To ask if you watched Andy Burnham’s bloody good speech?

[Househunt2026]

As in actually watched it and didn’t just doom scroll the commentary? It was bold and honest and pragmatic and actually made me hopeful that we have someone at the helm with a vision for a better tomorrow who has Britain’s best interests at heart.

The National Care Service is a masterstroke, paid for out of scrapping the triple lock and the very real savings of reducing NHS bills on A&E and hospital beds for elderly who should be in care but have nowhere to go.

Scrapping right to buy and increasing council control of housing, boosting the technical education track for young people, pushing renewables, nuclear and energy sovereignty, public control of key utilities for water to get bills down and reduce pollution, investing in people & getting them back to work, leasehold reform by Christmas and everyone’s energy bill will be reduced by fast tracking decoupling energy prices from global gas pricing and by having no VAT on energy bills by TOMORROW!

You can watch the whole thing here and be directly informed instead of getting your perspective filtered through all the bots and misinformation peddlers online m.youtube.com/watch?v=jyjTT_55Gi0

Nah. He wanted to cut Pip from disabled people and his govt have cut LCWRA in half for new claimants. I'm disabled so nah. I don't vote labour. I used to but I'm glad I don't and I never will again

What?

Six weeks versus two years.

You didn’t answer my question about him delivering on the manifesto, the manifesto that got him elected?

Listen, I am not here to defend Starmer, he’s gone, it’s done, all I have said is can we give Burnham five minutes to try and regain some ground? People need time to get stuff done, to allow to economic growth and improvements. We have to give them space to change things, it cannot happen overnight.

Who do you vote for out of interest?

Yes, that was the joke. Never mind.

I vote SNP. I'm Scottish.

Ah, that’s an option we don’t have in England!

Time will tell but there a couple of factors that make this unlikely:

Labour have 3 more years to piss off an already pisssed off electorate.

Don’t underestimate the right, they can be very tenacious if they see the threat of a left coalition on the horizon. And they’re more likely to get out and vote.

He wasn't given a chance though. The poisonous lies that were gleefully circulated about him started from day one. Including on MN. Some of it was really disgusting, especially when his children were dragged into it. I expect he's bloody glad to be out of it all. Some of his cabinet got the same treatment.

I don’t see why more right wing Governments in France and Germany necessarily mean we can’t enter into a closer relationship with the EU again. It may actually help us if they put pressure on the EU regarding freedom of movement and some more restrictions there as the UK public seem as a whole obsessed with immigration.
If we fully rejoin the EU then Labour diehards will have to give up control on some of their more crazy policies like private school VAT and will have to stick to tighter financial parameters and inflation targets etc. All round a good thing.

I feel really sorry that English people have so few options. The SNP aren't perfect but I voted Labour until I could not do it anymore. 2014 was the last straw

Personally I have decided it is a good thing for EU bureaucrats to legislate for us. From what I have seen in the last 10 years we aren’t able to rationally legislate or get sensible shit down anymore anyway. So delegate it and start growing economically again or it will simply a matter of years of pointless infighting over petty identity and cultural wars and blaming and shaming. It is so dull and unproductive.

Oh come on. He was useless. His government tried to cut the winter fuel allowance and then tried to cut Pip. And then made cuts LCWRA. Read the room. He got ousted for a reason

Talking of budgets, Burnham has a couple of weeks left to decide if 28th October is to be a snap election budget or a Starmer/Reeves sticking plaster budget.

If Labour trounce their Left flank on 8th October, in Holborn & St.Pancras, many around him will be urging him to go for a snap election. Some senior ministers are doubtless veterans of Gordon Brown’s 2006 procrastination, which turned into 2010’s drubbing.

A can kick election budget will reveal where they are headed. Odds at just over the 50% mark indicate it will be a snap job. Remember how painful it is for Labour Ministers to exercise spending restraint when in government, because their manifesto committed to not raising income taxes and not taxing “working people”, plus Gilts markets saying “Nein”. The Labour Party must have public money to spend or they will disintegrate in power.

Taxing private money to spend as public money is the sole organising principle of the Labour Party. It has no other purpose. Labour will do “whatever it takes” to get its paws on more “public” money, rest assured there will be no expropriation policy too shameful, no legal instrument too coercive.

Meanwhile, there will no economic growth at all, just degrowth as measured by GDP per capita. For Burnham and Labour's welfare and public sector trade union clients, that will be quite sufficient.

Quite right. Andy Burnham could have joined Kier Starmer’s government and supported him. But his giant ego and sense of entitlement meant he had to seize power himself. The man’s a fcking weasel. Like a number of our other recent PMs, it appears that he’s coveted the top job all of his adult life and yet doesn’t seem to have a fcking clue now that he’s actually secured it (see also Boris).

Yep Starmer did it to himself. Mostly Labour MPs were panicking about losing to Reform, so they ousted him.

I don't disagree that he made some massive mistakes. The biggest being Mandelson. He was toast after that.

I am talking about the vile lies and conspiracy theories which were circulated about him. The same doesn't seem to have happened yet for Burnham, thankfully.

I first voted Labour almost 40 years ago. How fucking long does it take for them to get things right. Its fucking tiresome.

They don't give a fuck. They are Tory lite. They care about their salaries. Nothing else.

‘Vile lies and conspiracy theories’ didn’t do for Starmer.

Most of us know what did, however.

I was a Labour member for 25 years and resigned the day that Burnham ousted Starmer.

Oof. Harsh assessment! I am still very much on the fence on Burnham. I want him and Labour to succeed but I agree that what he did to become PM was very slimy.

Yes, and his doomed partnership with Reeves - it’s hard to think of a worse PM, Chancellor combination, historically.

And Starmer did his level best to block Burnham’s return to Westminster, of course...

Hmm if we're comparing warmongering it's worth taking a moment to remember that Kemi and Nige both said we should follow Trump into Iran in spring. We'd be at war right now.

They didn't help, though. And were completely unnecessary and rather disgusting.

What do "most of you" think "did for him"? I think it was Mandelson.