Starmer announces resignation as prime minister and leader of the Labour party
18 hours ago by erusuoyera to c/uk_politics
Narrator: "something worse showed up."
When was the last time there was a good one? In my lifetime there's been Thatcher, Major, Blair, Brown, Cameron, May, Johnson, Truss, Sunak and Starmer. Name one good one amongst that rogues gallery. I will not hold my breath.
God, choosing a least bad one is even hard. David Cameron or Gordon Brown? I don’t know if I was just less informed about British politics during their tenures or if they were actually better.
Edit: oof, I forgot about how Cameron handled brexit, not him.
Probably Gordon Brown or John Major.
Brown sold off the gold reserve when gold was at a record low. He tried to increase pre-charge detention to 42 days and to introduce lie detectors into benefits claims.
That’s fair. Major was before my time, so I just did a quick wiki glance, and did automatically dismiss him because he was a conservative in thatcher’s cabinet, but that doesn’t make him inherently worse than the rest on this list.
Plus, we just saw what you get from a former civil rights lawyer in the Labour Party
Cameron brought us get the unemployed to work unpaid for private corporations to keep their unemployment benefits.
If you want to argue that is technically paid work you can buy then it was paid at £1.60/hour, far below minimum wage and the tax payer was paying it rather than the corporation benefiting from it.
I realized after I commented that he was also the one who brought the brexit referendum forward
Brown probably, but he didn't have much time to screw anything up.
Brown is frequently cited by economists as the person who did most to repair the world economy after 2008 and prevent the collapse from being catastrophic.
Truss, She was fantastic. For a week or two
No, you are thinking of the cabbage!
Name a good one. In the non-gaslit version of history even Churchill ("our greatest PM") was despised. Seems to me each PM is used to get the Establishment over a bump and then dispensed with in favour of another "jam tomorrow" character who'll take the country's ire over the next crisis. It's systemic.
Depends what you mean by good?
Both Thatcher and Blair - whatever your opinion of them - led governments that made lasting changes to how the country worked. Even the coalition managed to achieve some significant things while navigating multi-party government in a very resource restrained environment. I think the current malaise started with Brexit where the population watched parliament struggle to enact the will of the people and have come to the conclusion that politicians are a self serving class with no concrete ideology to form a program for government. Starmer sweept into a loveless majority with little more of than a plan of "be less shit than the Tories" I'm not surprised they want to dump that for anyone who seems like they have a plan.
Who said anything about a good one?
I just want someone who's less unflavoured cold porridge and a bit more present.
BoJo the clown might've been a terrible PM but at least he had some presence. Sure it was mostly because the majority media was backing him, but at least you heard about what he was doing.
Meanwhile, Starmer actually got shit going in some aspects: and the media was playing crickets noises throughout. Because our Prime Milquetoast was afraid of actually hammering home the achievements, while letting the media get away with their usual bullshittery crap.
Pretty much all I want is a PM who gets shit done and makes sure people know about the positive changes coming.
I disagree about Starmer getting things done, but you're right about Boris.
If someone told you they were a massive fan of Boris, you might think they are wrong, but you wouldn't be surprised.
If someone told you they are a massive fan of Starmer, you'd think they are a bit weird.
Eh, Starmer did get some stuff done.
The Renter's Rights bill as well as the leasehold system reform in itself is a major achievement.
Workers rights also saw some improvements (SSP from day one, no zero-hour contracts, no fire-and-rehire). Not as much as I'd like to see but it's much more than what the Tories achieved in 14 years...
Then there's the whole plan of bringing railways back into public ownership, and plans to do so for utility services too. Sure, this won't have a visible effect for a few more years but once properly in effect, and Starmer could've gone for a handful of low hanging fruit - things that need immediate change that do have immediate visibility.
Not to mention that the economy IS improving, wages are getting better, inflation is down, so overall the UK is doing better than it was doing two years ago. The main issue is, that there is no media visibility of this at all. You too are saying there's not much Starmer has gotten done yet even a cursory overview of what actually happened in the past two years shows that there is, actually, a lot going on. And then I haven't even touched down on the improving NHS wait times, crime dropping considerably (homicides alone are the lowest since 1970), or how illegal immigration dropped nearly half in just the past year.
But don't get me wrong, I'm not praising him - he could have and should have done more. No argument there. But let's not minimise what he's actually gotten done when compared to any PM of the past 16 years, he's light-years ahead of any other for actually improving Britain for the average citizen.
@fonix232 @erusuoyera @Mantzy81 Starmer's backbenchers are just totally unsupportive of radical change.
A lettuce?
I would like to believe that this is causal not correlative. You leaving caused this to happen. You are too powerful.
I've got an idea!
I will start a holiday fund. Whenever y'all want a new PM, just donate enough so I can head off for a week or two. With a country of 60 million people... If just half of you want a new PM, a single one penny donation will make it happen.
He’s doing a good job of that himself.
The previous MP for Makerfield was Josh Simons. Simons ran the Labour Together think-tank which purged the Labour Party of lefties and installed Starmer as leader.
When several investigative journalists began looking into potential campaign violations for Starmer’s successful General Election, Simons hired a PR firm to have private investigators probe the journalists’ private lives. He also directed MI5 to investigate them on false accusations of Kremlin ties.
When this came to light in February, Simons was forced to resign the ministerial positions Starmer had rewarded him with.
As buy-in for his comeback, he resigned his constituency to enable Burnham to stand. Burnham is widely expected by party sources to reward Simons with a senior position at No 10.
With respect, while that doesn't sound good, I don't think it's the kind of issue that leads to anything like "universal revulsion". It's the kind of thing that incenses politics nerds like us.
I also think "widely expected" is doing a lot of heavy lifting in your last claim.
I get Nick Clegg vibes from Burnham tbh (similar to Zack Polanski of the Green Party), it feels like it's only a matter of time before he betrays everyone who buys into his words.
The fact that Wes Streeting has put his hat in with Burnham all but confirms it.
Maybe I've not been playing close enough attention to politics, but I'm not entirely sure what he's done so wrong to warrant this. He's very middle of the road, hardly wowing everyone, but hardly very scandalous either (well, apart from appointing Mandelson I guess). Is this now just going to become the norm, changing PM's every year?
Under his tenure:
- terrorism laws have been exploited to criminalise property damage and the holding of signs by pensioners
- the nation's medical records have been sold off to the known foreign fascist controlled private company Palantir
- our freedoms on the internet have been curtailed
- he appointed a known friend of a paedophile and twice previously disgraced minister as US ambassador despite vetting saying not to
- austerity has continued
- the broken workfare (not welfare) system has continued
- the UK has continued to supply weapons and intelligence to a genocidal state
- trial by jury is looking likely to be abolished
- private water is still a fucking disgrace with little done to remedy it
He's a wet blanket who's incapable of commanding a cabinet, and spends more time making stupid TikToks like he's on the campaign trail than doing anything of substance. His actions, cabinet, and command of that cabinet, contradict everything he says he stands for.
Meanwhile the railways are getting nationalised, we finally have meaningful rental reform, and have stuck to green commitments.
Trial by jury is likely to be abolished
False.
Criminalise property damage
Is already criminal
Anyone can focus on the bad things and write lies. That's what the media does, and what you've done. It'll be the same with the next guy.
You mean like how you've just written a bunch of lies?
Jury trials:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cn5lxg2l0lqo
https://www.independent.co.uk/...
Criminalise property damage:
Not under terrorism laws.
None of your links say jury trials are going to be abolished. They say the proposal is to make some trials currently conducted by a jury judge-only. Is this you repeating your honesty or your reading comprehension?
Not under terrorism laws.
No dispute from me there.
The railways were effectively nationalised in 2020 with the ending of franchising and switch to National Rail Contracts , and Great British Railways has its origin in 2018 during May’s government.
The implementation was Starmer’s, but it was more of a rubber stamping of previous Tory policy.
Railway nationalisation needed new legislation this parliament to enact it. If we're blaming Starmer for "continuing austerity" (despite what he's done to reverse it, like lifting the two child benefit cap) and crediting the Tories for rail nationalisation, then I have to ask who's side we're on.
It's one thing when it's the media doing this kind of mud-dragging, another when it's the supposed left-wing comments section of Lemmy.
How long will you be supporting your current darling - be that Burnham or someone else, should they get into power? How long will it take you to credit all their successes to someone else, all the failures of the country and the world to them, and focus on the latter to the exclusion of all else?
Absolutely nothing. He's not been amazing by any stretch, but his net approval rating is -46, beating Liz Truss at the height of her unpopularity by a mere 1 percentage point. Liz Truss crashed the economy and the entire country knew it, while Starmer has... U-turned on a few things. Generally been a bit milquetoast. Speaks with a nasal voice?
His unpopularity is deeper than Boris Johnson, who was swilling wine with his mates while the rest of us were enjoying the delights of yet another quiz on Zoom, who illegally prorogued parliament to deliberately impede the democratic operation of parliament, ever reached.
And the same will happen to Burnham, and in two years we'll be going into another general election with the least popular PM ever and the Labour party will again be tearing itself to shreds, and hand the country over to Reform or whatever even more nakedly racist self-consciously obnoxious bile has emerged out of the right wing.
I'll be honest as a young voter the u turns are the most damning for me. It feels to me like he's more concerned with trying to stay middle of the road and regain public popularity than doing his job. I don't know how true that is given the longer things have gone on the more hated he seems to be. Either he actually doesn't care or he just doesn't understand why he's so unpopular and keeps reinforcing decisions that make him unpopular.
Like I want a leader who leads and stalmer seems like a beaurocrat thrust into a leasership position and unwilling to make any real long term improvements to the country. I think he was planning to just keep the status quo until the next election in the hopes the public will understand the tories just make things worse and then coast on that for a couple more elections, eventually making small real gains... But the country honestly does not have the time or patience for that. I certainly don't.
Even now I think if he was gonna resign he should've at least pushed through some meaningful changes and take the hate with him. Proportional representation for example. Instead he just punted that to the next guy and ensured the downsides of making a change like that impact the whole party instead of just him.
I think the u-turns are symptomatic of someone who doesn't have strong personal beliefs, which fails to meet the moment. But Liz Truss had strong personal beliefs which were catastrophically wrong. Boris Johnson has strong personal beliefs in enriching his mates and throwing parties. Being a bit wishy washy and middle of the road isn't good, but it's so far from deserving of "second least popular PM ever" it's not even funny.
I agree. I don't think stalmer is the worst. Especially in the rogues gallery we've had the last decades... But honestly the man seems like he was never the right person for the role and sounds like he knew it. I think no one else was there so he saw it as something he had to do (out of duty or something). But end of the day I can't sympathise with him. The country needs tough love and real leadership and he's not that. Hes had 2 years to come up with and present a clear vision for his UK and I still don't see it. Hopefully Andy has something in mind otherwise this is gonna repeat :/.
The majority of the public is desperate for change, and running out of patience with a political system that doesn't deliver.
Starmer ran on a vague platform of change and competence, but since taking office Starmer has shown have little political vision or political acumen to move the country forward. The Labour government has been less beset by personal scandal, but the bar for that was already incredibly low.
There hasn't been any specific event which has cost him his position (at least, not known to the general public). His problem is that there's basically nobody who likes him, and the only reason he got selected in the first place is that nobody particularly hated him either. Now new parties have sprung up to fill the void left by what were traditionally the majority parties, so "he's not the other guy" isn't going to swing it any more.
What are you talking about? It's been messy for ages by now.
Fair enough, agreed.
He’s trying to make it messy. By the time the next leader sees a day in Parliament, the media will have had a month to anticipate worst cases. If he’d stepped down immediately, an interim leader would have kept things for a week or two until Burnham was inevitably coronated.
He has set the nomination process to end coinciding with the summer break. Do we really need to wait two and a half weeks before nominations open? With Streeting captured by Burnham it looks like there could be only one candidate anyway.
If he’d opened nominations tomorrow, thats two weeks of parliament the new PM would have had to make an impression before silly season.
If you want to have a meaningful contest, you have to allow a bit of time for contestants to get themselves arranged, don't you? And if you don't do that then it harms Burnham's legitimacy as a successor
He presented himself as a moderate, which in reality means he wanted to pull the labor party back to the right again. The very first thing he did was purge the left wing of the party
What’s this Labor Party of which you type? Are letters falling off a la Tory Conference?
That's fair. I'm much happier voting for Greens, less hand wringing, more sleep, that sort of thing. I couldn't imaging having the support of genocide on my conscience, I support it via taxes... But voting for it? Then theres the anti-privacy, the anti-LGBT, the Mandleson thing...
I can't remember the moment I chose not to vote labour, it could have been when he told people to leave. I do remember, very specifically, not wanting to support Starmer though, a good call I think. There's a reason Starmer got fewer votes than Corbyn: we knew.
The long-running London production of "The Government" is about to announce its new lead. Don't worry, everything about the show is the same and you'll still be able to buy refreshments during the interval - though the Cost of Living Crisis means prices for beers, wine and choc-ices have to be increased by 50%. "The Government" became a hit when it promised change to the usual Westminster shows but, over the last 50 years has declined in popularity.
"Pure knockabout theatre," is how one critic has described the show while Muddy Wokenfield of The Guardian called it "Vaudeville and Pantomime at it's British best!"
Let's hope Wesley doesn't end up replacing him
He says he's backing Burnham. Coronation time for the King in the North.
Bye bye to the shit version of Nigel Farage
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Pick the most appropriate, and put it there.
Posts should be related to UK-centric politics, and should be either a link to a reputable news source for news, or a text post on this community.
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If you think "reputable news source" needs some definition, by all means start a meta thread. (These things should be publicly discussed)
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Good riddance.
Let's hope something worse doesn't show up.
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