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I've been thinking about the new Burnham Cabinet.

He has to find room for Rayner and Streeting (and himself).
i think Reeves, Cooper and Lammy are for the chop.

The simplest and least disruptive is;
Rayner -> Deputy PM replacing Lammy (but Burnham first see below)
Miliband -> COE replacing Reeves
Streeting -> Energy replacing Miliband
Starmer -> Foreign Sec replacing Cooper.
Everyone else stays in place pro temp.

But a first step could be Burnham -> deputy PM replacing Lammy with Starmer staying in place for a few months to provide a managed handover.
This would a Blair/Brown type of relationship with an agreed timetable to minimise disruption.

The alternative is a nasty civil war with senior ministers taking sides.
I think Burnham, being a friendly accommodating chap, will seek to persuade Starmer to take the least disruptive route, and be rewarded with the role of Foreign Secretary - which I think he enjoys most and most suits him.

Check back here later to see what actually happens.

I don't mind that except Miliband at CoE. Please god no, stick Cooper in there or something.

He's the favourite on Betfair at 1.66, so prepare yourself.

Off to No 10 to barricade Starmer in myself then.

I've been thinking about the new Burnham Cabinet.

He has to find room for Rayner and Streeting (and himself).
i think Reeves, Cooper and Lammy are for the chop.

The simplest and least disruptive is;
Rayner -> Deputy PM replacing Lammy (but Burnham first see below)
Miliband -> COE replacing Reeves
Streeting -> Energy replacing Miliband
Starmer -> Foreign Sec replacing Cooper.
Everyone else stays in place pro temp.

But a first step could be Burnham -> deputy PM replacing Lammy with Starmer staying in place for a few months to provide a managed handover.
This would a Blair/Brown type of relationship with an agreed timetable to minimise disruption.

The alternative is a nasty civil war with senior ministers taking sides.
I think Burnham, being a friendly accommodating chap, will seek to persuade Starmer to take the least disruptive route, and be rewarded with the role of Foreign Secretary - which I think he enjoys most and most suits him.

Check back here later to see what actually happens.

I doubt SNP will lose a lot of sleep over Aberdeen South. Arbroath and Broughty Ferry is a more typical constituency for them and they won it easily.

Indeed, there's a risk of taking the wrong lesson from a good result, as happened after Uxbridge.

Everyone, including Starmer and Burnham, concluded that bring the drivers' friend was the way to go, ignoring the detail that Zone 6 is an unusual bit of London. Chasing that vote was one of the signs of Sunak going mad.

Potentially, it's the same here, except eking out oil and gas for a bit longer. Obviously plays well in Aberdeen, not sure about nationwide.

Nobody will bring Aberdeen's glory days back. Geology prevents it even if saving the planet isn't your thing. But it's an emotional thing. People who made a good living out of the oil boom no longer do. Kemi Badenoch is playing the unlikely role of Arthur Scargill in his opposition to an unfeeling Margaret Thatcher towards the miners.

There is 25 billion of tax income from Kemi's policy which we are not receiving due to dogma, whilst at the same time Norway extracts the oil and gas and tax from it's fields around ours

It is not either or but both, maximise tax from extracting oil and gas and continue the transition to net zero

North sea oil and gas exploration will be very much on Burnham's agenda and significantly Wes Streeting is on the same page as Kemi

And fuck the planet.

The planet will be fine. Global temps have varied hugely over the millions of years. A bigger concern is the habitats of the species that live here and our own ability to survive. Some greens would rather we didn't, but then I think the world would be a poorer place with no-one to appreciate its beauty.

The sooner we end all use of fossil fuels the better, but what is stupid is not using our own resources in order to polish our halo while using them from elsewhere.

I wonder if that’s what the people on Venus said before the runaway greenhouse kicked off.

Do you genuinely believe that we are at risk of a runaway greenhouse effect?

That’s actually a salient point - most of the time we frame this debate as if the uncertainty in the models only runs in one direction, and there is some evidence that scientists are deliberately tempering their language to make their findings more palatable.

So yes, there probably is a risk, at least as large that the fuss we are making about climate change is overblown.