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The contrast between year one of Starmer's government and year one of Blair's is quite telling.

Within the first 12 months Blair had passed many changes that he wanted. Devolution, BoE independence, minimum wage etc etc etc all happened in the first 12 months.

What the hell has Starmer done? Announcements that planning will be changed. Announcements that this, that or the other will happen.

Where are the changes? We could have had a new planning system in place by now.

Starmer is the sort of dull plodder who’d arrange a meeting to discuss a meeting.

Not before there's been a meeting to discuss how the announcement of the meeting to discuss the meeting will proceed.

Disgraceful.

Are you suggesting that we leave out the meeting to discuss the budget and terms of reference for the meeting to discuss the biscuits for the meeting to discuss how the announcement of the meeting to discuss the meeting?!!

That’s would be a catastrophic failure of Proper Government!

Oh god, alright then ...

You can't just arrange a big-ticket budgetary meeting willy nilly like that. It needs some proper prep. I suggest a meeting.

There are a lot of meetings being organised seemingly at random.

We need to have a meeting to align on how scheduling will be coordinated in future.

All of these meeting could have been an
email

Sorry didn’t have time to check my email - been in back to back meetings all day

The contrast between year one of Starmer's government and year one of Blair's is quite telling.

Within the first 12 months Blair had passed many changes that he wanted. Devolution, BoE independence, minimum wage etc etc etc all happened in the first 12 months.

What the hell has Starmer done? Announcements that planning will be changed. Announcements that this, that or the other will happen.

Where are the changes? We could have had a new planning system in place by now.

Starmer is the sort of dull plodder who’d arrange a meeting to discuss a meeting.

It is also the Cabinet. A lot of those Blair ideas where brought to the table by powerful cabinet members who had spent the opposition years thinking out plans. Absolute no sign of that except for Miliband and probably Streeting.

I've just come back from ten days in Montenegro. Apart from being marred by various small frustrations like cheating taxi drivers and triple digit temperatures in Podogrica, it was an improbably fascinating trip - a country, like so many in Eastern Europe, apparently split down the middle between following its heart, towards its Slavic brethren Serbia and Russia, and its head, towards NATO and civilised Europe.

As some commenters seem to appreciate my occasional postcards from foreign parts, I thought I'd share some thoughts:

- they use the Euro, and this has clearly trapped them in an unsustainably strong currency. Things feel much more expensive than they should for a developing country at the back end of Europe, unemployment is obviously very high (14% officially, youth unemployment 26%, in reality probably significantly higher)
- Russian influence EVERYWHERE. The most common petrol stations were Lukoil, many Russian banks (Sberbank etc) have branches in the towns, lots of signs in tourist areas where in Russian and the usual quota of Russian men obviously drunk by noon on the beaches
- but every Montenegrin ministry in the capital flies an EU flag alongside the Montenegrin one, and some fly NATO flags as well. So it's an odd mix. Their national symbol is the double-headed eagle, simultaneously facing west and east, which seems somehow appropriate to the country.
- the language situation is just as confused. Montenegrin itself is sort of a dialect of Serbian but sort of its own language. It only formally separated from Serbian in the 1990s. Most of the signs use the Latin script but some are in modified Cyrillic and a few are in English.
- the people I talked to are also a mix - they look Mediterranean rather than Slavic, though their language and culture are obviously basically Serbian. They drive better than you'd expect for a country that's next to Albania, and actually stop at pedestrian crossings, which was unexpected
- the US embassy in Podgorica is staggeringly ugly and larger than the former embassy in London on Grosvenor Square. For an obscure country of 600k, not a world power of 70m. God knows what Uncle Sam is thinking.
- the food is good if uninspired - classic Balkan fare of grilled meat, potatoes, sauces, soups, etc.

Anyway it was a good trip, though unfortunately I had to cut it short because of work. They won't become another Belarus as they are too far - geographically and culturally - from Russia but I will be interested to see if they can maintain their precarious national balancing act over the next couple of decades or if they will embrace the free world with all its problems and disappointments wholeheartedly.

Thank-you.

One idea I have been hearing to tip that balance the Western way, from both the Daily Telegraph Ukraine the Latest podcast *and* Rory Stewart on The Rest is Politics, is that a variety of multi-speed EU should be made available to some countries in the Western Balkans, where they get accelerated access to the EU features that help develop their economies* in advance of fulfilling the entire EU rulebook which takes decades.

As a tactic of drawing them deeper in, more quickly, given Russian tactics.

* As an example, single market access to be less restricted.

The EU already has something sort of like that with its Association Agreements, e.g. with Georgia.

They could doubtless be developed further, but of course the EU would be very reluctant to allow countries to cherry-pick desirable aspects of EU membership without the undesirable ones, but then would that be attractive to countries like Montenegro?

Knowing the EU and its negotiating style, any more in-depth agreement would basically be a kind of colonial arrangement, or at least could easily be presented as such. Brussels doesn't really do flexibility or goodwill so I think they could cause more political problems than they solve.

She quite frequently sets the agenda. Her problem is that whenever she does, it is on topics that remind voters that the Tories also failed to resolve them

From header: Rob J this week unleashed his inner Boris with a tweet surely conceived for the side of a bus:-

Yesterday a young man was murdered in broad daylight for his watch.

And now Starmer is on the verge of giving killers a 70% reduction on the full sentence.

The Tory government were warned that they would run out of prison places by the end of the year unless they did something to fix the problem. All they did was make a speech. The reason Starmer is having to reduce sentences is because the Tories did nothing to fix the prisons problem.

Labour have been in office for over a year now. What have they actually done in that time to build more prison places?

The contrast between year one of Starmer's government and year one of Blair's is quite telling.

Within the first 12 months Blair had passed many changes that he wanted. Devolution, BoE independence, minimum wage etc etc etc all happened in the first 12 months.

What the hell has Starmer done? Announcements that planning will be changed. Announcements that this, that or the other will happen.

Where are the changes? We could have had a new planning system in place by now.

They are certainly too timid and cautious. I kind of think they are on the right track in some policy areas but that they themselves are uncertain and lack belief in what they need to change, so end up neither going fast enough nor far enough.

Their communications are very poor. Even if they achieve a win they allow it to be sold as a defeat. Some of the " trade deals" could be seen as more of a win than a loss. Deals are a negotiation that encompasses wins and losses. This bunch allow the Tory media to focus on the downs but make no attempt themselves to promote the ups.

They didn't make enough of their legacy. They needed a Liam Byrne note to keep them afloat for a decade. I am sure they found plenty, but being naive and useless sent them all to the dumpster rather than the Guardian.