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

Donations. It was a rookie error.

Economic Growth! which is a concept completely alien to Labour. I don’t think Burnham has mentioned it once. He just keeps banging on about fucking buses.

Freebies.

So, September 2024, then.

He mentioned it several times in his speech. You should watch it.

He says 'growth in every postcode' frequently.

Are you not familiar with Debbie's posting style?

Well, again, let’s see how the growth figures look over the next 18 months. The country thinks Labour are clueless on the economy - prove us wrong!

@NorthXNorthWest I see you're giving me sarcastic flower responses now. Perhaps you're annoyed because your earlier little insult got deleted?

For future reference, the private reactions are not supposed to be used sarcastically or passive aggressively. Using them in that way, along with comments implying that people are stupid, really doesn't strengthen your case. It just makes you seem like a rather desperate playground bully.

You’re not the country, much as you might wish you were.

I think you're confusing 'the country' with your own view. Lack of confidence in managing the economy isnt something directed specifically at Labour. 43% of voters don't trust any major party with the economy. Of those who do have some trust, 28% place highest trust Labour, 25% the Tories and 22% Reform. Make of that what you will. But its not helpful to project your own view as fact.

Oh, and another passive aggressive emoji from @BermudaRhombus this time? Do you want to join the bullies' clique in the playground too?

You can all put as many little passive aggressive flowers on my post that you like, I genuinely don't give a shit. And I like flowers.

I was just supporting you. Can’t win.

Maybe, but I was a Labour member and activist for 25 years until this summer and I know what I used to hear on the doorstep all the time. We were well aware of this as a weakness.

Interesting that "the country" apparently thinks Labour is clueless on the economy, and yet "the country" elected a Labour government with a large majority, is still putting Labour ahead in the opinion polls and still thinks that the current Labour PM is the best option for prime minister amongst the party leaders.

"The country" must think the other options on offer are really bad in that case.

Not buying it, given the tone of your earlier posts. But whatever. I'm not going to go and tell tales to the teacher.

Think we already covered this up thread. I was always worried that Labour supporters would misinterpret the size of the majority as a massive endorsement. Again, something we used to discuss a lot - complacency and all that.

Nobody thinks it was a massive endorsement. We all know that some off the seats were won with the narrowest of majorities. That's beside the point.

You can't make sweeping generalisations about what "the country" supposedly thinks of Labour when they are still the most popular party.

Maybe the electorate does think Labour is crap. At the last election, I certainly wasn't enthused by them. But it's all relative, and if they think Labour are crap, then it follows that they think all of the alternatives are even crapper.

Oh hearts this time? Nice.

Tbf the electorate did give a strong opinion in May which led to Labour doing what many claimed they don’t usually do - switch leaders.

So it’s not all been great for them. Voting since in council by-elections hasn’t changed much either.

And yet the national polls still show them leading.

As I said, my opinion is informed by the decades I spent in the party, at meetings, manning stalls and spending days knocking on doors. I have a fair idea of what the public thinks. But in the end only a public vote will give us an answer.

I think YouGov put Reform back up a couple of days ago, it’s pretty close. But in terms of what a party wants between polls and votes they’ll choose the latter.

Wow, you’ve changed your tune. You were all about polls when they were going your way.

That's right, there was one which showed Reform having a small lead. But if you average all of the latest polls, Labour are around 4 points in front.

Well, yes. And the last national public vote that we had for the Westminster parliament put Labour in charge.