Burnham unopposed & likely to be PM by mid July

I don't think he'll lose any to the LibDems. They have long advocated increased defence spending and welfare reform.

I think it’s a warning that there will be a bond crisis if he puts anyone in who is further left than Reeves. The markets want a blue Labour as chancellor like Streeting. God help us all if Burnham gets the Chancellor wrong.

There is a paradox here.
Tories and Labour have played children’s party musical chairs now which will push even more people Reform way.
However, at the same time if the former two parties have established a precedent for musical chairs (which let’s face it, really is the case now), it should put any vaguely sane person off Reform - because there people really are voting for a few characters and imagine if any of the real duds that party abounds in, were to get in if they were to come into power.
Except I suppose Nigel would promise no musical chairs in a manifesto. One would hope so.

What I find most offensive is some commentators saying that Britain has become ungovernable. How utterly disrespectful to the public and most of us going about our daily business working hard and respecting law and order. The division to me seems to be between the “leaders” and those they supposedly serve. It’s like they are out of touch and not sensitive to our needs and following false data scientifically presented as fact some like poll data. Social media is the pits of venting and abomination- I wonder what Freud would have said about it. It’s the super unconscious made conscious but not meant to be overstudied by politicians.
whoever leads or doesn’t lead- stop treating the general public like naughty erroneous children and treat us with respect and dignity valuing what each and everyone of us brings to the table.

We have representative government, that’s how it works.

I understand, I just think the public should know who will take power if the party outs their own leader. It should be up to the public not the party.

The deputy steps in when the PM is ill (Raab when Johnson had Covid, say)

When John Smith died, Margaret Beckett was leader pro tem before Blair.

You're a delight in these dark days @BIossomtoes when it is so lovely to think that such wide eyed innocence exists.

I have seen you display it many times and it's wonderful! 💐

I think the deputy though is never meant to be proper PM, I don't think Raab would have been, he was just put in place when Boris was in hospital so Lammy is probably just for emergencies like that.

Me too but not joining in with Trump and Israel's war was when this all seemed to kick off...

I think being called a fake by Trump would be considered a compliment.

Maybe we should have a 1 and 2 then, who the public know will not change, and if something happens to 1 they know 2 will step in. I actually thought the Deputy PM was the automatic default but it seems to be that the Labour party don't want Lammy either...so why were they put there in the first place? Does the party not wanting him mean he is just as "bad" as Starmer? And how come they have all jumped onto Burnham after so many decades of him being the silent fart in the room? Not saying I want Lammy at all - his ties to the Trump administration have me suspicious - but you would think for continuity it would be the person who has been deputy would be next to take the hot-seat as they have schmoozed all of the other world leaders and committed to the same policies and agreements with them.

I don't think Labour have considered the longer term here and seem to just want a shiny new object. As soon as Trump calls him a fake they'll probably hate him and the tide will turn again.

That article is 16 years old. There was very little point in kissing his arse back then.

Ha ha ha ha ! You're surely not putting half baked , biased The Guardian as proof.

You are! What a laugh! You know they kiss his arse and would do and have done if he was, at that moment, shitting out of it!

@Wipeywipey it’s an interesting contradiction, isn’t it? We elect the individual MP so if he/she defects to another party, that’s not cause for a by election. And yet because the PM is the leader of the party with a majority, that party can change the individual in charge, also without cause for an election.

On balance, if I had to pick one, it would be by elections after defections (elected party matters more than individual) over elections post a change of leader (elected individual matters more than party)

Badenoch has made it her hill to die on that she wouldn’t do it.

You can see it coming though, right? Nothing to stop it, apparently.
It also makes me uneasy that the party had years to pick a leader and Burnham was there alongside Starmer, yet apparently they didn't realise how boring he was until he was elected. The whole country could see he was boring and still voted for him. Why do we now have to get the Labour reject no one who knew him ever wanted as PM for 2 decades prior?

Don’t give them ideas!!

The problem is there aren't any entry level jobs available even for graduates. If you want to get a lot of people who haven't worked in years and who have health issues back into work you need to magic up something for them to do and someone to pay them or you just end up with them costing more via NHS than they would staying at home.

If Farage joined the Tories and they did this, would everyone be happy?

I think the trouble is that no matter who you vote in, the press and party can come along and upend it all at will.

What is the point in us voting for a party who have picked a leader if they can't do that properly and decide to change it and make the country back someone else whenever they like? I know the Tories did it too and frequently, but it feels like they are cheating and getting PM's in by stealth that the country would never vote for in reality. I think they need to change the law on this and force a GE if they want to change leader unless serious health issues happen.

This….loads of posts i could quote but deffo this

im so disappointed in them

I disagree. I don’t think it would make a ha’pporth of difference.