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Starmer should do PMQs even when Sunak isn’t there – politicalbetting.com
Starmer should do PMQs even when Sunak isn’t there – politicalbetting.com
One thing we are learning about Sunak is that he doesn’t like PMQs and his team is going to great lengths to restrict the number of his appearances. Hence this last week and next we find that the PM will not be facing the Commons and Starmer.
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Yes Starmer should crack on in Rishi's absense.
So this is what all the fuss was about.
Honest Bob Jenrick, patriotic national treasure or callous barsteward.
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2023/jul/07/robert-jenrick-has-cartoon-murals-painted-over-at-childrens-asylum-centre
Also he doesn't need to do anything. He is winning regardless and effect on PMQs on the outside world is massively overblown, its just noise to most people (it is as much about rallying your own troops).
Anyone who says "I'm not racist but *racist thing here*" has demonstrated that they quite clearly are racist.
A devoutly Muslim Afghan would have every reason to fear that an influx of white people would mean that Afghanistan would cease to be a devoutly Muslim country.
In other parts of the world, growth in the size of a minority group may lead the current majority group to fear that they will cease to be the dominant political group.
You may not agree with that outlook, but there is nothing irrational about it.
The first is racist, the second in my view is not
Looks like Sunak is interested in breaching the 20% floor.
Perhaps they'll get it?
Labour shortages and big wage rises mean that employers will have to give serious thought to investment.
Price rises caused by external shocks mean we can no longer rely upon imports of cheap goods to keep down inflation.
Interest rate rises mean we can't rely upon ever increasing asset prices, and that zombie companies will go under.
But, it requires new ways of thinking.
What a shame we have a zombie government in place that's doing absolutely nothing to create a competitive environment where those opportunities can be realised.
Instead they just seem to want to further sweat wages for taxes to protect those asset prices and shield those not working from paying for what they require.
If winning at any cost to keep the gravy train rolling is the aim. Why not?
ETA the Savile smear will come as a deniable, below the radar, social media attack, not at PMQs or the Number 10 lectern.
I’d rather the Tories didn’t go there though. We see from the States, where negative campaigning gets us, way more heat than light.
Now when you only have 1 x 30 min session, your excuses for not attending is really dog eat my homework.
I would equally object to taking in 20 million westboro baptists as I would 20 millions fundamentalist muslims. The more people that come here that don't value a secular liberal state then the more chance we end up losing it.
Broad argues that the tri-polar nuclear weapons world that is developing is inherently less stable than our current bipolar world. (I agree, and have had similar thoughts for some time, though not nearly as well expressed.)
We made considerable progress in reducing nuclear weapons, when there were just two nations with large stock piles. Among American leaders, I would give the largest credit for that success to George H. W. Bush. But even Barack Obama, incompetent as he is, was able to achieve some reductions.
I do not see an obvous diplomatic strategy to follow. But there are some bright commenters here. Perhaps one of them can make some suggestions.
(Physicists will like his metaphor, even if, like me, they are distressed by his conclusion.)
If Sunak wants to attack Starmer personally, he'd be better finding something else. But I suspect there isn't much to find. Starmer's cupboard is, I think, pretty devoid of skeletons.
I think for the Conservatives and their media shills they are now so desperate it doesn't matter whether an allegation has any foundation, but what damage can be exacted, fairly or unfairly.
We don't want to go on a bear hunt any more.
There are of course exceptions - Greece being one though I'd argue ND's victory was less impressive than seemed likely a few months back.
In Holland, Norway, Spain, Austria, Sweden, Germany and Denmark the incumbent Government has lost ground or is struggling against opponents on one or both flanks. In Italy, the FdL are in under Meloni but it remains to be seen if they have any answers.
Whether the challengers are Chega (Portugal), VOX (Spain), AfD (Germany) or BBB (Holland), the message of anti-immigrant populism is similar - is it "right wing"? No, not really, much of what these parties support is actually more socialist in nature with a lot of State intervention.
Combines two of PB's favourite topics, the cheating Aussies and a cashless society.
A controversy-filled Ashes series took its most absurd turn yet when Cricket Australia vehemently denied suggestions that wicketkeeper-batsman Alex Carey walked out of a Leeds barber without paying a £30 bill.
Sir Alastair Cook, the former England captain, claimed on BBC Test Match Special that, when having a pre-Test haircut, he had got chatting to his barber.
“The barber says the Australians had been in,” Cook said. “He didn’t know his cricket very well, so he was telling me what they looked like.
“He said Marnus [Labuschagne], the funny one. Then David Warner had a haircut, Usman [Khawaja] had a haircut and he says, ‘Oh there’s another one …’
“He says, ‘One of them, I think Alex is his name’. I said, ‘Alex Carey, wicketkeeper?’
“He says, ‘He hasn’t paid’. It was one of those cash-only barbers, and he promised him he would do a transfer later on in the day.
“True story. He might have paid by now.”
The barber, Adam Mahmood of Doc Barnet’s Barber Shop, explained his version of events to the Sun.
“They all came in just before we shut,” he said. “We cut their hair and had a great laugh.
“But we don’t accept cards and Alex said he had no cash on him.
“Well, there’s a Tesco cash machine literally round the corner he could have run to. He could have nipped back to their hotel and been no more than five minutes but instead he said he would transfer it.
“Maybe he forgot. I’m giving him the benefit of the doubt but if it’s not paid by Monday, I won’t be happy.”
Remarkably, the Australia camp reacted angrily to the suggestion that Carey has not paid, saying that he had not even had a haircut in Leeds and that while another player had been to the barber’s, he had paid. They said they would return with the receipt later on Saturday to clear up any confusion.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/cricket/2023/07/08/alex-carey-barber-alastair-cook-leeds-australia-headingley/
From February 2022.
Rishi Sunak has distanced himself from Boris Johnson's comments on Sir Keir Starmer and Jimmy Savile, as he was quizzed on the resignation of the Prime Minister's head of policy.
The Chancellor was questioned in the wake of Munira Mirza's resignation, who condemned the Prime Minister's "inappropriate" slur at Sir Keir Starmer.
Mr Johnson made a disproved claim in the Commons on Monday that Sir Keir failed to prosecute Savile when he was director of public prosecutions.
He said: "Instead this leader of the opposition - a former director of public prosecution who used his time prosecuting journalists and failing to prosecute Jimmy Savile, as far as I can see - he chose to use this moment to continually pre-judge a police inquiry."
Mr Sunak later told a press conference: "Being honest I wouldn't have said it and I'm glad that the Prime Minister clarified what he meant."
https://www.lbc.co.uk/politics/boris-johnson-backtracks-jimmy-savile-starmer-slur/
£10 for haircut and £500 to hire a tractor to drag him backwards through some hedges for two hours.
My name is Leonadamus, PBer of PBers;
Look on my Wallet, ye Lowly, and rejoice!
Everything inside remains. From the bustle
Of Camden Road boundless but for ULEZ
The Wack happy traveler wanders on beyond
The most recommended (= liked) comment in the times is: 'Sunak when Johnson repeated the lie about Savile: “I wouldn’t have said it”
Sunak now: “I’m saying it” '
The other comments are not hopeful for the tories either.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opinion_polling_for_the_2023_Dutch_general_election
Nevertheless, it’s interesting.
A centre-right / liberal coalition is being brought down by immigration and net zero policy.
I would like to visit the Museum of British Art.
Yale now publishes the Pevsners and a lot of great epigraphs on British art and architecture.
At the moment Sunak and Hunt are refusing nurses and teachers even a below inflation pay rise, so that is the public sector vote gone to Labour (and to be fair many of the Cabinet from Barclay to Braverman to Chalk to Keegan think they are wrong on that).
Sunak is also a Leaver and beyond the Windsor framework for NI is refusing to do anything to soften Boris' Brexit deal so that is the Remainer vote gone to Labour and the LDs.
Sunak is also not doing much to stop the boats and reduce immigation, so that is seeing hardline redwall Brexiteers go RefUK or even back to Labour.
Hunt is also refusing to even consider any pre election tax cuts, so that is the Thatcherite on economics vote either staying home or also going RefUK.
Until inflation and interest rates really start to come down mortgage holders will mostly keep voting Labour having switched from the Tories after the Truss budget.
So who is still voting Tory? Well mostly Leave voting home owning pensioners who aren't too bothered about immigration and fiscal conservatives working in the private sector who own or nearly own outright their properties and are on a high income and not too affected by cost of living.
Not much scope for re electing lots of Tory MPs with just them however
Oddly enough, that might be the kind of economic and trading realtionship for which a majority of the British population could vote. It might be our way back but it requires the anti-EU populists to win power in enough countries to basically take the EU back to EFTA.
No successor has reversed it because it suits them.
It’s hardly a cheap jibe against Blair, though.
Recent Tory government, and Sunak is as bad as if not worse than his predecessors, routinely ignore Parliament. But it does retain some teeth, notably through its select committees, despite having one of the weaker Speakers of modern times.
They may hate the traditional centre-left and social democrat politics but that's not because they are fans of a "small state", far from it, their belief is the state can and should do more.
I wonder if he might be tempted to have one more go? Though there's only so many times you can come back from injury.
Such a shame he couldn't quite manage a win yesterday.
You asked me yesterday about 'reaction will survive - reaction always survives,' in 1906.
I thought it might be Clynes who said it.
Having checked, it was an unnamed Labour MP writing in Justice on the results.
Will Starmer reverse this? I suspect not for Labour are as much authoritarian centralisers as the Conservatives, two cheeks of the same, as @malcolmg would put it.
As it is, Euroscepticism at large, in almost all its forms, simply leaves the ideological space clear for coteries of hardcore federalists in Brussels.
Perry Anderson is a rare exception in English.
Remainers and Brexiters alike should read his Eurosceptic essay (15,000 words) freely available on the LRB website.
* the reality is that you can't do that without being incredibly protectionist i.e anti-market.
You summarise well why the Tories are struggling, but the solution to that is to smartly try to do well on some of those issues and come across as better than the Opposition.
The Government seems to have given up. And if they give up and just rely on the racist vote, that will drive away more votes than it wins them.
There were those in 1996 who wanted Clarke to cut taxes before the election - he refused and did so in order to provide for the long term health of the economy even though that inheritance was passed to a Labour Chancellor who, in all fairness, kept to Clarke's spending plans for the first two years.
While the short term may look bleak, the longer term does give cause for optimism. Conservatism and the Conservative Party has proved spectacularly adept at re-invention in opposition - it may take a while but it does happen. Trying to formulate a vision of a Conservative Britain in the mid-2030s requires a lot of thought but it has to start somewhere - I'd offer the thought ecological conservatism is a thing - preservation (conservation if you like) should be a vital part of Conservative thinking yet combining nature and technology and taking the best from both to provide sustainable economies which can both enrich humanity and the planet.
Mortgage holders won't come back either until interest rates and inflation are well down from current levels whatever the Tories cultural position
Apart from all the others that have ever been tried.
When things go boom, the country has a way of muddling through. Middling through isn't the best option, and it'd be better to see an aspirational government elected with a vision to improve things, but I don't see it happening any time soon.
But as disappointing as merely muddling through is, it's categorically better than any non democratic alternatives.
Culture is almost by definition societal so I don't even understand what it means to suggest it is a private.
Personally I wouldn't want to live in any society that has a big majority of any fundamentalist branch of a religion whether Muslim, Christian, Hindu, Jewish, Buddhist, Wiccan or even Jedi. That is not being racist as I don't care what colour people are or background they have, but a reflection that a pluralist society is better.
Religion and race are being conflated in this discussion when they are quite separate, if demographically linked.
Take a guess which is the right tyre for the conditions?