All of them were personable, well-drilled, and hovering ideologically around the center of Labour politics, with Burnham tilting slightly to the left and Kendall to the right.
One is center-right (the Tories), one is center-left (Labour), and the third (the Liberal Democrats, or Lib Dems) is sorta center-center-left.
To those just plugging into British politics, U.K. governments are always led by either the Conservative (center-right) or Labour (center-left) parties.
The center-left Labour party experienced historic losses in the polls, shedding 29 seats.
Losers on the left in the U.S. and U.K -- where there are traditional two-party systems -- found champions in traditional center-left Labour (Jeremy Corbyn) and Democratic (Bernie Sanders) parties.
In five years as the party's leader before the 2010 election, he often seemed out of step with the Conservative mainstream as he worked to reposition the party on the political center ground that Labour dominated in winning three successive elections.
A UKIP volunteer distributing election posters in the city center sneers that Labour "represents nobody, other than rich metropolitan liberals".
Irish political commentators have predicted a sweeping win in the election for two opposition parties expected to govern in a coalition, the right-of-center Fine Gael party and the left-of-center Labour Party.
May's supporters argue that the deal is the best on offer, and the alternatives are a chaotic "no-deal" Brexit that would cause huge disruption to people and businesses, or an election that could see the Conservative government replaced by the left-of-center Labour Party.
Other Conservatives will be arguing that it would be folly to tack to the right and leave the center completely open to Labour.
Everyone assumed ex-Lib Dem voters would head for the center-left embrace of Labour, but many voted Tory.
