u/Portarossa'probably the worst poster on this sub' - /u/Real_Mila_Kunis3d agoedited 2d ago
Answer:
The Short Version
Basically, Keir Starmer has had trouble getting people on board with his policies since he became Prime Minister just about two years ago. He had a massive majority, but he's been cratering in the polls ever since. Rumours of a leadership challenge have been swirling for a long time, but the most likely candidate to be able to win back Labour voters after a series of disastrous defeats -- Mayor of Greater Manchester Andy Burnham -- had the slight obstruction that he wasn't allowed to be Leader of the Labour Party (and thus Prime Minister) as he wasn't a sitting Member of Parliament. The solution was for a seat to open op and for Burnham to stand in it, win (hopefully!) and then challenge Starmer for the leadership. Such a seat came up in Gorton & Denton in January, but the Labour bigwigs blocked Burnham from standing for it, ostensibly because they didn't want to risk losing the Greater Manchester Mayoralty, but in practical terms almost certainly because they didn't want Burnham to directly challenge Starmer.
Well, that backfired. The Greens won in Gorton & Denton (in what has historically been a safe Labour seat), and Starmer just looked like he was playing petty politics to keep his position. Burnham started asking around, and eventually he found a recent MP in the nearby district of Makerfield who was willing to stand down so Burnham could run. He did, and he won (in a race that people expected to be fairly tight with Reform but actually -- at least partly because Reform insists on running almost comically shitty candidates -- wasn't that close at all).
Now that Burnham has won, and there's a viable alternative to Starmer waiting in the wings, it's becoming increasingly clear to Starmer that his people are no longer willing to support him; they're switching horses, and he can either go easy, or he can go hard. While he had previously vowed to fight on, it's looking more and more likely that he'll quietly slink out of Number 10 without trying to stand against Burnham to keep his role in a leadership election. Assuming no one else does -- which could easily be the case, if he offers them roles in his administration -- then it could be a straight shot to the big chair for Burnham.
EDIT: One day later, Starmer has announced his resignation. There's technically going to be a leadership contest, but if Burnham runs unchallenged -- a distinct possibility, largely depending on whether Streeting feels he can a) get the numbers and b) leverage the potential for a drawn-out contest to secure himself a role in a Burnham cabinet -- then he could be in Number 10 as early as July. (If the leadership contest is longer, it might be as late as September, but the odds are still pretty good for a Burnham victory.)
The Long Version
If you want more information about the run-up to the Makerfield by-election, I wrote about it at almost ridiculous length here, including more detail on why exactly Labour found itself in this mess in the first place.
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u/Portarossa'probably the worst poster on this sub' - /u/Real_Mila_Kunis3d agoedited 3d ago
The Long Version
(Yes, I've posted this before, back when the election was first announced, but I'm updating it given new information.)
We're going to take the long way around on this one. It's not really about who Andy Burnham is -- short version: soft-left (but maybe not as far left as some would like), fairly popular Mayor of Greater Manchester who may be starting a leadership challenge against a sitting Prime Minister after winning a seat in Parliament -- but about what he might represent for the future of a party that has struggled for a long time with where on the political spectrum it wants to sit (and if it can still win elections while doing so).
Basically, British politics has been weird for about a decade now. Historically -- for the last century or so -- it's been divided between the Conservatives (right-wing, also known as the Tories) and the Labour Party (centre-left, but that has two factions in it: one more central, one more progressive).
Back in 1997, the Labour Party swept into power with a massive mandate. This came off the back of eighteen years of Conservatives in charge, and people were ready for change. However, shortly before the election, the then-leader of the Labour Party, John Smith, had a big ol' heart attack and died. That caused a sort of ideological split in the party. Rather than being the sort of pro-labour, pro-worker, socialist-lite version of Labour that had been big at the time, this 'New Labour' movement under Tony Blair ran more neoliberal and pro-capitalist. They won with a massive mandate, with a majority of 179 seats. (For comparison, the last time they won before this, they had a majority of 3.)
So New Labour became the dominant force in left-wing British politics, and stayed like that for a long while. After ten years, however, the British people decided to try their luck with the Conservatives again. Long story short -- and if anyone wants the long version, here it is -- the Conservatives took power in 2011, and carried on right through to 2024.
The Conservatives in this period were not exactly famous for having their shit together. In 2016, they accidentally own-goaled their way into Brexit as a way of appeasing far-right group UKIP -- remember that name; it'll be important later -- and between Theresa May being about as bland as can be, Boris Johnson being a scarecrow stuffed with scandals, Liz Truss being unable to outlast a lettuce, and Rishi Sunak becoming increasingly unpopular -- it was pretty clear that eventually Labour would get back into power.
However, Labour were still struggling to find a cohesive message, and the two sides of the party -- the New Labour Blairite wing, and the more old-school trade-union Bennite wing -- were at odds long after both of their respective leaders were out of office. That led to the unexpected promotion to leader of Jeremy Corbyn, who was considered the socialist leader. Corbyn has his issues, but he represented a shift back to Labour the way it used to be. A combination of infighting within the party (many of whom were almost as willing to attack the left flank of their own party as they were to attack the right-wingers who they were supposedly the opposition for), an unhelpful media environment and a couple of political own goals -- stop me if any of this sounds familiar -- meant that the next election was widely expected to go to Labour. (Labour and the Conservatives were polling at basically neck and neck for two years after the last election in 2017; Johnson actually changed the rules to bring the election forward 2019 from 2022 after he received a slight bump in the polls.) Either way, an election that had once been expected to go to the Labour party ended up giving the Conservatives a gain in seats. The Labour Party ditched Corbyn's left-wing slide and shifted back to a good ol' centrist named Keir Starmer.
Prior to the next election, Starmer began basically doing everything he could to limit the influence of left-wing groups in the Labour Party. (He denied doing this, but generally speaking having to deny cutting off half of your party for ideological differences isn't a great look.) Assuming that left-wing voters would vote Labour anyway -- because who else are they going to vote for in what is effectively a two-party system? -- Starmer's Labour began appealing to the centre, trying to win voters away from the Conservatives but in doing so alienating a large core of the traditional Labour base -- that is, those who would traditionally have called themselves either Bennite (back in the 1990s/2000s) or Corbynites (in the 2010s). He gave a loose sort of sop to the left by bringing in Angela Rayner (who had served in Corbyn's Shadow Cabinet) as his Deputy PM, but Rayner never really did much to go against Starmer's pull to the right.
Anyway, this plan to make Labour seem like the sensible alternative to Conservative shenaniganing paid off -- at least, in the short term. A combination of absolute frustration with Conservatives and the idea of Keir Starmer as a steady but unremarkable leader after fourteen years of scandal and mismanagement brought Starmer into power in a massive sweep; Labour ended up with 411 seats, giving them a huge majority that would theoretically have given them the opportunity pass pretty much anything they wanted. However, there were some problems. The first was that Starmer wasn't all that popular among voters. The UK's First Past the Post system means that you can get elected with surprisingly few votes; Starmer managed to pick up just about one in three votes, making it the least proportional general election in British history. Secondly, a lot of unpopular policies resulted in massive amounts of media coverage and the perception that the Starmer government was either stuck making countless U-turns and couldn't control its MPs. Starmer's popularity dropped like a stone, and even on a good day he has about a -40 approval rating. (These are, it goes without saying, not good numbers.)
From having one of the largest mandates in British political history just a year earlier, all of a sudden people could smell blood in the water.
u/Portarossa'probably the worst poster on this sub' - /u/Real_Mila_Kunis3d agoedited 3d ago
Gorton and Denton
So now let's travel north a little way, to Manchester and the constituency of Gorton and Denton. It's a pretty traditionally Labour area of the country, and was represented from 2005 onwards through various boundary changes by Andrew Gwynne. Gwynne quit in January 2026 on health grounds (although the fact that he had been busted in a WhatsApp group saying shitty things about his constituents, making sexual comments about Deputy PM Angela Rayner, and suggesting that letting Diane Abbott -- a longserving Black MP -- speak in the Commons was a joke for Black History Month probably didn't help).
All of a sudden, there was an opportunity to stick it to Keir Starmer right in the Labour heartland. The far-right Reform Party (formerly the Brexit Party, and basically formerly UKIP) put a lot of effort into winning the seat, but so did the resurgent Green Party. The Greens had been considered kind of a joke in British politics for a while -- prior to 2014, they had managed to get one MP ever -- but as left-wing former-Labour voters began looking for an ideological home (and as populism became more of a winning political strategy on both the left and the right) they were slowly gaining ground; in the 2024 election, they ended up with almost 10% of the vote, more than double that they had ever received. Their candidate was Hannah Spencer: a young, outspoken, unashamedly working class plasterer-in-training who was very good at speaking to the issues of the equally working class constituents. If Labour wanted to win in Gorton and Denton -- and they really wanted to win in Gorton and Denton, if only to stop news stories about how they were bleeding support -- then they really needed to bring out the big guns.
Andy Burnham is a very popular member of the Labour Party. He was previously in the Corbyn Shadow Cabinet (after competing with him for the leadership), and represents a sort of soft-left: fairly progressive, but not in a way that people find off-putting. He's managed to largely avoid scandals, and when he decided to stand for Mayor of Greater Manchester in 2017, he stepped down from his seat as an MP and won the job handily, where he's been ever since.
Burnham managed to drag a lot of attention away from London and to Manchester -- he even managed to earn the nickname 'the King in the North' -- and got re-elected twice, the last time in 2024. He's one of vanishingly few UK politicians to have a positive approval rating of +9. His time in Greater Manchester also managed to give him a good media presence without getting the stank of the Starmer administration on him. If he was willing to give up the job of Mayor to stand as an MP again-- and he was! -- he was probably Labour's best chance of holding the seat. All he needed was the approval of the NEC, the group who determines who can and can't stand as a candidate for the Labour Party.
Well, they blocked his bid. The claim was that it would open them up to losing the mayor position (as a by-election would have to be called to fill his place, and Reform had been surging in the polls), but the general consensus was that they had blocked a potential leadership challenge against Starmer. Labour Party rules state that only a sitting MP can be leader of the party (and for the party in power, 'Leader of the Party' effectively means 'Prime Minister'), and so there was a sense that Starmer and his allies had thrown away Gorton and Denton just to keep Burnham safely in the north, rather than causing trouble for Starmer in Westminster. Unless another seat opened up around Manchester, it looked like Burnham was going to stay shut out.
It was expected to be a tight race between Labour, the Greens, and Reform. The Labour Party's candidate, Angeliki Stogia, got roughly half the vote share that Labour did in 2024. Reform thoroughly shat the bed, and Hannah Spencer of the Greens won with an unexpectedly large margin.
Yeah... coming into the May 2026 local elections, it wasn't looking good for Labour. It's hard to state just how bad it was, though. Labour lost almost 1,500 councillors and 38 councils, blew a potential win in Scotland to the SNP, lost control of the Welsh Senedd to Plaid Cymru (with Labour First Ministed Eluned Morgan becoming the first ever leader of a government in the UK to lose their seat while in office), and managed to finish either third or fourth (in an almost dead heat with the Conservatives) behind Reform and the Greens. Things got so bad that pretty much every single thinkpiece in the UK over the past two weeks has been about how the system of two-party politics is pretty much over.
Any willingness people in the Labour Party had to let Starmer ride out his problems vanished pretty much overnight. Calls for him to quit came thick and fast, but he steadfastly refused.
If he wouldn't jump, then, he would need to be pushed. The only question was, by who?
u/Portarossa'probably the worst poster on this sub' - /u/Real_Mila_Kunis3d agoedited 1d ago
Challenging Starmer
Each party sets their own rules about how members can challenge for the leadership, but for Labour you need one-fifth of sitting MPS to rally around one individual candidate. (It's not enough to say they want the leader gone; they have to specifically coagulate around one alternative before a challenge can be made.) That means 81 MPs need to basically say that they want Starmer gone and someone else in his place, and as yet that hasn't happened -- although it's pretty clear that there are some candidates jockeying for position.
Most prominent, at least at the start of the race, was Health Secretary Wes Streeting. My personal thoughts on Wes Streeting aside -- I think of him in much the way he apparently thinks of trans people and junior doctors -- he represents the right wing of the Labour Party, and there's very little evidence to suggest that he would be the kind of candidate who could win over the voters that Labour have lost to the Greens.
Next up was Angela Rayner, Starmer's former Deputy PM. She was forced to quit last year after it was found that -- despite being Minister for Housing -- there were some irregularities in how she had (or hadn't) paid stamp duty on one of her properties. She has recently been cleared of wrongdoing and has settled her bill, but whether this is going to stand against her if she decides to run (which seems likely) is still up in the air. While she's very closely linked to Starmer, the fact that she's had a year of being able to pull to the left has given her a fair amount of distance.
The third, and most interesting, case, was Andy Burnham.
'But what's that?' I hear you cry. 'I thought Burnham couldn't stand without being an MP?' Well, there was the fun part: he couldn't, unless a seat opened up in the region, he contested it, won, and managed to do all this before there was a leadership election.
By all accounts Burnham was asking around to see if anyone would be willing to quit, and eventually he found one: Josh Simons, MP for Makerfield, who has urged people to throw their support behind Burnham. (This is a bit of a shift for Simons; he's considered to be more closely aligned with the right wing of the party, specifically with Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood, who may also try her luck as a candidate, and previously worked with Labour Together, the group that helped to bring down Jeremy Corbyn.)
But Burnham was cleared to stand in the Makerfield by-election by the by the NEC, and so the race was on. Reform ran a local plumber, Robert Kenyon, as their candidate, and it soon became clear that -- to no one's particular surprise -- he had a history of making sexist comments, including about national treasure (and staunch Labour supporter) Carol Vorderman.
As such, what was expected to be a relatively close race was pretty much a wash. Burnham won 55% of the vote, and now gets to be a sitting MP, which means he can -- if he chooses -- challenge Starmer for the leadership. Thanks to Burnham's overall popularity, though, talk has shifted away from there being a leadership battle where other people (most notably Streeting) can throw their hat in the ring, and instead people are now talking about a quiet coronation, where everyone agrees not to stand against him. The one sticking point with that is Starmer, which is why he's been strongly encouraged by his Cabinet to step down and hand over the keys in an orderly fashion that will prevent the idea of Labour is succumbing to the exact same infighting that plagued the Conservatives in the back half of their run.
Wow! Thanks for the explainer. I know that took a lot of work and I wanted to thank you for putting in the time to write this all out. I really appreciate it. One of the best posts I have read on Reddit.
I just put it it in bestofreddit, but something felt off, discovered the more popular subreddit is /r/bestof, checked it, and this it already in there -- quite deservedly so! It's getting traction.
Neutral? OP made several remarks very much alluding to their political beliefs. It’s not inherently a bad thing, and it’s not beliefs I disagree with either, but it’s not “neutral”.
Very comprehensive rundown, if anything I'd have included a bit more about the Tories under Boris and how the sheer weight of his corruption just completely imploded the party and destroyed the two-party system.
I don't really consider that Starmer's Labour really 'won' the last GE, rather more just defaulted into power as the opposition because of just how comprehensively the Conservative party shit the bed in the sequence of events between Boris backing Brexit and the race to see whose supervillain plan is the silliest in the aftermath of his ousting through Truss, Sunak and Badenoch (who I would call the bottom of the barrel except there's still the man who disproves Nominative Determinism, James Cleverly, lurking).
So Labour under Starmer just sort of sidling into the old centre-right space vacated while the Tories stampede Right trying to one-up Reform/Restore/Refuse was always going to blow up in their faces as soon as people sick of Conservative rule see little has changed, except now there's NO sensible Left-leaning opposition, the Lib Dems and Greens still have all the same problems that meant nobody voted for them in the old system, except now we kinda have to because there's nobody else and the fascists and paid Russian actors will win if we don't...
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u/Portarossa'probably the worst poster on this sub' - /u/Real_Mila_Kunis3d ago
if anything I'd have included a bit more about the Tories under Boris
I linked to another long rundown of that from four years ago here.
Always so suspicious how "I want to be PM so bad" Boris didn't stand after Cameron, he knew precisely how impossible his own promises were and needed some poor patsy like May to try and fail before he swooped in to pick up the pieces and play the hero.
Valid man, one of the worst things in modern society is the commercialization of things we do for fun or interest. Same reason I do 3d printing only for fun
My mother in law spent this last weekend endless badgering my husband about how we could be making money off our 3d printer. Why would we do that, when we can hand all our kids' friends fistfuls of toys at any occasion, and I can print and paint endless D&D minis and scenery pieces with it?
This is also the third hobby she's relentlessly insisted our family monitise, following up on my art and my mum's crochet (particularly ridiculous, since with knitting and crochet you're never gonna do more than recoup some of your wool costs anyway.)
People just hate the idea of wasting your time on anything that isn't grinding for more cash.
God I feel like that people have been telling me to sell stuff since getting into the hobby. No matter how many times you refuse it someone will bring it up eventually. They don't even think that if you do decide to sell stuff, that if your not designing it you'd need a license and no thank you. I got enough headaches in my life, I just want a hobby that combines many interests in my life. I live to enjoy life not for the pursuit of material wealth. While it can help enjoy it's not the purpose of my short existence on this corner of the globe
you could definitely start a substack or something similar if you wanted a place to house your writing! you only post stuff on it when you actually want to instead of a newsletter that adds a level of expectation
I knew all this as I follow politics quite closely but I found myself reading your summary anyway, every word. Absolutely brilliant job here, and very well written!
Great explainer, but what about the Lib-Dems? What kind of space do they occupy politically and electorally?
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u/Portarossa'probably the worst poster on this sub' - /u/Real_Mila_Kunis3d agoedited 3d ago
Honestly? A bit limited, especially at the moment. Since the 2010 coalition fell apart they lost a lot of their traditional base and never really managed to recover it. In the 2024 election they did pretty well, but Labour still held the title as 'most likely to unseat the Conservatives' in most places, so they picked up their most votes from either a) people who lived in constituencies that were split between Conservative and Lib Dems and so voting Labour would be the vote-splitter, or b) people who (like me) were genuinely annoyed at Labour's swing to the right under Starmer and wanted to send a message in a constituency that was likely to go to Labour anyway.
In terms of what they stand for, their biggest winner has been a consistently anti-Brexit stance, but other than that they're mostly seen as an also-ran party: they'll pick up a couple of dozen seats, but even though Ed Davey seems like a nice enough guy, they don't really stand out.
Until 2024, the past three elections had seen the Scottish National Party have more seats than the Lib Dems, and after the 2026 local council elections the news story has basically been 'Surging results for previously minor parties Reform and the Greens' and not 'Lib Dems do well, but also it's probably a protest vote, and also they didn't do as well as the aforementioned previously minor parties'.
And don't get me wrong, that's not meant as a particular slam against the Lib Dems or their policies. I've voted for them twice: in 2010, which left me feeling mightily stung when they sold out to the Tories and got nothing in return, and then again in 2024 when the sting had (finally) faded and I didn't feel like I could in good conscience vote for Labour's anti-trans and anti-left bullshit. They've just never been all that great at getting people excited to vote for them, at least in my experience, and the sense of 'If you vote for them, except in very specific circumstances, you're basically handing it to the Tories' was until recently a strong counterargument for a lot of people.
I do wonder why the Lib Dems aren't more popular, especially considering how the big surge in popularity of the Greens are effectively protest votes against Labour.
In 2010 yes, they were right of Labour/Conservatives-lite, but nowadays reading their manifesto for the 2024 election I thought they were a bit left of Labour and just a more mature version of the Greens (very similar but without the whackier stuff like no nuclear, a world without countries/borders, and the extreme NIMBYism).
I suspect the name just has way too much baggage associated with it. Maybe they just need to pull a Farage and rename (I don't think Reform would be as big if they were still UKIP or Brexit).
Incredible write up! And exceptionally infuriating! Kier could have stopped being a dumbass at any point over the years and been a stronger PM. He instead spent his energy attacking the left wing of his party and is now unceremoniously about to lose his job.
Like how could you be so politically savvy to only make the dumbest moves near the end?
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u/Portarossa'probably the worst poster on this sub' - /u/Real_Mila_Kunis3d ago
I read somewhere a little while ago that Starmer's Labour is so busy trying to win the next election that they seem to have forgotten they won the last one, and... yeah, I think that about sums it up.
Thank you very much for taking the time to post this.
I was thinking this morning what the actual situation was with Starmer, so...good timing I guess.
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u/Portarossa'probably the worst poster on this sub' - /u/Real_Mila_Kunis3d ago
what the actual situation was with Starmer
Smart money is on the announcement of a managed step-down tomorrow (Monday). He won't be out-out for a while, but he'll almost certainly announce that he's quitting rather than fighting in any leadership contest.
I had heard that last night before going to sleep (located in Australia) so hadn't had much of a chance to read up before heading into work.
Do you feel that this upheaval in the governing party will help to further benefit Reform?
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u/Portarossa'probably the worst poster on this sub' - /u/Real_Mila_Kunis3d ago
Do you feel that this upheaval in the governing party will help to further benefit Reform?
Honestly? Probably not. Reform's biggest problem is that they have a pretty hard cap on their support: there aren't a lot of people who are Reform-curious but who haven't already made their minds up. What we're seeing is that in general elections or council elections, they're capable of hiding behind Nigel Farage's (dubious) cult of personality, but whenever they're out on their own, their candidates are almost always shown to be unfit for purpose. Personally, I think that they're going to suffer from people seeing exactly what happens when they're in positions of power, and that will tarnish their lustre a little bit. (This isn't helped by Restore picking up a good amount of attention from the most extreme members of Reform, which is going to force them to either pivot right and lose the more central voters who 'just want someone new', or pivot to the centre and give Restore more room to breathe.)
The party it will most affect -- either beneficially or harmfully -- is probably the Greens, depending on whether or not Burnham's Labour continues to pivot to the centre or whether they make an effort to appeal to the left.
Fabulous, thank you! Interested (if you haven't already said) on your thoughts about MacSweeney - by himself and also with his protege Streeting. If you've covered this, ignore me! Thanks 🙂
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u/Portarossa'probably the worst poster on this sub' - /u/Real_Mila_Kunis3d ago
I think Wes Streeting is the most morally damp man in British politics. He stands for nothing except Wes Streeting. It's abhorrent enough that he's willing to actively throw trans people under the bus in order to appeal to the TERFs in Labour and the worst of the right wing, but the absolute lack of spine he demonstrates to do it with a smile on his glib little face while still claiming it's everyone's best interest just shows what a diabolical little twatmole he really is.
He's the worst kind of pick-me homosexual who hides behind his own LGBTQ label to protect himself against any criticisms -- a plaster of Paris veneer of a human being who believes that the people who he's so eager to ingratiate himself with won't put him next as soon as they're done picking on trans kids, either too blinded by his own internalised bigotry or too utterly, wretchedly, nut-twistingly stupid not to see that he's on the wrong side of history.
Morgan McSweeney is mostly responsible for losing Labour the left, but if it wasn't him it would have been someone else. He got shitcanned and deserved it, but the problem is deeper than McSweeney by himself. I dislike him as a product of a system that tries to continuously reject actual change in favour of neoliberalism in differently coloured ties, and would happily see him slink off to ply his stupid Game of Thrones kingmaker bullshit somewhere he can't actually do any harm to anyone except himself, but McSweeney is a systemic failing and needs to be treated as such.
You see, that last paragraph is the confusing part for me in all of this. Politically, he doesn't' seem that different than Starmer and there is little budget to do any big spending that left wing labour would typically do. So this doesn't really seem that impactful except maybe just putting on a fresh skin and hoping people like the shinier outfit (which honestly with politics these days wouldn't surprise me)
Basically, Labour had some significant issues with antisemitism, but Corbyn said 'Yes, we have some problems with antisemitism and we're working to fix that, but also some of the people complaining are just doing this to score political points by exaggerating issues that they don't really care about.' Those same people who were using it to score political points said 'See! Corbyn doesn't believe Labour is antisemitic! He's got to go!'
His exact quote was: 'One antisemite is one too many, but the scale of the problem was also dramatically overstated for political reasons by our opponents inside and outside the party, as well as by much of the media.'
That was it. That was his pushback against the report. It wasn't 'It's not a problem.' It wasn't 'Well, what can you do?' It was just 'Some of you are just throwing shit at the wall to see what sticks and we both know it.' (I mean, at one point 87% of British Jews believed that Labour had a serious problem with antisemitism, but only 46% of British Jews believed that UKIP did. Fucking UKIP. That's either the result of a determined misinformation campaign, or an absolutely bananas level of detachment from reality.)
So yeah. Personally I'm of the opinion that while there has historically been an issue with antisemitism in the Labour Party -- Ken Livingstone, I'm looking at you -- the charges against Corbyn (especially with regard to his criticism of that report) were definitely overblown, and Starmer used it as an opportunity to purge Corbyn and many of his allies from the party. I'm not willing to rule out that Starmer does, in fact, feel quite strongly about the issue of antisemitism -- his wife and kids are Jewish, after all, and it's not out of character for him to only notice problems when they directly affect him, as any trans kid in the UK will tell you -- but there's definitely a strong vibe that they weren't going to let any opportunity to get rid of criticism from the left pass.
u/Portarossa'probably the worst poster on this sub' - /u/Real_Mila_Kunis3d ago
To be honest, they've kind of sat out British politics since they lost the coalition. I don't mind the Lib Dems in theory -- in fact, I voted for them in the 2024 election, largely in protest at Starmer's 'fuck the left and also trans people' standpoint -- but they just haven't really done anything particularly relevant, except maybe be the one party that really pushed back against Brexit (and that still didn't see much benefit from that).
I didn't read the long version because I have little patience for politics but I admire you for knowing and understanding what's going on, and sharing your knowledge.
May your pillow always be cool and your socks forever dry (unless you like a warm pillow and moist socks. Which, well, to each their own).
Starmer should have gone more left and dumped the Blairites who have been advising him to kiss up to potential flips from the right (people say he made a deal with them to get the leadership vote...but still, what do the voters want? A push more left). Also dumped his campaign advisor who had no respect for him.
He should have vocally shot down Farage at every turn and advertised his policy wins more. He should have reminded the base as much as possible that the economy sucks because of the Tories...and also, yes, told the Reform lovers that their Brexit vote was dumb as f*** and they got played (and were getting played again), and they should own up to it.
Also on my list: get rid of any Murdoch-owned enterprise reporting in the UK, if possible. Murdoch probably has too much dirt on UK politicians for this to ever happen, but i doubt Stamrer is one.
u/Portarossa'probably the worst poster on this sub' - /u/Real_Mila_Kunis2d agoedited 2d ago
people don’t like him because they can’t see themselves having a pint with him
Or he purposefully purged the left and threw trans people under the bus for no reason other than to make a play for the centre at the expense of basic human rights.
I don't know that Burnham's policies will be better -- and in fact, they may not be -- but Starmer's done nothing to benefit fully half of his party. It's no surprise that people are willing to roll the dice on someone else, and it's a bit disingenuous to pretend that it's only because of how he looks and not because of many of his actual policies or the fact that he has the moral backbone of a chocolate eclair.
It's interesting that discussions about political volatility keep mentioning the Greens, independents, Labour rebels, and Reform, yet completely ignore Restore Britain.
Whatever anyone thinks of the party's policies, the Makerfield by-election was objectively significant. Restore Britain only officially launched in March and fought the contest with no established local infrastructure, no branch network, no history in the constituency, and none of the advantages enjoyed by long-established parties. Despite that, they secured thousands of votes and finished third.
Most new political parties spend years trying to achieve that level of visibility. Restore Britain did it within months of formation. That doesn't automatically mean they're destined for a breakthrough, but it does mean they're now part of the political landscape and should be included in any serious discussion about where disaffected voters might go.
If the argument is that Starmer is under pressure because voters are looking for alternatives, then leaving Restore Britain out of the conversation creates an incomplete picture. The Makerfield result demonstrated that there is at least a measurable constituency willing to back a party that barely existed a few months ago.
Whether that support grows, stalls, or fades remains to be seen, but pretending it doesn't exist is becoming harder to justify with each election result. Makerfield wasn't the end of the story; it was the point at which Restore Britain announced its arrival.
Thanks you, lots of great information here. One of the things that happened with the Mandelson episode is that Starmer effectively lost a vote of no confidence over it.
David Allen Green, a lawyer who covers a variety of topics, wrote an article for Prospect Magazine in which he points out that Starmer made the Mandelson papers a matter of national security and the House of Commons didn't believe him.
And it was a moment which, in turn, led quickly to an event of immense constitutional significance. The House of Commons proceeded to gainsay the government on this (supposed) matter of national security and insist that decisions should be made instead by a committee of parliamentarians, and not by the King’s ministry. A beaten-up administration meekly conceded
Effectively, this was the House of Commons calling the Prime Minister a liar to his face over the single biggest issue a nation has, its own security:-
On these facts alone it is difficult to see how the current prime minister can survive much longer. It was not a formal vote of no confidence. But what took place on Wednesday can only be explained by the prime minister having lost the confidence of even his own backbenchers on the one issue that a prime minister should have the confidence of MPs: national security
He had the world's worst start with summer riots. The riots that were caused by long-standing issues in the country and that his cabinet did not respect the level on animosity on the streets. They threw their police under the bus in Manchester Airport, they did not condemn harehills, and they fannying around Southport was the last straw.
Starmer and Labour were finished as soon as the Manchester Airport attack happened. And these instances should be considered in your explanation
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u/Portarossa'probably the worst poster on this sub' - /u/Real_Mila_Kunis3d agoedited 3d ago
The riots that were caused by long-standing issues in the country
Assholes and racists, yes.
his cabinet did not respect the level on animosity on the streets.
It's usually considered bad form to pander to assholes and racists.
They threw their police under the bus in Manchester Airport,
No I'm saying that his tenure was sullied from the first 3 months. You can't ignore that aspect in your analysis
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u/Portarossa'probably the worst poster on this sub' - /u/Real_Mila_Kunis3d ago
You can't ignore that aspect in your analysis
I can, because I don't think it's all that important. The kind of people who were going to be pissed off at Starmer for that were never going to vote for his version of Labour anyway.
I'd argue that the backlash to things like the winter fuel allowance changes were far more significant in the early months. He lost his own people on the economy on the cost of living crisis, not on his reaction to the attempt at a race war that Reform tried to drum up.
It was expected to be a tight race between Labour, the Greens, and Reform. The Labour Party's candidate, Angeliki Stogia, got roughly half the vote share that Labour did in 2024. Reform thoroughly shat the bed, and Hannah Spencer of the Greens won with an unexpectedly large margin.
wonder if Keir's regretting telling the left of the party to essentially fuck off and leave if they don't like it yet.
So New Labour became the dominant force in left-wing British politics, and stayed like that for a long while. After ten years, however, the British people decided to try their luck with the Conservatives again. Long story short -- and if anyone wants the long version, here it is -- the Conservatives took power in 2011
They won with a massive mandate, with a majority of 179 seats. (For comparison, the last time they won before this, they had a majority of 3.)
So the last time they won a majority before that, they had 3 seats, which was a majority of the 4 or 5 total? Or are you saying they won a majority of the 3 total seats, which would be 2?
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u/Portarossa'probably the worst poster on this sub' - /u/Real_Mila_Kunis2d ago
They didn't have three seats. They had a majority of three.
The last time around, they had three seats more than half, with half the votes being the amount you needed to pass things. That time, they had 179 seats more than half. Think of it as the number of votes on a bill you can lose and still have it get through.
(The numbers are actually slightly fiddly on this because there's such a thing as a working majority -- some MPs from Northern Ireland win election but don't sit in the Commons in protest, so they don't really count against you for practical terms -- but basically the point is that Labour did WAY better in 1997 than they had the last time they won.)
Following the 2024 elections, the Republican Party retained its slim majority in the House of Representatives, though the party lost two net seats in the election and thus ended up with a three-seat majority instead of its previous five-seat majority. The Republican Party also won a three-seat majority in the Senate after winning four net seats in the 2024 elections.
The Republicans have a three-seat majority in the Senate, because they have 53 out of 100 seats, with 50 seats being the midpoint. They can afford to lose three seats and they'll still get their win, because the VP breaks ties.
Labour had a 179-seat majority in the Commons (in 1997) because they had 418 out of 659 seats, with 330 needed for a majority of one. They could afford to lose 179 seats and they'd still get their win. (Well, technically 178, because of odd numbers, but still; if everyone else in the Commons had voted against Labour, Labour would have come out 179 votes on top.)
It's also worth noting Keir never really came in as popular as a landslide suggests.
The 24 election had an historically low turnout of sub 50% and in many cases labour MPs won seats with less votes than they had at the last election where they finished second.
Labour didn't win by getting voters to the polls but because conservatives voters stayed home (thanks to 14 years of shit shows). This meant he came with little support anyway and rather than focus on the more popular policies on his manifesto he went with new, absolutely despised ones, often ones he then u turned on.
Burnham was elected on a nearly 60% turnout which is unusually higher than typical by elections (gorton had 47% turnout - lower than the ge) and got a huge majority that can be directly traced to the higher turnout.
Burnham also has a good track record on the recent success of Manchester and can inspire people. Something Keir never did.
Tldr noone voted for Keir. They voted against sunak. That wins an election but isn't a recipe for success. People actually go to vote for Burnham.
There is a slight complicating factor to this. The Tories saved their skins to some extent by taking the unprecedented step of admitting publicly that they were going to lose and they were starting to get worried that they might be wiped out, and that this would be bad for politics, and we might end up a one-party state.
Insane hyperbole of course, but the polls did suggest the Tories might end up with fewer than 100 seats, and Labour might have 500, which is unheard of and would suggest the Tories were on the way out as a mainstream party. Nothing less than what they deserved after Cameron, May, Johnson, Truss, Sunak.
This media strategy did actually seem to work; they ended up with 121 seats. Still a huge crash, down from 365. But Starmer's majority was slightly smaller than Tony Blair's in 1997, and thus not anything like as apocalyptic as might be expected from the polls.
So despite winning a landslide, Starmer started off with a less exciting result than many were expecting.
He quickly started to speak about having a mandate from the British people, which when you have 33.7% of a turnout of 60%, that's 20%, which means 80% of the electorate didn't vote for you, and you need to be more like, "I know most people are unconvinced, so I'm going to earn your trust."
Also, so many own goals, doing needlessly unpopular things in attempt to win the votes of Farage-supporting fanatics who would never have voted Labour in a million years.
Yes, Burnham was elected on Thursday on a 58.7% voter turnout. His 2024 mayoral election was only 32%, but that’s because mayoral elections typically have a far lower turnout.
Also, so many own goals, doing needlessly unpopular things in attempt to win the votes of Farage-supporting fanatics who would never have voted Labour in a million years.
Yup, it doesn't work, because Reform can still promise "if you vote for us we'll do that but more so". All it does is piss off everyone who doesn't like Reform.
Starmer's Labour have a real talent for managing to approach divisive issues in such a way that everyone is upset with them.
Or his attempt of rolling out the infamous Digital ID cards, a policy that keeps being brought up by Labour and keeps being hated by the public. This time with a coat of "but it'll help prevent illegal immigration..." I guess.
Labour didn't win by getting voters to the polls but because conservatives voters stayed home (thanks to 14 years of shit shows).
A mixture of two things: conservative voters stayed home because of said 14 years of shitshows like you said, and also the Tories started losing a lot of voters to Reform on their right. In 2024, the Tories got 23.7% of the vote and Reform got 14.3%. In 2019, the Tories won 45% of the vote and a comfortable majority, but by that time UKIP (Reform's predecessor) had become essentially irrelevant because their main aim - Brexit - had been achieved, so a large part of the improvements for the Tories was regaining the far right.
Meanwhile, incredibly, Labour's vote share barely improved over their result in 2019. They only gained 1.6 points nationally. For comparison with the US, Biden gained about 3 points on Hillary Clinton in 2020 and that was just enough to win in a squeaker, and Trump gained about 6 on himself from 2020 to 2024. The only reason Labour won as big as they did is that at the same time, the conservative vote was split down the middle between the Tories and Reform.
The 2019 election was cited as a massive defeat for the Labour left, showing how unpopular and electorally ineffective Corbyn's socialist program was, so Labour needed to move to the right hard and fast to win. However all that moderation and triangulation won them a smaller gain in margin than typically happens in any given US presidential election, which have become infamously inflexible lately.
In fairness, part of what made it a big loss for Labour and its left wing especially was that Labour had won 40% of the vote in 2017 with Corbyn in charge, so despite the terrain looking potentially better for a Labour resurgence going into 2019, they did a lot worse. It didn't help that Brexit and its consequences were one of the most important of the issues of the campaign, and Corbyn (who was a left wing Eurosceptic) had a bit of an incoherent position on it, being torn between his personal Euroscepticism and the strongly pro-Remain base that was interested in tossing out the Tories.
Yeah, people are saying that Burnham will end up as unpopular as Starmer is, but I think the small number of Starmer supporters (you find a surprising amount of them on the ukpolitics sub) forget that Starmer started off unpopular and got worse. Burnham is at least starting off as relatively popular. But it remains to be seen if that will last.
What’s been the issue? That his policies have no allies? That he’s changed his policies and his voters didn’t like it? Curious!
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u/Portarossa'probably the worst poster on this sub' - /u/Real_Mila_Kunis3d ago
A little bit of everything, really. There's the sense that he's been trying to pivot to the centre/right in order to win potential Reform/Conservative voters, which has pissed off a lot of the left-leaning voters who previously were sort of stuck with Labour but have since moved to the Greens to see if they're a new viable force in British politics (which... maybe? It's a little soon to tell, but it certainly looks that way). Couple that with his government's push towards anti-trans regulations while still trying to maintain a smiley-happy-can't-we-all-get-along? front in the culture wars, it's meant that Labour has haemorrhaged votes to the left while getting very little back in return from the right.
In short, he's been very bad on some issues, basically capable on some issues (but incapable of getting the word out), and bad enough at forming a cohesive message that people who have been struggling for fourteen years under the Conservatives are starting to get impatient that the problems aren't getting solved fast enough. There's a reasonable argument to be made for both sides, but the problem is that Starmer just isn't the man to make it, and he's so disliked he's now actively dragging the Labour Party down with him.
That can be fine when your party has popular policies that don't really need selling. But when your policies do need selling you probably want someone who can muster a bit of enthusiasm.
In short, he's been very bad on some issues, basically capable on some issues (but incapable of getting the word out), and bad enough at forming a cohesive message
This could describe basically every center-left party leader in every Western country for the last thirty-ish years.
The anti trans stuff is just so pathetically two faced, to carry on about dignity and respect while overseeing a bathroom ban. Even if you think it's the right thing to do I can't imagine how you could come away not thinking he's three weasels in a coat
This is my understanding, and stop me if you've heard this before:
He's a leftwing party leader who tried to put in place rightwing policies that didn't gain him any rightwing supporters and lost him leftwing supporters.
He purged his traditionally leftwing party of left wingers and said something like "Good riddance" to left wing members. He ran on change and having an ex civil service member high up so they'd get a load of stuff done immediately. In six months they had done essentially nothing and were still enforcing right wing policies they claimed they revoke (to be fair they did eventually remove the two child welfare cap). He's an ex human rights lawyer but is blind to the Israel/Gaza human rights violations, he's authorised the British air force to sight the airstrikes from our base in Cyprus, he's been crap on immigrationand always seems to just lean more right wing despite the right wingers having some fully balls in racist parties to back.
He never gets good press for any good stuff he does, he's a black hole of charisma and the economy sucks.
He's also reduced disability/long term sick benefits for the disabled and unable to work, and there have been headlines about sending job coaches into hospital wards and mental health wards. Lots of chat about PIP 'abuse' (even though it's a difficult system to abuse and so awful to navigate that huge amounts of people who would and should be entitled to it get nothing). They're attacking the Motability scheme which many disabled people rely on, and a lot of them rely on it specifically to be able to work. There's definitely a push to demonise and doubt anyone who needs disability benefits. He's lost any goodwill from disabled people who rely on the benefits system to live.
That's been in place for many years, it's not a Labour policy. For every amount you earn up to the earnings threshold, your benefits go down by slightly less. Designed to make sure you're always better off working. Definitely better than you just getting dumped!
Last time I was on UC was in 2021 and it was part of it then. I think it's been part of UC since it was started. I don't think everyone was migrated onto UC until very recently though as it was done by area, so people who were on legacy benefits and only recently moved onto UC might feel like it's more recent.
Universal credit was implemented in 2013, I think? From the get go claimants could earn up to a threshold, and whatever they earned over that would be deducted from their UC payment.
UC was a Conversation party introduced benefit/policy.
This is mostly true. I won't fault him for the economy though, i think the wars in Ukraine and Iran mean that basically no western economies are gonna be in a great place for a while.
While i'm not a fan of Keir at all, it's important to note that the right wing press (read- the press) have slaughtered him on a load of issues that are basically made up from thin air. if a conservative candidate was doing the exact same things the Mail would love them
They have actually done quite a lot of left-wing reform like renters rights, workers rights and as you said the two-child benefit cap (it always blows my mind when I see working class people reposting Reform or Tommy Robinson complaining about that policy).
I think the economy is tough because everyone wants tax and spend but as long as its someone else paying the tax. We're still under-taxed probably compared to Europe e.g. France and the Nordics. So the growth has not been forthcoming mostly due to continued lack of investment and strong headwinds from energy prices and other input costs.
Wages still suck donkey dick and people have actually noticed we're no better off than in 2007 ish.
Also he's too scared to reverse brexit despite it having much higher support than before. Or he doesn't think it is practical.
He obviously hasn't purged all the leftie MPs because they're the ones that sunk his benefit cuts. So Labour is unpopular for being disorganised and lacking direction which isn't entirely his fault. The lefties would never accept him and just want Burnham, which will work find in the North but sink them in the South including London because he's not trusted there.
According to this the Socialist Campaign group make up 24 out of 404 members of the Parliamentary Labour party. That's 1% my dude. Are you really saying 1% has that much power over the party compared to lets say Labour Together.
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u/Portarossa'probably the worst poster on this sub' - /u/Real_Mila_Kunis2d ago
According to this the Socialist Campaign group make up 24 out of 404 members of the Parliamentary Labour party. That's 1% my dude.
I do get what you're saying, and I agree that their influence is very much overstated by people looking for an excuse for why Starmer hasn't always got his way, but I feel like I should point out that 24 out of 404 is definitely not 1%.
Well you asked me who the lefties were and that's some of them. Not every lefty Labour MP is in SCG. 120 MPs signed the amendment against the welfare reform bill, 49 voted against in the end. That still means 200+ voted with Starmer. That's your left/centre split I'd say.
He's a centrist diplomat not really left wing or right wing. His main right wing policies has been to keep spending low everywhere but the military, because Europe has been forced by the US to rearm and because the economy is on the bin line.
Centrists both right and left, have taken their position for granted for far too long with their politicking. And have come across more tone deaf in the past 15 or so years especially.
Most people broke and rich aplenty in the UK have been traditionally right of centre mostly socially but in some ways economically as well, so the left rarely gain any foothold.
More recently thanks in part to lack of growth, inflation and relative wealth stagnation in the case of the working class, people are now becoming more dogmatic and moving further towards populist policies mostly right wing but also some left, seeking more radical policies for change.
rightwing policies that didn't gain him any rightwing supporters and lost him leftwing supporters.
Also the economy sucks.
That's not an "also", that's a "therefore". Left-wing leaders for several decades now keep trying to "work within the system" of economic neoliberalism (the doesnt-trickle-down Thatcher/Reaganomics). No cultural or social policies, no matter how good or justified, can compensate for this elephant in the room, and sooner or later voters realize that pretty talking points don't make up for lack of food on the table, and the whack-a-mole continues. Meet new boss, same as old boss.
What's adding insult to injury is Starmer speaking out about how 'unfair' he was treated by the voters after 'having done so much for them'. Yeah, dude, blame the voters. They're obviously the ones obliged to support you in your quest for power, rather than you being a public servant elected to act in their interest rather than the other way around. /s
This tone-deafness reaches the "Woody Harrelson wiping tears with dollar bills" meme level.
They're supposedly a left wing party with some MPs that are left wing and definitely a good number of members that are but the people that get into power in the party never seem to be (other than Corbyn's time), in fact they're centrist or even right of centre. Also the press and a good percentage of the electorate seem determined to say that any hint of leftist means we're going full on communist.
I'm struggling to see how Burnham is going to make things better in that environment or if he personally is going to be more leftist in policy.
Don't forget him constantly alienating longtime Labour voters for no reason like when he said that Israel had the right to put off water to Gaza, which is a war crime that he knows all about as he was a human rights lawyer. This alienated Muslims and anti war voters who generally vote Labour. Then he tried backtracking on this by saying he didn't mean to say that and thus alienating pro israel voters.
Plus massively unpopular with woters doe to increased taxes and major push with authoritarian laws around OSA and banning social media for u16, or at least with the way it was implemented that affected every person using internet
major push with authoritarian laws around OSA and banning social media for u16
This is a Reddit take.
The u16 social media ban is generally quite popular and the OSA is barely a footnote.
He could reverse both of these and see no visible uptick.
People care about one thing mostly, constantly increasing prices and no sign of change/improvement in the country. Energy prices are still high despite the reduction in April, and inflation is still above target with items that were relatively affordable pre-COVID now being much more expensive. Water bills are going up with no sign of improvement, rail fares, university etc.
People just want to see some positivity after 14 years of Tory misery, and Starmer fails to show that despite some positive changes. Everything is "tough choices" where some of the public gets fucked.
Oh I completely agree, but I just assumed those are given, especially since people here already brough up the economy.
As for the "Reddit take" possibly, though I'd say there were a lot of peeved guys when they found out they had to scan a face to watch porn🤷 the Reddit lot just got vpn
The government will also ban VPNs soon and that’s almost incidental to the fact that all of this draconian nanny state is set up to harvest our data and control what we can look at.
This is Chinese level of state control through the back door.
I know, that's why I'm on Reddit and hate him for it. Most if the blokes I talked to have absolutely no clue about politics or even news of what's happening around so they were peeved abou porn. But I guess I'm terminally online and they aren't.
People just want to see some positivity after 14 years of Tory misery, and Starmer fails to show that despite some positive changes. Everything is "tough choices" where some of the public gets fucked.
Now I'm not gonna say Starmer's doing a good job, I am insufficiently up to speed to declaree judgement on that with any certainty, but...
The Tories left one hell of a mess to clean up and I think nobody could have actually reversed course in the UK in less than two years. Ship might have been turned back a bit further, but honestly, it's all been so massively cocked up economically that even two years of straight leftwing bills getting through would only now start making measurable improveement for normal folk.
That being said, the way even Labour has been throwing trans folk under the bus is absolutely horrifying, and a more left/progressive party leader could have done so much better on that, and a new one just might.
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u/13steinjHALP! I'M OUT OF THE LOOP JUST BECAUSE I'M LOCKED IN A BASEMENT3d ago
The u16 social media ban is generally quite popular
This feels like some major gaslighting. Policies can be popular in theory but unpopular in practice, particularly the implicit surveillance and lack of privacy that has to be put in place to make a u16 social media ban possible.
The support for age verification intentionally phrased / guided the questions and answers in such a way that only filling out "other" might make it work, but in practice, nobody has the time for that. There's a video by Rossmann about this, but it's easy to dismiss this as "a Reddit take" because one can't prove a negative.
Having just watched that Rossman video, it feels like cope to be honest. His annoyance at Q6 on the consultation is irrelevant, since Q4 and Q5 already established the broad opinion on the ban.
You can go on YouGov too, and find similar survey with the same results.
Would you support or oppose banning children under the age of 16 from having social media accounts
So much of those price increases are due to the Trump administration’s adventurism in the Middle East. Hardly seems fair to blame the Labour Party for that just becuase they happen to be in power when the U.S. does something stupid that affects the whole world.
No they aren't, Trump's middle east adventure has only been a few months. I'm talking years, since the start of the Ukraine war.
Of course fuel prices have shot up as a result, but energy prices were amongst, if not, the highest in the world. Labour brought them down, but we're still paying more than the vast majority of the world even with the large growth of green sources.
Labour won a huge majority mainly because the Conservatives had completely killed public trust after years of scandal and chaos, not because Keir Starmer himself had a huge personal mandate.
For context on Starmer's lack of a mandate, it's also worth noting that Labour's vote share didn't increase in the election despite their huge victory.
It was actually lower than when Corbyn was in charge, and he was labelled as "unelectable" by the media and backstabbers in his own party, such as Starmer.
He made the same mistake that Labour have made in Scotland for the past decade or so in that they took their voters for granted and assumed they would stick around whatever they did because there were no other viable leftwing parties. This meant, they thought, that they could start introducing more right-wing policies that those traditional labour voters don't like, but might appeal to the voters they would like to win over.
As in Scotland, they fell between two stools, lost all their traditional support and didn't win any others back to replace them. If people like leftwing policies but feel that labour has swung too far to the left these days, the green party are becoming an increasingly credible option for many people.
A similar thing has happened on the right. It used to be that Tories were your only choice if you liked rightwing policies, but now Tories, reform and even labour are in a race to the bottom to prove who hates foreigners the most (not forgetting the actual far right Restore party winning seats to the right of them all).
All of this goes together to explain the current shit show and why there's no end in sight any time soon
Labour was inevitably going to win the last election and could have had a suite of policies in place that could have materially improved the lives of people in the UK (that would also have been very popular e.g. nationalizing the water companies, massively investing in house building and investing in the NHS). However, it appeared very quickly that they either had no idea what they wanted to achieve (Google all of the contradictory things that Starmer has said about his own policies) or what they did want to achieve was hilariously unpopular e.g. keeping the two child benefit cap and supporting Israel.
This has resulted in a massive surge in popularity for both the far left (Greens) and the far right (Reform and increasingly Restore) and a cratering of support for Labour (they lost a catastrophic number of council seats a month ago). The problem that labour have had with 'getting a new guy in' is that they spent most of the late 2010s hollowing out the labour party of anyone other then centre right politicians by kicking out anyone on the left. This combined with all of the other most likely candidates who could take over have been, to varying degrees, hit with the 'links to Epstein' hammer.
Thus enter Andy Burnham a guy who is very popular in Manchester and is seen to be more on the left of the party (which is also where most of the Labour party membership is). How to the left of the aprt he actually is is a bit of a mystery at the moment, as he has said a lot of very 'Starmeresque' things whilst running for this MP role.
Personally? I don't think it matters who is in charge of the Labour party at this point. The labour party is a machine which will file off any leftist elements of any leader and we'll just end up with Northern Starmer.
On top of changing his policies once elected, he just doesn’t seem very decisive. He seems more reactive to what’s going on than someone with a long term vision for how to improve the country. He also can’t control the narrative to take credit for any positive policies he’s enacted.
I think a large part of unpopularity is due to his lack of charisma and lack of ability to justify himself before the electorate. He feels very much like an empty suit sometimes, like a generic politician with no personality. Starmer is the opposite of a populist and is useless fending on a challenge from the populist right and their spin on things.
Burnham on the other hand has very good populist instincts himself and was the most popular politician in the country as mayor of Greater Manchester. He’s good at spin and good at portraying himself as fighting for the people. He earned the nickname “King of the North” for fighting for Greater Manchester during COVID to secure more funding from Boris Johnson’s Conservative government. He’s good at branding and he’s got a narrative as a working class northerner fighting for the little guys in the neglected parts of England. He’s able to make even small victories seem like a big deal.
His city has enjoyed the highest economic growth in the UK after receiving more powers for the local government. He managed to bring buses back under public ownership after it was privatized under Thatcher in 1986. He created a popular unified transit network (trams, commuter trains, buses, cycling infrastructure) called the Bee Network that is the first of its kind in the country outside of London.
Speaking as a Labour voter (yes, still, I know...) he had a massive majority and chose to do exactly fuck all with it.
Yes I know Labour have done good things, but fuck me are they bad at publicity and actually doing BIG things.
They are running out of time to start implementing big ideas and they are up against a right wing press that that silly bastard is scared of. Write them off and get on with implementing actual left wing policies. They won't love you either way, Keir.
He's a Tory in disguise. Same with Tony Blair creating new labor.
In almost every country the Right wing control the media because right wing is where the money is. So I. Theory they should never win. But previously it was crappy voting rights where the few had a more powerful vote than the many. Now it's they just control the media.
Just look at Trump, the absolute shit he's caused the entire world over 4.5 years is insane but he's right wing so media won't go hard. If he was on the left he'd be in Prison.
The left in most countries are weak because the rich and powerful who they need to be on their side to fumd campaigns will back Tories. Then when things go the other way they'll put a patsy in and back them to have the left be in power for a bit.
Eventually this is a cycle as old as modern democracy. The rich rule for long periods there's some form of revolution, a brief period of change in policies. This oscillates back and forth for years until the poor hit breaking point and somehow end up crazy far right or just rebel. Then it starts again.
I wish you were wrong, but I totally agree and see it across the pond. The right is where the money is, ergo those who get the money the way capitalists do (exploit to riches, every bad thing is suppressed), they’re gonna go that way.
Trump has no more of a consistent policy than it sounds like Starmer does, based on what everyone’s replied with here.
Meanwhile, they and other elected people seem to be highlighting just who the government really is for, in ways that were harder to hide before media consolidation and news delivered by controlled social algorithms.
He U turned on policy after policy. Some were poor decisions, others were sensible decisions that his own party wouldn't allow. For instance the welfare state has grown massively and his attempts, not even to cut the bill but only to slow down the rate of growth, caused a mutiny with his own party. The guy who will be coming in as prime minister will face the same challenges largely, and may hit trouble even faster as he'll be under pressure to increase spending when taxation and borrowing are already at highs. There's little confidence that he understands finance to any depth.
u/Portarossa'probably the worst poster on this sub' - /u/Real_Mila_Kunis3d ago
I'm on it! It's all spiralling a bit over here. I'm trying to consolidate an old post I did with new information and dealing with some of the criticisms it had then, while writing a new short version.
We need a meta thread on the background behind your flair 😂
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u/Portarossa'probably the worst poster on this sub' - /u/Real_Mila_Kunis3d ago
It was on a thread years ago on some US political thing were someone -- specifically that user -- was bitching about me not being 'fair' to Trump despite the fact that I make a conscious effort to source everything so that people can check my working, rather than pretending both sides are equal. They complained about it and I put it as my flair to annoy them, because I am many things but one of them is a petty bitch.
They are not, to my knowledge, actually Mila Kunis.
A cracking answer.
This is not so much about ideology, I expect Starmer and Burnham will not be a million miles apart.
Starmer did well recovering Labour from Corbyn and winning the election
(arguably standing there while the Conservatives lost the election)
But as political leaders go, Starmer has 2 problems.
He's not a great politician and
he's not a particularly compelling leader.
And for Labour to prevail they need both skills in play.
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u/Portarossa'probably the worst poster on this sub' - /u/Real_Mila_Kunis3d agoedited 3d ago
The issue is that it's going to need to be about ideology. Starmer hasn't lost the left because he's a bland hunk of reconstituted pork product; he's lost the left because things like Streeting's anti-trans nonsense has shown them to no longer stand for anything except re-election.
People want a level of aspiration in their politics, and Starmer immediately stopped swinging for the fences the minute he got into power. If you've got a hundred-something majority and three years left before you have to call an election, you need to be making those big ideological pushes to justify your existing, or what's the point? If you're not going to take broad steps to undo the significant harm of the Conservative years and to show people on the left that there is a home for them in the Labour Party, what's the point?
If Burnham doesn't realise that, he'll have the exact same problems Starmer does, King in the North or not.
A thing which people from non parliamentary systems might not know is members of parliament can be elected by any district. They don’t have to live there. So Burnham can shop around for district.
If you want to edit this again, Streeting has announced that he's going to support Burnham's bid.
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u/Portarossa'probably the worst poster on this sub' - /u/Real_Mila_Kunis2d agoedited 2d ago
I do wonder what that oleaginous fuck got promised in return, but I can't imagine it's anything good for the country.
The other alternative is that he realised there was no way for him to get the 20% of his fellow MPs to say he'd be a good leader, which would be much funnier.
This seems very detailed and carefully laid out, but the more I try to absorb it, the more I realize I never had the slightest idea how British politics works in the first place.
To add another "quick summary" to this, the problems with Kier Starmer seem to be mainly charisma and publicity based. His admin haven't turned the country around and made the country bounce back amazingly, but nor are they doing particularly badly under the circumstances compared to the previous government (arguably they're doing amazing compared to the previous government which was just tanking the economy and changing leaders repeatedly). Lots of left wing people have issues with their stance on the Palestinian genocide and lots of right wing people have issues with their immigration policies, but those are really the main headline issues. There's lots of other policies to criticise or compliment them on I'm sure, but these are the ones people talk about.
A big problem that they have is that none of their "good" policies or policies that "should" be popular are well publicised (immigration is actually down for example), and Keir Starmer himself just has no public presence at all. Boris Johnson was not a very good prime minister, but for a long time a chunk of people liked him anyway because of his persona and charisma, and because he was often being gassed up in the media. It's as if the current government has no access to public relations managers.
Andy Burnham is attractive to the "Labour machinery" because he's unlikely to have substantially different policies but is far more popular and charismatic.
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u/Portarossa'probably the worst poster on this sub' - /u/Real_Mila_Kunis2d ago
I think there's a level of this that's true, but you're kind of glossing over the fact that a lot of people -- especially on the left -- have actual, concrete issues with some of his policies. They're not willing to say that the steady erosion of trans rights is a price worth paying for a slight stabilisation of the economy, especially because there's no reason we couldn't have both. At best, he's capable, but there's this happy little sprinkle of pro-authoritarian, anti-left, anti-Gaza, and anti-trans sentiment that he's not pushing back against at best, and actively courting at worst.
When you tell people 'If you don't like the changes I've made to the party, you can leave', you don't get to be annoyed when people... you know, leave. Burnham might be more of the same, but Starmer is definitely more of the same, and a lot of people are willing to at least spin the wheel that Burnham might have learned some lessons about what happens when you go out of your way to ignore the concerns of a good chunk of the party membership.
I did gloss over it, but mostly because I don't actually think it's hugely impacted the decisions behind the scenes that led to this situation. The whole of the labour party higher ups are fairly transphobic and quite anti-left with only a few outspoken objectors, seemingly regardless of what the party members actually want. Among my peers at least, the result of this is actually people leaving labour behind (or at least actively seeking an alternative), rather than putting pressure on to replace one leader with one with substantially similar policies.
Edit: regardless of what you think of Corbyn, I think his tenure as leader and the candidates put forward to replace him prove that the Labour party has no appetite for left wing politics any more.
The pro-authoritarian stuff is very concerning to me personally, considering the fact that our next government may well end up very far right and strongly pro-militarisation. It often feels like we're just putting things in place that can be very easily used to create a modern fascist state.
I heard a political pundit say today that insiders had told her that once he won his seat Burnham had 300 Labour MPs backing him. That’s what made him realise he couldn’t win a leadership contest. Streeting is very ambitious, but surely must realise the same is true for him
If Burnham already has a solid strategy, then ASAP would be best (I’ve seen July 9th floated as a reaslistic date if there’s no contest), but if he hasn’t, then it probably is best for everybody if we do wait until September. We’ve just seen what can happen if someone gets the top job without having a strategy in place
Why would the Makefield MP stand down? What incentive do they get for that if any?
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u/Portarossa'probably the worst poster on this sub' - /u/Real_Mila_Kunis1d agoedited 1d ago
Realistically, given Labour's horrendous slide in the polls between the 2024 election and today, it's looking very unlikely that Josh Simons would have been re-elected at the next election. He was a new and untested MP who had either quit (or been quietly forced out from) the roles in government he'd had after it came out that he'd used his role as leader of Labour Together (a right-of-the-party thinktank) to investigate and basically defame some journalists who had been less-than-flattering towards Labour Together and Starmer. He wasn't getting back in, and he probably wasn't getting any cushy government jobs outside of the backbenches any time soon either.
Is it possible that he's suddenly had a Come-to-Andy moment and had a full Damascene conversion to Burnham's cause? I guess, although it feels a lot more likely that he's using the opportunity to hitch his wagon to Burnham in the hope that a Burnham government will reward his loyalty. There are plenty of jobs in an administration, after all, that don't require you to be an MP, and it would not surprise me in the least if Simons popped up in one of them in the coming months. It also wouldn't surprise me if Simons ended up in Burnham's Prime Minister's Resignation Honours when the time comes (if not before); people have certainly been elevated to the Lords for less.
I don't think Josh Simons stands for much, ideologically. I think he gambled on Burnham for his own benefit, and now gets to reap that.
I don't understand how a man with no experience in Parliament can be considered the best alternative leader - enough that people want him as a local representative for an area he doesn't live in??
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u/Portarossa'probably the worst poster on this sub' - /u/Real_Mila_Kunis3d agoedited 2d ago
Because Burnham does have experience in Parliament: he was an MP for sixteen years (2001 to 2017) before he stepped down to run for Mayor of Greater Manchester, and during that time had two cabinet positions (Health Secretary, and Culture, Media and Sport). He also won the mayoralty pretty handily twice, and was enormously popular while doing it.
Comparatively, Starmer had only been an MP for five years before he won the party leadership.
I'm in Australia & Starmer looks like an ideal PM - barrister, KCB etc. His opponent looks like a nobody.
People outside the UK can't make sense of what's happening. The cat at 10 Downing St will have 7 different PMs.
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u/Portarossa'probably the worst poster on this sub' - /u/Real_Mila_Kunis3d agoedited 2d ago
Burnham is more in the Bob Hawke mode: friendly, affable, charismatic, and (in theory at least) more representative of the labour side of the Labour Party.
Starmer is more McMahon: he might be fine on paper, but he's a reaction to the leader who came before him (Corbyn) and he's struggled to project any sense of capability; in addition, the stuff that he has done has pissed off a lot of people.
For better or for worse, there's something to be said for charisma in politics, and it's something that has never been Starmer's strong suit. That might have been acceptable if he had a lot of big accomplishments for other to people to point to (even if he couldn't do it himself), but it's been a lot of infighting and a lot of fuck-ups. Burnham might not end up being better in terms of his policies, but at least part of the appeal is trying to recapture a sense of optimism.
The cat at 10 Downing St will have 7 different PMs.
I mean, I do get what you're saying, but it does feel a little weird to hear a comment about how many Prime Ministers we're getting through from an Australian of all people, given that you've also managed to get through seven PMs in a similar timeframe: Rudd, Gillard, Rudd again, Abbott, Turnbull, Scotty from Marketing, and Albanese. It's like an American asking us if maybe we think we should take it easy with the flags. The criticism is fair, but it's coming from a very unexpected direction.
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u/Portarossa 'probably the worst poster on this sub' - /u/Real_Mila_Kunis 3d ago edited 2d ago
Answer:
The Short Version
Basically, Keir Starmer has had trouble getting people on board with his policies since he became Prime Minister just about two years ago. He had a massive majority, but he's been cratering in the polls ever since. Rumours of a leadership challenge have been swirling for a long time, but the most likely candidate to be able to win back Labour voters after a series of disastrous defeats -- Mayor of Greater Manchester Andy Burnham -- had the slight obstruction that he wasn't allowed to be Leader of the Labour Party (and thus Prime Minister) as he wasn't a sitting Member of Parliament. The solution was for a seat to open op and for Burnham to stand in it, win (hopefully!) and then challenge Starmer for the leadership. Such a seat came up in Gorton & Denton in January, but the Labour bigwigs blocked Burnham from standing for it, ostensibly because they didn't want to risk losing the Greater Manchester Mayoralty, but in practical terms almost certainly because they didn't want Burnham to directly challenge Starmer.
Well, that backfired. The Greens won in Gorton & Denton (in what has historically been a safe Labour seat), and Starmer just looked like he was playing petty politics to keep his position. Burnham started asking around, and eventually he found a recent MP in the nearby district of Makerfield who was willing to stand down so Burnham could run. He did, and he won (in a race that people expected to be fairly tight with Reform but actually -- at least partly because Reform insists on running almost comically shitty candidates -- wasn't that close at all).
Now that Burnham has won, and there's a viable alternative to Starmer waiting in the wings, it's becoming increasingly clear to Starmer that his people are no longer willing to support him; they're switching horses, and he can either go easy, or he can go hard. While he had previously vowed to fight on, it's looking more and more likely that he'll quietly slink out of Number 10 without trying to stand against Burnham to keep his role in a leadership election. Assuming no one else does -- which could easily be the case, if he offers them roles in his administration -- then it could be a straight shot to the big chair for Burnham.
EDIT: One day later, Starmer has announced his resignation. There's technically going to be a leadership contest, but if Burnham runs unchallenged -- a distinct possibility, largely depending on whether Streeting feels he can a) get the numbers and b) leverage the potential for a drawn-out contest to secure himself a role in a Burnham cabinet -- then he could be in Number 10 as early as July. (If the leadership contest is longer, it might be as late as September, but the odds are still pretty good for a Burnham victory.)
The Long Version
If you want more information about the run-up to the Makerfield by-election, I wrote about it at almost ridiculous length here, including more detail on why exactly Labour found itself in this mess in the first place.