Best Of

Hahahaha. That polling for Starmer

Has a prime minister ever had such negative polling with his own party? Extraordinary

You'd think he might say fuck it and retire

It gives me some consolation, as Britain goes down a Starmer-shaped khazi, that most sensible Britons share my outright loathing of this nauseating dork

Tipping Jess Phillips to be next Labour leader at 50/1 aside, I stand be when I said five years ago in this header, particularly…

“Last month, Keir Starmer appeared on the television in my front room to give his response to the Prime Minister’s Covid-19 statement. A few seconds later my eyes glazed over, a few more passed and I switched the tv off saying “Jesus, he is dull”. It set me thinking that in a world of Reality tv, tiktok, snapchat, (none of which I am a fan of), and general instant gratification, (which I kind of am) Starmer was too boring to be Prime Minister. Those with a keen interest in politics scrutinise policies, but it could be that a significant minority, perhaps even a small majority, of the public prefer someone they can imagine mucking in on I’m a Celebrity Get Me Out of Here.”


https://www1.politicalbetting.com/index.php/archives/2020/06/06/the-case-for-making-personality-ratings-a-good-electoral-indicator/

Fav to be next PM was indeed a contestant on said show

His dullness isn't his problem though. There's a market for dull. His problem is his incompetence. Or not really believing in anything except process. Or that even when he's telling you about sonething he really believes in - like football - he sounds insincere and inauthentic. Or his political tin ear. Or the fact he came in to office without any real plan apart from not being the Tories, assuming that was all that was needed. Or his grifting. Or his failure to understand how the private sector operates and how money is made. Or his London-centricity.
Compared to all that, his lack of charisma is only a minor handicap.

Off thread: Daughter #3 did the eleven plus today.
We don't really expect her to pass. When her oldest sister did it passing was the preserve of the top 25%, now it's significantly harder. And, what with the ADHD, she faces her own challenges. Still, she did her best and - in contrast to many - didn't come out crying. She didn't panic when unfamiliar material came up. So I'm proud of her.
We'll now be £2-3k a year better off as six years of paying for tutors (two years for each child).

I'm pretty ambivalent about the grammar school system. The whole process of what ten year olds in Trafford (and adjacent postcodes) have to go through seems ridiculous and ridiculously costly. Still, we've done pretty well out of it: my oldest two have ended up at what are probably the right schools for them; my youngest will probably also end up at the right school for her (indeed, if she does have, it will cause us a problem, so memtally geared are we all to the local High school).

Anyway - the rest of year 6 will be a breeze now.
What did she choose for her post-11+ treat? A small box of Ferrero Rocher.

One for @Leon, if the maggots haven't done for him...


(((Dan Hodges)))
@DPJHodges

Slightly long post. But there's a lot of concern on the moderate Left today about the Robinson event. Fine. But if you actually want to do something about it you have to understand four things:

1) To deal with the underlaying causes requires hard policy proscriptions on areas like immigration. And you will have to endorse positions that make you instinctively uncomfortable. But they are unavoidable.

2) The Blue Sky experiment has failed. You may hate Musk. But this is the most influential platform on the globe. If you abandon it to Robinson and his allies you have already lost.

https://x.com/DPJHodges/status/1967502268833403136

The last point is very true. Abandoning X en masse is huge mistake for the Left. There's many non-politically aligned people around the world, for whom it just represents their daily reality, and are posting on other issues.

If you abandon the political dimension of that global meeting-space entirely to the hatd right, that just becomes many politically unaligned people's sense of objective reality, and also majority opinion.

Musk has so twised the algorithms to repeat what he wants them to that I don't think the absence of some people on the left makes any difference.

Starmer’s new position is that he “knew about the emails from Mandelson to Epstein after Epstein’s conviction” but HE DIDN’T KNOW WHAT WAS IN THEM

So he didn’t think to ask?

Next it will be “yes I read the emails where Mandelson praises Epstein as the worlds greatest pedo but AS I READ THEM SOMEONE COVERED MY SCREEN WITH VASELINE SO THE ACTUAL WORDS WERE BLURRED”

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2025/09/15/did-morgan-mcsweeney-hide-mandelson-evidence-from-starmer/

It’s a very lame defence. I knew this person was chummy with Epstein, he proved to be even more chummy with Epstein which was absolutely beyond the pale (not beforehand though, no) and I knew there were some emails doing the rounds but I hadn’t read them so I wasn’t quite sure how chummy they were so I didn’t bother finding that out until after I had to publicly defend him.

It’s a classic politician’s excuse, in the real world there’s not much of a fag paper between it all.

The reason he appointed Mandelson isn't sayable by him - he judged the need to suck up to Donald Trump to be more important than maintaining normal standards of propriety. State visit, the same. Lammy Vance, the same. Rutte "daddy", the same. Euro leaders dash to Washington after Alaska, the same. Pakistan and the nobel peace prize, the same. There's hundreds of examples from around the world. It's a big global theme right now. All a bit pathetic, if you ask me, and counterproductive, but they're all at it so I suppose I must be wrong and it's very worthwhile.

Kruger was a big beast inasmuch as there were any left in the Cons party. Good thinker, not my cup of tea but I get it.

Perhaps he thinks he can shape Reform around himself and the "drunken sailor spending" comment was one thing that made Reform approach him to define their spending plans rather than criticise them.

I doubt Nigel gives a flying fig about spending plans. His voters are all convinced that the mass expulsion of immigrants will rectify every financial problem. When that particular panacea fails to work under a Reform government, its leadership (as they did with Brexit) will just move on to something else.

(Guardian)
..The last question at the press conference came from my colleague Aletha Adu.

Q: [To Kruger] Do you take back your claim that Reform UK would spend money like drunken sailors?

Kruger said he was confident that the party would be able to come up with fully-costed, workable plans.

He said when he criticised Reform’s spending plans recently, he was referring to their welfare plans. But at the Reform conference, Farage committed the party to welfare reform, he said.

...

Farage ended by saying there would be a press conference next week where “we will show you how we propose to save huge amounts of money”.

Nigel needs to be careful there. What stops Labour from nicking his ideas?

I think he'll guard against that by making sure they're not worth nicking.