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.

Complex decisions that he took less than 24 hours to make. A machinery of government change is expensive, disruptive, causes huge delays to delivery and he was arrogant enough to do it in this way (with very little justification behind it). It really doesn’t bode well for me that he is good at making decisions. He completely disregarded the huge uproar from the tech sector yesterday. Someone in his position should be taking careful consideration of expert advice, especially when the consequences are this large.

Well of course, you can’t expect people to be forced to relocate without being appropriately compensated? I can’t imagine there are many career civil servants based in No10 thrilled at the prospect of being frog marched up to Manchester, especially knowing their careers will likely need to be back in London again in a few years.

I've finally been tempted to create an account so I can reply to this. For background, I'm generally left leaning and have been a Labour (or Lib Dem) voter all my life. However, I am quietly raging about Burnham and will find it very hard to vote Labour ever again for the following reasons:

• Starmer was, in my opinion, what the country needed: a boring internationally respected statesman, stable. someone who was not a career politician and had real world experience. Beyond his lack of popularity - which to me hardly seemed justified in view of the good job he did internationally (Trump, Iran, Ukraine etc.) - I cannot think of a justifiable reason for his own party to remove him causing yet more instability, cost, and reset when what we needed was a period of stability. For what its worth, I also genuinely believed Starmer was a decent, good person who simply was not good enough at the showbusiness end of politics, and did not deserve the treatment his party meted out

• Burnham, and all his allies, have shown incredible self interest, while simultaneously holding themselves out as acting in the public good. Anyone with an eye can see what they were worried about was losing their own seats to Reform because "Starmer boring". He did not intend to resign the mayoralty if he lost (selfish, power hungry). His allies did not respect the wishes of the Makerfield electorate, and engineered their MP to stand down (this is on Josh mostly of course - in the bin please Josh. And do you remeber by the way he was getting revenge after being censured by Starmer over the think tank journalist investigation? So it was personal for Josh, but he still claims he did it for us). Burnham will be a poor local MP, and clearly used Makerfield as a stepping stone and a soundbite

• By resigning he caused significant costs of Manchester for the mayoral election - thanks mate

• In all his speeches after ascension he has preached the need for stability - THE BRASS NECK OF THE MAN, WHERE DID THE LATEST INSTABILITY COME FROM ANDY. I expect Reform to be hypocrites, not people nominally on my side of the fence who constantly play on being "the good guys"

• Healey, who seemed to be taking a principled stand on our poor defence strategy, what a surprise, was clearly in bed with Burnham's team - in the bin with you too John

• Burnham immediately restored Haigh and Rayner, who in my view, were fairly demoted from cabinet for their transgressions. Did those go away with Starmer? No. Again, cronysim I would expect from the worst Tory governments, not people who trade on being morally superior

• I find the professional down to earth northerner schtick boring and cynical. He's a career politician! He has nothing in common with most Northerners I know and live with (that's fine of course, but stop trading on it!)

• I live in Manchester, and doubt those aspects of it that have improved are down to him (mainly they're due to the BBC relocation and Chinese investment etc). His record on rough sleeping is not good, an incredible mistep to me to trumpet his failure (ofc, I hope he does it). He wasted an incredible amount of money (was it 1.4 billion) on the Manchester clean air zone, which failed. Still YELLOW BUSES YAY PLZ BE PREIM MINISTER ANDEH, KING IN THE NORTH

I had huge, huge issues with Starmer by the way (e.g. allowing Esther Rantzen and the thickest of his new MPs to cross the rubicon of assisted dying, another thing for the state to cock up. But the sheer hypocrisy of Burnham and co, the the fact they expect us to swallow that they did this for our good not theirs is unforgiveable.

(EDITED: Forgot that he called for a general election between BoJo and Sunak, yet more hypocrisy/self-interest)

Ok…

Sunak’s rise to power was not dissimilar to Burnhams and yet somehow that gets conveniently forgotten … Sunak was unopposed in the leadership election. And all the tabloids have already started on Burnham, making him out to be scheming and untrustworthy. Yet some of these commentators were Boris’ biggest fan club. And so it begins… unless people learn to be more discerning about the stories they ingest about our political leaders we will be back here again in about 18 months and everyone will be asking: why do we keep changing PMs?

I’m neutral about Burnham right now, let’s wait and see, give him a chance before trashing him when he’s barely walked through the door of no 10.

Some saying we need to know more about him, you saying he’s deciding things too quickly, he definitely can’t win.

Do you assume every new PM didn’t bother thinking about policy before they were elected? What about Bj who was so shocked when leave won the referendum as he didnt have a plan?

Building No 10 North - Re:State

People are focusing on the supposed "coup", but do you really think this kind of Machiavellian politics doesn't happen in every party? Leadership becomes untenable when a Prime Minister loses the confidence of their Cabinet and parliamentary colleagues. We've seen it with Labour, the Conservatives and countless governments before.

As for Burnham "suddenly becoming Prime Minister", he was elected as an MP in a decisive by-election. Like every other MP, his democratic mandate comes from being elected to Parliament. You might not like the system but all parties 'benefit' from it.

If the objection is that Labour didn't hold a lengthy internal leadership contest, I'm actually glad they moved quickly. The country doesn't benefit from weeks or months of a government effectively standing still while politicians campaign against one another.

And as for the calls for a general election every opposition party demands one when the government changes leader. That's opposition politics. Once they're in government, they invariably discover there's no constitutional requirement to call one. Funny how that works.

I have been a civil servant for a long time, I am a Labour voter myself, but I have not seen anything this chaotic since Covid. He asked ministers to draw him up plans on the weekend and made the decision on Monday, this was not policy he had been carefully considering, if he doesn’t know much about something that’s a reason to take some time, but he’s trying to shape his image on getting stuff done, whether it’s actually good be damned.

He is already deviating from the manifesto so the party majority won’t suffice now, the public voted for the manifesto that is now null and void. Luckily for us at least half the Labour Party are against Burnham so he won’t be there for very long.

So he’s not been doing anything for a few weeks, he just asked them to do it this weekend … right

Do you have any idea what you’re talking about? You said you don’t know enough about digital ID but you’re defending him against what has widely been called a ludicrous misstep by the sector? The reason politics is so hard to discuss now is how bipartisan it is, you can respect a person without agreeing to everything they’re doing, stop defending something you don’t understand.

Don’t relocate people , let them stay in a cheap hotel for a few nights and some travel expenses. Far cheaper. The new PM seems determined to govern from two places, but the country can’t afford to spend huge amounts to do it then cuts have to be made or you keep it as it is.

This is the bit I find strange:

It proposes transferring teams from Whitehall departments, including the Treasury, Cabinet Office, and the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government – all of which are now being led by secretaries of state from the North of England.

They are not always going to be presumably? I know that MPs have always had to go to London but it is important they attend Parliament often.

Oh and that’s def not going to be cheap paying for endless hotel nights and transport! Not to mention the impact on the children of these poor people being transferred - they won’t be see their parents Monday to Friday.

It’s another dud policy that will do precisely nothing to increase productivity and morale in this country, and it will cost millions, money we don’t have.

Because parties always follow their manifesto... do you need a list?

Re 'going back to the 1970s'. Burnham never said this nor has stated as such. This came from the Daily Mail after Burnham said that the privatisation of the 1980s damaged Britain and increased costs for all of us. Not many people would disagree with that.
And we think that tabloids don't influence public opinion, my word.

'He has no mandate '. We do not vote for the PM. We never have. Burnham has already said he will follow the 2024 manifesto. Again this is the influence of the right wing tabloids and the self interest of Reform. Though Farage right now isn't even an MP so has absolutely zero right to pontificate.

Oh I agree that whatever they do for people relocating it won’t be cheap once it’s all added up. Seems bonkers to me. All so he can have his northern place to govern from. Arn’t we meant to be cutting back ?

Yes, DP reported it to me that Burnham "wanted" to take us back to the 70s as well. My first response was "is that what the Daily Mail told you?" And lo and behold....

I don't really get the manifesto thing. If both PMs are going to do all the same things (ie what was in the 2024 manifesto), why was change (and disruption) needed?

What Burnham does want to do is reverse the deindustrialisation and subsequent societal ills of the Thatcher years. That is why his vision is for regrowth and devolution.

Hell probably stick to the what, but have a different approach to the how.

Haven't RTFT. So apologies if this has been said.

Classism. That's what it is. And snobbery.

Classism against the ruling class? Is this a thing now?

It feels like a habit now, almost as soon as someone is in office people are out baying for their blood wanting everything sorted out yesterday. While I do appreciate journalists holding politicians to account sometimes it feels more like sport than actual journalism. It whips up a frenzy and then everyone else online follows suit talking them down before they even have a chance. Even for Starmer who I didn't love he was only in office 2 years it's not a lot of time to sort long term systemic issues. No doubt Burnham will be voted out for failing to wave a magic wand and fix the country in the 2 years or so. Then what next reform? Who do we get when they too inevitably fail to deliver and most likely make things much worse? People need to face up to the fact that there are no easy options here and that improvement will take long term thinking, cross party collaboration and some short to medium term pain. At this point we aren't doing it for us but for future generations.