It's going to be an exhausting and tedious news schedule over the coming days for the 67 million UK citizens who don't live in Greater Manchester.

Sky News@news.sky.com · 2w ago

Manchester mayor election: Who will Burnham's successor be?

Britain, Japan and Italy are bringing Canada in on their project to field a sixth-generation fighter jet by 2035, defense ministers from the nations announced jointly today.

Canada joins British-Italian-Japanese fighter jet project

Ottawa joins Global Combat Air Programme as an observer nation.

politico.eu

Sure. Burnham couldn't end rough sleeping in a single city, but obviously doing it across a whole country will be a doddle.

Adam Bienkov@adambienkov.bsky.social · 3w ago

Ending rough sleeping should be perfectly achievable if Burnham has the will to achieve it. Official figures suggest there are fewer than 5,000 people sleeping rough on a typical night across England. A problem that one of the richest countries in the world really should be able to fix

From the campaign trail and the media studios to the Treasury, No10 and the Cabinet Office. It’s been a privilege to be in the cabinet of a Labour government and to serve the country. Andy Burnham has called to tell me I won’t be a part of his cabinet. I wish him and his team every success.

No sooner than Starmer announces his resignation than Farage demands a general election and the BBC highlights Burnham’s lack of a mandate. Can anyone see a pattern here?

We can be grateful for Keir Starmer’s leadership and the work his government has done to put Britain back on a path to a brighter future. We wish Keir and his family all the best for what comes next, and remain forever grateful for what he has done for my party and for our country.

Cool story. Now, is Polanski going to put his big boy pants on at any point and run for a seat, or is this incessant trapping off all he's got? Currently, his opinion and words carry as much weight as Dave's do down the local pub.

Zack Polanski@zackpolanski.bsky.social · 2mo ago

Bills up. Wages too low. Record profits for Oil & Gas. 50 richest families with more wealth than 50% of population. Shit in our rivers. Pensioners jailed for protesting. Migrants thrown under the bus. Supporting a Genocide. That's Starmer's legacy.

I know a lot of people have a lot of opinions on Starmer. Some hate him, some love him. Much speculation on his future is framed as "picking a team". One thing's for sure, all that aside, if I was Starmer I'd definitely bow out from having to deal with this twat for even a single second longer! 👇

CNN@cnn.com · 2mo ago

US President Donald Trump weighed in on the future of British Prime Minister Keir Starmer on Sunday, claiming that he “will resign,” amid widespread speculation the UK leader could set out a timeline for his departure as soon as Monday. https://cnn.it/4uRcfjV

Makerfield By-Election Voting Intention: LAB: 49% (+6) RFM: 39% (-1) RES: 8% (+1) GRN: 2% (-1) LDM: 1% (-3) CON: 1% (-1) Via @survation.bsky.social, 26 May - 1 Jun. Changes w/ 18-22 May.

My favourite and most comedic moment of #QuestionTime was Kenyon saying Reform will "ban knives completely" Sure, it's that easy. Don't worry, we'll all just earn a Michelin star to prove our credentials so we can chop an onion at home. That's definitely the way forward. Absolute fuckwit.

#QuestionTime: Burnham (Labour): Tough gig. Running for local seat, wants to be PM, can't say he wants to be PM. Kenyon (Reform): Out of his depth, nothing new to say, standard Reform nonsense. Wakefield (Greens): Posh word soup. Winstanley (Con): Nervous word soup. Austin (LD): Why am I here?

Seriously. Fuck Nigel Farage.

So not even a week since this Burnham saga erupted fully All of them were riding high telling us the PM has to go,they were the only ones to save us. Blah blah Starmer is getting on with it and Streeting is a dead duck now,no one is backing him and Burnham is floundering under the weight of his lies

Brexit increasingly resembles a form of necropolitics through which the will of the living is outweighed by the will of the dead

I sincerely hope, since he seems to be so popular, that Burnham grows into the person the country needs. I remain, as ever, open and hopeful. But my initial impression is of a very talented local politician, out of his depth, employing the same political handbook that has ruined Labour. Sorry. 7/7

Has anyone actually tried to win this sort of area by being honest? Wouldn't that be real leadership? To say: "I know why you voted for this, but it's turned out badly and I think you know that. You now have a choice. Trust the next easy solution the same conmen offer you, or fix the damage." 4/

I really wanted this Burnham speech to leave me hopeful and was actively rooting for it. I found it deflating - to put it mildly. Where it needed to be brave and expansive, it was small and meek. Let me give one example that I found quite instructive, since Andy used it as a framing device. 1/

Those bold moves suddenly not quite so easy when you've got to put your money where your mouth is www.theguardian.com/politics/202...

Andy Burnham says he will not try to return UK to EU

Burnham vows to have ‘relentless domestic focus’ in Makerfield in first speech since announcing byelection run

theguardian.com

"What went wrong"? This is many, many, many, many, many, many, many words to avoid saying "Brexit" Quite literally, a word that doesn't appear in the entire essay

Financial Times@financialtimes.com · 3mo ago

Once the model of stable government, Britain has had six PMs in the past 10 years — and is in the grip of yet another leadership crisis. Anthony Seldon asks what went wrong. Read The Weekend Essay in full here: ft.trib.al/5CLV8Ht

Between this and “councils shouldn’t fly the Ukraine flag” the next election is IMV begging to be won by the Conservatives, but who instead want to kid themselves that “a fluke in Wandsworth” means that Kemi Badenoch is a good leader with a good strategy.

Elizabeth Taylor@elizabethtaylor47.bsky.social · 3mo ago

Aside from anything this makes Kemi Badenoch’s weird defence of the march even more bizarre. Her voters hate him even more than Labour ones!

This is the step many miss in this debate. It doesn't have to be no-free-speech vs anything-goes. There are many activities that we regulate more strictly when commercial. Rules are mostly different between doing-X and doing-X-for-money. Remove financial incentives and grifters will soon peel away.

Alex Andreou@sturdyalex.bsky.social · 3mo ago

That these racist thugs have morphed into "far right influencers" is central. Being a bigot used to be a hobby. It is now a profession. We don't have to treat the monetisation of hate as an inevitable phenomenon. We can regulate platforms - not to supress speech, but to remove financial incentives.

Reform are targeting individual journalists now it seems

Who has the cards…

🪖MilitaryNewsUA🇺🇦@militarynewsua.bsky.social · 3mo ago

❗️During hearings in the US Senate on May 13, US Army Secretary Dan Driscoll highly praised Ukraine’s Delta combat management system. “It fully integrates every drone, sensor, and fire platform into a single real-time network. We don’t have anything like that,” he stated.

BREAKING: Reform UK leader Nigel Farage bought a £1.4 million property in cash shortly after receiving a £5m personal gift from billionaire donor Christopher Harborne, according to property records seen by Sky News.

Poor Wes Streeting. All that scheming and plotting, but alas, his 1% chance of winning a leadership challenge with Labour member votes is now a 0% chance. Angela Rayner says she has been cleared by HMRC over tax affairs www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

Angela Rayner says she has been cleared by HMRC over tax affairs

Rayner stood down as deputy prime minister in September 2025 after admitting underpaying stamp duty.

bbc.co.uk

Starmer dropkicks Badenough in the commons. Humour in adversity. And he has quite the way with a punchline.

This I think has a lot to it, not just in terms of UK politics, but in how a fixation on defeating the Far Right can lead to such a panicking overcorrection that it starts to undermine an ability to calmly develop policy strategies for all aspects of state and society bsky.app/profile/shuf...

Shuffle@shuffleosint.bsky.social · 3mo ago

Don't understand why the debate isn't focused on who can best use the massive majority to push through Labour policies and create change that people can feel. Why always having to couch policy on what's best to stop Reform, why not what's best for the country, Labour and the people...

Don't understand why the debate isn't focused on who can best use the massive majority to push through Labour policies and create change that people can feel. Why always having to couch policy on what's best to stop Reform, why not what's best for the country, Labour and the people...