Best Of

In why Reform will put Labour to the sword in May latest...


Andrew Lilico
@andrew_lilico
·
1h
People ask "How could Reeves not notice that £900 hadn't gone from her account?" That sounds like a question from organised people who run their bank accounts tightly. Personally I'd have no idea if a bill I'd believed I'd paid hadn't gone out.


Andrew Lilico
@andrew_lilico
·
50m
She's Chancellor & her husband is a senior civil servant, plus she got rental income on her house. They probably gets north of £20k per month passing through a joint bank account. £900 will be easy to miss.

https://x.com/andrew_lilico/status/1983985870438068362

One one hand, he's right.

On the other hand, it does highlight the gap between the upper upper middle class (not even the mega elite) and the rest.

On the other hand, there's that hilarious gap between Reform's leadership and followership.

(That's already too many hands. Ed.)

On the other hand (Oh, I give up. Ed.), remember the expenses scandal? It may have started as a partisan thing, but it ended up hurting all of politics. A lot of MPs have houses they rent out...

The UK had a £26bn tourism deficit in the first half of the year:

Overseas residents made an estimated 7.2 million visits to Great Britain and spent an estimated £4.7 billion in Quarter 1 (Jan to Mar) 2025.

Overseas residents made an estimated 9.3 million visits to Great Britain and spent an estimated £7.9 billion in Quarter 2 (Apr to June) 2025.

Residents of Great Britain made an estimated 18.7 million visits outside of the UK and spent an estimated £16.5 billion in Quarter 1 (Jan to Mar) 2025.

Residents of Great Britain made an estimated 26.0 million visits outside of the UK and spent an estimated £22.1 billion in Quarter 2 (Apr to June) 2025.

https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/leisureandtourism/bulletins/overseastravelandtourismprovisional/januarytomarchandapriltojune2025

Which is approximately how much money the government borrowed from foreign sources.

What do we expect if we jack up visa fees to ridiculous levels, impose absurdly high aviation taxes, don't build nearly enough airport capacity, stop tourists from reclaiming VAT to the delight of the Frogs and impose planning regulations that mean that building cheap accommodation is impossible?

As usual, a greedy, incompetent, short-sighted and stupid government (this one and the last one) shoots itself and the country in both feet.

Why would someone come on holiday to a country where most of the news about hotels is of racists protesting outside them?

Also the hospitality industry is particularly reliant on low waged immigrant staff. Stopping them from coming is harming our domestic tourism industry.

Actions have consequences. Hotels and restaurants really struggle for staff.

60 seconds of searching gets some facts.....



https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/sn06022/

By choice.

Its not a law of nature or economics.

Continually leaking £30bn out of the country, year after year, decade after decade, eventually you end up wondering why so many of the country's assets are foreign owned.

You can’t stop people going on holiday and the hospitality industry couldn’t cope if there was a big increase in staycations as there’s not enough staff which wasn’t the case before Brexit .

How language and expectations change. I remember when staycation meant staying at home rather than staying in your own country.

Wot - centrist/progressive party makes huge gains at the expense nasty populists? Imagine if that becomes a thing....

To an extent, what happened was that parties who were in the coalition government lost seats to ideologically similar parties who were not. So, the PVV (hard right populists) lost 11 seats, but 2 similar parties gained seats: Ja21 up 8, FvD up 4. The NSC were wiped out, losing 20, but the CDA were up 13. The NSC began as a CDA split.

D66 did great (+17), but their gains were partly from the left (GL/PvdA -5, SP -2, Volt -1). So, maybe half the D66 gains were from the NSC collapse?

The hard right vote was similar in size, but splintered, while the centrist-progressives made some gains from the centre-right and centre-left.

Up with Norwegian and Welsh, Dutch must be one of the most pointless languages to learn, since almost all native speakers have far greater English proficiency than you would ever achieve in their own language. And with Dutch it does sadly sound as if you have a public hair stuck in your throat.

As a bet, backing the Dutch Libs would clearly have been a cracking one. The odds were long, of course, because no-one saw it coming.

Maybe Ed Davey will succeed where Jo Swinson failed??

I consider myself a German speaker and it has crushed my soul that every time I start speaking German to a German, they start replying to me in English by saying ‘Ah, you are English.’

I remember that happening when I was speaking to our French lawyers for an arbitration we were doing in Paris. Every time I would ask for the person I wanted to speak to in my best schoolboy French and every time the receptionist would reply in flawless English. It was indeed crushing.

I used to be an excellent French speaker, these days I sound like Officer Crabtree from 'Allo 'Allo.

" 'Allo 'Allo", was from a lighter time when we laughed at Nazis rather than voted for them.

Wot - centrist/progressive party makes huge gains at the expense nasty populists? Imagine if that becomes a thing....

Good morning

And our conservative candidate beat reform in out local ward election last night

Won 60% of votes gaining it from Reform

From small acorns large oak trees grow

I suppose it's conceivable that the doubts about Reform's potential for serious harm might persuade right of centre voters to hold their noses & vote Conservative in this country. Not so much a resurgence of popularity as a least bad option. Or vain hope that they might tackle the problems that right of centre people perceive as serious.

Not just right of center people, Anne. Maybe one day all voters will start supporting candidates who are addressing the very real problems we face with realistic policies.

We live in hope,

Up with Norwegian and Welsh, Dutch must be one of the most pointless languages to learn, since almost all native speakers have far greater English proficiency than you would ever achieve in their own language. And with Dutch it does sadly sound as if you have a public hair stuck in your throat.

As a bet, backing the Dutch Libs would clearly have been a cracking one. The odds were long, of course, because no-one saw it coming.

Maybe Ed Davey will succeed where Jo Swinson failed??

I consider myself a German speaker and it has crushed my soul that every time I start speaking German to a German, they start replying to me in English by saying ‘Ah, you are English.’

I remember that happening when I was speaking to our French lawyers for an arbitration we were doing in Paris. Every time I would ask for the person I wanted to speak to in my best schoolboy French and every time the receptionist would reply in flawless English. It was indeed crushing.

It is a great deal better to be making the effort, rather than to begin by saying Do you speak English?

That's true. My French is definitely 'schoolboy' but I find it scores brownie points with the locals. They appreciate the effort being made.

Conversely, Mrs PtP speaks the language perfectly but with a Montreal accent. They can be a bit sniffy about that.