Starmer's resigned

[Sadcafe]

So the admittedly boring but truly decent PM has announced his resignation and the egotistical, pompous Burnham will doubtless become PM. God help the country

Why are you over the moon? Are you happy because Burnham will likely be PM and is likely to be more left wing?

Did someone hold a gun to your head forcing you to put the rent up?

Not ranting at all….it is what it is. I stand by my personal opinion that Burnham would not win a GE. I’ll bet that despite the calls for a GE, that it won’t happen, because they know Burnham wouldn’t be voted in by the people. Raynor was going ballistic when the Tories had a change of leadership half through their term, let’s see if she’s as equally enthusiastic now the shoes on the other foot, as it were…..

I actually think Andy Burnham could be a very good Prime Minister.

But we need this like a hole in the head.

And Burnham won't be able to do anything to materially improve people's lives in the timescales they expect them to improve. He'll be a good Prime Minister, but he's not a magician. The current government has achieved quite a lot and they get less than zero credit for it. So Burnham will fail, because no one can succeed right now. I truly believe we have become ungovernable as a nation.

Today is a very depressing day.

Starmer did not deserve this. He is nowhere near as bad as the narrative that's run in the press and on social media. And I'd have liked Burnham to have a proper run out of his role as Mayor and into a senior role without all the party politics surrounding this. It's all very very shabby. More fucking psychodrama.

It‘s a mix of issues, and all parties are going to face them:

1. The Media is entirely click-chasing now and relies on sensational stories and drama. “Will the PM stay or go?!” is a nice traffic-generator in a way that “PM making decisions for how country runs in difficult circumstances, many people not feeling deliriously happy with it - business as usual” ever can. Imagine how today’s media would have treated John Major!
2. Voters are increasingly encouraged to regard their political beliefs as akin to religious tribalism. There is no “Hey they have a point” to anything for the other side, THEY are always just evil bastards. This is happening on both sides of the spectrum: witness how quickly the “corrective” to woke overreach has turned into “HE DOESN’T KNOW WJAT A WOMAN IS” even several months after public U-turn on TWAW.
3. Political parties are an even more souped-up echo chamber of the tribalism voters are experiencing. No leader (who by definition needs to make compromises with reality and take difficult decisions) will ever be pure enough for the hardcore on the back benches and the extended party.
4. We really can’t ignore what a gift social media has been for foreign agitators. Right now they’re attacking Starmer, but you can bet that if Reform gets in and actually grows up and tries to govern responsibly, they would go after them too in favour of the next upstart party who promises to burn everything down. They want chaos, mob rule and weakened democracies with corrupt institutions and they’re pumping money into the new Cold War to get there.

What you kicked your tenant out because you want to give them a tiny bit of protection? Wow

Burnham is wildly popular round here as mayor, with cross-spectrum support. I wouldn't bet against him winning a General Election.

Labour has a massive majority which they won't want to lose, so I doubt they will want to risk a GE. They won't want to make the same mistake as Theresa May.

Nor would I. But it’s three years ago and we all know how much can change in that time.

Come on every party howls when PMs change and they aren’t in power and shut up when it’s them. That’s how the game is played. I’ve been more right leaning as I’ve gotten older although I did vote Labour for the first time in the last election. I’ve always rated Starmer personally.

Our whole country has been proper fucked since the Great Recession of 2008 there was fuck all money when Cameron got in and massive debt too. We then massive chain of upsets of Brexit -> Covid -> War in Ukraine and the effects on climate change -> now we have to contend with an unstable America.

So much of politics has become voting more against what we hate and less about what we believe in. I am not immune to that either. I’ll go with whatever party stands the best chance of opposing the far right that has become to greatest existential threat our country faces. Starmer has had to lead a party divided between a more rational centre and an absolutely deluded far left. I think he’s represented us well on the world stage in very difficult times. I probably rate him more now than when he got in.

Andy I’ll give a shot he’s a shade more left leaning but hopefully not irrationally so.

Trial by media. Shame he's gone.

Not necessarily. Yes a lot of people round here are fans of his, but a lot of people I know aren’t. Me included.

A truly decent PM. Really? Our country is on its knees. The public are crying out for a general election so that we actually have some hope of trying to make Great Britain great again!

You might think he was decent, OP, but he was way out of his depth and has made poor decisions - admittedly well intentioned, but that doesn’t help practically. That said, the replacement won’t be better.

A GE won’t fix things either.

We need a centrist government with people from the left and right and crucially, people who understand economics and human behaviour. I remain astonished that KS and RR, with their Oxford degrees, do not.

Being a mayor is doing politics on super-easy mode, though. I hope he is just as successful as a prime minister, but there is absolutely nothing in his track record to suggest he will be. I think we'll end up in the same place as we are now in 6 months, with a lot of wasted time and energy.

Didn’t the conservatives change leader three times while in power without triggering a GE?

We really can’t afford to be naive about foreign agitators now. Look at the arsonists in Russia’s pay, the Reform MP who was found to be on Russia’s payroll, the Labour MP on China’s, the Russian shots fired at the yacht in the Channel recently (and the weirdos who jumped out to excuse it!), the Russian navy cutting undersea comms cables, all the high profile Russian poisonings on our soil over the past decade, Chinese monitoring of dissidents on UK soil, Russian drones and fighter jets increasingly buzzing U.K. airspace - it’s a lot cheaper for our enemies to just get “sympathisers” to push agreed-on talking points screaming about the need to cycle through PMs and burn down our institutions!

And much easier to not be caught doing it, too.

Absolutely spot on. Society is thriving on drama. Depressing times.

The top rated comment under the Mail-online's main feature on Starmer's resignation says or words to this effect: Starmer lied and plotted against Boris Johnson and made up the Partygate scandal to drive him from power! it had well over 4k likes showing the level of ignorance, and lack of critical thinking in this country. If you genuinely believe that Partygate was fabricated by the then opposition to destroy Boris Johnson then I guess you also believe anything you see on YouTube, TikTok and Instagram that fits your world view. Heaven help us when we do have the next general election as telling truth, from proganda through to downright lies is going to challenge all of us

That’s not answering the specific line from the pp re the thread she follows.

All the reform voters and right wingers are online this morning, perhaps all the labour voters are at work while you lot dossing about at home

I'd love to see the IP tracking for mumsnet, although I'm sure most will use VPNs.

I felt there was a lack of direction and of leadership.

Of course no one going to be happy all the time - but the pushing through things then backing down in face of opposition only to do a version of them a bit later didn't look good to me at least.

The pound has dropped in value in response to Starmer’s resignation. I guess the markets don’t favour the prospect of a Burnham premiership, much like most sensible people don’t.

I feel sorry for Starmer. He was a decent PM, despite what the Times and Sun would lead you to believe. The UK's economy is growing at the exact same rate as the rest of the EU, albeit facing different challenges. But in this day and age, if you are not a good communicator, you are scuppered.

I do hope for the UK's sake there is no GE next year. Reform will get in, and Farage will be your PM. It's in everyone interests, including Conservative and Liberal voters, that Burnham stabilises the boat. I doubt there'll be a lurch to the left, Burnham is no Corbyn. He's a pragmatist and he knows anything too controversial will be a Labour own goal.