Mailwatch(ed) Forum

Now they've got Starmer out, the Guardian can recommit to the hardest of hard news. Or not.

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/20 ... o-hysteria

Burnham’s ‘black box’ plans for cabinet send Westminster into hysteria

Or "bloke who isn't the PM hasn't appointed the Cabinet".

never in British politics has such power been concentrated in the hands of such a tiny number of individuals. Never in British politics have so many of Labour’s biggest beasts had so little influence or leverage.

On the other hand, he's been around for a long time (first elected MP in 2001) Other Labour politicians know plenty about him, and he'll have an idea about what they can do, and they'll have an idea about what they want to do. Not all that different to any new PM. What leverage did eg Theresa May's Cabinet have over Bozo Johnson, or Bozo's Cabinet over Liz Truss?

Here's my idea. Wait till he actually appoints people.

But clearly it's not such a mystery because The Guardian's also decided that not very much is going to change because he's keeping lots of Starmer appointees in place.

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/20 ... 0-advisers

‘Continuity Keir’: Burnham keeping on many of Starmer’s No 10 advisers
Lack of change in key roles could mean next week’s policy announcements may lack radicalism many hoped for

I love the "many hoped for" there. It means "we at the Guardian hoped for". It's like when they have "Government urged to..." stories. These mean "we urge the Government to do that, and we've made it look like a news story by phoning up a couple of people who agree with us".

I find this whole thing absurd.

It feels like there's a man, on stage, and he's trying to do his act. The entire time, the chorus is yelling at him he's doing it wrong. Then the chorus spots someone else and says 'he'll do it better!'. Now he's on stage, and I have very little conviction the chorus will ever shut up. This isn't about actual policies, past a certain point. It feels like the press-politics-drama-nexus is its own beast, determined to gorge on itself and everyone else is asked to treat it as 'serious politics'.

You've hit the nail on the head.

Sadly, the excitable political "journalists" - really, not much removed from gossip columnists - have a monstrously over-inflated sense of their own importance which leaves me thinking about history: as I understand it, Ted Heath went to the country in 1974 on the premise of "who runs this country - the government or the miners?". Unfortunately for Heath, the electorate decided "not you, pal."

We seem to have reached something similar now in that the leadership of the government is chosen by unelected journalists, aided and abetted by social media rather than the electorate. Maybe the time has come to really rein these bastards in.

And some of the politicians are happy to play along with it....

Looks in the direction of Lucy Powell

I spotted Leveson on Starmer's honours list yesterday.

Samanfur wrote: ↑Fri Jul 17, 2026 1:50 pm I spotted Leveson on Starmer's honours list yesterday.

Crossbencher.

Final poll of Starmer's tenure shows Labour tied with Reform via Survation