- cross-posted to:
- world@quokk.au
- cross-posted to:
- world@quokk.au
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How important is the PM’s position in terms of policy and power? Are they closer to the US president, or are they more a representative of whatever the cabinet and ministries are doing? In case of the latter, does Starmer’s resignation really matter if that doesn’t change?
The PM is the head of government and is ultimately responsible and accountable for its actions and policies. They are also the head of their political party and thus will have a say on what policies are brought to the table (although they do still need to be voted on in the houses).
Our PM is not technically the head of state (that’s the King, from whose power the government derives its authority), however for all intents and purposes they may as well be.
So yes, his resignation will have an impact.
Fucking finally.
Now lets see how much worse the next one is…
If he can at least read the room it would be an improvement. Starmer spent most of his time trying to appease reform voters.
I will never again assume that someone is progressive just because he’s gay, or in a party called Labour.
Good riddance.
Let’s hope something worse doesn’t show up.
Narrator: “something worse showed up.”
Don’t be hating on Andy Burnham, he’s solid
Is he? I don’t understand how being mayor of the city at the same time as their bus network improves necessarily means he’s a good politician.
Lol people said that about Nick Clegg.
That’s not how the game goes.
just like the british press you give away the depth of your analysis and are unable to comprehend how good he’s been
career as a rag journo in mind?
Starmer, good. Lmao.
Transphobic technofascist future in mind?
Fookin hell mate, I leave for a few days and all hell gets loose?
Let’s hope the next PM is less of an undercooked potato than Starmer was.
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.
Truss, She was fantastic. For a week or two. Crashed the pound and made it cheaper to send my UK daughter some birthday money.
Truss, She was fantastic. For a week or two
No, you are thinking of the cabbage!
God, choosing a least bad one is even hard.
David Cameron orGordon 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.
Never claimed he was perfect. You can find fault with literally every PM that has ever existed. But him and Major seemed to be relatively scandal free compared to many who have come before and after them.
Gold had been underperforming for decades before Brown sold it off though, you cant really fault him for not predicting the future.
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.
Slavery runs strong in British history
I realized after I commented that he was also the one who brought the brexit referendum forward
I actually kind of think Cameron introducing austerity may have been worse, overall, over time. Brexit was a fumble, but austerity was malicious.
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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.
I was in Finance in Britain at the time.
He was the one who saved banks with unconditionally given public money, then turned around and put them in a special “hands-off” management structure where basically the bankers managed themselves.
Royal Bank Of Scotland did not restructure their Investment Banking operations for almost a decade and kept losing billions of pounds every year. I actually worked there for a bit during that period and they were spectacularly inefficient and chaotic compared to other Investment Banks I worked in and under no pressure at all to improve.
Oh and Zero Interest Rate Policy in the UK - that started under Gordon Brown too.
The 2008 Crash recovery was one of the slowest recoveries from a Financial Crash in History.
All this crap then led to Austerity (by then under the Tories), which in turn fed the mix of discontent and scapegoating of the EU that led to Brexit, which in turn put the UK in the sorry state it is today.
Gordon Brown did not repair even the British Economy, much less the World’s.
I remember those claims back then already and they were complete total bollocks fed by a handful of opinion makers in British newspapers and New Labour politicians - as far as I know, not a single international Economist endorsed that idea that Gordon Brown saved the World’s Economy: the whole thing was just one big circle jerk of New Labour politicians and supporters.
I think you’ve been watching too much BBC and reading too much The Guarding - they’re the ones who invariably spin “Briton saves the world” stories out of British politicians swiping British problems under the carpet and leaving them for others to solve later.
Blimey! Didn’t you notice that I wrote that Brown is cited by economists? That I didn’t say anything about agreeing with that. If anything I agree with pretty much all you say. (Worth checking what someone actually writes before getting a bit accusative.)
Did you notice that they said no reputable international economists actually say that?
But you’re right to call out the accusatory tone of @Aceticon@lemmy.dbzer0.com’s comment, that did kind of spoil an otherwise very informative post.
Please point out a renowned international Economist who actually said that Gordon Brown saved the World’s Economy.
I keenly remember that claim back then because it was part of Gordon Brown’s campaign strategy against the Tories to keep Labour in power (which, by the way, failed) and there was literally no Economist or even Financier outside Britain claiming that Gordon Brown saved the World’s Economy.
As I said, I was in Finance at the time and the rest of the World wasn’t looking at Britain for guidance on how to react to the Crash, they were looking at the ECB and the Americans, which are far larger Economies - the only way Britain stood out back then was that it was the worst hit Economy of all after the US, and later it stood out because as the web was untangled on the whole thing, it turned out that many cases of market manipulation and other shenanigans leading to the Crash actually happened in London (most of which, by the way, having happened during the time Gordon Brown was Chancellor, and please don’t get me started how both Tories and New Labour seriously defunded the Serious Fraud Office and turned the FSA into a joke)
That old claim you repeated in your post is a perfect example of British Exceptionalism.
It does seem like even the less offensive ones tend to have a major cock-up that results in them being denied entry into the “least bad PM” club, doesn’t it?
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.
Unless that radical change is generally opposed by the population. Like their inane age verification crap.
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.
I’m just trying to imagine what kind of holiday £300k might buy…
that would buy you a day-trip in Monaco, depending on how lucky you’re feeling
A spenny one!
A lettuce?
Wait, I had this on my… Last years bingo dammit!
After burning down the UK, he gets to enjoy his golden parachute how lovely!
To be fair, Conservatives started the fire more than a decade earlier. Starmer just failed to meet expectations, sometimes in egregious ways.
“Burning down the UK” like introducing a massive renter’s rights bill?
He’s a politician so on Lemmy we burn them all apparently?
Epstein pedophile handing contracts to pedo Peter Thiel’s palantir
The woke mob won’t be happy until we have Queer Starmer and they make us all have to have pronouns.
Gonna hazard a guess that you have and use pronouns all the time, but sure, it’s the ‘woke mob’.
And the right won’t be happy until the general public have been brought down to the intellectual level of yourself.
You’re an embarrassment to the species.
That’s not true my mum says I’m very special.
Comes in, shits on table, leaves
You okay Britain? You’ve been going through PMs like DiCaprio goes through 20 year olds.
Murdoch says we need a new PM so…
If only more countries did the same
You know why none of us talk about our “activities” online, right?
Because that gets us sent very briefly to Panama.
Oh my, but he was such a liked PM both by left and right
Can’t wait for the media to work their magic on Burnham until he too is universally reviled. It already seems to have started.
It wasn’t the media’s fault that Burnham basically up and said “I agree with everything Labour has done under Starmer”.
That’s not what I’m referring to.
He’s doing a good job of that himself.
Is he?
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.
How many Truss’s did Starmer last?
At least 4 or 5 lettuces! Pretty good!
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.
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Don’t forget support for US planes
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.brunel.ac.uk/news-and-events/news/articles/Jury-trials
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/uk-court-reforms-jury-magistrates-b2992696.html
https://edm.parliament.uk/early-day-motion/64854/jury-trial-rights
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.
They say the proposal is to make some trials currently conducted by a jury judge-only.
Also known as abolishing the jury.
Have another source, why not:
https://www.justice.org.uk/briefings/plans-to-restrict-the-right-to-jury-trial
The majority of crime falls within the remit of < 3 year sentencing, so the majority of trials would have trial by jury removed. Your reading of what is happening is so pedantic as to be outwith the realm of reasonable understanding.
The majority of crimes are already summary only, that’s just the consequence of there being a lot more petty thefts and speeding than murders.
I’m not a fan of the impression that moving more cases from either way to summary only is being done for reasons of costs, but you are making it sound like this is trial by jury going away for everything when it very much isn’t.
If we’re going back down the route of pedantry, the majority of crime goes undealt with, then after that the next most is handled by police and wardens without the court system involved at all. yOU Are mAkING iT SOUNd LiKe the MAJOriTY of cRime IS DeaLT wiTH by anYBodY WheN it veRy mUCh ISn’T.
Many summary crimes are what are called “either way” which means you can admit your guilt and be sentenced by a judge in a magistrates court, or you can profess your innocence and go to crown court for a trial by jury.
Why do you think most cases are summary? Do you think it’s because it’s petty crime with non-prison sentences that the CPS are very confident they’ll win because the defendant definitely is guilty and professes their guilt in court to get it over with? That’s not what anybody up in arms about this change cares about. They care about the trials where the defendant professes their innocence and could have life changing consequences if incorrectly found guilty.
Ultimately, do you think anybody standing in the dock gives a fuck whether it hasn’t been 100% abolished? It will be abolished for most. It will be abolished for anybody claiming innocence. It was a contributing factor as to why Starmer has had to go. The legal profession is outraged at this immense overreach by the government and has kicked up a stink about it.
Many legal scholars and journalists have used the term abolished. The 50 people who upvoted the comment seemed to understand what I meant. This pedantry aids nobody except the scumbags trying to remove legal safeguards.
Simple question for you: after this is enacted, will there or will there not be jury trials in England and Wales?
For the vast majority of people, no. For every single one of them, trial by jury is gone. It has been abolished for them.
And then, how long do you think until the world of political spin pushes for the removal of that right for murderers, rapists, terrorists, etc? How many will be willing to stick their neck out to defend those people’s right to a trial by jury?
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?
Starmer didn’t lift the two child benefit cap, his backbenchers did.
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 :/.
I agree except that I suspect the only options preferable to someone basically doing the same things is so far to the left that it’s not achievable.
My sibling in Christ, dude has been installing a surveillance state, cracking down on protests, financing Israel and has caused social murder towards transgender people.
Most of these have been happening under previous governments ever since I can remember. They’re things I strongly appose but at the same time, they’re not “scandals” of the PM, they’re policies of the governments.
Fascist, anti-trans, surveillance kinda sums it up nicely.
Yeah. Banning vpns or at least requiring ID for them, because he messed up so badly banning social media.
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.
Well I respect that he’s had the grace to not make it messy
What are you talking about? It’s been messy for ages by now.
To not make more of a mess of it, then
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.
What would not making it messy look like in your view? He can’t run a contest for his successor in secret
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
They’ve had time. Half the cabinet registered domain names for possible campaigns months ago. They’ve been gauging support for a long time and will know if they are viable. Streeting certainly knew he wasn’t.
The nomination period is 1 week. I’d argue that’s plenty of time. Remember the maximum number of candidates is 5, but Burnham will have more than 81 signatures so it will be at most 4.
Waiting until 9th July to open nominations means it’s likely that the others will drop out beforehand and it will be a coronation in slow motion, which isn’t great either.
If the others have an honest chance to compete and choose not to, that’s totally fine.
I don’t think that rushing to get the successor in before the summer break is a good idea either. That means that the new guy basically just assembles a cabinet, gets in, and then is not seen to do anything for a month and a half
