Best Of

Excitement builds.
Will it be be over by 11.01am?

Nigel Farage MP
@Nigel_Farage
·
1h
I will set out our economic vision for a future Reform government at 11am.

https://x.com/Nigel_Farage/status/1985252405361950978

The general issue is significant. If Reform form a government they will of course have to govern as a high spend, welfare state, massive state provision government. The social democratic post WWII consensus will not have been abolished by the voters. Ask the voters of Clacton what they want in the way of pensions, NHS, free education, police, welfare safety net. All the big costs are there.

So Farage has to move away from both libertarian small state - interesting idea but wanted by almost no-one, and those who want it are rich - and unicorn stuff about savings made on rainbow flags and lanyards. He will have to run a high spend (loud voice) and therefore high tax (quieter voice) government. Even more so WRT tax if he wants to remove the deficit and start paying back the debt.

He’s had to cut all his tax reduction policies by the look of it - so what’s left is Government spending vita and his plans to destroy the NHS.

He doesn’t plan to destroy the NHS. It would still be free at point of use. Just another change to it.

As for tax, I saw a graphic (wish I could find it) showing how many Reform target seats had rather a lot of PIP and UC claimants. They would be mad to cut that for their client vote.

I'm fascinated by the obsession some have that the right is planning to destroy the NHS. How many years of Tory government have we had since the NHS was formed? And yet its still here. The main principle behind the NHS - free at the point of use - is only broadly true. I pay for dental treatments and prescription charges, for instance. I cannot imagine any government abandoning free at the point of use. But you can imagine a big change to how the NHS is paid for. And to be honest we ought to do more to look at how our competitor nations in Europe do healthcare and nick the best bits.

Efficiency will come from public health initiatives (lifestyle changes so that people don't get as ill), reducing waiting lists so people get treated at a less severe stage and evaluating and implementing best practice.
Any means of paying for the NHS, patient contribution, insurance etc, will require more bureaucracy and therefore be less efficient so more costly.

Efficiency for the NHS

- Setup an *internal* consultancy, within the NHS. Its job is to go round improving processes, and joining stuff up. You'll be looking at "We saved 1.46% in area X this year, by reducing form entry duplication". A slow, steady thing, over years. It will never end, so it is *core* to NHS operations.
- Expand training of medical staff by 1% above the natural growth required for the increasing population etc per year. Until the training of staff exceeds 100% of planned NHS demand.
- This is connected with reducing and finally eliminating agency staffing which is insanely expensive.
- Redesign the contracts for doctors and nurses so that instead of "Beatings will continue until morale improves", a slightly more modern approach to management-staff relations is taken.

Jake Sherman

@JakeSherman
NBC POLL

And one year before the 2026 midterm elections, Democrats lead Republicans in the fight for Congress by 8 points, 50%-42%, the largest lead for either party on the congressional ballot in the NBC News poll since the 2018 midterms.

https://x.com/JakeSherman/status/1984988752389812698

Which is why Trump will try and stop the midterms from happening

He doesn’t have to stop them. The Republicans will use gerrymandering, helped by SCOTUS abolishing the Voting Rights Act. He can have ICE agents at polling stations to intimidates Democrat voters. Maybe arrest a few Democrat politicians, raid some campaigning offices on terrorism charges. Seize voting machines and ballots after “discoveries” of fraud. Maybe shut down some media who don’t tow the line.

Actually cancelling elections is something that even tyrants don't like to do- it is too much of a visible crossing of an "are we the baddies?" line.

Managing the electoral process, so that the outcome truly reflects the will of the people, on the other hand...

Yet we cancelled plenty of local elections this year because we’d get the wrong result we’re reorganising local govt

It’s different when we do it 😉

.

...the relatively civilized Matt Goodwin...

That must be one fuck of a relative...

Noted. Goodwin usually makes arguments in a broadly rational manner, using facts, accumulating data, drawing conclusions from grounds and suggesting conclusions which are more or less consistent with a society which has regard for the rule of law.

(I more or less never agree with him, his forms of fact selection (which are distortion but common in mainstream politics), or his conclusions. Like other polemicists from the PM down he leaves out facts which are unsuited to him and it isn't all that hard to see thriough him. But that's true of wet centrist liberals too, of which I suppose I am one.)

He is surrounded by people who don't do anything of the sort. People who make up facts, threaten others and act as if they have no regard for the rule of law.

For all his faults, Goodwin is useful for the moment as a measure of how a political debate is developing, and how argument can alter the Overton window.

However his use of quote marks around the word "British" referring to a man born here who has now been released as innocent and uninvolved which I quote further up is just horrible.

This is the Goodwin quote again ICYMI:

10 people suffering a mass stabbing on a train at the hands of two Black "British" men for no apparent reason.


https://x.com/GoodwinMJ/status/1985011132654829815

Way past time that the BBC stop platforming the racist activist on Question Time as an "academic"
https://x.com/AdamBienkov/status/1983853807894458653

I don't think Matthew Goodwin is a racist.

I do think he's gone off the side of the map a bit.

I think that's what Twitter can do to people.. see Carol Voderman, J K Rowling, AC Grayling, Andrew Adonis etc.

He appears to think that someone who is Black can't be British. That seems definitionally racist.

That's a bit of a stretch. I suspect he jumped to a conclusion that the authorities knew more than they let on. Whilst they might have held a British passport they might have been a recent immigrant, like Axel Rudakubana, who don't really have much loyalty to the country and for whom the passport is a flag of convenience.

Now, he looks rather silly. But I don't think he's a racist.

I know one when I see one, like Tommy Robinson or the EDL mob.

Axel Rudakubana was born in the UK. He was not an immigrant.

Your interpretation of Goodwin's comments is possible, but seems generous. It was reported pretty early on that both men were born in the UK. Goodwin, on other occasions, has shown a very narrow definition of British that basically equates to White British or having been born in Britain.

And it was reported early on that the police had arrested two Black Britons of very similar age and sex, both for attempted murder, and it turned out later one of whom was entirely innocent.

See how this works?

I am unclear how that excuses Goodwin?

He doesn't need to be excused. It's a silly tweet in the heat of the moment where he assumed the authorities knew more but were playing it down, like they were recent migrants who held a technical British passport but had no real loyalty to the country. That's his shtick. Now, he looks silly because he's jumped to a conclusion. And he wasn't the only one.

If he exhibits or starts to exhibit a pattern of racist behaviour suggesting he is in fact one you can be assured I'll be one of the first to say it.

This isn't it.

Bollocks.
If you read his tweet he talks about non Britishness persisting for several generations.

Don't sane wash him.