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've done this. I didn't get a fraud conviction over it! She must have done something else!

https://www.transformjustice.org.uk/news-insight/one-in-four-have-a-criminal-record-the-louise-haigh-case-shows-we-need-reform-of-dbs-checks/

At least he's started already, and he seems to actually like the people in our country. He's capped bus prices at £2, scrapping vat on electricity bills, wanting to upgrade military defences, i just hope he can be brave enough to tax the ultra wealthy properly and big businesses.

But this will go the same way, already many are cheesed off with AB's backdoor appointment.

At some point ministers have to learn how to work as a team with the boss not constantly trying to get rid depending on what gossip on X or what Sky news says.

Don't get me wrong i wasn't a Starmer fan but Burnham is such a sneak it just does not bode well.

I wanted to understand this more. The Times reported, when Haigh's conviction was disclosed, that her employer had investigated her for similar before. However, by the time it was all public, she had pleaded guilty to one offence and Aviva did not want to comment.

ETA I think she was running for MP about the time of the civil case - so then she got elected and didn't need another job.

He’s been in power for less than a week and we already have the first u-turn. The increase in the lower income tax threshold is now off the table. Not much to be positive about to be fair with a start like this.
his cabinet choices are questionable too with the old recycled bunch

He wasn't elected during a General Election. The last "crowned PM's" were a failure, there is no track record of their success in recent memory. He left Manchester in debt there is a real fear he will make the UK worse off than the last appointed bunch. He has months to consider his plan, he has not articulated it or declared what he considers success to look like.

He seems to have a personality cult thing going on like Corbyn did, a lot of personal ambition to be PM ( like Johnson) but not much experience, a parochial outlook and I think he’ll be totally out of his depth very very quickly. Very few of us in the South would ever have voted for him in an election and I feel he’s got in through deception via the mainly northern left wing anti-Starmer mps and support from the right wing press who hope he’ll fail so the Tories win the next election. The system no longer works, we should have an election if the leader changes

By all means stand by what you said, but you're making the same sweeping statements you accuse Reform and Conservative voters of making, for the same reasons. You do realise that the political axe your beloved Andy is carrying was forged over successive administrations and bears blue, red and orange fingerprints, don't you? None of them comes out of this with clean hands.

I suspect many politically homeless people like me stopped cheering for one colour over another because we want to judge what's actually in front of us, not the colour of the rosette. The Emperor, whatever colour (s)he wears, is, and always has been, naked.

Exactly. He'll do well on a stage in Glastonbury with all the climate change warriors <ironically leaving piles of litter everywhere>, less so in important meetings with leaders of other countries where his 'I'm a northern boy and I'm gonna make northerners rich' bollocks will have everyone pissing themselves laughing.

It was not the fraud on it's own. She LIED about it. MPs are supposed to have integrity. I don't want liars representing me from ANY party.

I grew up through Tory Sleaze and watched it again through the pandemic. I want different.

Starmer removed the anti Semites from Labour, correctly. He removed Rayner, correctly, she displayed a lack of integrity (and I like her generally!). He removed Haigh correctly - she has a lack of integrity. He removed Josh Simons, the ex-Makerfield MP, because Simon's think tank investigated journalists - he had a lack of integrity.

Starmer walked the walk, he said things would be different and that MPs needed to change and he stood by his word. HE had integrity.

Now, Burnham comes back in, and restores then all. He tells us it's because we need change, and stability (lol!). No integrity. He tells us he is going to give us a new politics, but it's the same old factionalism, overlooking bad behaviour for mates, rewarding traitors (Healey, Sarwar).

People have such low expectations. Why don't we deserve the best to govern us? Why should we tolerate the lies about their motivation? Andy Burnham might well care about the country, but only as a corollary to himself. The behaviour displayed by Burnham and his team has been appalling, and their lack of honesty about it corrosive to democracy and trust in government.

As I said in my other post, I will struggle to vote for them again.

No, a sweeping statement would be to include every single person who doesn't vote Labour. Which I did not. Are you arguing that the people I'm describing don't exist?
And he's not my 'beloved Andy'. He's the person currently heading the party that best aligns with my own values, and I think a pragmatic choice given his popularity, when popularity is important to retain power.
If he does things I disagree with, I'll criticise him then on those actions. So far that hasn't happened. I don't have a problem with the way he had become PM. I don't have a problem with anything he's said so far.

A U-turn within 24 hours on increasing the personal tax allowance. Same circus different clown?

a pragmatic choice given his popularity, when popularity is important to retain power.

One of my problems with Burnham is this. Is he, in fact, popular - there has been no comparison of like with like. What happens if he becomes unpopular?

The whole stealth of his adoption of more power, and the cronyism in the appointments of those who undermined the previous administration, are a problem for many of us.

I didn't say you were talking about every Reform or Conservative voter. I said you were making sweeping statement that's not the same as all or every. You are assigning motives to a broad group of Burnham's critics without evidence, whilst criticising others for making broad assumptions about people they disagree with. I'm pretty sure that' meets the bar for inconsistency. You may disagree with those critics, but you can't know that they are all conservative and reform voters or even why most of them hold their views any more than they know yours.

As for whether he's done anything wrong, that all depends on where you set the bar. We clearly disagree on that. Personally I believe that someone seeking to be first amongst equals should be judged not only on what they do once they're in power, but also on how they got there, the standards they set, and the rhetoric they use along the way. The process and rhetoric absolutely stinks, and now he's calling for unity...

From where I'm standing, the Emperor is as naked as the day he was born. The axe he's dragging is the same blunt one that helped create the mess in the first place. Like another poster said, plus ça change

He has far and away the highest approval rating of any other politician. How much this can be attributed to his work in a different role, and how much to his transferable skills and qualities is hard to judge until we see him in this job.
I think he has a tough job with a very tough audience, and it's impossible to make changes to this country in a way that pleases everyone, because some people's interests directly conflict with others.
There are two options really. Walk a safe line and try not to displease anyone too much, but not particularly please anyone either; or be marmite. I don't know which way he'll go.

This in spades.

I think it works for Labour if he remains popular. But that can be a slippery thing. I prefer him to Starmer and don’t actually dislike him, but it feels quite precarious as the bucket to put it all in after all the speeches and cabinet meeting.

As it is so bound in being liked, and maybe he’s a sort of a nicer politician in a serious spot.

But I guess we’ll see. I don’t want an early GE, he’s got some time to show if his plans will work.

Anyone wanting a change of leader would be foolish to want a GE now. Kemi knows this. (As an aside, I respect her refusal to criticise the change of leader and attempts to explain that there was no wrong doing, and she would be hypocritical to suggest otherwise) It's just the idiot Farage that doesn't appear to have looked at the polls and thought it through.
I genuinely don't know if he will remain popular, what is popular and what I think are often very different things, as with Reform. So I'd not be best placed to call it.

I agree with every word of this.

He never committed to this, it isn’t a u turn.

Yes, the BBC describes it as "pulling back":

Burnham told the Times over the weekend that the "frustration about the personal allowance" he had heard while campaigning in the Makerfield by-election was "lodged in my mind".

The prime minister then told reporters on Monday that "all of this will be looked at" in the next budget but conceded any change would be expensive and "difficult given the financial circumstances in which we find ourselves".

The problem with changing leaders based on polls about popularity is, what happens if they then become unpopular, do you get rid of them?

I do think Louise Haigh having such a high up role is a problem as well.