Burnham unopposed & likely to be PM by mid July

[Twiglets1]

Wes Streeting confirms on social media that he won’t stand as a candidate for the Labour leadership. He says that a contest where candidates spent the summer “exaggerating small differences” would not be good for the party or the country, and having spoken to Burnham, he is confident that that there is “a place” for the policies he has been advocating under a Burnham premiership.

The Guardian say this means it is now very, very likely that Burnham will be PM be mid July. It is conceivable that another candidate may come forward. But, apart from Streeting, no one else has publicly signalled an intention to stand, and with Burnham now a shoo-in, it is hard to imagine any other MP getting the support they would need to be a candidate.

heguardian.com/politics/live/2026/jun/22/keir-starmer-resignation-timeable-andy-burnham-labour-leadership-prime-minister-latest-news-updates?page=with%3Ablock-6a390a538f08adffab1e97fd#block-6a390a538f08adffab1e97fd

I am really concerned about a coronation for Andy Burnham without much scrutiny of what he is actually going to do as PM. He is likeable, yes, but that's not going to cut it when it comes to actually governing.

I say this a lot on here but honestly I think the issue lies within the Labour Party itself and how politically broad they are. There’s also a conflict between the back benchers who are further to the left and the leadership who are more moderate. The leadership get the
party elected but then get torpedoed by the left. But the left aren’t electable as history has shown. There needs to be a lot more party discipline. Or the party needs to split. I think a “Blair” type centrist party could do well but maybe that’s just me projecting my own politics.

The public deserves to know what Burnham’s plan is and it better be very clear and planned out if he ambushed Sir Keir from the back like this.

I agree with you! Hes successfully barged his way to where he is, it’s a joke now to say HE prefers Sept! So now we’ll have one or two who will stand just to please their new leader and try to quieten coronation criticism. Yet More manipulation. And do they all really think the British public will believe the farce a sham leader election campaign would be? No he has been planning to get to this point for long enough to have some semblance of what he would do once there?! Just crack on with the job you want and we’ll soon see whatever you will bring to the country, or not.

I also understand what people are saying when they say the Labour Party wasn’t given enough time etc but I think they would have been cut more slack if it was clear they were moving in the right direction but they just did a load of pointless showboating that pissed people off without raising any meaningful revenue ( IHT on farms, VAT on school fees, winter fuel) and then failed to tackle the big problems because they couldn’t get it past the back benchers.

Can someone more knowledgeable than me ( not difficult ) explain why Andy Burnham is so popular ?

Ed Milliband no thankyou. He was useless before and can take part of the responsibility for Cameron getting to do the Brexit vote and more years of austerity. And he should be slapped down as though he he is some old labour grandee. No he's just a bad smell still lingering

I agree with you about a centrist party though possibly I am just projecting my own politics too!

I can't believe this fiasco. How on Earth can someone be elected as an MP on Thursday & be in Westminster on Monday, being spoken if as the next PM??

I had such high hopes that Labour would provide stability and get on with governing and thus happens. The media are to blame too. They've been reporting on this & speculating for ages.

I'm shocked at Wes Streeting too. I'm quite cross.

Yep the wrong Milliband brother. We will never know if David would have succeeded where Ed failed, but a contributory factor to Brexit 😢

Even if our parliamentary system stays as is, there should be a new rule that only MPs who were voted in at the most recent GE can put themselves forward as leader. At least that way there would be some connection to the electorate.

You've summed it up in a nutshell here.

I think Labour are turning themselves into a shit show with this move and Burnham looks arrogant assuming he can just walk into the role of PM after two days as an MP.

They've got 400 MPs and none of them were capable of leading the party so they've had to parachute in Andy to save them? WTF

I hope Labour lose the Manchester mayoral election and the next general election, they're looking more incompetent every minute.

The media have largely caused this.

They carp on and on about whoever is in charge, pulling them to bits and driving up public discontent. I'm sure they just do it to create content but this is the end result. I don't think Starmer was so bad he needed to be replaced half way through his term though I disagreed with some of his decisions, such as low spending on defence.

I don't agree. It was caused by poor decision after poor decision, interspersed with u-turns.

When you've got business leaders telling you that your policies are killing growth and employment, and your chancellor keeps saying how well her policies are working, it just makes you look like your decisions are ideological, rather than what's best for the country.

Then you show that your back benchers have control and you can't get your own policies through parliament, which makes you look weak at best.

Starmer also isn't a natural 'salesman'. If he had the personality to be able to sell what he was doing to the electorate, it would have helped. We don't need gregarious politicians (like Johnson), but we do need somebody with enough personality to be able to bring the country round to their way of thinking (Blair had this).

I don't think the country is all about personality over policies, but if your policies aren't demonstrably working and you also don't have the personality / gravitas to sell them to the electorate (plus your back bench is against you), then you're doomed to failure.

You make some good points.

Starmer does need to take a lot of the responsibility of course. Though his personality hadn’t changed and he has been leader of the Labour Party for 6 years.

I just think the media are responsible too for why we keep chopping and changing PMs like they are dispensable as soon as we get the ick.

No prime minister has been or ever will be universally popular, even amongst the people who voted them into power. The Labour Party inherited a shit show so it was a tough brief from day one.

I actually don't think Starmer was so bad. Under hks leadership, he followed process, waiting times in the NHS reduced, the economy started to recover, the national minimum wage went up ha inf been stagnant for years, he resisted joining in trumps lunacy war, free breakfast club for all kids etc. He listened when people complained about the winter fuel allowance and reduced it's severity. He had a lot of good quality a and sometimes you just need to follow process to get a country back on track. But his downfall was he wasn't a strong character liked by the media, he was 'dutiful instead of 'dynamic'. The best dirt they could dig up on him was accepting a free Taylor swift ticket which I think he paid back! Hardly compares to the last administration level of scandal! And I do believe he probably didn't know about Mandlesons Epstein links or they were played down, but I can see why he was chosen as he had a good relationship with Trump. I note no one is going after the King, our head of state, for resignation/abdication for his brother's links to Epstein and yet the palace must have known about that as he was friends with him after he was charged. I don't know much about Andy Burnham but I really hope he isn't a power hungry style over substance sort of person. Out country needs stability right now, not a change of leadership trying to get to grips with the job yet again. To be fair to Starmer, I suspect he'd had enough of the infighting whilst he was trying to get the job done. I quite liked Angela Rayner too as she seemed good at what she did and was a people northerner, but she came a cropper too and was punished for trying to do the right thing. Let's hope Burnham isn't going to be farage lite.

Watched Newsnight last night.

It was Labour MP after Labour MP saying the best thing for the country is that Burnham gets in quickly and we don't have the distraction of a summer of debates.

They actually come across as more out of touch and clueless than the Tories did in the last parliament.

The Labour Party inherited a shit show so it was a tough brief from day one.

But they lied about not knowing what the financial situation was, lied about the cause of the black hole (some was of their own making), and then - to top it off - introduced policies which made things worse! I'm not saying we weren't in a bad way, but the evidence was that it was turning a corner.

The VAT on private schools and IHT on farms were both ideological policies. Neither is actually fiscally useful (I have no skin in either game).

They hamstrung themselves with their manifesto (but didn't let the content of it bother them when they cut WFA), then forced themselves into policies which made the cost of employing people far higher.

The errors are their own, and unforced.

Starmer performed better in opposition. But it's dead easy carping from the sidelines, not so easy to actually perform in government! (As I'm sure every party finds out when the GE brings a change of government.)

Does anyone know what Burnham's policies are likely to be? I appreciate we elect the party, not the PM, but at least the Conservatives thrashed out their policy differences in public before changing their leader.

I am weary of the permanent ministerial shuffle. It means no one follows through on projects and no one is in charge of their brief. As a country and a system, we've got to get back to four-year terms being the norm.

Agree with this too. I would vote for a centrist party and Labour back benchers are absolutely sabotaging their own potential success. I've come to consider them as idiots, tbh.

Why waste time on a contest when people like Streeting know they just don't have the numbers to win?

Anyway deals are being done behind close doors to get roles in a Burnham government in exchange for support/not challenging him as the next leader.

Better for the country as well to move on quickly to a new government that gets on with the job.

We'd need Proportional Representation in order for a new centrist party to stand a chance. Or for people to not be horrified by the thought of a coalition. But the Tory - Lib Dem one was an unmitigated disaster in terms of creating support for coalition governments.

For the record, I'm also for a centrist party and proportional representation. Both would hopefully represent the largest percentage of the voters (even the ones I don't agree with) and hopefully be able to get on with the job of actually governing.

Self-serving snake Streeting is almost as bad as Burnham then.

I wonder what the press / public's moniker for Andy Burnham will become in due course. His equivalent of "two tier Kier".

This so true.