Andy Burnham should be delivering Labours manifesto, not his own

[canthavetoomanylights]

Fair enough, have your ideas on HOW to do it, but his plans to further devolution were not voted on. Surely this is wrong.

It’s an entirely different job, you sit on the sidelines and say everything is shit, whilst having no policies of your own. Any idiot can do that. Corbyn saw off 4 prime ministers.

Define “success” in a shadow leader?

I'm public sector and I'm definitely not happy. Yes, he may raise salaries, but not provide any extra funding, so funding is cut in real terms. He will then likely increase my tax. So I won't actually have any extra money myself. And I will have to stretch my nhs budget even further, with less staff, more complaints. Job satisfaction in our team is lowest in 20 years, we know we aren't providing a service which our patients deserve, it's heartbreaking to have to tell parents of disabled children that they will get less and less support. And they are seeing false headlines of more nhs funding, so they think we are making up our cuts, which destroys trust between us and the families - which is essential when they are trusting us with their amazing children. I love my profession, but currently hate my job, as I can't do it to the standard I'm happy with anymore due to the real term funding cuts. I'm also a school governor, and hearing very much the same sentiment - the children deserve so much more than we can give them, and it's getting worse rather than better.

You can see how that would completely paralyse the government right? It would actually be a perma-election. There would be no capacity to respond to events at all.

There will be many scenarios where it is legitimate and necessary for the government to make laws that are outside of the manifesto, but Burnham is talking about devolution of power which surely should require electoral support.

I do think if he’s planning big changes to the way the system works it should lead to an election. Particularly if it’s going to involve relocating the civil service and the seat of government.

if he’s so confident it will work and be a vote winner, and I’m not saying it won’t be, then he should ask the electorate.

Just to add to the above, Burnham has described his devolution plan as the “biggest change in our liftetimes in the way the country is run”.

If he does this with no election then he will be seriously undermining our representative democracy and giving vast ammunition to Reform at the next election.

Yep, schools have headline pay rises but no increase in budget so the pay rises have to come out of existing budgets. Many of the headline policies the government have introduced have no extra money attached to pay for it. No one in Labour seems to care about where the money is coming from. Even when the answer is ' it isn't' and it has to come from cuts to other services.

Devolution was in the Labour manifesto. It's already happening.

OP, what's your issue with the concept of devolved powers? Especially if they achieve what's on the party manifesto?

Read page 40 of the Labour manifesto.

Which someone has already pointed out earlier.

Starmer has made it an incredibly easy job! It is easy to sit and say everything is shit when you've got a Starmer making it all shitter every week. Even the Labour MPs have been queueing up to comment on how shit it all is.

I don’t particularly have any issue with it. But that’s not my point. I don’t think he can be handed the role of Prime Minister and the power to implement such changes, which he says himself will be big, without it being put to the electorate first.

@GasPanic

You’re right, I wasn’t aware of that. In that case I think that really weakens any objection to Burnham’s plan as it’s right there in the 2024 manifesto!

Looking at the manifesto, there is so much here which hasn’t been done. It’s such a shame

Let's go one step further, with devolved powers and budgets - seperate London and the south east from the rest of the UK. Wales and Scotland can ask for and vote on devolution, so let's have the people in the south vote on separating from the north. Of course, this will never happen!

It literally says, restore hope, stop chaos and rebuild the country. What a failure so far!

There's serious precedent, though, even for explicitly and gleefully doing the OPPOSITE of the manifesto promises. Theresa May, just for example, jumped up and down on the 2015 Conservative Manifesto's promise to protect the UK's place in the European Single Market and made sure that that pledge (and the country) were well and truly broken before calling (and losing) an election. And here we are ten years later, still reeling.

The UK does desperately need devolution, though.

They are only 2/5 of the way through parliament.

But I think it is fair to say that they have probably had more distractions than they needed which is pretty much their own fault of course.

Governments in this country don't have a great record on fulfilling manifesto pledges. House building in particular is one that they fail to achieve time and time again - current estimates are that they will only build 50% of what was pledged.

There’s nothing about No10 North and Manchesterism. There’s little about nationalisation.
Hes obsessed with the North and he’s about to become our pm without accepting any questions about his plans.
Labour are desperate.

Governments don't build houses.

That's the problem.

They're promising any old rocking horse shit and people believe it.

They can't deliver it because it's not them "doing" it.

He does want to promise every postcode something though. He's going to enrich everyone's lives.

But he wants to raise money through lvt etc etc so there are definitely some postcodes that won’t be better off!!

What exactly does the north need? Friends I know who live there (many of who have made the decision to move there and some who have family there) have cheaper and many larger homes than friends of mine in the south can afford, own nice cars and go on holidays. Nationally we all seem to have issue with energy prices, NI rises on those in the middle, the super rich not paying enough, high streets dead due to high business rates and NI rises so small firms can’t pay staff, expensive and not working trains….He talks about the North but parts of Kent and London etc are also among the most deprived.

What was on the manifesto is what voters voted for. They didn't like how it was achieved previously and that's partly what ousted Starmer. So what you're saying is that you want results but also to dictate how it's done.

I might be mistaken but that's not how politics work.

Burnham's favourability rating has dropped by 7 points in the last 10 days - he's now on -11.

https://x.com/i/status/2071555259948732822