Best Of

On topic - the budget is already sinking and there is a week and a half to go. They have managed to get to an extraordinary position where whatever they unveil, the response from political wonks will be "is that it?" and the response from market wonks will be "don't like that".

And so the recriminations. I'm on record saying McSweeney will the first up against the wall, gone by the 2nd week of December as the budget fallout gets brutal.

After that? Starmer is toast. The kind of toast where you're desperately scraping it with your knife to try and save it, but knowing in your heart that you will still be able to taste the burn.

There won't be a general election before 2029, so we have to put up with this shit. So let's hope someone with some nous and some vision comes forward or we truly will be sunk.

There is a model that the government could adopt - the miracle of Manchester. This has been a 30 year turnaround so its not all on Burnham, but as the metro mayor he knows what works and how to get significant changes done effectively. Shift Gwynne aside and get him into parliament. Whilst there is still time...

It is time to shit or get off the toilet.

Do what you think needs to be done to balance the budget, or you don't deserve to be in office.

He doesn't know how. Then again, neither do the Tories. We need to drive growth to generate tax revenues. But collectively seem to think that making people have less money in their pocket - cuts and tax rises - will make that happen.

I blame the Treasury. Liz Truss was right as much as she was bonkers - she turned her guns on the Treasury. She just didn't go far enough.

Truss cut tax without cutting spending which with the size of the deficit the markets wouldn't have

I have rewatched the end of Truss over the weekend when mulling over the state of Starmer.

Fascinating to watch the winding up of the fracking debate. The minister proudly boasts about how the Conservatives had massively developed renewable energy. Because its right for Britain and puts us in a good place for the future.

Whatever happened to the Conservative Party? Even at its zenith of loopyness it was still better grounded in reality than Badenoch's mob.

One thing occurs. When Thatcher and Howe took over in 1979 there was a budget deficit and high inflation. They choose to try to squeeze inflation out of the system which eventually led to a strong upturn in the economy, although not without an awful lot of pain en route. The deficit was definitely a BAD thing and should be avoided.

Now we have been living with deficits for decades and arguably it has become normalised. In some ways its the same a the availability of cheap credit to all of us. Want that new car? Credit makes it happen. Want that new phone? Stick it on your credit card. Etc etc.

Have our politicians just come to accept that deficits don't really matter? Is that why no-one is ever serious about getting rid of them?

The global economy doesn't expect sovereign debt to be repaid, only refinanced.

We absolutely could borrow to invest in capex. Our problem is that we have stopped doing capex projects and we're borrowing to pay the in year costs of our declining economy.

Borrow to invest? Return on investment, economy grows. Borrow for a black hole? More debt, economy slows. So of course we're doing the latter. We need to invest our way out of the hole...

I absolutely get it that the national finances are not the same as a household budget. but at some point people have to understand just how much money we spend each year paying off loans.

I do agree we need to spend on investment. But both recent flavours of government have been shit at this. The Tories destroyed HS2. And then in come the ming vase crowd and can loads of roads projects (e.g. Stonehenge, where millions has already been spent). Projects in the UK pump prime things. If you are spending money on construction all those workers are being paid etc.

From what I’ve heard the lack of rail projects is decimating the industry to the extent that it will never be able to recover

HS2 had to set up several training centres at the start of the project, because they couldn’t find skills they needed.

The industry and government needs to ensure there’s a steady pipeline of rail projects when HS2 is completed, otherwise people will drift off into other jobs and the skills will again be lost.

Already happening - I know someone who was in one of those HS2 centres, most people have left the industry because they couldn’t get permanent jobs

Well that’s crap. It shouldn’t take a genius to work out that losing skills in niche industries is really expensive, so the next project will run over time and over budget because they’ll need to repeat the training exercise again.

You will remember that one of the things a lot of people on here have repeated for years is that we need orchestrated long term plans for all infrastructure projects

Heck it’s one of my tests as to how clueful a poster on here actually is - we should have 20 year (at various levels of details) plans for power, rail, infrastructure, housing and a whole set of things - if something is planned and then cancelled it should generate annoyance not glee with someone clueful

And we really should be the leaving people to it, because we need hospitals, roads, schools, trains so just give them a budget and leave them to it

On topic - the budget is already sinking and there is a week and a half to go. They have managed to get to an extraordinary position where whatever they unveil, the response from political wonks will be "is that it?" and the response from market wonks will be "don't like that".

And so the recriminations. I'm on record saying McSweeney will the first up against the wall, gone by the 2nd week of December as the budget fallout gets brutal.

After that? Starmer is toast. The kind of toast where you're desperately scraping it with your knife to try and save it, but knowing in your heart that you will still be able to taste the burn.

There won't be a general election before 2029, so we have to put up with this shit. So let's hope someone with some nous and some vision comes forward or we truly will be sunk.

There is a model that the government could adopt - the miracle of Manchester. This has been a 30 year turnaround so its not all on Burnham, but as the metro mayor he knows what works and how to get significant changes done effectively. Shift Gwynne aside and get him into parliament. Whilst there is still time...

On the subject of toast, I am someone who likes it charcoal black. I once set fire to a Novotel toaster in an effort to get it to go beyond the 'dried bread' anaemia stage (it was the third pass that did for it, as I recall).

And yes, I know burnt toast is potentially carcinogenic - I limit myself to toast once a fortnight or so.

I did see a hotel toaster set on fire, but as I recall it was because someone sent a croissant through it, so not you that time.

I recall a fellow student making cheese on toast in a toaster. I imagine this is how Sir Isaac Newton discovered gravity.

I guess he could have put the toaster on its side 😉

Don't be silly, attaching the cheese to the bread with rubber bands is the obvious solution.

If it’s a mild cheddar would anyone notice the difference ?

Yes because burnt rubber doesn't taste like cheese. At least, I doubt it.

Secret confession as we are all friends on PB - I love the crunchy cheese that's been melted and then cooled down from a toasted sandwich.

That bit of crispy cheese on the edge of the lasagna dish is just wonderful.

Is enough attention being paid to this conundrum:

1) It currently appears to me that only two parties, at most, could possibly lead (minority or majority) the next government - Reform and Labour
2) About 65% of the population don't want a Reform government and won't vote for one
3) About 75% of the population don't want a second Labour government and say they won't vote for one

Therefore there might be something wrong with proposition (1). But I have no idea what it is. And there can't be no party who can lead the next government (as minority or majority) because the laws of maths don't allow it and nature abhors a vacuum.

Enlighenment?

https://www1.politicalbetting.com/index.php/archives/2025/11/06/the-reform-paradox-being-the-countrys-most-popular-and-unpopular-party/

Under FPTP I reckon at the next election we could see hundreds of seats that look very similar to the 1992 Inverness, Nairn and Lochaber result, with just 3.4% between the top four parties.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverness,_Nairn_and_Lochaber_(UK_Parliament_constituency)#Elections_in_the_1990s

Interesting graphic from some analysis of the 2024 GE. It will probably be even tighter next time. You can see where Corbyn’s Labour piled up huge majorities to no good effect nationally

An interesting discussion on David Starkey's Youtube channel introduced a new phrase to me - 'thought-terminating clichés'. The example used was when one says to a scientologist that Xenu does not exist, they call you a 'supressive person'. Such phrases are often used within cults. By strange coincidence, lefties have lots of them. 'Trump'. 'Truss'. 'Russia'. 'Fascism'. 'Climate denialism'. 'Tory'. They stop the spread of wrong thinking like a little poke with an electric cattle prod.

A great line of his when discussing the woke crusaders of various hues.

Their opinions are the “affectations of the lanyard wearing class”.

Brilliant.

It is brilliant amongst people who are independently wealthy or WFH and don't have to work for a living in offices, but since I have worked for a living in offices my entire flipping life I have worn more lanyards and badges than I care to count!

Quite. A perfect excuse to look down on the many workers who produce the dividends and services on which the observer relies.

Also, it's WHAT IS ON THE LANYARD THAT MATTERS. It's the commentators who consistently miss that.

And those commentators are the first to howl at breaches of security in private and public sectors. Security on which the lanyard badge is an imperfect, but valuable, element. I've had to stop and interrogate people without an obvious lanyard and badge and insist that I see the badges; and the many doors with electronic locks provide another layer, as one needs swipe cards (and a suspicious mentality when strangers try to slip in after one).

Also I’m pretty sure the lanyard despisers would be the last people to insist on correct forms of address, titles and honorifics. David Starkey CBE for example. I’m sure he was relieved about all those doctorates and establishment baubles withdrawn after he did a racism.

I’ve ended up with a Royal British Legion lanyard….

My last lanyard at work was a Pride lanyard 👍 before that it was a Sunflower lanyard, I didn’t know what it meant, a colleague gave it me as a joke !

My last one, with the pass for Dundee HC, was the Lion King. Now that's quality.

Good evening

This is an excellent article by Kamal Ahmed

Shabana Mahmood would make a better Prime Minister than Keir Starmer

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/2025/11/16/theres-obviously-superior-choice-for-pm-than-starmer/

Whatever the quality of the argument- right now, that's a crazy thing to say.

It's looks like she did a decent job at Justice, and may well be effective at the Home Office. If she can thread the multiple needles on immigration, she will be in a strong position in 2028 or so. But it's much much much too early to say whether she would make a good PM. And this fast-tracking of relatively untried newbies up the ladder is one of the key reasons they fail so reliably.

It happened to Rishi, it's happening to Kemi, and the response of some on the right is to put forward Katie Lam as the next human to throw into the mincing machine.