Best Of

In more concrete matters relating to Starmer's future we have just had our 11th consecutive month with manufacturing PMIs below 50, that is indicating a future contraction and the latest figure is one of the worst: https://www.msn.com/en-gb/money/other/uk-factories-stumble-as-new-orders-fall-back-pmi-shows/ar-AA1LD3ZA?ocid=msedgntp&pc=HCTS&cvid=68b69efe1dfd4e56a1a8495a30003596&ei=27

I may have mentioned our trade deficit from time to time in passing. This really isn't helping. Its time we had a government more focused on the day job.

The economy is only staying afloat because of services . The latest update to that is due out shortly .

Yes and to be fair that has largely been the case for 30 years or more. But what we are not seeing is any sign of investment in new production in the UK, any uplift in training, any growth in productivity, any facilitation of growth by removing planning hurdles or otherwise, any attempt to encourage entrepreneurial activity in the UK, it makes you despair. What we got instead was the increase in Employers NI and an above inflation increase in the minimum wage with inevitable consequences for the level of employment.

It just won't do. Our forthcoming budget needs to focus on growth (as Reeves herself recognised before the election). That means finding ways to boost investment through more generous allowances, encouraging training, not hammering Entrepreneurial Relief or Capital Gains or share based ISAs, looking at why London is struggling to compete in the IPO market, etc etc. I fear we are going to see the reverse as our Chancellor scrabbles around for a few billion more taxes to make her nonsensical targets and kick the can down the road for a few more months.

My new brainiac IQ 190 squillionaire friend, who was freaking out about the gilts market months ago (presciently) is now freaking out about gilts EVEN MORE

He says the government is “driving straight into a brick wall”. He thinks the present gilts “crisis” is maybe the markets reacting to Starmer’s “phase 2” speech which didn’t acknowledge the fiscal emergency at all

He says, as tax rises won’t work, borrowing can’t be done, and the government refuses to cut, we “may become Turkey or Argentina for a bit”

🫣

I am no brainiac, nor do I have an IQ of 190, nor, sadly, am I a squillionaire but this is kind of obvious. We are heading towards a fiscal crisis. It is not just that we need to borrow new money at penalty rates, we also have to roll over ever more debt taken out when interest rates were very, very low. 10 year gilts maturing just now were probably borrowed at less than 1%. To replace those borrowed funds we will be borrowing the same money at more than 5%. The cost of our debt is going to be rising for a long time, even if we manage to get current rates down. Every other category of spending is going to be squeezed by this.

Right, so what do we do? The "cut spending" brigade envisage that the sick and the poor are wasting the money so just take it off them. In reality they are sick and poor and when need remains and you cut the provision you spend more mopping up the various crises you create.

So we can't cut spending on the front line. We need to cut spending on everything else. How is it that we have an NHS where the budget goes up every year and front line provision shrinks? Its a bonfire burning our cash - and we can't afford to fuel it any more.

We set up a crisis team during Covid. Massive spike in patients, fewer resources, how do we do things. We need to do the same thing today. We simply cannot afford the vast bureaucracies and overlapping managers that we have in health and education. If that means that we have to make redundant the staff at NHS Trusts and Education Trusts then sobeit.

Even the guy running a company that provides school transport for SEND kids has gone on record complaining of the complete madness & waste in the current system.

PIP payments appear to have gone from “I need money for transport because otherwise I can’t get to work” to ”I have ADHD and find using the bus a bit tricky & would like my own car”,

The NHS maternity service is spending more on compensating mothers & children for damage done to them due to lack of adequate staffing than it is on actually delivering maternity services.

We trapped many of the “sick and poor” in unemployment because we let large corporations argue that even jobs that paid less than minimum wage counted as “shortage professions” that deserved unlimited work visas. How are they going to get work when made to compete in that environment?

The legal profession has turned the Equality Acts into a tool to undermine market forces in the labour market, leading inevitably to the chaos in Birmingham & the further casualisation of labour as employers flatly refuse to take on employees who have been turned into future legal liabilities for the sin of paying different jobs different amounts of money in order to attract workers.

We’ve made it completely impossible to build anything at all, anywhere. Latest stupidity on this front is that the cheap rate for non-degradable landfill that can be used to fill old quarries (cement, soil etc) at £4/tonne is being removed & the standard rate of £136 / tonne is being applied across the board, adding something like ~£25k to the price of the average house & vastly increasing the costs of larger projects. But that’s a pinprick next to the new Building Regulations, which appear to have cut house-building in half from already pitiful levels & the marauding Environment Agency that believes spiders matter more than housing children.

I could (very easily) go on, but there is so much in this country that doesn’t require money spending on it - it needs saner review & regulation. Successive governments have made this situation worse and worse because every regulation has had a proponent who cares very much about it being implemented but the costs have been spread across all of us, so pushback has been difficult to organise. We have ended up with a diffuse rule by lawfare, where everyone has a very important job to do but in the aggregate their job is to prevent anything happening at all.

I see the Starmer administration and consider a government utterly mired in the mundane. I have no doubt that ministers are in their departments beavering away being busy on policy initiatives, feeling like they are making a difference. The problem is that largely they are not - busy fools.

If Starmer is to break this current political zeitgeist then he needs to change plan and do so significantly. @Leon suggests he call an EU referendum - that would do it! Or something similarly bold. I'd even welcome him coming out and calling out the racist women-beating child-molesting scum at the heart of the protect our women / raise the colours movement.

He won't do anything. Because he's frit.

Agreed, entirely.

As I noted yesterday, Labour behave as if scared of their own shadow.

They might also have grasped the nettle of putting Thames Water into special administration.
Or told the BoE to cool it with quantitative tightening.
Or tackled seriously our sclerotic planning rules.
Or selectively used compulsory purchase powers to finance house building in areas of high demand.
Or introduced regional electricity pricing.

Etc

Any or all of those could accurately be described as starting to tackle the mess bequeathed to them.

Instead, some bullshit about using their first year of government to "lay the foundations".

‘I’ve applied for more than 5,000 jobs – it’s brutal out there’

When lay-offs hit my role as a senior copywriter at Virgin Media O2 in August 2023, I knew the job hunt wouldn’t be easy. But two years, a drained bank account and a psychiatric unit later, I never imagined it would be this brutal.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/money/jobs/career-advice/applied-over-5000-jobs-brutal-market/

Not to go all Leon, but AI....

5000 jobs in two years is seven a day.
He really needs to think about tailoring his applications.

I often think this when I see stories like this. I’ve been lucky - I’m in a job I love and have been able to progress here too. But I think I’ve genuinely only applied for about 10 jobs in my life, plus about six letters asking about post doc positions. And each application was crafted to match the job specs, and all the rest.
Those who are applying for 5000 jobs are not really applying for 5000 jobs. A better focus would help.

Yes, he should have spent more time building his skills to better prepare him for a job.

My guess is this is the core problem. His expertise is in an area that LLMs have and will even more so eat the role. If he doesn't have much to add beyond crafting words nicely, its a difficult hire.

Honestly, he should have spent two years doing woodworking or something. People always need cupboards built and doors adjusting. Electrical work is what I'd do today.

"Starmer pushes digital ID cards for all after Macron demands action to tackle scourge of illegal working in Britain"

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-15058275/Starmer-pushes-digital-ID-cards-Macron-demands-action-tackle-scourge-illegal-working-Britain.html

So now he overturns our liberties after receiving orders from the president of France

Every day he manages to make me hate him just that little bit more

Dystopian Britain. The government tracks your every move.

It doesn't, though, does it. Turn your phone off, nobody knows where you are.

I wouldn’t be so sure. Go for a drive and there are number plate cameras everywhere. Use your credit or debit card and you are logged. It’s harder than you might imagine to completely disappear. How many ring doorbells do you pass? CCTV installations?

Now 99.99% of the time no one is following you. But if little kinabalu should become a suspect in a crime, well there would be the ability to track you.

In which case, you would think the police would actually be able to catch some criminals committing crimes other than upsetting someone on X.

Did a senior policeperson not stop and think "Wait, the police have an issue with perceived bias and over-reaction at the moment, should we really arrest this 57 year old Irish comedian, for three possibly transphobic tweets? Yes, we should!!"

Then they must have had a chat about how to do it, to improve the image of the police, in a country where the polling says the public has calamitously lost trust in them

"Shall we quietly send around a constable? Ask him to come to the station? What's the most politic and delicate way to handle this? So we don't alienate still more citizens?"

"I know, let's send a squad of three, no four - yes four armed police to arrest him as soon as he gets home from America, like he's a jihadi but worse."

"That's brilliant but I've got an even better idea, let's send FIVE - five armed police! - and let's do it literally at the airport as he lands so it looks like we are insane and have lost all sense of proportion and we have no clue about catching actual criminals, because we think bad tweets are worse than rape?!"

"This is genius, Sir. Soon the public will love us once again."

What are you talking about, "a second Labour term"? Leon has already said on the previous thread that the Labour Party are done. Bet accordingly!

He just doesn't see any way back for them, does he. It's a worry.

As far as I know - I am happy to be corrected - no governing party with polling as poor as Starmer’s Labour has ever gone on to win a subsequent election

That could be wrong, I’m still traumatised by my near death experience with the birds of Frankfurt, but if it is true then it suggests history is on my side here

For recent Labour reference, Mr Gordon Brown of the Manse's Labour hit absolute rock bottom in May 2009 leading in to the local and Euro elections (including one 18% poll with MORI equalling the July 2019 and current FoN lows).
The average May poll rating was above the current Labour average and had recovered to mid 20s within a month. We know how well his recovery went.......
So, with SKS Labour in worse shape and huge economic headwinds (Brown's nadir was in a major recession) I think they struggle to recover.
If Labour are in similar shape in May they'll be utterly mullered everywhere - Brown in 2009 Euros saw Labour come sixth in Cornwall behind Mebyon Kernow. Losses in London could be apocalyptic as could the Welsh and Scottish results

Isn’t this all a bit of an Apples and Oranges comparison though?

Reform’s rise means it is the first time in a generation that we’ve had a possible 4 way split. 5 if you count the Greens. 6 if you count the Corbyn/Sultana party. Possibly more if you count the Home Nations’ parties.

Labour are certainly in trouble on current form. However they could also - quite viably - get a majority under FPTP, if A) there’s even a small ‘Vote Labour to keep Farage out’ effect and B ) the Tories/Reform stay divided.

Expect tactical voting in abundance, also.

We’re in uncharted territory and that’s not taken into account enough on here. It really isn’t impossible that Labour squeak through on something like 28/29% and it’s very difficult to predict what that means in terms of seats/ the makeup of the next government.

The very fact that Reform themselves are streets ahead on around 30-35% should say it all