Morgan McSweeney gone - What Now For Number 10?

Here is the updated position regarding which elections are taking place, this one is dated 28th January, so includes the full picture, mayors etc as well, following the 15th January deadline.
www.instituteforgovernment.org.uk/explainer/local-elections-2026

To survive Starmer now has to move leftwards that will leave him less money to invest in growth, its hard to see him lasting long. Maybe poor results in the council elections will be his final coffin nail.

Thanks Casdon at least you know the full facts and don’t speculate 👍

No. The deadline was 15th January. According to the Local Government Association:

‘Labour controlled councils make up the largest number of those seeking a cancellation, with 15 having made a request to cancel while four have said they want elections to go ahead. Three of the nine eligible Conservative councils have set out their capacity constraints.

Just one Liberal Democrat council has sought to cancel its elections. Cheltenham BC said the fact that it held all-out elections in 2024 means no councillor has served for more than two years already.

A further 10 councils that are under no overall control also wrote to the minister about capacity constraints.’

But anything is possible?

And legal?

No. The option to cancel was for councils which are being merged only, and the deadline to get them cancelled has passed.

Could they get all cancelled??

More like 3 months until the local elections in May.
Enjoy!😄

Oreo

Beware the Ides of March😲

😆

So we've got another month to endure all this!🙈

Beware the Ides of March😲

Now I’m imagining men in togas surrounding him with evil expressions…

Casdon

Woe, woe, and thrice woe eazybee.

Well it is for Starmer!

We know his record and performance as PM and Leader of the Opposition and it is not impressive.

I am very impressed by the number of contributors on this thread who know Keir Starmer so well and intimately!!

nanna8

None of those ‘front runners’would be a good look really. I’d imagine Starmer realises that and that is possibly why he is clinging on.

So presumably he thinks he is doing a good job. And that people would choose him as the best of a poor bunch.

None of those ‘front runners’would be a good look really. I’d imagine Starmer realises that and that is possibly why he is clinging on.

People like MacSweeney virtually dictates what the government does in many way.

Remember Steve Hilton sand his Blue Sky thinking nonsense.

Starmer is a wet lettuce and needs to go.

But who will replace him?

Please God. Save us from that awful Angela Raynor woman. She makes Thatcher look like Tinkerbell.

🙏🧚👎

eazybee

The Labour Party is lurching from disaster to disaster; the threat to the cabinet and to the country today is, would you like a General Election. (the veiled threat being Rayner or Miliband.)
What it really means is that Labour knows full well that Starmer did not win the election, the Conservatives lost it. Many laughingly voted for Labour' because it cannot be any worse than the Tories,'
Well, they are not laughing now, and they will take far more care over whom they honour with their vote. Labour knows this, and is desperately, none more desperate than Starmer, clinging on to their jobs in the vain hope that things will improve.
Starmer has his own agenda which he does not deign to share. Labour will not improve until he has gone, and it is my firm conviction that he cares neither for his party nor his people, only for his own career.

Well said eazybee

Woe, woe, and thrice woe eazybee.

He never appeared to me to be a man of vision.

Even less so now.
He appears to have totally relied on advisors.

The Labour Party is lurching from disaster to disaster; the threat to the cabinet and to the country today is, would you like a General Election. (the veiled threat being Rayner or Miliband.)
What it really means is that Labour knows full well that Starmer did not win the election, the Conservatives lost it. Many laughingly voted for Labour' because it cannot be any worse than the Tories,'
Well, they are not laughing now, and they will take far more care over whom they honour with their vote. Labour knows this, and is desperately, none more desperate than Starmer, clinging on to their jobs in the vain hope that things will improve.
Starmer has his own agenda which he does not deign to share. Labour will not improve until he has gone, and it is my firm conviction that he cares neither for his party nor his people, only for his own career.

There is always a tweet.

Anas Sarwar:

4 April 2025: It was great to catch up with my old friend and the UK’s (relatively!) new Ambassador to the US, Peter Mandelson.

x.com/AnasSarwar/status/1908204710143942907

Sir K S is in perilous position. He's very upset and angry with himself for letting himself be persuaded that Mandelson was fit to be our ambassador in the US.
He has been disappointing as PM. But he seems to be a man of good faith who is learning to communicate. And the
unseemly recent churn of PMs is to be avoided. I hope he sticks this out.
churn of PMs

This is interesting.
www.history.co.uk/articles/worst-british-prime-ministers

Lord Frederick North (1770 – 1782)
Whenever anyone asks who the worst PM of all time was, one name crops up more than any other - Lord Frederick North. It is North who refused to abandon the Tea Act, which forced subjects in the Thirteen Colonies to buy East India Company tea and pay taxation to the Crown, while undercutting smugglers, merchants and artisans. Furious at the imposition of taxation without representation, North’s stubbornness led to the Boston Tea Party and the American Revolutionary War that saw Britain lose its colonies.

Just ask the pensioners with a small private pension, publicans, small landlords and small business owners what Labour has done for them and I think you'll get a different opinion. Nothing!! Probably made life worse. Just because they have done a few things for a few people doesn't make them that much better than the Tories in the beginning who were told by the out going Labour chancellor that there was no money left. As for the lying campaign promises especially around the WASPI women. I'm all for if you lie just to get votes and have no intention of following through with these promises, as a politician you cant be that good and don't deserve any praise.