To think Andy Burnham will not make Labour any more electable.

[4thweekofjuly]

I think there is little appetite for a new PM and a new Labour leader will make 0 difference to their chances of winning. I also think the best the public can hope for, from any government, is a slow, well managed decline. I don't think there is much of a future in the UK and the public need to accept the social contract is no more. .

In fact @1dayatatime you could research this yourself. At one point Trump wanted the NHS to be part of a US-UK trade deal. Who is to say that won’t happen again? Farage would also have sent troops to Iran for a war which is nothing to do with us. So, thanks to the pricks who vote Reform, we could lose the NHS to billionaires and our sons and daughters would have to fight for Trump’s obsession with getting his hands on other countries oil.
But, you know, ‘ Liebour’, ‘Andy Burnham is a chippy northerner’ all politicians are the same’, ‘foreigners out’.
<slow hand clap>.

Perhaps we could adopt the same principle as Farage who will put so called migrant hotels in Green voting areas. All Reform voters have to pay for their healthcare and their kids, not ours can fight Trump and Farage’s phoney wars.

You cannot sell the whole nhs. You can sell bits that might make money. Lots of it never will and we do need far more insurance as other countries have. The sacred cow nhs needs slaughtering. It needs to be run as other countries run theirs. Not necessarily the USA, but Australia, Germany and France are a much better role model.

They all spend more from taxation. The NHS is data rich, that’s why the US wants it.

I am beginning to think it's very possible he won't win. He had a better chance in the last by election when he wasn't allowed to stand. If he doesnt win what then. An even worse mess.

Well done for weaving into your post Iran, "it's all about the oil" and billionaires, but do think that you could have another go this time including " Epstein" in there somewhere in order to get maximum batshit conspiracy theory buzzword bingo points?

Well calling half the population ‘pricks’ is a bit sad and especially on here when 99.9% of us don’t have one! Such sour grapes - it’s democracy.

If you vote Reform I think you are a prick. I’m exercising my right to free speech which Reform voters seem very keen to promote. See Lucy Connelly for further details.

Yes, I hate this automatic bleating out that Labour & Starmer are terrible for this country, are doing nothing right etc etc.
It's been LESS than two years that they have actually been in power - the election was a July one and that's in the middle of the summer recess.
Yet they are still expected to have turned everything around in that time despite Trump starting a damaging, illegal war in the meantime!
I don't agree with Burnham is doing. He had his chance to be party leader in the past and wasn't chosen. He opted to go for the mayoralty of Manchester and should stick with that job. Mancunians must be annoyed that he's now jumping ship.

Keir Starmer was voted in as PM & should be allowed to continue in the job. What none of us need, the Labour Party or the country, is this infighting and nonsense which is distracting everyone in the Government from getting on with the job at hand.
I hope Starmer stays firm & Burnham loses the by
-election.

The only people who voted for Starmer are his constituents. I want the most effective PM possible in these troubled times. Starmer would be a brilliant foreign minister, that’s where his talents lie.

What is this with two more years in government?!!! I keep hearing this. Four year terms are a US thing. In the UK it’s five years, so given that the last election was less than two years ago the current government has over three years to run.

I agree that he is strong on foreign policy - but I can’t see anyone doing a better job as PM to be honest. I’m not sure that sorting out Greater Manchester’s public transport qualifies someone to be PM. Rayners would be a disaster. I’m not keen on Streeting either.

I’ve just realised that if I could pick someone experienced and solid on domestic policy - on the whole - I’d be picking Gordon Brown.

Really?
What a grandiose statement to make with literally no evidence to base it on.
You might not like it or agree with it, but the Labour Party won the last election with a majority of the votes.
So I imagine a few more than just "his constituents" had a degree of faith in Keir Starmer.

It seems that a lot of people want the Holy Grail of brilliant public services in their own area and which serve them, very little paid out in benefit payments and to pay hardly any tax, preferably no tax at all.

You can imagine whatever you like, the fact remains that the only people who voted for Starmer were his constituents. We don’t have a presidential electoral system here.

Well I am not a constituent of his and I voted for him.

And we know that the leader of a party is fundamental in whether that party get elected or not.
Party leaders have fallen foul of this before - they fail to gain the trust of the electorate so don't gain votes for their party from voters who might usually vote for another party.

We don't have a presidential system, no, but the leader of the party is crucial when it comes to a General Election and it's frankly ludicrous to suggest otherwise.

No you didn’t, you voted for the candidate standing in your constituency.

You are just being pedantic and you know it.
I voted in my constituency because, yes, that's how our system works but I wanted Labour to be in power and for Keir Starmer to be PM.

In this country people vote for the party they want to lead the country when it comes to the GE, it's just that we have a system where we vote for an MP locally.

I know you will come back on this
with another grand, pedantic post but I also know that you know very well what I mean.

Agreed . Definitely not USA but certainly other EU countries.

I just couldn’t remember the month / year they were elected and guessed, no big deal 🤨

You didn’t lol.

Hello, another pedant on the thread. LOL

How is that pedantic? It’s not pedantry - it’s the basics of how politics works. You may have voted for your local Labour MP because you wanted KS to be PM, but you didn’t actually vote for KS. Do you see what I’m saying?

Edit: The UK Parliament backs me up on this, saying:

Can I vote for a new Prime Minister?
You can only vote to elect your local MP in a general election. You cannot vote for a new Prime Minister. If you live in the constituency represented by the current Prime Minister you are still only voting for them as your local MP in the next Parliament.

Thank you so much for explaining the voting system to me as though I am a child I know exactly how it works.

Perhaps you should also explain it to all the political parties and tell them that campaigning during a GE is pointless because people only vote for their local MP and so have no interest in their manifestos for the country or who the leader of any political party is?

Perhaps they haven't realised and it would save them an awful lot of
time and money