AIBU to wonder why Burnham attracts so much negativity?

[Conicallychronic]

Why is there so much negativity towards politicians and Burnham in particular? Burnham hasn’t really done anything yet but so many on here appear to hate him.

I agree that politics has been a shambles recently but what’s the alternative?

Personally I feel a degree of optimism that we may have a PM that actually turns things around for us.

I was as vitriolic about Johnson as he was patently unsuitable. Truss I didn’t bother getting angry she was just a joke. But I can definitely respect the decent PMs even if I don’t agree with everything they do - Sunak, May, Cameron. The press and SM have been incredibly unfair on Starmer and likely Burnham too. The richest don’t want to pay more tax simple as, and they flood our feeds with hatred. Also Russian bots wanting to destabilise the West. Many voters don’t read or research for themselves, they just lap it up.

Couldn't say this better myself. I'm actually not an Andy Burnham fan especially but the only PM I've really hated was Boris Johnson. I don't think AB is a self interested liar like BJ.

I really dislike the way he's come to power. The undermining Starmer, the MP "agreeing" to step down, the abandoning what he promised to do for Manchester.

I hope he'll be a good PM, but I don't like "him".

I completely agree. I don’t hate him at all and will reserve judgment on his tenure once we know more about his policies. But I don’t like how he got to power, through the back door, it feels sly and underhand. I also wonder if he’s got a big ego: there’s a lot of hubris around him…let’s see if he lives up to it.

The Daily Mail has started already it's been one day and people believe the crap. At least give him chance.

I do agree! But we need to change it to be like the US then. As it's happened lots over the last years but nobody seemed to moan as much about the torys.

Exactly! Although I’m quite harsh on Cameron due to the referendum. But I always say May and Sunak were decent people I just didn’t agree with - they both ended up stuck with policies they didn’t really want, I think, and perhaps should have been stronger.

People won’t even believe in the russian bots etc trying to destabilise us when confronted with direct evidence of it, so I’m not sure what we can do.

I think it was a mistake to replace Starmer but I really want to give Burnham a fair chance, and wish everyone else would.

Perfect answer. We've been on the "immigration" train for at least 12 years; a lovely convenient scapegoat for the rich-owned right-wing tabloids and you can't expect them to support anyone from Labour. If you ignore all that most people are cautiously neutral.

I think it’s inherent in our system which some would say does have a democratic deficit. The PM is not a directly elected leader or figure head but an administrator for the Crown, really.

The monarchy is our continuity, and our direct representation is our MPs.

So we’re not very democratic in some ways but our MPs are meant to fulfil that role.

Strange because if someone asked me who Burnham most resembles I would say Johnson. It's the personality cult type leadership, where he seems to be lauded by many just for being Andy Burnham (or maybe not being Keir Starmer) rather than someone who actually has a fantastic record of achievement in politics.

Now he actually has the keys to number 10 maybe we're going to find out what he is actually about.

There was a lot of Tory backstabbing and was never going to like them anyway, but they didn't engineer by elections or abandon exisiting mandates people had voted for to gain power.

We expect it from Tories, but Labour are supposed to be in it for the greater good and less self serving.

It wouldn't matter who the Labour PM was though, large elements of the press would have it in for them. The harder they work at discrediting him, the more worried they are that he might be successful.

To me he's ridden roughshod over Starmer and his followers and it's all been done in great haste . I don't like that .

Yes, maybe that's why this feels all wrong. Democracy, the voters, had spoken and then he's taken all these steps to undermine it.

I agree with both posters. I don’t feel I trust him fully because of it. But sincerely hope he has the country’s interests at heart.

It seems like an extraordinarily undemocratic way for someone to become prime minister. I loathe Trump and his regime but when they pull stunts like this there is outrage. Also there is a cult of personality thing going on with him that is always difficult to live up to.

The other thing that’s a bit of a deficit is the whole “first past the post system” which means parties come to power with a smallish share of the popular vote.

It depends on how you feel about how totally we should rely on “the will of the people”. People are easily manipulated it seems! Look at the Brexit vote- madness which was known to be pushed from russia to weaken Europe and by the very rich who sought to make a profit but terrible for this country. But people did vote for it, albeit by an ultra-slim margin.

Our current system isn’t that democratic but it does at least contain safeguards against extreme parties- or so we always thought!

I don't think it has been great haste. There have been rumblings of discontent with Starmer for months and months. The Scottish Labour leader, Anas Sarwar, called for him to resign in February. The great disaster of the local council elections in England and Wales + the Scottish Parliament and Welsh Senedd elections was in May.

Got rid of the best PM we've had in years?
Took power by way of a coup?
The Labour party as a group are just as bad for orchestrating it.

He's a politician, you can't trust any of them further than you could throw them.

I don't feel anything towards him, I feel done witht he whole thing. Politicians are letting us down by swapping out every few minutes. That said, I think your line "Personally I feel a degree of optimism that we may have a PM that actually turns things around for us." is the core of the problem. We have a fantasy that someone is going to save us from this mess and will also be universally liked. Whatever policies a government puts in place, some will like it and some will not.

That’s another layer of disappointment for me. I hoped Labour were better than conservatives and would offer some stability but party politics seems to have come first and they’ve done exactly what they criticised conservatives for. It just doesn’t sit right for me personally.

The thing that frustrates me about this (and democracy perhaps?) is that Starmer was forced to step down because he was unpopular, not because he was doing a bad job. Most ordinary people who didn't like him can't say what it is he was doing wrong, they'd essentially been told by the right wing press machine they weren't supposed to like him.

It's not undemocratic. I hold no brief for Burnham and I am sorry Starmer went, as I think he has been unfairly blamed for some things and vilified for his personality, but he did make some catastrophically stupid decisions - e.g. appointing Mandelson, scrapping the winter fuel payment without a good PR strategy to point out that it wasn't means tested, a lot of the recipients didn't need it and poorer pensioners would still be getting it.

Burnham was an MP under Blair and Brown who served as a Minister and Cabinet Minister before 2010. He remained in Parliament for some years after that and was in the Shadow Cabinet. He has then had another elected office as Mayor of Greater Manchester. Now he's an MP again. It's not as if they've catapulted somebody in who's never had any political experience at all.

Cameron was not a decent PM. He put his interests and those of his party ahead of those of his country and in so doing caused enormous harm to Britain. He’s one of the worst PM’s we’ve ever had.

You could equally argue that a large number of voters expressed their discontent in the various elections that took place in May. Electors are a fickle lot. Less than two years from the General Election when Labour was elected with an enormous majority after years of Tory government chopping and changing, and this is what happens next. All very odd.