Best Of

Looking like my expectation that Starmer would shuffle off the scene and retire in year 4 of his stint as PM is optimistic.

If there's not another scandal to devour him first, it could come down to how long Labour MPs put up with being behind (or well behind) Reform in the polls. Plenty of AM/MSP candidates will be looking at all this and getting very angry

Surely UK Labour vote in a female leader next time

Yep. Hence my Phillipson bet at 33/1 for next PM.

Starmer is stubborn and has the hide of a rhinoceros, and even less insight. So I wouldn't expect him to step down any time soon. 2028, I think.

Incidentally, I dont think Mandelson will publically turn on Starmer. He is certainly enraged, but too much a Labour loyalist.

Not only is Starmer stubborn but if he believes all rules were followed he seems genuinely confused when things blow up.

....Procedure was followed as required in section 8, subsection 27, paragraph 5.....and therefore I do not understand why there is any issue what so ever over my conduct in this matter....it was an independent process and no further information crossed my desk....

So you are saying there is a large upside potential?

It’s becoming ever clearer that Britain’s primary economic problem is penny-pinching households and businesses. Labour have managed to suppress confidence even further since their election. Reeves’ number one priority at the budget should be to boost confidence.

The lack of confidence is a symptom of the problem, not the problem in itself. The problem is a state that seems determined to strangle economic growth, even as it gaslights about wanting to boost it. That causes low confidence. And to boost confidence in the private sector, which is the ultimate source of all long term economic growth, the government needs to stop raising taxes on the productive and enterprising, cut spending on unproductive malingerers and losers and deregulate.

But they're going to jack up taxes further, especially no doubt those taxes (business and payroll) that hurt growth in the long term and regulate more. And they've failed spectacularly to cut spending despite a gigantic majority.

So, barring some miracle or change in the laws of economics, we have at least three more years of stagnation.

I would love to be wrong about this but I'm almost certain.

But the way that economic confidence is becoming split on party lines suggests that people's reports of economic confidence have less to do the actual economic state of the nation and more to do with online polarisation.

Was the Trans bullet casings thing a far-right hoax in the end? Struggling to work out what the truth is but note quite a few papers still have that claim up, with others suggesting it was a false report from some dodgy law enforcement official.

Difficult to know what to trust in Trump's America.

You mean the nonesense about the headstamps that are common on brass?

Your thing that in the land of gun nuts…

TRN is a Turkish manufacturer's headstamp.

Is that was it was? Ffs.

As I was saying- emote and then scramble round for evidence to fit.

Look, we all do it, me included. It's part of the human condition. It's just that civilization and progress depend on not doing it. But chancers across the board exploit that effect as a hack to get the power they crave.

That's fair, but you'd expect US federal law enforcement and the Wall Street Journal to do better.

The leadership of US federal law enforcement has been replaced by a bunch of people whose only qualifications are that the loooooooooove Trump.

Note they sacked the Utah FBI field director a couple of weeks before this incident, because his face didn't fit with the new regime.

The FBI have released further video of someone jumping off the roof and running towards woodland, 'where a gun was found'

OK, but the guy leaving the roof doesn't appear to be carrying a long gun...

It looks like he only has a small backpack in the video.

It's all getting a bit "grassy knoll".

Some innocent engaging in a little lunchtime parkour? Needs some practice if so, to be fair.

Not saying this chap didn't do it (incidentally he doesn't look very Trans) but hard to see how he dropped the rifle in the woods on his way. Abandoning it on the roof maybe, but he doesn't appear to have taken it with him.

Surely he'd have more conspicuous there without a rifle than with one!

I am not saying he didn't have a rifle. I just dont see how the rifle got from the rooftop to the woods.

Agreed. I was just being a little facetious about gun-carrying Americans. But it didn't look as though the chap who jumped down from the roof was carrying anything.

An associate the other side of the building took the gun?

I don't think the suspect in the video can possibly be trans.

I mean, how can you jump off a roof like that whilst in high heels?

So you are saying there is a large upside potential?

It’s becoming ever clearer that Britain’s primary economic problem is penny-pinching households and businesses. Labour have managed to suppress confidence even further since their election. Reeves’ number one priority at the budget should be to boost confidence.

The lack of confidence is a symptom of the problem, not the problem in itself. The problem is a state that seems determined to strangle economic growth, even as it gaslights about wanting to boost it. That causes low confidence. And to boost confidence in the private sector, which is the ultimate source of all long term economic growth, the government needs to stop raising taxes on the productive and enterprising, cut spending on unproductive malingerers and losers and deregulate.

But they're going to jack up taxes further, especially no doubt those taxes (business and payroll) that hurt growth in the long term and regulate more. And they've failed spectacularly to cut spending despite a gigantic majority.

So, barring some miracle or change in the laws of economics, we have at least three more years of stagnation.

I would love to be wrong about this but I'm almost certain.

Reeves paying the price of her anti business budget

And why does she have to continually stand on a building site with a hard hat on ?

https://news.sky.com/story/zero-growth-in-july-as-economy-continued-to-slow-official-figures-show-13429036

You liked it when Boris did that.

Pete, you're obsessed with Boris. You see Boris fans everywhere. There are hardly any. Most of us on the right were at best deeply ambivalent about him at the time - you juat didn't see it because you perceived any failure to be constantly furious about every aspect of him as wild fandom.

What is sauce for the goose etc.

I am just so dismayed that this week's Johnson revelations regarding Madura et al don't make any noise in the media outside the Guardian. Now you might counter that with " well he's no longer in Government". And that would be true.

Even when he was in Government he never set the media pulse racing with, what I consider to be the most egregious genuine national security scandal since World War II. A scandal which had it involved ANYONE else would have been bigger than Profumo. I am talking about a UK Foreign Secretary shaking off his minders to attend a "Gentleman's" party in Lombardy hosted by the KGB.

And yet on here and in the media he is revered for "having got all the big calls right".

No, the only thing for which he is "revered" is keeping the Conservatives in office (if not necessarily in power) by smashing Corbyn and Labour in the 2019 GE.

As we've seen in the last year and a bit, the Conservatives aren't much good at Opposition - being "in Government" is their natural state and Johnson kept them there. He gave them a strong majority and it looked like the Tories would be in power for another decade to add to their first decade.

Morning all

As with others, I completely respect Mandelson's political achievements especially in the 80s and 90s when he was instrumental in turning Labour from a party flirting with obscurity to an unparalleled election winning machine. The Labour campaigns of the mid-90s and the GE campaign of 1997 were masterpieces of their time - the Conservatives, by contrast, were like a cyclist with a flat tyre trying to keep up,with a Ferrari.

That was then, however, and we know how Mandelson's time in office worked out (or didn't). His "I'm a fighter, not a quitter" line from 2001 was famously re-purposed by Liz Truss in 2022 (was it the day before she quit?).

I'm sure his advice was and has been useful for Labour and in that capacity he was probably a help to the re-habilitation of Labour under Starmer (the parallels between 2019 and 1983 for Labour were obvious) but to offer him the "reward" of such a significant Ambassadorial role knowing what was publicly (and privately) known about his relationship with Epstein seems to be the height of folly.

Mandelson is entitled to protest his innocence and "guilt by association" is only a crime in politics. The trouble is, Mandelson is politics and iyou have to play by the rules if you want to play the game. Had he remained quietly in the background, nothing of significance beyond the usual speculation would have occurred but re-emerging into the political frontline wasn't a good idea either for him or for Starmer, however much the latter may have felt he "owed" Madelson for his contributions.