Would you vote for Angela Rayner?

[WildEnergySupplier]

Sounds like she's throwing her hat in the ring.

She says she's paid off the tax she owes and is no longer under investigation.

This apparently means she's free to run - and is going to.

Not in a million years

As a rather uncommitted Tory, I could/did vote for Starmer who is a rather wet lettuce Socialist, and feel fairly safe. But I am going to move heaven and earth against Rayner or Burnham whose beliefs fly in the face of economic reality.

If AB thinks he can bring the bond markets into line to do his bidding, he is several levels more deluded than I feared.

I think it is really sad that the Labour Party bullied Starmer so badly, but I guess that is what they do.
I also do not understand why suddenly Burnham is en vogue when in the past he was too Blairite for a lot of them. It is utterly confusing. Burnham is more like Bojo I reckon, he will say and do wherever the wind blows. If he has made comments on the very left, who knows if it is because he changed or because he realised that is what he needs to do to be elected as the King of Labour members. Wes Streeting is too young maybe to have realised what the nest of vipers is actually like.
In the end, if Burnham gets in, I doubt he will do the bidding of those who put him there. He will do Burnham. Now whether people are going to like that or not is anyone’s guess. Burnham, if he gets in, will face all the same fundamentals as Starmer. The only thing he has on Starmer is that he can possibly navigate the nest of vipers slightly better. For the country itself, he has nothing else up his sleeve.

Normally the “procedural” type like Starmer, Sunak, May don’t get in at the ballot box. But Starmer did - that is what the public wanted after the Torie chaos. To let him make the hard decisions and get the job done - that was the mandate. That’s why people swung.

Now it transpires Labour is THE Nasty Party, well done everyone. Torie the incompetents, Labour nasty evil bunch of backstabbing vipers. It is a terrible look and undermines everything they were meant to stand for. True colours and all that. I never actually truly believed it but now I do. I guess it was there in some of the spiteful policies. The signs are always there.

No way

Yes

This just shows me you don’t really know much about politics though. Historically Burnham has been further to the right of the party than Starmer. And ‘Manchesterism’ is all about the use of private finance in the local economy along with public investment. It’s Blairite through and through. He’s just got himself a bit of an unearned hard lefty reputation as he differs on some frontline community issues like welfare.

@WhatNextImScared - I think you are missing the point entirely. As far as the ex Tory swing voters are concerned, Burnham has come out of nowhere and appeared suddenly in the press a few weeks ago. They do not have a history of familiarity and affiliation like some ardent Labour supporters do.

If the whole next election is going to be fought on a “disenfranchised”/protest vote basis - Labour have just added a whole lot of disenfranchised swing voters into the mix. Completely unpredictable now where they will go. The fact that Labour members have the arrogance to assume they get a say and nobody else does - it is literally the doom of the party for the foreseeable. A reasonable bystander may have hoped they had learnt their lesson from the Tory mess. Appears absolutely not.

Labour have broken public trust, and that needs to be acknowledged. Voters are already using local election and may well use the upcoming by-election to register dissent.

Labour seem determined to close out the noise of a disgruntled public in the hope of preventing their own collapse.

They are not listening to the electorate. They are not listening to the hundreds of thousands who turned out in London calling for Starmer, and increasingly this government, to go.

Instead, dissent is too often dismissed with the usual smear: racist, far-right, ignorant. Keep saying it and perhaps they’ll believe it.

The Tories imploded and left a mess behind. That does not make Labour the virtuous saviours. Labour are now imploding halfway through their tenure and, like successive governments before them, will leave behind their own mess.

No, @WhatNextImScared I know nothing about politics, except that my BScEcon was titled Politics and Comparative Government!

Andy Burnham has wavered around and wobbled with the mood of the moment, from Blair to Corbyn to Manchester mayoralty -- where he seems to have done a fine job. But most of all, he looks like an opportunist.

What follows is cut and pasted from Matthew Syed, in yesterday's Times.... It's a cry for serious political strategy, not lobbyists and SpAds...

"George Bernard Shaw’s point about the professions being conspiracies against the laity can be reformulated as politics being a conspiracy against the public interest. The only way through this thicket of lobbyists is take them all on simultaneously: to drop the triple lock, to face down Nimbyism, to cut benefits to fund defence, to close tax loopholes for the mobile super-rich, to reform public sector pensions, to tackle the human rights lobby (not least to do what we absolutely must: stop the boats) and to confront the net zero brigade, a highly articulate group which exploits the perception of virtue to enrich its highly partisan interests. Whether we are inside or outside the EU is a mere distraction unless we confront this seminal task.

"Because if we do this, you know what will happen? Growth will restart. Work rather than benefits will start to pay. Wages will rise in a real way rather than through productivity-busting deals beloved by unions that trigger inflation. Electricity prices will fall. Industry will revive. The collective pie will start to expand, thereby improving the lot of all those vested interests, which were, in hindsight, not vested interests at all but nooses around our neck. This is what democratic politics is supposed to be about. It is doable but not amid the superficiality of ceaseless leadership speculation — which is now a symptom and a cause of our predicament."

No I wouldn’t . I do admire her . She came from nothing and has done a lot to get where she is . I remember that when in opposition , she was fantastic at Prime Minister’s question time when up against the Deputy Prime Minster Dominic Raab .

I just don’t see her as PM . Whilst her bluntness works really well in a lot of situations I can’t really see her handling Trump with the kid gloves that Starmer used effectively until the Iran war , when he had to make the stand that we weren’t going to join the US in the war .

I do hope that she gets a high profile post and comes back to government but I think Labour need to think of showing a balanced cabinet and not just from 1 section of the party .

I am disappointed in labour that they haven’t had a female party leader / leader of the opposition ever .
Just checked as vaguely remembered a caretaker leader . It was Margaret Beckett , who briefly became the opposition leader / party leader following the sudden death of John Smith ( 1994 ) but only until another man ( Tony Blair was appointed ) .

I think they have had some fantastic and very able female MPs , who have become great ministers and gone onto to do great work, why have they never been able to get to the top position ?

I really admire Jess Philips and ( Dame) Emily Thornberry too but not sure either would be great PM material either .

I think whoever gets the job , if Starmer is ousted which now seems to be when not if , it is a really difficult task .
I think the starting point has to be who will be able to win over all factions of the party and the trade unions . They have to be able to show a United front .

The problem with the imminent leader selection is that it becomes too inward looking . Who needs opposition parties when labour will tear themselves to pieces and do the job for them ?
They then focus on this and can’t 100 per cent focus on governing , when we are in very challenging times .

The new leader will secondly have to win over the public and face off opposition from the right ( Reform principally ) , the left ( Green Party ) and SNP and Plaid Cymru .All within a relatively short window .

Lovely to see such a thoughtful post @2026onwardsandup.

I think one of the reasons there’s never been a Labour female leader is because there’s a clear understanding that a woman has to be light years better than a man to succeed. All women know this. The only successful female leader has been Thatcher - who famously never had a woman in her cabinet. May was well meaning but inherited an appalling poison chalice, Truss was bonkers, ditto Jo Swinson (remember her?). I think Rayner is a leader of the future, she needs more ministerial experience and polish first.

I too love Thornberry and Philips but not as PM. Maybe this is just the wrong time. There are some fabulous women coming up - Naz Shah and Rosena Allin-Khan
spring to mind as well but not now.

Guest on GB news was saying that the economy of Manchester is growing at twice the national average and AB has done good things with clean/renewable energy, and he is also into PR? We might have to ease up on him a bit, maybe he is not all just window dressing ?

Yes, Manchester is absolutely booming. We do Labour properly up here. Lord help us with the new Reform councillors though.

I suspect he won"t win, WS might, and his EU nonsense will probably lose them the next GE, surprised Germany hasn"t bailed out of the "Great Project" by now TBH.

“I think one of the reasons there’s never been a Labour female leader is because there’s a clear understanding that a woman has to be light years better than a man to succeed. All women know this. The only successful female leader has been Thatcher - who famously never had a woman in her cabinet. May was well meaning but inherited an appalling poison chalice, Truss was bonkers, ditto Jo Swinson (remember her?). I think Rayner is a leader of the future, she needs more ministerial experience and polish first.
I too love Thornberry and Philips but not as PM. Maybe this is just the wrong time. There are some fabulous women coming up - Naz Shah and Rosena Allin-Khan
spring to mind as well but not now.”

Shabana Mahmood would make an excellent PM and she has it all, education, energy, she is a practising Muslim, from an ethnic minority.
But she is too right wing for you @blossomtoes isn’t she?
Why does anyone think Jess Phillips resigned.
They went to school together.

The answer is right there for you. Why can some of you not see it? You cannot see it because instead of choosing the right person for the country you can all only see the party and the members. And that does not work for the public and they will punish Labour for a very long time for their blindness.

I am not anti Burnham at all. But it is too late. You cannot do it this way. I would have agreed in principle that it is time for someone who knows more about the North of England to lead, but not like this.

Yes Mahmoud is too right wing for me. If I wanted Tories I’d vote that way.

What Andy Burnham has helped deliver in central Manchester is impressive. Investment has flowed in, the skyline has changed, and regeneration has clearly benefited parts of the city. But is the model sustainable in the long term?
Who ultimately owns these build to rent assets, and where do the long term profits go once construction ends? If much of the investment is backed by institutional investors, private equity and overseas capital, how much wealth actually remains in Manchester or the wider UK economy, and how much flows back into globally mobile capital through rents and asset appreciation?

Investment itself is not bad. In many cases it is essential. But there is a difference between one off regeneration and creating long term domestic wealth and sustainable tax streams. Also if politicians criticise concentrated global wealth whilst at the same time leaning on them deliver visible "growth", it is fair to ask whether that model will support redistribution over the longer term, or whether it is just creating new long term income streams for the same hard to tax, mobile global wealth they claim to oppose.

Andy for PM. No thanks.

Rayner is a leader of the future, she needs more ministerial experience and polish first.

That's the least of her problems.

Yep. Judged by snobs.

Ah, I see, he is just running the basic property Ponzi model, nothing new or innovative then? All the "build to rent" dross will go the way of commercial property bets IMO, overseas student visa applications are down 40%, that has to hurt Manchester?

Well she would be even Worse than Jeremy Corbyn. And we all know how that ended. Jeremy Corbyn was probably quite intelligent so at least he had that going for him.

I see her as a good local MP who serves her constituents but not as a party leader. I dont think she has the intelligence or breadth of vision to rule the country.

That’s the million pound question.

There is definitely some UK investment involved, but who really captures the long term benefits? If the assets are majority owned by global investors, then a material amount of the rental income and capital appreciation may ultimately flow outside Manchester and the UK over time, particularly given how the international investment can be structured from a tax perspective and obligation to maximise returns for investors.

The regeneration absolutely has value for Manchester. But regeneration and long term wealth that stays in the local area are not necessarily the same thing. How sustainable those benefits are in the longer term, especially if student demand formed part of the original investment appraisal... Like you say international student numbers have already started to fall now we have a less welcoming environment towards overseas students.