Keir Starmer - and his miserable government

Reform wouldn't have won even if it wasn't Burnham. Only increased the votes by few thousand. Vote share 2%+. Labour candidate last election got 18k votes. Reform this election 15k votes.

No fan of Starmer or this clown show of a government. Will Burnham potentially become PM and do anything different, I doubt it. Think we are heading for our form of Maga at some point, with probably near identical results of disillusionment & corruption.

2 parties that are based on one issue. If you can do well on that one issue you make Reform and Restore irrelevant. Unfortunately I don't think Labour or the Tories have the balls to do what's needed to make this happen.

(19-06-2026 10:19 )coolguy4u Wrote:  Reform wouldn't have won even if it wasn't Burnham.

That's completely wrong. Without Burnham, Reform would have won the seat with a landslide.

By-elections generally have a turnout 15-20% lower than the previous general election. This by-election was actually 6.2% higher than the previous general election, so rather than an expected turnout of 32-34,000, it ended up being over 45,000.

The pollsters reckoned Labour without Burnham would have managed around 9,000 votes, but they ended up with almost 25,000. They had Reform getting around 16-18,000 votes, with or without Burnham, which is not far off what they did get.

Don't forget there was a council election in Makerfield last month, which Reform won convincingly, their 50% vote trouncing Labour’s 27%. Without Burnham, this vote would likely have been pretty similar.

Reform said they were hoping for 18,000 votes, which they thought would be a certain win. They got 15,696 so not terribly far off what they were looking for, but in the end nowhere near enough to win.

(19-06-2026 17:00 )Glenn Miller Wrote:  

(19-06-2026 10:19 )coolguy4u Wrote:  Reform wouldn't have won even if it wasn't Burnham.

That's completely wrong. Without Burnham, Reform would have won the seat with a landslide.

By-elections generally have a turnout 15-20% lower than the previous general election. This by-election was actually 6.2% higher than the previous general election, so rather than an expected turnout of 32-34,000, it ended up being over 45,000.

The pollsters reckoned Labour without Burnham would have managed around 9,000 votes, but they ended up with almost 25,000. They had Reform getting around 16-18,000 votes, with or without Burnham, which is not far off what they did get.

Don't forget there was a council election in Makerfield last month, which Reform won convincingly, their 50% vote trouncing Labour’s 27%. Without Burnham, this vote would likely have been pretty similar.

Pretty sure sky news had labour winning by a small margin without Burnham. Burnhams 20 point lead was however a surprise.

So when do we think Burnham is likely to launch his challenge for the leadership? Do we think before the Party Conference or after it?

Well that's handy because he's about to get a lot of extra time in that matter

Trump wants in on the action. He's posted

"Keir Starmer will resign as Prime Minister of the UK.
He failed badly on two important issues, IMMIGRATION AND ENERGY (OPEN NORTH SEA OIL!).
I wish him well."

So he's making it out that he's being replaced because didn't do what Trump had told him.

I for one am shocked that Trump would take that position on these events