AIBU to thank the people with crystal balls for giving us the heads up?

[Fallbuy]

Thank god for the mystics, the seers, and those with crystal balls on this forum. Without them we wouldn’t know how shit Andy Burnham is going to be, despite him not being appointed yet and not having done anything. They deserve our thanks.

do you need a hug?

Try having a lie down in a darkened room with a cold flannel on your brow.

That actually sounds pretty good…..

Personally as someone from the right politically I don't think he'll be too bad. He's got a good job political brain, hasn't been caught with his hands in the till and might give some stability to the country. Plus it will actually be a left wing politician leading a left wing party...let's face it he can not be worse than Starmer and his cabinet

I am happy for him to give it a go (because obviously he needs the permission of some random from the Midlands).

I’ve done a little bit of reading about him. He doesn’t sound perfect but I never took to Stamer at all so hopefully it’s an upgrade.

Time will tell.

It's odd that people think he will be very left wing when he was probably the health secretary who invested more in the private sector than any other in history.

I don't think he'll be any worse than Starmer but I HATE the way he's been imposed on us as PM.

I worked with the Department of Health when he was SoS.

I know full well how shit he's going to be.

In what way?

He's got a track record of promising everything under the sun to NHS workers, without the means to pay for it or deliver it. He made statements in speeches in 2010/11 - which in hindsight were not policy speeches, but his first leadership campaign - which laid out his vision including such pearls of wisdom as giving the impression NHS commissioning managers could simply award contracts to NHS providers and not worry about inconveniences like the public sector procurement regulations. I was running multiple procurement projects at the time, NHS managers decided to can them en masse because St Andy told them it was OK, and I had a week of hell where I received at least one legal challenge every single day.

Then, when he was Shadow Secretary of State for Health in 2014, he let it be known that NHS managers didn't have to do anything Jeremy Hunt told them to because he'd be back the following year, he had their backs, and all would be OK. So, long before the 2015 election was called and triggered purdah, half the NHS simply stopped delivering policy.

I'm also a Greater Manchester resident (and voter). Don't get me started on the Clean Air Zone fiasco, which just about sums him up perfectly.