Electorally it may feel like 1997 but politically and economically the country is in a very different place.
This is what Starmer, Reeves and co are failing to understand.
It worries me what happens next.
I am not so sure. I think that Labour in power is going to be a lot more radical than many expect. Talk cautiously, win and act radical is a much better electoral and political strategy than talk radical and lose.
I keep warning people about this.
Floating voters tempted by Labour should take note.
You will have given them a mandate to do it and if you don't like what subsequently happens you will be culpable.
Blaming the voters, even if it's true, is rarely a good look.
Besides, there's the cast iron excuse that the other lot looked even worse; see 2019.
Sunak has been given a pretty poor hand. But in part, it's a hand he chose and he hasn't played it to the best. The next election isn't about voting Labour in, it's about voting the Conservatives out. Not so much "things can only get better" as "things can hardly get worse".
And On Topic, that's why the Conservatives might as well stick with Sunak. He is set to lose, probably badly, but there's no sign at all that anyone else could do better.
Things can always get worse.
Still think Cameron should have stayed and worked on Brexit rather than run away on the “you broke it you own it” basis. Would have hopefully prevented the turmoil of changing PM and all the competing sides tearing each other apart rather than focussing on delivery.
He should have worked on a plan, delivered it and then once done he could strop off to his caravan.
Presumably Cameron calculated (correctly) that the aftermath would be a total shitshow to which he would be inextricably linked, and instead he could withdraw with his reputation relatively intact. That worked out well.
"The government is arranging contingency plans for the collapse of Britain's biggest water firm Thames Water - amid growing concerns over whether it can service its £14billion worth of debts.
Ministers are understood to have met with Ofwat, the industry regulator, to explore the prospect of putting Thames Water into a Special Administration Scheme (SAR), resulting in temporary public ownership."
How did the £14bn debts arise ?
"Thames Water's debt rose from £1.8bn to £8bn from 2000 to 2012 under its foreign owners; first the German utility RWE and, post-2006, a group of private equity funds domiciled in Luxembourg, marshalled by the Australian bank Macquarie. "
I'll have to look up the more recent period to see why the debt's gone even higher, although I expect some of the same processes have been at work. They've recently started investing a little more in London facilities, but compared to decades of neglect, it doesn't seem to be too much.
It's quite simple - extract as much cash from the business as possible. The bulk of the proceeds will have been paid out in dividends, not used for investment in the business. Decades of failed regulation..
The owners don't care if it goes bust or nationalised as they've already taken their profit.
Sarah (I'm heartbroken about sewage but doubled my salary) Bentley has resigned from Thames Water.
Anyone care to guess how big her payoff will be? The last one got £2,800,000.
Admittedly if you rise above a certain level as an executive in British business it's almost impossible not to make a fortune (all those immense bonuses, golden handshakes, failing upwards etc.,) but it is especially egregious in circumstances such as these.
It's almost a truism that any government regulator whose name start with OF... is utterly useless.
In discussion with OfGem they explained the minimum standards to be applied, which boiled down to if a company says they are trying to fix your problem - even if they've not done so in 6 months and you've caught them out in several lies - then there's nothing anyone can do.
Our fundamental problem remains the trade deficit and the accumulation of more than 30 years of such deficits now. These have wiped out our accumulated capital and made us a debtor nation. Debtor nations can have viable economies but they are vulnerable to the decisions of others beyond their shores and their control. They have far less room for manoeuvrer and have to comply with market expectations, as Truss found to her cost.
The new Labour government will have all of these restraints and more given the suspicion generated to international finance by their obsession with windfall taxes. They will find themselves severely constrained. They will blame the Tories for this and, of course, they have a point, although the deficits go back to the time of Gordon Brown as Chancellor.
If we, as a country, want greater autonomy we need to start living within our means. That is increasingly difficult given the assets already sold and the profits that already belong to others (those moaning about the water industry should reflect on this) but it is absolutely essential. This is the prism through which every policy needs to be looked at: will it drag in further imports or will it allow us to grow exports? Ultimately, almost nothing else matters.
The UK having to live within its means would hopefully enforce a more mature attitude.
If the only way to increase your spending is to increase your earning then greater attention would need to be paid to the effectiveness of education and training, the usefulness of transport and the affordability of housing.
Electorally it may feel like 1997 but politically and economically the country is in a very different place.
This is what Starmer, Reeves and co are failing to understand.
It worries me what happens next.
I am not so sure. I think that Labour in power is going to be a lot more radical than many expect. Talk cautiously, win and act radical is a much better electoral and political strategy than talk radical and lose.
I keep warning people about this.
Floating voters tempted by Labour should take note.
You will have given them a mandate to do it and if you don't like what subsequently happens you will be culpable.
Blaming the voters, even if it's true, is rarely a good look.
Besides, there's the cast iron excuse that the other lot looked even worse; see 2019.
Sunak has been given a pretty poor hand. But in part, it's a hand he chose and he hasn't played it to the best. The next election isn't about voting Labour in, it's about voting the Conservatives out. Not so much "things can only get better" as "things can hardly get worse".
And On Topic, that's why the Conservatives might as well stick with Sunak. He is set to lose, probably badly, but there's no sign at all that anyone else could do better.
Things can always get worse.
Still think Cameron should have stayed and worked on Brexit rather than run away on the “you broke it you own it” basis. Would have hopefully prevented the turmoil of changing PM and all the competing sides tearing each other apart rather than focussing on delivery.
He should have worked on a plan, delivered it and then once done he could strop off to his caravan.
He would have had as many problems as May had, as the Leaver-MPs would have had been accusing him of Minimum-Brexit the whole time and probably rebelled on many of the Brexit acts like they did under May. I think the only advantage Cameron would have had is the buffer of a workable majority, which after June 2017 May didn't have.
Electorally it may feel like 1997 but politically and economically the country is in a very different place.
This is what Starmer, Reeves and co are failing to understand.
It worries me what happens next.
I am not so sure. I think that Labour in power is going to be a lot more radical than many expect. Talk cautiously, win and act radical is a much better electoral and political strategy than talk radical and lose.
I keep warning people about this.
Floating voters tempted by Labour should take note.
You will have given them a mandate to do it and if you don't like what subsequently happens you will be culpable.
Blaming the voters, even if it's true, is rarely a good look.
Besides, there's the cast iron excuse that the other lot looked even worse; see 2019.
Sunak has been given a pretty poor hand. But in part, it's a hand he chose and he hasn't played it to the best. The next election isn't about voting Labour in, it's about voting the Conservatives out. Not so much "things can only get better" as "things can hardly get worse".
And On Topic, that's why the Conservatives might as well stick with Sunak. He is set to lose, probably badly, but there's no sign at all that anyone else could do better.
Things can always get worse.
Still think Cameron should have stayed and worked on Brexit rather than run away on the “you broke it you own it” basis. Would have hopefully prevented the turmoil of changing PM and all the competing sides tearing each other apart rather than focussing on delivery.
He should have worked on a plan, delivered it and then once done he could strop off to his caravan.
Presumably Cameron calculated (correctly) that the aftermath would be a total shitshow to which he would be inextricably linked, and instead he could withdraw with his reputation relatively intact. That worked out well.
I think it is the case he would have been ousted at once. Should he have forced that option? Maybe, but I think desp.te what everyone was claiming during the campaign they knew he'd have to go if he lost
Interesting figures being bandied around on facebook that the average dividend payment for Thames Water investors seems has been around a 2bn per year since 1991, and that the last reservoir was also built in 1991.
That would make around 65-67 billion in dividends.
What do folk think Thames Water is, a public service? It's only there to make money for its shareholders and directors.
If anyone wants to know where the money has gone, and why we cannot have nice things anymore, they just need to look at the kleptocracy at the top and how our own oligarchs profit from their closeness to our politicians.
Our fundamental problem remains the trade deficit and the accumulation of more than 30 years of such deficits now. These have wiped out our accumulated capital and made us a debtor nation. Debtor nations can have viable economies but they are vulnerable to the decisions of others beyond their shores and their control. They have far less room for manoeuvrer and have to comply with market expectations, as Truss found to her cost.
The new Labour government will have all of these restraints and more given the suspicion generated to international finance by their obsession with windfall taxes. They will find themselves severely constrained. They will blame the Tories for this and, of course, they have a point, although the deficits go back to the time of Gordon Brown as Chancellor.
If we, as a country, want greater autonomy we need to start living within our means. That is increasingly difficult given the assets already sold and the profits that already belong to others (those moaning about the water industry should reflect on this) but it is absolutely essential. This is the prism through which every policy needs to be looked at: will it drag in further imports or will it allow us to grow exports? Ultimately, almost nothing else matters.
The UK having to live within its means would hopefully enforce a more mature attitude.
If the only way to increase your spending is to increase your earning then greater attention would need to be paid to the effectiveness of education and training, the usefulness of transport and the affordability of housing.
I have noted, over the years, how it is common to walk past a pretty ordinary house in a pretty ordinary area and see a brand spanking new Range Rover parked outside. All on the never never*.
The UK has for some time manifestly not been able nor wanted to live within its means.
*and now of course the roll will be tricky on account of current rates.
Our fundamental problem remains the trade deficit and the accumulation of more than 30 years of such deficits now. These have wiped out our accumulated capital and made us a debtor nation. Debtor nations can have viable economies but they are vulnerable to the decisions of others beyond their shores and their control. They have far less room for manoeuvrer and have to comply with market expectations, as Truss found to her cost.
The new Labour government will have all of these restraints and more given the suspicion generated to international finance by their obsession with windfall taxes. They will find themselves severely constrained. They will blame the Tories for this and, of course, they have a point, although the deficits go back to the time of Gordon Brown as Chancellor.
If we, as a country, want greater autonomy we need to start living within our means. That is increasingly difficult given the assets already sold and the profits that already belong to others (those moaning about the water industry should reflect on this) but it is absolutely essential. This is the prism through which every policy needs to be looked at: will it drag in further imports or will it allow us to grow exports? Ultimately, almost nothing else matters.
The UK having to live within its means would hopefully enforce a more mature attitude.
If the only way to increase your spending is to increase your earning then greater attention would need to be paid to the effectiveness of education and training, the usefulness of transport and the affordability of housing.
In short, more like the Germany economy than the American, despite the fact that we also have some cultural commonalities with the US.
Britain is mid-Europe and mid-atlantic, and needs to understand that.
Electorally it may feel like 1997 but politically and economically the country is in a very different place.
This is what Starmer, Reeves and co are failing to understand.
It worries me what happens next.
I am not so sure. I think that Labour in power is going to be a lot more radical than many expect. Talk cautiously, win and act radical is a much better electoral and political strategy than talk radical and lose.
I keep warning people about this.
Floating voters tempted by Labour should take note.
You will have given them a mandate to do it and if you don't like what subsequently happens you will be culpable.
They'll get in because natural Conservative voters are going to have a serious think about which way they'll vote, stay at home or switch this time whereas Labour will get every soft left, marxist and a whole bunch of centrish voters out as normal. You're right about personally examining which way you're going to vote and examining that thought (As I did for the referendum), but a couple of PBers not ticking the box for Starmer won't stop the Conservatives being completely shellacked at the ballot box.
Electorally it may feel like 1997 but politically and economically the country is in a very different place.
This is what Starmer, Reeves and co are failing to understand.
It worries me what happens next.
I am not so sure. I think that Labour in power is going to be a lot more radical than many expect. Given the state the country is in, what other choice is there? That everyone can see just what a mess it is out there gives Labour the leeway to do that - and there are some relatively quick wins around planning reform, housebuilding, infrastructure investment and closer ties to the EU that the Tories just cannot pursue. Labour has to establish a direction of travel and demonstrate that it is producing results to win a second term. I think Labour understands that. Talk cautiously, win and act radical is a much better electoral and political strategy than talk radical and lose.
Investment is fine. I agree we need ‘a new deal’. It needs to address people as well as infrastructure. We need to demonstrably improve healthcare and working people’s wages. And force our utility companies to invest in upgrading our decaying infrastructure.
But we also need to reform our governance. The last 7 years have been a shitshow of power grabs, corruption, nepotism and kneejerk lawmaking. We have to reform governance to allow a wider range of views to be represented in Parliament, and to enable a more consensus based approach.
I have no confidence Starmer will do this. And if so, and if he drives further austerity it will lead to the rise of a populist right winger. And one who will be more damaging than Johnson.
Apparently Ed Miliband was extolling the virtues of PR at Glastonbury
Not sure if he discussed it with Starmer though
If anyone had had their fingers burned by voting reform, you’d think it would Ed.
Interesting figures being bandied around on facebook that the average dividend payment for Thames Water investors seems has been around a 2bn per year since 1991, and that the last reservoir was also built in 1991.
That would make around 65-67 billion in dividends.
What do folk think Thames Water is, a public service? It's only there to make money for its shareholders and directors.
As do all businesses but they have the safeguard of competition from rivals.
With a business which is a natural monopoly an effective regulator is required instead.
"The government is arranging contingency plans for the collapse of Britain's biggest water firm Thames Water - amid growing concerns over whether it can service its £14billion worth of debts.
Ministers are understood to have met with Ofwat, the industry regulator, to explore the prospect of putting Thames Water into a Special Administration Scheme (SAR), resulting in temporary public ownership."
How did the £14bn debts arise ?
"Thames Water's debt rose from £1.8bn to £8bn from 2000 to 2012 under its foreign owners; first the German utility RWE and, post-2006, a group of private equity funds domiciled in Luxembourg, marshalled by the Australian bank Macquarie. "
I'll have to look up the more recent period to see why the debt's gone even higher, although I expect some of the same processes have been at work. They've recently started investing a little more in London facilities, but compared to decades of neglect, it doesn't seem to be too much.
It's quite simple - extract as much cash from the business as possible. The bulk of the proceeds will have been paid out in dividends, not used for investment in the business. Decades of failed regulation..
The owners don't care if it goes bust or nationalised as they've already taken their profit.
Sarah (I'm heartbroken about sewage but doubled my salary) Bentley has resigned from Thames Water.
Anyone care to guess how big her payoff will be? The last one got £2,800,000.
Admittedly if you rise above a certain level as an executive in British business it's almost impossible not to make a fortune (all those immense bonuses, golden handshakes, failing upwards etc.,) but it is especially egregious in circumstances such as these.
It's almost a truism that any government regulator whose name start with OF... is utterly useless.
Interesting figures being bandied around on facebook that the average dividend payment for Thames Water investors seems has been around a 2bn per year since 1991, and that the last reservoir was also built in 1991.
That would make around 65-67 billion in dividends.
What do folk think Thames Water is, a public service? It's only there to make money for its shareholders and directors.
If anyone wants to know where the money has gone, and why we cannot have nice things anymore, they just need to look at the kleptocracy at the top and how our own oligarchs profit from their closeness to our politicians.
Last night's "Boris, the Lord and the Spy" amplified your assertion. Nothing we didn't already know, but a scandal, the proportions of which, should make Profumo look like a Sunday school outing.
Electorally it may feel like 1997 but politically and economically the country is in a very different place.
This is what Starmer, Reeves and co are failing to understand.
It worries me what happens next.
I am not so sure. I think that Labour in power is going to be a lot more radical than many expect. Talk cautiously, win and act radical is a much better electoral and political strategy than talk radical and lose.
I keep warning people about this.
Floating voters tempted by Labour should take note.
You will have given them a mandate to do it and if you don't like what subsequently happens you will be culpable.
Blaming the voters, even if it's true, is rarely a good look.
Besides, there's the cast iron excuse that the other lot looked even worse; see 2019.
Sunak has been given a pretty poor hand. But in part, it's a hand he chose and he hasn't played it to the best. The next election isn't about voting Labour in, it's about voting the Conservatives out. Not so much "things can only get better" as "things can hardly get worse".
And On Topic, that's why the Conservatives might as well stick with Sunak. He is set to lose, probably badly, but there's no sign at all that anyone else could do better.
Voting Tory is far more of an unpredictable black box than voting Labour.
You could end up with Sunak, Truss, Johnson or their acolytes. Aside from wearing blue and pandering to the boomer generation and shafting workers they have little in common with each other on how the economy should work.
Yes the last 12 months of 3 different PMs shows a complete lack of direction in the Tory Party. Yet they seem to be trying to depict Starmer as a flip-flopper.
I don't think they've grasped how that period of change utterly wrecked their chances. Especially when a huge number wanted it to end by putting Boris back.
It marked a genuine period shift in politics I feel - the moment the party lost basic credibility among many core and casual supporters. Everything they try is undermined by it.
I remarked at the time that when Labour were going through a similar period, with Brown becoming clearly increasingly unpopular, they agonised over trying to topple him. The thinking in the party seemed to be that they couldn't impose a second 'unelected' PM on the country. The fear was that it would look like the Labour were being horrifically self-indulgent while in Government and destroy what remained of their credibility.
Not the only reason they didn't get rid of Brown, but I think it was a factor.
Electorally it may feel like 1997 but politically and economically the country is in a very different place.
This is what Starmer, Reeves and co are failing to understand.
It worries me what happens next.
I am not so sure. I think that Labour in power is going to be a lot more radical than many expect. Talk cautiously, win and act radical is a much better electoral and political strategy than talk radical and lose.
I keep warning people about this.
Floating voters tempted by Labour should take note.
You will have given them a mandate to do it and if you don't like what subsequently happens you will be culpable.
They'll get in because natural Conservative voters are going to have a serious think about which way they'll vote, stay at home or switch this time whereas Labour will get every soft left, marxist and a whole bunch of centrish voters out as normal. You're right about personally examining which way you're going to vote and examining that thought (As I did for the referendum), but a couple of PBers not ticking the box for Starmer won't stop the Conservatives being completely shellacked at the ballot box.
I would be surprised however if the Conservatives suffered a loss of 172 seats as they did in 1997.* Not only is Labour starting from much further back, but Starmer is no Blair.
Seeing them lose 100 seats is not by any means unrealistic. But the statements I'm seeing now remind me of the comments made by many, including me, about how Cameron would easily hammer Brown and win a majority of 100. And yes, Brown performed abysmally in 2010 - the lowest share of the vote for any governing or recently governing party since 1784 - but Cameron was still well short.
I will believe in Labour landslides if and when I see them.
*The figure in the header is a notional one adjusted for boundary changes. It is worth remembering that on the new boundaries the Tories would gain around 10 seats.
Electorally it may feel like 1997 but politically and economically the country is in a very different place.
This is what Starmer, Reeves and co are failing to understand.
It worries me what happens next.
I am not so sure. I think that Labour in power is going to be a lot more radical than many expect. Talk cautiously, win and act radical is a much better electoral and political strategy than talk radical and lose.
I keep warning people about this.
Floating voters tempted by Labour should take note.
You will have given them a mandate to do it and if you don't like what subsequently happens you will be culpable.
Many floating voters have taken note. Over the last 8 or 13 years they have given the Conservatives a mandate to do "it" and now they don't like what has subsequently happend.
Electorally it may feel like 1997 but politically and economically the country is in a very different place.
This is what Starmer, Reeves and co are failing to understand.
It worries me what happens next.
I am not so sure. I think that Labour in power is going to be a lot more radical than many expect. Talk cautiously, win and act radical is a much better electoral and political strategy than talk radical and lose.
I keep warning people about this.
Floating voters tempted by Labour should take note.
You will have given them a mandate to do it and if you don't like what subsequently happens you will be culpable.
Blaming the voters, even if it's true, is rarely a good look.
Besides, there's the cast iron excuse that the other lot looked even worse; see 2019.
Sunak has been given a pretty poor hand. But in part, it's a hand he chose and he hasn't played it to the best. The next election isn't about voting Labour in, it's about voting the Conservatives out. Not so much "things can only get better" as "things can hardly get worse".
And On Topic, that's why the Conservatives might as well stick with Sunak. He is set to lose, probably badly, but there's no sign at all that anyone else could do better.
Things can always get worse.
Still think Cameron should have stayed and worked on Brexit rather than run away on the “you broke it you own it” basis. Would have hopefully prevented the turmoil of changing PM and all the competing sides tearing each other apart rather than focussing on delivery.
He should have worked on a plan, delivered it and then once done he could strop off to his caravan.
He would have had as many problems as May had, as the Leaver-MPs would have had been accusing him of Minimum-Brexit the whole time and probably rebelled on many of the Brexit acts like they did under May. I think the only advantage Cameron would have had is the buffer of a workable majority, which after June 2017 May didn't have.
I think it wasn’t workable enough. It was a small majority and May, I believe, calculated she couldn’t get her vision past the headbangers. Hence 2017.
Over the years I’ve realised the only way to discredit something is to try it and see what happens. Thus Communism, Water Privatisation, and Brexit, although in both cases hard core adherents will forever whine it’s “not been tried properly”.
Electorally it may feel like 1997 but politically and economically the country is in a very different place.
This is what Starmer, Reeves and co are failing to understand.
It worries me what happens next.
I am not so sure. I think that Labour in power is going to be a lot more radical than many expect. Given the state the country is in, what other choice is there? That everyone can see just what a mess it is out there gives Labour the leeway to do that - and there are some relatively quick wins around planning reform, housebuilding, infrastructure investment and closer ties to the EU that the Tories just cannot pursue. Labour has to establish a direction of travel and demonstrate that it is producing results to win a second term. I think Labour understands that. Talk cautiously, win and act radical is a much better electoral and political strategy than talk radical and lose.
Investment is fine. I agree we need ‘a new deal’. It needs to address people as well as infrastructure. We need to demonstrably improve healthcare and working people’s wages. And force our utility companies to invest in upgrading our decaying infrastructure.
But we also need to reform our governance. The last 7 years have been a shitshow of power grabs, corruption, nepotism and kneejerk lawmaking. We have to reform governance to allow a wider range of views to be represented in Parliament, and to enable a more consensus based approach.
I have no confidence Starmer will do this. And if so, and if he drives further austerity it will lead to the rise of a populist right winger. And one who will be more damaging than Johnson.
Apparently Ed Miliband was extolling the virtues of PR at Glastonbury
Not sure if he discussed it with Starmer though
I mean conference passed it as a motion, right? And if I were Miliband I'd be pissed; Starmer keeps cutting back the environmental pledges that are his portfolio and (in Ed's thinking) a clear win-win: green investment to grow the economy whilst appealing to both young and working age voters. If I were Miliband I would be assuming that I wouldn't be on the front bench in Starmer's government - he is too far to the left for the positions Starmer is currently staking out.
Interesting figures being bandied around on facebook that the average dividend payment for Thames Water investors seems has been around a 2bn per year since 1991, and that the last reservoir was also built in 1991.
That would make around 65-67 billion in dividends.
What do folk think Thames Water is, a public service? It's only there to make money for its shareholders and directors.
If anyone wants to know where the money has gone, and why we cannot have nice things anymore, they just need to look at the kleptocracy at the top and how our own oligarchs profit from their closeness to our politicians.
Last night's "Boris, the Lord and the Spy" amplified your assertion. Nothing we didn't already know, but a scandal, the proportions of which, should make Profumo look like a Sunday school outing.
And as far as I know, it didn't even make much of the incredible fact that Lebedev was there the very chummy drinking night that Johnson and Gove decided to back Brexit.
Then Johnson held up every query or complaint about the peerage for his chum.
Interesting figures being bandied around on facebook that the average dividend payment for Thames Water investors seems has been around a 2bn per year since 1991, and that the last reservoir was also built in 1991.
That would make around 65-67 billion in dividends.
What do folk think Thames Water is, a public service? It's only there to make money for its shareholders and directors.
If anyone wants to know where the money has gone, and why we cannot have nice things anymore, they just need to look at the kleptocracy at the top and how our own oligarchs profit from their closeness to our politicians.
Last night's "Boris, the Lord and the Spy" amplified your assertion. Nothing we didn't already know, but a scandal, the proportions of which, should make Profumo look like a Sunday school outing.
And as far as I know, it didn't even make much of the incredible fact that Lebedev was there the very chummy drinking night that Johnson and Gove decided to back Brexit.
Then Johnson held up every query or complaint about the peerage for his chum.
It did mention the alleged planned video call from the mansion with Lavrov which apparently never took place.
Electorally it may feel like 1997 but politically and economically the country is in a very different place.
This is what Starmer, Reeves and co are failing to understand.
It worries me what happens next.
I am not so sure. I think that Labour in power is going to be a lot more radical than many expect. Talk cautiously, win and act radical is a much better electoral and political strategy than talk radical and lose.
I keep warning people about this.
Floating voters tempted by Labour should take note.
You will have given them a mandate to do it and if you don't like what subsequently happens you will be culpable.
Blaming the voters, even if it's true, is rarely a good look.
Besides, there's the cast iron excuse that the other lot looked even worse; see 2019.
Sunak has been given a pretty poor hand. But in part, it's a hand he chose and he hasn't played it to the best. The next election isn't about voting Labour in, it's about voting the Conservatives out. Not so much "things can only get better" as "things can hardly get worse".
And On Topic, that's why the Conservatives might as well stick with Sunak. He is set to lose, probably badly, but there's no sign at all that anyone else could do better.
Things can always get worse.
Still think Cameron should have stayed and worked on Brexit rather than run away on the “you broke it you own it” basis. Would have hopefully prevented the turmoil of changing PM and all the competing sides tearing each other apart rather than focussing on delivery.
He should have worked on a plan, delivered it and then once done he could strop off to his caravan.
He would have had as many problems as May had, as the Leaver-MPs would have had been accusing him of Minimum-Brexit the whole time and probably rebelled on many of the Brexit acts like they did under May. I think the only advantage Cameron would have had is the buffer of a workable majority, which after June 2017 May didn't have.
I think it wasn’t workable enough. It was a small majority and May, I believe, calculated she couldn’t get her vision past the headbangers. Hence 2017.
Over the years I’ve realised the only way to discredit something is to try it and see what happens. Thus Communism, Water Privatisation, and Brexit, although in both cases hard core adherents will forever whine it’s “not been tried properly”.
She may have calculated that, but I think her immediate reasons were twofold:
1) She had very nearly failed to get a budget through due to opposition to the NI changes and wanted a bigger majority to get round it;
2) In light of the Copeland and Stoke results, she realised she had a golden opportunity to reshape the political map which might evaporate when she had to make compromises with the EU.
I spoke to a friend last night. She's a tory. Has a small mortgage which has nearly doubled in the last couple of months. Her son's fixed term mortgage is about to come up for renewal in September and he's bleak about it. Part of the problem seems to be the scale of loan nowadays as well as the greater length of typical mortgages.
Both in Surrey. Both tory voters. Both deeply worried.
It feels to me as if the mortgage rate rise is the final nail in the current tory coffin. You touch people's homes, you really are toast.
There's also the small matter of a 40% rise in water bills coming next.
When people simlutaneously see that, and companies like Thames Water also simultaneously being bailed out by the government because they've been loaded with debt under the private equity model, the anger is going to be even greater.
The Tories are well-done toast with jam, and a bit of honey.
@DavidL is right in saying that the trade deficit underlies all these problems. It has been financed by selling off assets overseas, such as utilities to Maquarie etc. It isn't a viable way of continuing.
Well, it's not really intended in that way. And now the assets have been sold, customer payments and government subsidies flow out of the country which makes the trade deficit worse. Water and the other utilities, as well as public transport, are effectively invisible imports from that point of view. Not to mention football clubs.
Electorally it may feel like 1997 but politically and economically the country is in a very different place.
This is what Starmer, Reeves and co are failing to understand.
It worries me what happens next.
I am not so sure. I think that Labour in power is going to be a lot more radical than many expect. Given the state the country is in, what other choice is there? That everyone can see just what a mess it is out there gives Labour the leeway to do that - and there are some relatively quick wins around planning reform, housebuilding, infrastructure investment and closer ties to the EU that the Tories just cannot pursue. Labour has to establish a direction of travel and demonstrate that it is producing results to win a second term. I think Labour understands that. Talk cautiously, win and act radical is a much better electoral and political strategy than talk radical and lose.
Investment is fine. I agree we need ‘a new deal’. It needs to address people as well as infrastructure. We need to demonstrably improve healthcare and working people’s wages. And force our utility companies to invest in upgrading our decaying infrastructure.
But we also need to reform our governance. The last 7 years have been a shitshow of power grabs, corruption, nepotism and kneejerk lawmaking. We have to reform governance to allow a wider range of views to be represented in Parliament, and to enable a more consensus based approach.
I have no confidence Starmer will do this. And if so, and if he drives further austerity it will lead to the rise of a populist right winger. And one who will be more damaging than Johnson.
Apparently Ed Miliband was extolling the virtues of PR at Glastonbury
Not sure if he discussed it with Starmer though
I mean conference passed it as a motion, right? And if I were Miliband I'd be pissed; Starmer keeps cutting back the environmental pledges that are his portfolio and (in Ed's thinking) a clear win-win: green investment to grow the economy whilst appealing to both young and working age voters. If I were Miliband I would be assuming that I wouldn't be on the front bench in Starmer's government - he is too far to the left for the positions Starmer is currently staking out.
I think he will be.
The Green investment plan is basically all Milliband, and he leaves the Soft Left, a key powerbase, off the front bench, it will rebel.
Three new Spanish polls this morning. All show the right wing lead narrowing slightly. However all give clear potential majority for the PP/VOX combo. No sign yet that the socialists are changing the game
What is becoming clear is that if there is a PP/Vox majority there will be a PP/Vox coalition. PSOE will be delighted with events in Valencia and Extremadura. Feijoo will spend the next few weeks dodging questions about this, while Sanchez is already moving very aggressively onto the front foot. I suspect that it is too late, that dislike of Sanchez is currently too ingrained in too many, but what happens after the GE will be fascinating. I do not see how a PP/Vox government ends well.
Few governments operating in a world post COVID and amidst the Ukraine debacle have it easy. That Spain seeks a respite from several years of a centre/extreme left Coalition for the opposite is hardly surprising. In fact this appears to be happening here in spite of a markedly less harsh economic downturn, which says something about how wrongly Sanchez has judged the national mood.
Yep, I think Sanchez badly misjudged the public mood. Anti-Sanchismo will almost certainly lead to a PP/Vox coalition. The question is, then what? Clearly, the Catalan and Basque separatists are itching for a change of government and a fight that Vox, at least, is also seeking. On top of that, there are the major environmental challenges posed by extended drought and higher temperatures which Vox denies are a problem; and the fact that both Vox and PP opposed the current government's popular labour reforms and moves to reduce the cost of housing. What will they do there? From a UK perspective, a PP/Vox approach to Gibraltar should be fun.
Haha - and a Starmer response if he wins. PP propose less tax for those earning less tha 40k. That would be welcome.
I think the major PP problem is that it is only very recently that it felt it might win the election. It is entirely unprepared for government with Vox. My guess is that a second GE is going to follow quite soon after this one. I suspect that is what Sanchez thinks too.
The current poll leads have existed for a year or so. If Box don't play ball another GE is possible. No obvious reason why the Sanchez would win it. Sounds very much like pissing in the wind.
Having a small poll lead is not the same thing as thinking you will win. The regional and local elections only happened a month ago. They were the gamechanger. After all, it is only 14 months ago that PP was in turmoil and was forced to change leader. I think Sanchez believes PP is wholly unprepared for government, especially one that involves working closely with Vox. That's why he brought the elections forward. It gave PP far less time to develop a strategy and programme for power. Obviously, it's a gamble - but a second election that is not about anti-Sanchismo would suit PSOE.
Electorally it may feel like 1997 but politically and economically the country is in a very different place.
This is what Starmer, Reeves and co are failing to understand.
It worries me what happens next.
I am not so sure. I think that Labour in power is going to be a lot more radical than many expect. Given the state the country is in, what other choice is there? That everyone can see just what a mess it is out there gives Labour the leeway to do that - and there are some relatively quick wins around planning reform, housebuilding, infrastructure investment and closer ties to the EU that the Tories just cannot pursue. Labour has to establish a direction of travel and demonstrate that it is producing results to win a second term. I think Labour understands that. Talk cautiously, win and act radical is a much better electoral and political strategy than talk radical and lose.
The quick wins you mention are mostly illusory. Planning reform and housebuilding have defeated every government for decades, there's no money for significant infrastructure investment and its benefits would take years to show up anyway, and closer ties to the EU, whatever those are, would not help much if at all for a long time either, even if the EU let us, which they show no sign of doing. And their fantasies about green growth and debts to the public sector unions etc would hit growth rather than help it.
The Conservatives have followed basically Labour policies in interfering in the economy, screwing the enterprising and productive, failed industrial policies and disastrous green crap and that's got us to where we are - no growth. Except, maybe, housebuilding, it'll be even worse under Labour.
Yes, that is the right wing line on all this. Proper Conservatism has not been tried and, as a result, we are in a spiral of unending, hopeless decline and things can only get worse. My view is different. I think a decision to no longer govern solely for the Boomer generation will open up a lot of possibilities. And Labour can make that decision because it does not rely on Boomer votes. Will it be easy or pain free? Absolutely not. Will there be a quick turnaround? No chance at all. But that does not mean there is no point in doing it. If Labour can demonstrate some progress after a five year term, memories of the absolute mess the Tories have made over the last 13 years will do the rest.
It's funny how in the mid 90's we also had "an absolute mess the Tories have made over the last 15 years" but the English voters have voted the Tories in in 8 out of the last 11 GEs.
But now the Boomer generation is beginning to fade away.
Electorally it may feel like 1997 but politically and economically the country is in a very different place.
This is what Starmer, Reeves and co are failing to understand.
It worries me what happens next.
I am not so sure. I think that Labour in power is going to be a lot more radical than many expect. Given the state the country is in, what other choice is there? That everyone can see just what a mess it is out there gives Labour the leeway to do that - and there are some relatively quick wins around planning reform, housebuilding, infrastructure investment and closer ties to the EU that the Tories just cannot pursue. Labour has to establish a direction of travel and demonstrate that it is producing results to win a second term. I think Labour understands that. Talk cautiously, win and act radical is a much better electoral and political strategy than talk radical and lose.
Investment is fine. I agree we need ‘a new deal’. It needs to address people as well as infrastructure. We need to demonstrably improve healthcare and working people’s wages. And force our utility companies to invest in upgrading our decaying infrastructure.
But we also need to reform our governance. The last 7 years have been a shitshow of power grabs, corruption, nepotism and kneejerk lawmaking. We have to reform governance to allow a wider range of views to be represented in Parliament, and to enable a more consensus based approach.
I have no confidence Starmer will do this. And if so, and if he drives further austerity it will lead to the rise of a populist right winger. And one who will be more damaging than Johnson.
Apparently Ed Miliband was extolling the virtues of PR at Glastonbury
Not sure if he discussed it with Starmer though
I mean conference passed it as a motion, right? And if I were Miliband I'd be pissed; Starmer keeps cutting back the environmental pledges that are his portfolio and (in Ed's thinking) a clear win-win: green investment to grow the economy whilst appealing to both young and working age voters. If I were Miliband I would be assuming that I wouldn't be on the front bench in Starmer's government - he is too far to the left for the positions Starmer is currently staking out.
I think he will be.
The Green investment plan is basically all Milliband, and he leaves the Soft Left, a key powerbase, off the front bench, it will rebel.
Starmer has walked back much of the green investment plan, to the point where I can see by election day there will be nothing left. And I don't think Starmer or his staff care about the Soft Left - they keep gunning for Andy Burnham every chance they have and he is only the Soft Left now due to the relative shift under Starmer (I remember when Burnham ran for leadership as another heir to Blair type).
Electorally it may feel like 1997 but politically and economically the country is in a very different place.
This is what Starmer, Reeves and co are failing to understand.
It worries me what happens next.
I am not so sure. I think that Labour in power is going to be a lot more radical than many expect. Talk cautiously, win and act radical is a much better electoral and political strategy than talk radical and lose.
I keep warning people about this.
Floating voters tempted by Labour should take note.
You will have given them a mandate to do it and if you don't like what subsequently happens you will be culpable.
From the left I'm pessimistic about radical change - all my contacts with the Opposition front bench suggest a deeply cautious approach. I remain loyal and think a change of Government is essential but I'm not expecting anything except dour centrism in Labour's first term, with just one or two more interesting policies, probably on housing. To be fair, I might do the same in Starmer's position, with the economy in the current state.
Sky reporting the government's own climate change advisors are saying the UK is falling behind in its efforts and they suggest hybrid cars should be eliminated, the ban on the sale of new diesel and petrol cars needs to be brought forward from 2030, and gas boilers changed to heat pumps far more quickly
Sky suggests that this will be a serious problem for the next government which they said at present is likely to be labour
It is clear the climate change advocates have little thought as how practical their proposals are and the cost implications to most voters
In a nutshell: the target date of 2030 is unattainable so let's bring it forward. Exceptionally good thinking.
What will happen is the entire car market will crash because people will hang on to what works, pending the multiplication by 25 of the size of the power distribution network.
Electorally it may feel like 1997 but politically and economically the country is in a very different place.
This is what Starmer, Reeves and co are failing to understand.
It worries me what happens next.
I am not so sure. I think that Labour in power is going to be a lot more radical than many expect. Given the state the country is in, what other choice is there? That everyone can see just what a mess it is out there gives Labour the leeway to do that - and there are some relatively quick wins around planning reform, housebuilding, infrastructure investment and closer ties to the EU that the Tories just cannot pursue. Labour has to establish a direction of travel and demonstrate that it is producing results to win a second term. I think Labour understands that. Talk cautiously, win and act radical is a much better electoral and political strategy than talk radical and lose.
Investment is fine. I agree we need ‘a new deal’. It needs to address people as well as infrastructure. We need to demonstrably improve healthcare and working people’s wages. And force our utility companies to invest in upgrading our decaying infrastructure.
But we also need to reform our governance. The last 7 years have been a shitshow of power grabs, corruption, nepotism and kneejerk lawmaking. We have to reform governance to allow a wider range of views to be represented in Parliament, and to enable a more consensus based approach.
I have no confidence Starmer will do this. And if so, and if he drives further austerity it will lead to the rise of a populist right winger. And one who will be more damaging than Johnson.
Apparently Ed Miliband was extolling the virtues of PR at Glastonbury
Not sure if he discussed it with Starmer though
I mean conference passed it as a motion, right? And if I were Miliband I'd be pissed; Starmer keeps cutting back the environmental pledges that are his portfolio and (in Ed's thinking) a clear win-win: green investment to grow the economy whilst appealing to both young and working age voters. If I were Miliband I would be assuming that I wouldn't be on the front bench in Starmer's government - he is too far to the left for the positions Starmer is currently staking out.
I think he will be.
The Green investment plan is basically all Milliband, and he leaves the Soft Left, a key powerbase, off the front bench, it will rebel.
Starmer has walked back much of the green investment plan, to the point where I can see by election day there will be nothing left. And I don't think Starmer or his staff care about the Soft Left - they keep gunning for Andy Burnham every chance they have and he is only the Soft Left now due to the relative shift under Starmer (I remember when Burnham ran for leadership as another heir to Blair type).
I wouldn't really agree with that. If figures like Rayner or Miliband are demoted, the party will rebel, because the centre of gravity of the party is still on the soft-left compared to during the Blair years.
Starmer has got rid of the Corbynites, but there's no majority for centre-right Blairism, by Labour standards, and he doesn't have a powerbase there in the way Blair did.
Our fundamental problem remains the trade deficit and the accumulation of more than 30 years of such deficits now. These have wiped out our accumulated capital and made us a debtor nation. Debtor nations can have viable economies but they are vulnerable to the decisions of others beyond their shores and their control. They have far less room for manoeuvrer and have to comply with market expectations, as Truss found to her cost.
The new Labour government will have all of these restraints and more given the suspicion generated to international finance by their obsession with windfall taxes. They will find themselves severely constrained. They will blame the Tories for this and, of course, they have a point, although the deficits go back to the time of Gordon Brown as Chancellor.
If we, as a country, want greater autonomy we need to start living within our means. That is increasingly difficult given the assets already sold and the profits that already belong to others (those moaning about the water industry should reflect on this) but it is absolutely essential. This is the prism through which every policy needs to be looked at: will it drag in further imports or will it allow us to grow exports? Ultimately, almost nothing else matters.
The UK having to live within its means would hopefully enforce a more mature attitude.
If the only way to increase your spending is to increase your earning then greater attention would need to be paid to the effectiveness of education and training, the usefulness of transport and the affordability of housing.
I have noted, over the years, how it is common to walk past a pretty ordinary house in a pretty ordinary area and see a brand spanking new Range Rover parked outside. All on the never never*.
The UK has for some time manifestly not been able nor wanted to live within its means.
*and now of course the roll will be tricky on account of current rates.
I find it difficult to tell.
There are certainly people who are spending far above their income level but equally there are others spending far below their income level.
Plus others spending at their various levels of income.
And then there's the difference between income and assets.
Property ownership status, possible inheritances received, the availability of cheap credit all make it difficult to guess how affluent someone really is.
The problem is that half the time the build quality of the replacements is scarcely better. I worked in a school once where the entire wall of the (new) geography block actually fell down. Fortunately it was at 8pm on Friday evening at the start of half term, so nobody was hurt and there was time to make emergency repairs before the school reopened. But it could easily have been very different.
Electorally it may feel like 1997 but politically and economically the country is in a very different place.
This is what Starmer, Reeves and co are failing to understand.
It worries me what happens next.
I am not so sure. I think that Labour in power is going to be a lot more radical than many expect. Given the state the country is in, what other choice is there? That everyone can see just what a mess it is out there gives Labour the leeway to do that - and there are some relatively quick wins around planning reform, housebuilding, infrastructure investment and closer ties to the EU that the Tories just cannot pursue. Labour has to establish a direction of travel and demonstrate that it is producing results to win a second term. I think Labour understands that. Talk cautiously, win and act radical is a much better electoral and political strategy than talk radical and lose.
The quick wins you mention are mostly illusory. Planning reform and housebuilding have defeated every government for decades, there's no money for significant infrastructure investment and its benefits would take years to show up anyway, and closer ties to the EU, whatever those are, would not help much if at all for a long time either, even if the EU let us, which they show no sign of doing. And their fantasies about green growth and debts to the public sector unions etc would hit growth rather than help it.
The Conservatives have followed basically Labour policies in interfering in the economy, screwing the enterprising and productive, failed industrial policies and disastrous green crap and that's got us to where we are - no growth. Except, maybe, housebuilding, it'll be even worse under Labour.
Yes, that is the right wing line on all this. Proper Conservatism has not been tried and, as a result, we are in a spiral of unending, hopeless decline and things can only get worse. My view is different. I think a decision to no longer govern solely for the Boomer generation will open up a lot of possibilities. And Labour can make that decision because it does not rely on Boomer votes. Will it be easy or pain free? Absolutely not. Will there be a quick turnaround? No chance at all. But that does not mean there is no point in doing it. If Labour can demonstrate some progress after a five year term, memories of the absolute mess the Tories have made over the last 13 years will do the rest.
It's funny how in the mid 90's we also had "an absolute mess the Tories have made over the last 15 years" but the English voters have voted the Tories in in 8 out of the last 11 GEs.
But now the Boomer generation is beginning to fade away.
I think that as the memory of the so-called “Winter of Discontent” fades as does its (unfair) automatic linking to Labour economic incompetence/comparative Tory competence. I’m 50 in January so was 5 when Thatcher was elected. No one my age or younger has any meaningful memories of the Seventies. It is only people older, at least 10 years older realistically, who can properly remember those events so the mud doesn’t stick to Labour as well.
Electorally it may feel like 1997 but politically and economically the country is in a very different place.
This is what Starmer, Reeves and co are failing to understand.
It worries me what happens next.
I am not so sure. I think that Labour in power is going to be a lot more radical than many expect. Talk cautiously, win and act radical is a much better electoral and political strategy than talk radical and lose.
I keep warning people about this.
Floating voters tempted by Labour should take note.
You will have given them a mandate to do it and if you don't like what subsequently happens you will be culpable.
From the left I'm pessimistic about radical change - all my contacts with the Opposition front bench suggest a deeply cautious approach. I remain loyal and think a change of Government is essential but I'm not expecting anything except dour centrism in Labour's first term, with just one or two more interesting policies, probably on housing. To be fair, I might do the same in Starmer's position, with the economy in the current state.
I think he has to finish bailing the water out and fix the hole in the hull before he can think about restarting the engines and steering a new course.
Electorally it may feel like 1997 but politically and economically the country is in a very different place.
This is what Starmer, Reeves and co are failing to understand.
It worries me what happens next.
I am not so sure. I think that Labour in power is going to be a lot more radical than many expect. Talk cautiously, win and act radical is a much better electoral and political strategy than talk radical and lose.
I keep warning people about this.
Floating voters tempted by Labour should take note.
You will have given them a mandate to do it and if you don't like what subsequently happens you will be culpable.
From the left I'm pessimistic about radical change - all my contacts with the Opposition front bench suggest a deeply cautious approach. I remain loyal and think a change of Government is essential but I'm not expecting anything except dour centrism in Labour's first term, with just one or two more interesting policies, probably on housing. To be fair, I might do the same in Starmer's position, with the economy in the current state.
I hope - and think - you'll be pleasantly surprised. Labour is more disciplined, more on message, now than it has been since the 1990s. All eyes are on securing an election win. But if that is achieved, everything changes. The aim then becomes securing a second term. That can only happen with a positive record. There will be major moves on housing, other infrastructure, public service reform and closer ties to the EU. There will be some constitutional reform too.
Electorally it may feel like 1997 but politically and economically the country is in a very different place.
This is what Starmer, Reeves and co are failing to understand.
It worries me what happens next.
I am not so sure. I think that Labour in power is going to be a lot more radical than many expect. Talk cautiously, win and act radical is a much better electoral and political strategy than talk radical and lose.
I keep warning people about this.
Floating voters tempted by Labour should take note.
You will have given them a mandate to do it and if you don't like what subsequently happens you will be culpable.
If we voted the current incompetents back in we would also be culpable but more so. With Labour we might get a radical govt but we know that with the current Tories we will get a corrupt govt.
The "lesser of two evils" is voting not-Conservative.
Electorally it may feel like 1997 but politically and economically the country is in a very different place.
This is what Starmer, Reeves and co are failing to understand.
It worries me what happens next.
I am not so sure. I think that Labour in power is going to be a lot more radical than many expect. Given the state the country is in, what other choice is there? That everyone can see just what a mess it is out there gives Labour the leeway to do that - and there are some relatively quick wins around planning reform, housebuilding, infrastructure investment and closer ties to the EU that the Tories just cannot pursue. Labour has to establish a direction of travel and demonstrate that it is producing results to win a second term. I think Labour understands that. Talk cautiously, win and act radical is a much better electoral and political strategy than talk radical and lose.
Investment is fine. I agree we need ‘a new deal’. It needs to address people as well as infrastructure. We need to demonstrably improve healthcare and working people’s wages. And force our utility companies to invest in upgrading our decaying infrastructure.
But we also need to reform our governance. The last 7 years have been a shitshow of power grabs, corruption, nepotism and kneejerk lawmaking. We have to reform governance to allow a wider range of views to be represented in Parliament, and to enable a more consensus based approach.
I have no confidence Starmer will do this. And if so, and if he drives further austerity it will lead to the rise of a populist right winger. And one who will be more damaging than Johnson.
Apparently Ed Miliband was extolling the virtues of PR at Glastonbury
Not sure if he discussed it with Starmer though
I mean conference passed it as a motion, right? And if I were Miliband I'd be pissed; Starmer keeps cutting back the environmental pledges that are his portfolio and (in Ed's thinking) a clear win-win: green investment to grow the economy whilst appealing to both young and working age voters. If I were Miliband I would be assuming that I wouldn't be on the front bench in Starmer's government - he is too far to the left for the positions Starmer is currently staking out.
I think he will be.
The Green investment plan is basically all Milliband, and he leaves the Soft Left, a key powerbase, off the front bench, it will rebel.
Starmer has walked back much of the green investment plan, to the point where I can see by election day there will be nothing left. And I don't think Starmer or his staff care about the Soft Left - they keep gunning for Andy Burnham every chance they have and he is only the Soft Left now due to the relative shift under Starmer (I remember when Burnham ran for leadership as another heir to Blair type).
I wouldn't really agree with that. If figures like Rayner or Miliband are demoted, the party will rebel, because the centre of gravity of the party is still on the soft-left compared to during the Blair years.
Starmer has got rid of the Corbynites, but there's no majority for centre-right Blairism, by Labour standards, and he doesn't have a powerbase there in the way Blair did.
I think that’s fair. This board often accuses Starmer of having no personality. If that’s true he can’t rule the party through a cult of personality which was, I think, something the Corbynites tried to do. Labour is more than Starmer.
People don’t just want a change from the Tories just because it’s time for a change. People want a change because the Government has been incompetent, biased in favour of boomers, and has made many people poorer. Yes, the country is in a mess because of continuing trade deficits, and lack of investment in infrastructure, but does Labour have the guts to explain why this is to the voters in terms they can understand? Do they also have the guts to start redressing the imbalance, by favouring UK owned business and by repatriating assets? Foreign ownership of UK infrastructure could be made less advantageous by giving e.g. Ofgem and Ofwat proper enforcement powers with punitive fines. If shareholders don’t like it, they can exchange their shares for UK gilts.
Electorally it may feel like 1997 but politically and economically the country is in a very different place.
This is what Starmer, Reeves and co are failing to understand.
It worries me what happens next.
I am not so sure. I think that Labour in power is going to be a lot more radical than many expect. Given the state the country is in, what other choice is there? That everyone can see just what a mess it is out there gives Labour the leeway to do that - and there are some relatively quick wins around planning reform, housebuilding, infrastructure investment and closer ties to the EU that the Tories just cannot pursue. Labour has to establish a direction of travel and demonstrate that it is producing results to win a second term. I think Labour understands that. Talk cautiously, win and act radical is a much better electoral and political strategy than talk radical and lose.
The quick wins you mention are mostly illusory. Planning reform and housebuilding have defeated every government for decades, there's no money for significant infrastructure investment and its benefits would take years to show up anyway, and closer ties to the EU, whatever those are, would not help much if at all for a long time either, even if the EU let us, which they show no sign of doing. And their fantasies about green growth and debts to the public sector unions etc would hit growth rather than help it.
The Conservatives have followed basically Labour policies in interfering in the economy, screwing the enterprising and productive, failed industrial policies and disastrous green crap and that's got us to where we are - no growth. Except, maybe, housebuilding, it'll be even worse under Labour.
Yes, that is the right wing line on all this. Proper Conservatism has not been tried and, as a result, we are in a spiral of unending, hopeless decline and things can only get worse. My view is different. I think a decision to no longer govern solely for the Boomer generation will open up a lot of possibilities. And Labour can make that decision because it does not rely on Boomer votes. Will it be easy or pain free? Absolutely not. Will there be a quick turnaround? No chance at all. But that does not mean there is no point in doing it. If Labour can demonstrate some progress after a five year term, memories of the absolute mess the Tories have made over the last 13 years will do the rest.
It's funny how in the mid 90's we also had "an absolute mess the Tories have made over the last 15 years" but the English voters have voted the Tories in in 8 out of the last 11 GEs.
But now the Boomer generation is beginning to fade away.
I think that as the memory of the so-called “Winter of Discontent” fades as does its (unfair) automatic linking to Labour economic incompetence/comparative Tory competence. I’m 50 in January so was 5 when Thatcher was elected. No one my age or younger has any meaningful memories of the Seventies. It is only people older, at least 10 years older realistically, who can properly remember those events so the mud doesn’t stick to Labour as well.
Yep. The Boomers bought the council houses and the shares in the privatised utilities. Younger generations wonder why they were sold.
Electorally it may feel like 1997 but politically and economically the country is in a very different place.
This is what Starmer, Reeves and co are failing to understand.
It worries me what happens next.
I am not so sure. I think that Labour in power is going to be a lot more radical than many expect. Talk cautiously, win and act radical is a much better electoral and political strategy than talk radical and lose.
I keep warning people about this.
Floating voters tempted by Labour should take note.
You will have given them a mandate to do it and if you don't like what subsequently happens you will be culpable.
From the left I'm pessimistic about radical change - all my contacts with the Opposition front bench suggest a deeply cautious approach. I remain loyal and think a change of Government is essential but I'm not expecting anything except dour centrism in Labour's first term, with just one or two more interesting policies, probably on housing. To be fair, I might do the same in Starmer's position, with the economy in the current state.
That gets to the heart of the matter, I reckon.
In broad terms, a large chunk of the population are willing to accept the Centrist Dad message that hangovers aren't meant to be fun, it might be OK to have some Alka Seltzer, but basically we have to endure for a bit and not be so stupid in future. That's true of tax, spending, public services and (whisper it) our trading relations with our geographic neighbours.
If Starmer can get a mandate on that basis, he becomes very powerful indeed. Not a full on Doctor's Mandate, but something in that direction. And if things are even a little less bad in 2028, which might just be boring government without scandals, that will be to his credit.
By forcing the bar for government standards so low and still failing, the 2019-24 version of the Conservative Party has made it easier for it's successor to clear it.
Electorally it may feel like 1997 but politically and economically the country is in a very different place.
This is what Starmer, Reeves and co are failing to understand.
It worries me what happens next.
I am not so sure. I think that Labour in power is going to be a lot more radical than many expect. Given the state the country is in, what other choice is there? That everyone can see just what a mess it is out there gives Labour the leeway to do that - and there are some relatively quick wins around planning reform, housebuilding, infrastructure investment and closer ties to the EU that the Tories just cannot pursue. Labour has to establish a direction of travel and demonstrate that it is producing results to win a second term. I think Labour understands that. Talk cautiously, win and act radical is a much better electoral and political strategy than talk radical and lose.
Investment is fine. I agree we need ‘a new deal’. It needs to address people as well as infrastructure. We need to demonstrably improve healthcare and working people’s wages. And force our utility companies to invest in upgrading our decaying infrastructure.
But we also need to reform our governance. The last 7 years have been a shitshow of power grabs, corruption, nepotism and kneejerk lawmaking. We have to reform governance to allow a wider range of views to be represented in Parliament, and to enable a more consensus based approach.
I have no confidence Starmer will do this. And if so, and if he drives further austerity it will lead to the rise of a populist right winger. And one who will be more damaging than Johnson.
Apparently Ed Miliband was extolling the virtues of PR at Glastonbury
Not sure if he discussed it with Starmer though
I mean conference passed it as a motion, right? And if I were Miliband I'd be pissed; Starmer keeps cutting back the environmental pledges that are his portfolio and (in Ed's thinking) a clear win-win: green investment to grow the economy whilst appealing to both young and working age voters. If I were Miliband I would be assuming that I wouldn't be on the front bench in Starmer's government - he is too far to the left for the positions Starmer is currently staking out.
I think he will be.
The Green investment plan is basically all Milliband, and he leaves the Soft Left, a key powerbase, off the front bench, it will rebel.
Starmer has walked back much of the green investment plan, to the point where I can see by election day there will be nothing left. And I don't think Starmer or his staff care about the Soft Left - they keep gunning for Andy Burnham every chance they have and he is only the Soft Left now due to the relative shift under Starmer (I remember when Burnham ran for leadership as another heir to Blair type).
I wouldn't really agree with that. If figures like Rayner or Miliband are demoted, the party will rebel, because the centre of gravity of the party is still on the soft-left compared to during the Blair years.
Starmer has got rid of the Corbynites, but there's no majority for centre-right Blairism, by Labour standards, and he doesn't have a powerbase there in the way Blair did.
I hope you're right, but with the MP selections and the membership suspensions I only really see the possibility of a pretty right wing Labour party under SKS. That he and Reeves are spending all their airtime talking about "fiscal rules" rather than saying that investment could solve so many problems and even help tackle the current inflation crisis is really aggravating to me.
The other issue is, no matter which way Starmer governs, there will be a clear argument for calling him a liar and hypocrite. If he goes leftwards once in government, every centrist and right leaning voter who swapped Lab from Tory will only hear how he's a Marxist and feel betrayed. If he stays on his rightward course, the Labour base and members who voted for him to be leaders based on his pledges and policies will feel abandoned and disengaged. The part is announcing policies and then disavowing them within weeks; so he could lead any way, who can possibly know? That's another bad example to add to the pile of Johnson and Truss and Sunak, and will further erode people's belief in democratic solutions to problems.
Electorally it may feel like 1997 but politically and economically the country is in a very different place.
This is what Starmer, Reeves and co are failing to understand.
It worries me what happens next.
I am not so sure. I think that Labour in power is going to be a lot more radical than many expect. Talk cautiously, win and act radical is a much better electoral and political strategy than talk radical and lose.
I keep warning people about this.
Floating voters tempted by Labour should take note.
You will have given them a mandate to do it and if you don't like what subsequently happens you will be culpable.
If we voted the current incompetents back in we would also be culpable but more so. With Labour we might get a radical govt but we know that with the current Tories we will get a corrupt govt.
The "lesser of two evils" is voting not-Conservative.
I spoke to a friend last night. She's a tory. Has a small mortgage which has nearly doubled in the last couple of months. Her son's fixed term mortgage is about to come up for renewal in September and he's bleak about it. Part of the problem seems to be the scale of loan nowadays as well as the greater length of typical mortgages.
Both in Surrey. Both tory voters. Both deeply worried.
It feels to me as if the mortgage rate rise is the final nail in the current tory coffin. You touch people's homes, you really are toast.
There's also the small matter of a 40% rise in water bills coming next.
When people simlutaneously see that, and companies like Thames Water also simultaneously being bailed out by the government because they've been loaded with debt under the private equity model, the anger is going to be even greater.
The Tories are well-done toast with jam, and a bit of honey.
@DavidL is right in saying that the trade deficit underlies all these problems. It has been financed by selling off assets overseas, such as utilities to Maquarie etc. It isn't a viable way of continuing.
One of the things I'm curious about is when did the trade balance stop being reported on the news.
Two hundred consecutive months of the BBC announcing a trade deficit would have given an inkling that there was something fundamentally wrong with the UK economy.
Three new Spanish polls this morning. All show the right wing lead narrowing slightly. However all give clear potential majority for the PP/VOX combo. No sign yet that the socialists are changing the game
What is becoming clear is that if there is a PP/Vox majority there will be a PP/Vox coalition. PSOE will be delighted with events in Valencia and Extremadura. Feijoo will spend the next few weeks dodging questions about this, while Sanchez is already moving very aggressively onto the front foot. I suspect that it is too late, that dislike of Sanchez is currently too ingrained in too many, but what happens after the GE will be fascinating. I do not see how a PP/Vox government ends well.
Few governments operating in a world post COVID and amidst the Ukraine debacle have it easy. That Spain seeks a respite from several years of a centre/extreme left Coalition for the opposite is hardly surprising. In fact this appears to be happening here in spite of a markedly less harsh economic downturn, which says something about how wrongly Sanchez has judged the national mood.
Yep, I think Sanchez badly misjudged the public mood. Anti-Sanchismo will almost certainly lead to a PP/Vox coalition. The question is, then what? Clearly, the Catalan and Basque separatists are itching for a change of government and a fight that Vox, at least, is also seeking. On top of that, there are the major environmental challenges posed by extended drought and higher temperatures which Vox denies are a problem; and the fact that both Vox and PP opposed the current government's popular labour reforms and moves to reduce the cost of housing. What will they do there? From a UK perspective, a PP/Vox approach to Gibraltar should be fun.
Haha - and a Starmer response if he wins. PP propose less tax for those earning less tha 40k. That would be welcome.
I think the major PP problem is that it is only very recently that it felt it might win the election. It is entirely unprepared for government with Vox. My guess is that a second GE is going to follow quite soon after this one. I suspect that is what Sanchez thinks too.
The current poll leads have existed for a year or so. If Box don't play ball another GE is possible. No obvious reason why the Sanchez would win it. Sounds very much like pissing in the wind.
Having a small poll lead is not the same thing as thinking you will win. The regional and local elections only happened a month ago. They were the gamechanger. After all, it is only 14 months ago that PP was in turmoil and was forced to change leader. I think Sanchez believes PP is wholly unprepared for government, especially one that involves working closely with Vox. That's why he brought the elections forward. It gave PP far less time to develop a strategy and programme for power. Obviously, it's a gamble - but a second election that is not about anti-Sanchismo would suit PSOE.
You forget the landslide here in Andalucía last year where PP gained an absolute majority after 40 odd years of PSOE dominance. Very difficult for Sanchez to win while that earthquake holds.
The problem is that half the time the build quality of the replacements is scarcely better. I worked in a school once where the entire wall of the (new) geography block actually fell down. Fortunately it was at 8pm on Friday evening at the start of half term, so nobody was hurt and there was time to make emergency repairs before the school reopened. But it could easily have been very different.
A relative runs a building company. Under the school rebuild plans under Brown, he looked into bidding, The price estimates per m2 rivalled the cost of luxury basement work.
The structural margins were quite low, in his view. As was the general spec.
His comment has that he could have built the school, and built a basement under it, with a 30m swimming pool. And made a profit.
Perhaps the biggest problem we have in this country is the smug acceptance of "Health Care Inflation", "Construction Inflation" etc - always way above Inflation inflation.
What we need is some actual management to reduce costs. And no, high costs don't mean high quality. And reducing costs isn't necessarily about cutting corners.
It is getting to a point where we will need to decide - either we put the effort in and build hospitals and railways for less. Or we won't be having them.
This will require work. And skills that the politicians don't have. Or the permanent structures of government.
But it's a choice that is becoming clearer and clearer.
I spoke to a friend last night. She's a tory. Has a small mortgage which has nearly doubled in the last couple of months. Her son's fixed term mortgage is about to come up for renewal in September and he's bleak about it. Part of the problem seems to be the scale of loan nowadays as well as the greater length of typical mortgages.
Both in Surrey. Both tory voters. Both deeply worried.
It feels to me as if the mortgage rate rise is the final nail in the current tory coffin. You touch people's homes, you really are toast.
There's also the small matter of a 40% rise in water bills coming next.
When people simlutaneously see that, and companies like Thames Water also simultaneously being bailed out by the government because they've been loaded with debt under the private equity model, the anger is going to be even greater.
The Tories are well-done toast with jam, and a bit of honey.
@DavidL is right in saying that the trade deficit underlies all these problems. It has been financed by selling off assets overseas, such as utilities to Maquarie etc. It isn't a viable way of continuing.
One of the things I'm curious about is when did the trade balance stop being reported on the news.
Two hundred consecutive months of the BBC announcing a trade deficit would have given an inkling that there was something fundamentally wrong with the UK economy.
Electorally it may feel like 1997 but politically and economically the country is in a very different place.
This is what Starmer, Reeves and co are failing to understand.
It worries me what happens next.
I am not so sure. I think that Labour in power is going to be a lot more radical than many expect. Talk cautiously, win and act radical is a much better electoral and political strategy than talk radical and lose.
I keep warning people about this.
Floating voters tempted by Labour should take note.
You will have given them a mandate to do it and if you don't like what subsequently happens you will be culpable.
If we voted the current incompetents back in we would also be culpable but more so. With Labour we might get a radical govt but we know that with the current Tories we will get a corrupt govt.
The "lesser of two evils" is voting not-Conservative.
I spoke to a friend last night. She's a tory. Has a small mortgage which has nearly doubled in the last couple of months. Her son's fixed term mortgage is about to come up for renewal in September and he's bleak about it. Part of the problem seems to be the scale of loan nowadays as well as the greater length of typical mortgages.
Both in Surrey. Both tory voters. Both deeply worried.
It feels to me as if the mortgage rate rise is the final nail in the current tory coffin. You touch people's homes, you really are toast.
There's also the small matter of a 40% rise in water bills coming next.
When people simlutaneously see that, and companies like Thames Water also simultaneously being bailed out by the government because they've been loaded with debt under the private equity model, the anger is going to be even greater.
The Tories are well-done toast with jam, and a bit of honey.
@DavidL is right in saying that the trade deficit underlies all these problems. It has been financed by selling off assets overseas, such as utilities to Maquarie etc. It isn't a viable way of continuing.
One of the things I'm curious about is when did the trade balance stop being reported on the news.
Two hundred consecutive months of the BBC announcing a trade deficit would have given an inkling that there was something fundamentally wrong with the UK economy.
The theory was probably that a floating exchange rate meant trade deficits did not matter because the pound would adjust (downwards).
I spoke to a friend last night. She's a tory. Has a small mortgage which has nearly doubled in the last couple of months. Her son's fixed term mortgage is about to come up for renewal in September and he's bleak about it. Part of the problem seems to be the scale of loan nowadays as well as the greater length of typical mortgages.
Both in Surrey. Both tory voters. Both deeply worried.
It feels to me as if the mortgage rate rise is the final nail in the current tory coffin. You touch people's homes, you really are toast.
There's also the small matter of a 40% rise in water bills coming next.
Between mortgages and bills and real terms pay cuts it is hard to see who is going to be able to buy all these new houses in the private sector.
The only realistic customer for a mass house building programme is the state, but with councils skint too, it is hard to see that happening either.
Pretty soon a lot of people's supposed wealth (tied up in real estate) is going to evaporate too.
It's being so cheerful that keeps me going.
New houses are getting bought as soon as they go on the market pretty much, there's no abundance of homes with nobody to buy them. Our housing crisis has been triggered by a lack of supply, more than a lack of demand.
A great many people have been able to pay for homes and mortgages, but its their landlord's mortgage they are paying. If we can transition to people paying their own mortgage, not a landlord's mortgage, then so much the better.
Falling house prices prices and growing wages will make smaller deposits necessary to hit a higher deposit percentage and smaller LTV percentage for first time buyers as we saw with the excellent amount of first time buyers that hit highs in the 90s. If we can get the great housing conditions of the 90s repeated again, then win/win.
People don’t just want a change from the Tories just because it’s time for a change. People want a change because the Government has been incompetent, biased in favour of boomers, and has made many people poorer. Yes, the country is in a mess because of continuing trade deficits, and lack of investment in infrastructure, but does Labour have the guts to explain why this is to the voters in terms they can understand? Do they also have the guts to start redressing the imbalance, by favouring UK owned business and by repatriating assets? Foreign ownership of UK infrastructure could be made less advantageous by giving e.g. Ofgem and Ofwat proper enforcement powers with punitive fines. If shareholders don’t like it, they can exchange their shares for UK gilts.
Exactly! It is time that offshoring was reversed. It has gone WAY too far.
Electorally it may feel like 1997 but politically and economically the country is in a very different place.
This is what Starmer, Reeves and co are failing to understand.
It worries me what happens next.
I am not so sure. I think that Labour in power is going to be a lot more radical than many expect. Talk cautiously, win and act radical is a much better electoral and political strategy than talk radical and lose.
I keep warning people about this.
Floating voters tempted by Labour should take note.
You will have given them a mandate to do it and if you don't like what subsequently happens you will be culpable.
Blaming the voters, even if it's true, is rarely a good look.
Besides, there's the cast iron excuse that the other lot looked even worse; see 2019.
Sunak has been given a pretty poor hand. But in part, it's a hand he chose and he hasn't played it to the best. The next election isn't about voting Labour in, it's about voting the Conservatives out. Not so much "things can only get better" as "things can hardly get worse".
And On Topic, that's why the Conservatives might as well stick with Sunak. He is set to lose, probably badly, but there's no sign at all that anyone else could do better.
Things can always get worse.
You are of course right that things could get worse. This government's salted earth policy will make life as difficult for the Conservatives as for Labour post GE should the Conservatives sneak a win.
I am not sure what "worse" under Labour will look like. It looks pretty dire now.
Number of newborns fell to record low in April https://m.koreatimes.co.kr/pages/article.asp?newsIdx=353861 The nation's population decline has been accelerating, with the number of newborn babies falling to a new low in April, Statistics Korea said Wednesday.
According to the statistics agency, 18,484 babies were born in April, down 12.7 percent from a year earlier. That is the lowest number for any April since the agency started compiling relevant data in 1981.
And this year marked the first time that the number of births dipped below the 20,000 mark in April...
Electorally it may feel like 1997 but politically and economically the country is in a very different place.
This is what Starmer, Reeves and co are failing to understand.
It worries me what happens next.
I am not so sure. I think that Labour in power is going to be a lot more radical than many expect. Talk cautiously, win and act radical is a much better electoral and political strategy than talk radical and lose.
I keep warning people about this.
Floating voters tempted by Labour should take note.
You will have given them a mandate to do it and if you don't like what subsequently happens you will be culpable.
From the left I'm pessimistic about radical change - all my contacts with the Opposition front bench suggest a deeply cautious approach. I remain loyal and think a change of Government is essential but I'm not expecting anything except dour centrism in Labour's first term, with just one or two more interesting policies, probably on housing. To be fair, I might do the same in Starmer's position, with the economy in the current state.
That gets to the heart of the matter, I reckon.
In broad terms, a large chunk of the population are willing to accept the Centrist Dad message that hangovers aren't meant to be fun, it might be OK to have some Alka Seltzer, but basically we have to endure for a bit and not be so stupid in future. That's true of tax, spending, public services and (whisper it) our trading relations with our geographic neighbours.
If Starmer can get a mandate on that basis, he becomes very powerful indeed. Not a full on Doctor's Mandate, but something in that direction. And if things are even a little less bad in 2028, which might just be boring government without scandals, that will be to his credit.
By forcing the bar for government standards so low and still failing, the 2019-24 version of the Conservative Party has made it easier for it's successor to clear it.
I don't see how that's going to work with the union pay demands.
Why are the doctors going to accept 5% when they've been demanding 35% ?
The problem is that half the time the build quality of the replacements is scarcely better. I worked in a school once where the entire wall of the (new) geography block actually fell down. Fortunately it was at 8pm on Friday evening at the start of half term, so nobody was hurt and there was time to make emergency repairs before the school reopened. But it could easily have been very different.
A relative runs a building company. Under the school rebuild plans under Brown, he looked into bidding, The price estimates per m2 rivalled the cost of luxury basement work.
The structural margins were quite low, in his view. As was the general spec.
His comment has that he could have built the school, and built a basement under it, with a 30m swimming pool. And made a profit.
Perhaps the biggest problem we have in this country is the smug acceptance of "Health Care Inflation", "Construction Inflation" etc - always way above Inflation inflation.
What we need is some actual management to reduce costs. And no, high costs don't mean high quality. And reducing costs isn't necessarily about cutting corners.
It is getting to a point where we will need to decide - either we put the effort in and build hospitals and railways for less. Or we won't be having them.
This will require work. And skills that the politicians don't have. Or the permanent structures of government.
But it's a choice that is becoming clearer and clearer.
My Dad worked for a private contractor at this time. Labour abandoned compulsory competitive tender on school projects, and contractors were ramping up their prices by up to 100%.
Electorally it may feel like 1997 but politically and economically the country is in a very different place.
This is what Starmer, Reeves and co are failing to understand.
It worries me what happens next.
I am not so sure. I think that Labour in power is going to be a lot more radical than many expect. Given the state the country is in, what other choice is there? That everyone can see just what a mess it is out there gives Labour the leeway to do that - and there are some relatively quick wins around planning reform, housebuilding, infrastructure investment and closer ties to the EU that the Tories just cannot pursue. Labour has to establish a direction of travel and demonstrate that it is producing results to win a second term. I think Labour understands that. Talk cautiously, win and act radical is a much better electoral and political strategy than talk radical and lose.
The quick wins you mention are mostly illusory. Planning reform and housebuilding have defeated every government for decades, there's no money for significant infrastructure investment and its benefits would take years to show up anyway, and closer ties to the EU, whatever those are, would not help much if at all for a long time either, even if the EU let us, which they show no sign of doing. And their fantasies about green growth and debts to the public sector unions etc would hit growth rather than help it.
The Conservatives have followed basically Labour policies in interfering in the economy, screwing the enterprising and productive, failed industrial policies and disastrous green crap and that's got us to where we are - no growth. Except, maybe, housebuilding, it'll be even worse under Labour.
Yes, that is the right wing line on all this. Proper Conservatism has not been tried and, as a result, we are in a spiral of unending, hopeless decline and things can only get worse. My view is different. I think a decision to no longer govern solely for the Boomer generation will open up a lot of possibilities. And Labour can make that decision because it does not rely on Boomer votes. Will it be easy or pain free? Absolutely not. Will there be a quick turnaround? No chance at all. But that does not mean there is no point in doing it. If Labour can demonstrate some progress after a five year term, memories of the absolute mess the Tories have made over the last 13 years will do the rest.
It's funny how in the mid 90's we also had "an absolute mess the Tories have made over the last 15 years" but the English voters have voted the Tories in in 8 out of the last 11 GEs.
But now the Boomer generation is beginning to fade away.
I think that as the memory of the so-called “Winter of Discontent” fades as does its (unfair) automatic linking to Labour economic incompetence/comparative Tory competence. I’m 50 in January so was 5 when Thatcher was elected. No one my age or younger has any meaningful memories of the Seventies. It is only people older, at least 10 years older realistically, who can properly remember those events so the mud doesn’t stick to Labour as well.
Yep. The Boomers bought the council houses and the shares in the privatised utilities. Younger generations wonder why they were sold.
Nothing wrong with having people able to buy their own homes.
The problem is that our population grew and there were no new homes for the growing population.
Had supply kept up with demand, as it has in countries where builders can get on with building without masses of red tape like Japan, then prices wouldn't have gotten out of control.
The problem is that the Tories used to believe in deregulation and cutting red tape, but when it comes to construction the red tape is seen as a ribbon the boomers want to keep their own assets inflated - and screw their grandchildren, they may possibly get an inheritance one day isn't that enough for them?
Electorally it may feel like 1997 but politically and economically the country is in a very different place.
This is what Starmer, Reeves and co are failing to understand.
It worries me what happens next.
I am not so sure. I think that Labour in power is going to be a lot more radical than many expect. Given the state the country is in, what other choice is there? That everyone can see just what a mess it is out there gives Labour the leeway to do that - and there are some relatively quick wins around planning reform, housebuilding, infrastructure investment and closer ties to the EU that the Tories just cannot pursue. Labour has to establish a direction of travel and demonstrate that it is producing results to win a second term. I think Labour understands that. Talk cautiously, win and act radical is a much better electoral and political strategy than talk radical and lose.
Investment is fine. I agree we need ‘a new deal’. It needs to address people as well as infrastructure. We need to demonstrably improve healthcare and working people’s wages. And force our utility companies to invest in upgrading our decaying infrastructure.
But we also need to reform our governance. The last 7 years have been a shitshow of power grabs, corruption, nepotism and kneejerk lawmaking. We have to reform governance to allow a wider range of views to be represented in Parliament, and to enable a more consensus based approach.
I have no confidence Starmer will do this. And if so, and if he drives further austerity it will lead to the rise of a populist right winger. And one who will be more damaging than Johnson.
Apparently Ed Miliband was extolling the virtues of PR at Glastonbury
Not sure if he discussed it with Starmer though
I mean conference passed it as a motion, right? And if I were Miliband I'd be pissed; Starmer keeps cutting back the environmental pledges that are his portfolio and (in Ed's thinking) a clear win-win: green investment to grow the economy whilst appealing to both young and working age voters. If I were Miliband I would be assuming that I wouldn't be on the front bench in Starmer's government - he is too far to the left for the positions Starmer is currently staking out.
I think he will be.
The Green investment plan is basically all Milliband, and he leaves the Soft Left, a key powerbase, off the front bench, it will rebel.
Starmer has walked back much of the green investment plan, to the point where I can see by election day there will be nothing left. And I don't think Starmer or his staff care about the Soft Left - they keep gunning for Andy Burnham every chance they have and he is only the Soft Left now due to the relative shift under Starmer (I remember when Burnham ran for leadership as another heir to Blair type).
I wouldn't really agree with that. If figures like Rayner or Miliband are demoted, the party will rebel, because the centre of gravity of the party is still on the soft-left compared to during the Blair years.
Starmer has got rid of the Corbynites, but there's no majority for centre-right Blairism, by Labour standards, and he doesn't have a powerbase there in the way Blair did.
I think that’s fair. This board often accuses Starmer of having no personality. If that’s true he can’t rule the party through a cult of personality which was, I think, something the Corbynites tried to do. Labour is more than Starmer.
I met Blair before he became a big shot. He seemed to me, to be one of those salesmen who has no core personality of his own. The kind of politician who can convince a room full of people that he understands (and is just like) *you*. For everyone in the room.
Not sure that's quite what I want in a PM.
Haven't met Starmer - but he doesn't seem like that from what I have seen and read. I think he has a rather blank public face (very unlike Blair) - probably very different on a one-one level.
Number of newborns fell to record low in April https://m.koreatimes.co.kr/pages/article.asp?newsIdx=353861 The nation's population decline has been accelerating, with the number of newborn babies falling to a new low in April, Statistics Korea said Wednesday.
According to the statistics agency, 18,484 babies were born in April, down 12.7 percent from a year earlier. That is the lowest number for any April since the agency started compiling relevant data in 1981.
And this year marked the first time that the number of births dipped below the 20,000 mark in April...
But they have a novel solution to the ageing population issue:
I spoke to a friend last night. She's a tory. Has a small mortgage which has nearly doubled in the last couple of months. Her son's fixed term mortgage is about to come up for renewal in September and he's bleak about it. Part of the problem seems to be the scale of loan nowadays as well as the greater length of typical mortgages.
Both in Surrey. Both tory voters. Both deeply worried.
It feels to me as if the mortgage rate rise is the final nail in the current tory coffin. You touch people's homes, you really are toast.
There's also the small matter of a 40% rise in water bills coming next.
Between mortgages and bills and real terms pay cuts it is hard to see who is going to be able to buy all these new houses in the private sector.
The only realistic customer for a mass house building programme is the state, but with councils skint too, it is hard to see that happening either.
Pretty soon a lot of people's supposed wealth (tied up in real estate) is going to evaporate too.
It's being so cheerful that keeps me going.
I have just filled in a meerkat form for house insurance, it looked at my location and number of rooms etc and said my very modest cottage would cost 760,000 to rebuild. Thing is nobody would pay that money for the actual house. So how can house builders make a profit?
Happy ending BTW, LV jacked me up to 750 a year on autorenewal and I nearly left it cos I see so much news about insurance going up. AA want 230 for the same cover.
Electorally it may feel like 1997 but politically and economically the country is in a very different place.
This is what Starmer, Reeves and co are failing to understand.
It worries me what happens next.
I am not so sure. I think that Labour in power is going to be a lot more radical than many expect. Given the state the country is in, what other choice is there? That everyone can see just what a mess it is out there gives Labour the leeway to do that - and there are some relatively quick wins around planning reform, housebuilding, infrastructure investment and closer ties to the EU that the Tories just cannot pursue. Labour has to establish a direction of travel and demonstrate that it is producing results to win a second term. I think Labour understands that. Talk cautiously, win and act radical is a much better electoral and political strategy than talk radical and lose.
Investment is fine. I agree we need ‘a new deal’. It needs to address people as well as infrastructure. We need to demonstrably improve healthcare and working people’s wages. And force our utility companies to invest in upgrading our decaying infrastructure.
But we also need to reform our governance. The last 7 years have been a shitshow of power grabs, corruption, nepotism and kneejerk lawmaking. We have to reform governance to allow a wider range of views to be represented in Parliament, and to enable a more consensus based approach.
I have no confidence Starmer will do this. And if so, and if he drives further austerity it will lead to the rise of a populist right winger. And one who will be more damaging than Johnson.
Apparently Ed Miliband was extolling the virtues of PR at Glastonbury
Not sure if he discussed it with Starmer though
I mean conference passed it as a motion, right? And if I were Miliband I'd be pissed; Starmer keeps cutting back the environmental pledges that are his portfolio and (in Ed's thinking) a clear win-win: green investment to grow the economy whilst appealing to both young and working age voters. If I were Miliband I would be assuming that I wouldn't be on the front bench in Starmer's government - he is too far to the left for the positions Starmer is currently staking out.
I think he will be.
The Green investment plan is basically all Milliband, and he leaves the Soft Left, a key powerbase, off the front bench, it will rebel.
Starmer has walked back much of the green investment plan, to the point where I can see by election day there will be nothing left. And I don't think Starmer or his staff care about the Soft Left - they keep gunning for Andy Burnham every chance they have and he is only the Soft Left now due to the relative shift under Starmer (I remember when Burnham ran for leadership as another heir to Blair type).
I wouldn't really agree with that. If figures like Rayner or Miliband are demoted, the party will rebel, because the centre of gravity of the party is still on the soft-left compared to during the Blair years.
Starmer has got rid of the Corbynites, but there's no majority for centre-right Blairism, by Labour standards, and he doesn't have a powerbase there in the way Blair did.
I hope you're right, but with the MP selections and the membership suspensions I only really see the possibility of a pretty right wing Labour party under SKS. That he and Reeves are spending all their airtime talking about "fiscal rules" rather than saying that investment could solve so many problems and even help tackle the current inflation crisis is really aggravating to me.
The other issue is, no matter which way Starmer governs, there will be a clear argument for calling him a liar and hypocrite. If he goes leftwards once in government, every centrist and right leaning voter who swapped Lab from Tory will only hear how he's a Marxist and feel betrayed. If he stays on his rightward course, the Labour base and members who voted for him to be leaders based on his pledges and policies will feel abandoned and disengaged. The part is announcing policies and then disavowing them within weeks; so he could lead any way, who can possibly know? That's another bad example to add to the pile of Johnson and Truss and Sunak, and will further erode people's belief in democratic solutions to problems.
My theory is that he wants to deliver New Labour Part Deux - cautious economics, schools 'n hospitals, without the invading foreign countries bit.
That would build a fair coalition inside and outside the party for a second term. If he can get some success at it.
The idea that he wants to rip off the latex mask and reveal himself as either the third Corbyn brother or Pinochet, only makes sense if he his very determined to lose the election after next.
Electorally it may feel like 1997 but politically and economically the country is in a very different place.
This is what Starmer, Reeves and co are failing to understand.
It worries me what happens next.
I am not so sure. I think that Labour in power is going to be a lot more radical than many expect. Given the state the country is in, what other choice is there? That everyone can see just what a mess it is out there gives Labour the leeway to do that - and there are some relatively quick wins around planning reform, housebuilding, infrastructure investment and closer ties to the EU that the Tories just cannot pursue. Labour has to establish a direction of travel and demonstrate that it is producing results to win a second term. I think Labour understands that. Talk cautiously, win and act radical is a much better electoral and political strategy than talk radical and lose.
The quick wins you mention are mostly illusory. Planning reform and housebuilding have defeated every government for decades, there's no money for significant infrastructure investment and its benefits would take years to show up anyway, and closer ties to the EU, whatever those are, would not help much if at all for a long time either, even if the EU let us, which they show no sign of doing. And their fantasies about green growth and debts to the public sector unions etc would hit growth rather than help it.
The Conservatives have followed basically Labour policies in interfering in the economy, screwing the enterprising and productive, failed industrial policies and disastrous green crap and that's got us to where we are - no growth. Except, maybe, housebuilding, it'll be even worse under Labour.
Yes, that is the right wing line on all this. Proper Conservatism has not been tried and, as a result, we are in a spiral of unending, hopeless decline and things can only get worse. My view is different. I think a decision to no longer govern solely for the Boomer generation will open up a lot of possibilities. And Labour can make that decision because it does not rely on Boomer votes. Will it be easy or pain free? Absolutely not. Will there be a quick turnaround? No chance at all. But that does not mean there is no point in doing it. If Labour can demonstrate some progress after a five year term, memories of the absolute mess the Tories have made over the last 13 years will do the rest.
It's funny how in the mid 90's we also had "an absolute mess the Tories have made over the last 15 years" but the English voters have voted the Tories in in 8 out of the last 11 GEs.
But now the Boomer generation is beginning to fade away.
I think that as the memory of the so-called “Winter of Discontent” fades as does its (unfair) automatic linking to Labour economic incompetence/comparative Tory competence. I’m 50 in January so was 5 when Thatcher was elected. No one my age or younger has any meaningful memories of the Seventies. It is only people older, at least 10 years older realistically, who can properly remember those events so the mud doesn’t stick to Labour as well.
Yep. The Boomers bought the council houses and the shares in the privatised utilities. Younger generations wonder why they were sold.
Nothing wrong with having people able to buy their own homes.
The problem is that our population grew and there were no new homes for the growing population.
Had supply kept up with demand, as it has in countries where builders can get on with building without masses of red tape like Japan, then prices wouldn't have gotten out of control.
The problem is that the Tories used to believe in deregulation and cutting red tape, but when it comes to construction the red tape is seen as a ribbon the boomers want to keep their own assets inflated - and screw their grandchildren, they may possibly get an inheritance one day isn't that enough for them?
If the councils had been allowed or better still compelled to use the proceeds from council house sales to build new council homes, it would have been a good policy. As it was, like much of Thatcherism, it was very short-term.
I spoke to a friend last night. She's a tory. Has a small mortgage which has nearly doubled in the last couple of months. Her son's fixed term mortgage is about to come up for renewal in September and he's bleak about it. Part of the problem seems to be the scale of loan nowadays as well as the greater length of typical mortgages.
Both in Surrey. Both tory voters. Both deeply worried.
It feels to me as if the mortgage rate rise is the final nail in the current tory coffin. You touch people's homes, you really are toast.
There's also the small matter of a 40% rise in water bills coming next.
When people simlutaneously see that, and companies like Thames Water also simultaneously being bailed out by the government because they've been loaded with debt under the private equity model, the anger is going to be even greater.
The Tories are well-done toast with jam, and a bit of honey.
@DavidL is right in saying that the trade deficit underlies all these problems. It has been financed by selling off assets overseas, such as utilities to Maquarie etc. It isn't a viable way of continuing.
One of the things I'm curious about is when did the trade balance stop being reported on the news.
Two hundred consecutive months of the BBC announcing a trade deficit would have given an inkling that there was something fundamentally wrong with the UK economy.
The theory was probably that a floating exchange rate meant trade deficits did not matter because the pound would adjust (downwards).
The trade balance was regularly reported in the 1980s but at some point during the 1990s it stopped being so.
The when it stopped being reported and the why it stopped being reported might be linked but I don't know either the when or the why.
The problem is that half the time the build quality of the replacements is scarcely better. I worked in a school once where the entire wall of the (new) geography block actually fell down. Fortunately it was at 8pm on Friday evening at the start of half term, so nobody was hurt and there was time to make emergency repairs before the school reopened. But it could easily have been very different.
A relative runs a building company. Under the school rebuild plans under Brown, he looked into bidding, The price estimates per m2 rivalled the cost of luxury basement work.
The structural margins were quite low, in his view. As was the general spec.
His comment has that he could have built the school, and built a basement under it, with a 30m swimming pool. And made a profit.
Perhaps the biggest problem we have in this country is the smug acceptance of "Health Care Inflation", "Construction Inflation" etc - always way above Inflation inflation.
What we need is some actual management to reduce costs. And no, high costs don't mean high quality. And reducing costs isn't necessarily about cutting corners.
It is getting to a point where we will need to decide - either we put the effort in and build hospitals and railways for less. Or we won't be having them.
This will require work. And skills that the politicians don't have. Or the permanent structures of government.
But it's a choice that is becoming clearer and clearer.
One of the biggest problems with Local Authority building works on schools etc is the brown enevelope issue. Those who decide who gets the work are often in the pay of a contractor so that contractor always wins the work and are therefore not bothered about the quality of the work that they carry out.
We recently tendered for a job to rewire the whole of a Council Office. During the tender period we were told by one of our wholesalers not to bother as the work was definitely going to be awarded to Contactor A. We still completed the tender and after a couple of weeks we were sent a tender award letter via the internet portal the Local Authroity uses. We were obviously delighted. Within an hour the award letter was rescinded and Contractor A was awarded the tender. We found out later the the person who sent us the award letter was not in on the bribery, so awarded us the tender as we were most competitive. Contractor A who had received a tender not won letter had phoned their man in the LA and complained and the chap who made the tender decision was relieved of his decision duties. Our complaints fell on deaf ears. The brown envelope problem is endemic within Local Authorities.
Electorally it may feel like 1997 but politically and economically the country is in a very different place.
This is what Starmer, Reeves and co are failing to understand.
It worries me what happens next.
I am not so sure. I think that Labour in power is going to be a lot more radical than many expect. Talk cautiously, win and act radical is a much better electoral and political strategy than talk radical and lose.
I keep warning people about this.
Floating voters tempted by Labour should take note.
You will have given them a mandate to do it and if you don't like what subsequently happens you will be culpable.
From the left I'm pessimistic about radical change - all my contacts with the Opposition front bench suggest a deeply cautious approach. I remain loyal and think a change of Government is essential but I'm not expecting anything except dour centrism in Labour's first term, with just one or two more interesting policies, probably on housing. To be fair, I might do the same in Starmer's position, with the economy in the current state.
That gets to the heart of the matter, I reckon.
In broad terms, a large chunk of the population are willing to accept the Centrist Dad message that hangovers aren't meant to be fun, it might be OK to have some Alka Seltzer, but basically we have to endure for a bit and not be so stupid in future. That's true of tax, spending, public services and (whisper it) our trading relations with our geographic neighbours.
If Starmer can get a mandate on that basis, he becomes very powerful indeed. Not a full on Doctor's Mandate, but something in that direction. And if things are even a little less bad in 2028, which might just be boring government without scandals, that will be to his credit.
By forcing the bar for government standards so low and still failing, the 2019-24 version of the Conservative Party has made it easier for it's successor to clear it.
I don't see how that's going to work with the union pay demands.
Why are the doctors going to accept 5% when they've been demanding 35% ?
To be fair in any negotiations when one party is being unreasonable its reasonable for the other to be equally unreasonable. If you're haggling and someone says £100 for a product you know to be worth £50 then walk away or offer £10, not £50, until serious negotiations can start and you can meet in the middle.
The Government has been trying to give double-digit pay rises to its preferred voters (triple locked pensioners) and frozen or 1% pay rises to those who work for a living.
In those circumstances why shouldn't those who work for a living demand much more than inflation, when the Government are offering much less than it? And when serious negotiations happen, maybe meet in the middle.
Those who work for a living should get a pay rise at least as high as those who do not. Which kind of makes the triple lock impossible.
Three new Spanish polls this morning. All show the right wing lead narrowing slightly. However all give clear potential majority for the PP/VOX combo. No sign yet that the socialists are changing the game
What is becoming clear is that if there is a PP/Vox majority there will be a PP/Vox coalition. PSOE will be delighted with events in Valencia and Extremadura. Feijoo will spend the next few weeks dodging questions about this, while Sanchez is already moving very aggressively onto the front foot. I suspect that it is too late, that dislike of Sanchez is currently too ingrained in too many, but what happens after the GE will be fascinating. I do not see how a PP/Vox government ends well.
Few governments operating in a world post COVID and amidst the Ukraine debacle have it easy. That Spain seeks a respite from several years of a centre/extreme left Coalition for the opposite is hardly surprising. In fact this appears to be happening here in spite of a markedly less harsh economic downturn, which says something about how wrongly Sanchez has judged the national mood.
Yep, I think Sanchez badly misjudged the public mood. Anti-Sanchismo will almost certainly lead to a PP/Vox coalition. The question is, then what? Clearly, the Catalan and Basque separatists are itching for a change of government and a fight that Vox, at least, is also seeking. On top of that, there are the major environmental challenges posed by extended drought and higher temperatures which Vox denies are a problem; and the fact that both Vox and PP opposed the current government's popular labour reforms and moves to reduce the cost of housing. What will they do there? From a UK perspective, a PP/Vox approach to Gibraltar should be fun.
Haha - and a Starmer response if he wins. PP propose less tax for those earning less tha 40k. That would be welcome.
I think the major PP problem is that it is only very recently that it felt it might win the election. It is entirely unprepared for government with Vox. My guess is that a second GE is going to follow quite soon after this one. I suspect that is what Sanchez thinks too.
The current poll leads have existed for a year or so. If Box don't play ball another GE is possible. No obvious reason why the Sanchez would win it. Sounds very much like pissing in the wind.
Having a small poll lead is not the same thing as thinking you will win. The regional and local elections only happened a month ago. They were the gamechanger. After all, it is only 14 months ago that PP was in turmoil and was forced to change leader. I think Sanchez believes PP is wholly unprepared for government, especially one that involves working closely with Vox. That's why he brought the elections forward. It gave PP far less time to develop a strategy and programme for power. Obviously, it's a gamble - but a second election that is not about anti-Sanchismo would suit PSOE.
You forget the landslide here in Andalucía last year where PP gained an absolute majority after 40 odd years of PSOE dominance. Very difficult for Sanchez to win while that earthquake holds.
I don't think Sanchez will win. But PSOE lost Andalusia well before last year.
I spoke to a friend last night. She's a tory. Has a small mortgage which has nearly doubled in the last couple of months. Her son's fixed term mortgage is about to come up for renewal in September and he's bleak about it. Part of the problem seems to be the scale of loan nowadays as well as the greater length of typical mortgages.
Both in Surrey. Both tory voters. Both deeply worried.
It feels to me as if the mortgage rate rise is the final nail in the current tory coffin. You touch people's homes, you really are toast.
There's also the small matter of a 40% rise in water bills coming next.
Between mortgages and bills and real terms pay cuts it is hard to see who is going to be able to buy all these new houses in the private sector.
The only realistic customer for a mass house building programme is the state, but with councils skint too, it is hard to see that happening either.
Pretty soon a lot of people's supposed wealth (tied up in real estate) is going to evaporate too.
It's being so cheerful that keeps me going.
I have just filled in a meerkat form for house insurance, it looked at my location and number of rooms etc and said my very modest cottage would cost 760,000 to rebuild. Thing is nobody would pay that money for the actual house. So how can house builders make a profit?
Happy ending BTW, LV jacked me up to 750 a year on autorenewal and I nearly left it cos I see so much news about insurance going up. AA want 230 for the same cover.
WTF is your house? How big?
A friend spent about half that on a smallish house (centralist London), where he kept the front wall and the neighbour's walls (terrace) and got rid of everything else.
Electorally it may feel like 1997 but politically and economically the country is in a very different place.
This is what Starmer, Reeves and co are failing to understand.
It worries me what happens next.
I am not so sure. I think that Labour in power is going to be a lot more radical than many expect. Talk cautiously, win and act radical is a much better electoral and political strategy than talk radical and lose.
I keep warning people about this.
Floating voters tempted by Labour should take note.
You will have given them a mandate to do it and if you don't like what subsequently happens you will be culpable.
If we voted the current incompetents back in we would also be culpable but more so. With Labour we might get a radical govt but we know that with the current Tories we will get a corrupt govt.
The "lesser of two evils" is voting not-Conservative.
Electorally it may feel like 1997 but politically and economically the country is in a very different place.
This is what Starmer, Reeves and co are failing to understand.
It worries me what happens next.
I am not so sure. I think that Labour in power is going to be a lot more radical than many expect. Given the state the country is in, what other choice is there? That everyone can see just what a mess it is out there gives Labour the leeway to do that - and there are some relatively quick wins around planning reform, housebuilding, infrastructure investment and closer ties to the EU that the Tories just cannot pursue. Labour has to establish a direction of travel and demonstrate that it is producing results to win a second term. I think Labour understands that. Talk cautiously, win and act radical is a much better electoral and political strategy than talk radical and lose.
Investment is fine. I agree we need ‘a new deal’. It needs to address people as well as infrastructure. We need to demonstrably improve healthcare and working people’s wages. And force our utility companies to invest in upgrading our decaying infrastructure.
But we also need to reform our governance. The last 7 years have been a shitshow of power grabs, corruption, nepotism and kneejerk lawmaking. We have to reform governance to allow a wider range of views to be represented in Parliament, and to enable a more consensus based approach.
I have no confidence Starmer will do this. And if so, and if he drives further austerity it will lead to the rise of a populist right winger. And one who will be more damaging than Johnson.
Apparently Ed Miliband was extolling the virtues of PR at Glastonbury
Not sure if he discussed it with Starmer though
I mean conference passed it as a motion, right? And if I were Miliband I'd be pissed; Starmer keeps cutting back the environmental pledges that are his portfolio and (in Ed's thinking) a clear win-win: green investment to grow the economy whilst appealing to both young and working age voters. If I were Miliband I would be assuming that I wouldn't be on the front bench in Starmer's government - he is too far to the left for the positions Starmer is currently staking out.
I think he will be.
The Green investment plan is basically all Milliband, and he leaves the Soft Left, a key powerbase, off the front bench, it will rebel.
Starmer has walked back much of the green investment plan, to the point where I can see by election day there will be nothing left. And I don't think Starmer or his staff care about the Soft Left - they keep gunning for Andy Burnham every chance they have and he is only the Soft Left now due to the relative shift under Starmer (I remember when Burnham ran for leadership as another heir to Blair type).
I wouldn't really agree with that. If figures like Rayner or Miliband are demoted, the party will rebel, because the centre of gravity of the party is still on the soft-left compared to during the Blair years.
Starmer has got rid of the Corbynites, but there's no majority for centre-right Blairism, by Labour standards, and he doesn't have a powerbase there in the way Blair did.
I hope you're right, but with the MP selections and the membership suspensions I only really see the possibility of a pretty right wing Labour party under SKS. That he and Reeves are spending all their airtime talking about "fiscal rules" rather than saying that investment could solve so many problems and even help tackle the current inflation crisis is really aggravating to me.
The other issue is, no matter which way Starmer governs, there will be a clear argument for calling him a liar and hypocrite. If he goes leftwards once in government, every centrist and right leaning voter who swapped Lab from Tory will only hear how he's a Marxist and feel betrayed. If he stays on his rightward course, the Labour base and members who voted for him to be leaders based on his pledges and policies will feel abandoned and disengaged. The part is announcing policies and then disavowing them within weeks; so he could lead any way, who can possibly know? That's another bad example to add to the pile of Johnson and Truss and Sunak, and will further erode people's belief in democratic solutions to problems.
There is a cure for this.
Announce lots of radical constitutional reform in his first term, before there's more money available.
Abolish the Lords, new federal GB-wide structure to deal with the SNP, PR, completely new honours system.
Also radically tightened regulation on the utilities. All these would significantly change how the country feels to live in from day to day, even before spending much money,
Electorally it may feel like 1997 but politically and economically the country is in a very different place.
This is what Starmer, Reeves and co are failing to understand.
It worries me what happens next.
I am not so sure. I think that Labour in power is going to be a lot more radical than many expect. Given the state the country is in, what other choice is there? That everyone can see just what a mess it is out there gives Labour the leeway to do that - and there are some relatively quick wins around planning reform, housebuilding, infrastructure investment and closer ties to the EU that the Tories just cannot pursue. Labour has to establish a direction of travel and demonstrate that it is producing results to win a second term. I think Labour understands that. Talk cautiously, win and act radical is a much better electoral and political strategy than talk radical and lose.
Investment is fine. I agree we need ‘a new deal’. It needs to address people as well as infrastructure. We need to demonstrably improve healthcare and working people’s wages. And force our utility companies to invest in upgrading our decaying infrastructure.
But we also need to reform our governance. The last 7 years have been a shitshow of power grabs, corruption, nepotism and kneejerk lawmaking. We have to reform governance to allow a wider range of views to be represented in Parliament, and to enable a more consensus based approach.
I have no confidence Starmer will do this. And if so, and if he drives further austerity it will lead to the rise of a populist right winger. And one who will be more damaging than Johnson.
Apparently Ed Miliband was extolling the virtues of PR at Glastonbury
Not sure if he discussed it with Starmer though
I mean conference passed it as a motion, right? And if I were Miliband I'd be pissed; Starmer keeps cutting back the environmental pledges that are his portfolio and (in Ed's thinking) a clear win-win: green investment to grow the economy whilst appealing to both young and working age voters. If I were Miliband I would be assuming that I wouldn't be on the front bench in Starmer's government - he is too far to the left for the positions Starmer is currently staking out.
I think he will be.
The Green investment plan is basically all Milliband, and he leaves the Soft Left, a key powerbase, off the front bench, it will rebel.
Starmer has walked back much of the green investment plan, to the point where I can see by election day there will be nothing left. And I don't think Starmer or his staff care about the Soft Left - they keep gunning for Andy Burnham every chance they have and he is only the Soft Left now due to the relative shift under Starmer (I remember when Burnham ran for leadership as another heir to Blair type).
I wouldn't really agree with that. If figures like Rayner or Miliband are demoted, the party will rebel, because the centre of gravity of the party is still on the soft-left compared to during the Blair years.
Starmer has got rid of the Corbynites, but there's no majority for centre-right Blairism, by Labour standards, and he doesn't have a powerbase there in the way Blair did.
I hope you're right, but with the MP selections and the membership suspensions I only really see the possibility of a pretty right wing Labour party under SKS. That he and Reeves are spending all their airtime talking about "fiscal rules" rather than saying that investment could solve so many problems and even help tackle the current inflation crisis is really aggravating to me.
The other issue is, no matter which way Starmer governs, there will be a clear argument for calling him a liar and hypocrite. If he goes leftwards once in government, every centrist and right leaning voter who swapped Lab from Tory will only hear how he's a Marxist and feel betrayed. If he stays on his rightward course, the Labour base and members who voted for him to be leaders based on his pledges and policies will feel abandoned and disengaged. The part is announcing policies and then disavowing them within weeks; so he could lead any way, who can possibly know? That's another bad example to add to the pile of Johnson and Truss and Sunak, and will further erode people's belief in democratic solutions to problems.
My theory is that he wants to deliver New Labour Part Deux - cautious economics, schools 'n hospitals, without the invading foreign countries bit.
That would build a fair coalition inside and outside the party for a second term. If he can get some success at it.
The idea that he wants to rip off the latex mask and reveal himself as either the third Corbyn brother or Pinochet, only makes sense if he his very determined to lose the election after next.
I mean, I think this country clearly needs policies closer to Corbyn's than Pinochet (as I feel would most voters) but he is governing the Labour Party like the papers said Corbyn would; with Stalinist purges.
Electorally it may feel like 1997 but politically and economically the country is in a very different place.
This is what Starmer, Reeves and co are failing to understand.
It worries me what happens next.
I am not so sure. I think that Labour in power is going to be a lot more radical than many expect. Talk cautiously, win and act radical is a much better electoral and political strategy than talk radical and lose.
I keep warning people about this.
Floating voters tempted by Labour should take note.
You will have given them a mandate to do it and if you don't like what subsequently happens you will be culpable.
From the left I'm pessimistic about radical change - all my contacts with the Opposition front bench suggest a deeply cautious approach. I remain loyal and think a change of Government is essential but I'm not expecting anything except dour centrism in Labour's first term, with just one or two more interesting policies, probably on housing. To be fair, I might do the same in Starmer's position, with the economy in the current state.
That gets to the heart of the matter, I reckon.
In broad terms, a large chunk of the population are willing to accept the Centrist Dad message that hangovers aren't meant to be fun, it might be OK to have some Alka Seltzer, but basically we have to endure for a bit and not be so stupid in future. That's true of tax, spending, public services and (whisper it) our trading relations with our geographic neighbours.
If Starmer can get a mandate on that basis, he becomes very powerful indeed. Not a full on Doctor's Mandate, but something in that direction. And if things are even a little less bad in 2028, which might just be boring government without scandals, that will be to his credit.
By forcing the bar for government standards so low and still failing, the 2019-24 version of the Conservative Party has made it easier for it's successor to clear it.
I don't see how that's going to work with the union pay demands.
Why are the doctors going to accept 5% when they've been demanding 35% ?
To be fair in any negotiations when one party is being unreasonable its reasonable for the other to be equally unreasonable. If you're haggling and someone says £100 for a product you know to be worth £50 then walk away or offer £10, not £50, until serious negotiations can start and you can meet in the middle.
The Government has been trying to give double-digit pay rises to its preferred voters (triple locked pensioners) and frozen or 1% pay rises to those who work for a living.
In those circumstances why shouldn't those who work for a living demand much more than inflation, when the Government are offering much less than it? And when serious negotiations happen, maybe meet in the middle.
Those who work for a living should get a pay rise at least as high as those who do not. Which kind of makes the triple lock impossible.
I don't disagree and many of the unions have been very reasonable this year.
But what's to stop them 'trying it on' with a new Labour government and going for a big increase - justifiably so in some cases.
And there's still the doctors - why are they going to stop demanding a 35%, or very likely even more, pay rise from PM Starmer ?
And if even say a 15% pay increase was given to the doctors then that would lead to demands from the other unions that their members to get a similar increase.
Electorally it may feel like 1997 but politically and economically the country is in a very different place.
This is what Starmer, Reeves and co are failing to understand.
It worries me what happens next.
I am not so sure. I think that Labour in power is going to be a lot more radical than many expect. Given the state the country is in, what other choice is there? That everyone can see just what a mess it is out there gives Labour the leeway to do that - and there are some relatively quick wins around planning reform, housebuilding, infrastructure investment and closer ties to the EU that the Tories just cannot pursue. Labour has to establish a direction of travel and demonstrate that it is producing results to win a second term. I think Labour understands that. Talk cautiously, win and act radical is a much better electoral and political strategy than talk radical and lose.
Investment is fine. I agree we need ‘a new deal’. It needs to address people as well as infrastructure. We need to demonstrably improve healthcare and working people’s wages. And force our utility companies to invest in upgrading our decaying infrastructure.
But we also need to reform our governance. The last 7 years have been a shitshow of power grabs, corruption, nepotism and kneejerk lawmaking. We have to reform governance to allow a wider range of views to be represented in Parliament, and to enable a more consensus based approach.
I have no confidence Starmer will do this. And if so, and if he drives further austerity it will lead to the rise of a populist right winger. And one who will be more damaging than Johnson.
Apparently Ed Miliband was extolling the virtues of PR at Glastonbury
Not sure if he discussed it with Starmer though
I mean conference passed it as a motion, right? And if I were Miliband I'd be pissed; Starmer keeps cutting back the environmental pledges that are his portfolio and (in Ed's thinking) a clear win-win: green investment to grow the economy whilst appealing to both young and working age voters. If I were Miliband I would be assuming that I wouldn't be on the front bench in Starmer's government - he is too far to the left for the positions Starmer is currently staking out.
I think he will be.
The Green investment plan is basically all Milliband, and he leaves the Soft Left, a key powerbase, off the front bench, it will rebel.
Starmer has walked back much of the green investment plan, to the point where I can see by election day there will be nothing left. And I don't think Starmer or his staff care about the Soft Left - they keep gunning for Andy Burnham every chance they have and he is only the Soft Left now due to the relative shift under Starmer (I remember when Burnham ran for leadership as another heir to Blair type).
I wouldn't really agree with that. If figures like Rayner or Miliband are demoted, the party will rebel, because the centre of gravity of the party is still on the soft-left compared to during the Blair years.
Starmer has got rid of the Corbynites, but there's no majority for centre-right Blairism, by Labour standards, and he doesn't have a powerbase there in the way Blair did.
I hope you're right, but with the MP selections and the membership suspensions I only really see the possibility of a pretty right wing Labour party under SKS. That he and Reeves are spending all their airtime talking about "fiscal rules" rather than saying that investment could solve so many problems and even help tackle the current inflation crisis is really aggravating to me.
The other issue is, no matter which way Starmer governs, there will be a clear argument for calling him a liar and hypocrite. If he goes leftwards once in government, every centrist and right leaning voter who swapped Lab from Tory will only hear how he's a Marxist and feel betrayed. If he stays on his rightward course, the Labour base and members who voted for him to be leaders based on his pledges and policies will feel abandoned and disengaged. The part is announcing policies and then disavowing them within weeks; so he could lead any way, who can possibly know? That's another bad example to add to the pile of Johnson and Truss and Sunak, and will further erode people's belief in democratic solutions to problems.
Aside arguably from the Atlee government of 1945, are there many historical precedents for an elected Labour government being much more radical than the anodyne version that they first presented to make themselves palatable to the the British/English voter? In any case I believe that years of policy contortions to gain electoral credibility tend to make the contorted end up believing that is their natural posture.
Electorally it may feel like 1997 but politically and economically the country is in a very different place.
This is what Starmer, Reeves and co are failing to understand.
It worries me what happens next.
I am not so sure. I think that Labour in power is going to be a lot more radical than many expect. Given the state the country is in, what other choice is there? That everyone can see just what a mess it is out there gives Labour the leeway to do that - and there are some relatively quick wins around planning reform, housebuilding, infrastructure investment and closer ties to the EU that the Tories just cannot pursue. Labour has to establish a direction of travel and demonstrate that it is producing results to win a second term. I think Labour understands that. Talk cautiously, win and act radical is a much better electoral and political strategy than talk radical and lose.
Investment is fine. I agree we need ‘a new deal’. It needs to address people as well as infrastructure. We need to demonstrably improve healthcare and working people’s wages. And force our utility companies to invest in upgrading our decaying infrastructure.
But we also need to reform our governance. The last 7 years have been a shitshow of power grabs, corruption, nepotism and kneejerk lawmaking. We have to reform governance to allow a wider range of views to be represented in Parliament, and to enable a more consensus based approach.
I have no confidence Starmer will do this. And if so, and if he drives further austerity it will lead to the rise of a populist right winger. And one who will be more damaging than Johnson.
Apparently Ed Miliband was extolling the virtues of PR at Glastonbury
Not sure if he discussed it with Starmer though
I mean conference passed it as a motion, right? And if I were Miliband I'd be pissed; Starmer keeps cutting back the environmental pledges that are his portfolio and (in Ed's thinking) a clear win-win: green investment to grow the economy whilst appealing to both young and working age voters. If I were Miliband I would be assuming that I wouldn't be on the front bench in Starmer's government - he is too far to the left for the positions Starmer is currently staking out.
I think he will be.
The Green investment plan is basically all Milliband, and he leaves the Soft Left, a key powerbase, off the front bench, it will rebel.
Starmer has walked back much of the green investment plan, to the point where I can see by election day there will be nothing left. And I don't think Starmer or his staff care about the Soft Left - they keep gunning for Andy Burnham every chance they have and he is only the Soft Left now due to the relative shift under Starmer (I remember when Burnham ran for leadership as another heir to Blair type).
I wouldn't really agree with that. If figures like Rayner or Miliband are demoted, the party will rebel, because the centre of gravity of the party is still on the soft-left compared to during the Blair years.
Starmer has got rid of the Corbynites, but there's no majority for centre-right Blairism, by Labour standards, and he doesn't have a powerbase there in the way Blair did.
I think that’s fair. This board often accuses Starmer of having no personality. If that’s true he can’t rule the party through a cult of personality which was, I think, something the Corbynites tried to do. Labour is more than Starmer.
I met Blair before he became a big shot. He seemed to me, to be one of those salesmen who has no core personality of his own. The kind of politician who can convince a room full of people that he understands (and is just like) *you*. For everyone in the room.
Not sure that's quite what I want in a PM.
Haven't met Starmer - but he doesn't seem like that from what I have seen and read. I think he has a rather blank public face (very unlike Blair) - probably very different on a one-one level.
That's right.
Look how different their pre-Wesminster ( and post-Westminster ) in Blair's case, careers, have been.
Blair - comfortable barrister not excessively driven by social conscience. His formative political experience was the 1983 election, after which an enormous amount of time was spent convincing a lot of people, and possibly himself, that both he and Labour could be almost-Tory.
Starmer in the same period was first representing the Miners, and then also doing pro bono work against McDonalds. He then joined the Establishment through institutional-legal channels, as DPP, rather than becoming more commercially-minded, as Blair did. He's still essentially of the soft left.
On topic, every time I look at the polling graph I am struck by the thought that there's a straight trend line that can be drawn through the Conservative polling, from 45% in early 2020 to 25% now.
Every time the Tories have looked like edging above it or dropping below they have come back on trend within a month or so.
The trend line will have the Tories below 20% by the time the next GE is called.
The problem is that half the time the build quality of the replacements is scarcely better. I worked in a school once where the entire wall of the (new) geography block actually fell down. Fortunately it was at 8pm on Friday evening at the start of half term, so nobody was hurt and there was time to make emergency repairs before the school reopened. But it could easily have been very different.
A relative runs a building company. Under the school rebuild plans under Brown, he looked into bidding, The price estimates per m2 rivalled the cost of luxury basement work.
The structural margins were quite low, in his view. As was the general spec.
His comment has that he could have built the school, and built a basement under it, with a 30m swimming pool. And made a profit.
Perhaps the biggest problem we have in this country is the smug acceptance of "Health Care Inflation", "Construction Inflation" etc - always way above Inflation inflation.
What we need is some actual management to reduce costs. And no, high costs don't mean high quality. And reducing costs isn't necessarily about cutting corners.
It is getting to a point where we will need to decide - either we put the effort in and build hospitals and railways for less. Or we won't be having them.
This will require work. And skills that the politicians don't have. Or the permanent structures of government.
But it's a choice that is becoming clearer and clearer.
One of the biggest problems with Local Authority building works on schools etc is the brown enevelope issue. Those who decide who gets the work are often in the pay of a contractor so that contractor always wins the work and are therefore not bothered about the quality of the work that they carry out.
We recently tendered for a job to rewire the whole of a Council Office. During the tender period we were told by one of our wholesalers not to bother as the work was definitely going to be awarded to Contactor A. We still completed the tender and after a couple of weeks we were sent a tender award letter via the internet portal the Local Authroity uses. We were obviously delighted. Within an hour the award letter was rescinded and Contractor A was awarded the tender. We found out later the the person who sent us the award letter was not in on the bribery, so awarded us the tender as we were most competitive. Contractor A who had received a tender not won letter had phoned their man in the LA and complained and the chap who made the tender decision was relieved of his decision duties. Our complaints fell on deaf ears. The brown envelope problem is endemic within Local Authorities.
Pretty shocking, though not totally surprising.
Did you think about going to the national press? I would have thought any of the serious papers would have loved to pursue this.
I spoke to a friend last night. She's a tory. Has a small mortgage which has nearly doubled in the last couple of months. Her son's fixed term mortgage is about to come up for renewal in September and he's bleak about it. Part of the problem seems to be the scale of loan nowadays as well as the greater length of typical mortgages.
Both in Surrey. Both tory voters. Both deeply worried.
It feels to me as if the mortgage rate rise is the final nail in the current tory coffin. You touch people's homes, you really are toast.
There's also the small matter of a 40% rise in water bills coming next.
Between mortgages and bills and real terms pay cuts it is hard to see who is going to be able to buy all these new houses in the private sector.
The only realistic customer for a mass house building programme is the state, but with councils skint too, it is hard to see that happening either.
Pretty soon a lot of people's supposed wealth (tied up in real estate) is going to evaporate too.
It's being so cheerful that keeps me going.
I have just filled in a meerkat form for house insurance, it looked at my location and number of rooms etc and said my very modest cottage would cost 760,000 to rebuild. Thing is nobody would pay that money for the actual house. So how can house builders make a profit?
Happy ending BTW, LV jacked me up to 750 a year on autorenewal and I nearly left it cos I see so much news about insurance going up. AA want 230 for the same cover.
WTF is your house? How big?
A friend spent about half that on a smallish house (centralist London), where he kept the front wall and the neighbour's walls (terrace) and got rid of everything else.
3 bed 1 bath not listed. 756,000. Not my problem because it's insured! I imagine insurers jack the estimate up to frighten people into getting cover.
There are also photos on Sunak’s social media accounts of him using regular permanent ink pens to actually sign documents, including an economic agreement with India in October 2020 when he was chancellor...
There are also photos on Sunak’s social media accounts of him using regular permanent ink pens to actually sign documents, including an economic agreement with India in October 2020 when he was chancellor...
Electorally it may feel like 1997 but politically and economically the country is in a very different place.
This is what Starmer, Reeves and co are failing to understand.
It worries me what happens next.
I am not so sure. I think that Labour in power is going to be a lot more radical than many expect. Talk cautiously, win and act radical is a much better electoral and political strategy than talk radical and lose.
I keep warning people about this.
Floating voters tempted by Labour should take note.
You will have given them a mandate to do it and if you don't like what subsequently happens you will be culpable.
From the left I'm pessimistic about radical change - all my contacts with the Opposition front bench suggest a deeply cautious approach. I remain loyal and think a change of Government is essential but I'm not expecting anything except dour centrism in Labour's first term, with just one or two more interesting policies, probably on housing. To be fair, I might do the same in Starmer's position, with the economy in the current state.
That gets to the heart of the matter, I reckon.
In broad terms, a large chunk of the population are willing to accept the Centrist Dad message that hangovers aren't meant to be fun, it might be OK to have some Alka Seltzer, but basically we have to endure for a bit and not be so stupid in future. That's true of tax, spending, public services and (whisper it) our trading relations with our geographic neighbours.
If Starmer can get a mandate on that basis, he becomes very powerful indeed. Not a full on Doctor's Mandate, but something in that direction. And if things are even a little less bad in 2028, which might just be boring government without scandals, that will be to his credit.
By forcing the bar for government standards so low and still failing, the 2019-24 version of the Conservative Party has made it easier for it's successor to clear it.
I don't see how that's going to work with the union pay demands.
Why are the doctors going to accept 5% when they've been demanding 35% ?
To be fair in any negotiations when one party is being unreasonable its reasonable for the other to be equally unreasonable. If you're haggling and someone says £100 for a product you know to be worth £50 then walk away or offer £10, not £50, until serious negotiations can start and you can meet in the middle.
The Government has been trying to give double-digit pay rises to its preferred voters (triple locked pensioners) and frozen or 1% pay rises to those who work for a living.
In those circumstances why shouldn't those who work for a living demand much more than inflation, when the Government are offering much less than it? And when serious negotiations happen, maybe meet in the middle.
Those who work for a living should get a pay rise at least as high as those who do not. Which kind of makes the triple lock impossible.
Yes, expecting people to take real-terms pay cuts is just not going to work. I've put up my fees, over the past year, in response to rising costs, so why should I expect others not to do likewise?
The problem is that half the time the build quality of the replacements is scarcely better. I worked in a school once where the entire wall of the (new) geography block actually fell down. Fortunately it was at 8pm on Friday evening at the start of half term, so nobody was hurt and there was time to make emergency repairs before the school reopened. But it could easily have been very different.
A relative runs a building company. Under the school rebuild plans under Brown, he looked into bidding, The price estimates per m2 rivalled the cost of luxury basement work.
The structural margins were quite low, in his view. As was the general spec.
His comment has that he could have built the school, and built a basement under it, with a 30m swimming pool. And made a profit.
Perhaps the biggest problem we have in this country is the smug acceptance of "Health Care Inflation", "Construction Inflation" etc - always way above Inflation inflation.
What we need is some actual management to reduce costs. And no, high costs don't mean high quality. And reducing costs isn't necessarily about cutting corners.
It is getting to a point where we will need to decide - either we put the effort in and build hospitals and railways for less. Or we won't be having them.
This will require work. And skills that the politicians don't have. Or the permanent structures of government.
But it's a choice that is becoming clearer and clearer.
One of the biggest problems with Local Authority building works on schools etc is the brown enevelope issue. Those who decide who gets the work are often in the pay of a contractor so that contractor always wins the work and are therefore not bothered about the quality of the work that they carry out.
We recently tendered for a job to rewire the whole of a Council Office. During the tender period we were told by one of our wholesalers not to bother as the work was definitely going to be awarded to Contactor A. We still completed the tender and after a couple of weeks we were sent a tender award letter via the internet portal the Local Authroity uses. We were obviously delighted. Within an hour the award letter was rescinded and Contractor A was awarded the tender. We found out later the the person who sent us the award letter was not in on the bribery, so awarded us the tender as we were most competitive. Contractor A who had received a tender not won letter had phoned their man in the LA and complained and the chap who made the tender decision was relieved of his decision duties. Our complaints fell on deaf ears. The brown envelope problem is endemic within Local Authorities.
A fair old horror story, Mr Hughes. But was the local authority in question run on the Cabinet system which the Tories set up? From what I have seen, there is a lot of centralised power and delegated decision-taking in this system, and precious little proper scrutiny, as we used to have in the old committee system.
There are also photos on Sunak’s social media accounts of him using regular permanent ink pens to actually sign documents, including an economic agreement with India in October 2020 when he was chancellor...
Wishy-washy Rishi?
Just wait till he reveals his progress on tackling the two pledges.
I spoke to a friend last night. She's a tory. Has a small mortgage which has nearly doubled in the last couple of months. Her son's fixed term mortgage is about to come up for renewal in September and he's bleak about it. Part of the problem seems to be the scale of loan nowadays as well as the greater length of typical mortgages.
Both in Surrey. Both tory voters. Both deeply worried.
It feels to me as if the mortgage rate rise is the final nail in the current tory coffin. You touch people's homes, you really are toast.
There's also the small matter of a 40% rise in water bills coming next.
Between mortgages and bills and real terms pay cuts it is hard to see who is going to be able to buy all these new houses in the private sector.
The only realistic customer for a mass house building programme is the state, but with councils skint too, it is hard to see that happening either.
Pretty soon a lot of people's supposed wealth (tied up in real estate) is going to evaporate too.
It's being so cheerful that keeps me going.
I have just filled in a meerkat form for house insurance, it looked at my location and number of rooms etc and said my very modest cottage would cost 760,000 to rebuild. Thing is nobody would pay that money for the actual house. So how can house builders make a profit?
Happy ending BTW, LV jacked me up to 750 a year on autorenewal and I nearly left it cos I see so much news about insurance going up. AA want 230 for the same cover.
WTF is your house? How big?
A friend spent about half that on a smallish house (centralist London), where he kept the front wall and the neighbour's walls (terrace) and got rid of everything else.
3 bed 1 bath not listed. 756,000. Not my problem because it's insured! I imagine insurers jack the estimate up to frighten people into getting cover.
Surely the rebuild cost should be less than the sales value because the insurer doesn’t have to pay for the land? I smell shite!
Electorally it may feel like 1997 but politically and economically the country is in a very different place.
This is what Starmer, Reeves and co are failing to understand.
It worries me what happens next.
I am not so sure. I think that Labour in power is going to be a lot more radical than many expect. Talk cautiously, win and act radical is a much better electoral and political strategy than talk radical and lose.
I keep warning people about this.
Floating voters tempted by Labour should take note.
You will have given them a mandate to do it and if you don't like what subsequently happens you will be culpable.
Blaming the voters, even if it's true, is rarely a good look.
Besides, there's the cast iron excuse that the other lot looked even worse; see 2019.
Sunak has been given a pretty poor hand. But in part, it's a hand he chose and he hasn't played it to the best. The next election isn't about voting Labour in, it's about voting the Conservatives out. Not so much "things can only get better" as "things can hardly get worse".
And On Topic, that's why the Conservatives might as well stick with Sunak. He is set to lose, probably badly, but there's no sign at all that anyone else could do better.
Things can always get worse.
The aftermath of the GFC, Covid, and the War in Ukraine would have given every government a hard time. The counter-argument that deficits don't matter, and that if the government kept borrowing 10% of GDP every year, it would all pay for itself seems utterly stupid to me.
But, the corruption, and the infighting, and the belief that laws are for little people, they are all on this government. They are totally unforced errors.
I expect that by its second term, a Starmer government would be just as arrogant and corrupt as the current one, but one can't blame people for wanting a change.
Just back after four weeks in the Greek islands, a few observations:
- much busier than 2022 - passport queues non-existent on arriving and leaving despite need for stamps - cost of eating out slightly higher than 2022 but portion size and quality noticeably affected - weather unusually unsettled, with rain some days and cool wind most days, poorer weather than back home in Yorkshire Dales - Americans by far the highest proportion of tourist, Chinese tourists returning, no Russians - designer boutiques and cocktail bars driving out traditional businesses even on less popular islands
Overall, the traditional Greek Island experience is getting harder to find.
The problem is that half the time the build quality of the replacements is scarcely better. I worked in a school once where the entire wall of the (new) geography block actually fell down. Fortunately it was at 8pm on Friday evening at the start of half term, so nobody was hurt and there was time to make emergency repairs before the school reopened. But it could easily have been very different.
A relative runs a building company. Under the school rebuild plans under Brown, he looked into bidding, The price estimates per m2 rivalled the cost of luxury basement work.
The structural margins were quite low, in his view. As was the general spec.
His comment has that he could have built the school, and built a basement under it, with a 30m swimming pool. And made a profit.
Perhaps the biggest problem we have in this country is the smug acceptance of "Health Care Inflation", "Construction Inflation" etc - always way above Inflation inflation.
What we need is some actual management to reduce costs. And no, high costs don't mean high quality. And reducing costs isn't necessarily about cutting corners.
It is getting to a point where we will need to decide - either we put the effort in and build hospitals and railways for less. Or we won't be having them.
This will require work. And skills that the politicians don't have. Or the permanent structures of government.
But it's a choice that is becoming clearer and clearer.
One of the biggest problems with Local Authority building works on schools etc is the brown enevelope issue. Those who decide who gets the work are often in the pay of a contractor so that contractor always wins the work and are therefore not bothered about the quality of the work that they carry out.
We recently tendered for a job to rewire the whole of a Council Office. During the tender period we were told by one of our wholesalers not to bother as the work was definitely going to be awarded to Contactor A. We still completed the tender and after a couple of weeks we were sent a tender award letter via the internet portal the Local Authroity uses. We were obviously delighted. Within an hour the award letter was rescinded and Contractor A was awarded the tender. We found out later the the person who sent us the award letter was not in on the bribery, so awarded us the tender as we were most competitive. Contractor A who had received a tender not won letter had phoned their man in the LA and complained and the chap who made the tender decision was relieved of his decision duties. Our complaints fell on deaf ears. The brown envelope problem is endemic within Local Authorities.
A fair old horror story, Mr Hughes. But was the local authority in question run on the Cabinet system which the Tories set up? From what I have seen, there is a lot of centralised power and delegated decision-taking in this system, and precious little proper scrutiny, as we used to have in the old committee system.
It is Tory run and a cabinet system, but all LAs that we deal with are the same. LA employees have a lot of decision making power and can ride roughshod across the procurement rules that exist. You would not believe the number of requests we get for free boilers, rewires etc in these people's houses.
The problem is that half the time the build quality of the replacements is scarcely better. I worked in a school once where the entire wall of the (new) geography block actually fell down. Fortunately it was at 8pm on Friday evening at the start of half term, so nobody was hurt and there was time to make emergency repairs before the school reopened. But it could easily have been very different.
A relative runs a building company. Under the school rebuild plans under Brown, he looked into bidding, The price estimates per m2 rivalled the cost of luxury basement work.
The structural margins were quite low, in his view. As was the general spec.
His comment has that he could have built the school, and built a basement under it, with a 30m swimming pool. And made a profit.
Perhaps the biggest problem we have in this country is the smug acceptance of "Health Care Inflation", "Construction Inflation" etc - always way above Inflation inflation.
What we need is some actual management to reduce costs. And no, high costs don't mean high quality. And reducing costs isn't necessarily about cutting corners.
It is getting to a point where we will need to decide - either we put the effort in and build hospitals and railways for less. Or we won't be having them.
This will require work. And skills that the politicians don't have. Or the permanent structures of government.
But it's a choice that is becoming clearer and clearer.
One of the biggest problems with Local Authority building works on schools etc is the brown enevelope issue. Those who decide who gets the work are often in the pay of a contractor so that contractor always wins the work and are therefore not bothered about the quality of the work that they carry out.
We recently tendered for a job to rewire the whole of a Council Office. During the tender period we were told by one of our wholesalers not to bother as the work was definitely going to be awarded to Contactor A. We still completed the tender and after a couple of weeks we were sent a tender award letter via the internet portal the Local Authroity uses. We were obviously delighted. Within an hour the award letter was rescinded and Contractor A was awarded the tender. We found out later the the person who sent us the award letter was not in on the bribery, so awarded us the tender as we were most competitive. Contractor A who had received a tender not won letter had phoned their man in the LA and complained and the chap who made the tender decision was relieved of his decision duties. Our complaints fell on deaf ears. The brown envelope problem is endemic within Local Authorities.
Appalling. I know this stuff was rife in the past, but I thought that really was in the past now. If I were you I would be fighting this, although I know the pragmatic thing to do (for your health) is probably to suck it up.
How do they not get caught if it is so obviously happening?
Comments
If the only way to increase your spending is to increase your earning then greater attention would need to be paid to the effectiveness of education and training, the usefulness of transport and the affordability of housing.
The UK has for some time manifestly not been able nor wanted to live within its means.
*and now of course the roll will be tricky on account of current rates.
Britain is mid-Europe and mid-atlantic, and needs to understand that.
With a business which is a natural monopoly an effective regulator is required instead.
Not the only reason they didn't get rid of Brown, but I think it was a factor.
Seeing them lose 100 seats is not by any means unrealistic. But the statements I'm seeing now remind me of the comments made by many, including me, about how Cameron would easily hammer Brown and win a majority of 100. And yes, Brown performed abysmally in 2010 - the lowest share of the vote for any governing or recently governing party since 1784 - but Cameron was still well short.
I will believe in Labour landslides if and when I see them.
*The figure in the header is a notional one adjusted for boundary changes. It is worth remembering that on the new boundaries the Tories would gain around 10 seats.
Over the years I’ve realised the only way to discredit something is to try it and see what happens. Thus Communism, Water Privatisation, and Brexit, although in both cases hard core adherents will forever whine it’s “not been tried properly”.
Then Johnson held up every query or complaint about the peerage for his chum.
https://twitter.com/normislandnews/status/1673832580179714050?s=61&t=LYVEHh2mqFy1oUJAdCfe-Q
1) She had very nearly failed to get a budget through due to opposition to the NI changes and wanted a bigger majority to get round it;
2) In light of the Copeland and Stoke results, she realised she had a golden opportunity to reshape the political map which might evaporate when she had to make compromises with the EU.
In these, her instincts were right.
Shame about the execution.
The Green investment plan is basically all Milliband, and he leaves the Soft Left, a key powerbase, off the front bench, it will rebel.
Starmer has got rid of the Corbynites, but there's no majority for centre-right Blairism, by Labour standards, and he doesn't have a powerbase there in the way Blair did.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-66030635
Vocational education: hi-viz jackets and hard hats in every classroom.
There are certainly people who are spending far above their income level but equally there are others spending far below their income level.
Plus others spending at their various levels of income.
And then there's the difference between income and assets.
Property ownership status, possible inheritances received, the availability of cheap credit all make it difficult to guess how affluent someone really is.
The problem is that half the time the build quality of the replacements is scarcely better. I worked in a school once where the entire wall of the (new) geography block actually fell down. Fortunately it was at 8pm on Friday evening at the start of half term, so nobody was hurt and there was time to make emergency repairs before the school reopened. But it could easily have been very different.
Margaret Moran, perhaps?
The "lesser of two evils" is voting not-Conservative.
Yes, the country is in a mess because of continuing trade deficits, and lack of investment in infrastructure, but does Labour have the guts to explain why this is to the voters in terms they can understand? Do they also have the guts to start redressing the imbalance, by favouring UK owned business and by repatriating assets? Foreign ownership of UK infrastructure could be made less advantageous by giving e.g. Ofgem and Ofwat proper enforcement powers with punitive fines. If shareholders don’t like it, they can exchange their shares for UK gilts.
In broad terms, a large chunk of the population are willing to accept the Centrist Dad message that hangovers aren't meant to be fun, it might be OK to have some Alka Seltzer, but basically we have to endure for a bit and not be so stupid in future. That's true of tax, spending, public services and (whisper it) our trading relations with our geographic neighbours.
If Starmer can get a mandate on that basis, he becomes very powerful indeed. Not a full on Doctor's Mandate, but something in that direction. And if things are even a little less bad in 2028, which might just be boring government without scandals, that will be to his credit.
By forcing the bar for government standards so low and still failing, the 2019-24 version of the Conservative Party has made it easier for it's successor to clear it.
The other issue is, no matter which way Starmer governs, there will be a clear argument for calling him a liar and hypocrite. If he goes leftwards once in government, every centrist and right leaning voter who swapped Lab from Tory will only hear how he's a Marxist and feel betrayed. If he stays on his rightward course, the Labour base and members who voted for him to be leaders based on his pledges and policies will feel abandoned and disengaged. The part is announcing policies and then disavowing them within weeks; so he could lead any way, who can possibly know? That's another bad example to add to the pile of Johnson and Truss and Sunak, and will further erode people's belief in democratic solutions to problems.
Two hundred consecutive months of the BBC announcing a trade deficit would have given an inkling that there was something fundamentally wrong with the UK economy.
And - hoping that you are a genuine new poster and not another Russian troll - welcome to posting on PB!
The structural margins were quite low, in his view. As was the general spec.
His comment has that he could have built the school, and built a basement under it, with a 30m swimming pool. And made a profit.
Perhaps the biggest problem we have in this country is the smug acceptance of "Health Care Inflation", "Construction Inflation" etc - always way above Inflation inflation.
What we need is some actual management to reduce costs. And no, high costs don't mean high quality. And reducing costs isn't necessarily about cutting corners.
It is getting to a point where we will need to decide - either we put the effort in and build hospitals and railways for less. Or we won't be having them.
This will require work. And skills that the politicians don't have. Or the permanent structures of government.
But it's a choice that is becoming clearer and clearer.
A great many people have been able to pay for homes and mortgages, but its their landlord's mortgage they are paying. If we can transition to people paying their own mortgage, not a landlord's mortgage, then so much the better.
Falling house prices prices and growing wages will make smaller deposits necessary to hit a higher deposit percentage and smaller LTV percentage for first time buyers as we saw with the excellent amount of first time buyers that hit highs in the 90s. If we can get the great housing conditions of the 90s repeated again, then win/win.
I am not sure what "worse" under Labour will look like. It looks pretty dire now.
Number of newborns fell to record low in April
https://m.koreatimes.co.kr/pages/article.asp?newsIdx=353861
The nation's population decline has been accelerating, with the number of newborn babies falling to a new low in April, Statistics Korea said Wednesday.
According to the statistics agency, 18,484 babies were born in April, down 12.7 percent from a year earlier. That is the lowest number for any April since the agency started compiling relevant data in 1981.
And this year marked the first time that the number of births dipped below the 20,000 mark in April...
Why are the doctors going to accept 5% when they've been demanding 35% ?
The problem is that our population grew and there were no new homes for the growing population.
Had supply kept up with demand, as it has in countries where builders can get on with building without masses of red tape like Japan, then prices wouldn't have gotten out of control.
The problem is that the Tories used to believe in deregulation and cutting red tape, but when it comes to construction the red tape is seen as a ribbon the boomers want to keep their own assets inflated - and screw their grandchildren, they may possibly get an inheritance one day isn't that enough for them?
Not sure that's quite what I want in a PM.
Haven't met Starmer - but he doesn't seem like that from what I have seen and read. I think he has a rather blank public face (very unlike Blair) - probably very different on a one-one level.
South Koreans become younger under new age-counting law
Happy ending BTW, LV jacked me up to 750 a year on autorenewal and I nearly left it cos I see so much news about insurance going up. AA want 230 for the same cover.
That would build a fair coalition inside and outside the party for a second term. If he can get some success at it.
The idea that he wants to rip off the latex mask and reveal himself as either the third Corbyn brother or Pinochet, only makes sense if he his very determined to lose the election after next.
The when it stopped being reported and the why it stopped being reported might be linked but I don't know either the when or the why.
We recently tendered for a job to rewire the whole of a Council Office. During the tender period we were told by one of our wholesalers not to bother as the work was definitely going to be awarded to Contactor A. We still completed the tender and after a couple of weeks we were sent a tender award letter via the internet portal the Local Authroity uses. We were obviously delighted. Within an hour the award letter was rescinded and Contractor A was awarded the tender. We found out later the the person who sent us the award letter was not in on the bribery, so awarded us the tender as we were most competitive. Contractor A who had received a tender not won letter had phoned their man in the LA and complained and the chap who made the tender decision was relieved of his decision duties. Our complaints fell on deaf ears. The brown envelope problem is endemic within Local Authorities.
The Government has been trying to give double-digit pay rises to its preferred voters (triple locked pensioners) and frozen or 1% pay rises to those who work for a living.
In those circumstances why shouldn't those who work for a living demand much more than inflation, when the Government are offering much less than it? And when serious negotiations happen, maybe meet in the middle.
Those who work for a living should get a pay rise at least as high as those who do not. Which kind of makes the triple lock impossible.
A friend spent about half that on a smallish house (centralist London), where he kept the front wall and the neighbour's walls (terrace) and got rid of everything else.
Less than an hour until the toss at Lord’s.
Announce lots of radical constitutional reform in his first term, before there's more money available.
Abolish the Lords, new federal GB-wide structure to deal with the SNP, PR, completely new honours system.
Also radically tightened regulation on the utilities. All these would significantly change how the country feels to live in from day to day, even before spending much money,
But what's to stop them 'trying it on' with a new Labour government and going for a big increase - justifiably so in some cases.
And there's still the doctors - why are they going to stop demanding a 35%, or very likely even more, pay rise from PM Starmer ?
And if even say a 15% pay increase was given to the doctors then that would lead to demands from the other unions that their members to get a similar increase.
https://twitter.com/United24media/status/1673967256101957635
Look how different their pre-Wesminster ( and post-Westminster ) in Blair's case, careers, have been.
Blair - comfortable barrister not excessively driven by social conscience. His formative political experience was the 1983 election, after which an enormous amount of time was spent convincing a lot of people, and possibly himself, that both he and Labour could be almost-Tory.
Starmer in the same period was first representing the Miners, and then also doing pro bono work against McDonalds. He then joined the Establishment through institutional-legal channels, as DPP, rather than becoming more commercially-minded, as Blair did. He's still essentially of the soft left.
Every time the Tories have looked like edging above it or dropping below they have come back on trend within a month or so.
The trend line will have the Tories below 20% by the time the next GE is called.
You heard it here first.
Did you think about going to the national press? I would have thought any of the serious papers would have loved to pursue this.
Rishi Sunak seen using erasable-ink pens on official documents and in meetings
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2023/jun/27/rishi-sunak-seen-using-erasable-ink-pens-on-official-documents-and-in-meetings
...Presidents of the United States routinely use pens with permanent ink to ensure there is no danger of their words being erased, fading over time, or being damaged by heat or damp conditions.
There are also photos on Sunak’s social media accounts of him using regular permanent ink pens to actually sign documents, including an economic agreement with India in October 2020 when he was chancellor...
But, the corruption, and the infighting, and the belief that laws are for little people, they are all on this government. They are totally unforced errors.
I expect that by its second term, a Starmer government would be just as arrogant and corrupt as the current one, but one can't blame people for wanting a change.
- much busier than 2022
- passport queues non-existent on arriving and leaving despite need for stamps
- cost of eating out slightly higher than 2022 but portion size and quality noticeably affected
- weather unusually unsettled, with rain some days and cool wind most days, poorer weather than back home in Yorkshire Dales
- Americans by far the highest proportion of tourist, Chinese tourists returning, no Russians
- designer boutiques and cocktail bars driving out traditional businesses even on less popular islands
Overall, the traditional Greek Island experience is getting harder to find.
How do they not get caught if it is so obviously happening?