Burnham unopposed & likely to be PM by mid July

I don't agree. It was caused by poor decision after poor decision, interspersed with u-turns.

When you've got business leaders telling you that your policies are killing growth and employment, and your chancellor keeps saying how well her policies are working, it just makes you look like your decisions are ideological, rather than what's best for the country.

Then you show that your back benchers have control and you can't get your own policies through parliament, which makes you look weak at best.

Starmer also isn't a natural 'salesman'. If he had the personality to be able to sell what he was doing to the electorate, it would have helped. We don't need gregarious politicians (like Johnson), but we do need somebody with enough personality to be able to bring the country round to their way of thinking (Blair had this).

I don't think the country is all about personality over policies, but if your policies aren't demonstrably working and you also don't have the personality / gravitas to sell them to the electorate (plus your back bench is against you), then you're doomed to failure.

I think Labour are turning themselves into a shit show with this move and Burnham looks arrogant assuming he can just walk into the role of PM after two days as an MP.

They've got 400 MPs and none of them were capable of leading the party so they've had to parachute in Andy to save them? WTF

I hope Labour lose the Manchester mayoral election and the next general election, they're looking more incompetent every minute.

You've summed it up in a nutshell here.

Even if our parliamentary system stays as is, there should be a new rule that only MPs who were voted in at the most recent GE can put themselves forward as leader. At least that way there would be some connection to the electorate.

Yep the wrong Milliband brother. We will never know if David would have succeeded where Ed failed, but a contributory factor to Brexit 😢

I can't believe this fiasco. How on Earth can someone be elected as an MP on Thursday & be in Westminster on Monday, being spoken if as the next PM??

I had such high hopes that Labour would provide stability and get on with governing and thus happens. The media are to blame too. They've been reporting on this & speculating for ages.

I'm shocked at Wes Streeting too. I'm quite cross.

Ed Milliband no thankyou. He was useless before and can take part of the responsibility for Cameron getting to do the Brexit vote and more years of austerity. And he should be slapped down as though he he is some old labour grandee. No he's just a bad smell still lingering

Can someone more knowledgeable than me ( not difficult ) explain why Andy Burnham is so popular ?

I also understand what people are saying when they say the Labour Party wasn’t given enough time etc but I think they would have been cut more slack if it was clear they were moving in the right direction but they just did a load of pointless showboating that pissed people off without raising any meaningful revenue ( IHT on farms, VAT on school fees, winter fuel) and then failed to tackle the big problems because they couldn’t get it past the back benchers.

I agree with you! Hes successfully barged his way to where he is, it’s a joke now to say HE prefers Sept! So now we’ll have one or two who will stand just to please their new leader and try to quieten coronation criticism. Yet More manipulation. And do they all really think the British public will believe the farce a sham leader election campaign would be? No he has been planning to get to this point for long enough to have some semblance of what he would do once there?! Just crack on with the job you want and we’ll soon see whatever you will bring to the country, or not.

The public deserves to know what Burnham’s plan is and it better be very clear and planned out if he ambushed Sir Keir from the back like this.

I say this a lot on here but honestly I think the issue lies within the Labour Party itself and how politically broad they are. There’s also a conflict between the back benchers who are further to the left and the leadership who are more moderate. The leadership get the
party elected but then get torpedoed by the left. But the left aren’t electable as history has shown. There needs to be a lot more party discipline. Or the party needs to split. I think a “Blair” type centrist party could do well but maybe that’s just me projecting my own politics.

I am really concerned about a coronation for Andy Burnham without much scrutiny of what he is actually going to do as PM. He is likeable, yes, but that's not going to cut it when it comes to actually governing.

This.

Streeting knew he didn't have the numbers as soon as he resigned, otherwise he'd have triggered a challenge then, before Burnham could be part of it. He's being pragmatic now.

I think this is the worst sort of politics and will damage the labour party significantly. I'm totally politically homeless now. Even the least worst has declined.

I foresee a replay of the starmer years, but this time the blame will be placed on "the previous administration" rather than "the previous government"

I can't think of anyone suitable to being Chancellor, which is concerning. There is not a depth of talent in the Labour Party. It doesn't garner confidence when they can't even rustle up one candidate to stand for leader amongst their existing 400, never mind a challenger.

There’s something that feels wrong to me about our new prime minister being someone who wasn’t even an mp this time yesterday and who we know nothing about really (unless you are from Manchester). A kind of arrogance, is there really no existing mp able to challenge him if only so that we hear his ideas? IMO it’s a start that risks a backlash - people will be disappointed within weeks/months when their lives don’t improve. I personally want to know what he is going to do to help businesses.

If (as someone up thread suggests) he would prefer to get in in September then I really hopes it is immediately. He’s going to be a disaster so he may as well get on with it so people realise he’s not the Labour party’s saviour. Let him take responsibility for not stopping unpopular bills rather than blaming ‘2 years under Starmer’. He can get on with his honeymoon period over summer.

Imagine having all those Labour MPs and not one was considered credible/capable enough to be PM. I think Burnham will be just as terrible if not worse. I’m a floating voter but will never consider voting Labour for the rest of my life - awful party.

I’m adding a lettuce to my next grocery order as we speak. Or perhaps a cabbage, I’ve heard they last slightly longer.

Link, sorry.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cx2kqd9ver1o

It's being reported that other MPs might now challenge him to avoid what's being called a 'coronation' for AB.

It does feel wrong for someone to just step into the PM role unopposed, just because one constituency deemed him fit.