Keir Starmer announces his resignation as prime minister | Hacker News Reader

Keir Starmer announces his resignation as prime minister

bbc.co.uk

21 pointsjjgreen12 comments

He made a few mistakes but hardly any more than previous PMs. Burnham doesn't seem to have any grand new plans, it's just business as usual. Three months and his approval is going to be just as bad - if they wanted to ditch the leader they should've done it much closer to an election. It also seems very undemocratic to parachute in a guy who wasn't even an MP to win a safe election so that he could just be handed the leadership with no vote from the parties.

I think this is just going to keep happening as long as the British electorate continue to simultaneously demand massive welfare hikes, more funding for public services and lower taxes all at once. It's just not a rich enough country to afford it all, and it only seems to be stagnating more.

This was a massive mistake in my opinion. He should have fought on and tried to get back support from various ministers.

I seriously don't understand how changing the leader can fix deep rooted structural problems. No new party, no new leader can or will fix things overnight.

I don't know why people in the UK are so simple-minded.

One thing I hope Burnham does immediately is make building things and development much easier like in Manchester.

Keir along with Theresa May and John Major were true bureaucrats but they all had no real charisma.

Sadly charisma is valued more by voters than other qualities of the political leader of a country.

Major was actually great in front of a crowd (or in a crowd, standing on his soap box!), and thrived when faced with hecklers. Starmer, by contrast, is good in small groups and one-on-one - he really shone in podcasts and "chatty" interviews.

Both are pretty charismatic in their preferred settings. Neither is a "complete package", but that's common in British politics, and you can certainly see why they won their party's leadership and led them to general election victories.

May, by contrast, really did lack charisma. A decent, principled administrator but far from being a people person. She became party leader in the chaotic period immediately after Brexit, winning by default after her rivals imploded. I don't think she'd have come first (or even second) in a properly-contested vote.

Major never recovered from rumours that he tucked his shirt into his underpants.

>Sadly charisma is valued more by voters than other qualities of the political leader of a country.

Isn't this basically an internal coup? That said I fail to see the point of him being replaced, the next person won't do any better.

> Isn't this basically an internal coup?

Kinda, but the coup was because Starmer is polling badly, and in the local elections he performed badly.

> That said I fail to see the point of him being replaced, the next person won't do any better.

It would be difficult to do worse, but not impossible. (I bet a Labour version of Truss exists, whoever they are I hope they don't win).

I always had a soft spot for May

When she was Home Secretary before being Prime Minister, it was her who blocked the extradition of Gary McKinnon

America wanted to extradite him and lock him up for decades (some even talked about “frying” him)

She’ll always have my respect for putting her foot down and saying no

Maybe Moises Naim's End of Power thesis was right. More complex things get Power becomes easier to acquire, harder to use, easier to loose.

So to summarise he mentions his family, antisemitism and that's it...

still blaming other people for his incompetence and poor achievements?

AGI has been achieved internally in the UK government.

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