Best Of

I think I might have to join the Lib Dems.

Prince Andrew faces humiliation at historic Commons debate

MPs plan to defy convention and discuss stripping Andrew of his titles for good as pressure to leave Royal Lodge builds

Prince Andrew faces a pincer movement from parliament and Buckingham Palace to strip him of his dukedom and banish him from his 30-room mansion in Windsor.

MPs are set to discuss Andrew’s future, defying years of convention that usually prevents politicians from ­criticising the royal family.

The Liberal Democrats have ­signalled that they intend to use their next Opposition Day debate to allow members to consider officially removing Andrew’s Duke of York title and discuss his continued use of Royal Lodge. Although such debates are rarely binding, it will allow the Commons to “express its will” and heap pressure on the ­government and the King to act...

...By convention, MPs are not allowed to criticise royals in the Commons. Opposition Day debates are one of the only ways the conduct of a royal can be raised. According to Erskine May, the guide to parliamentary procedure, such a debate permits “critical language of a kind which would not be allowed in speeches in debate”.

Sir Ed Davey, the Lib Dem leader, has separately called for Andrew and his landlord, the Crown Estate, to give evidence to MPs on an influential select committee about the terms of the lease on Royal Lodge.

https://www.thetimes.com/uk/royal-family/article/prince-andrew-faces-humiliation-at-historic-commons-debate-x7rgzcqbf

Some facts.

1. Royal Lodge is owned by the Crown Estate. It is not part of the royal family's personal property.

2. The Crown Estate is an independent corporation which manages a whole load of assets, including land and its profits go back to the Treasury. It's legal obligations are set out in 2 statutes - one in 1961 and one earlier this year.

3. Its latest report is here - https://www.datocms-assets.com/136653/1751320624-ar-25-the-crown-estate-annual-report.pdf. Its current Chair is Robin Budenberg, who used to be a UBs investment banker (often advising the government). I have worked with him.

4. Andrew has a lease on Royal Lodge. Under its terms, he had to pay (and has paid) £8.5 million for the repair of the property and his annual rent is a peppercorn one, though he has continuing obligations to keep the property in a good state of repair. Whether this agreement made good financial / property sense at the time, I cannot say but it would have been reviewed by the Crown Estate legal and property advisors and would, I assume, have had to be signed off by the relevant persons.

5. Whether it now makes sense for him and his ex to live in a house which is far larger than they need and given his personal behaviour and its effects on the working royals is another matter which is separate from whether the Crown Estate handled the decision about the use of this property and the money for it properly or well. It may well have been a sensible agreement at the time.

6. Regardless of Andrew's behaviour, there is something wrong about tearing up lawful contracts because we don't like particular individuals. The rule of law should mean something and there are far too many instances at the moment of all sorts of people and organisations who should know better taking the view that they should simply ignore any laws, judgments or contracts they do not like or which inconveniences them. This is a wrong. We should say so loudly and clearly not indulge this nonsense. It is very Trumpian behaviour and it is one of the many ironies that it is often done by people who claim to despise Trump or who think of themselves as "progressive".

7. Parliament had an opportunity to debate how the Crown Estate should operate when it passed the Crown Estate Act 2025. I wonder how many of the MPs now making a noise about Andrew took the opportunity to do this. It's not as if his difficulties were not known about.

TBC

FTP

Liz Truss owning Rishi Sunak quite comprehensively wasn’t what I was expecting.

https://x.com/trussliz/status/1982222949542175062?s=61

She got quite comprehensively owned back in the comments:

https://x.com/simonmedhurst/status/1982223819168239773

But she wasn’t wrong.

Nor was Simon Medhurst...

To be fair though, Sunak was in a position where he didn't have lots of choice in the matter. Taxes had to go up due to a black hole caused by an economic crisis. An avoidable one caused by Truss' idiocy.

Now we could discuss whether he picked the right ones or did it in the right way, but it wasn't his fault he inherited a disaster zone. If he had won the first leadership contest, taxes probably wouldn't have had to go up.

Trouble is that, if you want to cut taxes without blowing things up, you really have to identify bits of government spending to cut as well.

And neither Truss nor Sunak really got beyond the "we'll get back to you on that one, pinky promise" stage.

That's not quite true.

Truss instead wanted to massively increase government spending through the fuel price cap.

An Ed Miliband original, lest we forget...

Wasn't the (insanely expensive) energy bailout largely driven by Moneysaving Martin Lewis?

(Yes, something needed to be done urgently, especially for people at the bottom of the income scale. But most of us shouldn't have had our energy use subsidised like that. And la Liz had campaigned on not chucking everyone a big pile of cash.)

Yes, it was the ‘people’s chancellor’ who led the lobbying on this.

Team Truss initially did not commit to anything but ended up having to, you’re right too, many of us didn’t need the money we didn’t.

She clearly didn’t want to do this knowing the consequences

She was prime minister. She could have spent more than 5 minutes designing a better scheme. People ok here warned about the excess generosity at the time. You'd think someone forever banging in about how there's too much govt spending qould have twigged that dropping tens of billions on paying everyones energy bills might have been a bit excessive

The main problem with what Truss did on energy was it was completely open ended. She set a price for domestic electricity, and then promised the government would make up the shortfall to real prices, no matter how high.

This was stupid on two counts:

1) Price signals are there for a reason. In times of scarcity we want people to respond to them, rather than carry on consuming as normal.

2) The bond markets were well out of their comfort zones with a government making an open ended commitment to price fixing which might have run to hundreds of billions in the worst case scenario.

A far better designed arrangement would have been to let electric prices float free, and give every bill payer a credit equal to the smaller of their annual electricity bill for the previous year, or £1k.

A few hard edge cases to sort (eg what about 1st time bill payers, how would this work for people on prepayment meters), but for the bulk of people this would have achieved a similar level of subsidy to what they actually did, but without destroying the price signal (as using less electricity would save you lots of money - you just got to keep your government subsidy and spend it on something else), without the biggest beneficiaries being rich people heating their swimming pools (hence the £1k cap), and without the cost being open ended and frightening off the bond market.

I suspect that Truss did what she did because politically she had to do something, but she was too focused on the mini-budget planning to realise the peril of such an enormous open-ended commitment to her premiership.

Obviously, after the markets turned, it suited her political opponents to pin it all on some fairly small unfunded tax cuts rather than the stupid policy they'd all been calling for her to carry out.

Smeakybpartial quote from talktv, but Labour have picked up on it. Pochin is surely right here, I mean the figures do back her up. Farage won’t condemn it, and he shouldn’t either

Nigel Farage needs to condemn this now, and urgently clarify whether Sarah Pochin’s views on race are welcome in his party.

https://x.com/labourpress/status/1982106185672314978?s=46&t=CW4pL-mMpTqsJXCdjW0Z6Q

I'd be interested in an advertiser's/marketers view on this. I suspect there are some hard stats behind the diversity we see in adverts - the most valuable customers tend to be in their 20s/30s ; Gen Z/Millenials with their woke views on stuff like race and trans. Does that offset the unease it generates in boomers?

Stuart in London seems to be asking for white DEI hires... and the fact he recognised the character in that ad as "Nigel" was quite memeable too.

There was a report released at the end of September by Channel 4 breaking down stats in uk ads.

“ Pregnant women appeared in only 0.1 per cent of adverts, while disabled people featured just 4 per cent of the time, a figure unchanged since 2018, despite making up nearly one in five of the population.

By contrast, Black people remain significantly over-represented on screen. The study shows they featured in more than half of adverts in 2022, up sharply from 37 per cent in 2020 following the Black Lives Matter movement.

Black people make up around 4 per cent of the population in England and Wales, according to the 2021 census.

South Asian people appeared in 17 per cent of adverts, higher than the 8 per cent share of the population they represent, while East Asians were present in 11 per cent of campaigns, compared with 1 per cent of the public.

Marcus Ryder, chief executive of the Film and TV Charity, said the imbalance shows the need for broader diversity among decision-makers in the industry.

Not entirely sure how Mr Ryder concluded there need to be more diversity in advertising when the research shows minorities majorly over-represented.

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/pensioners-tv-adverts-mirror-on-the-industry-b2837888.html

My wife is in the industry - the majority of bookings go to “ethnically ambiguous” people because they appeal to the broadest demographic.

More generally what you typically see is mixed race families - black male plus white female. The spending is mainly done by women (hence they are usually the most appealing character) but advertisers are concerned that an all white cast will limit their reach to non white audiences.

The one exception to this is where you want a foolish/weak character - there it is usually a white male because of the concerns advertisers have about the power dynamic of an ethnic minority or a woman being mocked/bullied.

So it’s all done for rational economic reasons, but the aggregate outcome is that it doesn’t reflect the composition of the population

Pochin apologises… and it’s a politicians apology “for any offence caused”

My comments on a Talk TV phone-in earlier today were phrased poorly and I unreservedly apologise for any offence caused, which was not my intention.

The point I was making is that many British TV adverts have gone DEI mad and are now unrepresentative of British society as a whole. This is not an attack on any group but an observation about balance and fairness in how our country is portrayed on screen.

A study commissioned by Channel 4 as part of its Mirror on the Industry project, found that Black people were featured in more than half of adverts in 2022, up sharply from 37 per cent in 2020 following the Black Lives Matter movement. By contrast, Black people make up around 4 per cent of the population in England and Wales, according to the 2021 Census.

Representation in advertising should reflect the diversity of modern Britain, but it should also be proportionate and inclusive of everyone. My comments were made in that context, and I stand by the principle that equality should mean fairness for all.

https://x.com/sarahforruncorn/status/1982134759699464389?s=46&t=CW4pL-mMpTqsJXCdjW0Z6Q

I don’t really understand how you get a diverse set of adverts to somehow coordinate the ethnicity of their actors…

I understand her sentiment, a bit. I have noticed and commented on how every family in adverts is now mixed race. But it’s pretty obvious why. I don’t think advertisers are trying to somehow gaslight people. They are trying to sell stuff.

It’s up to advertisings agencies and their customers how they cast commercials, but you can be sure that, if they were cast in proportion to our diverse society, there’d be lots of protests about ‘not seeing people like me on tv’

Yes, this is the problem. See the England women's football team at Euro 2021.

Football teams have a terrible record on EDI. It seems to me that they are wholly composed of ultrafit young people. How can a overweight 62 year old like me be expected to identify with them?

Oh, it's actually very simple: all you need to do is to identify as an incredibly fit 26 year old. That's what I do, and I'm expecting an England call up imminently.

Pochin apologises… and it’s a politicians apology “for any offence caused”

My comments on a Talk TV phone-in earlier today were phrased poorly and I unreservedly apologise for any offence caused, which was not my intention.

The point I was making is that many British TV adverts have gone DEI mad and are now unrepresentative of British society as a whole. This is not an attack on any group but an observation about balance and fairness in how our country is portrayed on screen.

A study commissioned by Channel 4 as part of its Mirror on the Industry project, found that Black people were featured in more than half of adverts in 2022, up sharply from 37 per cent in 2020 following the Black Lives Matter movement. By contrast, Black people make up around 4 per cent of the population in England and Wales, according to the 2021 Census.

Representation in advertising should reflect the diversity of modern Britain, but it should also be proportionate and inclusive of everyone. My comments were made in that context, and I stand by the principle that equality should mean fairness for all.

https://x.com/sarahforruncorn/status/1982134759699464389?s=46&t=CW4pL-mMpTqsJXCdjW0Z6Q

I don’t really understand how you get a diverse set of adverts to somehow coordinate the ethnicity of their actors…

I understand her sentiment, a bit. I have noticed and commented on how every family in adverts is now mixed race. But it’s pretty obvious why. I don’t think advertisers are trying to somehow gaslight people. They are trying to sell stuff.

It’s up to advertisings agencies and their customers how they cast commercials, but you can be sure that, if they were cast in proportion to our diverse society, there’d be lots of protests about ‘not seeing people like me on tv’

Yes, this is the problem. See the England women's football team at Euro 2021.

Football teams have a terrible record on EDI. It seems to me that they are wholly composed of ultrafit young people. How can a overweight 62 year old like me be expected to identify with them?

Smeakybpartial quote from talktv, but Labour have picked up on it. Pochin is surely right here, I mean the figures do back her up. Farage won’t condemn it, and he shouldn’t either

Nigel Farage needs to condemn this now, and urgently clarify whether Sarah Pochin’s views on race are welcome in his party.

https://x.com/labourpress/status/1982106185672314978?s=46&t=CW4pL-mMpTqsJXCdjW0Z6Q

I'd be interested in an advertiser's/marketers view on this. I suspect there are some hard stats behind the diversity we see in adverts - the most valuable customers tend to be in their 20s/30s ; Gen Z/Millenials with their woke views on stuff like race and trans. Does that offset the unease it generates in boomers?

Stuart in London seems to be asking for white DEI hires... and his accidental description of Farage was quite memeable too.

I thought it was just that if you only have white people in your adverts you'll get called racist so everyone has non-white people in which results in the ridiculous statistics.

It's an odd thing for somebody to get worked up about and a 'tell' if they do.

A ‘tell’ that they aren’t easily gaslit

So you get worked up about too many non-white people in ads? Really?

No, not really. The absurdity makes me laugh or roll my eyes, but I wouldn’t say I was worked up about it.

That's the point, it's absurd rather than upsetting. You might wonder whom the advertisers think their targets are

As someone said upthread, it’s highly unlikely that youngsters watch much tv, and even less so the ads anymore anyway. My son, who is nearly 6, can’t get his head around the fact that we never used to be able to rewind live tv, or that we might miss a program if we weren’t in, and would never get the chance to see it again.