@hossack_phil Took them 12 hours to count the first choice and only had half a million to count! Imagine if everyone had voted…. We’d be looking at November before the result was declared!
Apparently it’s only take 2 or 3 hours for the second choice count so they must have lost a few🤣
Ah Andy Burnham, the King of the North who finally wandered south, not with an army but with a carefully selected collection of northern sounding phrases, a black T shirt under a blazer, and the political equivalent of a midlife crisis TikTok account.
Well done on becoming the latest temporary resident of Number 10. Britains revolving door of prime ministers has been spinning so fast it now resembles a particularly unfunny episode of The Traitors filmed in a rain soaked bus shelter.
Sixth or seventh PM in a decade? At this rate the furniture in Downing Street should come with a polite notice saying previous occupants may have shown mild competence.
You didnt win a general election. You simply waited for Starmer to collapse like a poorly made garden chair and then strolled in unopposed. It’s the political version of finding an empty parking space outside Tesco and immediately declaring yourself mayor of the entire car park.
Your entire brand rests on being the salt of the earth northern bloke who properly gets it. The trouble is that salt has gone distinctly soggy. Youve been doing the Im just a normal lad from up north routine for so long it has acquired more coats of varnish than a Manchester tram.
It reminds me rather strongly of Starmer endlessly telling everyone his father was a toolmaker. Both of you reach for the same authenticity badge whenever the room goes quiet.
One flashes the northern accent and the flat cap energy. The other waves the toolmaker dad like a union membership card. After a while people start wondering whether the toolmaker ever actually made any tools or whether the northerner has spent more time in London meeting rooms than in actual northern weather.
Russell Kanes impressions are already sharper than the original and half the internet has decided you are the David Brent of politics.
The awkward glasses, the forced mateyness, and the lingering suspicion that at any moment you might produce a guitar and start singing about shared values.
The pork scratchings video, the Love Island style hot new bombshell enters the villa arrival at Number 10, the solemn rating of AI pictures of Number 10 North as if judging a particularly drab Bake Off technical challenge.
Absolute peak British cringe. You are the first prime minister who looks as though he would rather post a soft launch Instagram reel than run the country.
And then there is the record. As Mayor of Greater Manchester you promised to end rough sleeping and then watched the numbers climb again while hundreds of millions went into shiny skyscrapers that somehow forgot to include affordable homes.
Manc-hattan for the developers, waiting lists for everyone else. Getting the buses back under public control was genuinely useful, yet it is hard to look like the peoples champion when the skyline appears to be sponsored by your preferred property tycoon.
Now you sit in the top job promising to rewire Britain, shift power out of Whitehall and give every postcode a fair go, all while securing the position through an internal party coronation.
Classic. Decentralise everything except the top job itself. Early moves include cutting business rates for pubs, which is jolly decent if your foreign policy consists mainly of more pork scratchings, and making sure everyone knows you are the first Co-operative Party prime minister, as if that alone will turn the cost of living crisis into a pleasant village fete.
You are more charismatic than Starmer in roughly the same way a slightly damp sponge is more charismatic than a house brick. But the constant Im different, Im from the North, I feel your pain performance is already wearing thinner than a Greater Manchester bus timetable in February rain.
Britain does not need another prime minister who treats governing as a branding exercise in regional authenticity. It needs one who can last longer than the average Premier League managerial career.
Welcome to Number 10.
Looks like they are having trouble fixing the Manchester Mayoral result! They are now counting second choices.
Considering they’ve had all day to count only 25% of the potential turnout, it must be bad!
@RachelD1892 Apparently, all the counters were taken into huddles by their “team leaders” or handlers and told to go and count second choices…. Definitely a fiddle goin on.