Burnham: Is the Media Tempting Fate by Jumping the Gun?

No need to apologise especially when not meant. We disagree that’s ok

Iam64

I don’t read my comment as suggesting benefit fraud is rife. I saw too much of it.

Sorry, I don't seem to be able to reconcile those two statements.

I don’t read my comment as suggesting benefit fraud is rife. I saw too much of it.

It would have to be a very wide ranging conversation, but before that I think that the very purpose of benefits should be established. We have, over time, gone from looking at benefits as something to tide people over a bad patch to regarding them as something to force them into work, by making them very hard to live on. Similar to the Victorian Poor law which forced 'the poor' into intolerable conditions in the workhouses if they weren't in work.

What about those who are utterly incapable of work?

There is also Wyllow's point about the cost of alternatives...

While Iam seems to imply that benefit fraud is rife, official govt. statistics put it at less that 3% of benefit money paid out.

I suspect many who did similar work to me will have seen too much benefit fraud to simply dismiss the need to have the conversation Galaxy proposes.
Yes I’m aware of tax fraud, shouldn’t be impossible to tackle both

If they want to cut the bebefits bill they can stop giving so much to landlords. Andy Burnam is the only politician I can think of who has acknowledged how much of the money goes on rent payments.

If you cut PIP - say to large numbers of young people, you have to fund back to work support plans etc, or better, like they had back in my day when younger, community work experience schemes or similar. Will much be saved?

A younger friend at the gym who works on the front line says on general benefits said people get just 10 minutes and in that time computer boxes have to be ticked and there is no time for encouragement or support

I am familiar with the PIP forms and they could change them to be much more carefully selective. They are currently based on a points system per difficulty that goes up as in 2,4,6,8,

then adds them up,

but if you add more subtleties as in 2345678 graduated assessments and so on....

It isn't about a conversation about welfare cuts really, there is a conversation before that I think, about work, purpose, mental health, etc. It would require someone quite brave.

It's also an incredibly difficult task.

Easy for opposition Badenoch to say, oh yes we will cut money on welfare and put it in defence vaguely - no specifics and she neatly dodges the issue that pensions are de facto benefits too and in fact younger voters have their own feelings about that...

I don't think it will be ever be possible in the near future for anyone to have meaningful discussions around welfare reforms, I don't actually think that is Starmer fault, it is more the tribal positions of 'supporting welfare' = good whilst addressing welfare issues = bad.

I would have supported changes to WFA and Pip had the proposed changes been discussed effectively with MPs. I was surprised Starmer made such a mess of that.
It seems he didn’t engage with MPs. It doesn’t matter if the proposals came from Rachel Reeves, Keir Starmer was PM and party leader. It started badly and became worse.

I’m still puzzled by the strong dislike, hatred even expressed by so many people towards Keir Starmer.

Indeed.

It was Reeves who wanted to cut the winter fuel allowance.
I have no time and no admiration for either of them but Starmer should not have listened to Reeves.

That resonates so much Iam and is so sad.

I have thought about that word "charisma". I don't like it as it's far too general and has references to being shallow in it, and Starmer is a very serious man.

Better phrases like, "a warm personality, who communicates with ease"

I was thinking a while ago, what PM with any sense of "easing in and holding support" puts in place a policy initially of cutting Winter Fuel allowance so suddenly in the way they did?

How many like me in the LP wrote immediately to their LP MP's or HQ at that point saying no, for goodness sake, it needs to be graduated, what on earth are you doing.....

Sadly Iam64 it appears to be all about personality and charisma🤷‍♀️

My constituency would definitely vote Andy Burnham rather than Keir.

I’m sorry it’s come to this but it began to be inevitable. Nazir Afzal who admires, and likes Keir, worked well with him at the CPS and has worked with Andy Burnham wrote an interesting piece in the Guardian this week. One sentence particularly resonated for me. He said Keir could win the case and lose the room. That’s what’s happened, tragically, to his time as PM.

We’ll just have to see🤷‍♀️

Wishing things were different doesn’t actually mean there would be any benefit to it though LizzieDrip, so it’s just wishful thinking I’m afraid. If it wasn’t the lack of an election, it would be something else that he would be constantly criticised for anyway - what matters far more, to the electorate, is that he actually delivers in the PM role.

Well, clearly KS is not going to stand.

Maybe the LP grass roots membership would vote overwhelmingly for AB … but without a leadership election we just don’t know.

If the Tories, Reform et al. do consistently criticise him for having no mandate (which they will), saying ‘the membership would have voted for him if they had the chance’ is a pretty weak argument IMO.

I think Starmer was right to increase the eligibility to stand as a candidate to 20% of MPs, otherwise in normal circumstances, the process for electing a leader is unnecessarily long because some people have no chance of being elected, it just increases the number of rounds. I’d like to see somebody else stand against Burnham, but I suspect the only person who would get over 80 votes would still be Starmer, so I can’t see it happening.

I’m not overly worried about Burnham being criticised for not having been elected through the usual process though, because I also think the membership would vote overwhelmingly for him if they got the chance to vote - particularly if the other candidate was Starmer.

Totally agree Ilovecheese.

I think it would be a good thing all round.

LP members (me included) who feel patronised and disrespected by the AB coup, would at least have their voice heard.

If AB won the contest, he would be able to say he has gone through due democratic process as laid out in the LP constitution, and has been given the mandate of the LP membership. Currently, opponents from all sides can say ‘AB has no mandate to be the leader of the LP or the PM’ - which I’m sure they will do with great regularity.

I’m hoping against hope that someone will have the guts to stand🤞

It would be a good thing, I think, if someone did. One problem is that Starmer increased the number of MPs a candidate needs to support them, from 10% to 20%, so it is harder now.
I think Andy Burnam would still win though., but it would look less like a coronation.

Nominations for the Labour Party Leadership are scheduled to open on 9 July and close on 16 July, with a leader to be elected by 29 August if a contested election is held.

AB is currently the only MP to announce his candidacy for the leadership contest but … wouldn’t it be a ‘turn up for the books’ if someone else has been quietly working away to get the support of 81 Labour MPs and, on the 9th July, puts their name in the hat🥳

There are good well meaning councillors that work for the good of the community, even they have to toe the party line, if they don't they get deselected at the next election. They are a minority, one friend of mine served as a Tory, fell out with them, then as a Lib Dem again disagreed, then got elected as an Independant for many years.

IMO local elections should not be party political but it's not going to happen

(not an added ward, an adjoining ward)