AIBU to think Andy Burnham might call a general election soon?

[Mywishistoclimbthe3peaks]

To think Andy Burnham will call a general election before Christmas? Yes it would be a massive roll of the dice but,

Reform - don't have the numbers for a GE and there's all frog faces suspicious money bringing him a lot of heat.

Torys - kemi doesn't have a lot of depth, I feel and she hasn't changed much in the polls. She's good at the dispatch box but let's face it anyone could stand up and insult the other side.

By calling a GE Andy would have his own mandate and break the deadlock of the back benchers.

Not being unreasonable = he needs to call a GE

Your being unreasonable = Robotic Kier and Ratchet Reeves have gone and Andy just needs to get on with it now.

No chance of an election as he will guard the huge Labour majority. Remember when Theresa May called an election when she was PM and lost her majority. Made life even more difficult for herself.

But the lack of an election to show the public want him will be an obvious barb for the other parties to use against him - I bet he has a thick skin though and will ignore them.

Well it didn’t go well for Teresa May when she called one in similar circumstances. She returned with a reduced majority if I recall

No chance. He knows he would lose

I think he’d be wise to as Reform have got a cloud over them at the moment, the Tory’s seem to be very much the third party and people seem to have high hopes for him. It would give him much more authority if he did and won but my guess is he won’t take the risk.

Of course he won’t. He will do very little as he’ll be too frightened of 1) his back benchers and 2) the unions.

He’ll focus on creating a mini parliament in Manchester and tell us all how he’s giving power back to the local communities.
Full of shite.

He would find it easier to manage the backbenchers with fewer of them! They are unwieldy and difficult to manage. They brief against the pm and have got used to it. He won’t keep them on side because it’s impossible.

Nothing. The opposition always whine for general elections, demand resignations and the like, it's their job. Labour will be doing it again when they're in opposition, the Tories will ignore it if they ever get back in, and so the wheel will continue.

And our system remains a parliamentary one, which means arguments that only someone who stood for election at the last GE should be PM are completely baseless.

He should but there is absolutely no way he will take that risk.

I don’t think he will, but he currently seems to be taking the government in such a different, radical and expensive direction that I think we should. The electorate haven’t voted for this.

I don’t think be should and I don’t think he will. The Labour Party has a large majority. We need him to get on with the job not waste time campaigning.

No chance!

This guy believes in short cuts, backstabbing and his ego.

Do you think a man like that will do the right thing?

I normally agree but I don’t think that stands here. People vote based on what the government says it will do, the direction and approach it will take. From AB’s early pronouncements it looks like he is radically departing from that, so he doesn’t have a democratic mandate for what he is doing.

I did actually speculate about this possibility a few weeks ago, but don't think he will. I get the tactical rationale for the idea though.

Labour are having a post Starmer polling surge, Reform are on the back foot and it's quite obvious Farage's media holiday is over, plus it's also now undeniable that the electorate can and will vote tactically to keep them out. There's no evidence the same propensity for tactical voting exists on the Right, see for example Restore standing in Makerfield and throwing punches at Reform. The Tories probably stand to be the bigger beneficiaries of greater media scrutiny of Reform, and I'd guess they will be in a better position in 2029 than they are now.

A hypothetical GE now obviously wouldn't deliver Labour 400 seats, but I still wouldn't be that shocked if they won it.

That's a different point. He could just as easily do that had he a less recent mandate. I understand the argument that a significant change of direction from the manifesto requires a GE, and it's a better one than when the MP in question was last elected.

He would be mad to! Although he’s probably more popular than Starmer at the end of his term, I’m not sure he’s necessarily more popular than Starmer at the start of his term. I’ve been feeling so despondent about politics lately, I’m going to allow myself a small amount of hope that he makes our country better and then calls an election when he’s in a strong position. God knows we need it.

This is my view too. He has a stonking majority and risking that in this climate would be unlikely. Interesting times though..

Starmer interestingly always had pretty low personal popularity ratings even around the time of the GE. It was never much of a personal vote for him.

Noooo. We need a period of stability after the years of revolving doors.

Someone needs to actually get on with the job of governing the country.

Nhs, education, environment, infrastructure, policing, care, welfare (and more)... and how to pay for it all

the list goes on, someone needs to start taking on those tasks, not just making lists of what the next one is going to do tomorrow.

Whole country feels like it is in limbo for what seems like forever, just someone take charge and do the bloody job.

No, polls are not in Labours favour.

I agree.

What if Restore Britain put out a reasonable manifesto-say something just a bit right of the Conservative Party- and persuaded someone like Maggie Oliver to be their leader.

Enough people agree with the choice of leader and the just a bit right of the Conservative Party and they are voted in on a landslide victory.

Then, two years later, Tommy Robinson persuades a Restore Britain MP to stand aside, so that he can take his seat and be parachuted in to oust Maggie Oliver and become PM-a coup,

Then he pushes aside the just a bit to the right of the Conservative Party and announces all migrants will be deported, DLA welfare stopped, the death penalty back, ID to be carried at all times and pay for the NHS at point of use.

Well, why not.

Who could complain because Burnham has done just that and plans to deliver a very different manifesto to the one the Labour Party was elected on.

A precedent has been set and the model will be copied and exploited in the future.

But of course Burnham has shown himself to be a treacherous snake, doesn't care that he can only get his far left policies on the books through the back door and has no shame that the only way he could get to be PM is through these means.

He tried to be leader twice, was rejected twice and so he looked about for a shady way, found it and will hold on without shame.

I think he should but I don't think he has the guts to do so. My feeling is he will drag it out as long as he can, to have his moment in the spotlight, as its unlikely labour will get back in again after the mess they have created

Which party do you think will solve all that? Not the Tories for sure and who wants Reform in charge of the country? Not any sane person that's for sure.

You're conflating two quite separate things here. The potential democratic issue is when a party significantly changes the positions they set out in their manifesto without putting it to the electorate. As we saw in 2022, that absolutely can happen when an MP was elected at the last GE. Our system doesn't really offer safeguards against that, but we're not going to create any by focusing on the time when the MP most recently received their mandate.

Labour was elected two years ago and he’s a Labour Prime Minister. Why would he call a GE? It’s far too risky. For all the people saying he doesn’t have a mandate, the British system is parliamentary, not presidential. MPs are elected and they elect a PM.

I think he might have called one had England won the World Cup. He would have had quite a bounce from that
and Farage is in trouble.

On the other hand he’s third time lucky, will he really risk that?

On the whole, I think he won’t.