibly - he can hardly be a worse communicator, he may have a clearer idea of what he wants to achieve. He may also veer further left and scare off the more centrist current voters like myself (though that would probably require either Ed Davey to come up with a more convincing reason to vote Lib Dem than keeping badgers off banknotes or Badenoch to both have some interesting ideas and put very clear blue water between the Conservatives and Reform and explicitly rule out any support to or from Reform to form a government).
Communication wise, Streeting is... well... Streets ahead, but I'm not sure he actually has a policy agenda. He'd be the most interesting though and the only one that might actually enthuse me to vote Labour, if he has a vision.
As for a coronation, Streeting's resignation letter was very clear about the need for a wide contest. He's going to look a right numpty if he rows in behind a Burnham coronation.
I do, in many ways, hope Burnham manages to lose the by election. For the lolz, but maybe also so that Labour take a good long look at themselves and do actually have a proper contest that involves setting out some ideas for governing before someone takes the top job.
I don't see Streeting as being able to pull back the Left from the Greens - the dislike of him on the Left is strong and consistent.
Burnham doesn't seem to have a definite ire against him.
At least, that's what I perceive from various people on the Green Left.
Tice promises a "great candidate" who is "known locally" who has a "cracking" chance of winning.
So another southerner who once visited Manchester to go to an Oasis gig?
Nonsense
This is Reform.
It would be a southerner who visited Liverpool to go to an Oasis gig and confused the two cities as being the same.
Fun game.
It will be a southerner who will try to ingratiate himself by saying he has always loved Manchester United since he saw Kenny Dalglish playing for them.
At the risk of sounding like a broken record... I hope he loses. The sense of entitlement on display by Burnham and his team is breathtaking.
You keep saying this, but what sense of entitlement?
He is putting his career on the line facing election in a seat which is no longer safe and in any other by-election circumstances I expect Labour would lose it right now.
That is brave, not entitled.
I expect he will win, both because he is genuinely popular locally and Starmer is loathed nationally, but that is politics not entitlement.
Politicians are supposed to put themselves forward for elections. People who only ever play it safe are how we end up with failed leaders like Starmer who only walked in to Downing Street with his Ming Vase because everyone else imploded.
You see it as brave, I see it as entitled. The whole Labour leadership question has effectively been put into suspended animation waiting for the prince over the water to return and rescue the party.
Yes, politicians are supposed to put themselves forward for elections. He did. He stood for Mayor of Greater Manchester repeatedly and was repeatedly elected. That cuts both ways. At some point there is also a duty to the office and to the voters who elected him to do the job rather than treating it as a holding pattern for Westminster.
What grates is not Burnham standing for Parliament per se, but the assumption from parts of Labour and the media that there is a throne waiting for him the moment he chooses to reclaim it. That is where the sense of entitlement comes in for me.
If he wants to come back and fight his way through a leadership contest on merit, fair enough. But the constant “waiting for Andy” psychodrama around Labour has become faintly absurd.
I can’t speak for them but I imagine that a lot of Manc voters would prefer Burnham as PM - it would be their man at the top at the end of the day.
Is it not the case, that even quite unpopular PMs have managed to "resist the tide" in their constituencies?
On the entitlement - is there evidence that Burnham shares the view that it's his crown, waiting for him?
He has already advised No. 10 staffers that he'll let them keep their jobs when he takes over.
New Health Secretary, James Murray, PPE at Oxford, local councillor, advisor to Sadiq Khan, MP, shadow minister, minister.
Same old same old.
New Health Supremo James Murray also went to the same posh school – St Paul's – as George Osborne. Btw apparently social media-friendly GOP Senator (and future US President) Josh Hawley taught there for a year! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Josh_Hawley
So yes, public school and Oxford PPE, not even great-grandson of a toolmaker.
As the next GE gets closer it seems clear that the question will distil into a fairly simple one of 'Reform government or Not Reform Government', and that this is really the subtext for non activists, who are mostly not very political social democrat centrists with better things to do than post on PB.
For the majority who don't want a Reform government this will become a more urgent than usual question. Reform is tied up with Trumpism, dog whistle ethnocentrism, noisy nationalism, 'ICE UK', plutocratic cash from abroad, people who post vile stuff on X and scapegoating. In addition offering belief in simple answers to complex problems. It is different in kind from the older knockabout of Tory v Labour etc.
Avoiding Reform government at this stage involves other more or less house trained parties getting strong support. Refinements come later.
Burnham, who I don't personally care much for, looks like being the best prospect of Labour beating Reform in actual seats, such as mine.
The greatest danger if he succeeds in the current project is a repeat of the ludicrous messianism we have seen before with Boris, Corbyn, Truss and of course Farage.
I am still of the view that Reform only looks popular because of Starmer.
We know Labour has the total capability to poll 32 to 40%. Their vote is currently split but how much of that is genuine hatred of Labour or just “get Starmer out”?
I would say that Labour’s problems, in what were once its heartlands, run a lot deeper than “just Starmer”.
At the risk of sounding like a broken record... I hope he loses. The sense of entitlement on display by Burnham and his team is breathtaking.
You keep saying this, but what sense of entitlement?
He is putting his career on the line facing election in a seat which is no longer safe and in any other by-election circumstances I expect Labour would lose it right now.
That is brave, not entitled.
I expect he will win, both because he is genuinely popular locally and Starmer is loathed nationally, but that is politics not entitlement.
Politicians are supposed to put themselves forward for elections. People who only ever play it safe are how we end up with failed leaders like Starmer who only walked in to Downing Street with his Ming Vase because everyone else imploded.
You see it as brave, I see it as entitled. The whole Labour leadership question has effectively been put into suspended animation waiting for the prince over the water to return and rescue the party.
Yes, politicians are supposed to put themselves forward for elections. He did. He stood for Mayor of Greater Manchester repeatedly and was repeatedly elected. That cuts both ways. At some point there is also a duty to the office and to the voters who elected him to do the job rather than treating it as a holding pattern for Westminster.
What grates is not Burnham standing for Parliament per se, but the assumption from parts of Labour and the media that there is a throne waiting for him the moment he chooses to reclaim it. That is where the sense of entitlement comes in for me.
If he wants to come back and fight his way through a leadership contest on merit, fair enough. But the constant “waiting for Andy” psychodrama around Labour has become faintly absurd.
I can’t speak for them but I imagine that a lot of Manc voters would prefer Burnham as PM - it would be their man at the top at the end of the day.
Is it not the case, that even quite unpopular PMs have managed to "resist the tide" in their constituencies?
On the entitlement - is there evidence that Burnham shares the view that it's his crown, waiting for him?
He has already advised No. 10 staffers that he'll let them keep their jobs when he takes over.
As the next GE gets closer it seems clear that the question will distil into a fairly simple one of 'Reform government or Not Reform Government', and that this is really the subtext for non activists, who are mostly not very political social democrat centrists with better things to do than post on PB.
For the majority who don't want a Reform government this will become a more urgent than usual question. Reform is tied up with Trumpism, dog whistle ethnocentrism, noisy nationalism, 'ICE UK', plutocratic cash from abroad, people who post vile stuff on X and scapegoating. In addition offering belief in simple answers to complex problems. It is different in kind from the older knockabout of Tory v Labour etc.
Avoiding Reform government at this stage involves other more or less house trained parties getting strong support. Refinements come later.
Burnham, who I don't personally care much for, looks like being the best prospect of Labour beating Reform in actual seats, such as mine.
The greatest danger if he succeeds in the current project is a repeat of the ludicrous messianism we have seen before with Boris, Corbyn, Truss and of course Farage.
I am still of the view that Reform only looks popular because of Starmer.
We know Labour has the total capability to poll 32 to 40%. Their vote is currently split but how much of that is genuine hatred of Labour or just “get Starmer out”?
Whilst I kind of agree I am also of the opposite but complimentary view. The Labour vote is only holding up to the extent it is because Reform are the main opposition and people fear that if Labour fail then Reform will win easily. I think if Reform were not there then the Labour vote would be even worse than it is now.
There’s definitely something in the idea that Manchester choose to elect a Manchester man for the PM. That will be very appetising IMHO.
Green vote already looks like it’s on the way to collapse. So Burnham needs to make a push on immigration.
Your regular reminder that Makerfield != Manchester.
But your point arguably still holds - That-vague-bit-of-small-towns-between-Wigan-Warrington-and-St-Helens elects a That-vague-bit-of-small-towns-between-Wigan-Warrington-and-St-Helens man for PM.
Burnham will struggle to make a push on immigration. It is one of his blindspots.
The immigration thing has already been done for him.
Can he sell it? Better than Starmer sure but probably not. And will it feel like it after the cumulative impact of the Brexit Boris wave? No And for some it is not about immigration numbers but particular immigration whether that is about the boats, employment, race or religion
As the next GE gets closer it seems clear that the question will distil into a fairly simple one of 'Reform government or Not Reform Government', and that this is really the subtext for non activists, who are mostly not very political social democrat centrists with better things to do than post on PB.
For the majority who don't want a Reform government this will become a more urgent than usual question. Reform is tied up with Trumpism, dog whistle ethnocentrism, noisy nationalism, 'ICE UK', plutocratic cash from abroad, people who post vile stuff on X and scapegoating. In addition offering belief in simple answers to complex problems. It is different in kind from the older knockabout of Tory v Labour etc.
Avoiding Reform government at this stage involves other more or less house trained parties getting strong support. Refinements come later.
Burnham, who I don't personally care much for, looks like being the best prospect of Labour beating Reform in actual seats, such as mine.
The greatest danger if he succeeds in the current project is a repeat of the ludicrous messianism we have seen before with Boris, Corbyn, Truss and of course Farage.
Labour will have to bang on and on about the Tories just being Reform's little helpers. Vote Blue, get Turquoise anyway.
In Bradford the Tories appear to want to both prop up Reform and be the official opposition. Cake and eat it territory.
As the next GE gets closer it seems clear that the question will distil into a fairly simple one of 'Reform government or Not Reform Government', and that this is really the subtext for non activists, who are mostly not very political social democrat centrists with better things to do than post on PB.
For the majority who don't want a Reform government this will become a more urgent than usual question. Reform is tied up with Trumpism, dog whistle ethnocentrism, noisy nationalism, 'ICE UK', plutocratic cash from abroad, people who post vile stuff on X and scapegoating. In addition offering belief in simple answers to complex problems. It is different in kind from the older knockabout of Tory v Labour etc.
Avoiding Reform government at this stage involves other more or less house trained parties getting strong support. Refinements come later.
Burnham, who I don't personally care much for, looks like being the best prospect of Labour beating Reform in actual seats, such as mine.
The greatest danger if he succeeds in the current project is a repeat of the ludicrous messianism we have seen before with Boris, Corbyn, Truss and of course Farage.
I am still of the view that Reform only looks popular because of Starmer.
We know Labour has the total capability to poll 32 to 40%. Their vote is currently split but how much of that is genuine hatred of Labour or just “get Starmer out”?
I would say that Labour’s problems, in what were once its heartlands, run a lot deeper than “just Starmer”.
Labours problem in its heartlands start with potholes in roads, move on to the town centres dying and finish with social care isn't that great...
To fix that Social care needs to be shifted out of councils budgets so they can concentrate on things that locals want...
As the next GE gets closer it seems clear that the question will distil into a fairly simple one of 'Reform government or Not Reform Government', and that this is really the subtext for non activists, who are mostly not very political social democrat centrists with better things to do than post on PB.
For the majority who don't want a Reform government this will become a more urgent than usual question. Reform is tied up with Trumpism, dog whistle ethnocentrism, noisy nationalism, 'ICE UK', plutocratic cash from abroad, people who post vile stuff on X and scapegoating. In addition offering belief in simple answers to complex problems. It is different in kind from the older knockabout of Tory v Labour etc.
Avoiding Reform government at this stage involves other more or less house trained parties getting strong support. Refinements come later.
Burnham, who I don't personally care much for, looks like being the best prospect of Labour beating Reform in actual seats, such as mine.
The greatest danger if he succeeds in the current project is a repeat of the ludicrous messianism we have seen before with Boris, Corbyn, Truss and of course Farage.
I think the mistake you make is thinking that non activists are mostly social democrat centrists. If that were the case then Labour or the Lib Dems would romp home at every election.
As the next GE gets closer it seems clear that the question will distil into a fairly simple one of 'Reform government or Not Reform Government', and that this is really the subtext for non activists, who are mostly not very political social democrat centrists with better things to do than post on PB.
For the majority who don't want a Reform government this will become a more urgent than usual question. Reform is tied up with Trumpism, dog whistle ethnocentrism, noisy nationalism, 'ICE UK', plutocratic cash from abroad, people who post vile stuff on X and scapegoating. In addition offering belief in simple answers to complex problems. It is different in kind from the older knockabout of Tory v Labour etc.
Avoiding Reform government at this stage involves other more or less house trained parties getting strong support. Refinements come later.
Burnham, who I don't personally care much for, looks like being the best prospect of Labour beating Reform in actual seats, such as mine.
The greatest danger if he succeeds in the current project is a repeat of the ludicrous messianism we have seen before with Boris, Corbyn, Truss and of course Farage.
I am still of the view that Reform only looks popular because of Starmer.
We know Labour has the total capability to poll 32 to 40%. Their vote is currently split but how much of that is genuine hatred of Labour or just “get Starmer out”?
Whilst I kind of agree I am also of the opposite but complimentary view. The Labour vote is only holding up to the extent it is because Reform are the main opposition and people fear that if Labour fail then Reform will win easily. I think if Reform were not there then the Labour vote would be even worse than it is now.
Council of Europe (which includes the UK) agrees new declaration around ECHR and migration. Exactly the sort of action many people have been demanding.
Burnham - really? Twice leadership election loser, mixed (at best) record in government. Doing well/ok as a mayor is not quite the same thing. If Labour can't do any better then it's not a great advert for the 2024 intake.
Better than Starmer? Possibly - he can hardly be a worse communicator, he may have a clearer idea of what he wants to achieve. He may also veer further left and scare off the more centrist current voters like myself (though that would probably require either Ed Davey to come up with a more convincing reason to vote Lib Dem than keeping badgers off banknotes or Badenoch to both have some interesting ideas and put very clear blue water between the Conservatives and Reform and explicitly rule out any support to or from Reform to form a government).
Communication wise, Streeting is... well... Streets ahead, but I'm not sure he actually has a policy agenda. He'd be the most interesting though and the only one that might actually enthuse me to vote Labour, if he has a vision.
As for a coronation, Streeting's resignation letter was very clear about the need for a wide contest. He's going to look a right numpty if he rows in behind a Burnham coronation.
I do, in many ways, hope Burnham manages to lose the by election. For the lolz, but maybe also so that Labour take a good long look at themselves and do actually have a proper contest that involves setting out some ideas for governing before someone takes the top job.
I don't see Streeting as being able to pull back the Left from the Greens - the dislike of him on the Left is strong and consistent.
Burnham doesn't seem to have a definite ire against him.
At least, that's what I perceive from various people on the Green Left.
I think any Labour leader would pull back much of the left from the Greens by the time of the GE. Firstly, tactically to stop Reform, where appropriate. Secondly, the Green leader's charm is already getting exposed as gloss hiding someone quite bonkers.
Burnham - really? Twice leadership election loser, mixed (at best) record in government. Doing well/ok as a mayor is not quite the same thing. If Labour can't do any better then it's not a great advert for the 2024 intake.
Better than Starmer? Possibly - he can hardly be a worse communicator, he may have a clearer idea of what he wants to achieve. He may also veer further left and scare off the more centrist current voters like myself (though that would probably require either Ed Davey to come up with a more convincing reason to vote Lib Dem than keeping badgers off banknotes or Badenoch to both have some interesting ideas and put very clear blue water between the Conservatives and Reform and explicitly rule out any support to or from Reform to form a government).
Communication wise, Streeting is... well... Streets ahead, but I'm not sure he actually has a policy agenda. He'd be the most interesting though and the only one that might actually enthuse me to vote Labour, if he has a vision.
As for a coronation, Streeting's resignation letter was very clear about the need for a wide contest. He's going to look a right numpty if he rows in behind a Burnham coronation.
I do, in many ways, hope Burnham manages to lose the by election. For the lolz, but maybe also so that Labour take a good long look at themselves and do actually have a proper contest that involves setting out some ideas for governing before someone takes the top job.
I don't see Streeting as being able to pull back the Left from the Greens - the dislike of him on the Left is strong and consistent.
Burnham doesn't seem to have a definite ire against him.
At least, that's what I perceive from various people on the Green Left.
It's the kind of logic that says that Badenoch or Jenrick had to be Con leader, due to Reform - and to be fair, that proved to be what happened. If someone like Streeting can't be Labour leader then it makes people like me a bit uncomfortable about voting Labour (as Badenoch and - to a far greater extent, Jenrick - made it less likely that I would vote Con any time soon).
New Health Secretary, James Murray, PPE at Oxford, local councillor, advisor to Sadiq Khan, MP, shadow minister, minister.
Same old same old.
New Health Supremo James Murray also went to the same posh school – St Paul's – as George Osborne. Btw apparently social media-friendly GOP Senator (and future US President) Josh Hawley taught there for a year! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Josh_Hawley
So yes, public school and Oxford PPE, not even great-grandson of a toolmaker.
That would make Murray the only member of this Labour cabinet who went to a major public school then, a few like Lammy and Starmer and Healey for 6th form went to public schools too but only minor ones (and in Starmer's case an ex grammar). Rather more are Oxford PPE or Law graduates so that isn't much change
After his ignorance (or credulity, if he just believed what he was told) about English whisky, he’s probably in hiding
I’m sitting in the Hotel Tempus having Eggs Benedict, gazing across the rolling hills of the Hepple Estate in the Northumbrian sun
Also, thinking about the recent BMG poll in inews, which directly contradicts the above and says Farage beats everyone
But Ipsos are the gold standard when it comes to these types of questions.
Secondly best PM questions are inherently flawed, these questions are asking something different.
See the polling for the 2015 GE election.
Also 1987 and 1992 too.
I think that's a reasonable starting point, but it's worth reflecting that 2026 looks quite different from 1987, 1992 and 2015 - the way things worked then in a two-and-a-half party world may not be the same as the way things work in a four-and-a-half party world.
As the next GE gets closer it seems clear that the question will distil into a fairly simple one of 'Reform government or Not Reform Government', and that this is really the subtext for non activists, who are mostly not very political social democrat centrists with better things to do than post on PB.
For the majority who don't want a Reform government this will become a more urgent than usual question. Reform is tied up with Trumpism, dog whistle ethnocentrism, noisy nationalism, 'ICE UK', plutocratic cash from abroad, people who post vile stuff on X and scapegoating. In addition offering belief in simple answers to complex problems. It is different in kind from the older knockabout of Tory v Labour etc.
Avoiding Reform government at this stage involves other more or less house trained parties getting strong support. Refinements come later.
Burnham, who I don't personally care much for, looks like being the best prospect of Labour beating Reform in actual seats, such as mine.
The greatest danger if he succeeds in the current project is a repeat of the ludicrous messianism we have seen before with Boris, Corbyn, Truss and of course Farage.
I am still of the view that Reform only looks popular because of Starmer.
We know Labour has the total capability to poll 32 to 40%. Their vote is currently split but how much of that is genuine hatred of Labour or just “get Starmer out”?
Whilst I kind of agree I am also of the opposite but complimentary view. The Labour vote is only holding up to the extent it is because Reform are the main opposition and people fear that if Labour fail then Reform will win easily. I think if Reform were not there then the Labour vote would be even worse than it is now.
That’s an interesting point Richard.
The other question is how hard the Green vote is. Will the Greens discover, as the Lib Dems did, that many of their new voters will go back to Labour at the first excuse?
Burnham - really? Twice leadership election loser, mixed (at best) record in government. Doing well/ok as a mayor is not quite the same thing. If Labour can't do any better then it's not a great advert for the 2024 intake.
Better than Starmer? Possibly - he can hardly be a worse communicator, he may have a clearer idea of what he wants to achieve. He may also veer further left and scare off the more centrist current voters like myself (though that would probably require either Ed Davey to come up with a more convincing reason to vote Lib Dem than keeping badgers off banknotes or Badenoch to both have some interesting ideas and put very clear blue water between the Conservatives and Reform and explicitly rule out any support to or from Reform to form a government).
Communication wise, Streeting is... well... Streets ahead, but I'm not sure he actually has a policy agenda. He'd be the most interesting though and the only one that might actually enthuse me to vote Labour, if he has a vision.
As for a coronation, Streeting's resignation letter was very clear about the need for a wide contest. He's going to look a right numpty if he rows in behind a Burnham coronation.
I do, in many ways, hope Burnham manages to lose the by election. For the lolz, but maybe also so that Labour take a good long look at themselves and do actually have a proper contest that involves setting out some ideas for governing before someone takes the top job.
I don't see Streeting as being able to pull back the Left from the Greens - the dislike of him on the Left is strong and consistent.
Burnham doesn't seem to have a definite ire against him.
At least, that's what I perceive from various people on the Green Left.
I think any Labour leader would pull back much of the left from the Greens by the time of the GE. Firstly, tactically to stop Reform, where appropriate. Secondly, the Green leader's charm is already getting exposed as gloss hiding someone quite bonkers.
His approval ratings are dropping very quickly. He just cannot stop lying.
As the next GE gets closer it seems clear that the question will distil into a fairly simple one of 'Reform government or Not Reform Government', and that this is really the subtext for non activists, who are mostly not very political social democrat centrists with better things to do than post on PB.
For the majority who don't want a Reform government this will become a more urgent than usual question. Reform is tied up with Trumpism, dog whistle ethnocentrism, noisy nationalism, 'ICE UK', plutocratic cash from abroad, people who post vile stuff on X and scapegoating. In addition offering belief in simple answers to complex problems. It is different in kind from the older knockabout of Tory v Labour etc.
Avoiding Reform government at this stage involves other more or less house trained parties getting strong support. Refinements come later.
Burnham, who I don't personally care much for, looks like being the best prospect of Labour beating Reform in actual seats, such as mine.
The greatest danger if he succeeds in the current project is a repeat of the ludicrous messianism we have seen before with Boris, Corbyn, Truss and of course Farage.
I am still of the view that Reform only looks popular because of Starmer.
We know Labour has the total capability to poll 32 to 40%. Their vote is currently split but how much of that is genuine hatred of Labour or just “get Starmer out”?
Whilst I kind of agree I am also of the opposite but complimentary view. The Labour vote is only holding up to the extent it is because Reform are the main opposition and people fear that if Labour fail then Reform will win easily. I think if Reform were not there then the Labour vote would be even worse than it is now.
That’s an interesting point Richard.
The problem we have in politics at the moment is it is dominated by negative reasons to vote rather than positive. People are voting against what they don't like rather than for what they do like. None of the parties inspire in any way and very few of their individual MPs do either.
On thread - I find it fascinating that there is an implied probability of 15% of the Conservatives getting most seats at the next election, and even more fascinating that there is an implied probability of 7% for Restore Britain. These seem like tremendous value to lay to me, particularly the latter.
Burnham - really? Twice leadership election loser, mixed (at best) record in government. Doing well/ok as a mayor is not quite the same thing. If Labour can't do any better then it's not a great advert for the 2024 intake.
Better than Starmer? Possibly - he can hardly be a worse communicator, he may have a clearer idea of what he wants to achieve. He may also veer further left and scare off the more centrist current voters like myself (though that would probably require either Ed Davey to come up with a more convincing reason to vote Lib Dem than keeping badgers off banknotes or Badenoch to both have some interesting ideas and put very clear blue water between the Conservatives and Reform and explicitly rule out any support to or from Reform to form a government).
Communication wise, Streeting is... well... Streets ahead, but I'm not sure he actually has a policy agenda. He'd be the most interesting though and the only one that might actually enthuse me to vote Labour, if he has a vision.
As for a coronation, Streeting's resignation letter was very clear about the need for a wide contest. He's going to look a right numpty if he rows in behind a Burnham coronation.
I do, in many ways, hope Burnham manages to lose the by election. For the lolz, but maybe also so that Labour take a good long look at themselves and do actually have a proper contest that involves setting out some ideas for governing before someone takes the top job.
That would be rather good, engaging with honesty about real policy options and how to run a country with grown up politics by a party with principle and a capacity to avoid running over cliffs.
I very much doubt whether the current membership of the Labour party would be willing to allow that to happen. Reform may have populist policies, but they are not the only party with a populist membership. People forget that SKS is only PM today because he ran for leadership on a socialist ticket. here it is:
As the next GE gets closer it seems clear that the question will distil into a fairly simple one of 'Reform government or Not Reform Government', and that this is really the subtext for non activists, who are mostly not very political social democrat centrists with better things to do than post on PB.
For the majority who don't want a Reform government this will become a more urgent than usual question. Reform is tied up with Trumpism, dog whistle ethnocentrism, noisy nationalism, 'ICE UK', plutocratic cash from abroad, people who post vile stuff on X and scapegoating. In addition offering belief in simple answers to complex problems. It is different in kind from the older knockabout of Tory v Labour etc.
Avoiding Reform government at this stage involves other more or less house trained parties getting strong support. Refinements come later.
Burnham, who I don't personally care much for, looks like being the best prospect of Labour beating Reform in actual seats, such as mine.
The greatest danger if he succeeds in the current project is a repeat of the ludicrous messianism we have seen before with Boris, Corbyn, Truss and of course Farage.
I am still of the view that Reform only looks popular because of Starmer.
We know Labour has the total capability to poll 32 to 40%. Their vote is currently split but how much of that is genuine hatred of Labour or just “get Starmer out”?
Whilst I kind of agree I am also of the opposite but complimentary view. The Labour vote is only holding up to the extent it is because Reform are the main opposition and people fear that if Labour fail then Reform will win easily. I think if Reform were not there then the Labour vote would be even worse than it is now.
That’s an interesting point Richard.
The other question is how hard the Green vote is. Will the Greens discover, as the Lib Dems did, that many of their new voters will go back to Labour at the first excuse?
Has Tribal Labour really broken?
I really am not convinced it has. People say they’ll never vote Labour again but I’m not convinced, I think they’ll never vote STARMER again.
There was an interesting discussion with some Welsh voters who went to Plaid. I was in all honesty expecting them all to have said they voted Reform but none of them did. All let down by Labour.
This doesn’t feel like Boris Johnson 2.0 to me instinctively for Reform.
As the next GE gets closer it seems clear that the question will distil into a fairly simple one of 'Reform government or Not Reform Government', and that this is really the subtext for non activists, who are mostly not very political social democrat centrists with better things to do than post on PB.
For the majority who don't want a Reform government this will become a more urgent than usual question. Reform is tied up with Trumpism, dog whistle ethnocentrism, noisy nationalism, 'ICE UK', plutocratic cash from abroad, people who post vile stuff on X and scapegoating. In addition offering belief in simple answers to complex problems. It is different in kind from the older knockabout of Tory v Labour etc.
Avoiding Reform government at this stage involves other more or less house trained parties getting strong support. Refinements come later.
Burnham, who I don't personally care much for, looks like being the best prospect of Labour beating Reform in actual seats, such as mine.
The greatest danger if he succeeds in the current project is a repeat of the ludicrous messianism we have seen before with Boris, Corbyn, Truss and of course Farage.
I think the mistake you make is thinking that non activists are mostly social democrat centrists. If that were the case then Labour or the Lib Dems would romp home at every election.
Are most non activists perhaps social democrat small c conservatives? And are Reform a radical party or a conservative one?
As the next GE gets closer it seems clear that the question will distil into a fairly simple one of 'Reform government or Not Reform Government', and that this is really the subtext for non activists, who are mostly not very political social democrat centrists with better things to do than post on PB.
For the majority who don't want a Reform government this will become a more urgent than usual question. Reform is tied up with Trumpism, dog whistle ethnocentrism, noisy nationalism, 'ICE UK', plutocratic cash from abroad, people who post vile stuff on X and scapegoating. In addition offering belief in simple answers to complex problems. It is different in kind from the older knockabout of Tory v Labour etc.
Avoiding Reform government at this stage involves other more or less house trained parties getting strong support. Refinements come later.
Burnham, who I don't personally care much for, looks like being the best prospect of Labour beating Reform in actual seats, such as mine.
The greatest danger if he succeeds in the current project is a repeat of the ludicrous messianism we have seen before with Boris, Corbyn, Truss and of course Farage.
I think the mistake you make is thinking that non activists are mostly social democrat centrists. If that were the case then Labour or the Lib Dems would romp home at every election.
“Social Democrat Centrists” would probably cover a lot of people who were, for instance, quite happy to vote for Cameron’s Tories but might not vote for Badenoch.
At the risk of sounding like a broken record... I hope he loses. The sense of entitlement on display by Burnham and his team is breathtaking.
You keep saying this, but what sense of entitlement?
He is putting his career on the line facing election in a seat which is no longer safe and in any other by-election circumstances I expect Labour would lose it right now.
That is brave, not entitled.
I expect he will win, both because he is genuinely popular locally and Starmer is loathed nationally, but that is politics not entitlement.
Politicians are supposed to put themselves forward for elections. People who only ever play it safe are how we end up with failed leaders like Starmer who only walked in to Downing Street with his Ming Vase because everyone else imploded.
You see it as brave, I see it as entitled. The whole Labour leadership question has effectively been put into suspended animation waiting for the prince over the water to return and rescue the party.
Yes, politicians are supposed to put themselves forward for elections. He did. He stood for Mayor of Greater Manchester repeatedly and was repeatedly elected. That cuts both ways. At some point there is also a duty to the office and to the voters who elected him to do the job rather than treating it as a holding pattern for Westminster.
What grates is not Burnham standing for Parliament per se, but the assumption from parts of Labour and the media that there is a throne waiting for him the moment he chooses to reclaim it. That is where the sense of entitlement comes in for me.
If he wants to come back and fight his way through a leadership contest on merit, fair enough. But the constant “waiting for Andy” psychodrama around Labour has become faintly absurd.
I can’t speak for them but I imagine that a lot of Manc voters would prefer Burnham as PM - it would be their man at the top at the end of the day.
Is it not the case, that even quite unpopular PMs have managed to "resist the tide" in their constituencies?
On the entitlement - is there evidence that Burnham shares the view that it's his crown, waiting for him?
John Major, for example, increased his share of the vote in his constituency in 1992. So did Gordon Brown in 2010. Given the chance to make Tony Blair PM in 1997, the Labour share of the vote increased by more than the national average in his constituency of Sedgefield. In 1979 Callaghan increased his share of the vote in his constituency by 7.3pp, even while the national Labour vote share declined by 2.3pp.
Voters *love* to have the opportunity to vote directly for the Prime Minister in their constituency.
Totally rational, they know there'll be a flow of goodies and plenty of constituency staffers to sort out constituents' issues.
Burnham - really? Twice leadership election loser, mixed (at best) record in government. Doing well/ok as a mayor is not quite the same thing. If Labour can't do any better then it's not a great advert for the 2024 intake.
Better than Starmer? Possibly - he can hardly be a worse communicator, he may have a clearer idea of what he wants to achieve. He may also veer further left and scare off the more centrist current voters like myself (though that would probably require either Ed Davey to come up with a more convincing reason to vote Lib Dem than keeping badgers off banknotes or Badenoch to both have some interesting ideas and put very clear blue water between the Conservatives and Reform and explicitly rule out any support to or from Reform to form a government).
Communication wise, Streeting is... well... Streets ahead, but I'm not sure he actually has a policy agenda. He'd be the most interesting though and the only one that might actually enthuse me to vote Labour, if he has a vision.
As for a coronation, Streeting's resignation letter was very clear about the need for a wide contest. He's going to look a right numpty if he rows in behind a Burnham coronation.
I do, in many ways, hope Burnham manages to lose the by election. For the lolz, but maybe also so that Labour take a good long look at themselves and do actually have a proper contest that involves setting out some ideas for governing before someone takes the top job.
I don't see Streeting as being able to pull back the Left from the Greens - the dislike of him on the Left is strong and consistent.
Burnham doesn't seem to have a definite ire against him.
At least, that's what I perceive from various people on the Green Left.
Rory on TRiP quoted Labour MPs on Streeting:-
I just had a Labour MP ring me and she just said, "Angela is just much more popular with the party members". And then I had another MP who had both Wes Streeting and Angela Rainer up to their constituency and they were like, "Well, Wes Streeting did a great job. He speaks very well, but Angela, they just loved; she's just of them. There's just a kind of emotional resonance that Wes doesn't get." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mVa3MZ2ED9w&t=1260s
There’s definitely something in the idea that Manchester choose to elect a Manchester man for the PM. That will be very appetising IMHO.
Green vote already looks like it’s on the way to collapse. So Burnham needs to make a push on immigration.
Your regular reminder that Makerfield != Manchester.
But your point arguably still holds - That-vague-bit-of-small-towns-between-Wigan-Warrington-and-St-Helens elects a That-vague-bit-of-small-towns-between-Wigan-Warrington-and-St-Helens man for PM.
Burnham will struggle to make a push on immigration. It is one of his blindspots.
I call those places Rugby League land.
I once got into so much trouble for calling people from St Helens ‘plastic Scousers’.
As the next GE gets closer it seems clear that the question will distil into a fairly simple one of 'Reform government or Not Reform Government', and that this is really the subtext for non activists, who are mostly not very political social democrat centrists with better things to do than post on PB.
For the majority who don't want a Reform government this will become a more urgent than usual question. Reform is tied up with Trumpism, dog whistle ethnocentrism, noisy nationalism, 'ICE UK', plutocratic cash from abroad, people who post vile stuff on X and scapegoating. In addition offering belief in simple answers to complex problems. It is different in kind from the older knockabout of Tory v Labour etc.
Avoiding Reform government at this stage involves other more or less house trained parties getting strong support. Refinements come later.
Burnham, who I don't personally care much for, looks like being the best prospect of Labour beating Reform in actual seats, such as mine.
The greatest danger if he succeeds in the current project is a repeat of the ludicrous messianism we have seen before with Boris, Corbyn, Truss and of course Farage.
I am still of the view that Reform only looks popular because of Starmer.
We know Labour has the total capability to poll 32 to 40%. Their vote is currently split but how much of that is genuine hatred of Labour or just “get Starmer out”?
Whilst I kind of agree I am also of the opposite but complimentary view. The Labour vote is only holding up to the extent it is because Reform are the main opposition and people fear that if Labour fail then Reform will win easily. I think if Reform were not there then the Labour vote would be even worse than it is now.
That’s an interesting point Richard.
The other question is how hard the Green vote is. Will the Greens discover, as the Lib Dems did, that many of their new voters will go back to Labour at the first excuse?
Has Tribal Labour really broken?
I doubt this will be a 'Labour' campaign. It will be badged as a 'Get Our Andy In' campaign. Suspect the literature will barely mention labour.
As the next GE gets closer it seems clear that the question will distil into a fairly simple one of 'Reform government or Not Reform Government', and that this is really the subtext for non activists, who are mostly not very political social democrat centrists with better things to do than post on PB.
For the majority who don't want a Reform government this will become a more urgent than usual question. Reform is tied up with Trumpism, dog whistle ethnocentrism, noisy nationalism, 'ICE UK', plutocratic cash from abroad, people who post vile stuff on X and scapegoating. In addition offering belief in simple answers to complex problems. It is different in kind from the older knockabout of Tory v Labour etc.
Avoiding Reform government at this stage involves other more or less house trained parties getting strong support. Refinements come later.
Burnham, who I don't personally care much for, looks like being the best prospect of Labour beating Reform in actual seats, such as mine.
The greatest danger if he succeeds in the current project is a repeat of the ludicrous messianism we have seen before with Boris, Corbyn, Truss and of course Farage.
I think the mistake you make is thinking that non activists are mostly social democrat centrists. If that were the case then Labour or the Lib Dems would romp home at every election.
Depends how you define social democrats. Lab + LD/Lib is a higher vote share than Con at most elections going back decades, as far as I can see from a quick Google. Now, not all LD/Lib voters are social democrats (I'm not sure I'd take that label!) but some are. And the Con-Lib coalition is good evidence to not lump Lab and LD together*. But are social democrats the largest group in the electorate? I'd say it's quite possible and depends how they are defined.
*the subsequent collapse in support for LD suggests that lumping Con and LD together was also not welcome to many LD voters!
Burnham - really? Twice leadership election loser, mixed (at best) record in government. Doing well/ok as a mayor is not quite the same thing. If Labour can't do any better then it's not a great advert for the 2024 intake.
Better than Starmer? Possibly - he can hardly be a worse communicator, he may have a clearer idea of what he wants to achieve. He may also veer further left and scare off the more centrist current voters like myself (though that would probably require either Ed Davey to come up with a more convincing reason to vote Lib Dem than keeping badgers off banknotes or Badenoch to both have some interesting ideas and put very clear blue water between the Conservatives and Reform and explicitly rule out any support to or from Reform to form a government).
Communication wise, Streeting is... well... Streets ahead, but I'm not sure he actually has a policy agenda. He'd be the most interesting though and the only one that might actually enthuse me to vote Labour, if he has a vision.
As for a coronation, Streeting's resignation letter was very clear about the need for a wide contest. He's going to look a right numpty if he rows in behind a Burnham coronation.
I do, in many ways, hope Burnham manages to lose the by election. For the lolz, but maybe also so that Labour take a good long look at themselves and do actually have a proper contest that involves setting out some ideas for governing before someone takes the top job.
I agree with most of that. I don't actually mind Streeting not having an agenda. He understands we need to be bold and radical and is willing to be unpopular to make some changes. That's a better starting block imo than someone who developed an agenda at school/university and then tries to fit the next 70 years of politics into it.
The UK will be able to take stronger action against illegal migration as Council of Europe Foreign Ministers, including Foreign Secretary Yvette Cooper, are set to agree an updated interpretation of Articles 3 and 8 of the ECHR today ... The declaration is expected to help courts interpret how the ECHR is applied, ensuring that serious criminals are not able to exploit the system to frustrate their deportation and extradition, and ensuring that family rights under Article 8 are properly balanced against the public interest – including the ability of countries to be able to deport foreign criminals and address national security threats.
At the risk of sounding like a broken record... I hope he loses. The sense of entitlement on display by Burnham and his team is breathtaking.
You keep saying this, but what sense of entitlement?
He is putting his career on the line facing election in a seat which is no longer safe and in any other by-election circumstances I expect Labour would lose it right now.
That is brave, not entitled.
I expect he will win, both because he is genuinely popular locally and Starmer is loathed nationally, but that is politics not entitlement.
Politicians are supposed to put themselves forward for elections. People who only ever play it safe are how we end up with failed leaders like Starmer who only walked in to Downing Street with his Ming Vase because everyone else imploded.
You see it as brave, I see it as entitled. The whole Labour leadership question has effectively been put into suspended animation waiting for the prince over the water to return and rescue the party.
Yes, politicians are supposed to put themselves forward for elections. He did. He stood for Mayor of Greater Manchester repeatedly and was repeatedly elected. That cuts both ways. At some point there is also a duty to the office and to the voters who elected him to do the job rather than treating it as a holding pattern for Westminster.
What grates is not Burnham standing for Parliament per se, but the assumption from parts of Labour and the media that there is a throne waiting for him the moment he chooses to reclaim it. That is where the sense of entitlement comes in for me.
If he wants to come back and fight his way through a leadership contest on merit, fair enough. But the constant “waiting for Andy” psychodrama around Labour has become faintly absurd.
I can’t speak for them but I imagine that a lot of Manc voters would prefer Burnham as PM - it would be their man at the top at the end of the day.
Is it not the case, that even quite unpopular PMs have managed to "resist the tide" in their constituencies?
On the entitlement - is there evidence that Burnham shares the view that it's his crown, waiting for him?
John Major, for example, increased his share of the vote in his constituency in 1992. So did Gordon Brown in 2010. Given the chance to make Tony Blair PM in 1997, the Labour share of the vote increased by more than the national average in his constituency of Sedgefield. In 1979 Callaghan increased his share of the vote in his constituency by 7.3pp, even while the national Labour vote share declined by 2.3pp.
Voters *love* to have the opportunity to vote directly for the Prime Minister in their constituency.
Totally rational, they know there'll be a flow of goodies and plenty of constituency staffers to sort out constituents' issues.
You don't get it. It's not cynically materialistic like that. It is the presumed (and often imaginary: we all can think of MPs who couldn't find their own constituency with a satnav) emotional connection to home.
At the risk of sounding like a broken record... I hope he loses. The sense of entitlement on display by Burnham and his team is breathtaking.
You keep saying this, but what sense of entitlement?
He is putting his career on the line facing election in a seat which is no longer safe and in any other by-election circumstances I expect Labour would lose it right now.
That is brave, not entitled.
I expect he will win, both because he is genuinely popular locally and Starmer is loathed nationally, but that is politics not entitlement.
Politicians are supposed to put themselves forward for elections. People who only ever play it safe are how we end up with failed leaders like Starmer who only walked in to Downing Street with his Ming Vase because everyone else imploded.
You see it as brave, I see it as entitled. The whole Labour leadership question has effectively been put into suspended animation waiting for the prince over the water to return and rescue the party.
Yes, politicians are supposed to put themselves forward for elections. He did. He stood for Mayor of Greater Manchester repeatedly and was repeatedly elected. That cuts both ways. At some point there is also a duty to the office and to the voters who elected him to do the job rather than treating it as a holding pattern for Westminster.
What grates is not Burnham standing for Parliament per se, but the assumption from parts of Labour and the media that there is a throne waiting for him the moment he chooses to reclaim it. That is where the sense of entitlement comes in for me.
If he wants to come back and fight his way through a leadership contest on merit, fair enough. But the constant “waiting for Andy” psychodrama around Labour has become faintly absurd.
I can’t speak for them but I imagine that a lot of Manc voters would prefer Burnham as PM - it would be their man at the top at the end of the day.
Is it not the case, that even quite unpopular PMs have managed to "resist the tide" in their constituencies?
On the entitlement - is there evidence that Burnham shares the view that it's his crown, waiting for him?
He has already advised No. 10 staffers that he'll let them keep their jobs when he takes over.
So no he hasn't shown any sense of entitlement.
Interesting - where was that leaked?
And if true a mistake since Starmer's No 10 operation has been shite to be frank.
As the next GE gets closer it seems clear that the question will distil into a fairly simple one of 'Reform government or Not Reform Government', and that this is really the subtext for non activists, who are mostly not very political social democrat centrists with better things to do than post on PB.
For the majority who don't want a Reform government this will become a more urgent than usual question. Reform is tied up with Trumpism, dog whistle ethnocentrism, noisy nationalism, 'ICE UK', plutocratic cash from abroad, people who post vile stuff on X and scapegoating. In addition offering belief in simple answers to complex problems. It is different in kind from the older knockabout of Tory v Labour etc.
Avoiding Reform government at this stage involves other more or less house trained parties getting strong support. Refinements come later.
Burnham, who I don't personally care much for, looks like being the best prospect of Labour beating Reform in actual seats, such as mine.
The greatest danger if he succeeds in the current project is a repeat of the ludicrous messianism we have seen before with Boris, Corbyn, Truss and of course Farage.
I think the mistake you make is thinking that non activists are mostly social democrat centrists. If that were the case then Labour or the Lib Dems would romp home at every election.
Every government since the war has been social democratic centrist. It is where the great majority stand. Obviously the practice of people involves personal self interest (tax cuts for me, tax rises for others etc) but once allowance is made, we are centrists.
Centrism, as I see it, is serious about avoiding populism (simple answers to complex questions), accepting the democratic process, avoiding authoritarianism, upholding the rule of law and separation of powers, working with an international order, accepts the world is complicated and imperfect, upholds private enterprise and a substantial welfare state, doesn't demonise minorities, prefers Adam Smith and David Ricardo to Marx and is fiscally responsible.
Towns are handsome and well kept. Farms look fat and happy. I hear there may be pockets of poverty up here, as well. I hear talk of a place called “Teesside” whatever that is. But this bit of t’North has a quiet but deep prosperity
It should say a lot for Burnham’s political skill perhaps that he has managed to engineer a solution which I’ll be honest, I thought was extremely unlikely.
Or perhaps it’s just how terrible Starmer is.
In his highdive act from Big Ben Burnham has managed to not trip up on the railings, missed the flock of pigeons, adjusted his budgie smuggler malfunction and corrected for wind speed. Now he just needs to hit that wheely bin full of tepid water.
The UK will be able to take stronger action against illegal migration as Council of Europe Foreign Ministers, including Foreign Secretary Yvette Cooper, are set to agree an updated interpretation of Articles 3 and 8 of the ECHR today ... The declaration is expected to help courts interpret how the ECHR is applied, ensuring that serious criminals are not able to exploit the system to frustrate their deportation and extradition, and ensuring that family rights under Article 8 are properly balanced against the public interest – including the ability of countries to be able to deport foreign criminals and address national security threats.
(No new appointment to the Chiltern Hundreds yet, but I thought this would be of interest.)
As I’ve said repeatedly, this government was underneath doing some decent things that if they had somebody able to articulate the message would have done better. But the public stopped listening long ago.
Burnham would be mad to drop some of the good stuff.
As the next GE gets closer it seems clear that the question will distil into a fairly simple one of 'Reform government or Not Reform Government', and that this is really the subtext for non activists, who are mostly not very political social democrat centrists with better things to do than post on PB.
For the majority who don't want a Reform government this will become a more urgent than usual question. Reform is tied up with Trumpism, dog whistle ethnocentrism, noisy nationalism, 'ICE UK', plutocratic cash from abroad, people who post vile stuff on X and scapegoating. In addition offering belief in simple answers to complex problems. It is different in kind from the older knockabout of Tory v Labour etc.
Avoiding Reform government at this stage involves other more or less house trained parties getting strong support. Refinements come later.
Burnham, who I don't personally care much for, looks like being the best prospect of Labour beating Reform in actual seats, such as mine.
The greatest danger if he succeeds in the current project is a repeat of the ludicrous messianism we have seen before with Boris, Corbyn, Truss and of course Farage.
I am still of the view that Reform only looks popular because of Starmer.
We know Labour has the total capability to poll 32 to 40%. Their vote is currently split but how much of that is genuine hatred of Labour or just “get Starmer out”?
Whilst I kind of agree I am also of the opposite but complimentary view. The Labour vote is only holding up to the extent it is because Reform are the main opposition and people fear that if Labour fail then Reform will win easily. I think if Reform were not there then the Labour vote would be even worse than it is now.
That’s an interesting point Richard.
The other question is how hard the Green vote is. Will the Greens discover, as the Lib Dems did, that many of their new voters will go back to Labour at the first excuse?
Has Tribal Labour really broken?
I doubt this will be a 'Labour' campaign. It will be badged as a 'Get Our Andy In' campaign. Suspect the literature will barely mention labour.
We'll see.
I was think more down the line - Streeting as PM vs Burnhan as PM
As the next GE gets closer it seems clear that the question will distil into a fairly simple one of 'Reform government or Not Reform Government', and that this is really the subtext for non activists, who are mostly not very political social democrat centrists with better things to do than post on PB.
For the majority who don't want a Reform government this will become a more urgent than usual question. Reform is tied up with Trumpism, dog whistle ethnocentrism, noisy nationalism, 'ICE UK', plutocratic cash from abroad, people who post vile stuff on X and scapegoating. In addition offering belief in simple answers to complex problems. It is different in kind from the older knockabout of Tory v Labour etc.
Avoiding Reform government at this stage involves other more or less house trained parties getting strong support. Refinements come later.
Burnham, who I don't personally care much for, looks like being the best prospect of Labour beating Reform in actual seats, such as mine.
The greatest danger if he succeeds in the current project is a repeat of the ludicrous messianism we have seen before with Boris, Corbyn, Truss and of course Farage.
I am still of the view that Reform only looks popular because of Starmer.
We know Labour has the total capability to poll 32 to 40%. Their vote is currently split but how much of that is genuine hatred of Labour or just “get Starmer out”?
Whilst I kind of agree I am also of the opposite but complimentary view. The Labour vote is only holding up to the extent it is because Reform are the main opposition and people fear that if Labour fail then Reform will win easily. I think if Reform were not there then the Labour vote would be even worse than it is now.
That’s an interesting point Richard.
The problem we have in politics at the moment is it is dominated by negative reasons to vote rather than positive. People are voting against what they don't like rather than for what they do like. None of the parties inspire in any way and very few of their individual MPs do either.
Agree wholeheartedly. I voted LD, pretty consistently, for many years because they were the party that best represented my views on a number of things. They're still not far away on many things, but I don't have the positive reason to vote for them that I used to, so for the last couple of elections* I've voted tactically for Lab against Con.
*by election and 2024 - I didn't vote Lab under Corbyn! 2019 I was in a safe seat and I effectively abstained (voted Green or Yorkshire Party)
Towns are handsome and well kept. Farms look fat and happy. I hear there may be pockets of poverty up here, as well. I hear talk of a place called “Teesside” whatever that is. But this bit of t’North has a quiet but deep prosperity
Pleasing
Friday....people "WFH" day where H stands for hotel.
Towns are handsome and well kept. Farms look fat and happy. I hear there may be pockets of poverty up here, as well. I hear talk of a place called “Teesside” whatever that is. But this bit of t’North has a quiet but deep prosperity
Pleasing
Indeed Alnwick Castle too and home of the Duke of Northumberland, Tory vote also generally hold up better Northumberland than most of the North and Reform are weaker there
Amidst the whirl of politics, KC3 went to Golders Green and was almost mobbed by anxious but happy Jewish people. Grateful for his presence. Imagine a Labour prime minister trying to do this. Oh wait he did and was screamed at
“Today, in response to a series of smaller attacks on Jews, our British monarch has just taken on a role as patron of the Community Security Trust. He has visited this site of an attempted massacre to shake hands with a traumatised and fearful Jewish community. He has, in short, behaved like a mensch. His visit tells a different story about how British institutions and leaders relate to this country’s Jewish community.”
On thread - I find it fascinating that there is an implied probability of 15% of the Conservatives getting most seats at the next election, and even more fascinating that there is an implied probability of 7% for Restore Britain. These seem like tremendous value to lay to me, particularly the latter.
Agree on “Restore Britain”. That probability feels like almost nil. Disagree on the Tories. Most seats might easily mean 25% of the vote next time, and with inbuilt GE campaign advantages through being the main opposition, and Reform being a one man band whose man might finally be losing some luster, I think the Tories have at least a 15% chance of most seats.
Towns are handsome and well kept. Farms look fat and happy. I hear there may be pockets of poverty up here, as well. I hear talk of a place called “Teesside” whatever that is. But this bit of t’North has a quiet but deep prosperity
Pleasing
Friday....people "WFH" day where H stands for hotel.
In the rural north they all go to stay at posh hotels on Friday? This is news to me but welcome news for hospitality
Amidst the whirl of politics, KC3 went to Golders Green and was almost mobbed by anxious but happy Jewish people. Grateful for his presence. Imagine a Labour prime minister trying to do this. Oh wait he did and was screamed at
“Today, in response to a series of smaller attacks on Jews, our British monarch has just taken on a role as patron of the Community Security Trust. He has visited this site of an attempted massacre to shake hands with a traumatised and fearful Jewish community. He has, in short, behaved like a mensch. His visit tells a different story about how British institutions and leaders relate to this country’s Jewish community.”
Not convinced. Labour need to persuade people to get off their arse to vote and no amount of scare stories about Reform are going to do that to the extent needed - there needs to be a positive case too.
Reform have pivoted towards pensioners since July ‘24 (including a direct attack on people my age), and they will have zero qualms about making unfunded promises about triple lock, WFP etc etc. This will be highly effective and the “stop Labour” will be just as potent as “stop Reform”.
This is Labour's problem under Starmer. It's far less about ideology, and far more 'why can't they just get shit done ?'
Can somebody educated in politics explain to me how Mamdani is able to do all this stuff but no other politician is ever able to make any noticeable progress?
Now the Mamdani experiment could quite easily end up a disaster - I make no prediction either way - but the point is he's (thus far) persuaded his electorate that he's getting shit done.
Council of Europe (which includes the UK) agrees new declaration around ECHR and migration. Exactly the sort of action many people have been demanding.
The link does not explain if this has any effect on the court. Do you know?
If not, it's about as much "action" as a local council resolution on Gaza.
There’s definitely something in the idea that Manchester choose to elect a Manchester man for the PM. That will be very appetising IMHO.
Green vote already looks like it’s on the way to collapse. So Burnham needs to make a push on immigration.
Your regular reminder that Makerfield != Manchester.
But your point arguably still holds - That-vague-bit-of-small-towns-between-Wigan-Warrington-and-St-Helens elects a That-vague-bit-of-small-towns-between-Wigan-Warrington-and-St-Helens man for PM.
Burnham will struggle to make a push on immigration. It is one of his blindspots.
I call those places Rugby League land.
I once got into so much trouble for calling people from St Helens ‘plastic Scousers’.
It is rugby league* land - these people care deeply about rugby league in a way much of the country doesn't really get - but this territory is even more specific than that. Wigan, Warrington and St. Helens are the medium sized rugby league towns between the big cities of Manchester and Liverpool, but I'm talking here about the small towns between the medium sized towns: Ashton-in-Makerfield, Hindley, Leigh**, Golborne, Newton-Le-Willows, Haydock. It's deeply inward looking. Everyone knows each other in a way that they don't quite in the medium-sized towns like Wigan.
*though I think I am right that actually more people PLAY rugby union, and of course Orrell, which was briefly in rugby union's top division in the early years after the establishment of such things in the 80s, and supplied several England players - rugby league is something to watch. Baffling to me because to my eyes League is a rather less engaging and exciting game. Nowadays of course many kids play both - my daughter plays rugby on the fringes of this zone and many girls play rugby league on a Saturday and rugby union on a Sunday in the way that kids elsewhere will play football on a Saturday and rugby (union) on a Sunday.
**granted Leigh has its own professional club but so chippy is Leigh about being overshadowed by big-city Wigan that I tentatively put it in this bracket.
Towns are handsome and well kept. Farms look fat and happy. I hear there may be pockets of poverty up here, as well. I hear talk of a place called “Teesside” whatever that is. But this bit of t’North has a quiet but deep prosperity
Pleasing
Friday....people "WFH" day where H stands for hotel.
In the rural north they all go to stay at posh hotels on Friday? This is news to me but welcome news for hospitality
I think again the k shaped economy. People on the upper end of the income scale have done very well over the past 5 years, might well have sold their homes and moved to a cheaper place and only expected in the office 2-3 days a week. I imagine all those on £99k a year have also pushed hard for more work life balance rather than take a pay rise. Thus they have money and opportunity to have extended weekends away.
Towns are handsome and well kept. Farms look fat and happy. I hear there may be pockets of poverty up here, as well. I hear talk of a place called “Teesside” whatever that is. But this bit of t’North has a quiet but deep prosperity
Pleasing
Friday....people "WFH" day where H stands for hotel.
In the rural north they all go to stay at posh hotels on Friday? This is news to me but welcome news for hospitality
Where have you been so far and what's your itinery. We have a caravan up in Hauxley and always looking for new things to do when we head up, although our little one is a bit too young for whisky tasting. Ideas beyond Cragside, Holy Island etc ?
On thread - I find it fascinating that there is an implied probability of 15% of the Conservatives getting most seats at the next election, and even more fascinating that there is an implied probability of 7% for Restore Britain. These seem like tremendous value to lay to me, particularly the latter.
Agree on “Restore Britain”. That probability feels like almost nil. Disagree on the Tories. Most seats might easily mean 25% of the vote next time, and with inbuilt GE campaign advantages through being the main opposition, and Reform being a one man band whose man might finally be losing some luster, I think the Tories have at least a 15% chance of most seats.
There seems to be little evidence that Restore are going to run many candidates
Council of Europe (which includes the UK) agrees new declaration around ECHR and migration. Exactly the sort of action many people have been demanding.
The link does not explain if this has any effect on the court. Do you know?
If not, it's about as much "action" as a local council resolution on Gaza.
The Uk gov link posted earlier looks a little more promising.
A woman said on an interview last night it was Starmer that people hate, not Labour.
We will find out but right now I think Labour’s polling is somewhat of an illusion because of how hated Starmer is.
Burnham at least won’t start off that way and I suspect at least initially Labour will tick up.
It’s clearly possible for them to poll between 32% and 40% as they have in an election. With both Farage and Polanski on the way down in approval, Burnham is fortunate in his timing.
Whoever takes over from Starmer, if they fail to deliver as PM, will be every bit as unpopular as he is.
As the next GE gets closer it seems clear that the question will distil into a fairly simple one of 'Reform government or Not Reform Government', and that this is really the subtext for non activists, who are mostly not very political social democrat centrists with better things to do than post on PB.
For the majority who don't want a Reform government this will become a more urgent than usual question. Reform is tied up with Trumpism, dog whistle ethnocentrism, noisy nationalism, 'ICE UK', plutocratic cash from abroad, people who post vile stuff on X and scapegoating. In addition offering belief in simple answers to complex problems. It is different in kind from the older knockabout of Tory v Labour etc.
Avoiding Reform government at this stage involves other more or less house trained parties getting strong support. Refinements come later.
Burnham, who I don't personally care much for, looks like being the best prospect of Labour beating Reform in actual seats, such as mine.
The greatest danger if he succeeds in the current project is a repeat of the ludicrous messianism we have seen before with Boris, Corbyn, Truss and of course Farage.
I am still of the view that Reform only looks popular because of Starmer.
We know Labour has the total capability to poll 32 to 40%. Their vote is currently split but how much of that is genuine hatred of Labour or just “get Starmer out”?
Whilst I kind of agree I am also of the opposite but complimentary view. The Labour vote is only holding up to the extent it is because Reform are the main opposition and people fear that if Labour fail then Reform will win easily. I think if Reform were not there then the Labour vote would be even worse than it is now.
That’s an interesting point Richard.
The other question is how hard the Green vote is. Will the Greens discover, as the Lib Dems did, that many of their new voters will go back to Labour at the first excuse?
Has Tribal Labour really broken?
I really am not convinced it has. People say they’ll never vote Labour again but I’m not convinced, I think they’ll never vote STARMER again.
There was an interesting discussion with some Welsh voters who went to Plaid. I was in all honesty expecting them all to have said they voted Reform but none of them did. All let down by Labour.
This doesn’t feel like Boris Johnson 2.0 to me instinctively for Reform.
People in Scotland stopped voting for Labour because of Labour, and only made a bit of a return in 2024 theoretically because of Starmer (though I think 14 years of Tory ****s had more to do with it). Dunno what tribal Labour is like down your bit but it’s gone the way of Ravenscraig, Longannet and John Brown’s up here. You can chuck in Grangemouth for a modern slant.
As the next GE gets closer it seems clear that the question will distil into a fairly simple one of 'Reform government or Not Reform Government', and that this is really the subtext for non activists, who are mostly not very political social democrat centrists with better things to do than post on PB.
For the majority who don't want a Reform government this will become a more urgent than usual question. Reform is tied up with Trumpism, dog whistle ethnocentrism, noisy nationalism, 'ICE UK', plutocratic cash from abroad, people who post vile stuff on X and scapegoating. In addition offering belief in simple answers to complex problems. It is different in kind from the older knockabout of Tory v Labour etc.
Avoiding Reform government at this stage involves other more or less house trained parties getting strong support. Refinements come later.
Burnham, who I don't personally care much for, looks like being the best prospect of Labour beating Reform in actual seats, such as mine.
The greatest danger if he succeeds in the current project is a repeat of the ludicrous messianism we have seen before with Boris, Corbyn, Truss and of course Farage.
I think the mistake you make is thinking that non activists are mostly social democrat centrists. If that were the case then Labour or the Lib Dems would romp home at every election.
Depends how you define social democrats. Lab + LD/Lib is a higher vote share than Con at most elections going back decades, as far as I can see from a quick Google. Now, not all LD/Lib voters are social democrats (I'm not sure I'd take that label!) but some are. And the Con-Lib coalition is good evidence to not lump Lab and LD together*. But are social democrats the largest group in the electorate? I'd say it's quite possible and depends how they are defined.
*the subsequent collapse in support for LD suggests that lumping Con and LD together was also not welcome to many LD voters!
In general the political argument of the great majority in the UK is within the constraints of post WWII social democracy. We are finding and will continue to find even Reform coming into line, with the exception of their UK nationalism. The voters of Clacton are social democrats (welfare state+private enterprise+NATO etc) to a man and woman.
I wonder how many people would vote against Burnham on principle because they don't like the way their constituency is being used as a stepping stone for his ambition? Less than 2 years ago they voted for an MP presumably because they had some affitity for him. For him to walk away after promising to represent them for the next 5 years just to satisfy internal Labour party politics would surely piss off at least some of those voters?
No. 2 years ago Makerfield voted for a Labour Party apparatchick named Josh Simons to replace a retiring MP who had represented the seat since 2010, Simons having been parachuted in by McSweeney's mob through selection directly by the NEC rather than local members. Indeed as the director of Labour Together he ran McSweeney's mob, if ever a selection was down to internal Labour politics at Westminster that was it. So I don't think the electors of Makerfield had the slightest affinity for Simons which is borne out by the fact that the Labour vote share in the constituency stagnated in 2024.
By contrast, Burnham is very much a local and his old Leigh constituency overlapped with parts of Makefield. Even if he wasn't such a prominent well-respected figure in the GM area, you would still expect the local electorate to have an affinity for him as a local which was lacking with Josh Simons.
And far from resenting a by-election, I think that electors of Makerfield will welcome their unique opportunity to decide the political choice facing the country, in an election which everyone will understand will amount to: Vote Reform, Keep Starmer or Vote Labour, Change to Burnham.
Burnham - really? Twice leadership election loser, mixed (at best) record in government. Doing well/ok as a mayor is not quite the same thing. If Labour can't do any better then it's not a great advert for the 2024 intake.
Better than Starmer? Possibly - he can hardly be a worse communicator, he may have a clearer idea of what he wants to achieve. He may also veer further left and scare off the more centrist current voters like myself (though that would probably require either Ed Davey to come up with a more convincing reason to vote Lib Dem than keeping badgers off banknotes or Badenoch to both have some interesting ideas and put very clear blue water between the Conservatives and Reform and explicitly rule out any support to or from Reform to form a government).
Communication wise, Streeting is... well... Streets ahead, but I'm not sure he actually has a policy agenda. He'd be the most interesting though and the only one that might actually enthuse me to vote Labour, if he has a vision.
As for a coronation, Streeting's resignation letter was very clear about the need for a wide contest. He's going to look a right numpty if he rows in behind a Burnham coronation.
I do, in many ways, hope Burnham manages to lose the by election. For the lolz, but maybe also so that Labour take a good long look at themselves and do actually have a proper contest that involves setting out some ideas for governing before someone takes the top job.
I agree with most of that. I don't actually mind Streeting not having an agenda. He understands we need to be bold and radical and is willing to be unpopular to make some changes. That's a better starting block imo than someone who developed an agenda at school/university and then tries to fit the next 70 years of politics into it.
'agenda' = 'plan' in my post, but I appreciate that's ambiguous. Yes, I'm not that much of a fan of a fixed ideology, but a plan, particularly if bold and radical, is needed. It should be based on the current problems, possibilities and - particularly - evidence. So if something is tried and does not work, you ditch it, even if doing so means going 'left' or 'right'.
A woman said on an interview last night it was Starmer that people hate, not Labour.
We will find out but right now I think Labour’s polling is somewhat of an illusion because of how hated Starmer is.
Burnham at least won’t start off that way and I suspect at least initially Labour will tick up.
It’s clearly possible for them to poll between 32% and 40% as they have in an election. With both Farage and Polanski on the way down in approval, Burnham is fortunate in his timing.
Whoever takes over from Starmer, if they fail to deliver as PM, will be every bit as unpopular as he is.
Depends what you mean. On what I would call delivery Starmer is probably actually above par. On ambition and strategy he is very limited at best. On communication he is probably the worst ever (Truss the only rival for that).
Communication may well be the most important of those variables in popularity.
As the next GE gets closer it seems clear that the question will distil into a fairly simple one of 'Reform government or Not Reform Government', and that this is really the subtext for non activists, who are mostly not very political social democrat centrists with better things to do than post on PB.
For the majority who don't want a Reform government this will become a more urgent than usual question. Reform is tied up with Trumpism, dog whistle ethnocentrism, noisy nationalism, 'ICE UK', plutocratic cash from abroad, people who post vile stuff on X and scapegoating. In addition offering belief in simple answers to complex problems. It is different in kind from the older knockabout of Tory v Labour etc.
Avoiding Reform government at this stage involves other more or less house trained parties getting strong support. Refinements come later.
Burnham, who I don't personally care much for, looks like being the best prospect of Labour beating Reform in actual seats, such as mine.
The greatest danger if he succeeds in the current project is a repeat of the ludicrous messianism we have seen before with Boris, Corbyn, Truss and of course Farage.
I think the mistake you make is thinking that non activists are mostly social democrat centrists. If that were the case then Labour or the Lib Dems would romp home at every election.
Depends how you define social democrats. Lab + LD/Lib is a higher vote share than Con at most elections going back decades, as far as I can see from a quick Google. Now, not all LD/Lib voters are social democrats (I'm not sure I'd take that label!) but some are. And the Con-Lib coalition is good evidence to not lump Lab and LD together*. But are social democrats the largest group in the electorate? I'd say it's quite possible and depends how they are defined.
*the subsequent collapse in support for LD suggests that lumping Con and LD together was also not welcome to many LD voters!
In general the political argument of the great majority in the UK is within the constraints of post WWII social democracy. We are finding and will continue to find even Reform coming into line, with the exception of their UK nationalism. The voters of Clacton are social democrats (welfare state+private enterprise+NATO etc) to a man and woman.
Not entirely, voters in Clacton want their own taxes cut even if they aren't bothered about high taxes for the rich and big business. Social democrats want the average voter to pay more tax too to fund increased spending on welfare and public services.
Social democrats were also pro EU and are pro immigration and woke unlike Clacton voters
Towns are handsome and well kept. Farms look fat and happy. I hear there may be pockets of poverty up here, as well. I hear talk of a place called “Teesside” whatever that is. But this bit of t’North has a quiet but deep prosperity
Pleasing
Friday....people "WFH" day where H stands for hotel.
In the rural north they all go to stay at posh hotels on Friday? This is news to me but welcome news for hospitality
Where have you been so far and what's your itinery. We have a caravan up in Hauxley and always looking for new things to do when we head up, although our little one is a bit too young for whisky tasting. Ideas beyond Cragside, Holy Island etc ?
With genuine sadness - I’m having a lovely time - I have to leave this evening. I’m doing a quick trip to a couple of castles and then a brilliant Anglo Saxon scholar - head of the ad Gefrin museum - it taking me to the actual SITE of King Edwin’s summer palace from 550AD
It sounds so tantalising. They have good evidence of an Anglo saxon pagan shrine alongside an Anglo Saxon church. So the conversion of the Saxons visible in one site. They also have the only timber theatre of its time in Europe. Clearly built to echo the Roman theatres the Saxons would have found, in ruins, when they came to Britain
What did they declaim in that theatre? Beowulf? Brilliant
The whole site has been occupied since the end of the ice age and has Bronze Age barrows and a Neolithic henge - all in the same place. So I’m hoping for Serious Noom
At the risk of sounding like a broken record... I hope he loses. The sense of entitlement on display by Burnham and his team is breathtaking.
You keep saying this, but what sense of entitlement?
He is putting his career on the line facing election in a seat which is no longer safe and in any other by-election circumstances I expect Labour would lose it right now.
That is brave, not entitled.
I expect he will win, both because he is genuinely popular locally and Starmer is loathed nationally, but that is politics not entitlement.
Politicians are supposed to put themselves forward for elections. People who only ever play it safe are how we end up with failed leaders like Starmer who only walked in to Downing Street with his Ming Vase because everyone else imploded.
You see it as brave, I see it as entitled. The whole Labour leadership question has effectively been put into suspended animation waiting for the prince over the water to return and rescue the party.
Yes, politicians are supposed to put themselves forward for elections. He did. He stood for Mayor of Greater Manchester repeatedly and was repeatedly elected. That cuts both ways. At some point there is also a duty to the office and to the voters who elected him to do the job rather than treating it as a holding pattern for Westminster.
What grates is not Burnham standing for Parliament per se, but the assumption from parts of Labour and the media that there is a throne waiting for him the moment he chooses to reclaim it. That is where the sense of entitlement comes in for me.
If he wants to come back and fight his way through a leadership contest on merit, fair enough. But the constant “waiting for Andy” psychodrama around Labour has become faintly absurd.
Yes and he has served time as Mayor and done the job, people are allowed to change roles or jobs if another opportunity arises that they think would suit them
As for your penultimate paragraph, he is coming back and fighting his way through a leadership contest on merit.
Psychodrama is as much the media's need to be talking 24/7 as anything else, there is always psychodrama in politics.
As far as his actions though, he is doing what you said "fair enough" to - and he is doing it the hard way, seeking a midterm by-election to do so.
I don't much like Burnham, and actively dislike his sense of entitlement, but I recognise he's changed the narrative by going for a "difficult"* by election.
If nothing else, it shows he's developed some political nous since he last stood for the leadership.
As the next GE gets closer it seems clear that the question will distil into a fairly simple one of 'Reform government or Not Reform Government', and that this is really the subtext for non activists, who are mostly not very political social democrat centrists with better things to do than post on PB.
For the majority who don't want a Reform government this will become a more urgent than usual question. Reform is tied up with Trumpism, dog whistle ethnocentrism, noisy nationalism, 'ICE UK', plutocratic cash from abroad, people who post vile stuff on X and scapegoating. In addition offering belief in simple answers to complex problems. It is different in kind from the older knockabout of Tory v Labour etc.
Avoiding Reform government at this stage involves other more or less house trained parties getting strong support. Refinements come later.
Burnham, who I don't personally care much for, looks like being the best prospect of Labour beating Reform in actual seats, such as mine.
The greatest danger if he succeeds in the current project is a repeat of the ludicrous messianism we have seen before with Boris, Corbyn, Truss and of course Farage.
I am still of the view that Reform only looks popular because of Starmer.
We know Labour has the total capability to poll 32 to 40%. Their vote is currently split but how much of that is genuine hatred of Labour or just “get Starmer out”?
Whilst I kind of agree I am also of the opposite but complimentary view. The Labour vote is only holding up to the extent it is because Reform are the main opposition and people fear that if Labour fail then Reform will win easily. I think if Reform were not there then the Labour vote would be even worse than it is now.
No idea how representative I am, but fwiw I could conceivably vote for a Starmer-led Labour party (will depend on tangible progress being made on economic growth and debt reduction). There is no way on earth I'd vote for a Burnham-led Labour party.
Not convinced. Labour need to persuade people to get off their arse to vote and no amount of scare stories about Reform are going to do that to the extent needed - there needs to be a positive case too.
Reform have pivoted towards pensioners since July ‘24 (including a direct attack on people my age), and they will have zero qualms about making unfunded promises about triple lock, WFP etc etc. This will be highly effective and the “stop Labour” will be just as potent as “stop Reform”.
This is Labour's problem under Starmer. It's far less about ideology, and far more 'why can't they just get shit done ?'
Can somebody educated in politics explain to me how Mamdani is able to do all this stuff but no other politician is ever able to make any noticeable progress?
Now the Mamdani experiment could quite easily end up a disaster - I make no prediction either way - but the point is he's (thus far) persuaded his electorate that he's getting shit done.
That is popular.
Partly it's about not talking bollocks and only claiming to have done what you have actually done.
For example, on the small boats, Starmer and his minions will regularly talk about, "smashing the smuggling gangs," but they obviously haven't done that. So it undermines their entire messaging because it establishes them as an unreliable narrator.
So, when they actually do achieve something - like increasing deportations, or amending the interpretation of the ECHR to prevent the courts blocking more deportations - they don't get the credit for it because people don't trust that they're being honest about it.
Obviously people are cynical and believe all politicians are liars, but there is nuance there, and people trust the truthfulness of some politicians over others.
I think some of you are overthinking this. Why are Reform smashing away at Labour? Why are the Greens smashing away at Labour? Because people want *change*. They voted for that in 2024 and didn't get it. That's why they are incandescent.
So on paper, Makerfield looks a risk. Reform sniping away. The Greens.
No. Why Makerfield? Because Burnham used to be the MP for part of it and lives there. The local connection, plus *its Andy Burnham* and he isn't remotely under threat.
Whats more, I expect that he is going to run the kind of by-election campaign we rarely see. Not "I want to be a Labour MP and bring Labour's program to this seat". It will be "I am the program".
And that program will be change. He will win the by-election comfortably, and then he wins the leadership by proclamation because nobody else will get to 81 names.
At the risk of sounding like a broken record... I hope he loses. The sense of entitlement on display by Burnham and his team is breathtaking.
You keep saying this, but what sense of entitlement?
He is putting his career on the line facing election in a seat which is no longer safe and in any other by-election circumstances I expect Labour would lose it right now.
That is brave, not entitled.
I expect he will win, both because he is genuinely popular locally and Starmer is loathed nationally, but that is politics not entitlement.
Politicians are supposed to put themselves forward for elections. People who only ever play it safe are how we end up with failed leaders like Starmer who only walked in to Downing Street with his Ming Vase because everyone else imploded.
You see it as brave, I see it as entitled. The whole Labour leadership question has effectively been put into suspended animation waiting for the prince over the water to return and rescue the party.
Yes, politicians are supposed to put themselves forward for elections. He did. He stood for Mayor of Greater Manchester repeatedly and was repeatedly elected. That cuts both ways. At some point there is also a duty to the office and to the voters who elected him to do the job rather than treating it as a holding pattern for Westminster.
What grates is not Burnham standing for Parliament per se, but the assumption from parts of Labour and the media that there is a throne waiting for him the moment he chooses to reclaim it. That is where the sense of entitlement comes in for me.
If he wants to come back and fight his way through a leadership contest on merit, fair enough. But the constant “waiting for Andy” psychodrama around Labour has become faintly absurd.
Yes and he has served time as Mayor and done the job, people are allowed to change roles or jobs if another opportunity arises that they think would suit them
As for your penultimate paragraph, he is coming back and fighting his way through a leadership contest on merit.
Psychodrama is as much the media's need to be talking 24/7 as anything else, there is always psychodrama in politics.
As far as his actions though, he is doing what you said "fair enough" to - and he is doing it the hard way, seeking a midterm by-election to do so.
I don't much like Burnham, and actively dislike his sense of entitlement, but I recognise he's changed the narrative by going for a "difficult"* by election.
If nothing else, it shows he's developed some political nous since he last stood for the leadership.
(*It probably won't be that difficult.)
I watched him in the 2010 debates last night. He was pretty empty although had some good points on social care.
Against David M he looked lost. Against Corbyn he actually held himself quite well but the members had decided already.
But up against people now, I think he will walk any contest he stands in.
He might well end up very unpopular. But for the start I think he’ll get a large bounce and people will be relieved.
As the next GE gets closer it seems clear that the question will distil into a fairly simple one of 'Reform government or Not Reform Government', and that this is really the subtext for non activists, who are mostly not very political social democrat centrists with better things to do than post on PB.
For the majority who don't want a Reform government this will become a more urgent than usual question. Reform is tied up with Trumpism, dog whistle ethnocentrism, noisy nationalism, 'ICE UK', plutocratic cash from abroad, people who post vile stuff on X and scapegoating. In addition offering belief in simple answers to complex problems. It is different in kind from the older knockabout of Tory v Labour etc.
Avoiding Reform government at this stage involves other more or less house trained parties getting strong support. Refinements come later.
Burnham, who I don't personally care much for, looks like being the best prospect of Labour beating Reform in actual seats, such as mine.
The greatest danger if he succeeds in the current project is a repeat of the ludicrous messianism we have seen before with Boris, Corbyn, Truss and of course Farage.
I think the mistake you make is thinking that non activists are mostly social democrat centrists. If that were the case then Labour or the Lib Dems would romp home at every election.
Depends how you define social democrats. Lab + LD/Lib is a higher vote share than Con at most elections going back decades, as far as I can see from a quick Google. Now, not all LD/Lib voters are social democrats (I'm not sure I'd take that label!) but some are. And the Con-Lib coalition is good evidence to not lump Lab and LD together*. But are social democrats the largest group in the electorate? I'd say it's quite possible and depends how they are defined.
*the subsequent collapse in support for LD suggests that lumping Con and LD together was also not welcome to many LD voters!
In general the political argument of the great majority in the UK is within the constraints of post WWII social democracy. We are finding and will continue to find even Reform coming into line, with the exception of their UK nationalism. The voters of Clacton are social democrats (welfare state+private enterprise+NATO etc) to a man and woman.
You keep saying this. The evidence for it remains poor. Look at MAGA. MAGA voters are just as reliant on govt largesse, but the Trump administration is absolutely not following a post-WWII consensus playbook.
Amidst the whirl of politics, KC3 went to Golders Green and was almost mobbed by anxious but happy Jewish people. Grateful for his presence. Imagine a Labour prime minister trying to do this. Oh wait he did and was screamed at
“Today, in response to a series of smaller attacks on Jews, our British monarch has just taken on a role as patron of the Community Security Trust. He has visited this site of an attempted massacre to shake hands with a traumatised and fearful Jewish community. He has, in short, behaved like a mensch. His visit tells a different story about how British institutions and leaders relate to this country’s Jewish community.”
Charles showing more leadership that Starmer in the US and at home right now. It must be very grating for Labour.
He really is. As I said the the other day, thank god we have a monarchy. Can you imagine this depressing unholy mess without that comforting knowledge: that there is something, however ruritanian, above our absurd and squalid politics?
And KC3 is actually good at the job. Sometimes very good. He can be too woke for me but I’m sure he can be too posh and Tory for lefties. That probably shows he is hitting the right spot
I think some of you are overthinking this. Why are Reform smashing away at Labour? Why are the Greens smashing away at Labour? Because people want *change*. They voted for that in 2024 and didn't get it. That's why they are incandescent.
So on paper, Makerfield looks a risk. Reform sniping away. The Greens.
No. Why Makerfield? Because Burnham used to be the MP for part of it and lives there. The local connection, plus *its Andy Burnham* and he isn't remotely under threat.
Whats more, I expect that he is going to run the kind of by-election campaign we rarely see. Not "I want to be a Labour MP and bring Labour's program to this seat". It will be "I am the program".
And that program will be change. He will win the by-election comfortably, and then he wins the leadership by proclamation because nobody else will get to 81 names.
But that’s what I’m saying above. Are people actually done with Labour or is that they’ve decided Starmer represents no change and they are going elsewhere?
It’s like with Johnson reading all the articles about the red wall being lost forever. I don’t buy it
Anyhoo, the big news yesterday was Nigel Farge lying again and potentially landing himself with a massive tax bill.
I'd disagree that that was the big story. The big story was the ongoing will-Andy-Burnham-get-to-be-PM story. I know many complain about the way the country collectively shrugs its shoulders at stories of Nigel Farage's dodginess, but this isn't really news: it's completely expected. It's priced in.
Am I right in thinking everybody who wants to stand need 81 MPs? So there is really only room for 3 candidates?
Technically 5. 403/81 = 4.97 (Needs to round down to 4) and Starmer as sitting PM doesn't need 81. But yes realistically 3 is pretty much the absolute max.
This is the last node in the supply chain of O&G to Moscow. If they can destroy Ryazan they can cut off fuel supplies to airports and electricity generators.
Amidst the whirl of politics, KC3 went to Golders Green and was almost mobbed by anxious but happy Jewish people. Grateful for his presence. Imagine a Labour prime minister trying to do this. Oh wait he did and was screamed at
“Today, in response to a series of smaller attacks on Jews, our British monarch has just taken on a role as patron of the Community Security Trust. He has visited this site of an attempted massacre to shake hands with a traumatised and fearful Jewish community. He has, in short, behaved like a mensch. His visit tells a different story about how British institutions and leaders relate to this country’s Jewish community.”
Charles showing more leadership that Starmer in the US and at home right now. It must be very grating for Labour.
Why would it be grating for Labour? The King is doing his job as head of state. His speech in the US will certainly have been written with substantial government input. Being able to do this kind of subtle diplomacy abroad and non partisan unifying stuff at home is precisely why having a constitutional monarchy is so great.
The casting process for the new James Bond has officially begun, after years of anticipation and speculation about who will take over from Daniel Craig as 007.
"The search for the next James Bond is under way," Amazon MGM Studios said in a statement, external.
Amidst the whirl of politics, KC3 went to Golders Green and was almost mobbed by anxious but happy Jewish people. Grateful for his presence. Imagine a Labour prime minister trying to do this. Oh wait he did and was screamed at
“Today, in response to a series of smaller attacks on Jews, our British monarch has just taken on a role as patron of the Community Security Trust. He has visited this site of an attempted massacre to shake hands with a traumatised and fearful Jewish community. He has, in short, behaved like a mensch. His visit tells a different story about how British institutions and leaders relate to this country’s Jewish community.”
Comments
This is Reform.
It would be a southerner who visited Liverpool to go to an Oasis gig and confused the two cities as being the same.
FPTP victors at those levels are always going to be very unpopular once in charge, whichever party wins.
But your point arguably still holds - That-vague-bit-of-small-towns-between-Wigan-Warrington-and-St-Helens elects a That-vague-bit-of-small-towns-between-Wigan-Warrington-and-St-Helens man for PM.
Burnham will struggle to make a push on immigration. It is one of his blindspots.
Burnham doesn't seem to have a definite ire against him.
At least, that's what I perceive from various people on the Green Left.
It will be a southerner who will try to ingratiate himself by saying he has always loved Manchester United since he saw Kenny Dalglish playing for them.
So no he hasn't shown any sense of entitlement.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Josh_Hawley
So yes, public school and Oxford PPE, not even great-grandson of a toolmaker.
Can he sell it? Better than Starmer sure but probably not.
And will it feel like it after the cumulative impact of the Brexit Boris wave? No
And for some it is not about immigration numbers but particular immigration whether that is about the boats, employment, race or religion
In Bradford the Tories appear to want to both prop up Reform and be the official opposition. Cake and eat it territory.
To fix that Social care needs to be shifted out of councils budgets so they can concentrate on things that locals want...
Council of Europe (which includes the UK) agrees new declaration around ECHR and migration. Exactly the sort of action many people have been demanding.
TLDR: You're right, I think. But I don't like it
Has Tribal Labour really broken?
I very much doubt whether the current membership of the Labour party would be willing to allow that to happen. Reform may have populist policies, but they are not the only party with a populist membership. People forget that SKS is only PM today because he ran for leadership on a socialist ticket. here it is:
https://www.clpd.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/Keir-Starmers-10-Pledges.pdf
There was an interesting discussion with some Welsh voters who went to Plaid. I was in all honesty expecting them all to have said they voted Reform but none of them did. All let down by Labour.
This doesn’t feel like Boris Johnson 2.0 to me instinctively for Reform.
https://correctiv.org/en/europe/2026/04/21/half-of-europes-towns-and-villages-have-fewer-residents-than-60-years-ago/?fbclid=IwY2xjawRzt6RleHRuA2FlbQIxMABzcnRjBmFwcF9pZBAyMjIwMzkxNzg4MjAwODkyAAEedNX0Cpc2i2sM923p7NklUH14TtYhUFDyHxHhTGPoa7FTqS8XIKSgmRSic3s_aem_WxBQ0AYsOJpfeH2KYaUMTg
I just had a Labour MP ring me and she just said, "Angela is just much more popular with the party members". And then I had another MP who had both Wes Streeting and Angela Rainer up to their constituency and they were like, "Well, Wes Streeting did a great job. He speaks very well, but Angela, they just loved; she's just of them. There's just a kind of emotional resonance that Wes doesn't get."
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mVa3MZ2ED9w&t=1260s
I once got into so much trouble for calling people from St Helens ‘plastic Scousers’.
We'll see.
*the subsequent collapse in support for LD suggests that lumping Con and LD together was also not welcome to many LD voters!
...
The declaration is expected to help courts interpret how the ECHR is applied, ensuring that serious criminals are not able to exploit the system to frustrate their deportation and extradition, and ensuring that family rights under Article 8 are properly balanced against the public interest – including the ability of countries to be able to deport foreign criminals and address national security threats.
https://www.gov.uk/government/news/reforms-to-secure-british-borders-to-be-agreed-by-foreign-ministers-in-moldova-this-week
(No new appointment to the Chiltern Hundreds yet, but I thought this would be of interest.)
Centrism, as I see it, is serious about avoiding populism (simple answers to complex questions), accepting the democratic process, avoiding authoritarianism, upholding the rule of law and separation of powers, working with an international order, accepts the world is complicated and imperfect, upholds private enterprise and a substantial welfare state, doesn't demonise minorities, prefers Adam Smith and David Ricardo to Marx and is fiscally responsible.
On a random Friday morning in May?
https://thetempus.co.uk/
Towns are handsome and well kept. Farms look fat and happy. I hear there may be pockets of poverty up here, as well. I hear talk of a place called “Teesside” whatever that is. But this bit of t’North has a quiet but deep prosperity
Pleasing
Burnham would be mad to drop some of the good stuff.
*by election and 2024 - I didn't vote Lab under Corbyn! 2019 I was in a safe seat and I effectively abstained (voted Green or Yorkshire Party)
The population of Dore and Totley did not decline 46.8% between 1961 and 2024.
The Gerhard Schroeder grade hair is a definite political asset though.
Amidst the whirl of politics, KC3 went to Golders Green and was almost mobbed by anxious but happy Jewish people. Grateful for his presence. Imagine a Labour prime minister trying to do this. Oh wait he did and was screamed at
“Today, in response to a series of smaller attacks on Jews, our British monarch has just taken on a role as patron of the Community Security Trust. He has visited this site of an attempted massacre to shake hands with a traumatised and fearful Jewish community. He has, in short, behaved like a mensch. His visit tells a different story about how British institutions and leaders relate to this country’s Jewish community.”
https://x.com/joshglancy/status/2054964695493136638?s=46
How about introducing differential tax rates between cities and the rest to encourage better balance or at least slow down the trend?
Otherwise we need to build more cities or link towns together to become cities.
It's far less about ideology, and far more 'why can't they just get shit done ?'
Can somebody educated in politics explain to me how Mamdani is able to do all this stuff but no other politician is ever able to make any noticeable progress?
How does he evade the same bureaucracy the other politicians always blame for not being able to do shit?
https://x.com/SirMichaelRocks/status/2054977208720953399
Now the Mamdani experiment could quite easily end up a disaster - I make no prediction either way - but the point is he's (thus far) persuaded his electorate that he's getting shit done.
That is popular.
If not, it's about as much "action" as a local council resolution on Gaza.
https://x.com/tendar/status/2055150998247649291
Meanwhile, the death toll in the Kyiv apartment collapse is now 24, including several children.
https://x.com/yarotrof/status/2055169874901500382
*though I think I am right that actually more people PLAY rugby union, and of course Orrell, which was briefly in rugby union's top division in the early years after the establishment of such things in the 80s, and supplied several England players - rugby league is something to watch. Baffling to me because to my eyes League is a rather less engaging and exciting game. Nowadays of course many kids play both - my daughter plays rugby on the fringes of this zone and many girls play rugby league on a Saturday and rugby union on a Sunday in the way that kids elsewhere will play football on a Saturday and rugby (union) on a Sunday.
**granted Leigh has its own professional club but so chippy is Leigh about being overshadowed by big-city Wigan that I tentatively put it in this bracket.
No. 2 years ago Makerfield voted for a Labour Party apparatchick named Josh Simons to replace a retiring MP who had represented the seat since 2010, Simons having been parachuted in by McSweeney's mob through selection directly by the NEC rather than local members. Indeed as the director of Labour Together he ran McSweeney's mob, if ever a selection was down to internal Labour politics at Westminster that was it. So I don't think the electors of Makerfield had the slightest affinity for Simons which is borne out by the fact that the Labour vote share in the constituency stagnated in 2024.
By contrast, Burnham is very much a local and his old Leigh constituency overlapped with parts of Makefield. Even if he wasn't such a prominent well-respected figure in the GM area, you would still expect the local electorate to have an affinity for him as a local which was lacking with Josh Simons.
And far from resenting a by-election, I think that electors of Makerfield will welcome their unique opportunity to decide the political choice facing the country, in an election which everyone will understand will amount to: Vote Reform, Keep Starmer or Vote Labour, Change to Burnham.
Communication may well be the most important of those variables in popularity.
Social democrats were also pro EU and are pro immigration and woke unlike Clacton voters
NEW: Allies of Wes Streeting confirm for the first time that he will stand in a future Labour leadership contest to replace Keir Starmer as PM.
One told HuffPost UK: "He has the numbers and will be a candidate when there’s a contest.”
Supporters of Keir Starmer had claimed Streeting had barely half the 81 MPs he needs to mount a challenge.
https://x.com/KevinASchofield/status/2055212428401549752?s=20
It sounds so tantalising. They have good evidence of an Anglo saxon pagan shrine alongside an Anglo Saxon church. So the conversion of the Saxons visible in one site. They also have the only timber theatre of its time in Europe. Clearly built to echo the Roman theatres the Saxons would have found, in ruins, when they came to Britain
What did they declaim in that theatre? Beowulf? Brilliant
The whole site has been occupied since the end of the ice age and has Bronze Age barrows and a Neolithic henge - all in the same place. So I’m hoping for Serious Noom
If nothing else, it shows he's developed some political nous since he last stood for the leadership.
(*It probably won't be that difficult.)
https://x.com/danneidle/status/2054973645512929428
For example, on the small boats, Starmer and his minions will regularly talk about, "smashing the smuggling gangs," but they obviously haven't done that. So it undermines their entire messaging because it establishes them as an unreliable narrator.
So, when they actually do achieve something - like increasing deportations, or amending the interpretation of the ECHR to prevent the courts blocking more deportations - they don't get the credit for it because people don't trust that they're being honest about it.
Obviously people are cynical and believe all politicians are liars, but there is nuance there, and people trust the truthfulness of some politicians over others.
So on paper, Makerfield looks a risk. Reform sniping away. The Greens.
No. Why Makerfield? Because Burnham used to be the MP for part of it and lives there. The local connection, plus *its Andy Burnham* and he isn't remotely under threat.
Whats more, I expect that he is going to run the kind of by-election campaign we rarely see. Not "I want to be a Labour MP and bring Labour's program to this seat". It will be "I am the program".
And that program will be change. He will win the by-election comfortably, and then he wins the leadership by proclamation because nobody else will get to 81 names.
Against David M he looked lost. Against Corbyn he actually held himself quite well but the members had decided already.
But up against people now, I think he will walk any contest he stands in.
He might well end up very unpopular. But for the start I think he’ll get a large bounce and people will be relieved.
And KC3 is actually good at the job. Sometimes very good. He can be too woke for me but I’m sure he can be too posh and Tory for lefties. That probably shows he is hitting the right spot
It’s like with Johnson reading all the articles about the red wall being lost forever. I don’t buy it
I cannot see why similar won’t happen to Burnham.
Although, unlike with Rayner, GB News et al would totally ignore it.
But yes realistically 3 is pretty much the absolute max.
https://x.com/jayinkyiv/status/2055129386618085536
This is the last node in the supply chain of O&G to Moscow. If they can destroy Ryazan they can cut off fuel supplies to airports and electricity generators.
"The search for the next James Bond is under way," Amazon MGM Studios said in a statement, external.