Is Larry the Cat still hanging in there? How many PMs has he outlasted by now?
I’m beginning to think that isolating the country economically to make a bunch of old racists happy might have been a bad idea.
I’m starting to think Larry would make a better PM.
No!!! Tell me it aint so Joe! 
It’s a common thought.
What is it about the job of Prime Minister of the UK that exclusively attracts milquetoasts and goofballs? Other countries have bad leaders, but rarely these specific types of bad leaders.
My total WAG: The combo of FPTP voting and a Parliamentary system.
With a side order of “Both parties have lost their ideological moorings in a society changing faster than sensible politics can adapt to. Leading to an unseenly brawl about power for power’s sake.”
I suspect a lot of parties in a lot of nominally democratic countries are bending and breaking under the same strains.
Naw, since Cameron was in for about six years, Blair for ten years, etc. FPTP is pretty old, and Thatcher for 11 years.
But this makes a lot of sense.
But could Starmer had done fundamentally better considering the constraints?
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Brexit caused a substantial economic decline in Britain, meaning both less money for the government and a lower standard of living for the general population.
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The war in Ukraine along with Trump’s hostility to NATO meant Britain had to increase spending on defense.
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A big increase in deficit spending would create substantial hostility in the capital markets meaning Britain would have to pay higher interest rates.
While he certainly could have avoided appointing an Epstein buddy and been more pro civil liberties (the Palestine protests come to mind) I seriously doubt if Burnham will be much more successful.
All good points. But did Starmer know Peter Mandelson was such a “friend” until the leaked emails?
Brexit was a bad idea, brought on by lies, ignorance, bigotry, and xenophobia.
There has to be more to it than that. Canada has both FPTP voting and a Parliamentary system, and the current Prime Minister, Mark Carney, is an eminently sensible and pragmatic leader with a strong background in economics who I think is the best PM we’ve had perhaps in living memory.
That said, however, the leader of the federal Conservative Party is a raving lunatic, at least by Canadian standards. 
IMHO yes but to do it he would’ve had to stop being Starmer.
He won with a friggin landslide, yes I know it was more tactical voting and hatred against the conservatives than anything related to him personally.
In politics that doesn’t matter, pound the landslide and get to work, people will follow you.
Raise taxes if you must, nationalize industries if you have to, do what you think is best to stop the constant sliding to the right in politics world-wide, but for God’s sake ACT!.
Roosevelt did not have a clear idea about how to deal with the Depression, he tried 100 things, some worked, some didn’t. Those who worked he reinforced, those who failed he abandoned.
If Starmer had done something like that, the UK would not by any means be in a much better situation, but he would be hated by the right and the establishment but far more respected by the population at large, and not resigning in disgrace.
By American standards, he aint so bad,
This is almost Liberal by US Standards-
Poilievre is in favour of addressing climate change by using green technology and placing targets to reduce carbon-related emissions, as opposed to using taxes.[239] One of the technologies he plans to incentivize is carbon capture and storage.[240] Poilievre also plans to increase the production of electric cars by greenlighting more mining of lithium, cobalt and copper required to produce the cars and batteries.[241][242][243] When speaking in Quebec, he called for less “red tape” and stated that he would permit more construction of hydro-electric dams.[242][244] Poilievre believes Canadian energy is cleaner than that of other countries, and proposes a ban on importing foreign oil and a review of all pipeline projects cancelled by the current government.[245]
I mean half of the GOP thinks that Global Warming is a myth started by radical Democrats.
WW2 worked pretty well.
But with Starmer in place of Roosevelt you get a right wing victory in 1936 and a completely isolationist (if not outright fascist) U.S.
Starmer expected to resign today.
What is the music in the background of his speech playing for?
Those are comedians nearby who play music for humerous effect.
When Johnson was speaking, thay would play Yakkety-Sax (the “Benny Hill music”).
And, btw, Starmer has resigned.
There’s a really good thread here using contemporary polling to show how and when it all went wrong for Starmer.
The highlights - or lowlights - are:
Labour elected to get the Tories out and deliver change
They didn’t actually have a coherent 5 year programme of change.
The changes they needed -and still need - to make would take a while to pay off and involve a degree of initial pain.
That meant that a) they had to act quickly and decisively, b) be prepared to take short term hits and c) tell a coherent and positive story about how they were fixing things for the better.
They did none of these things. The promise not to raise taxes has been discussed but really is fundamental. Then you have in short order three failed attempts to do something about the finances within that ridiculous straitjacket; means-testing the Winter Fuel Payment (under-planned, badly briefed, media outrage; humiliating backtrack); revising the inheritance tax laws for farmers (ditto); slashing disability benefits (parliamentary rebellion, backtrack).
On top of that, they were barely in the door before it was revealed that the new upright and principled leaders of the country were taking bungs from wealthy millionaires to buy themselves nice clothes, or happily grabbing freebies to football matches, pop concerts and horse races from city fat cats. This immediately soured everyone who had wanted a change from the sleaze of the Tory era, destroyed any claims to the moral high ground and left the door wide open for challenger parties to the right and left to play the “they’re all the same, real change is over here” card.
The response to this threat was to get very worried about losses to Reform on the right, while ignoring the bigger losses to the Greens on the left. Which meant a prolonged focus on immigration, putting forward rhetoric and policies that appalled both Labour core voters and those defecting to the Greens, while also ramping up the saliency of immigration as an issue among Reform-curious defectors to no other effect than making them more supportive of Reform - not surprising if your message is “those guys are right, please don’t vote for them”.
This then led into a budget process in which it was trailed for months that this time round, having wasted a year, Labour really would enact some big changes, bite some tough bullets and deliver a committed plan to turn the country’s finances and public sector around. And then caved literally 24 hours before, abandoning various apparent commitments to produce another milksop mish mash.
That then led us into the Mandleson/Epstein scandal and here we are…
Two other significant failures that exemplify the fundamental failure mode of the Starmer government: first, declining to end the two-child benefit cap until they were dragged into it after two years - a policy which, first and foremost, would cut pverty, and was dear to the hearts of Labour MPs, and popular with Labour voters, and represented the “not the Tories anymore” change they were elected to deliver. Instead, maintaining the cap was seen by the inner circle as some sort of badge of electoral seriousness.
Second, the gradual and shameful slide from trans-inclusive rhetoric in opposition to transphobic policies in government - again, betrayal of your apparent values and the voters who chose you based on them, in return for promoting the agendas of parties who can only benefit from your effective backing. And again, presented as hard nosed big boy politics by those on the inside.
And as he isn’t actually going until September we are going to have another summer of drift and put off anything of significance.