Simon Tormey

Another way of putting it is that we've got a kind of crisis-prone system

political system where successive prime ministers have basically either proven themselves to be incapable or unwilling to take the difficult decisions which confront a country which is in kind of relative decline in European and global terms and there are tough choices to be made and some of them are more likely to make it than others.

He did.

It was a landslide in terms of the proportion of seats in the House of Commons.

But of course, it was actually quite a...

a weak vote in terms of the overall sort of picture in UK politics.

So Labour only won 34% of the vote on a 60% turnout.

So you've got to think that basically one person in five voted for Labour.

But the net result was, of course, as you pointed out,

412 Labour MPs out of 650 seats.

So it's also a reflection of the very disproportionate nature of how British elections work, that someone who wasn't actually terribly favoured by the British electorate nonetheless managed to, as you say, achieve a landslide.

Really, Labour was seen as a kind of relief option after 14 disastrous years of conservative rule.

Well, it looks very much like Andy Burnham will be the next Labour leader and by extension, therefore, prime minister of Great Britain.

But it's quite nervy out there in House of Commons land.

And of course, there will always be those people who are very sceptical about a kind of coronation.

Just Andy Burnham rocks up having won a by-election last Thursday and

greeted by crowds and then becomes Labour Party leader and then Prime Minister.

There's going to be people who are saying, hold on a second, that just really gives him untrammeled power.

What about if we put up a stalking horse candidate, as we would put it in the UK, that might be able to sort of make his path a bit choppier than might otherwise look?

But it's all a kind of opportunity cost as far as people trying to put up alternative candidates.