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Sunak – are we approaching the end days? – politicalbetting.com
Sunak – are we approaching the end days? – politicalbetting.com
This morning sees what are probably the worst front pages for the Tories for a month or so.
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As for Sunak: "never glad, confident morning again", but if he is replaced, then obliteration is all the more certain.
All the choices for the Conservatives are terrible, and it may even be that the current situation is not as bad as it is going to get.
Edit: first and the first first for a very long time... 🙂
That said, TINA remains in charge. The only possible option to take it to the General Election flounced out rather than being forced out by the Privileges Committee, and anyone with any ambition on the Tory benches would rather bide their time to be LOTO in due course.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-66708226
"Concrete tests ordered on 1990s court buildings
The government has ordered urgent tests on courts built in the 1990s after dangerous concrete was found at a site in north London, the BBC has learnt. Harrow Crown Court closed indefinitely last month because reinforced autoclaved aerated concrete (RAAC) was found during improvement works.
But following inquiries by the BBC, the government said that Harrow Crown Court had not been included in that survey because it was opened in 1991. The survey only examined court buildings opened in the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s because those were deemed to be the ones at risk."
https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1698834460131651883
Based on what we’ve heard from advertisers, ADL seems to be responsible for most of our revenue loss.
Giving them maximum benefit of the doubt, I don’t see any scenario where they’re responsible for less than 10% of the value destruction, so ~$4 billion.
Document discovery of all communications between The ADL and advertisers will tell the full story.
It’s a fuck-up, but she does “human” reasonably ok, which is a rare thing in Tory politics.
As for Sunak, he is of course fucked.
Unlike Keegan, he’s *personally* responsible for slashing school repair budgets.
The Mail AND the Telegraph are turning against him.
Not just with these front pages, you can see the commentariat start to re-position itself, too.
Meanwhile, Keir’s re-shuffle has quietly impressed the more thoughtful analysts with its decisive and lack of sentimental focus on being a government-in-waiting.
I would not rule out a kamikaze leadership bid by Suella Braverman, but not until after next year’s locals.
In the shorter-term, I think the Tories lose Mid-Beds even if Labour/LD cannot agree who to rally behind.
https://x.com/americaelige/status/1698847559517626659
Milei (LLA, right|libertarian): 38%
Massa (UP, centre-left): 27%
Bullrich (JxC, centre-right): 25%
Schiaretti (HxNP, centre): 6%
...
Fieldwork: 15-23 August 2023
Sample size: 2,000
https://londonist.com/2013/10/fly-through-17th-century-london?fbclid=IwAR0E-Gb_hFZko50W50I9jhtSuH5reUjcIlTyw71UzZEJ6Mmj0L8knRq6Pos
I caught the Keegan rant and didn't think it was so bad. Sure, as a Politician she should know there are cameras and recording equipment everywhere and she would never be safely off-air, but given it was an aside after the interview ended I think a few honest opinions and a bit of fruity language were perfectly reasonable.
What is interesting is that the Daily Hate-Mail should turn on her. (Does nobody there ever utter an expletive?) They have an agenda. This does not look good for her, and even worse for Sunak. The Mail speaks for What's Left Of The Tory Party and if he's lost them, he's on his way out, either before or by virtue of a General Election.
Will that help the Tories? Will it fuck. (Apologies to the snowflakes at the Mail but sometimes I can't help my language.) There is no Saviour, no Prince Over The Water, no option other than to keep buggering on with what might pass in some quarters for half-decent, competent Government, and hope the coming drubbing doesn't annihilate them completely.
Lose Mid-Beds? Yes, and High-Beds, Low-Beds, Flower Beds and any other Beds they try to lie in. Meanwhile, Starmer quietly prepares for the takeover.
Can't happen too soon, for everyone's sake.
They'll be doing well to finish above The Monster Raving Loony Party, which looks increasingly credible compared to the Boys And Girls In Blue.
Toodle pip. Nice morning. Gonna take the dogs out early.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2023/09/04/kim-jong-un-russia-vladimir-putin-arms-deal/
Meanwhile, Ukraine continues to receive NATO weapons systems, and is having pilots trained to fly F-16s, as they edge closer to cutting off the supply routes to Crimea.
Yesterday I watched with astonishment the unfolding drama. It is an utter shambles, and not exactly the first of such these past few years.
When the Daily Mail goes with a lead headline like that you know you're in a big trouble.
It may take a few weeks for the opinion polls to reflect this (look at the timelag following Black Wednesday) but expect some bigger Labour leads to come.
When Labour mess up, which they assuredly will, I will join the chorus of condemnation if I still have breath. So let's not dress this up with anything other than what it is: utter chaos.
Why would anyone vote for this shitshow?
The problem here is Sunak's political skills, not his ability to administrate. That’s what he needs coaching on - particularly his behaviours under stress, ranging from desperate to petulant (neither of which build confidence) - as it's going to get worse.
But above all that significant numbers of children are now having to stay home again.
It all adds to a sense of a Government in disarray, whilst the country crumbles around them ... literally.
It's incompetence.
Not just communication.
If so, it's a pointless experiment, as Trump has been running the same one for nearly a decade...
They have, in their day, pissed off a lot of people. But it would be incredibly hard to win a defamation case against them, because you not only have to prove that anything they wrote was (a) untrue, (b) defamatory and (c) - and this is also the real kicker - that it was written with a wanton disregard for the truth.
That last one is an incredibly high bar. And the ADL has some of the best lawyers in America on staff.
Here's the thing, though.
It's easy to be a free speech absolutist about with which you agree. The measure of your commitment, though, is when there is speech that is inconvenient to you.
By contrast she really dislikes Sunak, for all the reasons cited below by myself and others. But, I suspect, above all because she believes it was Sunak who shafted her beloved Boris.
I don't know what % of the electorate they represent but they helped land the buffoon a 2019 majority and I can't see any sign at all of them voting Conservative again next time. My friend is resigned to a Labour victory. She's not even sure she will vote Conservative, for the first time in her life.
On the other hand, if it's Milei v Bullrich, then it could be very exciting.
I don't share the values of SKS, or their hangers-on quite frankly, and I know Labour will be coming for me.
This site is as its best when we have a variety of opinions, I really think the attacking of Heathener really has gone on too long when the posts are far more interesting to read than “why is everything so woke” or “aliens” or “COVID was started in a lab this far-right blog post says so”.
This one will smoulder and flare for years.
Jettison Rishi at the end of October (which is a shame- but man, he was poor yesterday) replace with a shiny new leader and pretend the new boss isn't the old boss and hope the voters don't realise the sleight of hand.
Although who would want to take on the Con leader role to be PM for likely, 5 minutes?
Yesterday was a terrible day for Rishi and the Conservatives. Can they come back for a GE win? Yes, but not with Rishi.
If he'd cut costs sharply at the start and introduced some subscription revenues, but left things broadly alone, then advertising revenue would have held up. Total revenues, with Twitter Blue and content revenue sharing, might well have ended up rising, even while costs were being cut.
Twitter would have become profitable, and he would have been in a much stronger position to do what he wanted.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-66710706
The mind-blowing thing is that Sunak was presented with all the evidence of the problems and how serious they were, and decided to cut the repairs budget in half. I just don’t see how you come back from a decision like that. It’s unforgivable.
You're apparently in a well-paid job, and have a comfortable life. You live in a society where lots - millions, in fact - of people don't have the advantages you have. Yes, you pay lots of tax. But many of the things that are wrong with this country can only be fixed with an increased tax take - and the question is where that comes from.
Someone has to pay tax - the question, as always, is how much of the burden falls on which individuals.
I think that may well be the case. Not least because even though Starmer lacks charisma, he has a ruthlessness and organisational ability that gets stronger all the time.
I don't think that bodes well for government, as all governments need to listen, but it is going to win him a significant majority.
How much would you like me to pay? 70%? 80%? 100%?
Sentiments like this are stagnating the country and will lead to a brain drain from Britain, which will cost the exchequer not add to it.
Water firms illegally spilled sewage on dry days - data suggests https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-66670132
I'm fairly convinced it was the most expensive troll in history.
Paul Dacre's staff briefings are rumoured to be nicknamed the vagina monologues.
https://www.theguardian.com/media/shortcuts/2012/mar/27/daily-mail-very-very-brief-guide
How many times has Sunak’s promised reshuffle been postponed now?
Now it seems RAAC panels can disintegrate suddenly and without warning. Does that mean rooms containing RAAC should not be used? Keegan referred vaguely yesterday to mitigations. What are these mitigations?
Does anyone know more about this?
We spend too much and don't have a broad enough tax base with enough growth.
That's the root of our problems.
1) Yes, but we don't know whether half of them have it because the DfE have been dragging their feet over this for five years and schools (and for the matter of that, hospitals, courts and other public buildings) have very little money to spare to do it themselves;
2) Essentially, not using the rooms is the mitigation. This may mean relocating to other classrooms or in extreme cases other sites. Whether money will be forthcoming is currently uncertain as the government keeps changing what it's saying.
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-norfolk-63137642
It must incentivise the operating team to get a move on, when the operating theatre roof is being held up by props...
Of course, as MoonRabbit speculated yesterday this issue could be a big win for the Tories if it spurs them to eject loser Sunak and replace with a winner.
I´m thinking something like more nasties lurking in the NHS during flu season, or another Brexit trade balls up...
Musk clearly isn't completely stupid (unlike say Cummings) but he is incredibly and increasingly arrogant. He seems to have come to genuinely believe everything he has achieved is due to his own extraordinary brilliance and therefore anything that goes wrong is Not His Fault. It must be the deepstate. Or the workers. Or his lawyers. Or in this case, the Jews.
His record doesn't justify such boundless self belief, and the obvious and entirely avoidable mistakes he is making with Twitter should ram home to him that he's mortal like the rest of us. I doubt if they will though.
Which is why Tory MPs won't risk it and will keep Sunak in place. He has also had success in cutting inflation etc
The problem is that organisations, especially large ones, have an impressive ability to absorb money with no result evident. Apart from the organisation being a bit larger.
Tony Blair realised this and made fiscal discipline a priority.
However, what we need is something stronger than that. Both parties appear to have given up on the idea of increasing productivity by the methods that actually work - as proved in the real world many times, in many organisations.
Right now, it's terrible - they've frozen the bands, and jacked up the burden through fiscal drag - but at least they're talking about tax cuts and reducing the burden as an aspiration.
By contrast, I don't hear Labour talking at all about this. Not only would their tax on private schools cost me thousands we don't have, and throw my kids out of the school they love, but I expect Labour would also increase the additional rate, and extenuate fiscal drag as well.
Now, you might not agree with me on all of that but at the very least you can hopefully appreciate why I might not be enamoured by it.
People are furious that the Tories are still giving out exemptions to the water companies, and the fact that several of these companies or their private equity backers are Conservative donors only stokes the wrath.
But if you want improved public services, it will hurt people financially. The questions become: do you want improved public services, and do you want people who can already not afford to put food on the table to have *less* money, or reduced services?
You're in a blooming fortunate position. Yes, there are iniquities in the way tax brackets are arranged, which should be fixed. But lots of people work just as hard as you, or even harder, and don't get the same rewards.
You need someone like Penny Dreadful or Tommy Tugs. If you go Braverman, you better hope she has off-the wall, industrial-scale hanging and flogging populism up her sleeve**.
** I suspect she has.
Labour at least might address the issues as to why our taxes are rising under Sunak.
The biggest issue in the state today is not spending on public sector employees, its that increasingly the burden of paying taxes is put on fewer and fewer working people, while those who aren't working for their income get away without paying their taxes.
If Labour can resolve the latter, then the Tories could when in office next time cut taxes, once everyone is paying their fair share. Otherwise, taxes are only going to ratchet upwards as if fewer people pay them, they each need to pay more, and Sunak's Tories are refusing to admit the problem which is why they're raising taxes.
If over a few years prices go up by 20%, but pay goes up by 22%, and tax thresholds scale with inflation, then you are better off at the end of the period.
The problem, the reason for the pain, is one entirely and solely of Sunak's making.
If over a few years prices go up by 20%, but pay goes up by 22%, and tax thresholds were frozen, then you are much worse off at the end of the period.
The problem isn't inflation, the problem is fiscal drag. Sunak caused fiscal drag. It is entirely and solely his choice.
Also, if you don't use a particular service, it's easy to think that that service is wasteful.
Almost Shakespeare 🤔
But then shoved them back in. Fiscal drag as you say. At a time of high inflation, about to get a boost when they finally impose customs controls and finish off Brexit (that's why the delay, apart from incompetence). Absolutely no changes to tax allowances to reflect that. In fact some have been reduced - savings interest allowance, CGT allowance, etc.
That's what is happening to *everyone* - except the pensioners, insofar as NI is really an income tax which hits the workers.
What Labout might or might not do is irrelevant, by comparison, especially this far out from an election.
You sound like a Glasgow football fan trying to excuse paedophilia in his club by wondering what the opposition club's scouts do in dark corners, and claiming that the opposition trainer just might possibly be a cannibal.
However, as was shown yesterday in the HoC yesterday, "Britain is literally falling apart under 13 years of Conservative rule" is a zinger and super effective to seed (yet) further discontent with this govt.
The only reprieve for them would be if the minutes to a secret meeting in 1997 were somehow discovered wherein Tony Blair, Gordon Brown, Jeremy Corbyn, and Keir Starmer together conspired to put RAAC into every school and hospital.
Which is entirely possible, of course. But still Rishi I think is going down and he will go down screaming "it's not fair" in that irritating way of his.
That's the root of the problem.
If everyone earning the same amount pays the same taxes, then those who are overtaxed could pay less tax.
Taxes suck, they should be as low as possible, but they should be consistently applied and unavoidable. Picking a lucky few who don't need to pay taxes just increases the burden on everyone else. When those who aren't paying taxes aren't just a few, then it massively increases the burden on everyone else.
But that's getting dangerously near medium-term planning, which we don't do.
The hospital is undergoing a major programme to support the roof with huge wooden ceiling struts (so if parts of it collapse, it's less likely to hurt people).
Each one of these pieces of wood is counted as a "prop". So as they are only part way through the programme, we can expect the number of "props" to rise to even higher numbers over the next year.
And that will be the case until 2030 when the majority of the building will be classed as unsafe to work in.
All very reassuring. You would definitely be spending most of your time looking up at the ceiling.
Fundamental to these is not being at constant war with the staff. That is simply bad management.
Politics often doesn't work the same way.
Crumbling schools is the perfect illustration of life under the Conservatives. We pay record taxes. We have crappy infrastructure and services where you now have to pay a spiv for a driving test - corruption is bedding in across all sectors. Schools are already buggered - teachers having to spend their own poor salaries on food and clothes for poor kids abandoned by the system.
And now this. They stopped replacing schools. They stopped repairing schools. And faced with repeated warnings about schools literally collapsing around the kids they cut funding for that as well.
As so utterly infuriates @Casino_Royale when we point to the evidence, his party Do Not Care about the lives of ordinary people. They simply aren't important. Which is why this scandal is already resonating across the political spectrum so loudly.
Is Sunak about to face a visit from Mrs Brady? I think that depends on how he responds to this. A starter for 10 is reversing yesterday's "go fuck yourselves" statement from the Treasury and finding money to fix this mess. Some genuine humility - "we got this wrong whilst we were busy fighting Covid, we'll sort it" - would help. But I'm not sure he can do either.
If he tries to bat it aside and Tory MPs start feeling the heat then he will be gone. But replaced by what? And when Braverman or Hunt or Anderson tries to claim they have a mandate to govern, the howling laughter will only sink them even lower in the polls.
Give up.