Do you want a change of leader?

My view is KS can't stay. That's politics.

I think the rule should be changed so that if there is a change of leader there’s a general election No thanks! The system is parliamentary democracy, not presidential.

I agree with the idea of cross party working nothing would ever get done, the largest parties don't have enough common ground. That's why we have elections, so something can get done. You'd end up with either total stalemate or ridiculous horse trading. If we are going to have coalition government we need PR and do it properly.

I want SKS to stay. Burnham won't be any better and th papers will go for him just the same. 8 think he's doing a decent job especially keeping us out of trumps war.

No. Starmer has had some issues. The u-turns have been particularly frustrating. But as others have said, he's a steady pair of hands. We need a grown up in charge with the ability to think through complex scenarios, not someone who is good with soundbites and gives overly simplistic answers to the country's problems.

Labour need to improve their messaging. The economy has remained pretty stagnant since they came to power, and this will take structural reforms to fully address, but you would think from some of the hyperbole on this forum that the entire nation is bankrupt and we're all starving.

Unfortunately, not only is it going to take time to solve the massive mess the Tories left the country in, it's likely that global issues will cause FURTHER pain.

Labour can replace Starmer if they want. But until they are brave enough to enact real change, we are ultimately sleepwalking into a far right government.

There should be an automatic general election if a party changes its leader.

Fed up with all these PM changes that make us look like a laughing stock.

It's not the time to replace KS. He's good internationally, he's getting good results at home (& laying rhe groundwork for better). He's poor at communicating his ideas & his successes. He's quite nasal which some equate with whiny / weak. He's neither imo. He's boring for sure but I'd rather boring & competent any day of the week.

It feels unusual to find a thread where the dominant opinion is that we should stick with boring Uncle Keir and we don't want more Westminster psycho drama. It seems at odds with the media consensus that KS is toast and AB is a shoo in.
I despair of the bubble thinking inside Labour and the media. It is arrogant in the extreme.
Are we the norm or are we out of touch?
AB will be the poster boy until he collides with reality and then he won't be. I've even seen assumptions that KS should pave the way until September so AB can do his reading in and KS can take the hit for those pesky problems in the in tray like the defence budget.
As for replacing Rachel Reeves with Louise Haigh, surely that's a joke? Louise with a fraud conviction and degrees in politics and law, Nottingham and Birkbeck plus jobs in the council. Or Rachel with degrees in PPE and economics, Oxford and LSE and a career at the Bank of England.
Have we really become such a joke of a country.
I am a Labour member by the way and my local crew are pinning their hopes on AB as the new Messiah.
I believe AB's personal approval ratings fell several points during the course of the Makerfield campaign. There is really a danger that voters are going to get mugged off with this arrogance.

The rapid turnover of PMs evidences that the country is ungovernable, not that parties are not up to the job.

@ThatsNicer What’s actually wrong with politicians being opportunistic? Circumstances change and they take the opportunity. I think it can be very damaging when someone has a fixed set of views and won’t change, inability to adapt is very dangerous in a politician, it was (is) one of Corbyn’s failings, he’s sticks to his principles no matter what.
The world moves and a good politician moves with in - hopefully within a set of values.

Sir KS may not be the most dynamic or flamboyant leader, but that’s okay with me, and I like the relative stability. As @FedUpandFiftyNine has said, he’s been a good global statesman.

I think if AB takes over, it’s Nigel’s turn to run the country next. There will be a swing to the right, as a protest.

This is exactly what I mean. They are either scraping the barrel for the least worst, or giving jobs to their mates / people who will do their bidding.

It really is dire.

There's many other politicians pushing this. Including from the Labour Benches. Opportunists all!
If AB does turn Left and away from the manifesto we should have the chance to vote in a General Election.

I want them to stop squabbling among themselves and get on with running the country.

Starmer hasn’t had the opportunity to show the grit and determination he had as head of the CPS. I agree Reeves hasn’t been great for him.

I remember when Brown took over, everyone said he wasn’t our prime minister as we hadn’t elected him; the same thing is going to happen.

Tbh no.

There's been mutterings that Burnham would have ex transport secretary Louise Haigh as chancellor.

This throws all the upfront sexist "Rachel from accounts" stuff about Reeves into sharp relief. She may have finessed her CV over her role in the bank of England, but Haigh has no economics or finance background at all. Let alone that she had to resign because of lying about that lost phone

Yep a super sensible mum who would have been happy to get us involved in the Iran war.

Many good points made above. I didn't vote for Labour, but they have met, or are on course to meet more of their manifesto pledges than pretty much any government of the last 50 years. That doesn't get mentioned in the press. Sure, we could have a debate about whether they were valid pledges, but that is a different discussion.

Starmer has made some total howlers, and their budget changes have been mainly correct in principle, but badly executed with incorrect break points.

I think my disappointment lies in the fact that there are no political heavyweights these days in any party. If Burnham gets in, what would his cabinet look like? Who would they be? There are no names that stand out to me. Although I don't like him much, Streeting did a reasonable job, so hopefully there are some other surprises currently under the radar.

I hope so.

I am sick to the back teeth of revolving Prime Ministers. It's no way to run a corner grocery store never mind a country.

And our next likely one is a Cambridge educated career politician who's never had a job outside politics in his adult life. Don't be fooled by the cute regional accent, he wasn't a feral child on the streets of Liverpool, he grew up in a village of under 4000 houses on the very northern boundary, surrounded by countryside.

Aside from the accent he's no different from any of the other career politicians. At least Starmer has lived in a real world where he had to send invoices to his clients.

I am not a massive Starmer fan, and he has shot himself in the foot a few times by too many u-turns precipitated by the different factions across the party, plus Streeting and Rayner were mistakes.

But. He is seen internationally as a steady hand at a time when other countries are seen as highly volatile, and big business is beginning to talk to the UK again after some very fractious post-Brexit years. He has managed Trump particularly well. In the current climate, when we are likely to have another financial crash at some point this counts for a lot.

If he would shift some of the domestic policies on business, address the welfare state and sort out local government we might actually see some progress. But people are fed up of pot holes, rubbish mounting up, schools budgets being tightened and not feeling able to invest in their business.

Well he didn’t really win. It was by default as the Tory vote collapsed. Starmer didn’t get much more votes than Corbyn at the previous general election when the tories won a big majority. It wasn’t that people wanted Starmer, it was that they didn’t want Sunak.

Would prefer Starmer to stay. I think it's awful that AB is seen as some kind of miraculous saviour. Starmer has had a lot of issues to deal with, many not of his own making, and he should be allowed to get on with his job. IMO the media just ramps things up to hysterical proportions, then certain characters jump on the bandwagon for their own purposes.

I think Starmer is generally fairly competent but a very poor communicator (in terms of "vision", "progress", "achievements". And he has made some poor decisions, as anyone would.

i would like to see him & Burnham working together. Harness Burnham's significantly better communication skills, and having another experienced person high up in government giving both challenge and ideas would be good.

Wont happen, though. Too many egos plus presumably the media with their silly games will ensure we get more instability and poor governance.

Starmer should have sacked Reeves. Better still he should never have appointed her. She’s not got a clue and is dragging Starmer down. He’d probably have survived as PM if he had a competent Chancellor.