Andy Burnham’s coup

[Sandysandybeaches]

I’m feeling increasingly annoyed and worried about this.
He seems like a decent chap and clearly popular in Manchester but it feels increasingly ‘off’ that he is arriving like done kind of messiah to save us all. It feels like an arrogance and very undemocratic. Were there really no Labour mps up to the job?
His aims and vision sound great but there was nothing about how he’ll actualy achieve it and I worry that people will soon feel let down and the trust in mainstream parties will be broken even further.

Thr focus on Manchester I find worrying from someone who wants to run the entire country. How does an extra layer of admin in other place help everyone else who still lives somewhere peripheral? No offence to Mancunians but they’re even further from me than London and I am not interested in the place, in fact it sounds like rural areas, the south west and north east will be even more ignored.

It does feel increasingly like a bloodless coup.

I thought Labour were better than this. I have voted Labour every election since 1979.

It is a bloodless coup and profoundly undemocratic

😂

I’d love to know how the whole debacle with taking down KS and replacing him started, who was talking behind his back (or openly) first, were there initially just a few MP’s involved in the idea to oust him? How did the plan grow and spread? Why was Wes Streeting saying he’d stand for pm one minute, then suddenly Andy Burnham is mooted and Wes backs down and steps aside for him? Has he been promised a significant role for stepping aside?

I’ve also wondered how involved Angela Raynor was in all this for some reason. She must’ve been feeling pretty peed off with Starmer after she had to resign. Will she get anything out of Burnham becoming pm?

I feel like a lot of the haste in this was due to media pressure / hysteria depending on your view. A couple of weeks ago we had Chris Mason suddenly telling us AB is likely going to be the next pm. Maybe he knew something we didn’t, well he probably did. I imagine the media is getting tips and leaks and they’re just running with that info, but I do feel like they seem to control a lot of the narrative too.

I’d like to know who first had the idea to parachute in Andy Burnham, and exactly how that idea gathered momentum and became a reality. To be a fly on the wall and know who first talked about ousting KS, how long it had all been brewing and why the choice to replace him was
AB and not someone else?

Personally I feel like it’s an unfair and unnecessary take down of KS and would prefer not to keep changing pm’s. I just find myself very curious about the whole backstory of how this came about internally and who was orchestrating everything.

He has a wealth of Westminster and ministerial experience, and as mayor of a huge urban area, he's very much aware of how government affects people at ground level. I'm not in the UK, and I'm not even British, but I'd prefer him over any product of the PPE pipeline who was parachuted into a random constituency and had an agent handle constituent problems.

Agree!

I’m a left-leaning voter and I’m completely dismayed by what’s happened.

I thought Starmer didn’t always get things right but unlike the Tories, his mistakes were made when he genuinely believed he was doing the right thing - unlike Boris backhanding his cronies loads of ££££ for fake contracts.

I deeply object to what happened in Makerfield - to get a colleague to stand down for you smacks of a huge ego. He abandoned his Mayoral position without a backward glance. The cost of an unnecessary by-election and the disruption to the people of Makerfield is unethical and immoral.

He’s clearly being making manoeuvres in the shadows for some time. I deeply dislike the devious way he’s gone about staging a coup.

I think he believes his own hype - but it’s telling that his record in Manchester isn’t as good as his PR machine likes to spin. Several failed or abandoned initiatives - and several years into his role as Mayor, the Greater Manchester Police were placed in special measures. He changes his mind depending on which way the political wind blows.

I think he believes that if he continues his role as King of the North, he’ll get the traditional red wall voters behind him. And that’s great but if as PM he’s supposed to be representing the whole of the country, not just the north. It’s almost the opposite problem - up until now, some things have been too Westminster-centric; he seems openly hostile to Westminster and London. (And no, I don’t live in London or the southeast so have no vested interest in protecting the status quo.)

There are a lot of problems to address and not much money - spaffing a load of cash to move domestic functions up north shouldn’t be a priority….yet he’s very keen for us all to know about this plan, while simultaneously refusing to take questions from journalists. Next thing you know he’ll be hiding in a fridge….

I’m just fucked off with the lot of them. I actually thought Labour meant the adults were in charge but we’ve got the same stupid popularity contests and MPs who can’t see further than the end of their nose.

I suspect Wes Streeting is playing a canny game. I think he could see that he wouldn’t win against Andy Burnham and even if he did, he’d be undermined in the same way. Burnham has persuaded so many MPs that he’s the messiah, anyone going up against him would fail. And yet…being PM at the moment is a bit of a poison chalice. The economy is a mess - and not entirely because of government policy. I think Streeting will plan on going for leader when things are more stable - and when Andy’s fan club won’t be waiting to undermine him.

I hope Burnham comes in and does a phenomenal job because god knows, we could all do with it. But I fear he’s all talk and little substance, and that he’ll soon discover having grand ideologies costs money that the country doesn’t have. If this dicking around ultimately lets fucking Farage and his band of morons in, I’ll never forgive Labour.

I think that what has been allowed to happen - that he is parachuted in is absolutely appalling and makes a complete mockery of democracy

Streeting would have to make his move before a general election as I don’t think his chances of re-election are great - he is sitting on a tiny majority of 500.

Are you from Greater Manchester? You don’t run a city region of that size and economic and cultural diversity for that long without making some decisions that some people are unhappy with. But he is a hugely popular and respected figure in the Northwest and to deny that does seem slightly bizarre, to be honest.

The same people talking about Andy Burnham being “over-hyped” suggested he might not win Makerfield: it wasn’t even close.

Manchester is booming. This isn't all of Andy Burnham's making and many of the surrounding towns are struggling but still he is seen as successful and is generally popular I agree.

I would suggest though it is far easier being a popular mayor than a popular PM, especially when your area is doing well. Look at Boris and London. He was still very popular when he left his role at London mayor with 52% believing he had done a good job and only 29% believing he had done a bad job. He didn't even last a full term as PM...

I don’t know if you heard the speech, but just to reassure you he really wasn’t hostile to London. He called it the “the world's greatest capital city” and spoke about more devolved powers going to London itself too.

We really are one of the most fiscally and politically centralised countries in the developed world, and it’s to our detriment.
Successive politicians of all political shades have spoken for a long time about redressing that but it hasn’t happened: maybe an idea as big as Downing Street North will be what it actually takes.

i live in Manchester- I am an elected member. Sadly (and not all his own fault) Keir was absolutely toxic on the doorstep. Did he deserve it ? Not really. Did we lose good colleagues based on the national picture? ‘Yes’.
Could that downward spiral continue- absolutely not, it was existential for us as a party.

i think he’s a decent man, the knives were out from the start. We handed ammunition unnecessarily to the press and the social media agitators constantly.

Mandelson was the point I realised he was absolutely fucked as an experiment. I have been a member all my life - Keir was more toxic than fucking Jeremy - and he really was awful.

As long as his policies don’t punish Londoners to achieve political point scoring then fine. That’s something the last PM would do but hopefully this one is better.

Stick to building other places up rather than dragging any successful places down and he’ll be better already.

I really hope Burnham can succeed and I really hoped Starmer could too - that’s why I voted for him - but I am worried that regions other than the north might get forgotten. I’m from East Anglia and whenever I’m in Manchester I look around and think “Why can’t Ipswich have anything like this?” I realise the two places are not comparable size wise, or any way really, but the idea that people in Manchester have it tougher than others just does not ring true.

He is a Cambridge graduate. I suspect you associate a Northern accent with below average intelligence.

I was there on Monday and have worked with Andy / his team for quite a bit so ‘seen him up close’.

what the Manchester’s means is what we did here - metro mayors with devolved powers dealing with specific geographical challenges and having the local understanding of how to remedy that. For example - a coastal community will have different challenges and opportunities- who’s best place to deal with their issues? Whitehall ? A whipped MP or someone on the ground who’s able to understand the people and places?
same with rural areas - what’s key to improving outcomes there ? How do we give opportunities to young people? Well, transport is key if you cannot access work or college you’re fucked.
I am being very basic here but I hope you’re getting the gist of what it means?

*waits for the Daily Mail readers to roll up to say ‘buses- good lord that’s it Labour only can deal with buses and immigrants’ 🙈

I understand that different areas have different challenges and opportunities but the rest of your post is a bit garbled.

The idea that all our problems will be solved if local people can make local decisions is a bit naive. There are many councils which are badly run because the people working there are not very competent.

As much as devolution can offer better outcomes, it can equally offer worse outcomes for some areas. And the additional layers of government bureaucracy will be bonkers.

I wish all political parties would realise we need less but better government, not more of the same red tape.

No I'm sure they recall that their calls were refused by the government. Which sets something of a precedent. You can't blame them for following it.

Genuinely, my understanding is that the whole idea of No 10 North is for other places across the country to be empowered to make their own decisions, with more funding distributed locally so that other regions can see the same kind of growth, based on local need and local priorities, that Manchester has had, under the devolution deal Andy Burnham negotiated for as Mayor.

It makes sense for No 10 North to be in Manchester because there were already plans, agreed by the treasury, to move thousands of civil servants to a new site there, and it’s also where Andy Burnham has an existing team he trusts and works well with there - it doesn’t mean No 10 North exists to serve Manchester.

I really don’t think anyone in Manchester feels uniquely hard done by - but you only have to look at the commentary around Andy Burnham, suggesting he’s somehow unintelligent or inexperienced - presumably purely based on his background and accent given his Cambridge degree and ministerial credentials - to realise there is a still a massive amount of anti Northern prejudice in our country. I’ve genuinely seen National broadcasters doing an impression of his voice despite the fact that many more people in this country talk like Andy Burnham than like Boris Johnson.

Govt will be ceding more power to local authorities?

<looks at own local authority>

<blanches>

I am a councillor. I do not mean at all council level - I mean at a CA level.

What is CA?