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- cross-posted to:
- world@lemmy.world
- europe@feddit.org
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This article is weird - the headline reads as if it’s a done deal, but the content reads that we’re in the same situation: Burnham’s side pressuring Starmer to step down, Starmer’s side denying he’s going to do so. So the news is actually just Burnham’s side want Starmer to step down.
I generally like the Guardian, but the coverage over the Makerfield by-election and Burnham’s aspirations have felt quite biased. They had 10 articles on the Makerfield by-election itself on Friday, and a lot of the themes seemed to be pushing an inevitability narrative of Burnham being leader.
The Guardian is usually better at separating editorialising from news, so I’ve been a bit disappointed in the coverage. I’m actually leaning in favour of Burnham but it feels like the Guardian focusing on an inevitability narrative is like it’s trying to help shape the story rather than just report it. It’s a left wing paper but it’s not a good sign that it’s blurring the lines between editorial and news.
It could be the Guardian manufacturing consent for Burnham. Or, they could be talking with Labour MPs off the record. Sure, Starmer hasn’t announced anything, but anyone who know, KNOWS.
I don’t really know where I land on The Guardian, they’re mostly factual so probably the latter. Do they have a wealthy owner, for whom Burnham is particularly advantagous, to justify manufacturing the consent?
He announced his resignation, it was probably the latter
I think he outlasted that head of lettuce
Boo no fun. I wanted to see him get dragged out of downog street kicking and screaming.
Starmer can kiss my arse. I hope the door hits him on the way out.
So, this other guy wins a special election and now he’s gonna be the next PM? How does that work?
John Oliver did an episode of Last Week Tonight on it recently. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RZL_TctrNco
Basically, Andy Burnham has majority support within the Labour Party to be the next PM, but he wasn’t a member of Parliament, which is necessary to challenge a current PM for the role. So the Parliament member for Makerfield resigned to hold a special election so that he could (hopefully) win the seat, which he did, and now he’s set to become the new PM.
And here I was trying to summarise the Westminster system with four paragraphs.
Only thing worth noting is a PM isn’t some presidential position. It’s generally just the party leader in the leadership position of the other ministers.
If a party decided they want to take turns of being leader each month, they’d each take a turn at being PM too.
Ah, this explains it. I was wondering how some random person who won an off-cycle election could just jump into leadership like that. But it seems that he had the leadership support already, and the election was engineered to make him eligible.
I was curious as to why none of the already elected Labour MPs would get the job. I guess none of them want it. Let’s see if he lasts longer than my salad.
They’re all widely seen as either tainted by Starmer, not good enough, or too new (as about half of them came in at the last election 2 years ago). There are some who have ambition, but not sure if they’ll have the support necessary to challenge.
The too news generally come under tainted by starmer - there was a lot of parachuting and overriding CLPs in the last election.
I wouldn’t worry about it - it’s become a rotating door of late.
Just trying to understand how it all works in the UK. What makes him so special? Did a watery bint throw a sword at him?
first of all, as we all know, strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government…
so, in UK you don’t vote for the PM. you vote for your local representative (Member of Parliament, MP). whichever party has the most MP becomes the ruling party and forms government, and the leader of that party becomes PM. if members of that party lost confidence in their leader, they can choose a new one. so if someone wants to be the new PM, they can do that by getting enough MPs behind them.
formally the new PM must be chosen through a leadership challenge process, but if the current PM sees the writing on the wall, they might choose to just resign with some dignity intact, instead of being dragged out kicking and screaming.
Top quote!
Think of it like the speaker of the house (assuming the one asking for clarification is American). They just have more than two parties.
That’s the problem, I’m not sure it’s ‘worked’ in the UK for a long long loooong time…
And your suggestion of a watery bint throwing swords might be a better method of choosing a leader than any that have come about for a while now
Lots of countries have a line of succession, which kicks in both for resignations and deaths.
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Brits, what’s the read on his presumed replacement? I figure he can’t be more of a disappointment than Starmer has been but I’m still curious.
It’s likely to be Andy Burnham, who IIRC is currently the only British politician with a net positive approval rating. So that’s something. 🤷♂️ He’s been pretty successful (and well liked) as the mayor of Greater Manchester, and generally comes across a bit more human than the other lizard-people in British politics.
He’s often described as “soft-left” by the media. So far, he’s been a vocal supporter of proportional representation, which is great, but whether he’ll drop that as soon as he gets into Number 10 is a different matter.
He’s a member of the “Labour Friends of Israel” group, but kinda seems to mostly sit on the fence on that whole issue. (He called for a ceasefire but refused to call it a genocide.)
I’m sure other people will chip in with other problematic things about him, I haven’t looked too deeply. 😃
This is a good summary.
I think whats missing is a lot of the hope being put into Burnham is by disillusioned Labour MPs, and may not reflect actual change.
Burnham is personally popular, but being Mayor of Manchester is generally an uncontroversial role: he can’t raise taxes and he has limited power, but he can be noisey complaining about how the Westminster Government mistreats the north and also claim a share in the success for projects like the integrated transport system. Things people don’t like in Manchester he can blame on Westminster.
While Burnham is a good communicator, he can’t actually change the fundamentals for Labour in government: there is no spare money even after tax rises, the economy is growing slowly (or shrinking slowly factoring in inflation) which both severely limits what can be done. Many Labour MPs fear they will lose their seats in the next election, and can’t see how to change things.
Burnham may be better at communicating how bad things are but I think realistically he will also become very unpopular, as the problem isn’t the prime minister as much as the reality. “Manchesterism” as a political philosophy is fools gold.
I’d also add: Burnham chose not to stand in the last general election when he would have been a shoe-in as an MP. He has instead had to gamble now to become an MP as he’s seen an opportunity to become PM. While is gamble paid off, I’m not sure that shows very good political judgement, and may be a warning about what’s to come.
I think the only way the UK has of getting it of the mess they’re in is to ditch their idiotic election system. They had the Tories in power for most of the last four decades and they’ve absolutely fucked up the place, while never actually having a majority of the vote. Burnham at least said he wants to do electoral reform so let’s hope he comes through.
Burnham at least said he wants to do electoral reform so let’s hope he comes through.
In 2015 Justin Trudeau said he’d do electoral reform for Canada, and we’ve had 3 un-reformed elections since then. Don’t get your hopes up.
Thanks, sounds like a marginal improvement but I suppose we’ll see about that
With the turnover of British MPs, it sometimes take me a bit to learn the new names. “Starmer” took longer for me to learn because whenever I’d read British news, it always looked like a bit of slang for a derisive word instead of a proper noun. When I finally figured out it was the new PM, I thought the word Starmer as a derisive slang was entirely appropriate.
A Starmer is where you position your asshole above your head and shit into your own mouth.
“He’s a real starmer, that one.”
Blair and Thatcher staying for 10 years was actually outside the norm
Starmer is a pedophile
Steven Hartley has a Lemmy account? Jack Denny maybe?
Lolol not even 2 years.
