Best Of

Is there nobody in Truss's close circle of friends who can sit her down and say "Liz, luv, it's over. Move on with your life."

Sad.

She’s probably got a couple of years of getting high-five-figure speech payments from the likes of Turning Point USA, can probably make herself a couple of million and then retire off the back of that.

Like many of us it isn't about money, it's about sense and purpose in life. I don't think Truss is motivated by greed, she was about pure personal ambition. Now it's over and she has nothingness stretching endlessly in front of her.

Most people's lives are about seeking meaning in existence.

Even more than material needs, that search for meaning seems to be at the heart of our problems. The hotel protests, the flagrash... in large part they are about looking for a cause to fight for, even if that cause doesn't really make sense or have that broad public support. I can't help thinking that part of the Brexit impulse was a generation's jealousy of the parents having had proper evil foreigners to fight.

Politics doesn't feel like the right tool to generate meaning (though you see it on the harder left). Though I'm not sure what the better tool is.

Hegseth's new title role is Secretary of War, shouldn't it be Secretary for War?

SoW he is and SoW he shall remain.
Hegseth was a grunt after all.

SFW = So fucking what...

I see the point you are making.

This administration is building nicely to a crescendo of awfulness. The jobs numbers yesterday were about 50k below expectations, with previous months also further reduced by another 22k - so it's now the worst period for US jobs since the Pandemic.

Haven’t you heard, Ambassador Mandelson thinks fellow Epstein pal Trump is a maverick risk taker doing the things that other democratic leaders aren’t brave enough to do.

Ironically in the face of those job figures, the ambo will apparently say in a speech:

"I credit President Trump's political instincts in identifying the anxieties gripping not only millions of Americans, but also far more pervasive Western trends: economic stagnation for many, a sense of irreversible decline, the lost promise of meaningful work…

"These American concerns find their mirror image in British society, where Keir Starmer won an electoral mandate for national renewal which is similar to Donald Trump's."

Move over sycophant Lammy, make room for an expert.

Pass me the sick bag ! What nauseating claptrap .

Didn't Mandelson praise brexit recently

Yesterday's reshuffle moved towards a Blairite government with a Blairlite leader

A man who has spent his miserable life being wrong claims a Brexit benefit and eulogises Trump.

It must hurt to see labour grandees championing brexit

FPT to Turbotubbs.....

If I was the suspicious type I might have thought Starmer himself was the lawyer who gave Ange the advice! This has worked out perfectly for him. He's got a shiny new team none of whom eat peas with their knife. From a government POV this couldn't have worked out better. Angie was never up to the job and despite protestations Starmer's much more comfortable without that particular loose cannon swinging around Downing Street.....

....No the story is about Ange herself and the snobbery that brought her down. The Telegraph and Mail have been campaigning against her for months. Pure snobbery. Someone on here yesterday called her 'Gobby'. I'm afraid that's what females from her background who are climbing the ladder are having to put up with.It is so depressing.... Just another scalp for some double barrelled nobody at the Telegraph

If Labour and its supporters tell themselves that "snobbery that brought her down" then they're screwed. Rayner did something minorly wrong, but for a value that is eye-watering for many voters. She denied wrongdoing, and then tried to blame others. She was in denial. All MPs (of all parties, not just Labour) need to learn lessons from this. Many are too thick, or greedy, or self-important, to do so.

The government's media management, and management of its MPs, is awful. They need to fix this. They need to develop a few simple messages and deliver them effectively. Since Starmer is incapable of the messaging, they need someone else. Lammy isn't it.

I don't think Rayner did deny wrongdoing. She fessed up, and wanted to pay the £40k. And she promptly and quite graciously accepted the findings of the Independent Adviser, falling on her sword immediately and admitting she'd been negligent.

Yes but the narrative of those hostile to Rayner is to paint as negative a picture of her as possible to forestall any attempt at rehabilitation in a year or two.

The fact remains she breached the Ministerial Code and that made her position untenable. Whether said Code is fit for purpose is another question - we want to ensure Government is as free as possible from allegations of corruption or inappropriate influence such as from third party lobbying companies - but the notion complex non-Government related private financial transactions need to be held to such a high standard - well, I understand why many would wish our Ministers to be beyond any kind of reproach especially since the Expenses Scandal - doesn't sit well with me and some latitude for genuine errors should exist (as distinct from deliberate and planned tax evasion).

She was a damn fool not to seek further advice as recommended.

But I'm remembering how but for a chance conversation with my accountant I would once have ended up paying the wrong rate of stamp duty too, and it would never even have crossed my mind to check.

There but for the grace of God...

Probably about the size of it. And it's not easy to distinguish between "get more advice because I'm covering myself" and "get more advice because you really need more advice".

Some other big-picture observations.

It's good to be back in a world where ethical judgements cause ministers to resign, not ethical advisers.

The chorus of "this wouldn't have happened if Rayner hadn't been so aggressive in opposition" is obviously claptrap.

Politicians of various colours have returned from worse things than this.

She only resigned after the ethical advisor told her she had broke the ministerial code. That's fine, but you don't extra Brownie points, especially after 2 weeks of deflecting and lying. It's a standard political scandal.

FPT to Turbotubbs.....

If I was the suspicious type I might have thought Starmer himself was the lawyer who gave Ange the advice! This has worked out perfectly for him. He's got a shiny new team none of whom eat peas with their knife. From a government POV this couldn't have worked out better. Angie was never up to the job and despite protestations Starmer's much more comfortable without that particular loose cannon swinging around Downing Street.....

....No the story is about Ange herself and the snobbery that brought her down. The Telegraph and Mail have been campaigning against her for months. Pure snobbery. Someone on here yesterday called her 'Gobby'. I'm afraid that's what females from her background who are climbing the ladder are having to put up with.It is so depressing.... Just another scalp for some double barrelled nobody at the Telegraph

If Labour and its supporters tell themselves that "snobbery that brought her down" then they're screwed. Rayner did something minorly wrong, but for a value that is eye-watering for many voters. She denied wrongdoing, and then tried to blame others. She was in denial. All MPs (of all parties, not just Labour) need to learn lessons from this. Many are too thick, or greedy, or self-important, to do so.

The government's media management, and management of its MPs, is awful. They need to fix this. They need to develop a few simple messages and deliver them effectively. Since Starmer is incapable of the messaging, they need someone else. Lammy isn't it.

I don't think Rayner did deny wrongdoing. She fessed up, and wanted to pay the £40k. And she promptly and quite graciously accepted the findings of the Independent Adviser, falling on her sword immediately and admitting she'd been negligent.

Yes but the narrative of those hostile to Rayner is to paint as negative a picture of her as possible to forestall any attempt at rehabilitation in a year or two.

The fact remains she breached the Ministerial Code and that made her position untenable. Whether said Code is fit for purpose is another question - we want to ensure Government is as free as possible from allegations of corruption or inappropriate influence such as from third party lobbying companies - but the notion complex non-Government related private financial transactions need to be held to such a high standard - well, I understand why many would wish our Ministers to be beyond any kind of reproach especially since the Expenses Scandal - doesn't sit well with me and some latitude for genuine errors should exist (as distinct from deliberate and planned tax evasion).

She was a damn fool not to seek further advice as recommended.

But I'm remembering how but for a chance conversation with my accountant I would once have ended up paying the wrong rate of stamp duty too, and it would never even have crossed my mind to check.

There but for the grace of God...

Probably about the size of it. And it's not easy to distinguish between "get more advice because I'm covering myself" and "get more advice because you really need more advice".

Some other big-picture observations.

It's good to be back in a world where ethical judgements cause ministers to resign, not ethical advisers.

The chorus of "this wouldn't have happened if Rayner hadn't been so aggressive in opposition" is obviously claptrap.

Politicians of various colours have returned from worse things than this.

FPT to Turbotubbs.....

If I was the suspicious type I might have thought Starmer himself was the lawyer who gave Ange the advice! This has worked out perfectly for him. He's got a shiny new team none of whom eat peas with their knife. From a government POV this couldn't have worked out better. Angie was never up to the job and despite protestations Starmer's much more comfortable without that particular loose cannon swinging around Downing Street.....

....No the story is about Ange herself and the snobbery that brought her down. The Telegraph and Mail have been campaigning against her for months. Pure snobbery. Someone on here yesterday called her 'Gobby'. I'm afraid that's what females from her background who are climbing the ladder are having to put up with.It is so depressing.... Just another scalp for some double barrelled nobody at the Telegraph

If Labour and its supporters tell themselves that "snobbery that brought her down" then they're screwed. Rayner did something minorly wrong, but for a value that is eye-watering for many voters. She denied wrongdoing, and then tried to blame others. She was in denial. All MPs (of all parties, not just Labour) need to learn lessons from this. Many are too thick, or greedy, or self-important, to do so.

The government's media management, and management of its MPs, is awful. They need to fix this. They need to develop a few simple messages and deliver them effectively. Since Starmer is incapable of the messaging, they need someone else. Lammy isn't it.

I don't think Rayner did deny wrongdoing. She fessed up, and wanted to pay the £40k. And she promptly and quite graciously accepted the findings of the Independent Adviser, falling on her sword immediately and admitting she'd been negligent.

Yes but the narrative of those hostile to Rayner is to paint as negative a picture of her as possible to forestall any attempt at rehabilitation in a year or two.

The fact remains she breached the Ministerial Code and that made her position untenable. Whether said Code is fit for purpose is another question - we want to ensure Government is as free as possible from allegations of corruption or inappropriate influence such as from third party lobbying companies - but the notion complex non-Government related private financial transactions need to be held to such a high standard - well, I understand why many would wish our Ministers to be beyond any kind of reproach especially since the Expenses Scandal - doesn't sit well with me and some latitude for genuine errors should exist (as distinct from deliberate and planned tax evasion).

She was a damn fool not to seek further advice as recommended.

But I'm remembering how but for a chance conversation with my accountant I would once have ended up paying the wrong rate of stamp duty too, and it would never even have crossed my mind to check.

There but for the grace of God...

Trevor Phillips of Sky suggest the winners from yesterday are Shabana Mahmood and Pat McFadden

He expects Mahmood to be much more forceful on immigration and the boats and McFadden on reigning in the welfare budget

I agree with him and actually quite like both those politicians and appointments

The bigger question is will labour mps go along with these two important ministers

Re the last paragraph, likely QTWTAIN - but, they do have one last chance after the budget to properly seize the moment and get the unpopular (to Labour MPs, anyway) out of the way with, to then move the narrative on to (they hope) a better 2027/28/29.

It will require a level of direction, conviction and strength of purpose that Labour have been extremely lacking up til now, so I don’t rate the chances at higher than 10%, but the next 12 months are really critical for Labour - they’ve already wasted the first 12, and they’re soon going to be approaching midterm where any will to do anything painful will completely evaporate.

Backbench MPs want to close the deficit, avoid tax rises and avoid spending cuts.

There's one and only one way that's possible, and no not an economic miracle, the country needs serious per capita economic growth.

The problem is we haven't had that in a long time, despite continuous technological improvements which should make it viable.

The way to achieve that is to remove the handbrakes from the economy that enable people to say no to development and growth.

The problem is there seems to be no desire to actually do that, as in addition to opposing deficits, taxes and spending cuts, they also oppose development and growth.

FPT

Can Steve Reed build more houses than Angie?

Other than small boats this government will rise or fall on this surely.

It's only a small proportion of the country that worries about housing costs. On average they are the lowest they have been since the '80s. I think a crash in prices is actually more of a risk to them than the opposite, particularly in London/SE if they introduce a property value tax and people start worrying about negative equity.

I think the NHS is a much bigger risk. But all of this is trumped by a general sense of inertia.

Are they?

There is a crucial distinction between house prices and housing costs.

For a start, you have 35%ish of the country that own their property outright. Then you have another 30% who own with a mortgage - they got hammered a bit during the period with high interest rates, but most people with a mortgage do not spend a particularly high proportion of their income on housing. For both these groups, high house prices are a good thing - they are an asset, not a liability or a cost.

Then you have social renters - 15%. A mixed picture, sometimes good, might not want to buy. And then private renters - another 15%. Not all private rents are insanely high - that tends to be an issue in the big cities, not our towns, and not all private renters want to buy anyway (e.g. students).

So you're not left with many people for whom lower house prices is a good thing (and particularly not in the main voting cohorts), nor many people with particularly high housing costs. There are broader societal/economic reasons why you might want to change this, but ultimately this is why housing is not a major issue in the polling.

That's largely wrong.

For many of those who own their own place, even outright, high house prices are a bad thing, as they want to upgrade in the future. And even if they don't, again for many, high house prices are neutral, as those gains will be on paper forever. And even if house prices are neutral for older homeowners, many will have to fork over fortunes if they want to help their children get on the housing ladder.

Private rent is determined in large part by the cost of housing, (though other factors such as government regulations also play a part), so reducing property prices would reduce the cost of rent. Students may not want to buy now (though I'm not sure about that - I once visited a friend at business school where housing was very cheap and finance readily available and he said that many of his classmates had bought a place for the two years and would then sell it or rent it out when they moved on) but they are likely to in a few years.

And of course there are costs throughout the economy because of high property prices generally, of which high house prices are an important component, though most people won't recognise those.

I think the reason housing doesn't feature is not that more people wouldn't benefit from lower house prices, just as they would benefit from lower food or energy prices, it's that both governing parties have been equally crap about this for a generation and nobody seriously expects either of them to sort it out.

Both main parties in Ireland have been monumentally useless over housing, but people in Ireland are still furious about the issue.

I wonder whether in Britain it has been tied up with the immigration issue. Britons may believe the argument that the housing crisis is primarily a crisis created by immigration, and so they're furious about immigration, whereas in Ireland people are more focused on the lack of supply.

Yep, there's that too. Housebuilding in your area:

• Deflates the value of your most valuable asset
  
• Puts more pressure on your local services
  
• Wrecks the nice view across the fields
  
• Puts you at risk of negative equity (if you have a mortgage)
  
• Is only necessary due to the Boriswave (in the public's eye)
  
• and even private renters are rightly deeply sceptical that housebuilding will solve the problem - it certainly hasn't in Edinburgh and the Lothians, which has had the fastest housebuilding programme pretty much anywhere. All it's done is facilitate even faster population growth, including students.
  

I think this is one of those topics where people have a vague sense that housebuilding is good for the country, but the NIMBYism is very strong and frankly rational. It's only in some city centres where you are going to get a degree of local support for it.

I was listening about this award winning development on Today this morning which could be a good model for bolting on multiple homes onto existing villages and towns without ballsing them up. Some interesting rules were put in place such as no more than 40% of residents over 65 (think it was 65) to ensure a good mix of people so a proper “community”.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cpd9l8d03eeo

https://www.architecture.com/awards-and-competitions-landing-page/awards/riba-regional-awards/riba-south-west-award-winners/2025/hazelmead-bridport-cohousing?srsltid=AfmBOoplvHjcZ0ERK_Ub86e9XzTE1CMliX2bgm88hrWlq0WjXntEutMe

One problem is that extra housebuilding in any single area doesn’t even touch the sides of the latent demand for housing in this country.

So unless we see mass housebuilding everywhere, people are going to rationally believe that any development local to them is all downside with no upside.

FPT to Turbotubbs.....

If I was the suspicious type I might have thought Starmer himself was the lawyer who gave Ange the advice! This has worked out perfectly for him. He's got a shiny new team none of whom eat peas with their knife. From a government POV this couldn't have worked out better. Angie was never up to the job and despite protestations Starmer's much more comfortable without that particular loose cannon swinging around Downing Street.....

....No the story is about Ange herself and the snobbery that brought her down. The Telegraph and Mail have been campaigning against her for months. Pure snobbery. Someone on here yesterday called her 'Gobby'. I'm afraid that's what females from her background who are climbing the ladder are having to put up with.It is so depressing.... Just another scalp for some double barrelled nobody at the Telegraph

If Labour and its supporters tell themselves that "snobbery that brought her down" then they're screwed. Rayner did something minorly wrong, but for a value that is eye-watering for many voters. She denied wrongdoing, and then tried to blame others. She was in denial. All MPs (of all parties, not just Labour) need to learn lessons from this. Many are too thick, or greedy, or self-important, to do so.

The government's media management, and management of its MPs, is awful. They need to fix this. They need to develop a few simple messages and deliver them effectively. Since Starmer is incapable of the messaging, they need someone else. Lammy isn't it.

I don't think Rayner did deny wrongdoing. She fessed up, and wanted to pay the £40k. And she promptly and quite graciously accepted the findings of the Independent Adviser, falling on her sword immediately and admitting she'd been negligent.

Yes but the narrative of those hostile to Rayner is to paint as negative a picture of her as possible to forestall any attempt at rehabilitation in a year or two.

The fact remains she breached the Ministerial Code and that made her position untenable. Whether said Code is fit for purpose is another question - we want to ensure Government is as free as possible from allegations of corruption or inappropriate influence such as from third party lobbying companies - but the notion complex non-Government related private financial transactions need to be held to such a high standard - well, I understand why many would wish our Ministers to be beyond any kind of reproach especially since the Expenses Scandal - doesn't sit well with me and some latitude for genuine errors should exist (as distinct from deliberate and planned tax evasion).

If as soon as this story broke she had got legal advice, found to have paid the incorrect amount, paid up, said sorry. I don't think she should have lost her job. Slap on the wrist, then she could have done the sit down interview with Rigby and explained her complex situation, end of story. I would also hope that it would have been a learning experience that not every thing a politician does is my team good / their team bad, as she (and Kemi) seem to play the game.