Best Of

Of course on a day when John Healey fires a missile at Starmer and Reeves, Kemi is supposed to have done the same to herself

To be honest I did not see her interview, and if she said the country cannot afford another left wing government she is spot on

Lee Cain is anti Kemi and I would be interested if she did say 'yes' or not

Anyway today is about the defence of the UK and survival of Starmer - Reeves

Her intervention has betting implications, if you cannot see that I cannot help you.

Vote Tory get Farage won't help the Tories recover.

Declaring she will not support a left wing government is honest but misquoting her, if she didn't say yes, is not

She has declared she will support a party for Government that many of her target audience considers to be fascists. Talk about snatching defeat from the jaws of victory.

Proposed amendment to the Triple Lock:

Continue with the highest of 2.5% annually, inflation and earnings, but rather than continuing to calculate the highest of those on an annual basis, freeze the date against which these are baselined to 6th April 2025 (the latest calculated lock date).

Triple lock.protected, but no longer such an escalator.

That’s not a bad idea as a political solution. Still mad compared to just fixing to CPI like other benefits.

For me the perfect policy would be making landlords ineligible for the State Pension. Your retired lifestyle should not rely on milking young people dry, and anyone with more than one house is minted anyway.

That would simply result in a stampede to sell second homes..

Crashing house prices for first time buyers

You'd think that a misleading header on this page that promotes misinformation would be altered or updated? (Fancy reading something Lee Cain says and believing it and then printing it.) Some people obviously believe what they want to believe.


Kemi Badenoch

@KemiBadenoch
This is bullshit.

What I ACTUALLY said is we "cannot have another left-wing government. But I'm afraid that Reform has quite a lot of left-wing ideas. They want more benefits. They want nationalisation”
I then said.
On "deals, non-aggression pacts and so on....I'm just saying no. It's just no, no, no, no, no, no, no."
https://x.com/KemiBadenoch/status/2065076212855124166

......which doesn't at all address what she did say.

The closing exchange with Shipman was as follows:
Tim Shipman: "So that sounds to me like you would do some kind of confidence in supply or an issue-by-issue support for things that you believe to be conservative, if that were the situation."
Kemi Badenoch MP: "I don’t know what the makeup of the next parliament will be. I am working for a conservative majority because that’s the only way that I think that we can get things done."

So when it was put to Badenoch that she would be prepared to offer confidence and supply to a Farage minority government, all she did was avoid the question by saying she hoped to avoid being put in that position. And neither does her subsequent post interview comment which rules out "deals" or "non-aggression pacts" rule out confidence and supply either. Confidence and supply does not require a formal "deal" and it may not even require that - abstention on confidence votes could be enough to put Farage in No 10 under certain parliamentary arithmentic. Non-aggression pacts during elections conducted under FPTP are something else entirely.

The manner in which Badenoch has avoided the question means it is entirely reasonable to conclude from those comments that she would not vote to keep Farage out of No 10.

So what you are saying is that you are putting words in her mouth, despite her specifically saying the opposite. Fine.

It must be a tough job resisting the demands of heavily-armed admirals, field marshals and air commodores on a daily basis. But our only foreseeable adversary has just been humiliated by Ukraine. What are we actually afraid of?

That's a good point re Russia. After over four years of huge spend and casualties they have failed to capture/occupy more than a small part of Ukraine and are now stuck or going backwards. Previously we'd probably have underestimated their desire to roll into Eastern Europe (hence the shock) and overestimated their ability to do it. I recall when the Ukraine war started the expert consensus was that Russia would achieve total victory within days.

Otoh we have this change with America. If they aren't allies anymore it leaves a hole to fill which will require more defence spending.

https://x.com/pippacrerar/status/2065064675256025363

Treasury source suggests that John Healey was, in effect, asking for cuts to schools and hospitals to pay for extra uplift in defence spending.

"The chancellor will always do what is right and needed to keep this country safe, you can see that from her actions - a record uplift in defence spending at the spending review, and then working alongside the PM deliver billions more to fund the DIP".

"In effect" the Treasury is prioritising the triple lock over the nation's defence.

See how that works ?

We may be missing the political significance here. The minister who refused to accept any cuts to pay for defence is Ed Miliband, widely touted as next Chancellor, and the Treasury source does not mention energy subsidies, CCS or Net Zero.

Interesting.

Why did Starmer accept that from Miliband? He's lost Defence minister which seems to me far worse than losing your energy minister.

Because Miliband's following is large enough to topple Starmer, whereas there is still a chance Burnham loses in Makerfield.

If Starmer said to the country that there needs to be a pause on Net-Zero and the billions allocated need to go to defence instead how many people in the country if polled would be angry and demand Ed for PM?

I think it would be largely popular move.

Also what the f is the point of having a PM if they are not able to tell the Treasury, sorry chaps, I’m the boss, it’s on my head but this is happening.

He should tell Miliband that his budget will be slashed for defence and if he doesn’t like it then he can explain to the public where else he thinks the cash can come from, and it won’t be schools, hospitals or welfare or he can tell the public that Britain getting to Met Zero first so we can have a lovely warm glow is much more important than ensuring the defence of the country.

Proposed amendment to the Triple Lock:

Continue with the highest of 2.5% annually, inflation and earnings, but rather than continuing to calculate the highest of those on an annual basis, freeze the date against which these are baselined to 6th April 2025 (the latest calculated lock date).

Triple lock.protected, but no longer such an escalator.

That’s not a bad idea as a political solution. Still mad compared to just fixing to CPI like other benefits.

For me the perfect policy would be making landlords ineligible for the State Pension. Your retired lifestyle should not rely on milking young people dry, and anyone with more than one house is minted anyway.

That would simply result in a stampede to sell second homes..

So down come house prices.

You'd think that a misleading header on this page that promotes misinformation would be altered or updated? (Fancy reading something Lee Cain says and believing it and then printing it.) Some people obviously believe what they want to believe.


Kemi Badenoch

@KemiBadenoch
This is bullshit.

What I ACTUALLY said is we "cannot have another left-wing government. But I'm afraid that Reform has quite a lot of left-wing ideas. They want more benefits. They want nationalisation”
I then said.
On "deals, non-aggression pacts and so on....I'm just saying no. It's just no, no, no, no, no, no, no."
https://x.com/KemiBadenoch/status/2065076212855124166

It's almost as if the press try to spin things. How unfair! That is the politicians job surely?

The party leaders are all at least a tad pathetic for something or other.

The press? Last week or so, from memory, someone on here was hounded for days by a group of people for an interpretation of something a Sky reporter said over pretty trivial stuff.

Today, a header goes up that is as incredulously factually wrong as you can get, that then gets lapped up as the truth by a load of people who like to think they know (and are) better.

Indeed and I was hounded over it but not a word today about Lee Cain's misinterpretation of this interview

https://x.com/LoftusSteve/status/2065056435201872349

https://x.com/pippacrerar/status/2065064675256025363

Treasury source suggests that John Healey was, in effect, asking for cuts to schools and hospitals to pay for extra uplift in defence spending.

"The chancellor will always do what is right and needed to keep this country safe, you can see that from her actions - a record uplift in defence spending at the spending review, and then working alongside the PM deliver billions more to fund the DIP".

"In effect" the Treasury is prioritising the triple lock over the nation's defence.

See how that works ?

We may be missing the political significance here. The minister who refused to accept any cuts to pay for defence is Ed Miliband, widely touted as next Chancellor, and the Treasury source does not mention energy subsidies, CCS or Net Zero.

Interesting.

Why did Starmer accept that from Miliband? He's lost Defence minister which seems to me far worse than losing your energy minister.

Because Miliband's following is large enough to topple Starmer, whereas there is still a chance Burnham loses in Makerfield.

If Starmer said to the country that there needs to be a pause on Net-Zero and the billions allocated need to go to defence instead how many people in the country if polled would be angry and demand Ed for PM?

I think it would be largely popular move.

Also what the f is the point of having a PM if they are not able to tell the Treasury, sorry chaps, I’m the boss, it’s on my head but this is happening.

He should tell Miliband that his budget will be slashed for defence and if he doesn’t like it then he can explain to the public where else he thinks the cash can come from, and it won’t be schools, hospitals or welfare or he can tell the public that Britain getting to Met Zero first so we can have a lovely warm glow is much more important than ensuring the defence of the country.

The entire budget of the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero (including provision for Sizewell C) is £14b or approximately 0.49% of GDP. I understand that it’s budget was doubled to account for capital investment (including Sizewell C) so even if you slash all of that you’re only looking at £7b or 0.25% of GDP and you still probably need to build some new power plants.

I would argue that decentralised local power generation is defence. The Ukraine-Russia war has shown that big centralised power plants are a major security risk. Maybe get rid of Sizewell C and focus on small nuclear, wind and solar.