On the impending arrival of The King In The North

[andrewducker]

On the one hand, I actively think that Burnham would do a pretty good job.

On the other hand it would be hilarious if he lost the by-election.

On the third hand, I'm pretty sure that no matter what happens Labour will find a way to sabotage themselves.

(To be clear, I'd rather that they didn't, and would rather like them to just be competent and decent, if they can work out how to do that.)

Comments

[calimac]

I was thinking about that: what if he lost the by-election. What also came up was: what if Labour loses the Manchester mayorality after/if he vacates it.

[andrewducker]

It's certainly a risk. But with the voting system allowing a second vote (not full AV, but still an improvement) Labour still have a decent chance of winning it.

[cmcmck]

Looking at Makerfield, it's by no means a nailed on certainly as a labour seat!

If they were either competent or decent thay wouldn't be doing what they are doing to people like me.

[andrewducker]

They certainly aren't right now. Burnham has been better than many though.

[mountainkiss]

Why do you actively think Burnham would do a good job?

[andrewducker]

From what he's said he wants to do. Which are the things that I think we urgently need.

Most importantly he's fully behind proportional representation, which I view as absolutely critical.

But his speeches the more authoritarian approaches that the current government has taken on things like immigration have also been reassuring.

Generally speaking he seems like a move away from the "Say the same thing that Reform do, thus doing their marketing for then." approach.

(Economically there doesn't seem to be a huge difference, but economically I'm mostly happy with what Labour are up to)

[mountainkiss]

How effectively do you think he would do the job, given that he’s been out of Parliament for a decade? I am not sure that what he’s been doing approaches the role of PM in terms of complexity and leadership requirement.

[andrewducker]

There I would hope that he'd hit the ground running and have people who do know the current state of play guide the detail.

Do you think that parliament has changed how it works dramatically in the last decade? Or is it more about whether he knows the people well enough that you're nervous about?

[mountainkiss]

I think he’s wildly overconfident, ego driven and has low understanding of the complexities and hard trade-offs of the role of PM compared with what he’s been doing. I don’t particularly trust him to pick good advisors and instead expect him to reward loyalty and promote northerners (which isn’t a bad idea per se but isn’t calculated to get him the expertise he needs around him quickly if he is to grip issues of this difficulty). I don’t know a lot about his character but his ambition and lack of humility don’t speak particularly well of his ability to adapt to a much harder context; today’s FT profile of him characterises him as being conflict avoidant; if true, that’s fatal in this context. To be clear, I would love to be wrong about this.

[andrewducker]

Yeah. If he can't deal with conflict that won't work for him at all. Thank you for the pointer, I shall go track down the FT profile!