A reminder on how Andy Burnham performed in his two previous leadership campaigns
A reminder on how Andy Burnham performed in his two previous leadership campaigns– politicalbetting.com
To have polled a mere 8.7% in the first round in 2010 looks very bad considering he was up against the Miliband brothers, Ed Balls, and Diane Abbott, the latter was the only person he finished ahead of.
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He'll get to be a PM, but would have even less of a mandate than if he'd fought a leadership election.
#TSEpuns
This phase is about as easy as it gets in politics being up against a very unpopular PM (Starmer) and the only man who would lose to him in an internal Lab contest (Streeting)
The only way he could not make it happen is by bottling actually challenging somehow which I think looks unlikely...
Once he is in No 10, that is much tougher than this bit
Burnham might take some encouragement from Ronald Reagan who was beaten by Nixon in the 1968 Republican primaries and narrowly by Ford in the 1976 Republican primaries. As we all remember though Reagan won the 1980 Republican primaries and then the 1980 and 1984 presidential elections
Burnham might take some encouragement from Ronald Reagan who was beaten by Nixon in the 1968 Republican primaries and narrowly by Ford in the 1976 Republican primaries. As we all remember though Reagan won the 1980 Republican primaries and then the 1980 and 1984 presidential elections. Biden also ran for the Democrats nomination in 1988 and 2008 losing to Dukakis and Obama before finally winning in 2020 the nomination and presidential election
And to see how that plays out go and look at Liz Truss
PMs should be elected by MPs - if MPs think Andy Burnham is that best option we should leave them to it
Nuff said.
One of humanity's great wordsmiths agrees with me.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dk47saogI8o
When was the last time we had a vaguely competent Cabinet?
I consider him to be a conniving Johnsonesque shite, but he's only up against Starmer who can sell a six nil win as a crushing defeat.
They need until about 2034 - ten years in power - imo, to see if they can make it work.
By which token, his theme song needs to be "When I'm 64."
If he does alright no one will care. If he does badly the lack of a contest will just provide a figleaf for internal opponents to claim they could have spotted the pitfalls and members to pretend they mighr not have voted him in.
Just listening to the 9am news on BBC London. Proper bulletin, none of your "up to date in fifteen seconds" nonsense.
Mentions of the Prime Minister being about to be deposed by his party? Not a sausage.
2015 was another story. None of the candidates were the right combination of willing, able, sane, grown up, experienced enough with proven top leadership capacity. It was, looking back, a disastrous exercise in bonkersness whose malign legacy is still with us.
It must be some kind of weird signalling error, but it's hard to see what it could have been.
Jacinda Ardern: ‘New Zealand will become a republic in my lifetime’
https://www.thetimes.com/world/australasia/article/jacinda-ardern-new-zealand-interview-kkppf03f9
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2026/jun/19/reform-uk-weaknesses-makerfield-nigel-farage-labour
Of course 'News' proper is what has happened, not what is going to happen, so neither the deposition nor Brazil beating Scotland is, at this moment 'News'. And in general 'News' proper isn't what someone has said, it is what has occurred.
There's poor media performance of course, but they might be strong elsewhere. Sometimes the decisions taken might indicate, but not always if we don't hear about what alternatives there were, or we dislike the choice but it was executed effectively. Sluggish delivery might be a sign, but when is it their fault for not wrangling Whitehall and when is it reasonable? Is the failure the fault of the Treasury, the classic ruiner, or should a competent minister deliver despite that?
We mostly go by vibes.
Ed Miliband has several of the right ideas although he is a bit hit and miss on others.
Mahmood is just a muppet.
But I was thinking more that she's a woman...
It's a brilliant technique to get elected, and it doesn't matter if you're elected to a role that has few tradeoffs to manage. Prime Minister isn't one of those roles- certainly not in a time without easy abundant economic growth.
Not so much "will the real Andy Burnham please stand up?" as "is there a real Andy Burnham to stand up?" Maybe it will be fine, but I'm not optimistic.
It doesn't take long to do even where referendums are required so not sure what the hold up is.
Canada will be last, due to generally being unconcerned.
The cabinet is...
SR style guide, super-pedantic edition.
(I spend too much time at work making this correction in my colleagues' reports.)
Tuesday is the tenth anniversary of the United Kingdom voting to put economic sanctions on itself and I had planned to do several threads on Brexit but now I'll be doing lots of threads on Starmer being ousted/the Labour leadership contest instead.
I am doing a thread on PM Andy Burnham is the James Rew of politics.
Lots of hype but didn't deliver on the big stage.
Considering their predecessors, this cabinet isn't even singularly useless.
Starting with Key.
Reason for hanging on to our monarchy in abroadland? The political capital expended. Even if 10% of the population are royalists, that can turn elections. So you generally leave it to the next lot. Eg Corbyn publicly declared he had no intention of abolishing the monarchy.
https://yougov.com/en-gb/articles/54571-royal-family-favourability-trackers-april-2026
I sometimes wonder if memories of the Dismissal were still a bit raw.
A pipe bomb was discovered in Bandon earlier in the week, and that didn't made the national broadcast news here, only being covered by the local newspaper, and later picked up by one national newspaper, to give an example.
Plenty of New Zealand polls for keeping a constitutional monarch over a politician head of state too
https://newsroom.co.nz/2024/10/22/nz-citizens-keen-to-stay-wedded-to-the-monarchy/
Baffled as to why it’s not got into the news yet (other than our local press). I suspect there would be a different reaction if the ethnicities were reversed, and I’ll be keeping a close eye on how the Crown Office approach it.
I'm not confident in the chances of success.
Eight now though I will take a 5% chance of success with Burnham over a zero percent chance with the incumbent albatross.
"The White House denied the claims, insisting Mr Trump “always operates in good faith and honours his commitments”."
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/us/politics/2026/06/20/trump-considering-tearing-up-iran-deal-midterms/
Reform would always have struggled, but I think could have performed better if they had developed an effective counternarrative against Burnham, beyond their charge that he was using Makerfield as a stepping stone. That was clearly believed by a lot of people, but it couldn't really go anywhere. I felt where Burnham was weakest was at the point of WASPI - it was an embarrassing f U-turn in real time. But for whatever reason it didn't seem that this was capitalised on.
They also had a problem with the plumber, who I don't think was a terrible candidate, but was undoubtedly damaged, particularly by the Vorderman letter to the women of Makerfield. The letter was an utterly cynical piece of confected outrage, and I think in response I would have issued an utterly cynical confected apology, and gone the 'bad boy forgiven' route. I also might have been tempted to put Kenyon up for an interrogation with someone like Kuensberg so the public could see him sweat it out. High risk, but I think many women might have seen it and ended up with some sneaking sympathy. His line would have been - 'sorry, regret my comments, however do we want a society where the only people who are allowed to hold office are people who have never said anything regrettable on social media?'.
Even with all that, I think Reform's best result would have been to be 'robbed' by Restore. That would have fit their narrative nicely. Sadly they just missed out.
It’s moot though for a betting site. Public opinion continues to move firmly against it, which is what matters in this context. The contrast with SINDY is really interesting, where we are in stasis.
- NATO on 8th July in Ankara
- EU on 22nd July in Brussels
- G20 on 15th Dec in Miami.
I suspect that Burnham will agree to Starmer remaining PM to attend the first two, but will want to introduce himself on the world stage at the G20 in December.Having a big argument with Lowe about split votes and precisely how many pogroms to conduct isn’t going to put Farage into No 10. At least this time they aren’t blaming “family voting”, which suggests they’ve learnt the lesson from last time.
What attracted voters to Burnham? Among voters overall, his strongest card was the chance to replace Starmer.
But among his coalition, strikingly, it was his *platform on taking back control of public essentials*.
Really interesting thread here but overall Brexit was irrelevant as all parties seemed to work out pretty quickly (except Matt Goodwin).
Burnham can plausibly get 33% of the vote again in a GE.
It's easy for people to rationalise poor results after the event, so it might be more instructive to set a yardstick beforehand.
This is the absolute worst time to be doing this with Burnham on the charge.
Starmer is very reluctant because it looks too left wing, even though it is very popular with electors.
The Peace Process is spreading by example.
Isn’t it great when successful cultural practices are taken up by others?