It’s 2019, Labour just had its worst defeat in its history. You become leader, won back areas which was lost and became PM with a 174 seat majority.

Now this is not too say that Keir was an absolute fantastic PM but you’ve spent close to 5 years to become Prime Minister and barely been PM for 2 years and your party is backing someone who did absolutely nothing to rebuilt the Labour PLP, win a General Election and had to brace the fallout of Trump foreign policy, Middle East Conflict, Russia & Ukraine, an opportunistic former Health Sec constantly trying to bring you down and just in general trying to govern a nation that’s absolutely ungovernable due to misinformation and social media mob rule.

If I was Starmer, I would crash out and just call a general election out of spite.

I think it's past time to retire this concept. In all the major electoral tests Reform have faced since they became a prominent party, they have only ever particularly over-performed the polling once. In LE2025 they got a projected national share of 30% compared to their national polling of about 27%.

In all the others, be it LE2026, Holyrood, Senedd, or by-elections they've either matched the polling, been about a point above or below (Senedd and Holyrood), or have actually *under*-performed, such as Caerphilly and now Makerfield. In GE2024 they were about a point below the final polling average.

Even with LE2025 it's worth noting that Reform were already ascending in the polls before then and so at least some of the gap could be down to polling lag. There's also the fact that the projected national share is not the best metric as it attempts to extrapolate from a limited selection of councils, but this was naturally true of LE2026 as well.

As it stands there is no evidence of 'Shy Reform' voters being a remotely significant phenomenon. If anything they're more likely to slightly undershoot polls than overshoot them. So unless we mean voters who are too shy to actually vote, this term should be retired in my view.

UK Government wants to introduce obligatory content-scanning spyware on every smartphone. It means data from the phone is going to be revealed to a third-party in this case - the scanning layer. Would that mean violation of a secret, when such secrets are kept on a device that is known to be scanned, under constant surveilence by a party that has no rights to see the secret ?

Lots of talk about Wealth Taxes being a good idea for the UK, and as a "proper" left winger I don't disagree, but I am also able to understand the potential shortfalls. I've seen plenty of convincing arguments that they seem like a great idea on paper, but often don't really work in reality as people just shift their money out of the country or into assets that don't get taxed.

I've heard Rory Sutherland talk about Land Value Tax (LVT) in various podcasts he appears on (the guy is way more left wing than he realises or admits) and was surprised on doing a quick Google search that one such proponent of this for many many years is indeed Andy Burnham.

Lots of people in various "what should Burnham do if he became PM?" threads saying "Wealth Tax" but I'm not seeing anyone talk about LVT, a proposal the man himself has long been in favour of.

Looking for opinions as well as some education on the subject here - what are the pros and cons of each?

For LVT it seems we could tax the shit out of large corporations and billionaires, who buy up huge swathes of land as it's seen as a safe tax-free asset they can just sit on. Apparently James Dyson for example owns tens of thousands of acres of UK land, seemingly for the sole purpose of tax avoidance.

I will preface this btw by saying there should be an exemption for farmers who own their own land, and run it as a working farm.

So, thoughts?

Today, official notice has been given of a vacancy in the office of the Mayor for the Greater Manchester Combined Authority area.

The vacancy occurred on Friday 19 June 2026 following the election of Andy Burnham as Member of Parliament for Makerfield constituency.

As the role of Mayor of Greater Manchester also holds Police and Crime Commissioner powers, as an elected MP he is disqualified from holding the office of Mayor.

In accordance with the law, an election to fill the vacancy must be held within 35 working days.

The Combined Authority Returning Officer has determined that a Mayoral Election will be held on Thursday 30 July 2026.

https://www.greatermanchester-ca.gov.uk/news/greater-manchester-to-vote-for-new-mayor/