Do you want a change of leader?

[Arewethereyetarewe]

BBC are predicting the PM should stand down. I know this is not news, but why can we not have a period of stability?

Andy Burnham is much lefter in terms of policies and may not follow the manifesto Labour got in on.

Left or right the country needs a longer term plan.

What do others think?

I want them to stop squabbling among themselves and get on with running the country.

Starmer hasn’t had the opportunity to show the grit and determination he had as head of the CPS. I agree Reeves hasn’t been great for him.

I remember when Brown took over, everyone said he wasn’t our prime minister as we hadn’t elected him; the same thing is going to happen.

There's many other politicians pushing this. Including from the Labour Benches. Opportunists all!
If AB does turn Left and away from the manifesto we should have the chance to vote in a General Election.

This is exactly what I mean. They are either scraping the barrel for the least worst, or giving jobs to their mates / people who will do their bidding.

It really is dire.

I think if AB takes over, it’s Nigel’s turn to run the country next. There will be a swing to the right, as a protest.

Sir KS may not be the most dynamic or flamboyant leader, but that’s okay with me, and I like the relative stability. As @FedUpandFiftyNine has said, he’s been a good global statesman.

@ThatsNicer What’s actually wrong with politicians being opportunistic? Circumstances change and they take the opportunity. I think it can be very damaging when someone has a fixed set of views and won’t change, inability to adapt is very dangerous in a politician, it was (is) one of Corbyn’s failings, he’s sticks to his principles no matter what.
The world moves and a good politician moves with in - hopefully within a set of values.

The rapid turnover of PMs evidences that the country is ungovernable, not that parties are not up to the job.

It feels unusual to find a thread where the dominant opinion is that we should stick with boring Uncle Keir and we don't want more Westminster psycho drama. It seems at odds with the media consensus that KS is toast and AB is a shoo in.
I despair of the bubble thinking inside Labour and the media. It is arrogant in the extreme.
Are we the norm or are we out of touch?
AB will be the poster boy until he collides with reality and then he won't be. I've even seen assumptions that KS should pave the way until September so AB can do his reading in and KS can take the hit for those pesky problems in the in tray like the defence budget.
As for replacing Rachel Reeves with Louise Haigh, surely that's a joke? Louise with a fraud conviction and degrees in politics and law, Nottingham and Birkbeck plus jobs in the council. Or Rachel with degrees in PPE and economics, Oxford and LSE and a career at the Bank of England.
Have we really become such a joke of a country.
I am a Labour member by the way and my local crew are pinning their hopes on AB as the new Messiah.
I believe AB's personal approval ratings fell several points during the course of the Makerfield campaign. There is really a danger that voters are going to get mugged off with this arrogance.

It's not the time to replace KS. He's good internationally, he's getting good results at home (& laying rhe groundwork for better). He's poor at communicating his ideas & his successes. He's quite nasal which some equate with whiny / weak. He's neither imo. He's boring for sure but I'd rather boring & competent any day of the week.

There should be an automatic general election if a party changes its leader.

Fed up with all these PM changes that make us look like a laughing stock.

No. Starmer has had some issues. The u-turns have been particularly frustrating. But as others have said, he's a steady pair of hands. We need a grown up in charge with the ability to think through complex scenarios, not someone who is good with soundbites and gives overly simplistic answers to the country's problems.

Labour need to improve their messaging. The economy has remained pretty stagnant since they came to power, and this will take structural reforms to fully address, but you would think from some of the hyperbole on this forum that the entire nation is bankrupt and we're all starving.

Unfortunately, not only is it going to take time to solve the massive mess the Tories left the country in, it's likely that global issues will cause FURTHER pain.

Labour can replace Starmer if they want. But until they are brave enough to enact real change, we are ultimately sleepwalking into a far right government.

I want SKS to stay. Burnham won't be any better and th papers will go for him just the same. 8 think he's doing a decent job especially keeping us out of trumps war.

I think the rule should be changed so that if there is a change of leader there’s a general election No thanks! The system is parliamentary democracy, not presidential.

I agree with the idea of cross party working nothing would ever get done, the largest parties don't have enough common ground. That's why we have elections, so something can get done. You'd end up with either total stalemate or ridiculous horse trading. If we are going to have coalition government we need PR and do it properly.

My view is KS can't stay. That's politics.

As others have said - this thread is really good! It makes me feel that it's not me that's off in their thinking. It is good to have a PM with a good brain, a decent, thoughtful man - Starmer has made mistakes but there are already results. And, yes internationally it has been good to be represented by an eminent lawyer - I am thinking of him going around Bucha, in Ukraine, where there were horrific war crimes.

No. The last 10 years have been absolutely ridiculous with the number of PMs & so much damage has been done. We need stability. The prospect of Andy Burham parachuting in as PM is putting me off voting Labour ever again.

Tbh, the media has a lot to answer for. The anti-Starmer stuff started straight after the election.

I don't know. I think it's a sign that pms are beholden to their backbenchers.

I've never been a fan of KS but I absolutely dread AB and a slide to the left and all the chaos that will follow.

No.

I hated the revolving door of Tory PMs. I hate the same shit under Labour. I'm tired of knee-jerk reactions. I'm tired of manufactured divisions fucking up our country.

I want stability. The UK needs stability.

And another huge proportion fear a slide to the right. And another huge proportion fear that a centrist achieves nothing meaningful and ‘flip flops’.

No government can combat the challenges that the UK is facing. It’s not possible. Any government will either be widely unpopular from the get go or fall into widely unpopular within 6-12 months. The electorate need to stop chasing the shiny next thing that will apparently ‘solve all our problems’, because it isn’t going to happen.

It’s the equivalent of a shopping addiction.

I’m past caring. We’re screwed. The country is bankrupt and there’s no magic man (or indeed, woman) who will be able to wave a magic wand and fix it without raising taxes.

And if they did, everyone would wail and vote them out, so they’ll never be brave enough to do it.

No because they were supposed to be better than that
He's been undermined by the MSM since day one and portrayed as the devil incarnate
Anyone thinking that any other leader won't receive the same treatment from our biased media and frothing social media is naive. Also, we're going to have the hypocrites that are the conservative party demanding a general election if labour tried to replace the prime minister without one
This nonsense is just going to go on and on and the country will continue to stagnate as there's too much focus on the politics and not doing the actual job of government. In fact, I will go as far as to say that this country is at the moment at least ungovernable

Blunt but accurate.

The only point I would change is that there are solutions to fix the problem namely cut Government spending and increase taxation and reduce national debt, except no one is going to vote for a candidate with those policies, so that they will forever remain a candidate and never a politician and so never have the chance to implement them.

Exactly this and always they’ve fallen for it hook, line and sinker… Starmer is very decent and definitely the best we have on offer as a country… but ‘they’ will read and believe the propaganda!

No.

The BBC and Laura bloody Kuenssberg & pals can fuck off. And take Fiona Bruce with them just because.

And don't even mention Chris Mason - who seems to exist solely on generating huge amounts of froth as if he needs it to feed on ... 🐛