Posted by jjgreen 1 day ago
I think this is just going to keep happening as long as the British electorate continue to simultaneously demand massive welfare hikes, more funding for public services and lower taxes all at once. It's just not a rich enough country to afford it all, and it only seems to be stagnating more.
I seriously don't understand how changing the leader can fix deep rooted structural problems. No new party, no new leader can or will fix things overnight.
I don't know why people in the UK are so simple-minded.
One thing I hope Burnham does immediately is make building things and development much easier like in Manchester.
Sadly charisma is valued more by voters than other qualities of the political leader of a country.
Both are pretty charismatic in their preferred settings. Neither is a "complete package", but that's common in British politics, and you can certainly see why they won their party's leadership and led them to general election victories.
May, by contrast, really did lack charisma. A decent, principled administrator but far from being a people person. She became party leader in the chaotic period immediately after Brexit, winning by default after her rivals imploded. I don't think she'd have come first (or even second) in a properly-contested vote.
Isn't this basically an internal coup? That said I fail to see the point of him being replaced, the next person won't do any better.
Kinda, but the coup was because Starmer is polling badly, and in the local elections he performed badly.
> That said I fail to see the point of him being replaced, the next person won't do any better.
It would be difficult to do worse, but not impossible. (I bet a Labour version of Truss exists, whoever they are I hope they don't win).
When she was Home Secretary before being Prime Minister, it was her who blocked the extradition of Gary McKinnon
America wanted to extradite him and lock him up for decades (some even talked about “frying” him)
She’ll always have my respect for putting her foot down and saying no