I certainly wouldn’t vote for Wes Streeting in a leadership contest - my preference would be Angela Raynor.
Wes Streeting is a Tory Wet who somehow finds himself in the Labour party. I'd love there to be a Tory party in which he could find a home, because that would make UK politics very much healthier.
Angela Rayner has a lot of merits, and certainly has the appearance of being honest rather than being a spin merchant.
I don't want Wes Streeting as a politician in any party. I hope Dawn Foster haunts him every night. Streeting came up via the NUS [National Union of Students] and I know a lot of people who worked with him, and who only have bad things to say about him.
Angela Rayner comes across as a normal person, which can only be a good thing.
This weeks editorial in The Tablet is an excellent appraisal of the situation. I was particularly struck by, 'Starmer got into difficulties because no-one in his cabinet seems to know what it is he wants them to do. What is this government for? '
Wes Streeting is not much liked on this forum. Certainly he is part of the problem and not the solution. However the Tablet article has this : 'Wes Streeting explained today why he was resigning from Sir Keir Starmer’s cabinet: “Where we need vision, we have a vacuum; where we need direction, we have drift.”
Thus do the people perish.
Burnham is perceived to be from the left of Starmer and Streeting to the right. Is that correct?
If so why did the MP (whose name I have already forgotten) who resigned appear to be from a position close to Starmer? None of this makes sense.
As I read it, Burnham (and Angela Rayner), are on the “Soft Left”, and he describes himself as a socialist. Streeting has resigned to set himself against Starmer, in preparation for a leadership bid, but now that Rayner has been cleared by HMRC regarding Stamp Duty, and a way made for Burnham to enter the House of Commons, Streeting’s position isn’t so strong.
Burnham is perceived to be from the left of Starmer and Streeting to the right. Is that correct?
Starmer is an empty vessel, currently serving as the mouthpiece of the Labour right. Who knows if he has any actual principles of his own. Streeting is a fully paid up ideologue of the pro-capital Mandelson/Blair tendency.
People are creating about a vision: so far Starmer has delivered increased workers and renters rights, lowed health waiting lists, better economic growth than any other G7 nation and kept us out of an illegal American war in Iran. In the Kings speech commitments were made, amongst other things, end right to buy and build more council houses (so that all the social housing stock doesn’t keep being sold off) which should result in lower in lower rents. The government is continuing to nationalise the railways.
This following infrastructure attrition under the condem governments, Brexit, the pandemic and Truss crashing the economy, and whilst offering support to Ukraine to keep Putin at bay (and therefore out of anywhere else in Europe).
What Doublethink says. The problem is that Starmer is a good man, but he is deeply uncharismatic. He’s rather like Gordon Brown, only not so clever (because Brown was very clever indeed). I don’t think Starmer can take all the credit for what Labour has done, but his modesty does him no favours.
People are creating about a vision: so far Starmer has delivered increased workers and renters rights, lowed health waiting lists, better economic growth than any other G7 nation and kept us out of an illegal American war in Iran. In the Kings speech commitments were made, amongst other things, end right to buy and build more council houses (so that all the social housing stock doesn’t keep being sold off) which should result in lower in lower rents. The government is continuing to nationalise the railways.
This following infrastructure attrition under the condem governments, Brexit, the pandemic and Truss crashing the economy, and whilst offering support to Ukraine to keep Putin at bay (and therefore out of anywhere else in Europe).
What is it we are supposed to want again ?
Labour need to be shouting tbis from the rooftops. Put it on posters all over the country because the Tory press will not mention it.
Yep Labour coms are awful.
My view on the Burnham debate. The guy stepping down is a Labour Together guy. They are losing appeal, and his constituency voted Reform in all wards in the local elections. I would say he saw the writing on the wall and get out while he could.
Which may change under Burnham, who has made a point of appearing regularly on media in Manchester and seems to have a quite natural and relatable communication style - whereas Starmer seems to always be struggling to relate people. Though party coms should not depend on who's at the top but have enough talent behind the scenes to get things done it does seem so often to rest on the shoulders of the party leader (the same can be said of the Greens, Polanski is clearly a gifted communicator but how much depth is there in the party coms?)
My view on the Burnham debate. The guy stepping down is a Labour Together guy. They are losing appeal, and his constituency voted Reform in all wards in the local elections. I would say he saw the writing on the wall and get out while he could.
The challenge of Reform would be present in any of the former "red wall" constituencies where Burnham was likely to be able to stand, all of those Labour MPs would be facing a struggle to retain their seats at the next General Election. And, I guess most of them would be expected to try to retain those seats rather than accept it's time to retire from politics and let someone else do the hard campaign graft for a low chance of being elected (under current expectations - whether Reform remain a challenge come the next General Election remains to be seen).
Presumably Burnham didn't fancy his chances in Aberdeen.
Yep Labour coms are awful.
My view on the Burnham debate. The guy stepping down is a Labour Together guy. They are losing appeal, and his constituency voted Reform in all wards in the local elections. I would say he saw the writing on the wall and get out while he could.
I predict that, should Burnham succeed in getting elected and subsequently in becoming Labour leader, the MP who stood down will be either parachuted into a nice safe seat for the next election or given a cushy job within the Party administration.
Yep Labour coms are awful.
My view on the Burnham debate. The guy stepping down is a Labour Together guy. They are losing appeal, and his constituency voted Reform in all wards in the local elections. I would say he saw the writing on the wall and get out while he could.
I predict that, should Burnham succeed in getting elected and subsequently in becoming Labour leader, the MP who stood down will be either parachuted into a nice safe seat for the next election or given a cushy job within the Party administration.
A peerage is always an option, too. Nothing looks as corrupt as Johnson's erminations while in office.
What Doublethink says. The problem is that Starmer is a good man
I don't in fact think he's a particularly good man.
You’re falling for the spiel in the media and elements of the Labour Party that are either panicking or self-serving.
Not really, it's an opinion based on observing the gap between what he says and what he does (or what he says later) over a number of years. I'm on record on saying here before the election that the policies being proposed were likely to be unequal to the task, and that Labour would run into trouble within a year or two and it was likely that Starmer wouldn't last a term. I got some push back on the last point.
The most charitable reading is that he has no particular political values, and is not particularly imaginative but is very ambitious.
The government is continuing to nationalise the railways.
A process that was begun, lest we forget, by Boris Johnson’s government.
Largely because a number of them were already facing financial collapse and so they were nationalised with the same grace that some of the banks were nationalised after the GFC.
People are creating about a vision: so far Starmer has delivered increased workers and renters rights, lowed health waiting lists, better economic growth than any other G7 nation and kept us out of an illegal American war in Iran. In the Kings speech commitments were made, amongst other things, end right to buy and build more council houses (so that all the social housing stock doesn’t keep being sold off) which should result in lower in lower rents. The government is continuing to nationalise the railways.
This following infrastructure attrition under the condem governments, Brexit, the pandemic and Truss crashing the economy, and whilst offering support to Ukraine to keep Putin at bay (and therefore out of anywhere else in Europe).
What is it we are supposed to want again ?
Labour need to be shouting tbis from the rooftops. Put it on posters all over the country because the Tory press will not mention it.
Nonetheless - these things have happened or are happening.
What Doublethink says. The problem is that Starmer is a good man, but he is deeply uncharismatic. He’s rather like Gordon Brown, only not so clever (because Brown was very clever indeed). I don’t think Starmer can take all the credit for what Labour has done, but his modesty does him no favours.
A good man would not have made the 'island of strangers' speech.
He has done some good things, but he has spent far too much time pandering to the Daily Mail's 'legitimate concerns' in a vain attempt to out-Reform Reform.
And he apologised for it. I don’t know why he said it, maybe it’s too easy to say that sort of thing. It shows he isn’t a great politics speaker, however good he is in a courtroom. Believe it or not, he was a human rights specialist.
Which is what makes the utter nightmare that is their policy on immigration unforgiveable. Also their capacity to maintain the fiction that our social security benefits are in any way generous. They pretty much breach the human right to a private life.
Which is what makes the utter nightmare that is their policy on immigration unforgiveable. Also their capacity to maintain the fiction that our social security benefits are in any way generous. They pretty much breach the human right to a private life.
You’ll be surprised to know that I agree. But there’s a better chance of improvements in both areas with this government than with any likely alternative. The Tories and Reform are evil, the SNP and Plaid Cymru represent defined minorities of the country and the Libdems & Greens are too callow, despite some excellent policies.
And he apologised for it. I don’t know why he said it, maybe it’s too easy to say that sort of thing. It shows he isn’t a great politics speaker, however good he is in a courtroom. Believe it or not, he was a human rights specialist.
Which is why I describe him as an empty vessel. He was impassioned and effective as a human rights lawyer, but either he walked backwards down the road to Damascus or it was just a performance, something he was paid to do and built a career on. Making the "island of strangers" speech, then walking it back, claiming Israel had the right to cut of power and water to Gaza, then walking it back, points to a man with few fixed opinions or values, willing to say and do good or evil based on expediency and what others want him to say at any given moment. The right of Labour took full advantage of that, sending him out to mouth leftishly while standing for leader, then pointing him rightwards once elected leader and in office once PM.
And he apologised for it. I don’t know why he said it, maybe it’s too easy to say that sort of thing. It shows he isn’t a great politics speaker, however good he is in a courtroom.
You mean he couldn't spot the obvious pratfall a mile away? How about last year during the race riots, when his government were characterised by him going to watch the footy while his ministers chuntered on about loving flags actually?
How about the 10 pledges, or his flip flops on nationalisation, university fees etc?
Believe it or not, he was a human rights specialist.
It's just a particular legal speciality, it doesn't confer moral outlook, and signally both sides in a human rights case will be represented by a 'human rights specialist'. On this note it's perhaps indicative that when there was a controversy a few weeks back about policemen booting a tased suspect in the head his touchstone for deciding the appropriate level of police brutality was what he learned in a police operations centre in Northern Ireland.
Just pointing out in Scotland we managed to nationalise railways, increase renters rights, stop council house sales, improve NHS waiting lists and doctors pay plus really lowering child poverty without attacking disabled people and people who come here to work, study and live. We tried to improve trans rights as well but that was blocked by Sunak and Starmer.
But we're meant to cheer because Starmer has done some of the things politicians with many fewer powers managed to do and managed to do without the vile attacks and scapegoating.
Starmer is still a disgrace and the scapegoating can't just be overlooked because he did a few things he could easily have done without all the morally bankrupt Reform lite stuff.
And while Streeting might be more personally invested in the transphobia (for some reason - this wasn't always his stance) it's happened on Starmer's watch with the full backing of him and his cabinet. He is absolutely culpable.
I mean... I get this to some extent... but as a floating (most recently Lib Dem) voter of the fish constituency... I feel the animus towards Labour in general and Starmer in particular looks a little... ... hopeless?
I mean, if this is how voters whom one might normally expect to gravitate towards Labour feel, how could one expect anyone else to vote for them?
I mean... I get this to some extent... but as a floating (most recently Lib Dem) voter of the fish constituency... I feel the animus towards Labour in general and Starmer in particular looks a little... ... hopeless?
I mean, if this is how voters whom one might normally expect to gravitate towards Labour feel, how could one expect anyone else to vote for them?
This is the odd thing about the Labour right. The people they distrust most and want to attract least is/are the rest of the movement. They trust only people outside the tent, i.e. natural Lib Dem and Conservative voters, to save them definitively from the horrific prospect of the Labour left being in power by putting the Labour right in power. The resulting government has the Labour badge, and therefore manages to styme any and all prospect of there being an actual government of the left. Job done. The appearance of the Greens as a serious alternative was not part of the plan, and has produced complete panic.
Wes Streeting is a Tory Wet who somehow finds himself in the Labour party. I'd love there to be a Tory party in which he could find a home, because that would make UK politics very much healthier.
Angela Rayner has a lot of merits, and certainly has the appearance of being honest rather than being a spin merchant.
You guys just don’t get it. Step outside the SoF bubble for a minute.
A soft left Labour party would seriously annoy most voters over ‘stop the boats’, keep an unsustainable welfare bill and crash the economy. These are what the voters care about, rightly or wrongly, and if they’re not given enough of what they want, they’ll go to Reform.
Who will do immigration, welfare reform and everything else in a nasty, nasty way.
A soft left Labour party would seriously annoy most voters over ‘stop the boats’, keep an unsustainable welfare bill and crash the economy. These are what the voters care about, rightly or wrongly, and if they’re not given enough of what they want, they’ll go to Reform.
Who will do immigration, welfare reform and everything else in a nasty, nasty way.
Streeting gets it.
Er right... consider the current state of the economy, and the success of the last sixteen years of government in stopping the boats. The idea that what we basically need is the same policies that over the past sixteen years have brought us to this position, but a bit more so, does not strike me as worth serious consideration.
The Tories spent most of the last sixteen year trying to stop the boats, and look how that worked out for them.
It didn't work for Cameron, or May, or Johnson, or Sunak; it hasn't worked for Starmer. What makes you think it will work for Streeting?
As for the soft left crashing the economy, again, the present approach is not working. The present situation is a crash, but because it's happened in slow motion over the past sixteen years nobody calls it that.. All the economists who predicted that the present approach wouldn't work recommend a soft left approach to restart the economy.
Wes Streeting is a Tory Wet who somehow finds himself in the Labour party. I'd love there to be a Tory party in which he could find a home, because that would make UK politics very much healthier.
Angela Rayner has a lot of merits, and certainly has the appearance of being honest rather than being a spin merchant.
You guys just don’t get it. Step outside the SoF bubble for a minute.
A soft left Labour party would seriously annoy most voters over ‘stop the boats’, keep an unsustainable welfare bill and crash the economy. These are what the voters care about, rightly or wrongly, and if they’re not given enough of what they want, they’ll go to Reform.
Who will do immigration, welfare reform and everything else in a nasty, nasty way.
Streeting gets it.
The people obsessed with those pretend "issues" are not "most voters" and they're already voting tory or Reform anyway. Step out of your right wing bubble and you'll realise that most people give a shit about others and recognise Farage for the nasty little toad he is.
Opinion polling, and what I've heard on the doorstep in recently months, would suggest that the major concerns of voters are cost of living (including rent/mortgage costs, inflation, energy costs), the health service (both the excess waiting times and creeping privatisation), with for many the environment, human rights and (in Scotland at least) constitutional questions over independence. Immigration doesn't really come up, except when people have been mislead into believing migration is a cause of the issues they really care about.
Wes Streeting is a Tory Wet who somehow finds himself in the Labour party. I'd love there to be a Tory party in which he could find a home, because that would make UK politics very much healthier.
Angela Rayner has a lot of merits, and certainly has the appearance of being honest rather than being a spin merchant.
You guys just don’t get it. Step outside the SoF bubble for a minute.
A soft left Labour party would seriously annoy most voters over ‘stop the boats’, keep an unsustainable welfare bill and crash the economy. These are what the voters care about, rightly or wrongly, and if they’re not given enough of what they want, they’ll go to Reform.
Who will do immigration, welfare reform and everything else in a nasty, nasty way.
Streeting gets it.
Welfare is only unsustainable if you don't tax properly. Constantly promising tax cuts is a tory and labour right folly.
Wes Streeting is a Tory Wet who somehow finds himself in the Labour party. I'd love there to be a Tory party in which he could find a home, because that would make UK politics very much healthier.
Angela Rayner has a lot of merits, and certainly has the appearance of being honest rather than being a spin merchant.
You guys just don’t get it. Step outside the SoF bubble for a minute.
A soft left Labour party would seriously annoy most voters over ‘stop the boats’, keep an unsustainable welfare bill and crash the economy. These are what the voters care about, rightly or wrongly, and if they’re not given enough of what they want, they’ll go to Reform.
Who will do immigration, welfare reform and everything else in a nasty, nasty way.
Streeting gets it.
The biggest cost of welfare is pensions. Pensioners typically vote in larger percentages than other age groups, so nobody is ever going to break the triple lock.
The problem is that voters want a government to provide services they aren't prepared to pay for. As and until someone - and it won't be a politician who wants/ needs to be elected - is prepared to lay out in stark terms the fundamental disconnect between desires and preparedness to fund all governments will "fail".
The problem is that voters want a government to provide services they aren't prepared to pay for. As and until someone - and it won't be a politician who wants/ needs to be elected - is prepared to lay out in stark terms the fundamental disconnect between desires and preparedness to fund all governments will "fail".
It's about fundamental demographics. There are, or soon will be, more elderly people who are living longer than there have been before. Which means that when you have a period of inflation and unemployment the amount of tax taken in reduces and overall there's a problem.
The Common Narrative would have us believe that it is small-boats and migrants which are causing the problems of balancing the books, but in reality any problems they cause are swamped by the above.
We need some quick and clever thinking to reboot the economy. The Labour government seems to have decided that they are going to bet on AI and not much else, which seems like quite a major mistake to me.
In addition Labour has shot itself in the foot by accepting the idea that International Students are a drain on resources rather than a clever export market.
This is not the only or biggest problem, but it is one that is entirely nonsensical.
In addition Labour has shot itself in the foot by accepting the idea that International Students are a drain on resources rather than a clever export market.
This is not the only or biggest problem, but it is one that is entirely nonsensical.
It makes perfect sense if you accept first that being elected is an end in itself, second that what headline writers and racists complain about (raw immigration figures) is actually what they want "fixed", and third that doing the second will lead to the first.
Comments
I don't want Wes Streeting as a politician in any party. I hope Dawn Foster haunts him every night. Streeting came up via the NUS [National Union of Students] and I know a lot of people who worked with him, and who only have bad things to say about him.
Angela Rayner comes across as a normal person, which can only be a good thing.
Thus do the people perish.
If so why did the MP (whose name I have already forgotten) who resigned appear to be from a position close to Starmer? None of this makes sense.
As I read it, Burnham (and Angela Rayner), are on the “Soft Left”, and he describes himself as a socialist. Streeting has resigned to set himself against Starmer, in preparation for a leadership bid, but now that Rayner has been cleared by HMRC regarding Stamp Duty, and a way made for Burnham to enter the House of Commons, Streeting’s position isn’t so strong.
Starmer is an empty vessel, currently serving as the mouthpiece of the Labour right. Who knows if he has any actual principles of his own. Streeting is a fully paid up ideologue of the pro-capital Mandelson/Blair tendency.
This following infrastructure attrition under the condem governments, Brexit, the pandemic and Truss crashing the economy, and whilst offering support to Ukraine to keep Putin at bay (and therefore out of anywhere else in Europe).
What is it we are supposed to want again ?
I don't in fact think he's a particularly good man.
You’re falling for the spiel in the media and elements of the Labour Party that are either panicking or self-serving.
There’s a lot of it about.
No, we know he's a lying, backstabbing piece of shit by observing his words and actions long before he became PM.
Labour need to be shouting tbis from the rooftops. Put it on posters all over the country because the Tory press will not mention it.
My view on the Burnham debate. The guy stepping down is a Labour Together guy. They are losing appeal, and his constituency voted Reform in all wards in the local elections. I would say he saw the writing on the wall and get out while he could.
Yea and amen. Of course, none of this is nearly as important as keeping the corporate paymasters happy.
The challenge of Reform would be present in any of the former "red wall" constituencies where Burnham was likely to be able to stand, all of those Labour MPs would be facing a struggle to retain their seats at the next General Election. And, I guess most of them would be expected to try to retain those seats rather than accept it's time to retire from politics and let someone else do the hard campaign graft for a low chance of being elected (under current expectations - whether Reform remain a challenge come the next General Election remains to be seen).
Presumably Burnham didn't fancy his chances in Aberdeen.
A process that was begun, lest we forget, by Boris Johnson’s government.
I predict that, should Burnham succeed in getting elected and subsequently in becoming Labour leader, the MP who stood down will be either parachuted into a nice safe seat for the next election or given a cushy job within the Party administration.
A peerage is always an option, too. Nothing looks as corrupt as Johnson's erminations while in office.
Not really, it's an opinion based on observing the gap between what he says and what he does (or what he says later) over a number of years. I'm on record on saying here before the election that the policies being proposed were likely to be unequal to the task, and that Labour would run into trouble within a year or two and it was likely that Starmer wouldn't last a term. I got some push back on the last point.
The most charitable reading is that he has no particular political values, and is not particularly imaginative but is very ambitious.
Largely because a number of them were already facing financial collapse and so they were nationalised with the same grace that some of the banks were nationalised after the GFC.
Nonetheless - these things have happened or are happening.
A good man would not have made the 'island of strangers' speech.
He has done some good things, but he has spent far too much time pandering to the Daily Mail's 'legitimate concerns' in a vain attempt to out-Reform Reform.
You’ll be surprised to know that I agree. But there’s a better chance of improvements in both areas with this government than with any likely alternative. The Tories and Reform are evil, the SNP and Plaid Cymru represent defined minorities of the country and the Libdems & Greens are too callow, despite some excellent policies.
Which is why I describe him as an empty vessel. He was impassioned and effective as a human rights lawyer, but either he walked backwards down the road to Damascus or it was just a performance, something he was paid to do and built a career on. Making the "island of strangers" speech, then walking it back, claiming Israel had the right to cut of power and water to Gaza, then walking it back, points to a man with few fixed opinions or values, willing to say and do good or evil based on expediency and what others want him to say at any given moment. The right of Labour took full advantage of that, sending him out to mouth leftishly while standing for leader, then pointing him rightwards once elected leader and in office once PM.
You mean he couldn't spot the obvious pratfall a mile away? How about last year during the race riots, when his government were characterised by him going to watch the footy while his ministers chuntered on about loving flags actually?
How about the 10 pledges, or his flip flops on nationalisation, university fees etc?
It's just a particular legal speciality, it doesn't confer moral outlook, and signally both sides in a human rights case will be represented by a 'human rights specialist'. On this note it's perhaps indicative that when there was a controversy a few weeks back about policemen booting a tased suspect in the head his touchstone for deciding the appropriate level of police brutality was what he learned in a police operations centre in Northern Ireland.
But we're meant to cheer because Starmer has done some of the things politicians with many fewer powers managed to do and managed to do without the vile attacks and scapegoating.
Starmer is still a disgrace and the scapegoating can't just be overlooked because he did a few things he could easily have done without all the morally bankrupt Reform lite stuff.
I mean, if this is how voters whom one might normally expect to gravitate towards Labour feel, how could one expect anyone else to vote for them?
This is the odd thing about the Labour right. The people they distrust most and want to attract least is/are the rest of the movement. They trust only people outside the tent, i.e. natural Lib Dem and Conservative voters, to save them definitively from the horrific prospect of the Labour left being in power by putting the Labour right in power. The resulting government has the Labour badge, and therefore manages to styme any and all prospect of there being an actual government of the left. Job done. The appearance of the Greens as a serious alternative was not part of the plan, and has produced complete panic.
You guys just don’t get it. Step outside the SoF bubble for a minute.
A soft left Labour party would seriously annoy most voters over ‘stop the boats’, keep an unsustainable welfare bill and crash the economy. These are what the voters care about, rightly or wrongly, and if they’re not given enough of what they want, they’ll go to Reform.
Who will do immigration, welfare reform and everything else in a nasty, nasty way.
Streeting gets it.
The Tories spent most of the last sixteen year trying to stop the boats, and look how that worked out for them.
It didn't work for Cameron, or May, or Johnson, or Sunak; it hasn't worked for Starmer. What makes you think it will work for Streeting?
As for the soft left crashing the economy, again, the present approach is not working. The present situation is a crash, but because it's happened in slow motion over the past sixteen years nobody calls it that.. All the economists who predicted that the present approach wouldn't work recommend a soft left approach to restart the economy.
The people obsessed with those pretend "issues" are not "most voters" and they're already voting tory or Reform anyway. Step out of your right wing bubble and you'll realise that most people give a shit about others and recognise Farage for the nasty little toad he is.
The opinion polls that suggest maybe a quarter of people support Reform?
Welfare is only unsustainable if you don't tax properly. Constantly promising tax cuts is a tory and labour right folly.
The biggest cost of welfare is pensions. Pensioners typically vote in larger percentages than other age groups, so nobody is ever going to break the triple lock.
It's about fundamental demographics. There are, or soon will be, more elderly people who are living longer than there have been before. Which means that when you have a period of inflation and unemployment the amount of tax taken in reduces and overall there's a problem.
The Common Narrative would have us believe that it is small-boats and migrants which are causing the problems of balancing the books, but in reality any problems they cause are swamped by the above.
We need some quick and clever thinking to reboot the economy. The Labour government seems to have decided that they are going to bet on AI and not much else, which seems like quite a major mistake to me.
This is not the only or biggest problem, but it is one that is entirely nonsensical.
It makes perfect sense if you accept first that being elected is an end in itself, second that what headline writers and racists complain about (raw immigration figures) is actually what they want "fixed", and third that doing the second will lead to the first.
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2026/may/16/wes-streeting-launches-scathing-attack-keir-starmer-vision-leadership