Mick Hartley

So farewell then Keir Starmer. The Andy Burnham coup is almost complete. Suzanne Moore in the Telegraph:

Appallingly, having been backed by Wes Streeting, it now seems Andy Burnham is to be parachuted into the job, purporting to be Starmer’s polar opposite on the strength of a Northern blokeishness and good eyelashes. If Starmer was perceived as inauthentic, we do not need a performance of authenticity from someone who has never had another job outside politics. Let’s get real. Burnham can listen and connect and wear Birkenstocks, but that is not enough to save the party. 

We need some actual meat in this pie.

What about investment, tax, energy, defence? How will Burnham operate on the international stage? No one knows who he is. How will this gender-ideologue cope with the ructions of the Supreme Court decision on biological sex? It goes without saying that Labour can never be led by a woman! Blokeishness rules.

Starmer manoeuvred the party into an electable position and won a vast majority. But instead of including us all in a progressive and optimistic government, he withdrew into a clique of men who think they are cleverer than they are. He ignored what he was being told. He ignored his party and his country.

It’s been painful to watch. It doesn’t even look like he enjoyed one minute of it. At the 11th hour, on Monday morning, he listed his achievements and showed some emotion, finally – about his family. 

Tears – almost.

Goodbye, Sir Keir, we hardly knew you. But mainly because you really didn’t want to know us.

As one commenter notes, “Starmer became PM simply by not being a Tory. Now, God help us, Burnham will become PM simply by not being Starmer.”