Does Burnham have a real mandate without a public vote?

No, any new leader doesn't have a mandate, but our rules are that an election doesn't have to be held.

@StabiaGirl

'.... a by-election should be triggered when an MP changes party/allegiance.'

I agree with this as I think most people vote for a party rather than an individual (although maybe not the case when it is local council elections).

Yes.

Like the Tories did?

He clearly has a constitutional mandate. I don't think there should be a new election just because a political party picked a dud as their leader the first time round - why should they be locked into failure rather than choosing someone else to lead.

It's what you said in your last sentence @MyCyanBear we only mind when it's a PM we don't like.

I didn't see the need to oust Keir Starmer personally as thought he was ok - a bit wooden but not awful. Andy Burner took a strange route to becoming PM.

Nevertheless, I don't hate the man and don't want any more public money being spent on elections so for me, I just accept that he is our new PM.

What about when the Tories were swapping PM's, did you want a GE election then? No, thought not.

And £100 billion on welfare, a good chunk of that is pensions, maybe we should stop the pensions?

He has a mandate as long as he keeps to Labours pre-election manifesto.

There was a public vote , labour won, as leader of the party he becomes P.M. not difficult is it

Like Burnham has given Sarwar a seat in the House of Lords to give him the Trade Minister job.
Sarwar who was the first person to publicly call for Starmer's resignation and Sarwar who said he would never go to the HofL.

The posts trying to knock Burnham down are really getting desperate...

You know perfectly well OP that under our current political system you don't elect a PM directly during a general election. You vote for an MP and then the political party that wins the most seats in the House of Commons forms the new government. Its leader becomes Prime Minister. That leader is now Andy Burnham.

The Tories went though a revolving door of PMs without a general election.

Frankly part of the media and of electorate need to stop behaving like petulant toddlers and try to create controversy, when what really matters is that we really need to get this country back on track and get stability and economic growth.

Calling for a GE and new leaders every 5 minutes is immature and idiotic and is a big part of why this country has been such a mess for the past couple of decades.

''@LagerLady
The majority of the public is dissatisfied with Labour''

This is your opinion, not a fact. Labour has in fact gone up in the polls since Burnham took over while parties like Reform are losing ground in all recent local elections and in the polls.

He does have a mandate, Labour won an election. People plotting to have an election are destroying this country.

We must have a stable government. Labour have got a chance to get things back in the right direction.

There are positive signs that our economic conditions are improving.

I think most people here are missing your point. As you said its constitutionally fine. Whether he has a 'mandate for change' is a different matter. He only has the mandate of the last manifesto. He clearly doesn't have a personal mandate from the electorate - and while we dont vote for a PM as in you dont put your X next to PM's name, when people vote for an MP they know they are voting for a PM so they are offering a personal mandate, despite the constitution. However, the system that brought him in is also the system that protects us, the electorate, in a way. In other words, if he makes a mess of it the MPs can get rid of him too. And its only half a term to the next GE so he will be tested by the electorate. Then we will know what we're voting for because he's been in office to show us.

Yes, they always used to push the 2 horse race in my constituency ,,, but the 2 horses have changed ... and I'm wondering if it could be 4, or with the Greens on the rise, even 5 ... very strange.

Boris won two elections. The first was the Conservative Party’s leadership election in July 2019. He was then appointed Prime Minister as the leader of the largest party in the HOC. He then called a General Election in December 2019 which the Conservative Party won with an increased majority. So he remained Prime Minister.

Time for this GIF...

Of course he does.

The Manifesto on which the Labour government was elected in 2024 was the party’s manifesto, not Starmer’s personal manifesto. If a party which wins a general election decides to replace its leader before the next election the manifesto remains valid because it’s the party’s manifesto not that of any individual.

A Manifesto is not a legally binding contract. It is a set of policies which a party says it will enact in government. If the party changes leader, and the new PM decides to bin any of the policies in the manifesto, they can. Their opponents will call them out on this, & rightly so. The electorate can then make up their own minds about whether the government has stuck to its manifesto & vote accordingly at the next election.

No, I don't see any indication he's going for a GE any time soon. It will be interesting to watch the next few years. Because unless our new three horse race becomes a two horse race again, this may be our last majority government.

Yeh it’d be pretty bad. Burnham’s best bet is to not get distracted by polls rn. I don’t think he will, his speeches don’t indicate that it matters atm.

Then it would be rinse and repeat unless Reform or the Conservatives drastically increase their popularity.

Burnham probably knows this. Even if he is enticed by a heady poll bounce he should stick to the GE later on.

Which is a very good reason for not having a GE right now. A period of stability with a PM lasting more than two years would be a good thing.

That wouldn’t last long.

I get that we vote for an MP, and then in turn, whichever party gets the most MPs forms the Government, with a Leader they pick. All fine.

But say I vote for an MP who is running on a published party manifesto of banning mushrooms because they are horrible squeaky things. Enough people countrywide agree with me so that party wins and forms the Government.

But then the leadership changes hands and the new leader decides mushrooms are the best food ever and says they will be served in every dish by law. That isn't the deal I agreed to when I put my X in the box.

So if Burnham is going to (for example/as seems likely) raise income tax, that is changing the terms of what the voters agreed to and voted for. How is that fair?