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Rishi’s summer and autumn of discontent – politicalbetting.com
Rishi’s summer and autumn of discontent – politicalbetting.com
Uh Oh….Is Rishi Sunak facing another byelection?Sleaze buster report into shamed MP Chris Pincher expected to drop within days…If it finds against him, he is likely to be suspended from Parliament triggering a byelectionhttps://t.co/zWoQqdI3c9
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And good morning to y'all.
I see that The Sun Tel has a piece on its front page titled 'TORIES ON COURSE FOR RECORD DEFEAT IN DORRIES BY-ELECTION.'
That won't help Mike's recovery. As he's fond of pointing out: THERE ISN'T A BY-ELECTION!
Squatting would, ironically, much improve the likelihood of the Conservatives holding Mid Beds. If they can't defend Mid Beds at a GE, they're heading for an epochal defeat, below a hundred seats.
Sounds as though all the conditions are there for a huge swing against the Tories.
(Did the letters 'a' and 'n' creep into that first word through a typo?)
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/jul/01/exclusive-uk-water-giants-recruit-top-staff-from-regulator-ofwat
Two-thirds of England’s biggest water companies employ key executives who had previously worked at the watchdog tasked with regulating them, the Observer can reveal.
Cathryn Ross, the new interim joint chief executive of Thames Water and a former head of watchdog Ofwat, is one of several ex-employees working for water companies in senior roles such as strategy, regulation and infrastructure...
The conflict with the public interest is utterly obvious. Privatisation of monopoly utilities, where the regulator is less than draconian, is indefensible.
And who would want to buy into an industry with a draconian regulator ?
F1: just contemplating bets. Lots of things that look ok, nothing fantastic. On the plus side, the pretend qualifying result means the weekend's green whatever happens in the race, (assuming a single bet).
But luck is a fickle mistress if you don't have decent policies, which he doesn't. The only question, of course, is whether his lies and bullshit are enough to last through the general election.
I think Sunak is safe for the moment because there is no obvious replacement, and nobody who knows anything about by-elections thinks they are evidence of anything. Otherwise the LibDems would win every general election rather than being a rounding error in Parliament.
...None of the former Ofwat employees has acted improperly or broken any rules around appointments of former civil servants. The regulator says it can impose restrictions on civil servants leaving for the private sector, which can include the type of work they can do, and these are shared with the new employer.
Helm said that Ofwat should have regulated the balance sheets of the water companies more closely. He said: “There was a failure to stop the companies essentially mortgaging the assets and then paying out the proceeds in dividends. It was a huge regulatory mistake and we are now seeing the consequences.”
A report published last week by Richard Murphy, professor of accounting practice at Sheffield University, has calculated that the nine water and sewerage companies in England and Wales benefited from a 35% profit margin before financing costs between 2002 to 2022, paying out £24.8bn of profits in dividends.
Why was Ofwat unable to carry out a similar calculation ?
Betting PostF1: backed Norris for a podium at 6.
https://enormo-haddock.blogspot.com/2023/07/austria-pre-race-2023.html
Pragmatic Semiconductor seeks to take advantage of Joe Biden’s $54bn subsidy scheme
A taxpayer-backed microchip champion has launched operations in the US after warning that meagre support from Britain could force it to move operations abroad.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2023/07/01/british-microchip-pragmatic-launches-us-operation/ (£££)
Sunak wants to stay in office, but the longer the Tories stay, the worse the result will be. If they go full term the defeat could be Kim Campbell levels of annihilation. However, the only control the PM has is to set the date of the GE. So its a pretty tricky path ahead.
It's even possible that they are still in 9ffice next summer, dreaming of the poll ratings they have now.
What is particularly infuriating is that instead of knuckling gown and making unpopular decisions in the national interest. Sunak is playing politics with his pathetic five pledges. Government by slogan is always weak and always fails.
The margin isn’t a factor for the regulators. They calculate a fixed return based on the regulated asset base and assumptions on cost of debt and levels of leverage
Basically the shareholders made out like bandits in the early years because the regulator miscalculated the cost of debt. But since then returns have been much more sensible
Sunak is struggling for several reasons, including the toxic legacy of Johnson and Truss and the turmoil within the party with Johnson even now leading the charge to leave the ECHR, and the serious cost of living crisis with rising interest rates.
Starmer does seem to be lucky, but he and Reeves have made the conscious decision to move to the centre, obviously greatly influenced by Blair and Brown who are rumoured to be moving into the Lords. It is also said he is to sideline Angela Rayner and about to reshuffle his shadow cabinet.
There are plenty of indicators of this movement to the centre as Starmer abandons previous pledges including the abolition of tuition fees, the £28 billion per annum spend on green issues, declining water privatisation, accepted Sunak’s 15-year NHS plans, rejecting membership of the single market, enshrining the pension triple lock for the next 5 years, and accepting any new licences in the North Sea the conservative government grant before GE24. Indeed, his only left of centre plans are the abolition of non dom status and vat on private school fees which will hardly raise much anyway.
I know @BJO receives a lot of criticism on here, but maybe he is sounding the alarm on behalf of the left and he is not a lone voice, but where can they go other than as in his case the greens.
All this points to a very grave position for the conservative party, and I cannot see anything but a very heavy GE24 defeat, no matter whether it is under Sunak or another leader if they were stupid enough to attempt to remove Sunak.
The next 5 years are going to be hard toil and it will be interesting to see how Starmer and Reeves deal with the public sector unions on wages as they will be constrained by the markets, though I do believe they are alert to these dangers.
As for the conservative party I utterly reject the right and if @HYUFD predictions are remotely correct post GE 24 with the party turning right, then I am politically homeless as I will only support a one nation conservative party.
It does make me wonder if some of us who were members should re-join to take the fight for the soul of the party on, but to be honest 2024 is a special year for our family with my 80th birthday and our diamond wedding in May and I really have other priorities
We have a wonderful family including 5 grandchildren that are such a joy, sometimes it is just magic to step back from politics and realise that family and friends come first and there is more to life than arguing politics
Labour plan to give teachers £2,400 to stop them quitting
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-66078820
They’ve already pledged all and indeed far more than the money that ‘abolishing tax breaks for private schools’ would raise for other things. So how will they pay for this?
Why not forgive student date, a portion for each year worked in the state sector. Same with younger junior doctors.
And good luck for your very special 2024
But it's a tougher asl still than Selby. Blair's swing just gets Labour over the line.
There are economies you could make in education that would help. For example, abolishing SATS, OFQUAL and the DfE. None of them fulfil any useful purpose whatsoever, cost an absolute fortune, and indeed take up a lot of time and money that could spent on far more useful things. You could even add GCSEs to that, particularly given how badly designed the current set are.
But I very much doubt if Labour, who have always had centralising tendencies, would make them.
The risk is that this pledge unless they can show where the money would come from would be like the Tory pay rises - as there is no funding, they would come out of school budgets and make them even more impossible to balance.
Richard Murphy LOL.
If it's to be a credible claim you need a credible claimant.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-66067924
Wokesters put your thinking caps on.
As for Labour saying where the money will come from, they do. It's in your linked article. You clearly do not believe them but that is a different matter.
(The new terms for new student loans are sneaky and pretty evil. Lower interest rates, sure, but people paying money to the government from a lower income and for more years. Ignoring the way that the eventual write-off was a feature so that lower paid graduates weren't completely screwed over.)
Starmer is a bit crap. May be a lot crap. People don't care, because he isn't actively corrupt and evil as the government is. Yet.
https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/politics/rishi-sunak-told-meeting-hed-30370275
Nothing to see here.
I have not detected any change since.
Add in that he is quite the bully, and his involvement in anything is a red flag for me.
At Winchester, Oxford, Stanford, Goldman Sachs and McKinsey, Sunak was told that if he worked hard and solved problems, he would succeed in life. But political reward is more hard won. One cabinet minister put it this way: “In his mind the deal he struck with the universe is not working out. He’s very clever, but he knows that with cleverness comes responsibility to graft ... But if you work hard and do the right thing, the universe will reward you — and in his mind at the moment the universe is not keeping its side of the bargain.”
It's the risk with meritocracy, that those who succeed under it conclude that all their success is down to their talents and efforts, ignoring the inevitable contribution of luck. And whilst it can be a useful star to navigate your own life by, it's potentially a dangerous belief to have when leading a society.
It looks like a decent day, and everything in my garden has doubled in size. So I won't be around on PB.
Have a good day, all.
Providing that regulation doesn’t create a disadvantage to foreign competitors, big companies actually like regulation. Big departments full of compliance people are just added to the customers bill.
Small companies find it hard to compete in such an environment, though.
The Tory leader thinks of himself as a problem-solver and that’s how he’s been projected to the public since he arrived in Downing Street. Competence and delivery were supposed to be the motifs of his premiership.
Here’s the snag. If you are going to market yourself as someone who is good at fixing stuff, you had better be good at fixing stuff. You need to be especially successful at tackling the challenges that you personally identified as mission critical.
The scorecard currently reads five pledges made, zero pledges fulfilled. On the exam he set for himself, he’s a total fail.
The five pledges, originally conceived as a way for the Tories to regain some credibility and trust, have boomeranged on the prime minister. Pollsters report that fewer than one in 10 voters think the government is doing well on reducing inflation, cutting NHS waiting lists, bringing down the national debt or removing asylum seekers who cross the Channel. Mr Sunak’s personal approval ratings, which looked quite good in the circumstances when he took over at Number 10, have tumbled into deeply negative territory.
Having staked the reputation of his premiership on these vows, he has no choice but to pray that his score will be better than nil out of five by the time of the election. Yet even if he gets very lucky and somehow manages to claw his way to five out of five before he has to face the country, he shouldn’t expect to be congratulated. Millions will still be stuck on NHS waiting lists and millions more will have suffered a colossal crunch to their living standards.
At the beginning of the year, Mr Sunak promised he would bring people “peace of mind”. That’s another of Mr Fix-It’s pledges that have come completely unstuck.
through the policy is 32% lower than simply
recruiting and training 104 additional teachers.
Not only does this make the policy extremely
cost-effective, it also means that there is an
increase in the number of experienced maths
teachers in the classroom.
https://www.gatsby.org.uk/uploads/education/reports/pdf/retention-payment-summary-paper.pdf
The only issue is will it be a labour majority or coalition.
Asked about England’s aggressive “Bazball” tactics, Sunak made clear he thought teams should “agree there is a way they are going to play” and “stick with it”. But in what might have been a response to his own critics he said: “There are periods within games that require an approach which recognises the situation you are in.”
This was a politer way of saying, “Hold your nerve” — a comment Sunak made last weekend that has been interpreted as a tin-eared admonition to nervous homeowners.
One close ally said: “He’s been steady so far, but the time is fast approaching when we need some political Bazball.” More prosaically, another cabinet minister said: “Rishi needs electrodes attaching to his bollocks.”
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/meltdown-why-rishi-sunak-feels-his-deal-with-the-universe-isnt-working-out-vskxjkvrj
It is a nonsensical saving that clashes with reality.
SCENE: Orwellian interrogation room
INTERROGATOR: Would you like one of these to smoke?
VICTIM: No thank you.
INTERROGATOR: How about one of these?
VICTIM: I'd rather not.
INTERROGATOR: Well, I have to stick the electrodes somewhere...
And with that, I need to go and teach Sunday School. What were they thinking?
Like other utilities it is madness to try to pretend there can be a market. Or competition.
Starmer will be continuity Sunak with some tweaks. No ideas, no purpose and no money.
5 more wasted years
Sitting PM's should be kept well away from TMS in future, be they Cons or Lab or any other.
The questions will be what they have left to go at.
Boats? They can't stop them, so will have to go after everyone who is responsible. The French, the courts, leftie lawyers - the enemies of the people. Only problem is that nobody seems to care any more.
Culture? "Starmer doesn't know what a woman is" has had minimal resonance so far. With the real economy crashing around people's ears, I can't see how that is going to change.
Labour are worse? The Tories are still touting "there's no money left" despite the reality of an awful lot less money being left now. With towns and communities being as visibly shabby and crumbling as they are, it would take something truly special to persuade people that today is something precious that needs to be preserved...
SATS I'm less sure about; they need the stress taking out of them because teachers communicate it to the kids which is no good for anyone. But having standardised data should be important to individual schools as well as in the aggregate.
Clearly, they have obligations in terms of the supply of water and the treatment of sewage and they can rightly be held to account for those services but how they want to fund their business, whether by debt or additional capital is really a matter for them.
But proper regulation included financial security for companies we cannot afford to go bust. And this is where the regulators have failed. They have failed to risk test the balance sheets against what is, in historical terms, not a particularly large increase in interest rates. The fact this remarkable oversight occurred in an industry where the staff of the water companies and the regulator seem to be interchangeable is concerning.
The prospect of 18 months of blocking while they hope something turns up is deeply depressing.
If we are talking Tory Bazball, here's an idea.
How about a surprise declaration to have a few overs at them while the conditions are dire?
I wonder if that's because modern teaching covers what's on the exam, and nothing more, whereas when I was at school we were taught to speak/understand the language? The syllabus doesn't appear to have changed much. Has how exams are set become much more tightly defined than back then?
Sunak is a pound shop Cameron.
He simply isn't up to the job.
Presumably he'll resign from parliament following a GE defeat and a new Tory leader replacing him. A Richmond by-election ought to be a Tory hold.
Even so, we need that change. The abuses, mendacity and corruption of the last few years need to be punished, and punished severely. Democracy needs it.
The Rainbow Line.
Swapping Tweedle Dee for Tweedle Dum achieves nothing
All Sir K can do is under promise and slightly over deliver. And put in some degree of competence and integrity. Neither of those is all that hard. Good luck.
Biggest guaranteed growth policy: Rejoin the Single Market.
Starmer is the heir to Thatcher.
Almost certain the Tories would lose big. But they would go down fighting, and the cull of mince MPs would improve the party.
2. Same as 1.
3. etc.
(*Yep, that includes me.)
There really are limits to how many people I can clinically supervise and train at one time.
Not be scandal ridden.
Lead a Party that isn't fighting amongst itself.
Be a PM with the confidence that there isn't a constant background hum of "we should change the PM".
Have a government that is excited and grateful to be in government, rather than treating it as some tiresome obligation.
All of these are improvements.
But here we are with the “grown ups” in charge and the lie of the land is the same as Truss but with no prospect of much growth.
THe EU can’t provide it as they’re not particularly charging ahead of the UK and are as deep in the mire as we are
Starmer in office will be five years of deciding how many penises a woman can have and bribing doctors to do their jobs. Add in yet another slew of pointless laws and the country will be seizing up.
So again what’s he going to do that’s different?
So, we have VAT on private school fees without recognising that such a course will increase the cost of providing state education to more pupils by more than the money raised. We have the withdrawal of non Dom status without recognising that the money that won't be spent in this country as a consequence will cost more than the additional tax paid. We have windfall taxes without recognising the adverse consequences for investment in the UK will cost us more in lost employment, economic growth and even taxes paid which somehow "pays" for other indulgences. We have people who think that they "paid" for their pension whilst electing governments of all stripes who ran a ponzi scheme using those taxes for current spending.
But it is so much easier to pretend than to have serious politics and real hard choices.
But the ships still sinking
Admit it - everything was better under Labour!
Rawnsley today.
Curiously enough just tiny subeditorial changes are needed to put this thought on the sports page.
And in such circumstances it's better to have someone who will at least try to maintain the lifeboats rather than having sold them off to a bloke they knew at school who they just met again in the pub.
"This 15 year workforce plan is not fully funded. The £2.4bn for new training doesn't cover the increased salaries - there is a huge revenue bill the NHS will need funding as these roles come through. The plan is more aspiration than a plan of how it will be done #NHSWorkforcePlan"
https://twitter.com/ShaunLintern/status/1674745885475893249?t=xr6FaLb_-RSIj-COCj91Lg&s=19
Let’s see we had Blair brown splits, lots of corruption and scandals, mandelson taking his voters for granted so it’s plus ca change.
The only difference being Tony did Iraq.
Incidentally I reckon French is probably the only GCSE I could just sit down and pass today without having to relearn anything.
The MSM tend not to be as interested in the opposition. Does anyone know what's happened to their chief whip?
Blair sold them in a posh restaurant. He wouldnt grubby himself in a pub.