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The Times edging towards coming out for Kemi. I hope they’re right, I still think she could be good


Kemi Badenoch is right that the welfare system is a fiscal disaster

There is an obvious gap in the political market that Ms Badenoch can fill: the cause of fiscal restraint. The Tories should never have given up their belief in a smaller state, but it is welcome to see them return to it. It is ever more likely that the UK is heading for a financial crunch this autumn, as Rachel Reeves’s mishandling of the economy risks creating a vast fiscal black hole. The unsustainable welfare bill is at the heart of the problem and voters now appreciate that it must be tackled. The time for hard truths is fast approaching.


https://www.thetimes.com/article/90e60687-5fbf-4c72-8b8d-ad43d7f23694?shareToken=c72a4a00fca348000b10564bde599bd7

If only she'd been in Government in the last fifteen years, she could have done something about it.

Im sure you think that’s a zinger but do share with us how many of those years Kemi was remotely senior enough to have any influence on the Tory government’s direction and overall policies. Junior ministers have little policy power over their own department yet alone wider government policy.

Oh btw, she was only elected in 2017 so had even less time to wield her ginormous influence on Cameron, May, Boris, Liz and Rishi.

The welfare bill is out of control. The welfare bill needs to be cut dramatically. Labour just attempted badly and failed miserably.

My main point stands. She has been in Cabinet during the years the welfare bill ran out of control.

I am well aware you don't approve of me posting on here, but you can't slap me down with a counter factual. She was in Cabinet when the welfare bill grew.

What is your obsession with making crap up about what other posters say/think? It’s up there with your Leon obsession.

Your point about Kemi would be effective if she had been PM or CotE, as she was not she would have absolutely zero control or influence over the growth or not of the Welfare bill during her time in government - you know that but in a desperate attempt to throw out attacks on the enemy you don’t actually use your brain.

Your main point was “ If only she'd been in Government in the last fifteen years, she could have done something about it” which was dumb as pointed out for the fact that she wasn’t in government for the last fifteen years and had no particular influence over government policy. So your main point doesn’t stand and you are trying to shift it because you also realise that your main point was pretty dim.

She was in Cabinet from 2022 until 2024.

She is perfectly entitled to point out that welfare is out of control and that once in Government she plans on doing something about it. However she couches it.in terms of Reeves being responsible. Granted Reeves, Starmer and Kendall made one hell of a mess of their botched Welfare Bill, but they didn't create the initial problem.

My point stands. Did she at any point tell Truss and Sunak. "Blimey the welfare caper, it's out of control don't you know?

And I can't promise, but I'll try to post less frequently. I'm currently on holiday so I've gone a bit mad with the posting, so sorry for that

I disagree with you on many things but read all of your posts when I can and would be very disappointed if you felt you had to reduce posting for any reason other than personal choice.

I also tend to post in bursts, mostly because of work pressures, so understand entirely what it is like to suddenly have the time and the inclination to get stuck in.

To be fair to PB this is a right wing blog, and I have noted that many non- right wingers seem to be posting less frequently than they once did.

As it is a right wing blog it is extremely rude of a centrist Dad guest to come along and dump all over Kemi Badenoch, Robert Jenrick, Boris Johnson, Nigel Farage and Donald Trump, oh and @Leon. I have been doing rather a lot of dumping, and if it spoils it for a not insubstantial number of other posters, perhaps I should try to desist a bit more successfully than I have in the past. I can't promise, but I'll try.

It really isn't 'a right wing blog'. It has posters from across the spectrum, fairly representatively, although Reform are significantly underrepeesented - largely because we are disproportionately mide class (so what we actually have is the full range of middle class opinions).
Some left wingers inhabit such a left wing bubble that they find any space in which everyone is NOT left wing 'right wing'. But pb really isn't such a place.
Your constant mentioning of Leon is odd.

It would be interesting to do a poll of PB contributors & see where the current centre of gravity lies, both in party & policy terms. Have to make sure it’s not a voodoo poll of course, or else the curse of our good host will descend upon us all.

It depends on whether you weight the PB contributors by number of posts, and include lurkers and low intensity posters.

Mostly we are a male centrist middle aged middle class bunch, with a few notable exceptions. Both far left and far right are sparsely represented, as are a number of other areas, Greens and Islamists for example.

At the moment we are in the summer silly season and there isn't much to bet on, so my interest has dropped.

I think we are in a situation where most of us are finding our natural parties somewhat if not majorly flawed so we are all grumpy about the mess they are in, all want them to be better at being what we feel they should be and are mostly in a cycle of negative politics, essentially against all the other parties rather than being particularly for your natural party.

I can’t really think of anyone on here who really thinks “their team” has it nailed at the moment. Tories like me are super frustrated with the past few years and the current malaise, Labourites such as MexicanPete or BJO have issues with Labour of varying extremes, I don’t think any of the reform curious posters are fully bought into the party or policies.

There isn’t any rallying point, a bright shining light. If PB had been arounfpd in say, 1997, there probably would have been quite a large constituency on here that was very positive and energised by New Labour/Blair but at the moment is just us resorting largely to “the best of a bad lot” or trying to keep supporting your team unenthusiastically.

One thing that PB is missing is the Green's leadership contest. The Greens have quietly got into double figures, and Zack Polanski looks to be way ahead. The Corbyn/Sultana party could well fall at the first hurdle if Zack wins and mops up the youth/Left/Gaza vote as I think he will.

Reform council leader urges Labour to reconsider curbs on care worker visas

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2025/jul/14/reform-council-leader-labour-reconsider-visa-tightening-care-workers

Heart of stone not to laugh.....

But more seriously, this while strange is an example of the sort of reality Reform will have to face. There are others, like their voters desire to have high levels of state expenditure, and therefore a less loudly expressed wish for high tax on everyone apart from Reform voters.

The internal stresses within the Reform offer are immense and, I would suggest, uncontrollable. Four years is more than enough to tear it apart.

I really wish we had a political culture where politicians told the truth about the various challenges and trade offs we face and the public was able to engage with the debate and understand the trade offs. Like, if you want to pay generous pensions and provide free healthcare when people are living longer with more health conditions then you need to pay more tax. If you want no immigration then you need to pay a lot more in the care sector and raise the retirement age. If you want to be outside the EU's single market then you will pay more for things and have a less productive economy. Instead we live in a world of utter political dishonesty and nothing ever gets fixed, rather the country continues to circle the drain.

Good morning

This poll shows just how Starmer has failed in his first year and opened the door to Farage

With the conservatives presently dead in the water and another poll this morning in the Metro affirming the public 'do not trust any of them', the country is in a deep hole and hence the illusion Farage is the answer

I would suggest there are less than a handful of our fellow posters who actually endorse Farage but he certainly receives the wide publicity he does due to our political vacuum

Not for the first time, I'm going to disagree with you on much of this.

I'm left with a number of thoughts - had, by some miracle, Rishi Sunak been re-elected, would he now have as dire poll numbers as Starmer? Probably. Had, by some other miracle, Farage and Reform won last year's election, would he have such good numbers as he has now? Probably not.

There seemed to have been some unrealistic expectations about what an incoming Labour Government could, should or would do and, among some, there is almost a reflexive dislike of the very concept of a "Labour Government" which is up there with what you should or shouldn't put on a pizza.

Starmer had two choices - one was to be radical and unpopular from day one. We all knew restoring the public finances and trying to correct years of Conservative inertia (as an aside, my biggest condemnation of your party is not that they did the wrong thing but rather they did nothing across a range of issues) would involve pain in terms of tax rises and spending cuts and going hard on that (hampered by the OBR) would have been helpful.

The other option was to be Continuity Sunak and continue to kick the can of the difficult issues down the road. Change without change so to speak.

Starmer's problem is he has tried to do both and done neither. We have half-hearted exhortations of change backed up by continuing inertia and hamstrung, despite a large majority, by a tranche of fearful MPs suspecting their tenure on Westminster could be very short. It has disappointed those who hoped for better and confirmed the fears of those who suspected the worst.

The one saving grace for Starmer is none of his political opponents have the slightest clue how to handle the big issues from the "small boats" to social care to prison places to balancing the public finances to the huge demographic and technological challenges our economy and society has to confront and this helps Starmer and Labour enormously.

People are frustrated not because it's the wrong type of change but there appears to be no change. Another summer and the "boats" are still coming, the economy is still stagnating etc. The other side of this desire for change is the solutions most people have are either incoherent, ruinously expensive, illegal or all three predicated on it being pain for other people but not for themselves. The frustration is as much because no one can see the solutions rather than there being obvious solutions but the Government won't implement them.

Jenrick is changing up his social media strategy:

https://x.com/robertjenrick/status/1944385240127967643

Coming out as a Tory 'wet'

Nowhere near his constituency.

His main home is in Herefordshire.

Isn't Leominster the location of his Wife's family's mansion?

For those who don't remember, during the Covid pandemic he decided to ignore lockdown and travel between his various homes.

More amusingly, he criticised the Reform candidate at the last election for living in Gedling, just outside the Newark constituency.

He is an utter scumbag.

THat's a bit harsh, no? I mean, there are some utter scumbags out there who might be a bit offended at being compared to Jenrick.