"Do they really care about losing elections, though? "

Well, yea. The PLP are a bunch of otherwise unemployable tosspots on near a hundred grand a year each with another quarter of a million wrangleable annually to employ your wife/husband and all your mates...then there's all those subsidised restaurants and bars where you can live the high life and make a network of oft lucrative connections with your dodgy fellow MPs and not to forget the lucrative pension.


It's a lot to give up: why maintain an allegiance to the present empty suit when you can instead dance the "hopey-changey" into the next election instead with the new dud in duds Andy Burnham who will be guaranteed to at least appeal to the large always wishful thinking sector of the electorate?

You are of course right that they don't give a flying fuck what the electorate thinks or wants: it's just that after trashing every promise he made first time, Starmer just isn't going to be credible for a second round, so to keep those lovely jobs, perks and pork pies they need a candidate whose credibility isn't zero: yet...