To think Andy Burnham needs to start to show us he can talk about more than "the north" and "buses"

[joeymaynardssandwiches]

I want to get behind Andy Burnham, I feel he's got the potential to be a great counterpoint to the rise of reform. And I do know it's "silly season" in politics and with parliament closed I guess there's a limit on what initiatives can be announced

But so far it feels like he hasn't broken away from being a northern caricature who just bangs on about buses.

I'm a "northerner" (who always thought of Manchester as the part of Midlands ) but I can only do my job in the south and I can assure Andy there are big pockets of deprivation in the south too.

And I am all for public transport, and investment in it. But it just feels like a real "low hanging fruit" approach for his first few weeks and I want to hear him talk about thornier and less uncontroversial issues.

And admittedly I haven't been reading every news story in depth as I have been busy with the kids so he may have discussed other things. But that is my overriding impression at the moment and it feels a bit frustrating

Here in this part of the south our bus services are utterly crap (one bus an hour) and stop at around 6.30-7pm so shift workers are unable to use public transport to & from the villages to the nearest towns where their jobs are. If anyone wants to go out in the evenings, they have to drive because there is no alternative. You can't go by train because you need the bus to get to and from the station.

Of course he'll be there in person. He isn't allergic to London. As for Kemi, she's going to have to become less combative otherwise she's going to look rather silly, which would be a shame.

No. I want him gone and the sooner the better. Let him call a snap general election. He’s arrogant enough to think he can win it.

She’s excellent. Makes this weak government look ridiculous, which they are.

I agree Kemi is excellent. But she has one register: very angry. It lets her down. As for ridiculous, Liz Truss's short term in office fits the bill much better.

If a symptom if him being obsessed with buses and Manchester is he makes the bus services in the rural South of England as good as Manchester then honestly that's fine with me.

I do get the point about only talking about England. But some issues (transport, the NHS, energy, water) are devolved. So there isn't much the Prime Minister of GB can do about the Scottish side of those things. So long as he also represents the UK on issues that aren't devolved (defence, the economy) I can't see the problem with him (sometimes) talking about issues that only affect England. It's unfair otherwise as Scotland has it's own parliament to concentrate on those issues. It's not like noone is thinking about it.

Nonsense.

I'm in Wales. Not sure if labour have realised we're still part of the uk and bus policy is irrelevant as devolved. Started long before Burnham though and they got a hammering in our Senedd election

Like Ukraine for example - where he is today

Fair enough. But I think that is very much a minority opinion - I think most people desperately want a bit of political stability and are willing to give Andy Burnham a fair hearing to make that happen.

I don’t have a crystal ball, but my sense is that the politically expedient thing for Andy Burnham to do might be to call an early election while he is so much more popular than all the other party leaders - but I don’t know if he will because I think he’s sincere in his commitment to finding a cross party solution on social care, and no political leader would be able to achieve that with an election looming.

This. I think it's appalling the way the mainstream news media cherry pick what they decide to report in the main headlines. They choose such a limited view that they want us to have of our parliamentarians, that fits in with the narrative they are pursuing, and unless you are prepared to invest a lot of time, you miss so much of what's going on, and what's being discussed.

The media push also push for fast results, instant improvements, new news to report. They ask questions designed to make themselves look clever and to catch the politicians out, rather than explore what they think, and what might happen. We're all busy and don't have hours to spend, but a nuanced, more thoughtful media could do a lot to slow the bloody Express train down before we hurtle into another disaster.

I blame our media for giving us Boris ("Ooh, isn't he funny?") and Liz (I've got a new idea and it's going to be super!) Truss and the chaos they both brought. And I've never heard them admit to a failure to explore core beliefs in a way that might have made folks think twice before voting based on a few snapshots/sound bites.

Rant over!

Well, quite. English MPs can't vote on devolved matters, but MPs of other nations can vote on matters which affect only England. I used to know someone who was in the audience of Question Time many years ago and he asked why. He was told he was a racist and a Little Englander. Didn't get an answer.

It's not a massive issue for me. It's a quirk dhe to the way Britain's democracy has evolved rather than being designed. Not the oddest quirk we have. It was annoying when you had, eg, Scottish Labour MPs voting for tuition fees in England when they didn't apply in Scotland. The decent thing there would have been to abstain IMO. But on the whole it's not a huge issue. However, the flip side of that is sometimes the Prime Minister will wind up discussing issues that only affects England. I think it's a bit hypocritical for people to them complain he isn't talking about Scotland also in that case.

I'd put that in the low hanging fruit box too. It's hardly a politically controversial decision
I can see what he's going, going for some initiatives to win over the public. But it makes me feel a bit patronised

The internationally wealthy like to live in their communities as much as anyone, albeit the communities of wealth and privilege. At the top end you have Lakshmi Mittal and his family leaving the UK after 30 years. That’s 3 decades of raising kids who feel British and have British friends from school and whatnot. Being part of a community makes them more likely to invest their money here. Now Switzerland benefits from that for no real reason - we did not make a game changing amount from these people and surely knew they’d just leave.

At the lower end you have people with (say) £10m total wealth which seems to most as an extraordinary amount but can be ratcheted up in finance, medicine, dentistry and pharma. They accepted their privilege tax when it was just VAT on school fees and loss of pension allowances, both of which are not raising much in tax receipts but make it seem “fair” to the average Joe. But they’re really concerned now.. They’re saved and invested well but are terrified at the idea of exit wealth taxes, loss of ISA and pension tax allowances and further inheritance taxes. They are leaving in droves to the Middle East, Singapore, parts of the US and places in Europe like Italy.

The papers would have you think this is a myth but the numbers from the Statistics office work in arrears and are increasingly unreliable anyhow.

He needs to be beware of the politics of distraction which is where politicians lean into the topics where there is little to no argument - Ukraine, illegal immigration..
He needs to tackle the issues that will see him and Labour out of power most important of which is the economy as people vote with their wallets.

But social care reform isn’t low hanging fruit, is it? And neither is ending rough sleeping. Both are incredibly complex issues, that successive governments have failed to solve. The kind of constitutional reform he’s talking about is hardly sexy, easy vote-winning territory either.

exactly the same here except ours stop at 5.30pm Commuter town in north Essex

And yet when Keir was ousted she was very conciliatory and was even praised by James O’Brien for being so.

Each leader has done the Ukraine optics. I agree with you I don’t think it’ll move the dial much.

I suggest you live in an echo chamber if you think my opinion is a minority one. There’s been a slight swing back to Labour as the new PM has created a new manager bounce, much like in a football club, however he hasn’t actually done much yet. To my mind the leaders are just puppets and the puppet master back benchers are still a bunch of Socialists hell bent on destroying the country.

I agree with @IdaGlossop that Kemi is going to have to find a different rhetoric style for PMQs now she’s facing Andy Burnham. My political beliefs aren’t the same as Kemi’s, but I do think she’s intelligent and shrewd and generally a strong orator. If she fall-back into sniping and personal jibes though, she’s going to look very silly, very quickly. Just look at the grace and good humour with which Andy Burnham batted away that stupid T-shirt and eyelashes thing.

I hope she does approach PMQs with the kind of measured, thoughtful tone James O’Brien praised her for - maybe then we’ll finally have a Prime Minister and Leader of the Opposition who are able to critique and challenge each other, but constructively, so that the good of the country comes before party politics for a change.

AIBU to have been waiting all my life for a Prime Minister to talk about The North and buses?

He's discussing Ukraine and EU relations today.

Any thoughts on Rachel Reeves and her impact on the current economy/employment or Gordon Brown selling all our gold reserves when the price was low? Any thoughts on Toby Blair taking us into the Iraq war or is it just the conservatives you want to rant about?