According to reports, 80 Labour MPs have now called for either immediate resignation or a timetable towards his resignation. Starmer is resisting – at the moment.
Not sure that Streeting or Rayner in charge would change anything much.
Starmer Going, Going, ….
by 198 Comments
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/c1m2e4nl1z1t
“Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.”
Sounds about right.
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Downing Street to be born?
Well played, sir!
Seems to be a bit of infighting going on . Streeting’s lot versus Team Burnham. Had hoped they were a bit better than this.
First mistake to make about Labour is to think they are a bit better. I’ve been disappointed by them for almost 50 years.
It seems that his situation is terminal. The speech this morning was remarkable for not being remotely remarkable. Some long overdue vitriol at Farage and the nationalisation of British Steel aside, what did he actually bring to the table? If he did put forth a compelling case for his continued premiership, I missed it.
That speech was terrible, and almost an invitation to sack him.
One of the criticisms of him is that he claims responsibility for whatever mess has just happened, waffles for a bit about values, principles and what made him the man he is, then says he’s going to stay in post and double down on doing exactly what he was doing before, maybe rebranded yet again.
And that’s what he did again yesterday.
Perhaps, but another criticism of him is that it tends to be other people who end up resigning because of said messes. As one commentator put it: “what rotten luck the prime minister has had with his recruitment”.
True, but so far nobody has resigned this time, have they?
The News Agents got it right, I think – he diagnoses the problem, but doesn’t address it or provide a coherent narrative of how to move forwards.
Also ‘growth’ as a strategy is like ‘happiness’ or ‘success’ as a target. It’s an outcome, not a policy, so meaningless.
The biggest problem with the current government is they believe you can tax your way to growth.
I forget who it was described Starmer as an “AI generated geography supply teacher”, but it’s pretty much spot on.
My biggest problem with the current government is that they restricted themselves in which taxes they could raise, forcing them to look at the scraps from winter fuel allowance, farm inheritance tax, etc. They clearly had a think about abandoning the pledge on income tax at the last budget, but rowed back. It’s been posted elsewhere about being honest with the electorate. We can’t fix social care, potholes, NHS waiting lists and build up our defence budget on the fumes in the tank. The expectation of ever-decreasing personal taxation generated over the last few decades is unsustainable.
Exactly. They have made a political choice to raise the taxes most damaging to the economy: those that impose costs on job creation. Not a policy compatible with delivering growth.
That was their choice. Nobody imposed it on them.
Increasing income tax won’t raise anything like enough for all the things you mention, unless it’s set at a level guaranteed to really have people running to the exit door. A 5% rise would raise circa £40bn p.a. That sounds a lot, but it’s actually about the same as the predicted rise in benefits spending by 2031. That’s the money needed to stand still, not increase spending on anything.
You could raise another £15bn by extending NI at 8% to all income ( investments, pensions etc), but I can’t see that being a one winner. Neither would either measure be likely to help grow the economy.
Couldn’t agree more that the projected increase in the benefits bill is unsustainable.
However, I think that committing not to increase the take from 75% of your sources of income was also unsustainable.
Income Tax provides just over 25% of government income.
Sure, but they also committed to not raising a number of other taxes.
@salwarpe – I heard that too, and I feel yes, he needed strident, assertive policy. No ifs, buts, equivocating or waffling.
But I don’t know what he could have said that would have achieved that.
PS. The News Agents. Why is Emily Maitlis now referring to herself as “Maitlis”?
I’ve heard her say she doesn’t like her first name.
It was always her twitter/BlueSky handle
Because she fell out with (Andrew) Marr?
Aha took me a minute!
They have short memories. Burnham was a nondescript minister and did badly in the leadership contest he competed and flounced off to Manchester where he has found his niche. Also not in parliament of course.
Miliband is a decent bloke but he’s already been rejected once by the electorate giving us Cameron and Brexit.
Half the party already hates Streeting who arrived in office allegedly with a plan but whose first move was to order a series of reviews.
Nope I think it has to be Ange. At least she’s a real person. She also got a few things done before getting bounced for something a Tory would have laughed off.
Polanski has done Rayner a huge favour with this tax evasion on his boat. He won’t resign of course, so that will get the Left off her back.
Yes I thought exactly that.
What would be the point of that if they are looking for someone who is going to win back the electorate? Unfair or not, she continues to be tarnished by her tax dealings which I understand have still not been resolved (apologies if I’m wrong). That stuff sticks in the minds of people who have resolved to ditch Labour because “we have to give Reform a chance”, and a ravenous media who’ll step up their campaign of condescension and vitriol to even greater intensity.
Hell, at this point even Jesus Christ would get short shrift as Labour leader, being an ex-Middle Eastern immigrant who tried to steal a match even on the boats by walking on water to the shores of Albion…
I suspect those people wouldn’t vote for Labour anyway.
You can bet Steve Reed, Rachel Reeves and David Lammy don’t want Starmer out, because they’d be replaced soon after. Even if Wes Streeting gets the job.
What’s been lacking in most of the noise is what any other potential leader would do differently, particularly in terms of achieving greater growth, without which anything else is pretty much impossible. In fairness, in the past few days Louise Haigh and others have put forward some interesting ideas. Haigh, for example, proposes funding social care from the centre, replacing stamp duty with a national, presumably annual, property tax, and reducing taxes on employment ( for both employers and employees) by increasing taxes on assets).
Haigh’s centrally funded social care idea isn’t a new one. Labour and the Lib Dems have been putting the notion forward in various guises for at least two decades; indeed, it was (ironically) Andy Burnham’s big policy proposal in the 2010 manifesto to create a National Care Service, to mirror/emulated the principles of the NHS. We know how far that initiative reached.
Central funding is an idea worth pursuing. I can see little merit in a National Care Service, given this and any other UK government’s record when it comes to running large operational bodies.
Whatever happens and whoever takes over, Labour is fucked for at least the next ten years. What I’m still puzzled about is the deep hatred of Starmer which appears to be nationwide. He’s made mistakes, lots of them, but the ferocity of the loathing to me seems disproportionate. He’s a decent bloke who never should have been Prime Minister, is a saint compared to Boris and, shudder, Farage but when football crowds are chanting “he’s a wanker”, WTAF??
His speech was insipid and lacked any encouragement that things will get better under his tenure.
The rot started with the first budget which sucked any hope out of the population. A massive wrong turn that was blamed on the idiots that they won power from. It is almost certainly true but not something that wins you friends.
Absolutely agree but why the loathing, hatred, disgust etc?
I agree, it’s odd. I don’t loath and hate him and I don’t know anyone who does. I didn’t expect them to be much cop as a government and to quote Tony Blair they failed to meet my lowest expectations. They had years to develop new ideas and came in completely clueless. I think they’ve already lost the next election which will be some form of coalition .
That’s just how politics is, these days. Or for anyone in the public eye, actually. People have been encouraged by the media, both social and traditional, to pile-on when something/someone annoys them. Fuses are generally shorter too.
Social media.
I think many here in Canada think that Mark Carney has played a difficult hand brilliantly since he became PM. Go on social media and many many clueless people say the liberals are running a “dictatorship” (no, they just won 4 democratic elections in a row), he is to blame for high petrol prices (Trump war, and Carney actually gave a tax holiday to reduce prices) and the federal government is to blame for many things that in Ontario are actually under the jurisdiction of the right wing provincial government. So many morons.
Are there really all that many morons or are they just a loud minority?
There’s a lot of social media crap that’s bot-generated by paid foreign actors.
Well possibly. But I have once or twice encountered such views in the real world. Everything is too partisan, politicians are judged on their party and the past rather than on what they are actually doing. Apparently some are refusing to do the census that has just been sent out, as it is “Carney controlling our lives”. Clueless
They’re probably bots. When Iran was first bombed apparently tweets supporting Scottish independence dropped significantly – a bot farm in Iran trying to break up the UK was hit.
I’m reading that he made some pledges in his speech. I’d trust him. During his time as Prime Minister he’s kept true to his word on all but ten of the pledges he made before winning the election.
I think the rot started much further back when big swathes of the electorate, spurred on by social media, started to believe that personality was more important in politicians than any ability to do the job, whatever economic or social conditions prevail in a county. See also Trump/USA.
It’s the mindset that change is automatically a good thing and to be sought after regardless of the impact or what else might come along with that change. Its the mindset of “if things are right it must be the fault of whoever is in government right now so let’s give someone else a go”, even if the incumbents are trying to make change happen but it can’t be achieved in a few months or even two years.
Changing the Tories was right – they had 14 years to make positive change and didn’t. Changing Starmer now won’t help and him and this government needs to stay in place until the next election. We need stability and time, not personalities and contestant leadership turmoil.
I have just started reading”What If Reform Wins?” by Peter Chappell. Set in 2029, it begins on the night of the election, which Reform wins by a landslide. The book imagines Starmer had been booted out in a coup some years previously (it was completed in February this year, the author explains in the preface) which led to a downward spiral in Labour internecine warfare, rather than fixing anything. Quite prescient.
I heard him interviewed on OGWN by Andrew Harrison.
Sounds very good, and appallingly plausible.
It really is very good. The author does a brilliant job imagining the immediate aftermath of victory in the not too distant future, with frighteningly plausible dialogue and behaviour and little details: Farage’s cold, folksy style, the all male inner core of the party, desperate Lee Anderson as Home Sec frantically trying to sledgehammer the migrants, Liz Truss vainly wandering around looking for a GB News producer who’d vaguely promised to interview her etc
Sounds with a look
Keir Starmer is not the cause of discontent but is a lightning rod for it. And anyone who replaced him would be in exactly the same boat.
Yes indeed. I can’t imagine why anybody would want to be PM – the stress must be appalling – but why would anybody choose to follow Starmer right now?
Do they imagine that the public’s attitude is going to improve overnight? Is anybody going to be saying, “Oh, now that Wes Streeting [to pick a name] is in charge, everything’s going to be OK and we can all relax”? I imagine that the current dim view of our politicians in general is going to take a long time to dispel.
I was a huge Starmer fan. I rather liked his lack of personality, and we’d all seen what happens when you allow ‘characters’ to run political parties. Once elected he made some awful decisions, but some good ones too. The problem is, the bad ones make headlines and the good ones don’t make the news at all.
There’s no grace period in our Tik Tok world. Like football managers, Prime Ministers are now expected to deliver instant results or they’re out. I don’t know how we ever come back from this.
My thoughts exactly, in a different format, above.
The Selecter. Leeds, 1979ish.
Bad gig? Was that Starmer’s fault ??
Starmer has covered Rush? Who knew?
This is genius. Weird but genius
Best post of 2026!.
Ha- dunno what happened there! Where’d the hearing loss thread go? Where am I? Who’s legs are these?
Not many Labour leaders win General Elections, an election win which, if predicted five years ago, would have been laughed at by 90% of the population and 100% of political commentators.
‘He got all the right decisions right’. Remember that guff about Fat Boy J.? When ‘anything but getting all the right decisions right’ was the reality.
Starmer got the biggest decision right.
Unless, of course, people think that sending troops to Iran was the way (Reform, Conservatives, Mail, Telegraph, Sun, Express, Spectator etc.) to go.
Agree about the biggest decision. He also played Trump like a fiddle from the get-go by massaging his ego, and has appeared as a calming influence on the international stage after the laughing stock years of Brexit. His PR has been disastrous though, unlike the Blair / Campbell well-oiled machine in the early days of the last Labour government.
I yearn for some boring, easily ignorable, basically competent governance. I’d find that infinitely preferable to this constant over dramatised churn. Of course this is exactly what the media wants, conflict is the essence of drama and drama is what they desire. It’s considerably more demanding to write or comment about plain old boring ‘normalcy’. Unfortunately this endlessly confected drama spreads out into the populace via social media along with the daily rags and television. It’s not a healthy situation and it is having and will continue to have some serious real world consequences. Politics isn’t football and yet here we are again with shouts for a change of manager as the country teeters on the brink of relegation. Personally I’ve never been a Starmer fanboy but then I’ve never been a fanboy of any politico, down that road lies madness. I believe Ruben Amorim is still looking for a new berth, might as well give it a shot. The media would love it.
I didn’t vote for him and I don’t particularly like him, and yet I still have this sinking feeling that he’s probably as good as it’s likely to get for us any time soon, particularly when looking at the alternatives.
Despite some major missteps, it seems like the government has been doing a relatively good job, with most of the important metrics starting to head in the right direction. The economy is doing slightly better, particularly considering the global headwinds. NHS waiting times are down. Immigration is down. I’m paying more tax than previously.
That this has been met with such a wall of rage is testament to both routinely appalling comms (I agree with Steve that the first budget was an astonishing act of seppuku) and an enraged electorate who still continue to demand blood sacrifice. The problem we now face is that our leaders will be asked to turn things round in a way that people can actually feel in their lives far more quickly than that sort of change can safely be implemented. The knives were out for Starmer well within six months – wonder how long the next person will get.
Starmer’s tenure has also demonstrated that all leaders will take a hammering off the media – even the profoundly dull ones with relatively few skeletons in their closet. With the exception, perhaps, of Farage – although his skeletons have also been given plentiful airing, they just don’t seem to rattle hard enough for some reason. Maybe because it’s long since priced in that he’s an utter scumbag, or maybe that he’s promising voters that one thing they really want and now don’t trust anyone else to provide.
The key thing is probably to recognise that everyone gets the treatment off the press, that it’s not personal, and that you need to find a balance between listening to all of it, which leaves you permanently on the back foot and in perpetual crisis mode, and listening to none of it, which leads to a bunker mentality in which you can’t see/address your own flaws, and in which even your own errors become someone else’s fault.
Which brings us to Polanski. He’s had a poor couple of weeks politically and someone needs to take the Twitter account off him before he hurts himself. The council tax thing is obviously a terrible look for a politician coming from the left. And yet, I find myself inclined to cut him a little slack; it genuinely does sound like the kind of mistake one might make (as opposed to Rayner, whose excuses were nonsensical), and I found his recent interview in which he admitted he’s not ready to be PM rather endearing in its honesty. He needs to cut out the unforced errors quickly though.
I am still waiting for a credible British politician to articulate how growing inequality can be properly addressed in this country at the necessary speed and without trashing the economy or resorting to economic fantasy. Maybe such a person and such a policy platform does not exist, or cannot exist, I don’t know. Maybe necessity will eventually compel them into being. Or maybe it’s a very bumpy road ahead.
Nicely put, Bingo, particularly your last paragraph.
Regarding the alternatives, have Streeting, Rayner, etc., somehow learned to be better at their jobs since party members last looked at them and said, “No, Kier is the one we want”? If they weren’t good enough for the top job then, how are they suitable now?
Like others above, I’m not sure why Starmer gets such a kicking. OK, he doesn’t come across as a go-getting dynamo nor a powerhouse on the world stage, but maybe a bit of grey solidity is what we need after the burning clown car of some of his predecessors.
I expect he’ll be out before the next election no matter what he does, such is the right-wing media’s apparent hatred of him, but what ideas do any of his would-be successors have right now that could substantially and effectively improve the country before Farage gets in and dooms us all?
I have this notion (which admittedly might not be original or even workable) that we should send some of our top political minds around the world to various successful/growing economies so they can see what they’re doing well, and then duplicate those schemes or policies here, as much as possible.
Whatever the past few governments have tried has got us in the mediocre position we now face. Why not steal policies that have been successful elsewhere, and show some imagination rather than just churning out meaningless talk of growth, enacting endless austerity (surely cutbacks must stop at some point, or nothing will be left), or increasing taxes yet again?
Well Rayner didn’t run for leader but won the deputy leader vote.
I’ve got a huge bag of popcorn and a cold beer waiting for if Ange gets to face Badenough across the dispatch box as PM.
Just listening to her on the Rest is Politics pod being grilled – she’s excellent.
Here’s something to keep you going.
Jess Philips’ letter is a zinger too.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cglpz89265jo
What a zinger!!!
Love that Jess Philips letter. Reasonable, calm, not asking for him to resign, just stating the reasons she feels she herself has to. A proper grownup.
This cuts to the chase (even if the grammar makes me wince).
Profound stuff, Bingo.
Well, I like him. Let me clarify – I prefer him to any that came before over the last 14 years. Remember those appalling c****?
And I prefer him to any that may come next.
But he has annoyed me no end with his appalling reading of the room, especially during Budget season. He and Rachel Reeves (gawd ‘elp us) really hammered the first and most painful nail in with the cutting of the winter fuel allowance. The sharp intake of breath heard across the country will never be forgotten. Nevertheless he’s a principled man and crucially not a ****.
We shouldn’t be in this position so soon again. And yet.
I don’t think he should take a lot of stick for cutting the winter fuel allowance. I know plenty of people, including me and my wife, who have received it when they don’t need it to pay the bills. It was perfectly valid to say it shouldn’t be handed out to everyone regardless of their means to pay. There is scope to argue that the original formula to continue to provide it for people on pension credit should have gone a little further, but it’s been twisted into claims that it was an attack on all pensioners.
Just an example of the dishonesty that underlies so much of our politics.
I agree but it was extremely naive to not foresee exactly what the
reaction to it would be from the right-wing and associated commentariat and have their ducks in a row to make their case. They didn’t. Labour’s comms have been frankly awful from day one.
Yes, terrible. They are doing good things but seem to be incapable of communicating it. As Alistair Campbell says, you can’t blame the right wing media, you knew about them. You need a plan to deal with them.
Exactly right My mum was a skint pensioner but lived in a retirement block and didn’t use the heating and was shocked they gave it to her when she didn’t need it.
Well put and I can’t disagree with that logic.
But it was fumbled and goofed. The optics were terribly handled.
Starmer came in with Rayner as Deputy, so he *could* stand aside for her and make out that this was the strong ‘n’ stable plan long term, anyway.
Rayner would be strongest choice I think as she would represent change and have a completely different leadership style. She will so-what herself away from the tax issue. Everyone else seems to – for far worse.
I’m not sure a cosmetic change of party leader is going to make any difference whatsoever. I feel genuinely in the political wilderness at the moment. After a lifetime of voting Labour, often despite an increasing amount of nose holding, the last straw is that I can no longer see how they are the party for those working in the public sector (as my wife, a Senior Manager in the NHS does, and has done for her whole career, as did I) when Wes Streeting wants to make such significant cuts to it alongside his links to private health care providers. I can’t understand how this doesn’t seem to be gaining much traction in the media either. What is the point of a Labour party that wont stick up for its public sector? Some may think this a bovine and naïve view but unless Labour are going to go for a complete reboot and return to their core values, steadfastly rejecting the racists of Reform, stopping the obsession with immigration and ceasing the constant trying to appease the rich, then they’ve probably lost my vote for now.
I left the party because the party left me.
I voted Plaid Cymru last week after a lifetime of voting Labour. It matters little to those in the PLP what occurs here in Cymru so screw ’em. Cymru am byth.
There is an interesting article by Chris Giles in today’s FT (I will post it here as the FT has a paywall).
“The UK Labour Party has an important choice to make about its leader. But the question of who resides in No 10 Downing Street is not the most consequential one in the days ahead. MPs must also decide whether they accept that they live in a world of economic trade-offs or prefer to bask in wishful thinking.
“Britain has been in this position many times recently and has come to regret too often choosing the latter. Whether it was the population plumping for Brexit, Boris Johnson’s government going for a highly damaging version of it or Liz Truss blowing the public finances in the hope of a Thatcherite growth revival, siren calls have been too tempting to resist.
“Changing the leadership might be the solution if Labour MPs think their problems lie with Sir Keir Starmer. But it makes no sense if they think that the current leadership is imposing economic constraints that would disappear along with the prime minister. The UK’s budgetary situation is simple to describe.
“The government is set to borrow roughly 4 per cent of national income in 2026. This is unsustainable at current levels of growth and borrowing costs, resulting in ever-increasing levels of debt. The better news is that the public finances are clearly improving. Tax increases have lowered borrowing and, if this continues, the public finances are set to become broadly sustainable in a couple of years.
“In what should be something of a national celebration, IMF data last month showed that the UK is on course this year to have a smaller deficit than the G7 average for the first time since 2003. In the 2030s, however, an ageing population will shift the public finances back into unsustainable territory unless the tax burden continues to rise gradually or the government cuts entitlements to pensions and benefits or public services.
“ These constraints exist whoever is in power. A new government could choose to raise public investment backed by higher taxes if it believed this would improve dynamism. But it should be wary of relying upon calculations that suggest public investment will transform growth and pay for itself over a period as short as the decade suggested by Labour MP Louise Haigh.
“This is partly because the flow of new investment is always small compared with the stock of publicly owned assets, however high the returns, and partly because many large government projects take a very long time before they produce any significant benefits. HS2, for example, is set to produce exceptionally low economic returns until it opens in the late 2030s, decades after it was announced in 2009. Other ideas similarly promise more than they deliver.
“The Labour growth group of MPs on the centre and right of the party makes a welcome call for the economy to shift towards productive activities and away from those that block and extract. But its flagship policy of increasing capital gains tax to lower national insurance would significantly raise the burden of a small and distortive tax that tends to lower growth.
“One thing we know is that pursuing sustainable public finances and low inflation is itself a growth project. With private investment almost five times the size of public investment, restoring fiscal and monetary credibility lowers borrowing costs for the private sector. Political stability enhances the attractiveness of the UK in a volatile world. It should be no surprise that Europe’s growth success stories in recent years are the former basket cases — Greece, Spain, Portugal and Ireland — which painfully faced up to their problems and largely fixed them with the rest of the EU’s help.
“Labour MPs have the power to change their leadership. That is their prerogative. They also have licence to indulge in economic wishful thinking. In British politics, the former is sometimes successful. The latter never works.”
It is justifiable to be highly critical of the media in the middle of this current brouhaha. I saw a clip yesterday of the TV journalist hyenas, mainly Beth Rigby and Chris Mason, descending on their prey as ministers left Downing Street. Chris Mason, in particular, came across as a constipated weasel as he was hovering for his ‘gotcha’ moment. It may be a false memory but political journalists used to be a more mature and balanced breed. And where is the proper scrutiny of Farage and Reform over the undeclared crypto donations?
Chris Mason the Dennis Pennis of political journalism.
There has always been quite a bit of that*, but the last couple of days’ coverage reeks of journalists trying to force the story rather than reporting it. It has had the unintended consequence of making me more sympathetic to Starmer’s position.
* I remember a letter in Viz years ago which went something like, ‘Convince your neighbours that you’re a parliamentary reporter by standing across the road when they leave for work each morning and shouting, “Are you going to resign?”’
Streeting making a move according to the Graun. I had I look at the reader comments which I don’t normally do as it’s Toxic City but I’d say the majority are anti Streeting, reluctantly pro Burnham and resigned to more Starmer as the King of the North is stuck there at least for now. I note Streeting doesn’t currently have the votes.
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/live/2026/may/13/keir-starmer-labour-party-prime-minister-leadership-wes-streeting-kings-speech-latest-news-updates?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Other
The real burning question, posed by a friend at dinner last night; has the situation in this country really grown so grave that we are forced to seriously contemplate a Prime Minister named Wes?
There has to be a gag in this about Wes being Craven and A Nightmare on Downing Street but I can’t be arsed trying to parse it.
And the first (openly) gay one. That certainly would be a step forward for tolerance, nah probably not.
We now have a queen called Camilla, so is the situation really that grave?
Well, we’ve had a Boris, a Winston, a Keir and even a Bonar, so Wes is definitely lacking a bit of oomph.
Ooh, I don’t know. Wes Montgomery had a fair bot of oomph…
Or a PM whose majority at the last election was 528.
Vote Wesley Streeting
He’s a friend to the poor…
There was a brilliant email read out on Jeremy Vine’s radio show the other day. It said, ‘replacing Starmer with one of his would-be successors would be like soiling your trousers and changing your hat.’
If Streeting comes in, what on earth is he going to do differently? Get a better speech writer? Of course leadership is important, and if Labour had some charismatic hero lined up, fair enough. But they don’t.
Wes Streeting only kept his seat by 528 votes in ’24, ahead of the Conservative candidate. No doubt Reform would be at his heels next time around. It’d be a bit of an embarrassment if the PM was to lose his seat.
I certainly enjoyed it when Liz Truss got booted out of the South-West Norfolk seat.
The Tories came a distant third. Streeting’s closest challenger was a Palestinian activist.
Streeting is an old mate of Mandleson isn’t he? After what happened a few weeks ago, shurely he’s too big a risk?
All of the likely candidates have dodgy connections of some sort.
Every last one of them tainted.
A Labour member writes:
I suspect this is all going to come to nothing and I just hope it all does so quickly, so the government can get on with their actual job.
It’s a mug’s game to make predictions. But. I am absolutely baffled by the notion that Streeting is a serious contender for Labour leader and can’t see that happening. I know of absolutely no-one who would vote for him. In my view Keir Starmer should sack him tonight and use the vacancy to bring Angela Rayner back in.
Angela Rayner was on TRIP very recently, and was excellent at articulating the real challenges that people, especially younger people without significant family behind them, are facing. Perhaps drawing attention to those issues is why she is out of favour with the top team that should be addressing them?
Yes she was good, and the earlier interview she did with them a few years ago was very good too.
Yes, very good.
If Streeting, Rayner, etc., are going to seek support on the basis that they have bright ideas that are going to turn the party and the country around, why can’t they just try convincing the cabinet to put those policies into effect?
That would save us all from the time-consuming kerfuffle of a leadership vote, when all that matters right now is improving things for as many people as possible.
Well Jess Phillips’ letter says they run into the sand in No. 10 and then nothing happens.
Mind you Rayner has actually got things implemented – workers rights, planning changes, house building.
House building ? Are you sure ?
Hmm. I’ve seen another take on that letter which suggests that the amazingly effective (implausibly so, imo) software solution she references is the product of one company with a track record of hyperbole.
I think Streeting has been forced, by both his own ego and ambition and the endless media gossip and hype from within The Westminster Bubble™, to make his move now before Burnham can manoeuvre himself back into Parliament. If there ends up being a beauty contest between those two, gorgeous, pouting Andy is the surefire winner.
Streeting is the epitome of Dave Spart, as in the NUS leader who “grew up”, put on a shiny suit and discarded any of his earlier principles, good and bad. Nasty piece of work, intent on privatising the NHS, whilst pretending it is service as usual.
Oooof. Timing is everything.
Angela Rayner has, this morning, sorted out her troubles with the HMRC.
BBC website pointing out
“The adviser also said she did get legal advice when buying the property, but failed to seek further expert tax advice as recommended.”
This Labour government has been a major disappointment but the biggest surprise was that Rayner left herself open to this when she must have known that she would be forensically scrutinised by the likes of the Mail.
The way things are going this morning, I honestly wouldn’t be surprised if Mandelson announced he was going to launch a challenge
I’ve just heard here’s a new, previously obscure peer, of Italian heritage, who has dramatically thrown his capello into the ring…one Pietro Mandelsonio.
Relative of Niccolò di Bernardo dei Machiavelli perchance?
Well, Streeting has gone. If I was Starmer I would have run his enormously long resignation letter through AI to filter out key points. Now we know why he’s taken so long.
The top layer of the Labour Party are still stuffed with adherents/members of Peter Mandelson, Morgan McSweeney and Steve Reed’s “Labour Together” cabal. Funded by the “interesting” Trevor Chinn. Look him up.
I think Angela Rayner would be the best choice from among the suggested future leaders, but I’m skeptical that Starmer will quit any time soon or that things would change very much if she did take over leadership.
I think there is too much power invested in the party’s status quo for anything radical to be allowed any time soon.
The problem with being in opposition is it’s rather illusory. You think you can solve the simple problems that seem so blazingly obvious, but all the simple problems have already been solved – you’re left with the continually intractable conundrums when you come into power.
What on earth would change if Rayner or Streeting got in? Are they so vainglorious to believe that people will rush out to vote Labour if they’re in charge? My abiding memory of Rayner is her charging £249 on expenses for some personalised airpods; Streeting famously babbled some pop culture guff about the Traitors a few months back – he’s now busy knifing Starmer in the front.
We know the Tories are cnuts. It’s the 6th form Politics Club moral superiority which repeatedly alienates me from Labour, as they continue to act as if their shit doesn’t smell and their answer is generally; “the Tories did it” (which the SNP also play). I’ve voted for them in the past, and they’ve always let me down. If they are doing the right thing, they wouldn’t need the rhetoric and the “act it till you are it” NLP game. They have proved just as Machiavellian as the other side whenever in power. Their sentimentality and presumptuousness about safe votes in the working class and minority voters was always going to be a liability, and so it has proved. My feeling is that there have been several reckonings in the Tories due to hubris, and Labour are currently feeling the first of several similarly deserved tidal waves. But what bloody time to have this…
I don’t think that’s the problem. The problem is that there is a long, and ever growing, list of things that need public money spent on them. We all know this – aside from the obvious ones like schools and the NHS, our infrastructure is creaking at the seams, the court service is on its last legs – that before we even get to the usual wish list of thing like “justice for the Waspi women!” etc.
Unlike the last government, this one does not have an ideological objection to public expenditure. However they are restricted in what they can do because increased public spending, without balancing income, will set the money markets into a catastrophic frenzy. Look what they did to Liz Truss — and she was one of their own.
This government has been able to make significant increases in eg the NHS budget – as Wes Streeting’s resignation letter helpfully makes clear – without frightening the bond market horses. I think that’s pretty impressive.
Any any Labour leader – any government – will be faced with the same tightrope.
Everything else is just magical thinking. Voting for magical thinking (hello Green voters, hello nationalists) might make people feel better but will achieve precisely nothing – other than letting in Reform.
Re bond rates, it rather depends on your perspective. Current UK 10 year bond rates are 5.17%., higher than after the infamous Truss/ Kwarteng mini budget. That compares with, say, Greece 3.86, Portugal 3.45, Japan 2.7, Canada 3.79, South Korea 4.17. If that’s the rate when the Bond markets aren’t concerned, I would hate to them if and when they are
The rumour mill grinds.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/cwy21gpr1kzt
The BBC ‘understands’
Will it be seven in ten years?
As always the answer is vote Lib Dem!
Then we get sanity.
Yep
Labour won’t win anyway. What is the point of replacing a boring but fairly competent leader with someone else not popular with the electorate?
See:
Heath 1970.
Thatcher 1981.
Major 1991.
Brown 2009.
A whole three years until the next election, with or without Starmer as the Prime Minster.
If I’d said five years ago that Starmer would win the next election (i.e. 2024/5), be honest now, what would you have said?
Honestly now… don’t be shy. I think I know the answer, but I agree that they shouldn’t replace him.
Burnham will be going some to win the seat anyway. Reform just won 24 of the 25 local council seats!
… and by-elections are notoriously random.
See SDP in the dire.
See Reform.
One’s a pointless score on Pointless, one will be a pointless score on Pointless in years to come, if of course Pointless is still going!
If the Housing Minister didn’t know what level of tax was due on her new house, why couldn’t she ask Rachel who’d just been increasing said taxes.
I don’t think anyone knows. It’s a question of defining a primary home. She sold her original house to a trust for her disabled son and bought the flat as her primary home. She lives with her son every other week, rotating parenting responsibilities with his dad. Should she pay the increased stamp duty for a second home on the flat? The HMRC think so but regard her non-payment as an error made after taking advice. Since then, she has consulted two specialist solicitors. One thinks she has good grounds for appeal. She has decided not to appeal and settled the bill.
Her job as Housing Minister is more about getting more homes built, rather than understanding the fine details of stamp duty.
This is in a different league to various Reform characters’ relaxed attitude to paying tax. Farage managed to pay £1.4 million cash for a house that is in his partner’s name, thus avoiding stamp duty (I think but everything is so murky I could be wrong.) Perhaps, the HMRC should investigate.
Exactly!!
Yes, a desperate attempt to avoid paying the tax. It’s inconceivable that this punishment for the evil landlords should rebound so spectacularly.
Maybe it was for the same reason Nadhim Zahawi failed to get correct advice on his shares and had to stump up £5m to get the HMRC off his back. And that’s despite the fact he could have asked himself as he was Chancellor.
This might explain why Nige chose Jenrick to be shadow chancellor rather than someone who’d actually been one before. Although there is the slight awkwardness still to be resolved around the £40k he took while a Tory from what is alleged to be a US businessman who is awaiting sentence having pled guilty to his part in a $35m investment fraud. Ideal candidate….
Touche. None of these politicians have any integrity.
Starmer exit seems very likely now. Trump has weighed in also in his own clueless, obnoxious way.
Also – live camera feed on the BBC at Downing Street and lots of media gathered. The Lectern of Doom is probably being wheeled out. With STRONG PRIMEMINISTER written under the mic.
That’s probably boosted Starmer’s chances of clinging on, to be fair.
Burnham coronation incoming. Starmer out by EOD. As has been mentioned Starmer has made some good progress but comms and policy chaos has been his undoing. I still don’t get the visceral loathing some people have for him tho
He never turned down a chance to get is “fourteen years of Tory misrule” message out or to make his views on Brexit plain.
We used to say ” let sleeping dogs lie,” he couldn’t.
They all do it. Cameron went on and on about the country’s finances while conveniently ignoring the global financial crisis just a couple of years earlier and selling off the government stake in various banks at a loss.
Well maybe, but it is divisive, and trying to bring the country together would lessen the loathing referred to by Slotbadger.
I know farage has stated “forget brexit.” but I hardly think it’s a “sleeping dog.”
It ought to be. Six years of wasted arguing was enough for me.
Only six years?
Which would they be?
So that’s that then – if Labour go with Andy Burnham uncontested, then he’ll be in No.10 in mid-July. If there’s a contest, then we’re talking September. Starmer will remain as PM until either of those dates.
Shame. He’s a good man.
We’ve been told that all our foreign and domestic issues can be solved within two years, after decades of neglect and underinvestment. No one is ever going to be given a chance to actually make a difference. It’s so much easier to be a Zack or a Nigel than a Kier, unless you actually go and win an election. Let’s see how long they last if they ever get the job, and how long Burnham’s honeymoon is.
Yes, this democracy thing isn’t working out. Need a firm hand …
Democracy works fine if people realise they are voting to give a Government and its Prime Minister a five-year mandate.
Seemed a decent bloke.
Indeed. And honourable. Unfortunately, all the personality of the world’s most boring accountant and these days with the electorate seething with anger, that just doesn’t cut it.
No idea how he managed to build up such hate for himself out there. Wife’s parents are dyed in the wool Conservatives and basically believe if you work hard enough you’ll get your just rewards (in their case a 1.5 million pound house in Shoreham). They disdain Farage, Brexit etc and have no problem with immigration as long as it’s “controlled”. Ask them about Starmer however and they get wound up – “Something not right, don’t trust him an inch, shifty eyes….”. Multiply that dislike by roughly 25 million and Starmer has done well to last two years as PM.
Are they on social media?
He won’t touch anything to do with the internet, she spends a lot of time on Facebook Marketplace buying antiques. They watch ITV News in the morning, BBC at lunchtime and Channel Four in the evening.
Gone. If ‘Andy’ is smart, when he’s PM he’ll make Starmer Foreign Secretary.
Funnily enough myself and my old friend Michael the Gardener were saying the same thing a little earlier today.
Good to know Michael the Gardener and Michael the Non-Gardener are on the same page.
No relation of Crazy Man Michael?
For “he must be keeper of the garden.”
I shall enquire. He has a convoluted lineage.
As long as it’s not convolvulus
I was admiring an arresting growth of bindweed through a bus window only yesterday.
Was the bus abandoned?
No it was perfectly well behaved.
Cue for a song.
Ah well, looks like our political punditry careers are over. Guardian:
“There has been some chatter about Burnham showing continuity by, for example, letting Starmer continue his Trump-whispering as foreign secretary. This is almost certainly not going to happen: neither man wants it, and Starmer will most likely be focused on a long summer holiday.”
BBC are speculating that Reeves will be out as Chancellor, should Burnham be crowned*,which they seem to be seeing as a done deal.
*No shit Sherlock
Heading towards our fifth Prime Minister in four years. Grim.
I have this lingering concern that Burnham is going to call an election sooner rather than later, although I fervently hope he’s not so foolish.
My main hope is that he brings in Proportional Representation before next election.
Indeed it would be good to be able to vote for a party you want instead of voting against a party you dislike as seems to happen now.
He won’t. The House of Lords would run it into the ground. and they would be right to do so.
Watching this from across the pond in Dublin. A sad turn of events, compared to those who proceeded him, he seemed thoroughly decent, honorable, reasonable and pretty normal. Seems like that just doesn’t cut it anymore in the UK. I hope Burnham manages to keep the baying masses happy but I have my doubts….
This ⬆️
Agreed Dave. I fail to understand why British political leadership is still determined by a handful of press magnates and foreign influencers. I like(d) Burnham but there’s no doubt that, should he be the successor, there will be immediate outrage, supported by Mason, Rigby, et al, that he was not legitimately elected to the position and the UK MUST have a GE. I’m not sure that Farage will benefit from that but why create the opportunity? They will aloso use his failure to see out his term as Mayor of Manchester against him.
Oh, and it just rubs salt in the wound that that nasty fucker in the White House took it upon himself to announce this resignatioin to the world last night. No gravitas, no comprehension, no class whatsoever.
I would say that Starmer gave him a call personally, out of respect for the position- and of course Trump reciprocates by blurting it all out.
It’s the kind of behaviour which ensures he will never receive the affection he craves.
So many ‘proper socialists’ gloating that ‘Jeremy was right’, ‘Jeremy was stabbed in the back’, ‘what goes around comes around’… didn’t they get the memo that ‘the greatest PM we never had’ lost two elections and had no chance of ever becoming so? ‘Jeremy’ had to go; at the time Labour had been given the last rites as a serious electoral concern. In that context, Starmer’s achievement of turning things round in so short a time, however unpalatable some of the decisions made may have been, is pretty remarkable. Recent events leading up to today show that the country has turned into a political basket case.
I will never understand why people claim he had “no chance” given that under his leadership Labour won more votes than under Starmer, Miliband and Brown and more than Blair managed in his last two General Elections. How can that possibly translate into him having “no chance”? I suppose one could claim he had “no chance” because his enemies were so very determined and effective, but that’s a comment about the opposition against him rather than about his leadership.
Corbyn went into the 2019 election with the worst net approval rating of any opposition leader since records started. His position on Brexit was at best ambivalent and at worst incoherent, in an election that was predominated by the issue, not least because it was called to give the Tories the mandate to get it done. Labour started behind in the polls and it didn’t change. Hence “no chance”.
His personal opinion of membership of the EU seemed at best ambivalent and at worst incoherent, but his position on Brexit was perfectly clear: renegotiate Johnson’s deal and hold a second referendum with a “sensible” Leave option vs. Remain.
Which was never going to happen because the rabid Brexiteers considered the result set in stone, even though the referendum was only advisory and not legally binding. Cameron’s failure to plan for a leave vote, Johnson’s naked opportunism and Corbyn’s wishy washy stance on Brexit were all major factors in the debacle.
My recollection is that his intent was “negotiate a new softer Brexit deal within three months, then hold a second referendum within six months, offering voters a choice between that deal and Remain”. He had no “position” to speak of – he saw his self as neutral and the “honest broker”.
Against a deliberately simple, reductive “Get Brexit Done”, it crippled the campaign. Leavers portrayed Labour as wanting to stop Brexit, Remainers uncomprehending as to how a party leader could fail to take a definitive position on the most significant issue the UK had faced in more than 50 years. Johnson gained the trust of the Leave vote whilst Corbyn alienated the Remain vote.
He has proved today what an absolutely charming statesman he would have made if he’d ever got near high office. His only achievement is to have convinced a small number of people that this graceless whinger would have solved all these issues within two years if it was him in Number 10.
https://x.com/jeremycorbyn/status/2068997385158611369
Socialists are rude, innit?
https://x.com/ZackPolanski/status/2068981736839487700
Another one whose whole appeal relies on permanent opposition.
Exactly. You’d never catch proper, electable politicians like Thatcher or Blair having a moan about the deaths of a mere few thousand foreign kids. How standards have fallen.
Don’t know why you’re bringing those two up in a conversation about Starmer’s legacy but im not sure either pretended they could stop the slaughter of ‘foreign kids’ in their first two years in office
I brought them up as examples of electable politicians who wanted to win elections and did so, in stark contrast to the socialist riff-raff whose whole appeal relies on permanent opposition and who gracelessly whinge about genocide.
Starmer has started a programme of change that Corbyn
Would have been proud of. Jezza knows change takes time especially against enormous opposition. But he still decides to attack Starmer for not immediately solving a global issue, as if that was a reasonable expectation
I think him and Zack were criticising Starmer’s support for/lack of opposition to Israel’s actions rather than his failure to resolve the issue.
To be fair to Corbyn, while it’s pretty thin skinned stuff it’s a response to a similar sideswipe he received in Starmer’s departure speech. It reads like it was fired off in anger, and it probably was.
It’s probably also fair that the left felt mislead by Starmer and some of the things he said during the original leadership contest. I’m not surprised they hold it against him.
On the other hand, what’s happened to Starmer rather puts a dent in the idea that the media criticism and internal plotting faced by Corbyn were somehow unique, rather than relatively standard, conditions for a Labour leader.
It’s also difficult to look at where Corbyn is right now – leading a tiny factional party prone to Life of Brian levels of infighting – and conclude that this is a politician who is wildly popular, a particularly talented leader or the innocent victim of a one off factionalism. Or rather, you can conclude it, but it requires some wild contortions.
With Starmer goes the last proper link to the Corbyn years. I like to think that maybe this can at least be the moment when everyone just (finally) moves on. The tit for tat stuff in speeches and tweets certainly doesn’t make anyone seem more, it just makes them seem less. Maybe there’s a lesson there.
I met him in the seventies when I used to sell Socialist Worker. Totally detached from reality and rubbish at social interaction. By the sounds of it, he’s not changed.
FWIW I’ve also met Andy. He has good social and communication skills. Never struck me as an ideas man. However, there is no shortage of ideas. The really good managers make the good ideas happen. I fancy he’s a good manager, at least, a better one than Starmer who kept tripping over bad ideas.
The Tory vote collapsed from 13.9 million in 2019 to 6.8 million in 2024. That’s a drop of 7.1 million who could have voted Labour, but Labour’s vote also dropped. His achievement was entirely due to an electoral system which rewarded a party with one third of the vote with two thirds of the MPs.
Burnham has long been a supporter of electoral reform. I think this is a good time to do it because FPP hasn’t worked for a very long time. In 2024, of the 59% of the people that actually voted, 33% of those voted Labour. So overall, that’s less than 20% of voters supporting Labour – which somehow delivers a landslide victory and a massive majority.
You can say “well if you don’t vote, how can your voice be heard?” – well 4m voted for Reform and they only got 5 seats. And yet only 172,000 people voted for the DUP and they also got 5 seats.
When people wonder about why people feel that politics doesn’t work for them – it seems obvious to me.
Spot on !
I believe that Burnham has said that he will not introduce PR in this parliament. With those figures, how many Labour MPs would want it anyway? Even if they managed to get 33% at the next election, that’s half of them out of a job. These are people who haven’t exactly shown much evidence that public service is their raison d’etre for being in politics.
Those MPs are one bad leader away from losing their jobs anyway…permanently!
Love this.
I think I’ve spotted a Burnham-ism. When he enters a room to a polite ripple of applause, someone somewhere will shout some “bantz” or a more generic “G’on Andy!”. This is allows Burnham to briefly shake his head in amused incredulity that one of his mates is trying to embarrass him. The viewer then concludes – “he’s got mates, he’s a good bloke”. Does he talk to his team pre-entrance to suggest something to shout? I wouldn’t be surprised.
Or maybe he really does have mates and he really is a good bloke.
I thought I might never see a Labour government again, after the Corbyn Catastrophe (or, if you prefer, Novara Nakba). Keir Starmer pulling Labour back from that was a remarkable achievement – the fashionable opinion being that it wasn’t possible.
And in truth he has been a reasonable prime minister, in very difficult circumstances. The criticisms of him are that – if I’ve got this right – his government has taxed people too much and also not enough; he has not prioritised spending on public services and also not prioritised spending on defence; he has been too tough on immigration and also not been tough enough on immigration. And so on.
The next prime minister will face exactly the same set of problems. Let us hope they face them with the same strength of character.
“Interestingly” …Steve Bray’s reason for playing Ode to Joy was to drown out a man with a megaphone saying derogatory things about Starmer. He had intended to play it at the end of the speech because Starmer had told a radio presenter it was his favourite piece of classical music.
The view from The Atlantic:
“Departures from Downing Street have become so frequent that Starmer’s announcement followed a well-established grammar: A lectern was dragged in front of the black door of Number 10, the doomed leader’s loyal staff gathered at the side of the road, and an irritating protester disrupted the speech by blasting music outside the gates. Two years ago, an activist named Steve Bray greeted a speech heralding the departure of Starmer’s predecessor, Rishi Sunak, with D:Ream’s song “Things Can Only Get Better.” Today he played Beethoven’s “Ode to Joy.” People often talk about how this is a country paralyzed by inaction, where nothing can get built and, as in the sketch show Little Britain, the computer always says no. Our failure to prevent moments of national importance—and personal devastation for the politicians involved—from being interrupted by one guy with a boom box and a very basic record collection is all the proof you need that this is true.”
superb!
“Our failure to prevent moments of national importance—and personal devastation for the politicians involved—from being interrupted by one guy with a boom box and a very basic record collection is all the proof you need that this is true.”
Perhaps one of these might capture the public imagination
https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2026/jun/24/best-fictional-tv-prime-ministers-west-wing-blackadder
Burnham was MP for the constituency I grew up in, and he was genuinely liked. He attended events he didn’t need to (can’t imagine Nige going to watch a charity choir event on a rainy day) and the feeling was that he’s just a really decent fella. Whether that translates into effective leadership, I don’t know. He doesn’t wildly seem to have core principles, but Blair proved that the chameleon effect can work.