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

I absolutely would adopt you! I love a Scottish accent 😊

Haha v good

I do so wish people would stop going on about the Tories - they were shit so we voted them out.
We voted for a Labour Government to stop the rot. Not to persist in the line trotted out at every interview 'We inherited from the Tories....'
Yes - we know.

@Fluffyholeysocks
But it is how economy works. It takes years to undo the damage done for over a decade by Torries. It will take decades to undo the damage of Brexit.
Show me a country where the government changed and the situation improved immediately. I cannot think of any.

It's more like you divorce someone but you own a business selling things and your ex is the largest customer by far so you have to keep selling them things from your shop. And therefore you have to make sure the items fit their own standards or you will lose your trade. Oh, also any other potential customers are thousands of miles away so.yoibcant just sell stuff to them instead.
It's sooooooo controlling

So get better at communicating your Government"s achievements! Get on the front foot. Don't be so reactive and pessimistic. Labour seem to have a woeful Communications/PR team. After 2 years in Government communicate your successes to the electorate. Yes, it will take time but here are the green shoots of recovery type messages. After 2 years we are tired of the same old blame the Tories message, Labour need to give some positivity, we aren't fools, we know it will take time.

Well the discussions about North Sea Oil relate to Scotland (whatever side of the debate you are on re that), and he has also been quite vog on decentralising power which would also have implications for Scottish governance. Whether that's good or bad sort of depends on your view of Scottish local governments, but it is true for Scotland and England that at council level councils have far less power and spending money than their equivalent in other democracies. And all the discussions about defence spending/Ukraine etc are all UL wide not just English issues.

Its not so much that his ideas re the wider UK are good/bad. That's totally dependant on ones own political positions. It's that he has definitely talked about stuff that relates to the whole of the UK. As he should. But it does irk me if the PM isn't allowed to talk about English issues (as in stuff that is otherwise devolved to the other countries) at all because we literally don't have any other parliament or PM.to do that. So should those issues as pertaining to England never get addressed while the Scottish and Welsh governments are allowed to adress them? Or it's offensive to Scotland because they feel left out because they have their own parliament for that? That seems incredibly unfair and mean-spirited.

Surely it's the job of Government to communicate what they are doing to the electorate? I don't want a Cabinet Minister 'doing his job quietly'. I want to KNOW what he is doing!
Get better PR and Communications teams. No one has to post on SM/Truth social. They can do it professionally, you know like Blair did.

I don't understand SG wanting to poke their noses into English matters that don't affect them due to devolution , just seems like school playground level mischief making to please the anti-English brigade.

Exactly this!
Stop treating people like fools who can be thrown a few bones.
I want to support Labour but I need to understand the deeper, trickier plans not just the placated with a few sound bite policies. I know the tricky things take time, but I want to know what's in the pipeline

@Fluffyholeysocks
The media has changed since Blair’s years. I think it is due to social media.
Now they are more likely to publish ‘click bait’ type of news.
Anything controversial or exciting gets the central spot.
Jenrick with his announcement about benefits - lots of attention even though his party only has a few MPs so no power.
Harry and Meghan coming back to the UK - centre spot on BBC website for days.
PMs and his cabinet- boring. Unless PM is replaced, then it is exciting.
It used to be that only tabloids did that, but now unfortunately all the major news outlets seem to follow the suit.
I don’t think it is anything to do with Burnham/Labour.
Boris got a lot of attention but it was due to COVID and his and his ministers antics. I still remember Cummings trip to a castle for “an eye test” and another fella kissing someone in a lift.
Truss did because of her disastrous policies and lasting only six weeks.
I don’t remember Sunak getting much attention apart from the controversy regarding his wife’s taxes.

@NOTANUM
This government, just like any other government, has been put in power by the votes of millions of “average Joes”. Their responsibility is to put the interests of the majority of the population (“the average Joes”) above the interests of the handful of billionaires. Things will be really bad if the situation is ever reversed. We can see it happening in the USA right now and people there are getting angry.
I am surprised that you mentioned Lakshmi Mittal and considered his leaving a loss to UK. Are you aware that more than 100 workers have died in his factories and his companies have been found guilty and fined millions of dollars?
Not to mention the Blair controversy. Frankly, Switzerland is welcome to him.

With regards to other millionaires leaving due to taxes , I think Britain has got enough super rich. I’d rather we kept the ones like Patriotic Millionaires UK, who are happy to contribute to the society.

I’m from Manchester and I completely disagree with you. Your description of his public speaking is way off. That sounds more like Starmer.

How nice that he has placed us in a vulnerable position vis a via Ukraine without any public mandate. No pm should have this authority without a General Election to back them.

You'd be surprised. Some people would rather see the UK fail, than succeed under Labour.🤯

Huh? The UK have been backing Ukraine since the war began back when Boris Johnson was PM. Since then we've had 5 PMs and a GE.

None campaigned on a mandate to withdraw support from Ukraine so what do you mean?

I wouldn’t believe that the group you mention are exactly the types we need. I have just checked and noticed that the Board has been removed from the website so it’s not even clear who’s behind it these days. Last time I looked, it had wealthy people involved but not the rich who bring in huge tax receipts or invest in the country.
Ultimately we need wealth creators of scale. A rising tide floats all boats etc.

Yes the media has changed, but thst isn"t an excuse to 'let Ministers do their job quietly". With the calibre of Ministers we have currently would you be content to let them carry on with no scrutiny? I wouldn't.

This is Labour to the core but the problem is as McFadden shows the natural instinct is to treat every situation as a way to tax people for benefits.

I find it genuinely intriguing that you think this, I think the one thing Andy Burnham has been consistently praised for is his communication - both as an orator, but also his and his team’s incredibly successful strategy on social media. I feel like this speech has exactly the kind of positive, “we’ll get there but it’ll be hard” energy that you’re describing: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=-u3Mpk_zUmc

I don’t know where you are getting your coverage from. He has already made big, radical pledges about homelessness and social care.

Do people really like the social media stuff? Or does he just think this as most of the public are relieved Starmer is gone and the polls are showing a bounce.

I was specifically asking about the mechanisms by which 'These people take their investment with them so we are overall poorer'.

There are two parts to this: firstly the 'taking their investment with them', and secondly the 'we are overall poorer'.

Taking the first part, you say 'Being part of a community makes them more likely to invest their money here.' I highly doubt that. They are not part of any community except that of the mobile international wealthy. And their investment decisions are international, driven entirely by getting the best returns vs risk. They can invest on any stock market worldwide, or use any other kind of investment worldwide. Just because they live in Britain, doesn't mean their money does.

Taking the second part, why does the rich leaving Britain mean we are overall poorer? You have to define 'we'. If you mean the UK average income, then it is just maths: take out the top few data points and the mean falls. If you are talking about the government tax-take reducing, the difference this makes to you or me ('we' being the ordinary person) is microscopic.

I don't dispute that some of the uber-wealthy are leaving the UK. I question whether this is a negative thing. It might even be a positive thing as it reduces wealth inequality (maths again), and it has been shown that high levels of wealth and income inequality are toxic and corrosive to society.

@StandingDeskDisco, you may not be concerned by HNWIs leaving the UK, but apparently, and privately, some of the top Treasury and HMRC nabobs have been shocked at their ability to exit fast, and horrified by the loss of tax revenue. Or so I have read.

From a purely social media/ marketing perspective, people definitely like it - his engagement is really strong. There was one video on education policy that had around 3 million views - that is really high for political explainer type content. And it means he’s cutting through with 18-24s, just in terms of visibility and showing up in their feeds. I guess the big questions are how long he can sustain that kind of engagement and also if it can translate to a boost for Labour as a whole - all the polling shows Andy Burnham is currently much, much more liked than the party.