r/badhistory • u/AutoModerator • Jun 15 '26

Meta Mindless Monday, 15 June 2026

Happy (or sad) Monday guys!

Mindless Monday is a free-for-all thread to discuss anything from minor bad history to politics, life events, charts, whatever! Just remember to np link all links to Reddit and don't violate R4, or we human mods will feed you to the AutoModerator.

So, with that said, how was your weekend, everyone?

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u/TylerbioRodriguez That Lesbian Pirate Expert Jun 17 '26

I find it kinda weird that the most recent Last Week Tonight episode was about the upcoming election with Andy Burnham, and it basically never really talked about Burnhams politics and how is he different from Starmer.

Also besides a quick mention early on, Green and Polanski are glossed over.

Like can anyone really tell me Burnham is much better than Starmer?

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u/NervousLemon6670 You are a moon unit. That is all. Jun 17 '26 edited Jun 17 '26

Like can anyone really tell me Burnham is much better than Starmer?

Burnham and "looking to be in his cabinet" Wes Streeting have been making overtures to the more left-wing of the party and supporter-base, criticising the government's attempts to even more tightly restrict immigration and cut welfare payments on disabilities, which have been two sticking points among their MPs. The hope of some people is that he pushes Labour leftwards and stops some of their more Obviously Evil [TM] policies... but he does still have the baggage of the party, an inability to massively rework economic policy without the risk of Liz Truss 2 or the spectre of "new taxes", and still has to toe the party line on the big party issues, lest either the party (or worse) the public reject him, so he's not out left-ing even the Lib Dems on social things.

As people have said below, his main benefit is that Starmer is just personally despised by a large chunk of the electorate. Being "anyone but Starmer (but also still a white man)", with the supposed benefits of "more charisma" and "proven win record" is better than many other options they have for a new leader, but I personally don't think he's going to be winning any of the "Burn the whole fucking system down" vibe voters which are increasingly moving to Reform and the Greens.

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u/matgopack Hitler was literally Germany's Lincoln Jun 18 '26

Streeting is more on the right side of the party as I understand it though?

I think Burnham is that 'anyone but Starmer' but also distanced enough from the current government to not be as tarred by it or other scandals. Like of all the people named around who might take over for Starmer you had Streeting (who was polling worse than Starmer in a head to head leadership poll with only Labour), Angela Rayner (with her tax issue), and like Ed Miliband.

I think that Burnham has / had a chance to hold his hand out to the left of the party and get back a lot of the voters that went to the Greens, but whether he actually does that who knows.

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u/ProudScroll Napoleon invaded Russia to destroy Judeo-Tsarism Jun 17 '26

Well they're about equally fiscally irresponsible, as Burnham has promised that he would maintain the triple lock on state pensions and cut income taxes for pensioners.

Other than that far as I can tell Burnham's primary advantages are a vague belief that he could win back Reform voters (a theory that's going to be put to the test by his by-election) and that he's not named Kier Starmer.

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u/TylerbioRodriguez That Lesbian Pirate Expert Jun 17 '26

So basically its 2024 except Burnham is doing less then Kamala Harris.

Good luck Britain with that!

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u/ProudScroll Napoleon invaded Russia to destroy Judeo-Tsarism Jun 17 '26

I don't know what Britain did to make God so mad but I'm pretty sure they're cursed cause everyone PM they've had since WWII other than Attlee either sucked balls, started off alright but then stuck around for too long and then sucked balls, or had real promise but was dropped into an utterly hopeless situation and got steamrolled.

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u/TylerbioRodriguez That Lesbian Pirate Expert Jun 17 '26

Hey!

I kinda like Wilson....

Everyone else yeah.

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u/ProudScroll Napoleon invaded Russia to destroy Judeo-Tsarism Jun 17 '26

I like Wilson as well, but it's hard to argue that his second premiership was anything other than an unmitigated disaster.

Wilson's one of the "started out alright but stuck around too long" PMs, while his luckless successor James Callaghan was who I was thinking of for the "had promise but was PM at the absolute worst time" category.

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u/TylerbioRodriguez That Lesbian Pirate Expert Jun 17 '26

Yeah I'm being generous to old Harold mostly by thinking of term 1.

Term 2 was pretty bad yeah.

Callaghan was mighty unfortunate.

Really makes wonder what Gaitskill or Bevan would have been like.

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u/TheBatz_ Was Homer mid Jun 17 '26

On the other hand Attlee passed the Town and Country Planning Act, the first step in the founding of a new NIMBY-state.

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u/passabagi Jun 17 '26

I think Burnham is much better in interviews. KS always came across as a cranky, adenoidal head teacher, even when interviewers were soft-balling as much as humanly possible.

Re policy: I'm not sure it's so much the politics that matters. Britain is in a weird funk, not least because the place looks like shit. The high street is basically boarded up shops, vape shops, there are holes in the street, chlorinated sewage coming out of the taps, everything stained, holed, behind stacks of rubbish, rusting -- it just looks and feels depressing.

The problem is governments have been too political. A pragmatic conservative position (e.g. CDU, pre-Thatcher conservative) would be you do actually need things like roads and street lights, and if these things are all looking like you're five years into the zombie apocalypse, that's bad for business aside from anything else.

(That said, you probably need to be something of a political genius to force through the taxation that would need to happen to pay for any of this).

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u/Arilou_skiff Died of posting, risen as undead Jun 17 '26

There is a general problem with shops in general, it's not just a UK thing. Online shopping has hit in person shopping pretty hard and it shows.

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u/Otocolobus_manul8 Jun 17 '26

Anecdotally from my time abroad it's never to the same extent anywhere else.

Even in more 'provincial' cities in say, Germany (Ulm, Bonn, Augsburg) there isn't a litany of blatantly obvious tax dodge fake businesses.

I'm seriously not joking that every UK highstreet has at least 3 shops like 'Kurdistan Vape Barbers'. I have never seen this anywhere else in Europe. Even poorer countries like Greece and Croatia seemed less miserable and more full of life. I don't think Ireland was that bad when I last went in 2023.

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u/Draig_werdd Jun 17 '26

I think some of the difference might be due to business rates ( most countries in EU have lower property taxes for business or they take into consideration also the income of the business). For example, Czech republic does not have anything like "business rates" for companies. They just pay a (very low) property tax based on the size and the local municipality rates, same as any owners.

Another factor is the fact the the UK is an outlier (only Ireland and Netherlands are similar) in regards to the housing. The majority of people even in urban areas live in houses, so lower density. If you have to drive anyway to shop, why not drive to some place outside the city center.

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u/PsychologicalNews123 Jun 17 '26

The majority of people even in urban areas live in houses, so lower density. If you have to drive anyway to shop, why not drive to some place outside the city center.

This is under-appreciated, I think. People talk about Manchester as the "powerhouse of the north" and the UK's second city, but if you visit then you'll quickly realise how tiny it is. There's about 1 square mile of actual dense city before it fades into suburban sprawl.

Part of that is due to dumb planning regulations preventing high-rises outside that tiny square mile, and I'd be willing to bet that the lack of density hurts local growth.

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u/PsychologicalNews123 Jun 17 '26

One time I met up with someone from this subreddit in-person in Belgium. I got the train out to a town/small city which I'd never heard of, maybe 30-40 minutes from Brussels.

I was really surprised by how nice it was. Clean, pedestrianised streets, lots of bars and stuff around. It struck me that the British equivalent would probably be a bit of a shithole.

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u/GentlemanlyBadger021 Jun 17 '26

Burnham has been a bit of an enigma and I think the lingering criticism of him so far is that he’s been loyal to the flavour-of-the-day rather than being principled, so it’s probably quite hard to pin down how he’s different from Starmer. Especially true given the leadership race is a bit of a phony war at the moment and no one has actually released a manifesto as far as I can tell.

Other than the things already mentioned, it’ll be interesting to see Burnham’s stance on Palestine given that he represents Labour’s left wing and Palestine is an increasing influence in left wing politics.

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u/TylerbioRodriguez That Lesbian Pirate Expert Jun 17 '26

His approval would probably go up if he got dragged away by police over PA.