Andy Burnham: A New Hope? – politicalbetting.com
Andy Burnham: A New Hope? – politicalbetting.com
How do Brits say they feel about Andy Burnham becoming Prime Minister. The top word is hopeful, followed by good and optimistic, though others aren't sure or are indifferent. A smaller number say worried.
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Andy Burnham: A no hoper?
Teetering between Green and KON Party
He seems a cheerful chappy, which is a nice change from the dreary Starmer and the "be nasty to everyone else" philosophy of Farage and acolytes.
He has some notion of the longer term, unlike everyone else in politics. Maybe his plans won't survive contact with the reality but at least he's going through the motions.
This harnesses the inherent factionalism on the hard left. Since everyone has already split from everyone else, no splits are possible.
* AB and many of his appointments are New Labour retreads.
There are some limited foundations for Burnham hope.
1) A glass half full is much better than a glass half empty. Burnham does generalised uplift quite well.
2) Reform have peaked.
3) Most people in the UK are actually doing OK; this is almost totally unreported story
4) The anti Labour media will find Burnham a hard target compared with Starmer, Corbyn or Miliband (E), all of whom were easy pickings. Burnham's personality is such that the middling sort and the WWC would rather like him than not.
5) Despite the talk he is a continuation social democrat in the 1945 model. It's not perfect but people like it. He isn't a socialist, a Marxist or a libertarian.
..That said Andy Burnham currently has much better political antennae and communication skills than Gordon Brown.
Lead Social Producer, Cabinet Office (x3) - £68,500pa
https://x.com/krxsctr/status/2080662162263929111
https://x.com/lauraloomer/status/2080657818466586812 - 45 minutes.
While I hate the terms "left" and "right" with a healthy passion (and anyone who uses them without quotation marks should be banned for all eternity though I concede a) that doesn't meet the standard of allowing free speech and b) it's a shade draconian), the one thing Burnham has shown this week is he has good political antennae.
The announcements on pubs and buses are the sort of thing which will resonate and the review of the Sentencing Act in the light of the release of those involved in the PC Andrew Harper murder was predictable andany PM would have ordered the same thing.
I wonder if he's trying to build a bank of goodwill in advance of the "hard decisions" in the autumn. I keep hearing from those who see the salvation of the public finances purely in terms of reducing welfare spending but it's always long on generalities and short on specifics. Whose benefits would you cut and by how much and on what basis? The demonisation of those on welfare in elements of the media conveniently forgets that there are those for whom the money they get from the Government is their sole source of income.
I also think Burnham's arrival will force Badenoch to raise her game and she will improve as a result. She's had it easy for 18 months against Starmer - now it gets serious and we will see if she is a credible alternative Prime Minister in waiting.
Sure, standing charges remain and we still have ludicrous levels of tax on industrial electricity. We still have the stupid mileage charge on EVs coming in. But it’s a step in the right direction.
Total salary and pensions £900k per year.
https://x.com/yarwoodwilliam/status/2080653938324365485
Zelensky would sit with Nosferatu for an interview if it helped Ukraine. It's his biggest quality and why he's still president.
https://x.com/justincbzz/status/2080686880635420980
Voters are pessimistic about how well Burnham will do because they are in a pessimistic mood anyway. Also Burnham has a vested interest in the long term because he wants to last longer than other recent prime ministers.
https://www.politicshome.com/opinion/article/tone-of-burnham-first-week-met-voters-where-they-are
The young princes who now stride the parade ground with the confidence born of aristocratic schooling can never be afraid. They never have been. Like latter day Pushkins drilled in the elite academy of Brownian blitzkrieg, they are bursting with their sense of destiny. It’s not the Milibands, the Ballses or the Burnhams who are unconsciously nervous. This is the moment for which they were created. They are ready.
How would that have worked ?
One critical test is coming up. Burnham has promised a 10 year plan 'later this year'. If Burnham is Starmer we will get meaningless waffle in 2028 which will be instantly reversed. So we will know if it doesn't happen in 2026.
If it does happen, we will have a decent idea of how he approaches hard decisions. Take social care: Starmer almost immediately kicked it into the very long grass (review and action by 2034 IIRC). Burnham has made it a central policy and action plank. The last time someone did that was T May in 2017 and it nearly won Corbyn the election.
https://youtu.be/RLm-ttIoUnc?si=yPL3B5O8hq33fhDb
Whenever I make a bad prediction I remind myself that Sion Simon piece still exists.
MOD and Defence contractors pay derisory salaries, always have done
Precisely no-one qualified to be a senior cyber security guy in the MoD’s nuclear department, is getting out of bed for £47k a year even with a nice pension.
Most decent people in the private sector will be on at least double that.
https://x.com/aswren/status/2080644253269528954
There are claims that the 0 in No10 has got wonkier over the years, but checking old stock photos, that's not the case.
https://www.alamy.com/stock-photo/60s-sixties-downing-street.html?sortBy=relevant
Ask me again in six months time.
Dave Troy
@davetroy
A warning regarding Ukraine developments: There is an odious group, the "Ukraine Reconstruction Summit" (URS) network, centered on Brock Pierce, Trump "spiritual advisor" Pastor Mark Burns, the AllatRa cult, Rabbi Moshe Azman, Yaakov Flitchkin, and several others.
This group has positioned themselves to profit from Ukraine "post-war" and held a major conference in Washington DC last September. This is the same network of people who funded the "Don Colossus" gold statue of Trump at his Doral Club.
Loomer met with Rabbi Azman yesterday. Brock Pierce is building a replica of a "school" building in DC in Anatevka, near Kyiv, with this group. Be very cautious when trying to assess motives and relationships when evaluating this network. It's not about victory for Ukraine — it's about accruing future power.
https://x.com/davetroy/status/2080660964068692326?s=20
Mk.7 > Mk.1 > Mk.5 > Mk.2 > Mk.8 > Mk.6 > Mk.3 > Mk.4
This discussion is now closed.
How much effort was made to get the LibDems on side in advance ?
It seems designed to attract either hyper patriots or would be foreign agents.
OSINTtechnical
@Osinttechnical
Remarkable onboard footage from a Ukrainian Yak-52 backseat gunner shooting down Russian Shahed attack drones from an open cockpit with his rifle.
https://x.com/Osinttechnical/status/2080843279835201705?s=20
But on reflection, maybe Burnham really is the messiah, and that rather than caving in the face of opposition, he pragmatically retreated in order to get shovels in the ground. Maybe it is better to get a compromise built rather than fight on and risk getting none of his pure vision enacted.
That said, funnelling George Osborne's money to a single property developer still does not look very hard and to a cynic, looks suspicious even if it isn't. Stuffing the Cabinet with ministers from his own regional powerbase, as well as basing his northern outpost there also leaves a sour taste. Likewise sacking any ministers who did not try to oust the discredited Starmer.
Pragmatist or weathervane? Let's hope the former.
It is hugely amusing that the LibDems so facilitated the Brexit they claim to so hate...
Or mybe Nick Clegg was just a dumb twat?
The prime minister has pledged to overhaul social care so that it “operates on the NHS principle” and is free at the point of need in a move that is projected to cost £18.5 billion a year
However, The Times has been told that this “universal” offer is unlikely to cover the “daily living costs” of a care home, such as laundry, food, accommodation and energy bills
It means home residents could still face bills of tens of thousands of pounds for accommodation costs under proposals for a new National Care Service
Covering these costs for everybody would add about an extra £16 billion to annual costs, according to estimates based on average care home fees
Dame Louise Casey, who is leading a commission looking at adult social care in England, is poised to launch a national conversation this month on how it should be paid for
Burnham is expected to give a speech setting out his vision in London next week
https://www.thetimes.com/article/ff51a7a6-6592-4389-a007-7bbf0f8a8644?shareToken=8bb9d8d9d76d12c2c9320bc31b39a619
https://x.com/Steven_Swinford/status/2080932513829036145
As a frequent user of the Sheffield to St Pancras service, travelling in first class makes it bearable.
South Yorkshire's Mayor Oliver Coppard, has called on East Midlands Railway (EMR) to temporarily scrap First Class designations, opening up all carriages to passengers equally, so no one is left standing in overcrowded trains while seats remain unused.
The call comes after EMR announced significant service reductions on routes linking Sheffield with the East Midlands and London, following ongoing reliability and maintenance problems impacting its train fleet. The disruption has led to cancelled services, shorter trains and increased chance of overcrowding for passengers travelling into and out of South Yorkshire.
https://www.southyorkshire-ca.gov.uk/news/article/mayor-emr-call-to-declassify
A small plane with a gunner hanging out of the window has proven surprisingly efffective at taking out enemy drones.
But at least it is a start.
Something has to be done - sounds like Burnham is serious.
Knock yourself out....
There is no justice in forcing poor people to accept many years of pain that the rich can avoid.
(On which note: life is going to be impossible for the historians of the future. There is just too much source material.)
Otherwise, as you suggest, it would be a great opportunity for Russia, China, Iran etc
https://x.com/yarwoodwilliam/status/2080653938324365485
The problem is that these roles appear to be all that they are recruiting in Manchester, which gives the impression that the whole project is nothing but spin over substance. I’m sure the substantive roles will come later, once they’ve worked out who will and won’t move from London, but it comes across terribly.
As to the northern emphasis in appointments, this comes to mind. Until last week I never noticed anyone commenting on the geographical composition of the top government posts. I suspect that Londoncentricity is so taken for granted that any derogation is astonishing.
There's another point about the north (and the midlands). And it's called Reform. In much of England the Reform threat is to what were generally safe Tory seats. These make little difference to Labour's efforts to get to 325+ in 2029. But in the north, take Cumbria as a simple example. Historically Cumbria is a mix of Tory, Lab and LD MPs. But, ignoring Farron's safe LD seat, all the rest are currently Labour, previously they were all Tory in 2019, and all projected to go Reform next time. Labour could lose the next election by losing the north alone. Burnham is rightly working on this.
Doctors push it hard to save their NHS money.
Tax per mile won't help EV uptake in rural parts. I think VED will need a complete overhaul in the next decade, likely shift to a charge per mile, and may end up more expensive on motorways than B and C roads.
Its incredible how long people drive to get to work round here, some of it is linked to young people not being able to get housing where they need it
@NeilDotObrien
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11m
The cost of anything you can really call a "National Care Service" would be enormous, so it is essential the PM sets out the funding plan immediately - or he will ignite 6 months of economically-damaging tax speculation with investors sitting on their hands - or leaving. (4/5)
https://x.com/NeilDotObrien/status/2080950151909151137
The Restore politician Henry Bolton has posted a map on 'X' which points the most northerly point of mainland Britain, Dunnet Head in Caithness.
Only problem for him is the arrow is actually pointing to the north of the Orkneys ...
https://x.com/_HenryBolton/status/2080757022962667805
I'm not sure what "operating on the NHS principle" means in this context.
But I note that the Dilnot Commission way back when expected "hotel costs" to be paid by the individual, and be outside the £35k lifetime cap on charges to the individual which applied to care costs.
Race, school, gender: the makeup of Andy Burnham’s cabinet – in charts
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The north-west overrepresented
It is little surprise that Burnham, the former Greater Manchester mayor and “King of the North”, has given an outsized number of cabinet posts to MPs representing seats from the north-west.
Politicians from that region, which has been Burnham’s power base for several years, make up just over a quarter of the cabinet – but only 11% of the UK population live there.
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2026/jul/24/demographic-makeup-of-andy-burnham-cabinet-charts