What's up with Kier Starmer? He's going to resign on Monday?

[FakeNoose]

Clearly I haven't been watching enough news lately, since I have no idea what this is about!

[malaise]

1. Here

https://www.democraticunderground.com/100221317920

Good

[FakeNoose]

2. OK, so this has nothing to do with the Epstein evidence, I guess?

Back a few months ago Starmer's Chief Aide resigned because he shows up in the Epstein documents. (I'm not sure what it was about, but he had some communications with Epstein several years ago.)

Now this latest problem seems like it's unrelated to that.

[malaise]

3. Everything to do with that Epstein fall out from

the appointment of the Ambassador to the US.
The bye election cemented serious opposition

[hlthe2b]

5. So will Burnham--a small town former mayor--automatically become PM?

and be able to counter our a-hole-in-chief, Trump?

Maybe Starmer has to go, but damn. Is this guy up to it?

[Sympthsical]

6. Manchester is a large metropolitan area

Third largest in Britain.

It'd be like the mayor of Chicago being elected President.

[hlthe2b]

7. Sorry. I know about Manchester, but heard him referred as I did on the short blurb

that did not mention the city (Manchester) last week and never read further until now.

Too damned much consuming us in this country to pay special attention to Starmer's impending ouster but I do hope Burnham is up to dealing with someone like Trump. Is his advancement to PM automatic with Starmer's resignation?

[Sympthsical]

11. Similar

I didn't even realize Starmer was in that much trouble, because as you said, too many rings in our circus at the moment. Burnham's victory is the first whiff I saw of the entire situation.

Edit: It seems people were waiting for the special election precisely to replace Starmer with Burnham, so it seems likely.

[Emrys]

14. More than that, the sitting MP in the constituency Burnham ended up winning resigned his seat

specifically to enable Burnham to run for election and aim to get back into parliament.

Word was that there a few other MPs who might have been willing to make a similar sacrifice if necessary.

[Sympthsical]

17. Oh, interesting!

Thanks for the information.

[malaise]

9. All about him

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andy_Burnham

[muriel_volestrangler]

10. As well as being a large city as mentioned above, Burnham was an MP before, and twice stood for party leader

It was after the 2nd time he didn't get it he ran for mayor of Manchester. Manchester seems happy with the job he's done, and Labour has run out of other popular senior figures, so it turned its lonely eyes to him.

Starmer has become very unpopular. Some of his early decisions - to remove a state pension bonus for winter fuel bills, and to not roll back a Tory limit on child benefit to just two children per family - were very unpopular with the party and typical Labour voters, and he was forced to reverse them. Things aren't going great - such as his appointment of Mandelson to suck up to Trump - and he just doesn't seem to know how to get things back on track. He is often pandering to the right, on immigration issues, and that again is unpopular with the party, and doesn't seem to be pulling many votes back from the awful Nigel Farage and his Reform party. Instead, Labour's been losing votes to the Greens on their left. The Greens won a by-election for Westminster in what used to be a safe Labour seat, and huge numbers of local Labour councillors were voted out at elections in May, when Labour also lost control of the Welsh parliament for the first time ever.

Burnham is somewhat to the left of Starmer (not radically so - the 2nd time he lost the leadership election, it was to Jeremy Corbyn, and it didn't look like he'd get a cabinet job from him, so leaving parliament wasn't that surprising). The hope is he can persuade back the voters drifting to the Greens.

While his previous posts in government were domestic rather than foreign-facing ones, I'm not that worried about how he may handle Trump. Starmer sucked up to Trump too much at first anyway, though he seems to have developed a backbone more recently.

[Sympthsical]

13. There was definitely a Green shift

Don't quote me, but the last data I saw had the Green vote share shifting from 4.4% in the previous election to 0.7%. It seems they shifted to Burnham.

But who's to say, since Sarah Wakefield came off as uniquely and unusually unlikable as their candidate. Laughing inappropriately and maniacally like a Batman villain on social media was certainly a choice.

[Emrys]

16. When you look at individual constituencies in UK elections,

expecially high-profile by-elections like this one, you always have to bear in mind tactical voting in our multi-party system.

It's not necessarily true that Green voters who voted for Burnham have changed party allegiances, but they and people who might have voted for other parties in previous elections were keen to avoid Reform living up to some of the more concerning polling in the early weeks running up to the election, especially as Reform had a very strong showing in the area in the recent local elections.

As it happened, Reform's candidate was even more of an embarrassingly useless arse than its candidates usually are, but I'd guess people weren't taking any chances.

[malaise]

4. Good link

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/keir-starmer

[Emrys]

8. It's been brewing for a long time.

The major factor is polling, which has seen Labour outstripped nationwide by Reform UK Ltd (which party hasn't been delivering on polling's promises in recent real elections, but the trends' effects on Labour Party morale will take a long time to settle down, if they ever do).

That polling reflects the political ineptness of the first year or so of Starmer's tenure. His government began by trumpeting about an "unexpected economic black hole" (whose very existence is debatable) left behind by the Tories and heralding an outlook that sounded too close for comfort to the Tories' adventures in austerity in the previous decade. Punitive targeting of groups such as state pensioners, not infrequently followed by belated and humiliating U-turns in the face of widespread public opposition, set the seal on a totally uninspiring, visionless approach to governing only worsened by the fact that Starmer is utterly lacking in charisma and, in public at least, human warmth and spontaneity.

During the general election Labour won, there was much talk of the "Ming vase approach", on the basis that Labour could win because the Tories were terminally discredited and unpopular, and the vital overriding consideration was to avoid saying or doing anything or making any firm commitments that might make unwelcome waves.

It shouldn't come as a surprise, but it seems to have done for surprisingly many, that the resulting government seems rudderless and flatfooted, and has very little in common with what are generally regarded as Labour traditions (apart from the well-practised one of perpetual infighting).

Faced with early divisions in the party, Starmer was very trigger-happy in retaliating against MPs who didn't follow the party whip - ironically on some of the issues on which he later U-turned.

All this, more than specifics like the Epstein/Mandelson revelations (which were just another set of examples of ineptness, albeit on a relatively grand and grisly scale), has added up to a riven party with many desperate for new leadership.

Whether a new leader will be enough to turn things around is anybody's guess, but I suppose it's unlikely to hurt more than the current turbulent doldrums.

[SocialDemocrat61]

12. Good luck to the new Prime Minister

[JBTaurus83]

15. They sound more inept

Than our Democrats.