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

True, and things have improved so much since then, so I can see why you’d be optimistic 😆

I’m not sure why council by-elections are still not reflecting any Labour / Burnham bounce since May.

Well either somethings changed or you were being too hard on yourselves, as its not the case now. Shame you didn't stick around for better times.

Yeah, things have improved in quite a lot of areas. There is a lot of work left to do though.

How many have there been in ten weeks?

I don’t think labours’s economic record has changed since the summer. Its reputation has been established over at least 50 years. As for sticking around, I could never bring myself to vote for another party, so I’ll just sit this out until Burnham is gone. A few of us from my local party are doing the same. We all feel the same about him.

😆

Here are a few slightly bouncy ones for you ES since Burnham took over. Two bounces of almost 20%.

So much for deeply held political beliefs.

I would love to hear of five areas where things have improved for all of us, not just for select groups.

Absolutely! I do believe, strongly, that there are ways to improve life here substantially with tax cuts.

In order to make it happen we need to decide what we want

• good life with certain floor for everyone, so everyone has some sufficient minimum

or

• equality, so we have a ceiling for everyone.

We can't have both.

People are unequal, their intelligence, talents, drive and ambition are unequal. You can't make a child who struggles to pass four GCSEs any higher than 3-4 to get the same result as a child who sails through eleven GCSEs with all 9. The only way to make it happen is to remove opportunity for education from 9 GCSE child. (Please don't say about extreme scenarios like illness or bereavement etc, you get the idea of my example).

What we need to do is to give opportunities to high achievers to thrive, to be successful and to enjoy benefits of their success; attract more people like this to UK. This can be done by tax reductions and trying to shift mindset that success is to be celebrated. In parallel, drastically reform welfare to make benefits time limited and linked to previous earnings, like Scandi model. Reduce /remove ER NI for under 20s or even 25s.
Our tax system punishes high earners that much that they reduce hours, refuse promotions and retire early. Businesses don't invest and don't hire. If you change tax regime economy grows and you get more tax receipts, but you also do need to change welfare drastically and urgently. Invest money in building social housing, work on changing mindset that urban population have to live in flats to be able to have affordable housing and minimise commute costs. Our NMW isn't low, our housing is unaffordable.

There are many ways to achieve a decent min standard of living if you allow some people live better than the others and drop idea of redistribution.

Personally, I’m quite content to wait for Burnham’s first proper test, and you can be assured, there will be one soon enough.

Chuck him a difficult ball - see what he’s made off. I said the same of Starmer, and look how fumbled catch after catch. What a total mug.

I sense Burnham will fold under pressure.

Can you list this improvements please?

What is it about Burnham that has so alienated you? (Sorry if you've said already on the thread)

YES to scrapping right to buy!!!

It should have been scrapped years ago.

Honestly, Andy Burnham could punch a puppy after doing that and I'd still love him for scrapping right to fucking buy.

(Disclaimer, not really, but still go Andy!)

Can you share the source of the data that you're basing this on, as the only info that I have found suggests that, since Burnham became PM, Labour held 5, lost 5 and gained 8. So, that would suggest a modest net gain of 3?

Not sure how reliable that is though, so happy to be corrected if you can share more accurate data from a credible source.

ETA Apologies, I meant to quote @EasternStandard 's post at 18.28.

The irony of a Burnham fan girl talking about “deeply held political beliefs” 😆 It’s too much.

I despise Labour. But I don't want AB to fold - I dread Reform much more than I hate Labour.

But I need to see the budget. And if budget is limited in terms of tax rises, I need to see the numbers in Manifesto. Their last Manifesto was a joke - anyone with Year 7 level of Maths could say that this budget was from la la land.

At present I see astronomic costs of AB's promises and no sources of funding for them.

I don't see a single policy to stimulate growth.

It feels to me that for many decades all governments taxed income (and Tory were so afraid to be called bad guys that our tax system is a complete outlier in terms of undertaxing low and mid incomes and over taxing higher earners). We reached a stage were there is nothing else to give income wise, so they are coming for so called wealth. I say so called, because it's not billionaires they will tax, but your pensions (IHT) and housing. London and SE will be decimated. So it's not just doesn't make to work hard but also not to save and invest.

The irony of a newly arrived poster having so much knowledge so shortly after they’ve landed.

That's an impossible ask. There will be nothing that improves something for one group without another having to concede some pre existing privilege. Improve renters rights and landlords have it less easy, same with day one employment rights which make it harder for employers to get rid of staff.
No policy will make things objectively better for everyone. The aim is to make things better for the majority.

Why?

Surely there are areas that benefit all of us?

Crime, health service, air quality?

Someone living in a low crime rural area with private health insurance may prefer to pay less tax and have lower investment in these areas.

You see, that's the problem.

Your post demonstrates this deep belief that it's a zero sum game, that to make it better for one you have to hurt someone else.

Renters rights bill - it didn't improve anything for renters, it made rents so high that people just can't find properties to rent. Private landlords exit market en masse. There will be institutional landlords left with sky high prices.

Employment rights - businesses reduced hiring and move to short term contracts instead of perms. Also make people redundant during probation at slightest suspicion. And this badly affects youngsters.

Unless you change mindset that you don't need to redistribute but to grow, we will be in this vicious circle forever

Health insurance does not cover emergency treatment, so they would benefit from a better health service.

And crime is never too low.

So to counter my argument that a policy can't benefit everyone, you are arguing that two sprcific policies have benefitted no one. Which doesn't really do the job.
To counter my argument you'd need to suggest a way to improve the rights of renters without making things less easy for landlords. A way to strengthen employment rights without placing greater onus on employers.
If you can do that, I'm happy to rethink my mindset.