Simon Tormey

I think

Whatever happens, Andy Burnham is going to be the next Prime Minister of the UK.

Well, it's slightly more complicated than that because the deal is that Starmer has said that he's happy to be Prime Minister until the return of Parliament in September and

But of course, the problem there, you've got a lame duck prime minister who really doesn't have any authority for the next three months.

And of course, if you've got some sort of crisis, then we might have to accelerate that timeframe as well.

So a lot of these things are sort of in play and all that can change in a matter of hours.

Well, partly circumstance and context.

Britain is in a world of pain, a very slow-moving economy, welfare bill going up, ageing population and so on.

But I think more fundamentally...

Really, this government just talked a lot about the failings of the Conservative administration, $20 billion black hole, and very little about the most essential ingredient coming into power.

Where's the hope?

Where's the vision?

And I think that really...

kind of hampered Starmer getting on the right side of the British population.

And I think they made some very early mistakes in terms of taking away the winter fuel allowance for old age pensioners, failing to get to grips with the small boats issue about illegal immigrants crossing the Channel, and never really gave the sense of confidence that he was in control of an agenda.

It was kind of downhill almost from day one.

So I think that really is at the heart of it.

On the upside,

I think people do recognize Starmer as a kind of fundamentally quite decent person.

Even if he's a little bit uncharismatic and unimaginative, he does come across as at least a kind of stable character.