AIBU to wonder why Burnham attracts so much negativity?

Ok…

I've finally been tempted to create an account so I can reply to this. For background, I'm generally left leaning and have been a Labour (or Lib Dem) voter all my life. However, I am quietly raging about Burnham and will find it very hard to vote Labour ever again for the following reasons:

• Starmer was, in my opinion, what the country needed: a boring internationally respected statesman, stable. someone who was not a career politician and had real world experience. Beyond his lack of popularity - which to me hardly seemed justified in view of the good job he did internationally (Trump, Iran, Ukraine etc.) - I cannot think of a justifiable reason for his own party to remove him causing yet more instability, cost, and reset when what we needed was a period of stability. For what its worth, I also genuinely believed Starmer was a decent, good person who simply was not good enough at the showbusiness end of politics, and did not deserve the treatment his party meted out

• Burnham, and all his allies, have shown incredible self interest, while simultaneously holding themselves out as acting in the public good. Anyone with an eye can see what they were worried about was losing their own seats to Reform because "Starmer boring". He did not intend to resign the mayoralty if he lost (selfish, power hungry). His allies did not respect the wishes of the Makerfield electorate, and engineered their MP to stand down (this is on Josh mostly of course - in the bin please Josh. And do you remeber by the way he was getting revenge after being censured by Starmer over the think tank journalist investigation? So it was personal for Josh, but he still claims he did it for us). Burnham will be a poor local MP, and clearly used Makerfield as a stepping stone and a soundbite

• By resigning he caused significant costs of Manchester for the mayoral election - thanks mate

• In all his speeches after ascension he has preached the need for stability - THE BRASS NECK OF THE MAN, WHERE DID THE LATEST INSTABILITY COME FROM ANDY. I expect Reform to be hypocrites, not people nominally on my side of the fence who constantly play on being "the good guys"

• Healey, who seemed to be taking a principled stand on our poor defence strategy, what a surprise, was clearly in bed with Burnham's team - in the bin with you too John

• Burnham immediately restored Haigh and Rayner, who in my view, were fairly demoted from cabinet for their transgressions. Did those go away with Starmer? No. Again, cronysim I would expect from the worst Tory governments, not people who trade on being morally superior

• I find the professional down to earth northerner schtick boring and cynical. He's a career politician! He has nothing in common with most Northerners I know and live with (that's fine of course, but stop trading on it!)

• I live in Manchester, and doubt those aspects of it that have improved are down to him (mainly they're due to the BBC relocation and Chinese investment etc). His record on rough sleeping is not good, an incredible mistep to me to trumpet his failure (ofc, I hope he does it). He wasted an incredible amount of money (was it 1.4 billion) on the Manchester clean air zone, which failed. Still YELLOW BUSES YAY PLZ BE PREIM MINISTER ANDEH, KING IN THE NORTH

I had huge, huge issues with Starmer by the way (e.g. allowing Esther Rantzen and the thickest of his new MPs to cross the rubicon of assisted dying, another thing for the state to cock up. But the sheer hypocrisy of Burnham and co, the the fact they expect us to swallow that they did this for our good not theirs is unforgiveable.

(EDITED: Forgot that he called for a general election between BoJo and Sunak, yet more hypocrisy/self-interest)

Well of course, you can’t expect people to be forced to relocate without being appropriately compensated? I can’t imagine there are many career civil servants based in No10 thrilled at the prospect of being frog marched up to Manchester, especially knowing their careers will likely need to be back in London again in a few years.

Complex decisions that he took less than 24 hours to make. A machinery of government change is expensive, disruptive, causes huge delays to delivery and he was arrogant enough to do it in this way (with very little justification behind it). It really doesn’t bode well for me that he is good at making decisions. He completely disregarded the huge uproar from the tech sector yesterday. Someone in his position should be taking careful consideration of expert advice, especially when the consequences are this large.

Are you serious?

Relocation packages? When we are £3 trillion in debt! WTAF is going on

I do feel his heart is in the right place ( as much as you can judge someone you have never met) but the way he went about what he did shows a different side.
I know politics is brutal and it’s how it is.

Yes I agree with you on unfunded tax cuts, and the oil field licences are populist nonsense, not sure about digital ID I don’t know enough about it.

we’re never going to agree with everything a PM does - I’m sure even PMs don’t agree with everything they have to do - they’re just incredibly complex decisions and not black and white!

I also am not happy with how this coup took place. With the conservatives, the ones taking over each time were already sitting MPs, the new PM wasn’t even an MP up to a few weeks ago. It feels wrong and hearing him speaking today he sounded nervous. Sometimes in life you do have to be careful for what you wish for! Maybe he’ll find it a lot more tricky than he thought it would be. Being a mayor and being a PM are not the same job at all.

No. 10 North (more extra spending)

It proposes transferring teams from Whitehall departments, including the Treasury, Cabinet Office, and the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government – all of which are now being led by secretaries of state from the North of England.
Whitehall officials willing to move to Manchester have been told they will be offered relocation packages, the BBC understands.

This.

Also, his favourite person is Andy Burnham. And he's a future faker.

I was probably being overly dramatic about “all”. But I don’t agree with unfunded tax cuts (which bring very limited financial benefit to people), scrapping of digital ID, the oil field licences which will have very limited financial benefit to the country but a large environmental cost and his machinery of government changes are utterly ludicrous.

What I don’t like is we, the general public, have NO IDEA who he is, or what his policies might be!!! I doubt he even knows given he is so out of touch!

This isn’t going to work. The homeless chestnut will not wash whilst he scrabbles around for time and inspiration.

It is a total shit show

He comes across as smug.
He hadn't finished his duties as mayor.
He staged a coup d'etat ultimately.
Hamartia - ambition.
And he ruined New Order for me.
No politician should dance. Ever.
I'll make an exception for Ed Balls teabagging Katya on but even then, he started believing his own hype towards the end.
Now if he was actually residing in Manchester right now in a two up two down, breathing the same fucking wildfire smoky air as I am right now, then we'd be talking.

This sums it up for me. I'm keeping an open mind because I want the country to prosper and hope he succeeds but I don't like the man.

I mean they’re about the same level as the other parties. A slogan to fix something the public say ok. Whether Burnham can do as proposed will be assessed in the interim in three years for the GE.

Maybe he’ll do some of it and get to carry on or there could be a gap between promises and money available. We’ll see.

Social media and bots have made it normal to be either left or right wing (like in the US) rather than politically centre right/left like in the more stable past.

It’s not AB per se. Any new PM would be bashed by the press unless they pledge fewer taxes on the rich (newspaper owners) and nobody is going to do that.

The way that AB became PM reminds me of BJ and the 1922 committee. They purposefully destabilised May, negotiated a weaker Brexit agreement and tried to make BJ the next Trump via the “goofy” personality. It’s not AB’s fault that there was no leadership election but it feels wrong to have him as PM. A leadership election would have given him the opportunity to inform the electorate what he stood for because outside of Manchester, people aren’t going to know.

Im astounded anyone could like or support a man who turned a blind eye to grooming gangs for as long as he could possibly get away with. He's disgusting.

Which of his policies particularly don’t you like?

I like that he is going to tackle rough sleeping - I do think it’s bad for our town centres as well as depressing to see every day. Some of the people can’t be helped but at least give them a bed!

I also like that he’s going to remove VAT on electricity bills. It’s been a missed opportunity by previous governments to make electricity cheaper than gas, so that people have incentive to move to electric heating which can use more renewables

And he’s going to build more social housing (reeves and Starmer made great steps in this to support the social housing providers but it was barely reported)

so what don’t you like?

That's true, every party uses slogans. My point wasn't about slogans, it was about selling easy answers to difficult problems. Those are two different things.

Yes he made a huge huge mistake with the referendum, but I think it’s an early sign of the massive current nightmare that people tune into memes on SM telling (usually telling them immigrants are the problem) than watching any serious news and discussion about the huge problems any PM needs to face.

It’s a facet of democracy that all PMs will sometimes put party first otherwise they lose power!

Burnham has no right to be in No10, he is an imposter. He has pushed and forced himself into the job without any recent or relevant experience - with such utter disregard for the people of this country. He is smug and unbearable. I would respect him if he did the right thing and called a GE. Then he would have a mandate to lead the country ( like May and Sunak)

Labour rely on slogans as much as any party.

Labour don't get a monopoly on being "good" or less self serving

A large part of the electorate now expects Amazon Prime delivery speeds for solving complex, long-term problems, which makes governing incredibly difficult. That's why populist movements like Reform, with their simple but often unworkable slogans, can seem so appealing.

Anyone on the Tory/Reform/Restore side of politics is likely to dislike him regardless of what he does

No the electorate should say in who they want to govern them and this is what Burnham used to say before he became leader.