You seem to not understand me. Of course I know he was elected as a MP. As for his election as leader of the Labour Party, you have a particularly Soviet view of democracy; the only other candidate was Catherine West (who? exactly) who didn't even put herself forward. She was nominated after Burnham had received enough votes to be unbeatable. He became Prime Minister by acclamation. This has all the features of a process that Leonid Brezhnev would be proud of. I'm not sure why you stated "I need to get over it". I frankly don't really care who heads the Labour Party, but don't you dare suggest that he was elected on the wave of public opinion. He was not. At the last election, there was no war in the Gulf, we were not hearing American incels stuck in Thailand enthusiastically suggesting an invasion of Canada was on the cards. We didn't have an American President threatening the new Prime Minister. We didn't have anywhere near the revelations of Epstein Island and how it infected the very highest echelons of Western society, likely involving current and past Heads of State. We didn't have an United States on the verge of defaulting. A man of your background will surely know, without Googling, which economist said "when the facts change, I change my mind". The facts have changed, and Britain is looking at an economic abyss thanks to a complete collapse in leadership across the Atlantic and a cretin in Moscow. We have an absolute need to increase defence spending, and not because of what the pillock in the Whitehouse says but because of what the pillock in the Whitehouse says, We can no longer trust our closest ally. But where is the money to come from once you have finished sorting out the winos, recruited the additional mental health counsellors for the children forcibly moved from their schools mid-term, once we've paid for the 2 quid bus rides to nowhere, paying to move government to Manchester, a meaningless 45 notes off heating this year, business rate reductions for pubs and night clubs, adult social care, building council houses. All these things you think are more important than tax, welfare reform and defence. We've already got a £4.7 bn hole in the defence budget. Increasing to 3% will add £10bn to that. Triple Lock has to be on the table, and it matters <deleted> all what the parties, major and no-hopers said 12+ months ago. Its a difficult choice that a true leader needs to tackle head on. The current pension bill is £146bn. The problem is that the 2.5% floor means pension spending can rise faster than the economy even when neither earnings nor inflation justify it. The OECD has specifically warned that the triple lock puts upward pressure on public expenditure and creates significant fiscal risks. The IFS has also calculated that the full new State Pension is already around £30 a week higher than it would have been had it simply been indexed to average earnings since 2011. 10 year guilts have reached 5.29%. Higher gilt yields gradually make new borrowing and refinancing existing debt more expensive. Before the recent gilt-market shock, the Chancellor's headroom was roughly £24bn. Estimates following the rise in yields suggested it could fall to around £13bn. To restore this headroom, so you can sort out the dossers and enjoy a £2 bus fare, the tax take needs to increased by £11bn, or cuts of £11bn need to be made. That increased tax burden or cut in services won't be placed on pensioners enjoying triple lock rises, but on the young. But the OBR's sensitivity analysis indicates that a sustained 1-point increase in borrowing costs could ultimately add roughly £15bn a year to borrowing. Burnham says that the triple lock reform is off the cards. Why? Because Keir Starmer said so? he's not Keir Starmer. Keir Starmer went because of catastrophic local elections. Burnham wasn't campaigning at the last general election, he was sitting pretty as Manchester mayor, thinking about the Hacienda etc. All those things you think he's going to do, he won't. He can't. He doesn't have the money. But he wants you to keep liking him. SO he'll keep saying he'll do it. He'll say a lot, but so far he's been the master at prevarication. He's not a great politician. If he was, it wouldn't have taken him 3 attempts to get in. In 2010, less than 9% of the parliamentary party thought he was worth a punt, somewhere behind Ed Balls. In 2015, against Corbyn, he managed less than 20% against a bloke who didn't make it through 6th Form. Given the lack of serious opposition to him within the parliamentary party (they are <deleted>ting bricks), he had the perfect opportunity to be the Statesman, and make that difficult fiscal choice, without much murmuring from his back benches. As this Parliament progresses, the news will inevitably get worse; the projections for interest rates are looking grim. People are going to lose their homes. Labour will have spent their honeymoon period spaffing around about cheap bus fares, in person job interviews (that was a corker from Burnham). All a <deleted> waste of time. And besides the current geopolitical situation which is almost existential for the UK, not we can add a 1000 year El Nino event, making the passing UK summer look like a walk in the park. He will face increased unfunded costs because of that, such as spikes in hospital admissions, failures in agriculture and other sectors. When a government issues today warnings to people to start stockpiling food ahead of next summer, you know something is up. I suppose you're an OAP or soon to be OAP, hence so defensive of the triple lock to the detriment of the rest of us.
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