Best Of

After droning on about doing the right thing for the country v the politically expedient thing it looks like it will be the latter .

If Reeves and Starmer were so worried about the political damage breaking a manifesto commitment would be then they should have not suggested they were going to do that . Now it just looks like they’re flailing around without a clue and will instead raise a range of other taxes and then hope for the best .

Messing around with thresholds looks like a sleight of hand . I’ve never known a budget where so many kites have been flown .

Labour backbenchers are living in cloud cuckoo land now being marshalled by Powell who will just say anything to ingratiate herself with them and the general public hoping to be in the right place if Starmer goes .

Unless Starmer and Reeves are incredibly lucky then this all looks like ending in tears . Where exactly is growth going to come from ?

People who don’t want a Reform government like myself just look on in horror .

If you have a majority of 170 you should carry out the policies you believe in. I can't believe they've caved in.

The trouble is that they have a sinking feeling, common amongst the even-slightly-reallistic left since the collapse of the Cold War, that the policies they believe in with their hearts, don't actually work and in fact make most things much worse. While there is no support in their party for policies that do work.

So they are left with either shameless, dishonest centrist opportunism, a la Blair, or technocratic managerialism, as Starmer has tried and failed dismally. Neither really work when you don't have a golden Thatcherite economic legacy to squander.

It was obvious that the Starmer government would end up this way, but I've been very surprised by the size and speed of the collapse.

https://www.thetimes.com/uk/crime/article/sara-sharif-case-workers-safeguarding-review-3pwtj7wfh

The headline summarises it - "chances to prevent murder ‘lost to racial sensitivities’".

An appalling case. No-one did what they ought because they feared causing offence or being branded as racist. And so a young girl - Sara Sharif - was brutally abused and killed. 96 separate injuries on her body. Her back had been broken 10 times. Unimaginable suffering in a short life.

25 years ago - 25 years - similar reasons ("cultural reasons" they were called - the murderers then were black Africans not people from Pakistan) led to no-one taking action to prevent the abuse and murder of a young girl of a similar age - Victoria Climbie. Her murder led to a public inquiry and lots of new legislation.

Yet here we are - despite all that - reading the same horrific story and wondering when in God's name those charged with caring for our children realise that putting children with men who are known to be violent is a fucking stupid idea and that worrying about being called racist simply should not be a consideration when a child's safety is at stake and that if abusing a child is part of a "culture" (and not a pathetic excuse for violence and cruelty) then we should be calling that culture what it is - barbaric - and refusing to accept it as a defence or excuse for barbarism instead of running scared of its sensitivities.

Ooh this is a good one.

https://x.com/devanaukraine/status/1988673684748607582

Igor Girkin — the same Russian commander who started the occupation of Crimea and Donbas in 2014 — now openly says that Russia’s catastrophe is inevitable, even if it wins the war.

He wrote:

“Time to find any way to ‘exit the war.’ The economic situation is catastrophic. The catastrophe is inevitable — even in the form of victory. It will not lead to the dissolution of the state, but to deep consequences. The peoples of Russia are removed from responsibility — it lies entirely on the Kremlin.”

This is more than despair — it’s a rare moment of truth from one of the regime’s own monsters. Girkin admits that even a “victory” will destroy Russia from within.

When the architects of aggression start warning about the doom of their own empire, it means the rot has reached the core. Like all totalitarian systems before it, Russia will collapse not from outside blows, but from its own decay — corruption, fear, and the moral emptiness that no “victory” can fill.

The fall has already begun.

"Find Out Now
@FindoutnowUK

Find Out Now voting intention:

🟦 Reform UK: 33% (-)
🟢 Greens: 17% (-1)
🔵 Conservatives: 16% (-)
🔴 Labour: 15% (-)
🟠 Lib Dems: 11% (-)

Changes from 5th November
[Find Out Now, 12th November, N=2,339]"

https://x.com/FindoutnowUK/status/1988963847936618606

The range of the Labour / Green polling numbers is the interesting bit across all the pollsters. Some Labour aren't doing that bad all things considered, others they are in danger of single digits if the budget goes badly.

"If the Budget goes badly" - it seems very likely it will go badly.

Putting up taxes is always unpopular - but the normal excuse is obviously we didn't have a choice, position is much worse than we thought etc.

But this time, the Government is going to choose to abolish the 2 child benefit cap.

However keeping the 2 child benefit cap is massively popular - Support 60%, Oppose 24%, Don't Know 16%.

Now very few journalists have cottoned on to this - but Times Radio picked up on it yesterday. And everyone is going to pick up on it very quickly on Budget Day.

Got to say, announcing changes like that alongside massive tax rises is going to send their polling even further into the basement.

Yes it’s probably needed to keep Labour MPs happy but they have a majority of 169, allow thr 50 or so that make up the awkward squad to leave

Sometimes you should make choices because they are the right thing to do. Removing the two children cap would take about half a million children out of poverty according to the Institute of Fiscal Studies. It would mean half a million children's lives transformed. It would cost around £3 billion a year, not a trivial cost but good value in the overall scheme. For comparison winter fuel payments cost a similar amount.

https://ifs.org.uk/articles/should-labour-scrap-two-child-limit

A general complaint I have against this government is they don't make choices on their own merits, because they think they are the right choice. I would respect them more even if I disagreed with some of those choices.

And even if you disapprove of "people having more children than they can afford", even if you ignore the possibility that families' circumstances can change over fifteen years...

is it really right to harm children who happen to be born into a family that is insufficiently prudent/lucky?

Really?

Sometimes the wisdom of crowds elides into the cruelty of mobs. I've got sympathy for the need to balance our finances, but the two child cap was always the wrong way to do it, and largely about signalling virtue to curtain-twichers.

"Find Out Now
@FindoutnowUK

Find Out Now voting intention:

🟦 Reform UK: 33% (-)
🟢 Greens: 17% (-1)
🔵 Conservatives: 16% (-)
🔴 Labour: 15% (-)
🟠 Lib Dems: 11% (-)

Changes from 5th November
[Find Out Now, 12th November, N=2,339]"

https://x.com/FindoutnowUK/status/1988963847936618606

The range of the Labour / Green polling numbers is the interesting bit across all the pollsters. Some Labour aren't doing that bad all things considered, others they are in danger of single digits if the budget goes badly.

"If the Budget goes badly" - it seems very likely it will go badly.

Putting up taxes is always unpopular - but the normal excuse is obviously we didn't have a choice, position is much worse than we thought etc.

But this time, the Government is going to choose to abolish the 2 child benefit cap.

However keeping the 2 child benefit cap is massively popular - Support 60%, Oppose 24%, Don't Know 16%.

Now very few journalists have cottoned on to this - but Times Radio picked up on it yesterday. And everyone is going to pick up on it very quickly on Budget Day.

Got to say, announcing changes like that alongside massive tax rises is going to send their polling even further into the basement.

Yes it’s probably needed to keep Labour MPs happy but they have a majority of 169, allow thr 50 or so that make up the awkward squad to leave

Sometimes you should make choices because they are the right thing to do. Removing the two children cap would take about half a million children out of poverty according to the Institute of Fiscal Studies. It would mean half a million children's lives transformed. It would cost around £3 billion a year, not a trivial cost but good value in the overall scheme. For comparison winter fuel payments cost a similar amount.

https://ifs.org.uk/articles/should-labour-scrap-two-child-limit

A general complaint I have against this government is they don't make choices on their own merits, because they think they are the right choice. I would respect them more even if I disagreed with some of those choices.

Does anyone know what an AI Growth Zone is?

@Keir_Starmer
·
15m
We are bringing an AI Growth Zone to Wales.

This will boost jobs and help Welsh businesses grow.

https://x.com/Keir_Starmer/status/1988987397464629471

I don't know. I hate to say this, but it might actually be pure bullshit. An AI-generated tweet issued by a SPAD who's never had a job with a yearly assessment to preserve a Prime Minister who hasn't got a clue about anything without somebody telling him first and is just counting the days when he can bugger off abroad so he can mix with Important People and think Important Thoughts with people who aren't British.

AIGZ = special designated area basically, with the right power supply etc. Been in the water all year.

https://www.computerweekly.com/news/366628066/The-UK-governments-AI-Growth-Zones-strategy-Everything-you-need-to-know

"What is an AI Growth Zone?

According to the government, AI Growth Zones are designated sites that are well-suited to housing AI-enabled datacentres and their supporting infrastructure. Ideally, these zones should have “enhanced access” to power supplies of at least 500MW and sympathetic planning support. This is because datacentres are notoriously power-hungry entities, and siting them in areas where energy is in short-supply could slow down the time it takes to bring one of these new AI server farms online."

Targeting, in part, poor areas eg deinustralised ones, which are less likely to complain planning wise. Not sure how much it will do for long term employment of the actual locals, or their leccy bills once regional pricing comes in, though (which may be one reason Labour don't like the latter).

In terms of locals long term employment from AI. The announcement today will be "generating power by the mid 2030s." So lets call it 2040....we will be on our 2nd or 3rd AI bubble bursting by then.

These announcements remind me a bit of HS2 was always sold as speed, when it should have been capacity. The nuclear power as part of securing future energy supplies particularly with much more renewables in the mix, absolutely, going to be loads of local AI jobs, bullshit. Even if datacentres are constructed nearby in 2035, they require about 5 mole people to operate.

I had the (tbh fairly obvious) revelation about the nature of the AI bubble this week in the Bay Area. Everywhere you look are billboards advertising AI this and AI that. As numerous as the billboards advertising personal injury attorneys in Houston.

Dig deeper though, and you realise AI is just a new word for tech. These are all largely standard tech companies most of which would have been doing 98% of the same stuff 5 years ago when Gen AI wasn’t a thing, and calling it something else. Back then the fashionable things were cloud, and blockchain. Same billboards but just substitute the word AI.

We do need to invest in tech infrastructure. If that requires us to use the AI word to drum up excitement then fair enough.

Somebody sent me an analysis a few days ago, which was carried out in remarkably quick time. Giving credit where credit was due, they said "aided by my trusty AI assistant". Um, given the warnings that come with the AI search results summary about these results may contain errors I'm not so confident about the analysis after all.

Am I unduly pessimistic?

Friend of mine who is a lecturer tried an experiment on a very well known AI on a subject he and I know well. He got the AI to chunter out some stuff about the subject and then started in on it. IT's not long before this starts happening:

"You say X, can you please give me the evidence?"
"Bloggs 1978 says so."
"But I've looked at it and it doesn't say that at all. What is your evidence?"
"I'm sorry, the correct evidence is in website so and so."
"But that is about something else. What is your evidence that it is relevant?"
"Jones 2008 ...
"But that doesn't exist. Tell me ...
...
and so on and so on for about 20 cycles. I paraphrase - but you get the idea. He makes a point of showing it to his students - I am sure as a warning to them not to make the AI write their essays.

The whole thing reminds me of nothing so much as the poor chap who was not quite all there mentally who just wanted to help the nice police and didn't want to admit he didn't know the answer to anything, so tried to keep them happy by answering yes etc. to their questions.

Trouble was, what they were visiting about was a murder down the road. And no adult present. He got banged up for life ... when they had a grade A suspect very close by.

Barely a week goes by without a hallucinated citation causing hilarity, embarrassment, and compromised careers, in the legal profession.

https://www.legalcheek.com/2025/10/judge-finds-barrister-relied-on-entirely-fictitious-ai-generated-cases/

https://www.11kbw.com/knowledge-events/case/andrew-edge-successful-before-high-court-in-ai-fake-authorities-case/

https://www.legalfutures.co.uk/latest-news/law-firm-that-cited-fake-ai-generated-cases-to-pay-wasted-costs

AIs are as unreliable as humans, though unlike humans, they don't intend to deceive.
I find it helps if you add to your prompt "if you are not certain, say you don't know. "

Humans making up citations is not “unreliability”

OK Humans lie to deceive. AIs try to please by making things up. Who is most trustworthy?

People. Humans answer based on some conception of reality, even if it is fictional. AI is just pattern-matching words: it has no concept of the meaning of the words, just the pattern they form. A human can poison you, a human can burn the toast, but an AI might feed you a Rachel's Trifle and not recognise the problem

AI has no originality, no capacity to think critically, no ability to discern truth from falsehood, no capacity to research primary sources, and it relies heavily upon there being a lot of accurate written material, online, on any given subject. If that material does not exist, or if you feed it lies, the answers it generates will be ridiculous.

I just did an AI Overview google search on the performance of the Spanish army in the Peninsular War - and got quite a neat summary of my own thesis on the subject.

Good morning, everyone.

Say Starmer just goes and Streeting replaces him.

What then?

There's still a very difficult economic picture and there's still an army of backbench Labour MPs who think their job is to fling money at people to make themselves feel better, rather than manage the public finances.

Still, the reputation of Sunak and Hunt is only improving each day this nonsense continues. We'll see (eventually) if Starmer and Reeves can get a grip.

My suspicion is it'll go something like this: taxes rise on the evil private sector, more money flung at the virtuous public sector, the economy is harmed so tax receipts don't match expectations, meaning more steps are needed at the next Budget which then harms the economy more, rinse and repeat.

Hopefully I'll be wrong.

What then (to use your terminology) is the alternative?

I presume you'd like to see taxes cut and spending cut - I suspect spending will be cut in the Budget but presumably you want to see some serious reductions? I presume it'll be the services people actually depend on which will bear the brunt rather than, let's say, defence which is sacrosanct.

Which services and whose benefits would you cut? Would you cut pensions (or just those in the public sector)?

As always, those advocating spending cuts are usually unaffected by any such cuts and it's not unreasonable of those who will be affected to ask why they should take the pain.

My approach would be to tighten up the approach to the economy. For example:

1) Stop this insanity of increasing benefit spending by ending the 2 child cap
2) Give nothing to the WASPI graspers
3) Thoroughly kibosh the rarely mentioned but still floating around 'discussion' about reparations
4) Increase the pension age (not immediately but pencil it in)
5) End the triple lock, it's unsustainable as well as being unfair on the working population of the country
6) Commit to a long term reduction of the deficit with a goal of eventually turning it into a small (few percent of GDP) surplus and seek consensus from other parties to maintain that goal, even if the specific path of reaching it might change
7) End all talk of the madness of wealth or exit taxes. Rich people spend a lot, and when they do, they pay VAT. It's never been easier to leave and work elsewhere
8) Increase income tax. I'm not a fan of tax rises, I instinctively prefer lower taxes, but we do need to raise more money and this seems both more straightforward and less harmful than other measures
9) Embark on a simplification of regulations, include taxation and building regulations, to make things easier for individuals and businesses to get things moving
10) Try and find a way to keep new innovations here. Encourage this with tax breaks (in a time-limited period) for setting up factories and the like in the fields of emerging technology. Re-introduce the golden share so we can retain leading innovations and the workers and businesses pay tax here. Perhaps have extra incentives for locating factories etc in the north of England
11) Collaborate closely with Ukraine to encourage both their and our own drone facilities to be built here. Essential for defence with excellent prospects for export

It's not often I can agree with all 11 points of an eleven point manifesti, but I'll sign up for this.

Usually lists of demands focus on what money should be spent on. We can all do that. What money should not be spent on is the much more pressing concern.