Best Of

One has to think like a Labourite.

The objective here is to consolidate the left-wing vote in an environment where Labour is bleeding heavily to the Greens and Lib Dems, and in the next election its base alone might put it in contention in a 4-way fight. It isn't to win over "floating voters" to Reform/Tories, and non-Labour voters rooting for Wes Streeting are like non-Tory voters rooting for Rory Stewart.

So, I'd say Ed Miliband has a real chance.

Labour would be better served by worrying about the Greens and piss diamonds than Reform.

Polanski was not good on QT. His ‘let’s get migrants over to do the jobs we don’t want to do’ is not the winning line he thought it was. As Kelly Osborne found out in the USA.

It shows his privilege and comfortable middle-class position, though.

Which is where most Greens now come from.

The sort of people who hated Brexit because they lost their minimum wage cleaners and babysitters.

Show me you don't know any Remainers, without saying you don't know any Remainers.

I’ve met people like that. In Wiltshire, there were some incomers to Malmesbury who fought against development on a mishmash of Green/Nimby excuses. After some wine, they would comment that if a factory got built locally, then wages would go up - which would hit them.

Strangely, the locals (pushed into the housing estate over the hill) all voted…

Maybe Wiltshire attracts that sort of person. It's not an argument I have ever heard anybody make round here.

They tended to be people who’d cashed in a house in London for a lovely stone house with land.

I found it interesting that they’d acquired the attitude of the Squirearchy with it - what they want is economic & social stasis. At least locally, for them.

Right, they've bought into a certain idea of the countryside, that they don't want disrupted. And they're insecure because they aren't rooted in their community. And they might have left London because "it's changed so much". They might not actually be that well off either - they have accumulated wealth through the happy accident of buying a terraced house in London at the right time. So they're economically insecure too. It makes sense. But among the left liberal denizens of my bit of London - the absolutely most tofu eating of the Remainer wokerati, seriously - this is not an argument I have ever heard.
Ironically at the time of Brexit our cleaner was not from the EU. Whereas now our cleaner is from the EU. And our child minder was from the PB Tory saintly caste of "white British", although we don't employ her any more as our kids are too old. We still see her and her family from time to time, though. We pay our cleaner £17/hour. Nobody I know saw EU membership as a source of cheap domestic labour, we certainly didn't.

I think it will be Wes. He is just the strongest candidate and I think will win over the membership when he goes up against the rest of the field. I don't think it makes sense to choose someone like Ed Miliband who has already lost an election. The only worry with Wes is over his own seat, but if he can turn Labour's fortunes around then he should be able to save his own seat in the process.

He is probably the one who could best sell a Labour message to the wider electorate. But to members won't it be easy for a rival candidate to pitch to his left without going full Corbynite?

Maybe I am projecting, but don't other Labour members also want someone who can appeal to the electorate as a whole and win an election? I just think Wes is so far ahead of the other candidates as a political communicator that it will become obvious that he is the best choice.

I think we need to pick a shortllist who we're basically OK with before considering electoral appeal, which is elusive and often transitory, and leads to embarrassment even when it works in electoral terms. Essentially a Labour leader needs to both command at least broad acceptance in the party and in the public, and there's no point in choosing a leader who goes out of his way to pick fights with much of the membership. That's why I would struggle to accept Streeting as leader, whether he won an election or not, whereas I'd accept a moderate centrist even if I often disagreed with them. My basic requirement is a broadly acceptable medium-term strategy, and my main criticism of Starmer, who seems pleasant enough, is that he doesn't seem to have a medium-term strategy at all, evem one I'd personally disagree with.

Doesn't that just make you part of Labour's problems ?
(TBF, I note you are anyway considering joining a different party.)

Perhaps (part of the problems), though I've decided against changing party for the forseeable future. I think however that it's generally true that party leaders need both acceptance by the membership and acceptance by the electorate. It doesn't need to be wild enthusiasm by either, but if either is turned off then the project isn't going to work. Nor should it - if the electorate doesn't like you, basic democracy requires that you don't win, and if the membership doesn't like you, you're not suited to lead it. I think that British political problems are partly caused by over-emphasis on winning at all costs, with actual ambitions to achieve anything in particular seen as secondary. You can't achieve anything unless you win, but you shouldn't even stand if you don't know what you're trying to achieve.

That’s fair - but what I think is missing from this is any kind of appreciation that parties of government (or that aspire to government) under a two party system are necessarily coalitions.
if you’re insisting on ideological purity, then you’re wanting something that’s essentially undemocratic- seeking majority rule for a set of views which don’t have majority approval.

I’m happy to recognise that you can make similar criticisms of those holding other particular political views, but your “whether he won an election or not” comment is what struck me.

Yes, and I've been a member of Labour for over 50 years as a result of accepting that people will have varying views in detail - insisting on purity ultimately comes down to only accepting yourself. It's a balance, but leadership needs to include some acceptable medium- to longterm perspectives of what we're trying to achieve, as otherwise it's at best negative ("stop maniac X") and at worst a waste of time.

Labour’s mistake, I suspect, will come to be seen as having raised relatively small, if still annoying, amounts of extra taxation and directing it almost entirely toward extra spending on benefits, rather than having been much bolder on taxation and then directed it toward delivering visible improvements in public services for us all.

https://x.com/pippacrerar/status/1997296467195617672

Informal discussions have taken place inside No 10 on rejoining customs union as quickest way to boost growth

We won't rejoin THE Customs Union or THE Single Market... Not yet, anyway. But an arrangement with a Single Customs Area and/or a United Market probably would be good for growth. It will leave the UK people with less control than they had in 2015, but beggars can't be choosers.

And going back to the theme of the header, the next Labour leader won't get the job without showing quite a lot of leg on the matter.

I think it'd add something like 0.2-0.3% GDP to growth, so very marginal in the grand scheme of things.

That's not what this is about nor why he's doing it. He's doing it because VALUES: it'd deftly stimulate the internationalist erogenous zones of left-liberal progressives, and probably give Remoaners a near orgasm.

I'd pledge it, if I were him, in the next GE because there's probably no better way Starmer can harvest their votes.

Better than a kick in the teeth. Using a recent estimate of UK GDP of about 2.56 trillion pounds in 2024, 0.3% of UK GDP is roughly 7.7 billion pounds What could be done with that?

If that were it, we'd probably do it, though we'd have to make contributions of £3 billion or so per year for structural funds, so the net gain would be much less than that.

But we'd have to accept EU regulations, which are often stupid and nonsensical, without any say in how they are determined. I think we'd have essentially no say in about half of our laws and regulations. So it would be a ridiculous situation and I don't think it would even last very long. Either we'd rejoin fully, which I think is unlikely because of the currency, freedom of movement and net contributions issues, or we'd leave again.

We'd also have to abandon our CPTPP membership.

Starmer is desperate for the slightest boost to growth but can't do the one thing that is proven to work - move towards a low tax, low spending, free markets model. Just reducing the tax-spend ratio by 1% of GDP - about a third of what Labour has increased it by since taking office - would increaase GDP by 3-4 times the boost from rejoining the Single Market. So he grasps for small, stupid and probably counterproductive gimmicks like this, rather than admit that his whole party is founded on the economically illiterate lie that is socialism.

Record broken for wind power generated

https://grid.iamkate.com/

(In the UK, not what's going on at the FIFA draw)

We weren't far off achieving Net Zero for electricity transmission last night.

If you add Wind, Hydroelectric and Nuclear I think it came to about 78% of electricity generation.

If only the rest of the world could do the same, and electrify everything.

Decarbonising electricity generation is the easy bit.

Domestic heating is the big challenge. Heat pumps in every home or a hydrogen network. The decision just keeps on being delayed.

Because neither is an easy option.

Direct electric heating (or high temperature output heat pumps) might be the best option if electricity prices fall sufficiently.

https://x.com/pippacrerar/status/1997296467195617672

Informal discussions have taken place inside No 10 on rejoining customs union as quickest way to boost growth

We won't rejoin THE Customs Union or THE Single Market... Not yet, anyway. But an arrangement with a Single Customs Area and/or a United Market probably would be good for growth. It will leave the UK people with less control than they had in 2015, but beggars can't be choosers.

And going back to the theme of the header, the next Labour leader won't get the job without showing quite a lot of leg on the matter.

I think it'd add something like 0.2-0.3% GDP to growth, so very marginal in the grand scheme of things.

That's not what this is about nor why he's doing it. He's doing it because VALUES: it'd deftly stimulate the internationalist erogenous zones of left-liberal progressives, and probably give Remoaners a near orgasm.

I'd pledge it, if I were him, in the next GE because there's probably no better way Starmer can harvest their votes.

It's not good for the Lib Dems. They'll have to invent something else for their manifesto, going more extreme.

Well from QT this week their deputy leader is clearly positioning them to be, at least, on a par with the greens and pro mass inward migration, no limits, no person is illegal. Nothing wrong with that. In spite of what Foxy and Rogerdamus say, I don’t see it as a vote winner.

One has to think like a Labourite.

The objective here is to consolidate the left-wing vote in an environment where Labour is bleeding heavily to the Greens and Lib Dems, and in the next election its base alone might put it in contention in a 4-way fight. It isn't to win over "floating voters" to Reform/Tories, and non-Labour voters rooting for Wes Streeting are like non-Tory voters rooting for Rory Stewart.

So, I'd say Ed Miliband has a real chance.

Labour would be better served by worrying about the Greens and piss diamonds than Reform.

Polanski was not good on QT. His ‘let’s get migrants over to do the jobs we don’t want to do’ is not the winning line he thought it was. As Kelly Osborne found out in the USA.

It shows his privilege and comfortable middle-class position, though.

Which is where most Greens now come from.

The sort of people who hated Brexit because they lost their minimum wage cleaners and babysitters.

Show me you don't know any Remainers, without saying you don't know any Remainers.

LOL

https://x.com/pippacrerar/status/1997296467195617672

Informal discussions have taken place inside No 10 on rejoining customs union as quickest way to boost growth

We won't rejoin THE Customs Union or THE Single Market... Not yet, anyway. But an arrangement with a Single Customs Area and/or a United Market probably would be good for growth. It will leave the UK people with less control than they had in 2015, but beggars can't be choosers.

And going back to the theme of the header, the next Labour leader won't get the job without showing quite a lot of leg on the matter.

I think it'd add something like 0.2-0.3% GDP to growth, so very marginal in the grand scheme of things.

That's not what this is about nor why he's doing it. He's doing it because VALUES: it'd deftly stimulate the internationalist erogenous zones of left-liberal progressives, and probably give Remoaners a near orgasm.

I'd pledge it, if I were him, in the next GE because there's probably no better way Starmer can harvest their votes.

https://x.com/pippacrerar/status/1997296467195617672

Informal discussions have taken place inside No 10 on rejoining customs union as quickest way to boost growth

What do they know about growth? They spent the best part of a year talking down the economy and were surprised that confidence collapsed.

If they do it, the aim wouldn't really be "to boost growth" but to polarise the electorate and try to build a coalition based winning as many of the 48% as possible.

They probably will. As I've said before, many times, Starmer was a Tedious Tactical Triangulator in opposition and he's now a Tedious Tactical Triangulator in office.

He will end up neither trusted nor respected, so it might not even work no matter what he does.

One has to think like a Labourite.

The objective here is to consolidate the left-wing vote in an environment where Labour is bleeding heavily to the Greens and Lib Dems, and in the next election its base alone might put it in contention in a 4-way fight. It isn't to win over "floating voters" to Reform/Tories, and non-Labour voters rooting for Wes Streeting are like non-Tory voters rooting for Rory Stewart.

So, I'd say Ed Miliband has a real chance.

Labour would be better served by worrying about the Greens and piss diamonds than Reform.

Polanski was not good on QT. His ‘let’s get migrants over to do the jobs we don’t want to do’ is not the winning line he thought it was. As Kelly Osborne found out in the USA.

It shows his privilege and comfortable middle-class position, though.

Which is where most Greens now come from.