Best Of

Good balanced header Foxy. Except of course for the ludicrous idea that the D'hondt method is anything other than the very worst form of electoral system. Anything based on proportionality between parties is just simply wrong from the very start.

I remember reading Dan Hannan’s critique of D’Hondt on the eve of one of the European elections, perhaps 2009.

The piece started something like “Next week I will be re-elected to the European Parliament”

He wasn’t joking either, he was #1 on the Tory list for a 12-member constituency, his party only needed to get 8% of the vote for him to be re-elected, and were polling in the high 30s.

I don't agree with Richard. The parties know their candidates well and it's reasonable that they should pick potential Cabinet Ministers etc. at the top of the list. If their choices are stupid they lose votes. Most other systems can be and are being gamed, sometimes to a ludicrous extent. d'Hondt produces a result in line with the population's general preferences, bearing in mind that a lot of voters couldn't even tell you who all the candidates are.

If you're going to emphasise candidates rather than parties, which I think is Richard's argument, then the current system is arguably as good as any - hence the profusion of kindependent MPs as party loyalty declines. But it produces results which don't closely represent what people really want. At present we have a Labour majority that is wildly in excess of the proportion of the population who actually support Labour. If a GE was held tomorrow, we'd probably get a result with Labour wildly underrepresented. Neither really makes sense in terms of reflecting what most people think.

To say it is only about D'hondt vs FPTP is rather misleading. Although in that isntance I would choose FPTP every time. We should be aiming to reduce the power of the parties not increase it. But an AV system would alow greater choice by the electorate over who represented them compared to FPTP whilst preventing further power being given to parties. D'hondt is pretty much the worst system we could have as it allows parties to decide who represents us rather than the voter.

STV, as used in Ireland, is, surely, better than either.

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

If the pincer movement includes Buckingham Palaces I hope karma bites them on the arse. Examining Andrew’s messy finances might open a whole can of worms regarding their own pecuniary arrangements.

We begin to see why the Prince of Wales has chosen a relatively small mansion to move into. The Monarchy is actually in some considerable danger as a result of Andrew's various sins. Those who witter on about "our future King" may learn a nasty lesson about "events". In general we are are prepared to tolerate a hard working, decent Royal family, even if we know the flummery and the grovelling are rather silly. If however, letting light into the "magic" reveals a Bluebeard's cave of greedy and self serving shits, then they will be out bag and baggage. Edward VIII, Princess Margaret, Andrew- in fact the Royal house has been shaky for the last century and it is obvious, even to the "firm" that a crisis is coming. While not as serious as the problems of the Norwegian royal house, the crisis in the Windsors is going to grow and support for the Monarchy will fall substantially. It is time we had a grown up conversation about the rights and duties of the Monarchy, and while we're about it over haul all of our creaking, nineteenth century constitution. That, I suspect, is what Ed Davey is intending in his current line of asking for a debate on the current crisis.

I think you're overegging the cake.

The alternative to the monarchy is having a political head of state. Compare and contrast support for the King and support for Starmer.

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

8. Also a fact, unpopular as it may be to state it, Andrew has never been charged with any criminal offence nor sought for questioning about it by the US criminal authorities. He is - like everyone else - innocent until proven guilty. Innocence under the law is not something reserved only for likeable people. He was asked to give a deposition in the context of US civil proceedings brought against him, which were ultimately settled. The late Virginia Giuffre got a large amount of money in that settlement but no admission of liability nor even an apology.

9. If he has broken the law in other respects, the law should take its course. I suspect that a lot of highly placed individuals - many of them politicians (I could name names but won't) - have met with or done business with or even accepted, money, hospitality and gifts from dubious Chinese individuals or people from other dodgy Eastern European or Middle Eastern countries or even countries such as Australia. It is practically the business plan for a part of Britain's wealth management sector.

10. He is not an asset to the royal family and his personal behaviour, if even a fraction of the stories about him are true, sounds quite ghastly. He is probably quite representative of a certain slice of upper class/rich British males if my own experience of that group is anything to go by. It would be best if he made himself scarce so that we do not have to hear from or see him again. If Parliament wants to remove ducal titles or limit them only to working royals, they would have to pass legislation to do so. It would certainly deal with both Andrew and Harry, but it just shifts the issue to a couple of black sheep calling themselves prince. Personally I don't much care. A title does not confer grace or judgment and vulgarity is pretty widespread among the rich and titled and entitled.

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.