Best Of

Re Rayner: I do have a little sympathy for her if she's been badly advised but I think the politics means she will have to go:

1) It's a large sum of money - she'd probably get away with underpaying £200 but £40k is a huge amount by anyone's standards
2) Labour are about to put up taxes in the next budget. If she stays then the attack lines write themselves.

One thing I found interesting is Davey's stance on this. I wonder if the LDs are getting a bit too cosy with Labour. Certainly, Davey never seems to throw any hardball questions at Starmer during PMQs.

The latter is reflective of Lib Dem members, take a look on here - the government's main defenders aren't Labour voters who are all in despair, it's Lib Dems who are really out there pushing the Labour narrative.

No, what we’re pushing is the non-Farage narrative. The fact that Starmer, Cooper and Co are all happily channelling the Reform leader leaves a gap.

Lib Dems aren’t suddenly going to stop being liberal internationalists or pro-Europeans just because the ruling party is - on paper if not in fact - also a liberal internationalist and pro-European party.

And yet they didn't come out against the OSA, one of the most illiberal policies in a generation. Pull the other one.

This I why I would be sacking, or reshuffling Raynor
I really don't give a crap either way about this tax thing; let the Revenue sort it out.

Over the last three years, housebuilding in London has collapsed. Molior recorded just 2,158 private starts in the first half of 2025, around 5% of London’s (low) targets, and still falling.

What is going on? I have posed this question to numerous specialists, most of whom cannot comment publicly for professional reasons. This thread is a summary of what I have gleaned.
https://x.com/SCP_Hughes/status/1963196403913494704

Whether or not she made a mistake or accidentally-on-purpose misstated her tax position is of minimal interest to me.
The fact that this government is proving as feeble as the last one in sorting out the planning morass, actually matters to millions of people's lives.

This is the sort of guy we should have over here.

"Farage condemned as 'Putin-loving, free speech impostor and Trump sycophant' by ranking Democrat on House judiciary committee

Jamie Raskin, the ranking Democrat on the House judiciary committee, says they do have free speech in the UK. He says Keir Starmer has not shut down GB News, even though Farage has a show on that station in which he criticises the government and calls for bans on peaceful protests.

He says Farage is able to parrot “Putin’s absurd talking points” on TV. He goes on:

"For a man who fancies himself to some kind of a free speech martyr, Mr Farage seems most at home with the autocrats and dictators of the world who are crushing freedom on earth."

He says Farage wants to get rid of the Online Safety Act. But if he wants to do that, he should be advancing those arguments in the UK parliament, which is meeting today, Raskin says.

He goes on:

"To the people of the UK who think this Putin-loving, free speech impostor and Trump sycophant will protect freedom in your country, come over to America and see what Trump and Mega are doing to destroy our freedom, kidnap college students off the street, ban books from our libraries, militarise our police and unleash them against our communities, take over our universities … You might think twice before you let Mr Farage “make Britain great again"."

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/live/2025/sep/03/farage-starmer-badenoch-pmqs-news-updates-uk-politics-live

Here’s an easy way to save mega billions. Sack Ed Miliband

“Reeves faces £11bn bill over Miliband’s North Sea shutdown”

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2025/09/03/reeves-faces-11bn-bill-over-milibands-north-sea-shutdown/

Yes, Miliband‘s approach to net zero is a perfect example of the kind of bone-headed stupidity that the UK is suffering from.

Refusal to permit North Sea gas when we are clearly going to end up importing LNG instead, making blocking the development permits nothing but hypocritical grandstanding. Refusal to implement regional electricity pricing for fear of electricity in Scotland being cheaper than in England. Scotland could probably do with the support of cheaper prices to support local industry, but no - lets force the wind farms to burn their brake blocks up turning themselves off in times of high winds instead. The side effect of convincing yet more Scots that London cares more about English voters than it does about Scottish ones is an extra bonus! etc etc.

Net zero is a worthy goal! We should be going at it 100% - but we do that by being honest about what’s in front of us, not by lying to everyone about electricity prices & hoping nobody notices that it’s our fault because we refuse to build out nuclear at reasonable cost.

Kemi and the rest of the Tories can do one . Rayner trying to support her son and ensure he’s looked after is now a crime apparently .

And Tice can also do one , supporting Farage the traitor.

Rayner should stress the good parent angle , she tried to do the right thing , was given bad advice and tell the right wing press to go fxck themselves .

So tax minimisation is actually OK providing you have a good enough reason to do it?

The trust was set up to look after her son , that’s it. Any good parent would do what they could to do that given he’s now disabled . The Tories who were happy to fellate Bozo and Tice who supports a traitor should STFU .

Rayner doesn’t need lectures from them .

In what way is it necessary to set up a trust to look after a child?

I feel like trusts only reason for existence is to dodge tax.

If the child has been awarded a large financial settlement to pay for their care for the rest of their life. Then a trust with independent trustees would seem a sensible precaution in the child's interest.