Burnham has won. More turmoil?

[KatiePricesKnickers]

Now Burnham has won, it will trigger a leadership contest, and if he wins, a new chancellor of the exchequer.

Surely this cannot be good for the country, or its finances?

YABU - Burnham is a true leader who will improve the UK for everyone and be a competent and respected leader.

YANBU - FFS, here we go again.

The first thing I shall be looking out for with interest is what happens to Josh Simons, the outgoing MP for Makerfield. If I remember correctly, Burnham publicly praised Simons in his victory speech, thanking Simons for his act of 'incredible selflessness' in stepping aside.

However, if Andy Burnham becomes PM and gives Josh Simons a plum job in Downing Street, or perhaps a position in the House of Lords, I would suggest that this was pre-arranged and therefore not an act of incredible selflessness. In my opinion, that would then be an obvious lie from Burnham, right from the start.

That’s politics. The greasy pole. Don’t say that there hasn’t been this for all time and in all parties.

All politicians lie. We forgive them if they succeed

Starmer was criticised very early in his premiership. What is Burnham going to succeed at within a few months?

All politicians lie. All of them are criticised. Good politicians let it slide. They survive it. Andy Burnham will have to learn to deal with those things. They aren’t terminal for a politician. Look at Trump.

Btw I assume Burnham if he has a brain will announce a lovely classic Labour policy like nationalisation to make all his party feel really good, and that they made a really good choice. That be pretty good for setting the terms of success for left wing people. The Telegraph, not so much.

Today is the day!

Either resignation or plans to hand the post to the next PM expected today.
Huge own goal from Starmer here. It is 100% because of his stupidity that we are all in this shitstorm.

I think Burnham has already stated that he will consider nationalising water supplies.
Transport, steel, IT are big opportunities here too. Particularly IT. Let's make our own flipping software! Keep the hundreds of million in UK, to pay our people, who lives in UK and pays taces in UK. And weapons. That will be another booming sector.
Bring manufacturing back. Jobs for our youth, so we can get them off the list of subscribers to Tate and Co.
Nothing better than busy people, making a living and enjoying life. That is what drives economies and social cohesion.

All our PM has to do is be clear and transparent. Keep in mind that government and police have lost much of the public's trust. So, keep it neat, recorded, clear purpose. No exceptions. No jobs for mates. No contracts without tender. Support UK companies, national or private, I do not care. Protect and create jobs here, in our soil.

So are "we" going to make people buy British? How? Tarrifs?

British goods cost more money than having stuff made and imported from China.

Pay, workers rights, infrastructure and safety being some of the things we don't compromise on.

How can we 'bring manufacturing back' when UK energy costs are so high? How does that work? It's pie in the sky when the govt are pursuing Net Zero. Will Miliband be Burnham's chancellor as speculated? God help us.

I’m pretty sure there are already people in the UK “making software”. We had a strong IT industry but then the IR35 rules led to flexible workers being forced into PAYE roles. IT is just the kind of industry that needs flexible workers as the workload is not constant and sometimes you need specialist skills for a short time. AB could stop companies “on-shoring” bringing in cheaper labour from India and also stop any further “off-shoring”.

Buying everything abroad means losing money daily. Surely you can see that.
Of course, we will keep a strong commercial tie with others, our current business partners. But we need to keep money and jobs in the country. Same as any other nation of the world.

We do, so why do we need to pay huge amounts to abroad companies? Let's do it here.
You know, the amount of people who just feels like change cannot happen is plain ridiculous. How do you think progress happened in the past? Just open a history book. Check how the great US fortunes were made, with the railway, manufacturing, clothing, car makers....
They did not make it by going but it is expensive, but it is cheaper there, but we do not have the people, but we always do it this way, but but but , if if if.....
You need a bit of passion for our children's future.
This vision that we cannot control our destiny is quite gloom!

And how are you going to make people buy the products that are 4 or 5 times the cost of Temu? or Amazon? or all the other cheap, fast fashion/products companies?

Especially when the cost of living is already so high?

And where are you finding all these people who'll want to work in factories? especially when they can claim benefits instead?

Oh come on!
People do want to work! Give them a job. They will buy items. Because they will want to. Nobody is going to make them... but, incidentally, that is what tariffs are actually for.
There are ways to fix economies, by matching prices to income. It is not rocket science.

This idea that we are all lazy, to be honest, is flipping insulting!

But, do not worry. Keep living in this hopeless world of yours. It seems to be cosy in there. As you clinge to it for dear life!

Government should definitely be embracing doing more IT and tech in general in-house, rather than contracting it out to (usually American or Indian) firms. We have hugely de-skilled vast swathes of the civil service, to the extent that they aren't equipped to make sensible decisions about IT any more. And we should certainly be taking IT and AI sovereignty seriously rather than being so incredibly overly reliant on AWS, Azure, Palantir etc as we are now.

But nationalisation makes no sense - the IT industry is not a natural monopoly (as water is), and does not provide critical physical infrastructure in the same way as electricity and gas suppliers do. And there is nothing to nationalise - the biggest UK IT company is Sage, why would we want to nationalise a company that produce accounting software for SMEs?

I work with young people, the NEET ones. Often, they have ridiculous ideas of work - £20 an hour and nothing less, won't work mornings, won't work weekends or evenings, don't want to do anything that's 'beneath' them like cleaning or warehouse work even when they have no qualifications or skills. Don't want to have to get a bus to work and so on. Don't like being told what to do - is a MAJOR thing I hear from them and their parents. 'Oh he can't get a job, he's got ADHD/ASC/mental health and doesn't like being told what to do, he'll kick off and get sacked'.

They're usually in receipt of state benefits or their parents are and that's what's been modelled to them and propped up by successive governments.

They think why would they work? it's inconvenient to them and wouldn't give them much more money than being on benefits so why would they bother to get out of bed, get on a bus, get told what to do?

Of course that's not all young people but there's a lot of them about with that attitude.

Which % of UK adult population is not on work or education?

Working age population so 16-64, 21% are economically inactive so out of work and not seeking a job.

No-one on IR35 was writing commercial software for the open market. They were building in-house systems, mostly for banks. I work for an actual software company (18k employees) and we do not, and have never, used contractors for software engineering. Contracting is very heavily used in IT services, which makes sense, but not in software, where the load is broadly constant - if it isn't it means you aren't releasing new product/improving old ones and are circling the drain.

Economically inactive includes:

1. students who don't work during term time
2. Stay at home parents
3. Early retirees
4. Those of independent means
5. The long-term sick

Of these, the only group of real concern is the long-term sick who may want to work but are simply unable to find a job that can make the accommodations they require. If people don't want to work, and can support themselves (either directly or via parents/partners), I don't think that is any of the state's business.

Yes I understand that. I was just responding to the previous poster’s comment that we need to make software in this country again.

The wider point still applies regarding use of cheaper labour from overseas and impact of IR35 on a flexible workforce in the IT industry as a whole.

The real concern are the NEETs, young people who are not in employment, education or training. There are now over a miion of them. This should be a national priority.

There are also many thousands of people in their 50s who are struggling to find jobs.

I know that's what it includes.

I answered a question.

What's your point?

In that statistic we do have a staggering number of 16-34 year olds economically inactive because they're on long-term sick. About half a million, mostly with them claiming MH reasons or ND.

So the idea they're going to leap into action for a factory job when the taxpayer is paying for them to do nothing seems unrealistic, which is the idea from a particularly poster I was responding to on this thread.

Yes to both your posts.

The issue with industry is that Chinese overcapacity and subsidy make the UK not very competitive. I think we all have to wake up in the West about the “free market”. Our largest competitor in China is using state subsidies to launch highly con industries which are producing too much, which is why the drive for exports. That isn’t free market economics, we are have the piss taken out of us by being this open economy with low tariffs.

If the UK wants manufacturing to return, then there needs to be some acceptance that finance and government subsidies is part of that. It also needs to nationalize some elements like energy which are making us even more uncompetitive.

If you are on the right these are difficult arguments because it means understanding the UK is going to be a much more mixed economy in terms of what the state does and what business does. That has implications on tax… I hope Labour does not repeat Reeves’s mistakes on small business and NICs.

Whoever becomes Chancellor may get more power to make change than in generation. I will be really interested in Burnham’s pick.