AIBU to feel the media is pushing Starmer out?

[Ihatethistimeline]

To feel the media is forcing Starmer out and to be annoyed by this.

They need constant drama and content and this is done at the expense of the country. Starmer is boring but things are improving despite major problems like Iran in the background.

If this were 20 years ago he’d have been safe. They are treating government like football clubs and want Burnham as they think he’s more showbiz. These foreign owner media outlets don’t care about the stability of this country, they just want headlines and drama on X to drum up more drama for headlines and opinion pieces where the media all interview each other.

The country is becoming ungovernable because them and I’m sick of it.

I do wonder whether this also puts off other good politicians from ever wanting to run for PM as who would want to put yourself in that position when you know that it will inevitably tarnish your reputation and in a few years (or less) you’ll be turned on by your own party.

Labour can’t ’support the working classes’. I don’t know if you’ve realised but the country is skint. The working classes have to start supporting themselves. We need to hugely cut welfare to be able to invest for growth, grow the economy and hopefully bring down taxes on working people in the future. What 100% will not work is giving more money away to people who haven’t earned that money. Andy Burnham will do just that and so Nigel Farage will walk the next election. Cheers Andy you Twat.

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I honestly don't get the hate for Starmer.

Yes, he's a bit boring and not the most charismatic, and potentially a bit of a fence sitter.

But he HAS done a lot of good things for the country. Economy, NHS, both improving. He did well with Trump for a while. He's good at forming relationships wherever he goes, in fact.

I think it's a shame he's out. I'm unsure about Burnham. Everything he says sounds good, and he seems quite refreshing, but for some reason I have my reservations. I heard somebody being interviewed on the BBC who said (very diplomatically) that Burnham needs to be liked, and that's going to cause him problems when he's under scrutiny in government and if he faces criticism. I think he might have an ego hidden under his common man exterior.

Probably because that's how democracy in this country works.

In fact the idea that we can displace Prime Ministers and governments who aren't acting in ways we want (see Truss, Johnson as well as Starmer) shows they are ultimately accountable to us (thorugh public pressure on the party).

They don't get to be elected and then just have carte blanche to do whatever they want for 5 years.

Rather than destabilising democracy it actually proves it is functioning.

And I would argue it actually functions a lot better in this country than in others such as the US, where it is very difficult to oust a President even if they are going strongly against public opinion after being elected.

I see the churn in leadership as part of the process that the country needs to go through to come to the realisation it needs to take strong medicine in order to resolve it's issues.

Once people start to realise there is no choice but to make tough choices, the situation will probably stabilise around a person who is willing to make those choices and sells the public a vision that they are necessary and will lead to improvement down the line.

Rather than a journeyman like Starmer whose only objective was to try to stay in power as long as possible by doing as little as possible.

I think the point remains though that Burnham will have an impossible job, just like Starmer had (Starmer's weaknesses aside). There are enormous structural problems in British society and the economy, and the general public don't have the patience or the attention span which would allow even a competent and experienced leader to begin to put them right. All egged on by the media.

Sunak and Hunt were beginning to make inroads.

Care to explain?

I don't think that's true.

There are individual cases. I know of a family from Pakistan, the Dad has mainly lived here for years and about 18 months ago brought over his wife and three children and now wife has just given birth to a 4th.

The Dad is a taxi driver.

Once people start to realise there is no choice but to make tough choices, the situation will probably stabilise around a person who is willing to make those choices and sells the public a vision that they are necessary and will lead to improvement down the line.

Absolutely right, but will there be anyone with the ability and the leadership left who actually wants to put him/herself into that position?

Someone always crops up eventually. It's just a matter of how long it takes to find them.

I think Kemi. Pretty much everything she says is sensible.

Yes and she doesn't seem to care about being liked, which given the circumstances we find ourselves in, is a plus.

I think you're correct, structural issues can be fixed but require pain experienced now for future gains. This can't be met through for to nimbyism and political short termism.

Agree with what you say here (although not convinced about Sunak and Hunt).

Constantly changing leaders and Cabinets means tackling those structural problems gets endlessly kicked down the curb. In a way, it's just a massive avoidance tactic that masks the fact that neither Labour or the Tories (or Reform but they're idiots so it goes without saying) have the faintest idea how to tackle those structural problems.

Starmer made his bed. A very shallow and uncomfortable one.

Good riddance.

Well describing a Reform term as "horrible" and then leading to Labour being voted in. If you're talking about. Government being horrible, it's hardly explaining your reasoning but I think I can guess what key words would be involved. Then expecting Labour to come straight in on the back of that. The Tories will be where?

I feel a bit relieved for him. Imagine trying to work with people calling you a nonce and baying for your blood constantly?!

It's shit for the country though. There's too much aggro in the world to have a leadership change.

It has been an odd sensation watching “back home” become a Magic Roundabout of Leaders when compared to my “adopted home” (Italy).

The media/information/opinion sharing & influencing landscape has changed so radically that would be onerous, if not actually impossible, to revert to the way things used to be. So perhaps some conventions need to be changed to provide more stability rather than feed into the online volatility.

If the convention of “you vote for the party you want locally, not its leader” were superseded by “you vote for the party you want locally, on the understanding that it will retain its leader unless the leader dies (note 1) or becomes incapacitated by ill health (note 2)”. With the understanding that if the government is loses confidence in its leader it must take the New Package Deal to the electorate. Would that help avoid what is starting to look like an over active reaction to poor press ?

I may not be very up to date with British politics. But I have 30+ years of lived experience of Italian Magic Roundabout of Leaders. And I can’t recommend it as a way to run a country. It’s not that stability of leadership at any cost is a garden party. And a too high frequency of elections can be a real pain in the arse (especially since schools are where the voting happens and personally as a teacher this fucks up my plans for the programme of study). But Magic Roundabout of Leaders was the worst of all worlds. With FPTP you’d be able to avoid too frequent elections because you’ll likely have far fewer unhappy coalitions ready to to fall apart at the seams 20 minutes after forming.

Note 1 - Might have the unwanted consequence of more attempted assassinations
Note 2 - Might have the unwanted consequences of invented maladies to cling to power while jettisoning an unpopular leader.

If Burnham (who I assume will become the next PM) sticks to the manifesto, nothing will change so what’s the point of changing the leader and creating unnecessary instability?

If he gives many of the backbenchers what they want and goes more to the left, he’ll be hounded out by the press in 5 minutes. Increasing welfare or not cutting welfare is the opposite of what the country needs.

In my personal opinion the next PM needs to go big or go home. Do what’s right for the country and not play to the media. Get the best minds in room and come up with a growth strategy and implement it.

There will be loud negative opinions from special interest groups and social media owners but in the long run, the number one thing this country needs is more money flowing. If that means cutting business and personal taxes and less financial services regulation then get it done. Alongside this investment in more 3rd spaces to bring people back together.

The government also needs to come off X and ignore the entertainment media who aren’t interested in policy, just engagement. There are hardly any real political journalists interested in actual policy anymore, they all seem like showbiz correspondents peddling gossip.

In the mid-2000s the journalists were really bored with Labour. Good government is dull. There are no crises, the economy does well (as ours is beginning to pick up), and everyone’s happy. That doesn’t sell newspapers, or in modern parlance, get clicks.

The next few weeks will be a bit of drama, then we’ll have the silly season then the pressure will be on Burnham. Watch him claim every bit of economic good news as his doing and not the result of two years of Starmer and Reeves rebuilding the economy.

Superb post.

People could be even more tired with Labour male leaders by then.

Not in general, no, but they and the Sun were the only two outlets I could find that covered this particular story. The figures are perfectly correct and taken from official sources, however.

I am a lifelong Labour supporter but cannot support them while Starmer is leader. He is disingenuous and totally incompetent. Burnham actually makes decisions and has a history of positive change at a regional level which he will hopefully translate to the national level. I can support Labour with Burnham in charge.

I agree. I don’t agree with everything he’s done/not done but now more than ever we need a steady ship. I’m sick of being manipulated by the media in this way. It serves nobody except the millionaires that own the news.