Best Of

Here's a thing, though.

Until very recently, "experience in one of the Great Offices" was pretty much the first line in the Person Spec to be a mid-term replacement PM.

On the basis, the shortlist ought to be Cooper, Lammy, Reeves, Mahmood, Rayner at a pinch. Not even Reeves can imagine that she has a chance, but it's striking that neither Cooper or Lammy are mentioned. Not necessarily shocking, but striking.

But paraphrasing a fictional Chief Whip, who is up to the job? You can never tell, unless you suck it and see.

Problem is all of them have been found either wanting (or in the case of Mahmood implementing things that are utterly toxic to the people likely to be voting)

Cooper I also wonder if she wants it - Ed couldn't keep his current very well paid job if she was PM..

For Kemi, Davey and Starmer, the biggest defence against being replaced is the paucity of obviously better replacements.

Which says a lot about the state of politics.

Burnham was/is a rather mild threat, as these things go.

I think you misunderstand the Lib Dems here. Davey is very much respected by his Parliamentary party, even while they are a little frustrated with the polls- he just led them to the most significant result for the party in over a century. Davey has a good working relationship with colleagues, notably Daisy Cooper, who is widely spoken of as his potential successor.

What would probably cause Ed to leave office early is if the health of his wife and or son were to take a turn for the worse. For the time being there is no more than normal anti leader muttering in the party and little enough amongst the MPs. He has solved some major internal problems, got 72 MPs elected and is on the brink of further local government gains. If he chose to stand down before the next election, he would not go until long after the locals this year- once again subject to the health of his family. I have been with Ed in public and there is no doubt that people like him- relatable, intelligent and a good guy... Not what we can say of every party leader in our country.
When the time does come, the Lib Dems have a clutch of very bright young new MPs- quite a contrast to the Tory benches indeed I was slightly surprised myself to see how much dead wood the Conservatives still have in the House (Sir David Davis is 77, the young Turk Sir Bernard Jenkin is 66)- and there are some very high quality people on the Lib Dem benches: Al Pinkerton, Calum Miller, Daisy Cooper to pick some names at random.

🤔

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2026/jan/18/liberal-democrat-mps-frustrated-ed-davey-leader

Reads like one slightly frustrated MP having a bit of a whinge and to fill column space, the Guardian has blown it up into a leadership crisis as newspapers are wont.

If the Press, including the BBC, were to make space for the LibDems instead of rushing to Farage every five minutes things might be different.
I'm just waiting for Farage to be asked about his views on the Labour situation.

I have no idea what the actual stats look like, but my impression, when I think about it, is that the LDs get quite a few slots on BBC radio (no idea about telly; does anyone watch it?) but fail to convey the impression, which Reform does sadly convey, that they are talking about the opinions, actions and policies of the next government and the next government's opinions of the present one. This renders all they say a bit forgettable as neither they nor the listener thinks it adds to the sum of useful knowledge.

Listening to Reform matters because most of us want to know how the 60-70% who want them beaten will do it. We already know that the LDs seriously contesting about 100 seats is part of the plan. In the other 530 GB seats they tend to get in the way. That's politics.

Ed Davey was on the Sunday Kuenssberg show yesterday.

I rarely comment on Ed Davey, not least because I do respect the views of some Lib Dems on here, but I just do not see him as his supporters do

He speaks about the EU with devotion and the care sector, which I understand with his own family problems, but he just comes over a bit 'meh' and his clowning around does not do anything for me

I see the Lib Dems as a southern English 'Waitrose' party and whilst they should do well in May I do not know where the money is coming from for their policies, not least because they seem to want to hand 5 billion to WASPI women but as per Davey yesterday, insist on immediate increases in defence spending

Did you miss the LD proposal to issue War Bonds?

No - I did listen to that but it's just more borrowing under a different name

Well there are only 3 available options - (1) borrow more, (2) cut spending, and (3) raise taxes. Only (1) is politically acceptable.

Borrowing more is not possible as our credit card is maxed out

Cutting spending is essential, or more specifically redirect spending into defence from reinstating the 2 child cap and end the triple lock amomgst choices

There is always a choice but not heaping more debt onto our grandchildren

Health spending is on an inexorable upward trajectory, given an ageing population and the rising cost of diagnosis, medication and surgery. Social care cost is on an upward trajectory for related reasons, as are pension costs. The future costs of pensions could be reduced by scrapping the triple lock, but that’s avoiding some extra spending, not cutting it. At the moment, welfare spending excluding pensions is also rising, and while not all of that appears justified, even levelling off the increase would be an heroic achievement by government. Education spending isn’t easily going to be cut, given existing underfunding and the backlog of capital investment and repairs in schools. Local government is already cut to the bone and struggling to fulfil even its statutory responsibilities, with a string of councils going bankrupt. Defence spending clearly needs to increase. Aid spending has already been cut (and shouldn’t have been).

Where, Big G, are these cuts of yours going to come from?

Firstly means test the state pension so that it provides the safety net for pensioners, also consider similar in the NHS

Not paying WASPI women, reinstate the 2 child cap, incentivise all the milionaires and non doms to return with their taxes, and use AI

Now, these are controversial but what is certain we cannot go on as we are

Can we lay off the pile on on Sandpit please?
1) He's been on the site for fucking ages; I find it vanishingly unlikely he's being paid to make pro-Trump noises.
2) I've rarely heard him make pro-Trump noises. Not thinking Trump = Hitler does not equal pro-Trump.
3) As it happens, I do think Trump roughly equals Hitler. But I am very interested in the views of a seemingly intelligent poster who does not hold that view. Why wouldn't you be?

It's ridiculous to fall into the trap of 'poster x does not hate politician y as much as I do - therefore poster x loves politician y.' We saw this with Boris too.

It seems fair to defend Trump [and the administration] on some levels - many things are arguable. TDS is still a thing.

But justifying the shooting of someone in the street who is protesting peacefully would seem a different matter.

The phrase TDS is often trotted out by trump apologists who don't want to see the whole picture.

I certainly wouldn't apologise for him but what I would take it to mean is not taking each specific action on its own merits.

He might accidentally do something right. Increasingly long odds on that, perhaps.


DS applies to all politicians, including Starmer, who also manages to blunder into doing the right thing sometimes, having announced the wrong thing first.

We were assured he was going to invade Greenland a couple of days ago. That he was a deranged dementia patient who had lost the capacity to reason, and therefore he'd as happily soak Greenland in European blood as eat his morning cornflakes.

Except it has now all been wrapped up diplomatically, he seems to have got everything he asked for, and he now says force was never on the agenda. Yet no embarrassed climb down from our resident Trump experts, just on to the next civilisation-ending outrage and hope nobody will notice.

No one thought he’d actually invade Greenland. And he didn’t get what he wanted . I see you omitted his trashing of NATO troops who died supporting the USA . He’s now given immunity to ICE to execute anyone they see fit and you’re still trying to sanewash his actions . He might not be mad but he is true evil .

Lucky is just telling us who he is.

Yet he’s not wrong to point out the resident Trump experts cocked up there and just pivoted onto the next issue to rant about.

You know Trump's playbook is to change so many things so rapidly you don't have a chance to correct one of them before another 5 things need to be corrected..

No, you should have mentioned it before.

Trump will be threatening Greenland again in due course, he's just backed off for a bit.
Your accusations of TDS are gaslighting, a year ago people were saying a he'd deport a lot of wrong people and that tariffs would be bad for international trade, they weren't saying that he'd deploy 2500 masked ICE agents to a city to drive in circles around residential blocks and schools abducting anyone non-white and murdering peaceful protesters or that the EU and sane NATO countries would be in a emergency diplomatic huddle to protect Greenland from annexation.
It'd be more fun to be discussing Burnham and why the idiot is distracting from the blue on blue psychodrama.

Braverman has joined Reform, I'm told....

Another win for the Conservatives if so.

I’ve had it confirmed.

She is speaking live on Sky

Great day for Kemi.

Really clearing the crap out of the party now.

It opens a whole new world for her rid of the worst aspects of Jenrick and Braverman

Even better. Not only has she got rid of them but Farage seems determined to give them Offices of Great State opposition speaking roles. So they will be on TV a lot reminding everyone what UK Trumpland will be like.

Braverman running UK ICE is enough to give anyone nightmares frankly.