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

again you are most welcome

And where was the split there? If you recall, our PM was elected as leader entirely unopposed because there was widespread consensus he was now the best person to take the role. Obviously there were people who wanted Starmer to continue, just like the Greens would have loved to be elected in Makerfield. The unity lies in recognition that what you might prefer may not be viable so you join together for the next best thing.
Contrast this with the right in Makerfield who you'd have thought wanted nothing more than to see Burnham elected the way Restore worked to take votes from Reform, plus constant criticism of Reform by the Tories, even though they knew they didn't have a prayer themselves.
The same is replicated at a national level, with Badenoch taking every chance to humiliate Farage. Don't get me wrong, she's right to do so. But unless she's labouring under the delusion it will win her back Reform voters, its a poor strategy to see off the left.

🙄

Was that speech anything but fair words?

Still not buttering my parsnips.

He wasn’t elected unopposed. The Labour MPs waved him through because they knew that allowing a vote of the members would rip the party apart. As it stands, Burnham has been hugely divisive within the parliamentary party and is utterly despised by a number of Labour MPs.

That is true. Panic over Reform makes the left jump. Well Labour anyway.

We had all this with Starmer and it's repeating with the same client journos acting like Burnham is the second second coming of Labour. Burnham is better than Starmer in the way all the other PMs were because at least he has an idea what he wants to do but like the other PMs it doesn't mean he's any good.

nor mine, which btw I roast and don't need buttering. As I said, Lawrence Fox can make a good speech and he is a total loony

Burnham has talked openly about suffering with imposter syndrome, but deep down he knows what everyone else can see. He’s simply not up to the job and he’s hopelessly out of his depth. I blame the people behind him who convinced him he should go for the leadership, it wasn’t really fair on him.

TBF, I’m being hyperbolic myself and by “go to war”, I mean made me strongly feel that he’s a politician I will passionately defend and maybe even join the Labour Party to campaign for if he carries on as he is, and delivers on what he’s said he will.

I suppose it’s less about whether I personally am suited to these forums (and I think you’re probably very right that I’m not) and more about me questioning what these forums are actually useful for, if they aren’t for constructive, evidence based, open minded debate - other than to further entrench people’s pre-existing views and push people further into their own echo chambers.

And where was the split there?

The labour party has more splits than a gymnast. Who should be leading, how and whether to reduce the deficit, how and whether to control immigration, how and whether and when to increase defence spending. It's got at least three two faced traitors in its cabinet.

If you recall, our PM was elected as leader entirely unopposed because there was widespread consensus he was now the best person to take the role.

He wasn't elected by anyone. He was appointed because nobody stood against him because they knew they couldn't get the numbers to win. That is not the same as a unanimous that he was the right man.

Obviously there were people who wanted Starmer to continue, just like the Greens would have loved to be elected in Makerfield. The unity lies in recognition that what you might prefer may not be viable so you join together for the next best thing.
Contrast this with the right in Makerfield who you'd have thought wanted nothing more than to see Burnham elected the way Restore worked to take votes from Reform, plus constant criticism of Reform by the Tories, even though they knew they didn't have a prayer themselves.
The same is replicated at a national level, with Badenoch taking every chance to humiliate Farage. Don't get me wrong, she's right to do so. But unless she's labouring under the delusion it will win her back Reform voters, its a poor strategy to see off the left.

Mid term strategies in by elections when the party in power has a huge majority are largely irrelevant. You won't see Greens or Corbyn or Lib Dems standing aside for Labour in a general election.

More of those fractures will emerge as Burnham starts to commit to some policies. He can’t hide in his comfort zone of good vibes and regional bus fares forever.

That’s where the bank of “People Who Have Saved and Done What Was Asked of Them” comes in. They are merrily finding ways to “reward” that behaviour. Why worry about fixing structural issues when you can just take from workers who have managed their finances better than successive governments? It’s much easier to dispossess them than to grow the economy or tackle billionaires.

Or he can tax new, small and medium businesses a bit more. As we have seen, that has been brilliant for growth.

"Those are my principles, and if you don't like them... well, I have others."

Oh the irony of this from someone for whom Johnson could do no wrong.

I disagree. He is the consummate politician. He has been trying to get this job for 20 years. He doesn't have imposter syndrome at all. He says he does because he is surrounded by dewy eyed class warriors who love to hear a story of the plucky working class from yesteryear. Compared to Kier Starmers who was a lawyer to his bones, Burnham is a politician to his bones (not a criticism-political parties need political leadership and people who know how it works). What did for Starmer was his own MPs and his lack of political ability. He is far more likely to be able to get things done because he's not being constantly undermined by his own party. Partly because they have told everyone that there is no one else.

Right now, he will say anything to deflect from immigration and the Manchester City debacle.

You know he is a liar right? I mean everything that comes out of his mouth is lies and uncosted lies at that.

We are absolutely screwed if you think him, labour and socialism are the answer to our problems.

Well the Tories weren’t, were they?

Do you differentiate between the Tory government of BJ, and the current shadow government?

Social care for who?
The masses coming in on boats who are anti-Western?

You seem to think his party are behind him. I’m optimistic that he’ll unravel very quickly once the first budget comes along.

His party has told the world that out of the 400 MP they have and who CLP'S selected throughout the country, none of them were competent enough to be leader of the party, so they had to engineer a by election to get someone else in. They have no choice but to be behind him. The only other place they can go is the Greens.

I’m not so sure.
It will be a damp lettuce of a budget with a lot of ‘jam tomorrow’.

I am keen to see how that very principled man John Healy manages the Defence budget that he resigned over.

I think it will be more borrowing under the guise of investment, when actually using the money to pay the running costs.

Any party who believed their strategy in Makerfield to be 'irrelevant' was stupid in the extreme. It was arguably the most important by election we have seen, given it was the political event that decided our PM, the direction of the government and of the country for the foreseeable future.
Had the right got its act together, Reform managed to find a candidate who wasnt a misogynist half wit, Restore stepped aside, Burnham may not have had such a decisive win and we may still have Starmer. Which if things continued to follow the trajectory they were on, would have been bad for Labour's future chances.
Parties may not stand aside for Labour in a GE, but the left leaning electorate will vote tactically to keep Reform out. Not sure if there's the same appetite amongst those who've turned to Reform from the Tories after 14 years of disillusionment to turn back. Or indeed from intelligent moderate Tories to vote for Farage's crooks and incompetents. I could be wrong of course.