The cabinet is not as radical a break with the past as some (well, Owen Jones in the Graun today) had hoped for. But is he going to be the most consequential Lab leader since Blair?
Burnham
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Absolutely. It’s 24 hours in and he’s already the most consequential Labour leader since Starmer.
See if he lasts more than a year first
The ludicrous, completely unreasonable criticism from the right wing media started before he’d even been officially sworn in, so he’s going to be up against it. But it hardly helps when people with a grudge from your own party start sniping about your early policies just because they’ve been ousted from the cabinet. Given how much every Labour leader is going to be so up against it anyway, why can’t these people just STFU?
Because squabbling with each other is their happy place. I didn’t read the Jones piece because I can’t stand him but it doesn’t surprise me at all. He probably wrote it weeks ago just to be ready to press send.
Arguably, squabbling over principles or political direction is a sign of ongoing healthy debate, far better than blind tribal conformity or vacuously nodding along. Unhesitatingly characterising any such argumentativeness as negative in-fighting is a classic MO for the right wing.
What’s perhaps missing is an ability on the part of some in the Labour camp to think for a moment and hold their tongue whenever they are likely to gift a few easy column inches to the Mail or whoever. Garrulous attempts at self-aggrandisement is what these loose-tongued squabblers reveal, not constructive comment.
The right wing press are losing their collective shit over things they think he MIGHT do. He hasn’t got a mandate! We need another election! He’ll force you to sell your second home and give the money to the nearest whippet owner!
I hope he learns from Starmer’s experience and ignores the right wing bleating rather than dither and U-turn – this was Sir Kier’s undoing. He also needs to mention successes when they happen with far better comms than his predecessor. I wish him all the best.
Exactly this and then he should very quickly get on with banning non doms from owning uk newspapers and then bring in proportional representation.
I agree too. My expectations are low but I hope he does well.
I think he’s started reasonably well. He clearly understands the media and he seems quite good at bypassing it on the socials (get me!). I think he is annoyingly polished for a Labour politician which is really going to annoy anyone on the right. His approach seems to be announce something good every day and be positive. I suspect he will run out of trinkets at some point and will need to tackle some of the big stuff.
He’s certainly not worse than any of the last 7 PM’s but that is an asthenospheric level bar isn’t it?
Word of the day: asthenospheric.
I rather enjoyed using it. Although I fear it is a bit Borissy.
Can’t be the word of the day. The word of the day only has five letters. Even I know that. And also, you’re not supposed to give it away.
I don’t know if you heard – Leedsboy was leading the last Wordle comp, went off to Ibiza for a rave, got out of his head and next thing you know, he’s last…
I don’t know whether he should be mocked, pitied or praised.
I am a married man with two 18 year olds. I get all three.
A rave? I had tuna salad and two beers in at the port in Soller. That was enough. And I was joint first last not last last.
The rest is factually correct.
Sorry Gaz, I’m not in the Wordle tribe.
Must remember not to get too upset by my self-imposed exclusion, and not to start a tribal squabble about it.
I’m new to the Wordle tribe and they’re a bit of a rum bunch with weird fixations on birds and anal probing.
I didn’t understand the little jokes so left that thread.
Heron’s are, apparently, very good as anal probes I recall.
Decline a spoonbill or a shoebill as an anal probe.
A hummingbird would be dainty.
There is a sword-billed hummingbird which could be useful as a probe.
At my age, a hummingbird ain’t going to survive a probing.
Though tattooing a flower round your nether region may entice one to probe further.
Burnham Out!
(just practicing for the inevitable headline in a couple of months)
The Daily Heil have already tried that with their headline at the weekend…”Burnham to take us back to the 70’s”
You’d think that a lot of their readership would rather like that, wouldn’t they?
Only if it’s the 1870s.
As a Daily Mail reader’s playlist is Abba and ‘Rumours’ followed by Abba and ‘Rumours’ topped off with a bit of Abba and ‘Rumours’, I’d have thought they’d jump at the chance to be back in the ho-hum 1970s again.
Bizarrely, not one of them I’ve encountered (a considerable number) could tell you the first thing about The Beatles or The Jimi Hendrix Experience.
Well The Beatles were so 1960s….
ABBA and Rumours sounds pretty good to me, better than prog stuff 😉
Actually I do know a Daily Mail reader. Big Beatles fan, went to see them live in 1964 or 5 in London. The bus broke down in snowy conditions on the way back to Wales
Burnham Down!
Yeah, alright, it is spelt differently.
I like what he’s saying and, the whimsy aside, I like the positive way he says is. He seems to have an idea of what he wants to use the office and his majority to achieve, which is more than Keir Starmer ever had. Starmer’s awful coms were a key part of his downfall, that and total lack of presentation skills. Starmer is a London lad but, and apologies to Yorkshire folk on here, I find it impossible to imagine anything he said without a miserable, droning Bradford accent. Burnham at least wants the national attitude to be more positive (then again, so did Boris Johnson).
Burnham was a very popular mayor but the PM’s job is less forgiving. He has started well with the VAT on fuel and English bus fare pledges. That’s tinkering around the edges of people’s budgets, but a positive sign. Interesting to see he has put the man who resigned from from the Defence Ministry due to funding Chancellor of the Exchequer. I like his recognition that the UK exists beyond London too.
Mildly amusing witticism I saw – the last time King Chas said ‘Andy Burnham’ he was talking to his brother about photos.
It strikes me that Burnham is already falling into the traps that Reeves/Starmer set for themselves. One of the big problems with the Starmer government, as I see it, was the contradiction between its pledge to boost growth and the simultaneous increase in the burden for businesses via higher National Insurance payments, the raising of the minimum wage and the revision of workers’ rights. There’s no rowing back on workers’ rights or the minimum wage, but perhaps Burnham could significantly ease the financial load for businesses as, without growth, the UK is going nowhere. I always thought Reeves should have introduced a 2p in the pound tax increase for everybody as a way to secure the ‘fiscal headroom’ that seems so important. The ‘no new taxes’ pledge made ahead of the general election was foolhardy and painted the government into a corner. Unfortunately, Burnham has restated this pledge, which means he will have to scratch around, just as Reeves did, to find any significant revenue sources.
Burnham’s immediate pledge to cut VAT on electricity is, I think, merely performative. It will save, on average, £4 a month for a household and yet cost £850m to implement. Other than looking like he is doing something, is this £4 a month a help to anyone? On buses, he will cap the fares at £2, which is welcome. But it will still cost a family of four (presumably not well off enough to own a car) £8 to travel on the bus. But I, as a pensioner with private-sector and state pensions (and a car), get to travel free because of my bus pass. How is this right?
Don’t get me started on perks for pensioners. Just because I have lived a fairly long life I get the triple lock, I get preferential savings on ISAs, I get free travel, I get a winter fuel allowance – and all the while I am of the generation that has gained hugely from accumulation of housing stock, house price rises and defined-benefit pensions. This is not fair. Reeves, rightly in my opinion, tried to means test the winter fuel allowance but she was shouted down by the party and the nation. She then did a U-turn and said only those earning more than £30,000 in pensions would get relief. But I can honestly say that anyone earning £30,000 does not need the £200 one-off amount the government now pays. Will Burnham revisit this and lower the threshold? I doubt it. I suspect he does not have the nerve to introduce the fundamental change this country needs, and, even he did have the nerve, his party would not countenance significant change.
Thus far, I can’t see that Burnham has ahd anything meaningful to say about growth, beyond generalised stuff about there being a world outside of London. Perhaps that’s yet to come. We shall see.
Meanwhile, after barely two days he appears to finding out already that ‘events ‘ ( as Harold MacmIllian described them) make life somewhat more challenging to a Prime Miniater than they might be to a Mayor.
Most consequential? Will no one think of Corbyn?
Sorry.
Take cover!
ho ho ho. Clearly magic santa was the OG circuit breaker – until it broke. I saw him on Newsnight the other night, in sulky mood.
Surely not?
The markets seem comfortable so far, suggesting he’ll last more than 44 days.
I really want Labour to not just make the right noises but to be genuinely impressive in the way things are introduced. You do just wish that every time Labour announce some new policy, with the intention of crowd pleasing, they would have thought about the intense, instant scutiny, ie what questions they will be asked about how it will be funded. I can’t believe they don’t seem to sit down and think about this from every possible angle, given that’s how the media works these days. Or if they do they clearly don’t do it enough, which doesn’t look great and is so frustrating to watch. Even using a bloody excel spreadsheet would sort this problem out for them.
I think political journalists in particular like to stir the pot. They seem to think their job is making news rather than reporting it.
I expect Burnham to stabilise things in a way that Starmer seemed incapable, but I don’t think we’ll see much actual change any time soon.
His announcement of new North Sea oil and gas drilling is not a good start to his premiership. It will make no difference whatsoever to UK energy and petrol prices.
It will, however, contribute to economic growth.
Today’s announcement on smallish tax relief for pubs and clubs is a good example. Well intentioned, but leading to predictable angst from businesses excluded from the scheme. Not just cafes and restaurants, but I see community pharmacies have been rattling their sabres.
A PM who would please everybody would soon have the country bankrupt
Of course. My point, however, was to say that today’s announcement on VAT illustrates NIck L’s point that some of these intended crowd pleasers don’t appear to have been entirely thought through. I mentioned pharmacies earlier. Thry have been closing at an alarming rate. ( about 5 per week). But apparently wet pubs are more important.
Burnham himself hasn’t helped matters by announcing this afternoon that saving pubs is an imperative as they are essential to working class culture. Presumably he actually means white British working class culture. Or at least the part that can afford to buy booze in pubs, as opposed to the (i suspect) larger group of working class people that spend more time in cafes.
He harks back to some undefined period when things were better. Or something.
The community pharmacy sector is severely underfunded to the tune of £1.5bn per annum for the cost to deliver the services versus what they get paid.
Their contract with the NHS also means that they are required to fill a NHS prescription if it means they have to do it at a financial loss. The whole community pharmacy system is broken.
I used to be one many years ago when it could make money…not today.
Worrying times…
Are you implying that black and brown people don’t go to pubs, ernie? Not where I live.
Most low/mid-wage working people I know pretty rarely go to cafes and restaurants. It used to be a thing for building trade people to go for a Friday morning fryup, but I think that tradition’s gone since Covid, sadly.
I don’t expect a lot from Burnham’s Labour apart from better communication. Labour under Starmer have been pretty disappointing, but still better than Johnson/Truss/Sunak’s Tories.
I used to be staunch Labour (my upbringing) but not any more.
I joined the Green Party earlier this year but I’m starting to have doubts about them too.
Yes, I am suggesting that people from minority ethnic communities are less likely to go to the pub. That was my experience living in Luton, a town with a very large populatikn of working class black and Asian people.
it’s similar here in Cambridgeshire. work with people from Pakistan, Kurdistan, Morocco,, Hong Kong, India and Madagascar. Only the Malagasy woman ever goes to a ‘proper’ pub ( she has a Welsh husband). Some of the South Asian people go Desi pubs, but they are essentially restaurants.
What research there is seems to suggest it’s not untypical. And it’s hardly surprising given the number of people in these communities that don’t drink.