Best Of

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 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

We’ve repeatedly debunked the £25 billion figure BigG.

No you haven't

We gain tax from more exploration which is not being paid at present at an estimate of 2.5 billion pa

Yes I have and it’s very silly to repeatedly come to a forum like PB with it. OEUK, which is the O&G lobby, reckon it’s about £1.5 billion per annum assuming full liberalisation of licensing and large cuts to EPL.

Their own model suggests a significant reduction in tax revenue while we wait for O&G activity to bump up a bit (in relative terms - it will still be declining in line with the overall trend). The implied future revenue is all indirect - payroll, supply chain etc. That subject to an awful lot of uncertainty.

I’m not against this but it doesn’t help the cause suggesting that there is significant cash available here - a 0.14% increase in tax revenue over a decade, and that’s a very optimistic estimate.

Any increase in tax revenue is significant.

A billion here, a billion there, soon you're talking real money.

Agree of course but I’m going to call out any crap fiscal analysis where I see, whether it’s claims about short term savings from removing the triple lock, the Greens double locking benefits, or mad tax numbers that even the lobbyists won’t stretch to.

The £25 billion is even more egregious because people are accidentally deliberately confusing a cumulative number with an annual one. It’s also convenient that this magical tax revenue won’t materialise for many years to come.

Sorry but its utter bullshit spin to denigrate any change.

There is nobody whatsoever who claims that there are short term savings from removing the triple lock, literally everyone making the argument is pointing to the long-term implications of the triple lock ratchet. Especially the yo-yo effect of having eg inflation one year causing an increase, then catch-up wages the following year causing the same increase to occur a second time.

Similarly literally any tax or spend change can be denigrated by referring it as a tiny percentage of overall tax and spend. That is true of everything when you do that, which is why you should never do that.

The simple fact of the matter is this is likely to result in tax revenues and won't harm the environment (versus importing and burning oil) so is the right thing to do. Everything else is inconsequential.

Arguably Makerfield is an excellent result for the Tories. Reason: For the Tories to recover they have to be the main contender Right of Centre, where all polling suggests half the votes go.

This is how it happens: Labour takes support away from the Far Right. The Far Right starts internal feuding. The Tories look respectable and find a few people who look like a government in waiting and suggest some sensible ideas. Votes drift back to the Tories from the Far Right, along with some support from those who have lent their support to Labour. The Tories so position themselves that it is safe to vote for them affirmatively and tactically to keep the Far Right out. (They need to do more on this soon.)

not enough to put them in government but enough to survive and fight another day.

Especially with Polanski's balloon already fast deflating, and the LibDems struggling to make an impact despite their 70-odd MPs, it is beginning to look credible that - as during previous parliaments - suggestions that the old Labour v Tory contest is dead may be premature. Unless Burnham does actually change the voting system, of course.

Next instalment in Farage's slow descent from the peak...Reform failing to win the Manchester mayoral

So, is Burnham going to play the long game and wait till next week before he removes Starmer or is he going to go for it now?

A government that has been largely paralysed by indecision since it was elected has fallen into chaos over the last few weeks, reduced to Starmer strutting about at international conferences promising we will help with non existent forces. For the sake of the country I hope Burnham gets on with it. We need purpose and a sense of direction. It has been sorely lacking.

Perhaps. But is it better to have no direction, or the wrong direction?

I fear we may be about to find out.

Burnham has given no sign that he has any idea how to solve the country's many problems than Starmer does. And he will probably make some key ones, especially economic ones, even worse.

He loves gimmicks, needs to throw the left of the party multiple bones, there's no money to pay for them and he will damage economic growth even more by raising taxes.

So by next year we may be pining for Starmer.

"The former chancellor Jeremy Hunt was among those who predicted that up to 90,000 children could enter the state sector after the addition of VAT. But the figures from the Department for Education (DfE) actually showed a decline in overall applications for both primary and secondary school places this year, while nearly 85% of families received their first choice of secondary school place, higher than in 2025 and 2024."

https://www.theguardian.com/education/2026/jun/18/vat-private-school-fees-not-caused-pupil-exodus-bridget-phillipson

So an extra £1.8bn for the ~10m pupils in state schools in UK. £200/student additional funding.

And what would have happened without VAT on school fees?

They wouldn't have had the additional £1.8bn in VAT.