The Labour Party under Andy Burnham

[Broucek]

They need someone with broad appeal and no reputation for controversy. Clue: not you, Angela

 

[brad465]

They need someone with broad appeal and no reputation for controversy. Clue: not you, Angela

Broad appeal rarely comes from one person: in the US a VP running mate pick is usually someone who covers the blind spots of the presidential candidate because the president rarely is able to do this themselves (Vance being a sycophant was an exception to this general rule). Even Blair needed help; Prescott and Brown covered some of the base/working class support while Blair grabbed the swing voters. The next Labour leader would need to have a Chancellor and/or other senior cabinet ministers who cover areas of support the leader themselves cannot easily appeal to.

 

[MotCO]

Sometimes the new leader is not one of the expected front-runners. One of the papers has suggested Alistair Carns, the Armed Forces Minister.

(It reminds me of the Yes Minister episode where Hacker reluctantly accepts he is the chosen one!)

 

[DarloRich]

Mcsweeny has quit

'I'm not prepared to walk away.' Starmer tells MPs as he fights for political survival after Mandelson scandal

It comes hours after Scottish Labour leader Anas Sarwar called on the PM to resign, saying "the distraction needs to end".

www.bbc.co.uk

 

[Gloster]

Rat leaves sinking ship.

 

[brad465]

About [insert expletive adjective] time.

 

[martin butler]

I would say that as his chief advisor has gone, jumped before being pushed, I might think, I would half expect Starmer to go next,

I can't see how he can stay on now, but who replaces him, normally it's the deputy PM, but whoever that is now, I'm not even sure myself, but if Labour is to remain in power beyond the next election, it needs a leader with a vison, and the guts to see it through,

 

[chris53]

I would say that as his chief advisor has gone, jumped before being pushed, I might think, I would half expect Starmer to go next,

I can't see how he can stay on now, but who replaces him, normally it's the deputy PM, but whoever that is now, I'm not even sure myself, but if Labour is to remain in power beyond the next election, it needs a leader with a vison, and the guts to see it through,

The current Deputy Prime Minister is David Lammy. The Deputy Leader of the party however is Lucy Powell

 

[martin butler]

The current Deputy Prime Minister is David Lammy. The Deputy Leader of the party however is Lucy Powell

I can't see Lammy getting it, the establishment won't accept a black man as PM, The right wing press will hound him, but actually, it might expose who the true racists are in this country, and make press regulation laws come in sooner, would David Lammy make a good PM ?

 

[Gloster]

It is a chance for Starmer to regain his authority, but it all depends on who he chooses as a replacement and what other changes he makes. Get it right and he has a chance to present a refreshed and vigorous party to the electorate, get it wrong and he won’t last the year.

 

[gabrielhj07]

Are the grown-ups in charge yet?

 

[brad465]

Are the grown-ups in charge yet?

The grown-ups work in other sectors that both pay more than a raw MP/Minister salary and come with much less public scrutiny. It doesn't matter what party these grown-ups support, or who is the governing party, they won't enter parliament under the current Westminster system.

 

[Purple Train]

Mcsweeny has quit

'I'm not prepared to walk away.' Starmer tells MPs as he fights for political survival after Mandelson scandal

It comes hours after Scottish Labour leader Anas Sarwar called on the PM to resign, saying "the distraction needs to end".

www.bbc.co.uk

Thank goodness.

 

[styles]

I would say that as his chief advisor has gone, jumped before being pushed, I might think, I would half expect Starmer to go next,

I'm maintaining that Starmer will stay. His main selling point was being some stability, and getting a new PM is not that.

It would be awful timing to leave before the Scottish or Welsh parliamentary elections.

He does need to be pretty open about things now though.

 

[Broucek]

I can't see Lammy getting it, the establishment won't accept a black man as PM, The right wing press will hound him, but actually, it might expose who the true racists are in this country, and make press regulation laws come in sooner, would David Lammy make a good PM ?

Well, the establishment accepted a brown PM with Sunak

The problem with Lammy is not his colour, he's just an unimpresssive individual

 

[Egg Centric]

The stupidest possible thing to do would be to defend McSweeny for the worst of it then just as things are getting better fire him. So that's what I expect to happen.

Guess I was wrong - there was an even stupider possibility

 

[Snow1964]

It is a chance for Starmer to regain his authority, but it all depends on who he chooses as a replacement and what other changes he makes. Get it right and he has a chance to present a refreshed and vigorous party to the electorate, get it wrong and he won’t last the year.

Probably hoping no further trouble short term, can easily survive Gorton and Denton by election even if Labour don't win.

But Starmer will really be on the ropes if Labour do poorly in the May elections (Scotland, Wales and some English councils). If results are dreadful for his party then it is just a case of staying on as a caretaker prime minister until someone else is appointed.

 

[Falcon1200]

the establishment won't accept a black man as PM

That is an absurd statement - Have you forgotten Rishi Sunak already? Anyway, it is not 'the establishment' which will determine who will become the next Labour leader.

 

[Nicholas Lewis]

It is a chance for Starmer to regain his authority, but it all depends on who he chooses as a replacement and what other changes he makes. Get it right and he has a chance to present a refreshed and vigorous party to the electorate, get it wrong and he won’t last the year.

Chucking McSweeney under the bus was always inevitable as hes loathed by the Left and Starmer needs them back on side. So they've got a scalp and as a result Starmer should now be immune from any attack prior to the local elections although given the runes why would anyone want to move until after them is beyond me. He may also come out of this a lot stronger now if he now asserts himself over the party and picks someone without their own agenda but actually just coordinates in the background to deliver government policy.

 

[GusB]

I can't see Lammy getting it, the establishment won't accept a black man as PM, The right wing press will hound him, but actually, it might expose who the true racists are in this country, and make press regulation laws come in sooner, would David Lammy make a good PM ?

I think we're past that. As has already been pointed out, "the establishment" has already had an Asian leader and the current Tory leader is black. It would be rather hypocritical of the right anyway (assuming you mean Refoam), considering prominent figures like Zia Yousef and (formerly) Ben Habib.

 

[jfollows]

I find the whole Starmer/Mandelson thing a huge nonsense from the Westminster bubble.
I mean that Starmer obviously got it wong and made a fool of himself, but he didn’t crash the economy, act as a lying hypocrite, and cause thousands more people to die than a competent PM would have done, to think of some of his recent predecessors.
He made a stupid mistake and he’s owned up to it.
And the candidates to replace him aren’t exactly stunning, someone who broke the financial rules her department was responsible for, for example.
It seems to be a load of nonsense whipped up by the Labour party.
I certainly criticise Starmer for other incompetence since he became PM, but I don’t see how replacing him will improve anything for anyone.
I don’t cry over McSweeney’s departure, of course.

 

[Richard Scott]

cause thousands more people to die than a competent PM would have done, to think of some of his recent predecessors.

Please explain.

 

[Farang]

Broad appeal rarely comes from one person: in the US a VP running mate pick is usually someone who covers the blind spots of the presidential candidate because the president rarely is able to do this themselves

Nixon joked that VP Spiro Agnew was his assassination insurance, so unpopular that nobody would want him as President.

 

[Harpo]

Please explain.

Johnson’s covid ditherings certainly fit that description.

 

[Cdd89]

he didn’t ... cause thousands more people to die than a competent PM would have done, to think of some of his recent predecessors

It's impossible to know how Starmer would have compared overall, especially since Labour Party might have been tearing itself apart in much the same way as the Tories did. However, we do have one specific example which is this post on X by Starmer:

https://x.com/keir_starmer/status/1417185971284496384

Boris Johnson's recklessness means we're going to have an NHS summer crisis.

The Johnson Variant is already out of control - and we're heading to 100,000 cases a day.

The accompanying video states that Labour does not support ending restrictions in July 2021 as it would cause an NHS summer crisis with deadly consequences. This was proven false.

Additionally, the use of the term "Johnson Variant" (which became popular on social media at the time) indicates that he was willing to use the pandemic for political purposes.

 

[Falcon1200]

Well done to Keir Starmer for finding someone to blame, and carry the can, other than himself; Not, for once, 'the party opposite', or the security services, but McSweeney. What a leader we have.

 

[YorkshireBear]

Well done to Keir Starmer for finding someone to blame, and carry the can, other than himself; Not, for once, 'the party opposite', or the security services, but McSweeney. What a leader we have.

And every other leader would do the same because that is how our political system works.

 

[sor]

And every other leader would do the same because that is how our political system works.

Other leaders didn't sell themselves as the clean break from decades of sleaze, including using the word "change" as the title of the manifesto

 

[Broucek]

Other leaders didn't sell themselves as the clean break from decades of sleaze, including using the word "change" as the title of the manifesto

Yeah, that's been the biggest dissapointment for me. I'm not a big fan of their tax and spend approach but they are what one could reasonably expect from a centre-left party. But there have been too many scandals given the sales pithc and that we are not that long into this parliament

 

[CharlieSpotted]

I would argue that there have been no 'scandals', no 'sleaze', just a bit of good old-fashioned political naivety and incompetence... now, naivety and incompetence are not good qualities that one would want in a PM or in a Government, but they are not comparable with some of the utterly abhorrent stuff we have seen in previous governments in recent memory.

Starmer's government has had absolutely nothing on the scandal-scale to compare with, for example, Johnson's COVID parties.