Andy Burnham's opener

It's been just over a week since Andy Burnham became our latest Prime Minister.

I must admit that I wasn't exactly keen on Burnham coming back, especially when an MP resigned his seat solely so Burnham could return to Parliament, especially as he was still serving out his term as Greater Manchester's mayor. But he's here now and I wish him the best. We've going to need him to succeed to stop Reform.

Thoughts so far is that he seems to something of a return to the pre-New Labour Prime Ministers. He feels that the UK made a major wrong-turn with the Thatcher era and the neoliberal period that followed it. Of course, he was part of the Brown government, but that's politics.

We have a real problem with social care - it needs to be sorted out properly before it collapses due to insufficient taxpayers to fund the system. Immigration does help in that, but we can't keep increasing our population ad infinitum; we already import a lot of our food as is.

Also, there is a need to get the NEETS to stop being NEETS. Many of them can work with the right incentives and support. I myself hold down a full-time job despite being on the autistic spectrum. If nothing else, people sitting around at home are ripe to be radicalised, especially with social media as it has been for a while.

Halting the prisoner release scheme is the right move. It needs a major review and we're probably going to have to build more prisons. We might even have to go back to the "hulk" principle by chartering some ships and turning them into floating prison for a while. There is a feeling that crime is out of control; this may not be true, but perception is often more important than reality.

Foreign policy seems to be largely the same. A decisive break with Trump is a risky move; a rupture might not be easily fixed even after his departure. Until we can defend Europe from the Russians without American assistance, we're kind of stuck.

Anyway, it's early days - we've got the summer ahead of us, Farage's stunt in Clacton and then the party conference season.

One thing that has to be a priority - going carbon negative. We need to get the excess carbon out of our atmosphere as the impacts are already.

This is probably not entirely coherent. But I'll leave it as is.

Exit Sir Keir Starmer

On Monday, the UK gets another Prime Minister. We've been having rather a lot of them lately. We're not exactly First Republic Italy yet, but the reputation of the UK for political stability is kind of gone.

Ultimately, Sir Keir was perhaps unsuited for the top job. He was at the end of the day a lawyer and not a politician. His election as Labour leader after the 2019 defeat was a case of being the most popular candidate in an mediocre batch and no-one really thought that Labour would be back that quickly. Then again, I didn't exactly think that Boris Johnson would self-destruct in the way he did.

The 2024 election was a case of "the Government losing" and Labour's landslide coming on a very low share of the vote.

Ultimately, Sir Keir made some massive missteps. Winter Fuel Allowance changes went down like a lead balloon - it's a third rail of British politics, along with the triple lock for pensions it seems. Immigration was always going to be an issue. "Two-tier Kier" will stick with him for the rest of his days, regardless of the truth of the matter. I definitely feel we could have done more on Gaza and should still do more.

However, what ultimately holed him below the waterline was the whole Peter Mandelson scandal. I don't know whose idea that was to appoint him as ambassador to the United States, but it was in retrospect a stupid one. John Healey resigning over defence spending was just the magazines exploding.

I have thoughts on Andy Burnham, our Prime Minister-elect, but I'll save those for next weekend once his government is in place.

Coronavirus #28: Vaccine passports

I would support a limited use of vaccine passports while Covid-19 is still a significant thing in this country - which it currently. Definitely for foreign travel and big events, but not for pubs and shops. I also don't think it is really that discriminatory considering that we will all be getting vaccinated in the next few months.

I also see that the Oxford/AstraZeneca jab won't be recommended for under 30s going forward; the risk of the blood clots for that group is higher than being hospitalised for Covid-19. Which makes sense. Now we need more carrots to encourage people to get vaccinated - I would personally eliminate testing requirements for those with both doses.

Still hoping to go abroad this year, but Europe does need to hurry up with its jabbing...

Brexit deal

This weekend we may know if we'll get a Brexit deal or end up with a No Deal in January. Or we might not. Some compromises are going to need to be made on both sides.

Let's sort this out; the uncertainty is bad for everyone.

Local and European elections 2014

The strong UKIP showing in the local elections and their triumph in the EU elections should be a wake-up call to all the other parties; we need to take this party very seriously and actively work to expose their damaging world view and policies. While they are impacting the Tory vote more than the Labour one, it is still hurting us - UKIP were basically responsible for Labour only ending up with one councillor in Havering.

Labour's performance in the locals was good, but could have been better; while we're still on course for at least largest party, we need to make more effort at connecting with people. It's not going to be easy, as we're still deeply associated with the last recession and "failures" on immigration, but it needs to be done.

It's not time to panic, but we should not be complacent.

Prince George

Congratulations to William and Kate on their new arrival.

Now, can the papers find something else to talk about? You know a story is eating itself when you're doing stories about how the story was reported.