I don't think these attacks on Reform will work. The aim is to try and destroy them by revealing their 'true nature' but it just keeps getting shrugged off by Farage. So the attacks fail, and the by product is that the discourse is normalised. It feels like the overton window shifting.
Yes. There is a fashion on TikTok for young kids in France and Germany to say “yeah I’m a racist so fucking what”
The term has lost a lot of its negative power through overuse and now it has a kind of mildly transgressive chic - which kids love of course. That’s how you shock the elders these days. Say “yeah I’m a racist” on TikTok. Cue heart attack in your parents
Saying “fuck the toreeez” and going to Glastonbury is what people like @Heathener do
Again I don’t believe Britain will be immune from this trend, we are merely behind the curve
Is Britain ahead, behind or on a totally different curve? Time will tell. Brexit and Johnson gave the populist mad right wing nonsense thing a bad name with anyone under 50
My thinking is Brexit has delayed our swerve to the populist right - but not necessarily averted it. We gave people the vote and they vented their anger - that has bought us time
With that time we need to see a proper right wing government emerge that will actually do proper right wing things. Then maybe we can dodge the whole Le Pen shit altogether -
But if that doesn’t happen then it seems inevitable to me that we will follow Italy France Sweden the USA Holland etc
I agree with your basic premise, it’s just that I don’t think they want right wing polices so much as a Government that does what it is told to.
Brexit was a cry of frustration because nobody ever listened to the public saying they wanted to go no further. And then they got disenchanted that it still didn’t happen, and we got 2019.
But I think it has led to volatility meaning Starmer isn’t guaranteed his second term, and the Tories aren’t guaranteed to replace him.
Boris Johnson fucked up in setting the post-Brexit income thresholds too low, which resulted in far more people coming than was anticipated.
His successors were then slow - very slow - to recognize this.
I find it astonishing that it wasn't recognized by either Johnson or Sunak (and his Home Secretaries) that numbers coming were way above forecast, and were resulting in much higher net migration than was the case when the UK was part of the EU.
And here Starmer is a very lucky General.
Firstly, higher income thresholds were put in place for visas. Now, you can argue that £38,700 is still too low (or alternatively that it is far too simplistic, given that a 21 year old earning £39k is very different to a 45 year old), but it is still almost 40% above the old threshold. That means that a very substantial number of people who were eligible for visas before, are no longer eligible. And it is Starmer who who will see the benefit.
Secondly, a large chunk of the increase in net immigration in the last three years has been student numbers. We've gone from 180k student (and dependent) visas issued a year to something like 600k. Based on experience most of those people will go home at the end of their courses. But there is an approximately three year period during which the number of students (and dependents) resident in the UK is rising fast. Once you get to the 3 or 4 year anniversary - and particularly if it is matched by smaller numbers of students coming - then the net impact falls dramatically.
Starmer, if he does absolutely nothing, will be Prime Minister, when net immigration numbers fall quite significantly. Because maths.
I don't think these attacks on Reform will work. The aim is to try and destroy them by revealing their 'true nature' but it just keeps getting shrugged off by Farage. So the attacks fail, and the by product is that the discourse is normalised. It feels like the overton window shifting.
Yes. There is a fashion on TikTok for young kids in France and Germany to say “yeah I’m a racist so fucking what”
The term has lost a lot of its negative power through overuse and now it has a kind of mildly transgressive chic - which kids love of course. That’s how you shock the elders these days. Say “yeah I’m a racist” on TikTok. Cue heart attack in your parents
Saying “fuck the toreeez” and going to Glastonbury is what people like @Heathener do
Again I don’t believe Britain will be immune from this trend, we are merely behind the curve
Is Britain ahead, behind or on a totally different curve? Time will tell. Brexit and Johnson gave the populist mad right wing nonsense thing a bad name with anyone under 50
My thinking is Brexit has delayed our swerve to the populist right - but not necessarily averted it. We gave people the vote and they vented their anger - that has bought us time
With that time we need to see a proper right wing government emerge that will actually do proper right wing things. Then maybe we can dodge the whole Le Pen shit altogether -
But if that doesn’t happen then it seems inevitable to me that we will follow Italy France Sweden the USA Holland etc
So after 14 years of Tory government and the implementation of the totemic political project of the populist reactionary right, our next move must be to the populist reactionary right, otherwise we might swing too far to the right.
What an unwelcome prognosis (!) for anybody on the left or centre or centre right of politics, ie the majority of people. Have you checked with them? I bet you haven't. Because what I reckon they'd say, most of them, is how about we give good government a whirl first? It's been a while since we tried that.
This government have been populist in rhetoric only. In reality they have had the highest immigration and highest tax on record. And have sold off a ton of top notch British companies. It hasn't been populist in implementation. Not one bit. Until we get the implementation of populist right wing policies then Farage and co will remain ever present
Possibly. Because some people are thick.
BTW: Companies get sold. It is called international capitalism, and unless they are nationalised industries, the government doesn't do it.
The French operate under capitalist system, it doesn't stop them from blocking foreign takeovers of companies with a national interest or strategic
I don't think these attacks on Reform will work. The aim is to try and destroy them by revealing their 'true nature' but it just keeps getting shrugged off by Farage. So the attacks fail, and the by product is that the discourse is normalised. It feels like the overton window shifting.
Yes. There is a fashion on TikTok for young kids in France and Germany to say “yeah I’m a racist so fucking what”
The term has lost a lot of its negative power through overuse and now it has a kind of mildly transgressive chic - which kids love of course. That’s how you shock the elders these days. Say “yeah I’m a racist” on TikTok. Cue heart attack in your parents
Saying “fuck the toreeez” and going to Glastonbury is what people like @Heathener do
Again I don’t believe Britain will be immune from this trend, we are merely behind the curve
Is Britain ahead, behind or on a totally different curve? Time will tell. Brexit and Johnson gave the populist mad right wing nonsense thing a bad name with anyone under 50
My thinking is Brexit has delayed our swerve to the populist right - but not necessarily averted it. We gave people the vote and they vented their anger - that has bought us time
With that time we need to see a proper right wing government emerge that will actually do proper right wing things. Then maybe we can dodge the whole Le Pen shit altogether -
But if that doesn’t happen then it seems inevitable to me that we will follow Italy France Sweden the USA Holland etc
So after 14 years of Tory government and the implementation of the totemic political project of the populist reactionary right, our next move must be to the populist reactionary right, otherwise we might swing too far to the right.
What an unwelcome prognosis (!) for anybody on the left or centre or centre right of politics, ie the majority of people. Have you checked with them? I bet you haven't. Because what I reckon they'd say, most of them, is how about we give good government a whirl first? It's been a while since we tried that.
I’m not saying this is great nor am I expressing a desire for this
I am extrapolating from the facts as they are. And as we now know, I am extremely good at this
Be afraid, be very afraid
And now I’m going back to e-biking pointlessly around grassy Breton clifftops in the sun while listening to Jacques Loussier do Bach. Who know that could be such fun?
I don't think these attacks on Reform will work. The aim is to try and destroy them by revealing their 'true nature' but it just keeps getting shrugged off by Farage. So the attacks fail, and the by product is that the discourse is normalised. It feels like the overton window shifting.
Yes. There is a fashion on TikTok for young kids in France and Germany to say “yeah I’m a racist so fucking what”
The term has lost a lot of its negative power through overuse and now it has a kind of mildly transgressive chic - which kids love of course. That’s how you shock the elders these days. Say “yeah I’m a racist” on TikTok. Cue heart attack in your parents
Saying “fuck the toreeez” and going to Glastonbury is what people like @Heathener do
Again I don’t believe Britain will be immune from this trend, we are merely behind the curve
Is Britain ahead, behind or on a totally different curve? Time will tell. Brexit and Johnson gave the populist mad right wing nonsense thing a bad name with anyone under 50
My thinking is Brexit has delayed our swerve to the populist right - but not necessarily averted it. We gave people the vote and they vented their anger - that has bought us time
With that time we need to see a proper right wing government emerge that will actually do proper right wing things. Then maybe we can dodge the whole Le Pen shit altogether -
But if that doesn’t happen then it seems inevitable to me that we will follow Italy France Sweden the USA Holland etc
So after 14 years of Tory government and the implementation of the totemic political project of the populist reactionary right, our next move must be to the populist reactionary right, otherwise we might swing too far to the right.
What an unwelcome prognosis (!) for anybody on the left or centre or centre right of politics, ie the majority of people. Have you checked with them? I bet you haven't. Because what I reckon they'd say, most of them, is how about we give good government a whirl first? It's been a while since we tried that.
I’m not saying this is great nor am I expressing a desire for this
I am extrapolating from the facts as they are. And as we now know, I am extremely good at this
Be afraid, be very afraid
And now I’m going back to e-biking pointlessly around grassy Breton clifftops in the sun while listening to Jacques Loussier do Bach. Who know that could be such fun?
Sky news showing a visibly angry Rishi Sunak condemning and actually saying the racist slur against him by the Reform volunteer
Apparently the police are now investigating whether an offence has been committed and the Sky report is not going to help Reform with highlighting their pro Putin, racist and misogynistic views
Time for conservatives to wake up and vote for the party to defend it from these vile views and characters
Sunak has never looked more authentic. That is genuine anger - and he is right to speak out as he has. However, this is also the bloke who has spent the last couple of years snuggling up to Reform voters and who was happy to take millions from Frank Hester. If he had taken a different path when he had the chance things may have turned out very differently for him.
There’s another universe where Sunak took on the right, ended the culture wars, exposed the Rwanda scheme as the farce it is and returned to Cameron/May pragmatic conservative politics. I think there might have been conservative votes in an Thatcherite economic pragmatic approach to the EU and a return to the vote blue go green agenda.
It’s tragic he didn’t go down that path.
And why on earth would someone like me vote for that soppy Blairite shite. That’s why they are in the mess they are. They are a social Democrat party pretending to be conservative
You are suggesting they do MORE of that and it will solve their problems. lol
Yeah, but you're more likely to vote for the fascists you so admire like Putin than 'soppy Blairite shite'.
No. I did the compass test and it had me smack bang on the Tory position IF THE TORIES ACTUALLY DID WHAT THEY PROMISE TO DO. But they never do. They lie and obfuscate and raise immigration to insane levels
Eventually voters in their disgust reach for more extreme solutions. That seems to be what is happening here in France
"More extreme solutions" being code for fascism, in your case. But you're just looking for excuses. You admire a fascist imperialist such as Putin because he gives one speech where he criticising woke. That's the earth-sized rabbithole you're fallen down.
Yes Mrs Jessop, whatever you say. Have another Hobnob and calm down
I am calm. I've had a very pleasant day, and not felt the need to screech about it out loud to everyone on here as a form of weird self-validation.
Although, having said that: I've just been given a bottle of Canadian Icewine. I don't think I've come across it before, and didn't even know Canada had commercial vineyards. Does anyone have any suggestions about how best to serve it? Is it a dessert wine?
I’ve had Canadian ice wine in Montreal where they make it. Very nice
It is a sweet dessert wine. I've had it and it's very pleasant. They pick the grapes when there's ice on them.
Brexit Britain could benefit from a flight to safety from the political chaos engulfing the US and EU.
This will compensate for all the dynamic wealthy patriots who'll be leaving for Dubai due to Labour wokeness and high taxes.
Oh please don't tell me that you, as an accountant, agree with that twat who wrote in The Guardian that we should be pleased that wealthy people are leaving.
To alter the quote from Blackadder, many Labour voters brains are so minute , that if a hungry cannibal cracked one of their heads open, there wouldn't be enough to cover a small water biscuit.
Yes. On this we agree. Even by the standards of the Guardian, that was one of the stupidest articles I have ever read. “Hooray all the evil wealthy tax payers are leaving. The fact they are leaving and not willing to pay massive taxes PROVES they are evil so we should be glad they’re going”
Where do you even begin with an argument that dumb?
Don't get sick. Don't get old. As a certain Welsh Windbag said.
But that was said of the Tories. Labour's Britain is going to be a hell-hole of diminishing services if that "Eat the Rich!" mentality is as popular amongst the new intake as seems likely.
My worry is not that they’re all secret or even open Marxists. They’re not clever enough for that
And that is my worry. That they are dumb as rocks. All of them. At least you knew Blair was clever and perceptive and Brown had a massive if weird brain
These guys? Sometimes I wonder about starmer. I mean he must be bright because he made it to DPP. I wish he’d evidence it a little more. Yet he doesn’t have a favourite novel or poem. He never dreams. He speaks of himself in the third person. He has zero sense of humour and no idea of “telling a story”. If he’s intelligent it must be a highly narrow kind of intelligence
Says in Starmer's biography his A level grades were 2 Bs and a C. Now admittedly that included Maths and a Science which are more difficult and overall still clearly above average but does suggest he is hardly brain of Britain either.
Intelligence wise as PM he will probably be another John Major or Jim Callaghan with a bit more metropolitan flair but not a great cultural hinterland either
You really are an educational elitist.
Who cares if Mr Thickie Starmer is thicker than Mr Clever Sunak? Starmer has graduated from the school of hard knocks as a child of a tradesman.
If you believe the last sentence I have a bridge to sell you. And it is Sir Thickie if you don't mind.
He actually ended up graduating from the rather featherbedded St Edmund Hall Oxford via the perfectly respectable Leeds University. Essentially he is middle class by any measure, but the dinosaur class obsessed Labour Party want him to be seen as a working class lad. Laughable.
Excuse me. The class obsessed poster outraged at Starmer's mediocre higher education performance was not a member of the Labour party but a former Conservative councillor from Epping Forest.
Yes, but you've got to give him a bit of joy ffs!
I don't wish to be cruel, but seeing HYUFD pass judgement on people's youth-time educational attainment as though that were the only indicator of intelligence, reminds me of a fat bloke in our pub who goes on about the England players not being fit enough.
I wish I'd known you could read Law after doing Science A levels.
You can do a conversion after doing a science degree. Margaret Thatcher being the most notable example, perhaps.
It's never too late!
Back in my day the normal route into pharmacy was through the Pharmaceutical Society's professional exams. Not acceptable for such a course, I suspect. Anyway, I was getting married when I finished and ambitions had changed.
Basing things purely on the signs in people's gardens, the "For Sale" party are putting up a strong campaign round here.
Got me a funny look on the train as I had a little giggle.
I cannot remember an election which had so little of a campaign. Ed Davey did his best in the early stages but even he seems to have given up. Almost no speeches of substance, no rallies, hardly any posters, its been weird.
Wow. Big mistake from Starmer, says he won't continue with 25% tax free allowance for pensions
He's gonna tax and tax and tax and tax and tax.
Then tax some more. You were warned.
Yep. I'm looking at disposing of a small amount of my portfolio shortly, simply to ensure the passive income or 'buy citizenship elsewhere' requirements are met prior to an emergency budget in September.
Labour can double tax rates if they like, but twice nothing is still nothing.
I don't think these attacks on Reform will work. The aim is to try and destroy them by revealing their 'true nature' but it just keeps getting shrugged off by Farage. So the attacks fail, and the by product is that the discourse is normalised. It feels like the overton window shifting.
Yes. There is a fashion on TikTok for young kids in France and Germany to say “yeah I’m a racist so fucking what”
The term has lost a lot of its negative power through overuse and now it has a kind of mildly transgressive chic - which kids love of course. That’s how you shock the elders these days. Say “yeah I’m a racist” on TikTok. Cue heart attack in your parents
Saying “fuck the toreeez” and going to Glastonbury is what people like @Heathener do
Again I don’t believe Britain will be immune from this trend, we are merely behind the curve
Is Britain ahead, behind or on a totally different curve? Time will tell. Brexit and Johnson gave the populist mad right wing nonsense thing a bad name with anyone under 50
My thinking is Brexit has delayed our swerve to the populist right - but not necessarily averted it. We gave people the vote and they vented their anger - that has bought us time
With that time we need to see a proper right wing government emerge that will actually do proper right wing things. Then maybe we can dodge the whole Le Pen shit altogether -
But if that doesn’t happen then it seems inevitable to me that we will follow Italy France Sweden the USA Holland etc
So after 14 years of Tory government and the implementation of the totemic political project of the populist reactionary right, our next move must be to the populist reactionary right, otherwise we might swing too far to the right.
What an unwelcome prognosis (!) for anybody on the left or centre or centre right of politics, ie the majority of people. Have you checked with them? I bet you haven't. Because what I reckon they'd say, most of them, is how about we give good government a whirl first? It's been a while since we tried that.
This government have been populist in rhetoric only. In reality they have had the highest immigration and highest tax on record. And have sold off a ton of top notch British companies. It hasn't been populist in implementation. Not one bit. Until we get the implementation of populist right wing policies then Farage and co will remain ever present
Possibly. Because some people are thick.
BTW: Companies get sold. It is called international capitalism, and unless they are nationalised industries, the government doesn't do it.
The French operate under capitalist system, it doesn't stop them from blocking foreign takeovers of companies with a national interest or strategic
Our government does too, but needs to be within the rules of World Trade. It is a balance. If you intervene too often you degrade the value of your own companies, plus it incentivises other governments who want to stop British companies making acquisitions.
My worry is not that they’re all secret or even open Marxists. They’re not clever enough for that
And that is my worry. That they are dumb as rocks. All of them. At least you knew Blair was clever and perceptive and Brown had a massive if weird brain
These guys? Sometimes I wonder about starmer. I mean he must be bright because he made it to DPP. I wish he’d evidence it a little more. Yet he doesn’t have a favourite novel or poem. He never dreams. He speaks of himself in the third person. He has zero sense of humour and no idea of “telling a story”. If he’s intelligent it must be a highly narrow kind of intelligence
Compared to Blair, Brown, Straw, Cunningham, Cook, Mowlem, Beckett, Darling, Dewar, Reid, Mandelson, Harman and the rest the current Labour front bench appears to be lacking intellectuals and political heavyweights.
Maybe they will surprise me, but I can just as easily believe they'll be even worse than I expect.
Who had heard of any of them before they were in government?
Wasn't Meacher the only one in the cabinet with government experience in 1997?
Without checking, Jack Cunningham had been in Cabinet at the back end of 1978/79?
I think he was the junior energy minister in the 78-79 government, and that was not a Cabinet post.
Brexit Britain could benefit from a flight to safety from the political chaos engulfing the US and EU.
This will compensate for all the dynamic wealthy patriots who'll be leaving for Dubai due to Labour wokeness and high taxes.
Oh please don't tell me that you, as an accountant, agree with that twat who wrote in The Guardian that we should be pleased that wealthy people are leaving.
To alter the quote from Blackadder, many Labour voters brains are so minute , that if a hungry cannibal cracked one of their heads open, there wouldn't be enough to cover a small water biscuit.
Yes. On this we agree. Even by the standards of the Guardian, that was one of the stupidest articles I have ever read. “Hooray all the evil wealthy tax payers are leaving. The fact they are leaving and not willing to pay massive taxes PROVES they are evil so we should be glad they’re going”
Where do you even begin with an argument that dumb?
Don't get sick. Don't get old. As a certain Welsh Windbag said.
But that was said of the Tories. Labour's Britain is going to be a hell-hole of diminishing services if that "Eat the Rich!" mentality is as popular amongst the new intake as seems likely.
My worry is not that they’re all secret or even open Marxists. They’re not clever enough for that
And that is my worry. That they are dumb as rocks. All of them. At least you knew Blair was clever and perceptive and Brown had a massive if weird brain
These guys? Sometimes I wonder about starmer. I mean he must be bright because he made it to DPP. I wish he’d evidence it a little more. Yet he doesn’t have a favourite novel or poem. He never dreams. He speaks of himself in the third person. He has zero sense of humour and no idea of “telling a story”. If he’s intelligent it must be a highly narrow kind of intelligence
Says in Starmer's biography his A level grades were 2 Bs and a C. Now admittedly that included Maths and a Science which are more difficult and overall still clearly above average but does suggest he is hardly brain of Britain either.
Intelligence wise he is probably John Major or Jim Callaghan with a bit more metropolitan flair but not a great cultural hinterland either
A levels were rather harder in his day (and my day) than yours..
BBC would get you into almost any University course then...
My offer from Birmingham was BBC. I expected A in Maths, B in Chemistry, but was worried about getting a C in Physics.
In the end I didn't get any Bs or Cs.
When A Levels were hard, and getting an A was harder still.
My offer from Cardiff was two Es. Got AABC. Life was somehow much easier in those days.
Brexit Britain could benefit from a flight to safety from the political chaos engulfing the US and EU.
This will compensate for all the dynamic wealthy patriots who'll be leaving for Dubai due to Labour wokeness and high taxes.
Oh please don't tell me that you, as an accountant, agree with that twat who wrote in The Guardian that we should be pleased that wealthy people are leaving.
To alter the quote from Blackadder, many Labour voters brains are so minute , that if a hungry cannibal cracked one of their heads open, there wouldn't be enough to cover a small water biscuit.
Yes. On this we agree. Even by the standards of the Guardian, that was one of the stupidest articles I have ever read. “Hooray all the evil wealthy tax payers are leaving. The fact they are leaving and not willing to pay massive taxes PROVES they are evil so we should be glad they’re going”
Where do you even begin with an argument that dumb?
Don't get sick. Don't get old. As a certain Welsh Windbag said.
But that was said of the Tories. Labour's Britain is going to be a hell-hole of diminishing services if that "Eat the Rich!" mentality is as popular amongst the new intake as seems likely.
My worry is not that they’re all secret or even open Marxists. They’re not clever enough for that
And that is my worry. That they are dumb as rocks. All of them. At least you knew Blair was clever and perceptive and Brown had a massive if weird brain
These guys? Sometimes I wonder about starmer. I mean he must be bright because he made it to DPP. I wish he’d evidence it a little more. Yet he doesn’t have a favourite novel or poem. He never dreams. He speaks of himself in the third person. He has zero sense of humour and no idea of “telling a story”. If he’s intelligent it must be a highly narrow kind of intelligence
Says in Starmer's biography his A level grades were 2 Bs and a C. Now admittedly that included Maths and a Science which are more difficult and overall still clearly above average but does suggest he is hardly brain of Britain either.
Intelligence wise he is probably John Major or Jim Callaghan with a bit more metropolitan flair but not a great cultural hinterland either
A levels were rather harder in his day (and my day) than yours..
BBC would get you into almost any University course then...
My offer from Birmingham was BBC. I expected A in Maths, B in Chemistry, but was worried about getting a C in Physics.
In the end I didn't get any Bs or Cs.
When A Levels were hard, and getting an A was harder still.
My offer from Cardiff was two Es. Got AABC. Life was somehow much easier in those days.
To be fair, E's aren't what they used to be. Back in the 80s, 2 E's would have got you through a full 48 hour rave.
Wow. Big mistake from Starmer, says he won't continue with 25% tax free allowance for pensions
They have clarified and said it won't be changed. Such a change would be devastating. If it were removed 25% of all pension funds of people over 55 would be withdrawn instantly unless the change was made instantly and without notice and that would also cause havoc.
Brexit Britain could benefit from a flight to safety from the political chaos engulfing the US and EU.
This will compensate for all the dynamic wealthy patriots who'll be leaving for Dubai due to Labour wokeness and high taxes.
Oh please don't tell me that you, as an accountant, agree with that twat who wrote in The Guardian that we should be pleased that wealthy people are leaving.
To alter the quote from Blackadder, many Labour voters brains are so minute , that if a hungry cannibal cracked one of their heads open, there wouldn't be enough to cover a small water biscuit.
Yes. On this we agree. Even by the standards of the Guardian, that was one of the stupidest articles I have ever read. “Hooray all the evil wealthy tax payers are leaving. The fact they are leaving and not willing to pay massive taxes PROVES they are evil so we should be glad they’re going”
Where do you even begin with an argument that dumb?
Don't get sick. Don't get old. As a certain Welsh Windbag said.
But that was said of the Tories. Labour's Britain is going to be a hell-hole of diminishing services if that "Eat the Rich!" mentality is as popular amongst the new intake as seems likely.
My worry is not that they’re all secret or even open Marxists. They’re not clever enough for that
And that is my worry. That they are dumb as rocks. All of them. At least you knew Blair was clever and perceptive and Brown had a massive if weird brain
These guys? Sometimes I wonder about starmer. I mean he must be bright because he made it to DPP. I wish he’d evidence it a little more. Yet he doesn’t have a favourite novel or poem. He never dreams. He speaks of himself in the third person. He has zero sense of humour and no idea of “telling a story”. If he’s intelligent it must be a highly narrow kind of intelligence
Says in Starmer's biography his A level grades were 2 Bs and a C. Now admittedly that included Maths and a Science which are more difficult and overall still clearly above average but does suggest he is hardly brain of Britain either.
Intelligence wise as PM he will probably be another John Major or Jim Callaghan with a bit more metropolitan flair but not a great cultural hinterland either
You really are an educational elitist.
Who cares if Mr Thickie Starmer is thicker than Mr Clever Sunak? Starmer has graduated from the school of hard knocks as a child of a tradesman.
If you believe the last sentence I have a bridge to sell you. And it is Sir Thickie if you don't mind.
He actually ended up graduating from the rather featherbedded St Edmund Hall Oxford via the perfectly respectable Leeds University. Essentially he is middle class by any measure, but the dinosaur class obsessed Labour Party want him to be seen as a working class lad. Laughable.
Excuse me. The class obsessed poster outraged at Starmer's mediocre higher education performance was not a member of the Labour party but a former Conservative councillor from Epping Forest.
Yes, but you've got to give him a bit of joy ffs!
I don't wish to be cruel, but seeing HYUFD pass judgement on people's youth-time educational attainment as though that were the only indicator of intelligence, reminds me of a fat bloke in our pub who goes on about the England players not being fit enough.
I am not running to be PM, nor is the fat bloke in the England team. That is the job they are highly paid for.
I also never said Starmer was thick but he is clearly not going to be in the top rank of our PMs by intelligence. Intelligence isn't the be all and end all for PMs, judgement, empathy and competence matters too but it helps
You define intelligence by A level results 35 years ago? Even worse than IQ testing.
Very true. Look at our Leon; he was thrown out of school for making stuff up, with just a swimming certificate by way of paper qualifications, and now he has an IQ of 6000.
My worry is not that they’re all secret or even open Marxists. They’re not clever enough for that
And that is my worry. That they are dumb as rocks. All of them. At least you knew Blair was clever and perceptive and Brown had a massive if weird brain
These guys? Sometimes I wonder about starmer. I mean he must be bright because he made it to DPP. I wish he’d evidence it a little more. Yet he doesn’t have a favourite novel or poem. He never dreams. He speaks of himself in the third person. He has zero sense of humour and no idea of “telling a story”. If he’s intelligent it must be a highly narrow kind of intelligence
Compared to Blair, Brown, Straw, Cunningham, Cook, Mowlem, Beckett, Darling, Dewar, Reid, Mandelson, Harman and the rest the current Labour front bench appears to be lacking intellectuals and political heavyweights.
Maybe they will surprise me, but I can just as easily believe they'll be even worse than I expect.
Who had heard of any of them before they were in government?
Wasn't Meacher the only one in the cabinet with government experience in 1997?
They had mostly been in John Smith's shadow cabinet, so they'd been tearing strips of their Tory opponents for years by 1997. Would every voter know them? No. But I expect most voters back them could name more of them than voters could of the current lot, even if it's largely due to the changed media landscape.
Nobody in 1997 really queried whether Labour were up to the job. They were seen as a serious and qualified group of people.
No they were quite widely dismissed as having no experience of government.
Though considering the shambles that we have had for the last decade with people experienced in government, no experience may well be a major step up!
Brexit Britain could benefit from a flight to safety from the political chaos engulfing the US and EU.
This will compensate for all the dynamic wealthy patriots who'll be leaving for Dubai due to Labour wokeness and high taxes.
Oh please don't tell me that you, as an accountant, agree with that twat who wrote in The Guardian that we should be pleased that wealthy people are leaving.
To alter the quote from Blackadder, many Labour voters brains are so minute , that if a hungry cannibal cracked one of their heads open, there wouldn't be enough to cover a small water biscuit.
Yes. On this we agree. Even by the standards of the Guardian, that was one of the stupidest articles I have ever read. “Hooray all the evil wealthy tax payers are leaving. The fact they are leaving and not willing to pay massive taxes PROVES they are evil so we should be glad they’re going”
Where do you even begin with an argument that dumb?
Don't get sick. Don't get old. As a certain Welsh Windbag said.
But that was said of the Tories. Labour's Britain is going to be a hell-hole of diminishing services if that "Eat the Rich!" mentality is as popular amongst the new intake as seems likely.
My worry is not that they’re all secret or even open Marxists. They’re not clever enough for that
And that is my worry. That they are dumb as rocks. All of them. At least you knew Blair was clever and perceptive and Brown had a massive if weird brain
These guys? Sometimes I wonder about starmer. I mean he must be bright because he made it to DPP. I wish he’d evidence it a little more. Yet he doesn’t have a favourite novel or poem. He never dreams. He speaks of himself in the third person. He has zero sense of humour and no idea of “telling a story”. If he’s intelligent it must be a highly narrow kind of intelligence
Says in Starmer's biography his A level grades were 2 Bs and a C. Now admittedly that included Maths and a Science which are more difficult and overall still clearly above average but does suggest he is hardly brain of Britain either.
Intelligence wise as PM he will probably be another John Major or Jim Callaghan with a bit more metropolitan flair but not a great cultural hinterland either
You really are an educational elitist.
Who cares if Mr Thickie Starmer is thicker than Mr Clever Sunak? Starmer has graduated from the school of hard knocks as a child of a tradesman.
If you believe the last sentence I have a bridge to sell you. And it is Sir Thickie if you don't mind.
He actually ended up graduating from the rather featherbedded St Edmund Hall Oxford via the perfectly respectable Leeds University. Essentially he is middle class by any measure, but the dinosaur class obsessed Labour Party want him to be seen as a working class lad. Laughable.
Excuse me. The class obsessed poster outraged at Starmer's mediocre higher education performance was not a member of the Labour party but a former Conservative councillor from Epping Forest.
Yes, but you've got to give him a bit of joy ffs!
I don't wish to be cruel, but seeing HYUFD pass judgement on people's youth-time educational attainment as though that were the only indicator of intelligence, reminds me of a fat bloke in our pub who goes on about the England players not being fit enough.
I wish I'd known you could read Law after doing Science A levels.
Whatever else you read at Uni, you chose....wisely.
Back in the day I knew of a real w***** who read politics at Cardiff. What f****' use was politics?
Wastrel degrees like Sociology, Politics, Philosophy and Classics all need to be banned by the new Conservative Government next Friday as irrelevant to modern living.
I wish I could have read something practically useful like Media Studies. Back in my day many non-Law and non-Stem degrees were academic nonsense!
I don't think these attacks on Reform will work. The aim is to try and destroy them by revealing their 'true nature' but it just keeps getting shrugged off by Farage. So the attacks fail, and the by product is that the discourse is normalised. It feels like the overton window shifting.
Yes. There is a fashion on TikTok for young kids in France and Germany to say “yeah I’m a racist so fucking what”
The term has lost a lot of its negative power through overuse and now it has a kind of mildly transgressive chic - which kids love of course. That’s how you shock the elders these days. Say “yeah I’m a racist” on TikTok. Cue heart attack in your parents
Saying “fuck the toreeez” and going to Glastonbury is what people like @Heathener do
Again I don’t believe Britain will be immune from this trend, we are merely behind the curve
Is Britain ahead, behind or on a totally different curve? Time will tell. Brexit and Johnson gave the populist mad right wing nonsense thing a bad name with anyone under 50
My thinking is Brexit has delayed our swerve to the populist right - but not necessarily averted it. We gave people the vote and they vented their anger - that has bought us time
With that time we need to see a proper right wing government emerge that will actually do proper right wing things. Then maybe we can dodge the whole Le Pen shit altogether -
But if that doesn’t happen then it seems inevitable to me that we will follow Italy France Sweden the USA Holland etc
I agree with your basic premise, it’s just that I don’t think they want right wing polices so much as a Government that does what it is told to.
Brexit was a cry of frustration because nobody ever listened to the public saying they wanted to go no further. And then they got disenchanted that it still didn’t happen, and we got 2019.
But I think it has led to volatility meaning Starmer isn’t guaranteed his second term, and the Tories aren’t guaranteed to replace him.
Boris Johnson fucked up in setting the post-Brexit income thresholds too low, which resulted in far more people coming than was anticipated.
His successors were then slow - very slow - to recognize this.
I find it astonishing that it wasn't recognized by either Johnson or Sunak (and his Home Secretaries) that numbers coming were way above forecast, and were resulting in much higher net migration than was the case when the UK was part of the EU.
And here Starmer is a very lucky General.
Firstly, higher income thresholds were put in place for visas. Now, you can argue that £38,700 is still too low (or alternatively that it is far too simplistic, given that a 21 year old earning £39k is very different to a 45 year old), but it is still almost 40% above the old threshold. That means that a very substantial number of people who were eligible for visas before, are no longer eligible. And it is Starmer who who will see the benefit.
Secondly, a large chunk of the increase in net immigration in the last three years has been student numbers. We've gone from 180k student (and dependent) visas issued a year to something like 600k. Based on experience most of those people will go home at the end of their courses. But there is an approximately three year period during which the number of students (and dependents) resident in the UK is rising fast. Once you get to the 3 or 4 year anniversary - and particularly if it is matched by smaller numbers of students coming - then the net impact falls dramatically.
Starmer, if he does absolutely nothing, will be Prime Minister, when net immigration numbers fall quite significantly. Because maths.
Are there any facts or figures on what percentage of migrants are coming on the income threshold visas?
The student one I think is ripe for abuse and I am sceptical that most will go home after three years, because actually a very big percentage already stayed and that was before a surge in people coming from third world nations who have no desire to return home.
Where my wife works the firm regular uses agency staff and the agency staff are almost always migrants who barely speak English and many of them have their phones playing university lectures on zoom in the background while they're getting on with their job. I don't think that's someone especially interested in the lecture.
Brexit Britain could benefit from a flight to safety from the political chaos engulfing the US and EU.
This will compensate for all the dynamic wealthy patriots who'll be leaving for Dubai due to Labour wokeness and high taxes.
Oh please don't tell me that you, as an accountant, agree with that twat who wrote in The Guardian that we should be pleased that wealthy people are leaving.
To alter the quote from Blackadder, many Labour voters brains are so minute , that if a hungry cannibal cracked one of their heads open, there wouldn't be enough to cover a small water biscuit.
Yes. On this we agree. Even by the standards of the Guardian, that was one of the stupidest articles I have ever read. “Hooray all the evil wealthy tax payers are leaving. The fact they are leaving and not willing to pay massive taxes PROVES they are evil so we should be glad they’re going”
Where do you even begin with an argument that dumb?
Don't get sick. Don't get old. As a certain Welsh Windbag said.
But that was said of the Tories. Labour's Britain is going to be a hell-hole of diminishing services if that "Eat the Rich!" mentality is as popular amongst the new intake as seems likely.
My worry is not that they’re all secret or even open Marxists. They’re not clever enough for that
And that is my worry. That they are dumb as rocks. All of them. At least you knew Blair was clever and perceptive and Brown had a massive if weird brain
These guys? Sometimes I wonder about starmer. I mean he must be bright because he made it to DPP. I wish he’d evidence it a little more. Yet he doesn’t have a favourite novel or poem. He never dreams. He speaks of himself in the third person. He has zero sense of humour and no idea of “telling a story”. If he’s intelligent it must be a highly narrow kind of intelligence
Says in Starmer's biography his A level grades were 2 Bs and a C. Now admittedly that included Maths and a Science which are more difficult and overall still clearly above average but does suggest he is hardly brain of Britain either.
Intelligence wise as PM he will probably be another John Major or Jim Callaghan with a bit more metropolitan flair but not a great cultural hinterland either
You really are an educational elitist.
Who cares if Mr Thickie Starmer is thicker than Mr Clever Sunak? Starmer has graduated from the school of hard knocks as a child of a tradesman.
If you believe the last sentence I have a bridge to sell you. And it is Sir Thickie if you don't mind.
He actually ended up graduating from the rather featherbedded St Edmund Hall Oxford via the perfectly respectable Leeds University. Essentially he is middle class by any measure, but the dinosaur class obsessed Labour Party want him to be seen as a working class lad. Laughable.
Excuse me. The class obsessed poster outraged at Starmer's mediocre higher education performance was not a member of the Labour party but a former Conservative councillor from Epping Forest.
Yes, but you've got to give him a bit of joy ffs!
I don't wish to be cruel, but seeing HYUFD pass judgement on people's youth-time educational attainment as though that were the only indicator of intelligence, reminds me of a fat bloke in our pub who goes on about the England players not being fit enough.
I wish I'd known you could read Law after doing Science A levels.
Whatever else you read at Uni, you chose....wisely.
Back in the day I knew of a real w***** who read politics at Cardiff. What f****' use was politics?
Wastrel degrees like Sociology, Politics, Philosophy and Classics all need to be banned by the new Conservative Government next Friday as irrelevant to modern living.
I wish I could have read something practically useful like Media Studies. Back in my day many non-Law and non-Stem degrees were academic nonsense!
Boris would correctly storm No 10 and I would join him if a newly re elected PM Sunak tried to ban Classics and Philosophy degrees (the chances of that though now being near zero)
Brexit Britain could benefit from a flight to safety from the political chaos engulfing the US and EU.
This will compensate for all the dynamic wealthy patriots who'll be leaving for Dubai due to Labour wokeness and high taxes.
Oh please don't tell me that you, as an accountant, agree with that twat who wrote in The Guardian that we should be pleased that wealthy people are leaving.
To alter the quote from Blackadder, many Labour voters brains are so minute , that if a hungry cannibal cracked one of their heads open, there wouldn't be enough to cover a small water biscuit.
Yes. On this we agree. Even by the standards of the Guardian, that was one of the stupidest articles I have ever read. “Hooray all the evil wealthy tax payers are leaving. The fact they are leaving and not willing to pay massive taxes PROVES they are evil so we should be glad they’re going”
Where do you even begin with an argument that dumb?
Don't get sick. Don't get old. As a certain Welsh Windbag said.
But that was said of the Tories. Labour's Britain is going to be a hell-hole of diminishing services if that "Eat the Rich!" mentality is as popular amongst the new intake as seems likely.
My worry is not that they’re all secret or even open Marxists. They’re not clever enough for that
And that is my worry. That they are dumb as rocks. All of them. At least you knew Blair was clever and perceptive and Brown had a massive if weird brain
These guys? Sometimes I wonder about starmer. I mean he must be bright because he made it to DPP. I wish he’d evidence it a little more. Yet he doesn’t have a favourite novel or poem. He never dreams. He speaks of himself in the third person. He has zero sense of humour and no idea of “telling a story”. If he’s intelligent it must be a highly narrow kind of intelligence
Says in Starmer's biography his A level grades were 2 Bs and a C. Now admittedly that included Maths and a Science which are more difficult and overall still clearly above average but does suggest he is hardly brain of Britain either.
Intelligence wise as PM he will probably be another John Major or Jim Callaghan with a bit more metropolitan flair but not a great cultural hinterland either
You really are an educational elitist.
Who cares if Mr Thickie Starmer is thicker than Mr Clever Sunak? Starmer has graduated from the school of hard knocks as a child of a tradesman.
If you believe the last sentence I have a bridge to sell you. And it is Sir Thickie if you don't mind.
He actually ended up graduating from the rather featherbedded St Edmund Hall Oxford via the perfectly respectable Leeds University. Essentially he is middle class by any measure, but the dinosaur class obsessed Labour Party want him to be seen as a working class lad. Laughable.
Excuse me. The class obsessed poster outraged at Starmer's mediocre higher education performance was not a member of the Labour party but a former Conservative councillor from Epping Forest.
Yes, but you've got to give him a bit of joy ffs!
I don't wish to be cruel, but seeing HYUFD pass judgement on people's youth-time educational attainment as though that were the only indicator of intelligence, reminds me of a fat bloke in our pub who goes on about the England players not being fit enough.
I am not running to be PM, nor is the fat bloke in the England team. That is the job they are highly paid for.
I also never said Starmer was thick but he is clearly not going to be in the top rank of our PMs by intelligence. Intelligence isn't the be all and end all for PMs, judgement, empathy and competence matters too but it helps
You define intelligence by A level results 35 years ago? Even worse than IQ testing.
Very true. Look at our Leon; he was thrown out of school for making stuff up, with just a swimming certificate by way of paper qualifications, and now he has an IQ of 6000.
Leon went to UCL from a Hereford comp and is now a zillionaire globally renowned author and travel writer, self made man of the people is Leon
Brexit Britain could benefit from a flight to safety from the political chaos engulfing the US and EU.
This will compensate for all the dynamic wealthy patriots who'll be leaving for Dubai due to Labour wokeness and high taxes.
Oh please don't tell me that you, as an accountant, agree with that twat who wrote in The Guardian that we should be pleased that wealthy people are leaving.
To alter the quote from Blackadder, many Labour voters brains are so minute , that if a hungry cannibal cracked one of their heads open, there wouldn't be enough to cover a small water biscuit.
Yes. On this we agree. Even by the standards of the Guardian, that was one of the stupidest articles I have ever read. “Hooray all the evil wealthy tax payers are leaving. The fact they are leaving and not willing to pay massive taxes PROVES they are evil so we should be glad they’re going”
Where do you even begin with an argument that dumb?
Don't get sick. Don't get old. As a certain Welsh Windbag said.
But that was said of the Tories. Labour's Britain is going to be a hell-hole of diminishing services if that "Eat the Rich!" mentality is as popular amongst the new intake as seems likely.
My worry is not that they’re all secret or even open Marxists. They’re not clever enough for that
And that is my worry. That they are dumb as rocks. All of them. At least you knew Blair was clever and perceptive and Brown had a massive if weird brain
These guys? Sometimes I wonder about starmer. I mean he must be bright because he made it to DPP. I wish he’d evidence it a little more. Yet he doesn’t have a favourite novel or poem. He never dreams. He speaks of himself in the third person. He has zero sense of humour and no idea of “telling a story”. If he’s intelligent it must be a highly narrow kind of intelligence
Says in Starmer's biography his A level grades were 2 Bs and a C. Now admittedly that included Maths and a Science which are more difficult and overall still clearly above average but does suggest he is hardly brain of Britain either.
Intelligence wise as PM he will probably be another John Major or Jim Callaghan with a bit more metropolitan flair but not a great cultural hinterland either
You really are an educational elitist.
Who cares if Mr Thickie Starmer is thicker than Mr Clever Sunak? Starmer has graduated from the school of hard knocks as a child of a tradesman.
If you believe the last sentence I have a bridge to sell you. And it is Sir Thickie if you don't mind.
He actually ended up graduating from the rather featherbedded St Edmund Hall Oxford via the perfectly respectable Leeds University. Essentially he is middle class by any measure, but the dinosaur class obsessed Labour Party want him to be seen as a working class lad. Laughable.
Excuse me. The class obsessed poster outraged at Starmer's mediocre higher education performance was not a member of the Labour party but a former Conservative councillor from Epping Forest.
Yes, but you've got to give him a bit of joy ffs!
I don't wish to be cruel, but seeing HYUFD pass judgement on people's youth-time educational attainment as though that were the only indicator of intelligence, reminds me of a fat bloke in our pub who goes on about the England players not being fit enough.
I wish I'd known you could read Law after doing Science A levels.
Whatever else you read at Uni, you chose....wisely.
Back in the day I knew of a real w***** who read politics at Cardiff. What f****' use was politics?
Wastrel degrees like Sociology, Politics, Philosophy and Classics all need to be banned by the new Conservative Government next Friday as irrelevant to modern living.
I wish I could have read something practically useful like Media Studies. Back in my day many non-Law and non-Stem degrees were academic nonsense!
My time again and rather than Law, I would read something that began with A. Astronomy. Archeology. At a push even Anthropology.
I don't think these attacks on Reform will work. The aim is to try and destroy them by revealing their 'true nature' but it just keeps getting shrugged off by Farage. So the attacks fail, and the by product is that the discourse is normalised. It feels like the overton window shifting.
Yes. There is a fashion on TikTok for young kids in France and Germany to say “yeah I’m a racist so fucking what”
The term has lost a lot of its negative power through overuse and now it has a kind of mildly transgressive chic - which kids love of course. That’s how you shock the elders these days. Say “yeah I’m a racist” on TikTok. Cue heart attack in your parents
Saying “fuck the toreeez” and going to Glastonbury is what people like @Heathener do
Again I don’t believe Britain will be immune from this trend, we are merely behind the curve
Is Britain ahead, behind or on a totally different curve? Time will tell. Brexit and Johnson gave the populist mad right wing nonsense thing a bad name with anyone under 50
My thinking is Brexit has delayed our swerve to the populist right - but not necessarily averted it. We gave people the vote and they vented their anger - that has bought us time
With that time we need to see a proper right wing government emerge that will actually do proper right wing things. Then maybe we can dodge the whole Le Pen shit altogether -
But if that doesn’t happen then it seems inevitable to me that we will follow Italy France Sweden the USA Holland etc
So after 14 years of Tory government and the implementation of the totemic political project of the populist reactionary right, our next move must be to the populist reactionary right, otherwise we might swing too far to the right.
What an unwelcome prognosis (!) for anybody on the left or centre or centre right of politics, ie the majority of people. Have you checked with them? I bet you haven't. Because what I reckon they'd say, most of them, is how about we give good government a whirl first? It's been a while since we tried that.
This government have been populist in rhetoric only. In reality they have had the highest immigration and highest tax on record. And have sold off a ton of top notch British companies. It hasn't been populist in implementation. Not one bit. Until we get the implementation of populist right wing policies then Farage and co will remain ever present
"Do things our way or people will be angry and vote for us."
Fine but the wrong sequence. The populist right can stick around as long as they like and try to get elected. Then we will have those policies. Until that day they can go whistle as far as I'm concerned. And since we're about to embark on 5 years, probably 10, of centre left Labour government I hope their lips are in good working order.
As far as I can tell, the 25% tax free allowance doesn’t have any sort of expiry date, so perhaps he actually misspoke.
I don’t deny that they are going to tax way more than they’re currently saying, but I don’t really have an issue with that.
Speaking as someone who is likely younger than a lot of other PBers, it’s been frustrating as all hell to see how this country has become lucrative as anything for a small segment of the population who all bought their houses 30 years ago for about £10, went to university for free, and now spend their days opposing everything that could possibly bring some more growth so we can bloody well pay for their pensions.
The Tory government that has continually bribed the grey vote has on the other hand, among many other measures, imposed a de facto graduate tax on the young, and frankly, the Tory vote share amongst people under 50 should absolutely terrify all Tories who want a return to government anytime soon.
I say this all as someone who has done pretty decently for themselves so far - this imbalance will define the next generation of politics. I have a lot of friends who are seriously contemplating more lucrative moves abroad - and most of them don’t even work in careers where that’s a common occurrence!
And yet some people would prefer to live in a country where they can sit like Smaug atop their pile of Gold, complain that the young don’t know the meaning of hard work, and enjoy a lifestyle of being slightly well-off in a country where nothing bloody works properly, and the young who support their lifestyle have all fled for pastures new. But it’s okay - at least the modern train that could aid the nation’s economy won’t be within 2 miles of their house, blocking the views - we absolutely couldn’t have that!
TL;DR if Starmer has a secret tax agenda - good - and unlike a lot of people who might say this I have no problems paying more tax myself either, if it’s coupled with fixing some long standing problems (the ridiculousness of how Council Tax is lower for Buckingham Palace than for 46% of households in the country - despite the fact that a ton of it is funding Adult Social Care - it doesn’t make any sense!!!) https://x.com/pjtheeconomist/status/1753361450809110922?s=46
Labour have the chance of a lifetime to use a supermajority to get all the unpopular things done quickly. I am not necessarily convinced they will - and if they squander it I will certainly look elsewhere in 2029.
As far as I can tell, the 25% tax free allowance doesn’t have any sort of expiry date, so perhaps he actually misspoke.
I don’t deny that they are going to tax way more than they’re currently saying, but I don’t really have an issue with that.
Speaking as someone who is likely younger than a lot of other PBers, it’s been frustrating as all hell to see how this country has become lucrative as anything for a small segment of the population who all bought their houses 30 years ago for about £10, went to university for free, and now spend their days opposing everything that could possibly bring some more growth so we can bloody well pay for their pensions.
The Tory government that has continually bribed the grey vote has on the other hand imposed a de facto graduate tax on the young, and frankly, the Tory vote share amongst people under 50 should absolutely terrify all Tories who want a return to government anytime soon.
I say this all as someone who has done pretty decently for themselves so far - this imbalance will define the next generation of politics. I have a lot of friends who are seriously contemplating more lucrative moves abroad - and most of them don’t even work in careers where that’s a common occurrence!
TL;DR if Starmer has a secret tax agenda - good - and unlike a lot of people who might say this I have no problems paying more tax myself either, if it’s coupled with fixing some long standing problems (the ridiculousness of how Council Tax is lower for Buckingham Palace than for 46% of households in the country - despite the fact that a ton of it is funding Adult Social Care - it doesn’t make any sense!!!) https://x.com/pjtheeconomist/status/1753361450809110922?s=46
Labour have the chance of a lifetime to use a supermajority to get all the unpopular things done quickly. I am not necessarily convinced they will - and if they squander it I will certainly look elsewhere in 2029.
End the CGT exemption for primary residences. Watch the boomers squeal.
I don't think these attacks on Reform will work. The aim is to try and destroy them by revealing their 'true nature' but it just keeps getting shrugged off by Farage. So the attacks fail, and the by product is that the discourse is normalised. It feels like the overton window shifting.
Yes. There is a fashion on TikTok for young kids in France and Germany to say “yeah I’m a racist so fucking what”
The term has lost a lot of its negative power through overuse and now it has a kind of mildly transgressive chic - which kids love of course. That’s how you shock the elders these days. Say “yeah I’m a racist” on TikTok. Cue heart attack in your parents
Saying “fuck the toreeez” and going to Glastonbury is what people like @Heathener do
Again I don’t believe Britain will be immune from this trend, we are merely behind the curve
Is Britain ahead, behind or on a totally different curve? Time will tell. Brexit and Johnson gave the populist mad right wing nonsense thing a bad name with anyone under 50
My thinking is Brexit has delayed our swerve to the populist right - but not necessarily averted it. We gave people the vote and they vented their anger - that has bought us time
With that time we need to see a proper right wing government emerge that will actually do proper right wing things. Then maybe we can dodge the whole Le Pen shit altogether -
But if that doesn’t happen then it seems inevitable to me that we will follow Italy France Sweden the USA Holland etc
I agree with your basic premise, it’s just that I don’t think they want right wing polices so much as a Government that does what it is told to.
Brexit was a cry of frustration because nobody ever listened to the public saying they wanted to go no further. And then they got disenchanted that it still didn’t happen, and we got 2019.
But I think it has led to volatility meaning Starmer isn’t guaranteed his second term, and the Tories aren’t guaranteed to replace him.
Boris Johnson fucked up in setting the post-Brexit income thresholds too low, which resulted in far more people coming than was anticipated.
His successors were then slow - very slow - to recognize this.
I find it astonishing that it wasn't recognized by either Johnson or Sunak (and his Home Secretaries) that numbers coming were way above forecast, and were resulting in much higher net migration than was the case when the UK was part of the EU.
And here Starmer is a very lucky General.
Firstly, higher income thresholds were put in place for visas. Now, you can argue that £38,700 is still too low (or alternatively that it is far too simplistic, given that a 21 year old earning £39k is very different to a 45 year old), but it is still almost 40% above the old threshold. That means that a very substantial number of people who were eligible for visas before, are no longer eligible. And it is Starmer who who will see the benefit.
Secondly, a large chunk of the increase in net immigration in the last three years has been student numbers. We've gone from 180k student (and dependent) visas issued a year to something like 600k. Based on experience most of those people will go home at the end of their courses. But there is an approximately three year period during which the number of students (and dependents) resident in the UK is rising fast. Once you get to the 3 or 4 year anniversary - and particularly if it is matched by smaller numbers of students coming - then the net impact falls dramatically.
Starmer, if he does absolutely nothing, will be Prime Minister, when net immigration numbers fall quite significantly. Because maths.
Are there any facts or figures on what percentage of migrants are coming on the income threshold visas?
The student one I think is ripe for abuse and I am sceptical that most will go home after three years, because actually a very big percentage already stayed and that was before a surge in people coming from their world nations who have no desire to return home.
Where my wife works the firm regular uses agency staff and the agency staff are almost always migrants who barely speak English and many of them have their phones playing university lectures on zoom in the background while they're getting on with their job. I don't think that's someone especially interested in the lecture.
You can only stay on at the end of your studies if you get another visa.
Now, you can do that by getting a new visa (like a skilled worker one) or by marrying a Brit. (Both of which are a hell of a lot easier if you are in the UK as a student already.) But it does mean that most students return home.
The stat that most stood out to me was that, if you looked at the cohort from 2010, then after five years 19% had managed to get new visas, while 1% had indefinite leave to remain.
I suspect that you will see very different patterns by nationality. Americans and Chinese students are probably near certain to return, while African students will be most keen to find a way to stay, with Indians in the middle.
Brexit Britain could benefit from a flight to safety from the political chaos engulfing the US and EU.
This will compensate for all the dynamic wealthy patriots who'll be leaving for Dubai due to Labour wokeness and high taxes.
Oh please don't tell me that you, as an accountant, agree with that twat who wrote in The Guardian that we should be pleased that wealthy people are leaving.
To alter the quote from Blackadder, many Labour voters brains are so minute , that if a hungry cannibal cracked one of their heads open, there wouldn't be enough to cover a small water biscuit.
Yes. On this we agree. Even by the standards of the Guardian, that was one of the stupidest articles I have ever read. “Hooray all the evil wealthy tax payers are leaving. The fact they are leaving and not willing to pay massive taxes PROVES they are evil so we should be glad they’re going”
Where do you even begin with an argument that dumb?
Don't get sick. Don't get old. As a certain Welsh Windbag said.
But that was said of the Tories. Labour's Britain is going to be a hell-hole of diminishing services if that "Eat the Rich!" mentality is as popular amongst the new intake as seems likely.
My worry is not that they’re all secret or even open Marxists. They’re not clever enough for that
And that is my worry. That they are dumb as rocks. All of them. At least you knew Blair was clever and perceptive and Brown had a massive if weird brain
These guys? Sometimes I wonder about starmer. I mean he must be bright because he made it to DPP. I wish he’d evidence it a little more. Yet he doesn’t have a favourite novel or poem. He never dreams. He speaks of himself in the third person. He has zero sense of humour and no idea of “telling a story”. If he’s intelligent it must be a highly narrow kind of intelligence
Says in Starmer's biography his A level grades were 2 Bs and a C. Now admittedly that included Maths and a Science which are more difficult and overall still clearly above average but does suggest he is hardly brain of Britain either.
Intelligence wise as PM he will probably be another John Major or Jim Callaghan with a bit more metropolitan flair but not a great cultural hinterland either
You really are an educational elitist.
Who cares if Mr Thickie Starmer is thicker than Mr Clever Sunak? Starmer has graduated from the school of hard knocks as a child of a tradesman.
If you believe the last sentence I have a bridge to sell you. And it is Sir Thickie if you don't mind.
He actually ended up graduating from the rather featherbedded St Edmund Hall Oxford via the perfectly respectable Leeds University. Essentially he is middle class by any measure, but the dinosaur class obsessed Labour Party want him to be seen as a working class lad. Laughable.
Excuse me. The class obsessed poster outraged at Starmer's mediocre higher education performance was not a member of the Labour party but a former Conservative councillor from Epping Forest.
Yes, but you've got to give him a bit of joy ffs!
I don't wish to be cruel, but seeing HYUFD pass judgement on people's youth-time educational attainment as though that were the only indicator of intelligence, reminds me of a fat bloke in our pub who goes on about the England players not being fit enough.
I am not running to be PM, nor is the fat bloke in the England team. That is the job they are highly paid for.
I also never said Starmer was thick but he is clearly not going to be in the top rank of our PMs by intelligence. Intelligence isn't the be all and end all for PMs, judgement, empathy and competence matters too but it helps
But you supported Boris Johnson, the most stupid PM in my vast political memory, had Liz Truss not come long to make him look moderately clever. And I know, he went to Oxford. What did he do at Oxford? Classics. Sounds rather clever doesn't it, and even if you don't want to imagine that he might have been accepted in the way described in Porterhouse Blue, it should be remembered that only a tiny percentage of A-level students, even in those days, studied Latin and Greek. It was, and still is, I believe, the easiest subject area to gain access to Oxbridge colleges other than Land Economy.
As far as I can tell, the 25% tax free allowance doesn’t have any sort of expiry date, so perhaps he actually misspoke.
I don’t deny that they are going to tax way more than they’re currently saying, but I don’t really have an issue with that.
Speaking as someone who is likely younger than a lot of other PBers, it’s been frustrating as all hell to see how this country has become lucrative as anything for a small segment of the population who all bought their houses 30 years ago for about £10, went to university for free, and now spend their days opposing everything that could possibly bring some more growth so we can bloody well pay for their pensions.
The Tory government that has continually bribed the grey vote has on the other hand imposed a de facto graduate tax on the young, and frankly, the Tory vote share amongst people under 50 should absolutely terrify all Tories who want a return to government anytime soon.
I say this all as someone who has done pretty decently for themselves so far - this imbalance will define the next generation of politics. I have a lot of friends who are seriously contemplating more lucrative moves abroad - and most of them don’t even work in careers where that’s a common occurrence!
TL;DR if Starmer has a secret tax agenda - good - and unlike a lot of people who might say this I have no problems paying more tax myself either, if it’s coupled with fixing some long standing problems (the ridiculousness of how Council Tax is lower for Buckingham Palace than for 46% of households in the country - despite the fact that a ton of it is funding Adult Social Care - it doesn’t make any sense!!!) https://x.com/pjtheeconomist/status/1753361450809110922?s=46
Labour have the chance of a lifetime to use a supermajority to get all the unpopular things done quickly. I am not necessarily convinced they will - and if they squander it I will certainly look elsewhere in 2029.
End the CGT exemption for primary residences. Watch the boomers squeal.
Brexit Britain could benefit from a flight to safety from the political chaos engulfing the US and EU.
This will compensate for all the dynamic wealthy patriots who'll be leaving for Dubai due to Labour wokeness and high taxes.
Oh please don't tell me that you, as an accountant, agree with that twat who wrote in The Guardian that we should be pleased that wealthy people are leaving.
To alter the quote from Blackadder, many Labour voters brains are so minute , that if a hungry cannibal cracked one of their heads open, there wouldn't be enough to cover a small water biscuit.
Yes. On this we agree. Even by the standards of the Guardian, that was one of the stupidest articles I have ever read. “Hooray all the evil wealthy tax payers are leaving. The fact they are leaving and not willing to pay massive taxes PROVES they are evil so we should be glad they’re going”
Where do you even begin with an argument that dumb?
Don't get sick. Don't get old. As a certain Welsh Windbag said.
But that was said of the Tories. Labour's Britain is going to be a hell-hole of diminishing services if that "Eat the Rich!" mentality is as popular amongst the new intake as seems likely.
My worry is not that they’re all secret or even open Marxists. They’re not clever enough for that
And that is my worry. That they are dumb as rocks. All of them. At least you knew Blair was clever and perceptive and Brown had a massive if weird brain
These guys? Sometimes I wonder about starmer. I mean he must be bright because he made it to DPP. I wish he’d evidence it a little more. Yet he doesn’t have a favourite novel or poem. He never dreams. He speaks of himself in the third person. He has zero sense of humour and no idea of “telling a story”. If he’s intelligent it must be a highly narrow kind of intelligence
Says in Starmer's biography his A level grades were 2 Bs and a C. Now admittedly that included Maths and a Science which are more difficult and overall still clearly above average but does suggest he is hardly brain of Britain either.
Intelligence wise he is probably John Major or Jim Callaghan with a bit more metropolitan flair but not a great cultural hinterland either
A levels were rather harder in his day (and my day) than yours..
BBC would get you into almost any University course then...
My offer from Birmingham was BBC. I expected A in Maths, B in Chemistry, but was worried about getting a C in Physics.
In the end I didn't get any Bs or Cs.
When A Levels were hard, and getting an A was harder still.
My offer from Cardiff was two Es. Got AABC. Life was somehow much easier in those days.
My offer from UCL was two Us.
You say that, my youngest son studied for his MA at Cardiff School of Journalism last year. The entry requirement was a minimum 2.1. There was a very posh girl who was allowed on without a first degree she so impressed the powers that be.
Brexit Britain could benefit from a flight to safety from the political chaos engulfing the US and EU.
This will compensate for all the dynamic wealthy patriots who'll be leaving for Dubai due to Labour wokeness and high taxes.
Oh please don't tell me that you, as an accountant, agree with that twat who wrote in The Guardian that we should be pleased that wealthy people are leaving.
To alter the quote from Blackadder, many Labour voters brains are so minute , that if a hungry cannibal cracked one of their heads open, there wouldn't be enough to cover a small water biscuit.
Yes. On this we agree. Even by the standards of the Guardian, that was one of the stupidest articles I have ever read. “Hooray all the evil wealthy tax payers are leaving. The fact they are leaving and not willing to pay massive taxes PROVES they are evil so we should be glad they’re going”
Where do you even begin with an argument that dumb?
Don't get sick. Don't get old. As a certain Welsh Windbag said.
But that was said of the Tories. Labour's Britain is going to be a hell-hole of diminishing services if that "Eat the Rich!" mentality is as popular amongst the new intake as seems likely.
My worry is not that they’re all secret or even open Marxists. They’re not clever enough for that
And that is my worry. That they are dumb as rocks. All of them. At least you knew Blair was clever and perceptive and Brown had a massive if weird brain
These guys? Sometimes I wonder about starmer. I mean he must be bright because he made it to DPP. I wish he’d evidence it a little more. Yet he doesn’t have a favourite novel or poem. He never dreams. He speaks of himself in the third person. He has zero sense of humour and no idea of “telling a story”. If he’s intelligent it must be a highly narrow kind of intelligence
Says in Starmer's biography his A level grades were 2 Bs and a C. Now admittedly that included Maths and a Science which are more difficult and overall still clearly above average but does suggest he is hardly brain of Britain either.
Intelligence wise as PM he will probably be another John Major or Jim Callaghan with a bit more metropolitan flair but not a great cultural hinterland either
You really are an educational elitist.
Who cares if Mr Thickie Starmer is thicker than Mr Clever Sunak? Starmer has graduated from the school of hard knocks as a child of a tradesman.
If you believe the last sentence I have a bridge to sell you. And it is Sir Thickie if you don't mind.
He actually ended up graduating from the rather featherbedded St Edmund Hall Oxford via the perfectly respectable Leeds University. Essentially he is middle class by any measure, but the dinosaur class obsessed Labour Party want him to be seen as a working class lad. Laughable.
Excuse me. The class obsessed poster outraged at Starmer's mediocre higher education performance was not a member of the Labour party but a former Conservative councillor from Epping Forest.
Yes, but you've got to give him a bit of joy ffs!
I don't wish to be cruel, but seeing HYUFD pass judgement on people's youth-time educational attainment as though that were the only indicator of intelligence, reminds me of a fat bloke in our pub who goes on about the England players not being fit enough.
I am not running to be PM, nor is the fat bloke in the England team. That is the job they are highly paid for.
I also never said Starmer was thick but he is clearly not going to be in the top rank of our PMs by intelligence. Intelligence isn't the be all and end all for PMs, judgement, empathy and competence matters too but it helps
But you supported Boris Johnson, the most stupid PM in my vast political memory, had Liz Truss not come long to make him look moderately clever. And I know, he went to Oxford. What did he do at Oxford? Classics. Sounds rather clever doesn't it, and even if you don't want to imagine that he might have been accepted in the way described in Porterhouse Blue, it should be remembered that only a tiny percentage of A-level students, even in those days, studied Latin and Greek. It was, and still is, I believe, the easiest subject area to gain access to Oxbridge colleges other than Land Economy.
I thought Land Economy was quite difficult?
You had to be a world class rower or the heir to a massive estate.
As far as I can tell, the 25% tax free allowance doesn’t have any sort of expiry date, so perhaps he actually misspoke.
I don’t deny that they are going to tax way more than they’re currently saying, but I don’t really have an issue with that.
Speaking as someone who is likely younger than a lot of other PBers, it’s been frustrating as all hell to see how this country has become lucrative as anything for a small segment of the population who all bought their houses 30 years ago for about £10, went to university for free, and now spend their days opposing everything that could possibly bring some more growth so we can bloody well pay for their pensions.
The Tory government that has continually bribed the grey vote has on the other hand, among many other measures, imposed a de facto graduate tax on the young, and frankly, the Tory vote share amongst people under 50 should absolutely terrify all Tories who want a return to government anytime soon.
I say this all as someone who has done pretty decently for themselves so far - this imbalance will define the next generation of politics. I have a lot of friends who are seriously contemplating more lucrative moves abroad - and most of them don’t even work in careers where that’s a common occurrence!
And yet some people would prefer to live in a country where they can sit like Smaug atop their pile of Gold, complain that the young don’t know the meaning of hard work, and enjoy a lifestyle of being slightly well-off in a country where nothing bloody works properly, and the young who support their lifestyle have all fled for pastures new. But it’s okay - at least the modern train that could aid the nation’s economy won’t be within 2 miles of their house, blocking the views - we absolutely couldn’t have that!
TL;DR if Starmer has a secret tax agenda - good - and unlike a lot of people who might say this I have no problems paying more tax myself either, if it’s coupled with fixing some long standing problems (the ridiculousness of how Council Tax is lower for Buckingham Palace than for 46% of households in the country - despite the fact that a ton of it is funding Adult Social Care - it doesn’t make any sense!!!) https://x.com/pjtheeconomist/status/1753361450809110922?s=46
Labour have the chance of a lifetime to use a supermajority to get all the unpopular things done quickly. I am not necessarily convinced they will - and if they squander it I will certainly look elsewhere in 2029.
Brexit Britain could benefit from a flight to safety from the political chaos engulfing the US and EU.
This will compensate for all the dynamic wealthy patriots who'll be leaving for Dubai due to Labour wokeness and high taxes.
Oh please don't tell me that you, as an accountant, agree with that twat who wrote in The Guardian that we should be pleased that wealthy people are leaving.
To alter the quote from Blackadder, many Labour voters brains are so minute , that if a hungry cannibal cracked one of their heads open, there wouldn't be enough to cover a small water biscuit.
Yes. On this we agree. Even by the standards of the Guardian, that was one of the stupidest articles I have ever read. “Hooray all the evil wealthy tax payers are leaving. The fact they are leaving and not willing to pay massive taxes PROVES they are evil so we should be glad they’re going”
Where do you even begin with an argument that dumb?
Don't get sick. Don't get old. As a certain Welsh Windbag said.
But that was said of the Tories. Labour's Britain is going to be a hell-hole of diminishing services if that "Eat the Rich!" mentality is as popular amongst the new intake as seems likely.
My worry is not that they’re all secret or even open Marxists. They’re not clever enough for that
And that is my worry. That they are dumb as rocks. All of them. At least you knew Blair was clever and perceptive and Brown had a massive if weird brain
These guys? Sometimes I wonder about starmer. I mean he must be bright because he made it to DPP. I wish he’d evidence it a little more. Yet he doesn’t have a favourite novel or poem. He never dreams. He speaks of himself in the third person. He has zero sense of humour and no idea of “telling a story”. If he’s intelligent it must be a highly narrow kind of intelligence
Says in Starmer's biography his A level grades were 2 Bs and a C. Now admittedly that included Maths and a Science which are more difficult and overall still clearly above average but does suggest he is hardly brain of Britain either.
Intelligence wise he is probably John Major or Jim Callaghan with a bit more metropolitan flair but not a great cultural hinterland either
A levels were rather harder in his day (and my day) than yours..
BBC would get you into almost any University course then...
My offer from Birmingham was BBC. I expected A in Maths, B in Chemistry, but was worried about getting a C in Physics.
In the end I didn't get any Bs or Cs.
When A Levels were hard, and getting an A was harder still.
My offer from Cardiff was two Es. Got AABC. Life was somehow much easier in those days.
My offer from UCL was two Us.
You say that, my youngest son studied for his MA at Cardiff School of Journalism last year. The entry requirement was a minimum 2.1. There was a very posh girl who was allowed on without a first degree she so impressed the powers that be.
Brexit Britain could benefit from a flight to safety from the political chaos engulfing the US and EU.
This will compensate for all the dynamic wealthy patriots who'll be leaving for Dubai due to Labour wokeness and high taxes.
Oh please don't tell me that you, as an accountant, agree with that twat who wrote in The Guardian that we should be pleased that wealthy people are leaving.
To alter the quote from Blackadder, many Labour voters brains are so minute , that if a hungry cannibal cracked one of their heads open, there wouldn't be enough to cover a small water biscuit.
Yes. On this we agree. Even by the standards of the Guardian, that was one of the stupidest articles I have ever read. “Hooray all the evil wealthy tax payers are leaving. The fact they are leaving and not willing to pay massive taxes PROVES they are evil so we should be glad they’re going”
Where do you even begin with an argument that dumb?
Don't get sick. Don't get old. As a certain Welsh Windbag said.
But that was said of the Tories. Labour's Britain is going to be a hell-hole of diminishing services if that "Eat the Rich!" mentality is as popular amongst the new intake as seems likely.
My worry is not that they’re all secret or even open Marxists. They’re not clever enough for that
And that is my worry. That they are dumb as rocks. All of them. At least you knew Blair was clever and perceptive and Brown had a massive if weird brain
These guys? Sometimes I wonder about starmer. I mean he must be bright because he made it to DPP. I wish he’d evidence it a little more. Yet he doesn’t have a favourite novel or poem. He never dreams. He speaks of himself in the third person. He has zero sense of humour and no idea of “telling a story”. If he’s intelligent it must be a highly narrow kind of intelligence
Says in Starmer's biography his A level grades were 2 Bs and a C. Now admittedly that included Maths and a Science which are more difficult and overall still clearly above average but does suggest he is hardly brain of Britain either.
Intelligence wise as PM he will probably be another John Major or Jim Callaghan with a bit more metropolitan flair but not a great cultural hinterland either
You really are an educational elitist.
Who cares if Mr Thickie Starmer is thicker than Mr Clever Sunak? Starmer has graduated from the school of hard knocks as a child of a tradesman.
If you believe the last sentence I have a bridge to sell you. And it is Sir Thickie if you don't mind.
He actually ended up graduating from the rather featherbedded St Edmund Hall Oxford via the perfectly respectable Leeds University. Essentially he is middle class by any measure, but the dinosaur class obsessed Labour Party want him to be seen as a working class lad. Laughable.
Excuse me. The class obsessed poster outraged at Starmer's mediocre higher education performance was not a member of the Labour party but a former Conservative councillor from Epping Forest.
Yes, but you've got to give him a bit of joy ffs!
I don't wish to be cruel, but seeing HYUFD pass judgement on people's youth-time educational attainment as though that were the only indicator of intelligence, reminds me of a fat bloke in our pub who goes on about the England players not being fit enough.
I am not running to be PM, nor is the fat bloke in the England team. That is the job they are highly paid for.
I also never said Starmer was thick but he is clearly not going to be in the top rank of our PMs by intelligence. Intelligence isn't the be all and end all for PMs, judgement, empathy and competence matters too but it helps
But you supported Boris Johnson, the most stupid PM in my vast political memory, had Liz Truss not come long to make him look moderately clever. And I know, he went to Oxford. What did he do at Oxford? Classics. Sounds rather clever doesn't it, and even if you don't want to imagine that he might have been accepted in the way described in Porterhouse Blue, it should be remembered that only a tiny percentage of A-level students, even in those days, studied Latin and Greek. It was, and still is, I believe, the easiest subject area to gain access to Oxbridge colleges other than Land Economy.
It was Boris who beat Corbyn, Boris who got Brexit done and had Boris still been leader the Tories would not be heading for near annihilation but would be on 200 seats+ with Reform well under 10% still. We therefore would have a pro Ukraine leader of the right still, not a surging Farage and his Putin apologies. The markets would not have reacted so badly to Truss' budget either as there would have been no Truss budget and no PM Kwarteng.
So no I make NO apologies for backing Boris with his Classics degree rather than Truss and Sunak's PPE degrees. Fat lot of good they did them!
Brexit Britain could benefit from a flight to safety from the political chaos engulfing the US and EU.
This will compensate for all the dynamic wealthy patriots who'll be leaving for Dubai due to Labour wokeness and high taxes.
Oh please don't tell me that you, as an accountant, agree with that twat who wrote in The Guardian that we should be pleased that wealthy people are leaving.
To alter the quote from Blackadder, many Labour voters brains are so minute , that if a hungry cannibal cracked one of their heads open, there wouldn't be enough to cover a small water biscuit.
Yes. On this we agree. Even by the standards of the Guardian, that was one of the stupidest articles I have ever read. “Hooray all the evil wealthy tax payers are leaving. The fact they are leaving and not willing to pay massive taxes PROVES they are evil so we should be glad they’re going”
Where do you even begin with an argument that dumb?
Don't get sick. Don't get old. As a certain Welsh Windbag said.
But that was said of the Tories. Labour's Britain is going to be a hell-hole of diminishing services if that "Eat the Rich!" mentality is as popular amongst the new intake as seems likely.
My worry is not that they’re all secret or even open Marxists. They’re not clever enough for that
And that is my worry. That they are dumb as rocks. All of them. At least you knew Blair was clever and perceptive and Brown had a massive if weird brain
These guys? Sometimes I wonder about starmer. I mean he must be bright because he made it to DPP. I wish he’d evidence it a little more. Yet he doesn’t have a favourite novel or poem. He never dreams. He speaks of himself in the third person. He has zero sense of humour and no idea of “telling a story”. If he’s intelligent it must be a highly narrow kind of intelligence
Says in Starmer's biography his A level grades were 2 Bs and a C. Now admittedly that included Maths and a Science which are more difficult and overall still clearly above average but does suggest he is hardly brain of Britain either.
Intelligence wise as PM he will probably be another John Major or Jim Callaghan with a bit more metropolitan flair but not a great cultural hinterland either
You really are an educational elitist.
Who cares if Mr Thickie Starmer is thicker than Mr Clever Sunak? Starmer has graduated from the school of hard knocks as a child of a tradesman.
If you believe the last sentence I have a bridge to sell you. And it is Sir Thickie if you don't mind.
He actually ended up graduating from the rather featherbedded St Edmund Hall Oxford via the perfectly respectable Leeds University. Essentially he is middle class by any measure, but the dinosaur class obsessed Labour Party want him to be seen as a working class lad. Laughable.
Excuse me. The class obsessed poster outraged at Starmer's mediocre higher education performance was not a member of the Labour party but a former Conservative councillor from Epping Forest.
Yes, but you've got to give him a bit of joy ffs!
I don't wish to be cruel, but seeing HYUFD pass judgement on people's youth-time educational attainment as though that were the only indicator of intelligence, reminds me of a fat bloke in our pub who goes on about the England players not being fit enough.
I am not running to be PM, nor is the fat bloke in the England team. That is the job they are highly paid for.
I also never said Starmer was thick but he is clearly not going to be in the top rank of our PMs by intelligence. Intelligence isn't the be all and end all for PMs, judgement, empathy and competence matters too but it helps
But you supported Boris Johnson, the most stupid PM in my vast political memory, had Liz Truss not come long to make him look moderately clever. And I know, he went to Oxford. What did he do at Oxford? Classics. Sounds rather clever doesn't it, and even if you don't want to imagine that he might have been accepted in the way described in Porterhouse Blue, it should be remembered that only a tiny percentage of A-level students, even in those days, studied Latin and Greek. It was, and still is, I believe, the easiest subject area to gain access to Oxbridge colleges other than Land Economy.
I thought Land Economy was quite difficult?
You had to be a world class rower or the heir to a massive estate.
It is also very useful in a practical way if you want to be a farmer
I don't think these attacks on Reform will work. The aim is to try and destroy them by revealing their 'true nature' but it just keeps getting shrugged off by Farage. So the attacks fail, and the by product is that the discourse is normalised. It feels like the overton window shifting.
Yes. There is a fashion on TikTok for young kids in France and Germany to say “yeah I’m a racist so fucking what”
The term has lost a lot of its negative power through overuse and now it has a kind of mildly transgressive chic - which kids love of course. That’s how you shock the elders these days. Say “yeah I’m a racist” on TikTok. Cue heart attack in your parents
Saying “fuck the toreeez” and going to Glastonbury is what people like @Heathener do
Again I don’t believe Britain will be immune from this trend, we are merely behind the curve
Is Britain ahead, behind or on a totally different curve? Time will tell. Brexit and Johnson gave the populist mad right wing nonsense thing a bad name with anyone under 50
My thinking is Brexit has delayed our swerve to the populist right - but not necessarily averted it. We gave people the vote and they vented their anger - that has bought us time
With that time we need to see a proper right wing government emerge that will actually do proper right wing things. Then maybe we can dodge the whole Le Pen shit altogether -
But if that doesn’t happen then it seems inevitable to me that we will follow Italy France Sweden the USA Holland etc
I agree with your basic premise, it’s just that I don’t think they want right wing polices so much as a Government that does what it is told to.
Brexit was a cry of frustration because nobody ever listened to the public saying they wanted to go no further. And then they got disenchanted that it still didn’t happen, and we got 2019.
But I think it has led to volatility meaning Starmer isn’t guaranteed his second term, and the Tories aren’t guaranteed to replace him.
Boris Johnson fucked up in setting the post-Brexit income thresholds too low, which resulted in far more people coming than was anticipated.
His successors were then slow - very slow - to recognize this.
I find it astonishing that it wasn't recognized by either Johnson or Sunak (and his Home Secretaries) that numbers coming were way above forecast, and were resulting in much higher net migration than was the case when the UK was part of the EU.
And here Starmer is a very lucky General.
Firstly, higher income thresholds were put in place for visas. Now, you can argue that £38,700 is still too low (or alternatively that it is far too simplistic, given that a 21 year old earning £39k is very different to a 45 year old), but it is still almost 40% above the old threshold. That means that a very substantial number of people who were eligible for visas before, are no longer eligible. And it is Starmer who who will see the benefit.
Secondly, a large chunk of the increase in net immigration in the last three years has been student numbers. We've gone from 180k student (and dependent) visas issued a year to something like 600k. Based on experience most of those people will go home at the end of their courses. But there is an approximately three year period during which the number of students (and dependents) resident in the UK is rising fast. Once you get to the 3 or 4 year anniversary - and particularly if it is matched by smaller numbers of students coming - then the net impact falls dramatically.
Starmer, if he does absolutely nothing, will be Prime Minister, when net immigration numbers fall quite significantly. Because maths.
Are there any facts or figures on what percentage of migrants are coming on the income threshold visas?
The student one I think is ripe for abuse and I am sceptical that most will go home after three years, because actually a very big percentage already stayed and that was before a surge in people coming from their world nations who have no desire to return home.
Where my wife works the firm regular uses agency staff and the agency staff are almost always migrants who barely speak English and many of them have their phones playing university lectures on zoom in the background while they're getting on with their job. I don't think that's someone especially interested in the lecture.
You can only stay on at the end of your studies if you get another visa.
Now, you can do that by getting a new visa (like a skilled worker one) or by marrying a Brit. (Both of which are a hell of a lot easier if you are in the UK as a student already.) But it does mean that most students return home.
The stat that most stood out to me was that, if you looked at the cohort from 2010, then after five years 19% had managed to get new visas, while 1% had indefinite leave to remain.
I suspect that you will see very different patterns by nationality. Americans and Chinese students are probably near certain to return, while African students will be most keen to find a way to stay, with Indians in the middle.
2010 data is quite inconsistent with modern data and as your link makes clear, people bringing dependents with them are not typically intending to leave the country and a major part of the figures is an eight-fold increase in the number of dependents coming over. With students from Nigeria bringing over dependents at a ratio of over 1:1.
But Starmer could be a lucky general there too as it seems that loophole that got exploited has been closed in which case again numbers could fall without him taking any action there either.
As far as I can tell, the 25% tax free allowance doesn’t have any sort of expiry date, so perhaps he actually misspoke.
I don’t deny that they are going to tax way more than they’re currently saying, but I don’t really have an issue with that.
Speaking as someone who is likely younger than a lot of other PBers, it’s been frustrating as all hell to see how this country has become lucrative as anything for a small segment of the population who all bought their houses 30 years ago for about £10, went to university for free, and now spend their days opposing everything that could possibly bring some more growth so we can bloody well pay for their pensions.
The Tory government that has continually bribed the grey vote has on the other hand imposed a de facto graduate tax on the young, and frankly, the Tory vote share amongst people under 50 should absolutely terrify all Tories who want a return to government anytime soon.
I say this all as someone who has done pretty decently for themselves so far - this imbalance will define the next generation of politics. I have a lot of friends who are seriously contemplating more lucrative moves abroad - and most of them don’t even work in careers where that’s a common occurrence!
TL;DR if Starmer has a secret tax agenda - good - and unlike a lot of people who might say this I have no problems paying more tax myself either, if it’s coupled with fixing some long standing problems (the ridiculousness of how Council Tax is lower for Buckingham Palace than for 46% of households in the country - despite the fact that a ton of it is funding Adult Social Care - it doesn’t make any sense!!!) https://x.com/pjtheeconomist/status/1753361450809110922?s=46
Labour have the chance of a lifetime to use a supermajority to get all the unpopular things done quickly. I am not necessarily convinced they will - and if they squander it I will certainly look elsewhere in 2029.
End the CGT exemption for primary residences. Watch the boomers squeal.
A sizeable number of people see a country where they bought a semi detached house for £130,000 in 1995 off a single person’s salary, see it be worth £963,000 in 2024, and then are bloody outraged that the state should perhaps take a bit of that in a country when they pass it down to their children, whilst millions of people are living with their parents in their 30s and 40s and may never own a home. “Can’t we cut benefits instead?” they ask.
I saw her dad, Pops. The Borderline, Charing Cross Road. Mid 80s. No idea who was on, turned up on spec.
What a man. He walked next to MLK Jr.
I've seen Mavis four times
I'd swap two of those for one Pops show
But not the one when she held my hand and squeezed it (at Under The Bridge, under the Chelsea stadium). I remember thinking after that I was now one degree of touching from MLK
Omg this poll is in line with pp Lab: 38% Ref: 21% Con: 18% LD: 11%
It's nowhere near the People Polling poll, if that's what you mean?
It's also not more than 1pt different for any party since their last poll, and their polls over the whole election period only appear to have tracked the general trend.
Possibly the worst decision this court has made, and heaven knows it's been a utter shitshow since Trump's appointments. It's an enormous power grab by the Court at the expense of Congress, and demonstrates a contempt for the stare decisis doctrine that is deeper than the Dodds decision.
Kagan's dissent is well argued, and appropriately scathing. She made a point of reading it from the bench.
Brexit Britain could benefit from a flight to safety from the political chaos engulfing the US and EU.
This will compensate for all the dynamic wealthy patriots who'll be leaving for Dubai due to Labour wokeness and high taxes.
Oh please don't tell me that you, as an accountant, agree with that twat who wrote in The Guardian that we should be pleased that wealthy people are leaving.
To alter the quote from Blackadder, many Labour voters brains are so minute , that if a hungry cannibal cracked one of their heads open, there wouldn't be enough to cover a small water biscuit.
Yes. On this we agree. Even by the standards of the Guardian, that was one of the stupidest articles I have ever read. “Hooray all the evil wealthy tax payers are leaving. The fact they are leaving and not willing to pay massive taxes PROVES they are evil so we should be glad they’re going”
Where do you even begin with an argument that dumb?
Don't get sick. Don't get old. As a certain Welsh Windbag said.
But that was said of the Tories. Labour's Britain is going to be a hell-hole of diminishing services if that "Eat the Rich!" mentality is as popular amongst the new intake as seems likely.
My worry is not that they’re all secret or even open Marxists. They’re not clever enough for that
And that is my worry. That they are dumb as rocks. All of them. At least you knew Blair was clever and perceptive and Brown had a massive if weird brain
These guys? Sometimes I wonder about starmer. I mean he must be bright because he made it to DPP. I wish he’d evidence it a little more. Yet he doesn’t have a favourite novel or poem. He never dreams. He speaks of himself in the third person. He has zero sense of humour and no idea of “telling a story”. If he’s intelligent it must be a highly narrow kind of intelligence
Says in Starmer's biography his A level grades were 2 Bs and a C. Now admittedly that included Maths and a Science which are more difficult and overall still clearly above average but does suggest he is hardly brain of Britain either.
Intelligence wise as PM he will probably be another John Major or Jim Callaghan with a bit more metropolitan flair but not a great cultural hinterland either
You really are an educational elitist.
Who cares if Mr Thickie Starmer is thicker than Mr Clever Sunak? Starmer has graduated from the school of hard knocks as a child of a tradesman.
If you believe the last sentence I have a bridge to sell you. And it is Sir Thickie if you don't mind.
He actually ended up graduating from the rather featherbedded St Edmund Hall Oxford via the perfectly respectable Leeds University. Essentially he is middle class by any measure, but the dinosaur class obsessed Labour Party want him to be seen as a working class lad. Laughable.
Excuse me. The class obsessed poster outraged at Starmer's mediocre higher education performance was not a member of the Labour party but a former Conservative councillor from Epping Forest.
Yes, but you've got to give him a bit of joy ffs!
I don't wish to be cruel, but seeing HYUFD pass judgement on people's youth-time educational attainment as though that were the only indicator of intelligence, reminds me of a fat bloke in our pub who goes on about the England players not being fit enough.
I wish I'd known you could read Law after doing Science A levels.
Whatever else you read at Uni, you chose....wisely.
Back in the day I knew of a real w***** who read politics at Cardiff. What f****' use was politics?
Wastrel degrees like Sociology, Politics, Philosophy and Classics all need to be banned by the new Conservative Government next Friday as irrelevant to modern living.
I wish I could have read something practically useful like Media Studies. Back in my day many non-Law and non-Stem degrees were academic nonsense!
My time again and rather than Law, I would read something that began with A. Astronomy. Archeology. At a push even Anthropology.
But fuck it, not law.
The opportunities out there are far and wide, and somehow I got involved in the borefest that is environmental compliance.
As far as I can tell, the 25% tax free allowance doesn’t have any sort of expiry date, so perhaps he actually misspoke.
I don’t deny that they are going to tax way more than they’re currently saying, but I don’t really have an issue with that.
Speaking as someone who is likely younger than a lot of other PBers, it’s been frustrating as all hell to see how this country has become lucrative as anything for a small segment of the population who all bought their houses 30 years ago for about £10, went to university for free, and now spend their days opposing everything that could possibly bring some more growth so we can bloody well pay for their pensions.
The Tory government that has continually bribed the grey vote has on the other hand, among many other measures, imposed a de facto graduate tax on the young, and frankly, the Tory vote share amongst people under 50 should absolutely terrify all Tories who want a return to government anytime soon.
I say this all as someone who has done pretty decently for themselves so far - this imbalance will define the next generation of politics. I have a lot of friends who are seriously contemplating more lucrative moves abroad - and most of them don’t even work in careers where that’s a common occurrence!
And yet some people would prefer to live in a country where they can sit like Smaug atop their pile of Gold, complain that the young don’t know the meaning of hard work, and enjoy a lifestyle of being slightly well-off in a country where nothing bloody works properly, and the young who support their lifestyle have all fled for pastures new. But it’s okay - at least the modern train that could aid the nation’s economy won’t be within 2 miles of their house, blocking the views - we absolutely couldn’t have that!
TL;DR if Starmer has a secret tax agenda - good - and unlike a lot of people who might say this I have no problems paying more tax myself either, if it’s coupled with fixing some long standing problems (the ridiculousness of how Council Tax is lower for Buckingham Palace than for 46% of households in the country - despite the fact that a ton of it is funding Adult Social Care - it doesn’t make any sense!!!) https://x.com/pjtheeconomist/status/1753361450809110922?s=46
Labour have the chance of a lifetime to use a supermajority to get all the unpopular things done quickly. I am not necessarily convinced they will - and if they squander it I will certainly look elsewhere in 2029.
You will be looking then.
Okay, that’s fine! Unlike many PBers I’m happy to change my vote if I don’t like what I see in the manifestos and/or feel let down by the previous administration.
(not casting any aspersions on you specifically btw!)
Brexit Britain could benefit from a flight to safety from the political chaos engulfing the US and EU.
This will compensate for all the dynamic wealthy patriots who'll be leaving for Dubai due to Labour wokeness and high taxes.
Oh please don't tell me that you, as an accountant, agree with that twat who wrote in The Guardian that we should be pleased that wealthy people are leaving.
To alter the quote from Blackadder, many Labour voters brains are so minute , that if a hungry cannibal cracked one of their heads open, there wouldn't be enough to cover a small water biscuit.
Yes. On this we agree. Even by the standards of the Guardian, that was one of the stupidest articles I have ever read. “Hooray all the evil wealthy tax payers are leaving. The fact they are leaving and not willing to pay massive taxes PROVES they are evil so we should be glad they’re going”
Where do you even begin with an argument that dumb?
Don't get sick. Don't get old. As a certain Welsh Windbag said.
But that was said of the Tories. Labour's Britain is going to be a hell-hole of diminishing services if that "Eat the Rich!" mentality is as popular amongst the new intake as seems likely.
My worry is not that they’re all secret or even open Marxists. They’re not clever enough for that
And that is my worry. That they are dumb as rocks. All of them. At least you knew Blair was clever and perceptive and Brown had a massive if weird brain
These guys? Sometimes I wonder about starmer. I mean he must be bright because he made it to DPP. I wish he’d evidence it a little more. Yet he doesn’t have a favourite novel or poem. He never dreams. He speaks of himself in the third person. He has zero sense of humour and no idea of “telling a story”. If he’s intelligent it must be a highly narrow kind of intelligence
Says in Starmer's biography his A level grades were 2 Bs and a C. Now admittedly that included Maths and a Science which are more difficult and overall still clearly above average but does suggest he is hardly brain of Britain either.
Intelligence wise as PM he will probably be another John Major or Jim Callaghan with a bit more metropolitan flair but not a great cultural hinterland either
You really are an educational elitist.
Who cares if Mr Thickie Starmer is thicker than Mr Clever Sunak? Starmer has graduated from the school of hard knocks as a child of a tradesman.
If you believe the last sentence I have a bridge to sell you. And it is Sir Thickie if you don't mind.
He actually ended up graduating from the rather featherbedded St Edmund Hall Oxford via the perfectly respectable Leeds University. Essentially he is middle class by any measure, but the dinosaur class obsessed Labour Party want him to be seen as a working class lad. Laughable.
Excuse me. The class obsessed poster outraged at Starmer's mediocre higher education performance was not a member of the Labour party but a former Conservative councillor from Epping Forest.
Yes, but you've got to give him a bit of joy ffs!
I don't wish to be cruel, but seeing HYUFD pass judgement on people's youth-time educational attainment as though that were the only indicator of intelligence, reminds me of a fat bloke in our pub who goes on about the England players not being fit enough.
I am not running to be PM, nor is the fat bloke in the England team. That is the job they are highly paid for.
I also never said Starmer was thick but he is clearly not going to be in the top rank of our PMs by intelligence. Intelligence isn't the be all and end all for PMs, judgement, empathy and competence matters too but it helps
But you supported Boris Johnson, the most stupid PM in my vast political memory, had Liz Truss not come long to make him look moderately clever. And I know, he went to Oxford. What did he do at Oxford? Classics. Sounds rather clever doesn't it, and even if you don't want to imagine that he might have been accepted in the way described in Porterhouse Blue, it should be remembered that only a tiny percentage of A-level students, even in those days, studied Latin and Greek. It was, and still is, I believe, the easiest subject area to gain access to Oxbridge colleges other than Land Economy.
I thought Land Economy was quite difficult?
You had to be a world class rower or the heir to a massive estate.
Well indeed, that massive intellect Gavin Hastings was an alumni of Cambridge with an MA(Cantab) (That is a BA anywhere else) in Land Economy.
I don't think these attacks on Reform will work. The aim is to try and destroy them by revealing their 'true nature' but it just keeps getting shrugged off by Farage. So the attacks fail, and the by product is that the discourse is normalised. It feels like the overton window shifting.
Yes. There is a fashion on TikTok for young kids in France and Germany to say “yeah I’m a racist so fucking what”
The term has lost a lot of its negative power through overuse and now it has a kind of mildly transgressive chic - which kids love of course. That’s how you shock the elders these days. Say “yeah I’m a racist” on TikTok. Cue heart attack in your parents
Saying “fuck the toreeez” and going to Glastonbury is what people like @Heathener do
Again I don’t believe Britain will be immune from this trend, we are merely behind the curve
Is Britain ahead, behind or on a totally different curve? Time will tell. Brexit and Johnson gave the populist mad right wing nonsense thing a bad name with anyone under 50
My thinking is Brexit has delayed our swerve to the populist right - but not necessarily averted it. We gave people the vote and they vented their anger - that has bought us time
With that time we need to see a proper right wing government emerge that will actually do proper right wing things. Then maybe we can dodge the whole Le Pen shit altogether -
But if that doesn’t happen then it seems inevitable to me that we will follow Italy France Sweden the USA Holland etc
I agree with your basic premise, it’s just that I don’t think they want right wing polices so much as a Government that does what it is told to.
Brexit was a cry of frustration because nobody ever listened to the public saying they wanted to go no further. And then they got disenchanted that it still didn’t happen, and we got 2019.
But I think it has led to volatility meaning Starmer isn’t guaranteed his second term, and the Tories aren’t guaranteed to replace him.
Boris Johnson fucked up in setting the post-Brexit income thresholds too low, which resulted in far more people coming than was anticipated.
His successors were then slow - very slow - to recognize this.
I find it astonishing that it wasn't recognized by either Johnson or Sunak (and his Home Secretaries) that numbers coming were way above forecast, and were resulting in much higher net migration than was the case when the UK was part of the EU.
And here Starmer is a very lucky General.
Firstly, higher income thresholds were put in place for visas. Now, you can argue that £38,700 is still too low (or alternatively that it is far too simplistic, given that a 21 year old earning £39k is very different to a 45 year old), but it is still almost 40% above the old threshold. That means that a very substantial number of people who were eligible for visas before, are no longer eligible. And it is Starmer who who will see the benefit.
Secondly, a large chunk of the increase in net immigration in the last three years has been student numbers. We've gone from 180k student (and dependent) visas issued a year to something like 600k. Based on experience most of those people will go home at the end of their courses. But there is an approximately three year period during which the number of students (and dependents) resident in the UK is rising fast. Once you get to the 3 or 4 year anniversary - and particularly if it is matched by smaller numbers of students coming - then the net impact falls dramatically.
Starmer, if he does absolutely nothing, will be Prime Minister, when net immigration numbers fall quite significantly. Because maths.
Are there any facts or figures on what percentage of migrants are coming on the income threshold visas?
The student one I think is ripe for abuse and I am sceptical that most will go home after three years, because actually a very big percentage already stayed and that was before a surge in people coming from their world nations who have no desire to return home.
Where my wife works the firm regular uses agency staff and the agency staff are almost always migrants who barely speak English and many of them have their phones playing university lectures on zoom in the background while they're getting on with their job. I don't think that's someone especially interested in the lecture.
You can only stay on at the end of your studies if you get another visa.
Now, you can do that by getting a new visa (like a skilled worker one) or by marrying a Brit. (Both of which are a hell of a lot easier if you are in the UK as a student already.) But it does mean that most students return home.
The stat that most stood out to me was that, if you looked at the cohort from 2010, then after five years 19% had managed to get new visas, while 1% had indefinite leave to remain.
I suspect that you will see very different patterns by nationality. Americans and Chinese students are probably near certain to return, while African students will be most keen to find a way to stay, with Indians in the middle.
2010 data is quite inconsistent with modern data and as your link makes clear, people bringing dependents with them are not typically intending to leave the country and a major part of the figures is an eight-fold increase in the number of dependents coming over. With students from Nigeria bringing over dependents at a ratio of over 1:1.
But Starmer could be a lucky general there too as it seems that loophole that got exploited has been closed in which case again numbers could fall without him taking any action there either.
It has indeed: it's much harder to bring dependents over than it used to be. I also posted more recent data, which showed a very similar trend.
You wife's colleagues are coming the UK and working while "studying", but they still need to qualify for a visa once their studies are over. They can get a two year "graduate visa" extension, but after that, unless they have a skilled worker visa or have managed to marry, then they'll be off back home.
Brexit Britain could benefit from a flight to safety from the political chaos engulfing the US and EU.
This will compensate for all the dynamic wealthy patriots who'll be leaving for Dubai due to Labour wokeness and high taxes.
Oh please don't tell me that you, as an accountant, agree with that twat who wrote in The Guardian that we should be pleased that wealthy people are leaving.
To alter the quote from Blackadder, many Labour voters brains are so minute , that if a hungry cannibal cracked one of their heads open, there wouldn't be enough to cover a small water biscuit.
Yes. On this we agree. Even by the standards of the Guardian, that was one of the stupidest articles I have ever read. “Hooray all the evil wealthy tax payers are leaving. The fact they are leaving and not willing to pay massive taxes PROVES they are evil so we should be glad they’re going”
Where do you even begin with an argument that dumb?
Don't get sick. Don't get old. As a certain Welsh Windbag said.
But that was said of the Tories. Labour's Britain is going to be a hell-hole of diminishing services if that "Eat the Rich!" mentality is as popular amongst the new intake as seems likely.
My worry is not that they’re all secret or even open Marxists. They’re not clever enough for that
And that is my worry. That they are dumb as rocks. All of them. At least you knew Blair was clever and perceptive and Brown had a massive if weird brain
These guys? Sometimes I wonder about starmer. I mean he must be bright because he made it to DPP. I wish he’d evidence it a little more. Yet he doesn’t have a favourite novel or poem. He never dreams. He speaks of himself in the third person. He has zero sense of humour and no idea of “telling a story”. If he’s intelligent it must be a highly narrow kind of intelligence
Says in Starmer's biography his A level grades were 2 Bs and a C. Now admittedly that included Maths and a Science which are more difficult and overall still clearly above average but does suggest he is hardly brain of Britain either.
Intelligence wise as PM he will probably be another John Major or Jim Callaghan with a bit more metropolitan flair but not a great cultural hinterland either
You really are an educational elitist.
Who cares if Mr Thickie Starmer is thicker than Mr Clever Sunak? Starmer has graduated from the school of hard knocks as a child of a tradesman.
If you believe the last sentence I have a bridge to sell you. And it is Sir Thickie if you don't mind.
He actually ended up graduating from the rather featherbedded St Edmund Hall Oxford via the perfectly respectable Leeds University. Essentially he is middle class by any measure, but the dinosaur class obsessed Labour Party want him to be seen as a working class lad. Laughable.
Excuse me. The class obsessed poster outraged at Starmer's mediocre higher education performance was not a member of the Labour party but a former Conservative councillor from Epping Forest.
Yes, but you've got to give him a bit of joy ffs!
I don't wish to be cruel, but seeing HYUFD pass judgement on people's youth-time educational attainment as though that were the only indicator of intelligence, reminds me of a fat bloke in our pub who goes on about the England players not being fit enough.
I am not running to be PM, nor is the fat bloke in the England team. That is the job they are highly paid for.
I also never said Starmer was thick but he is clearly not going to be in the top rank of our PMs by intelligence. Intelligence isn't the be all and end all for PMs, judgement, empathy and competence matters too but it helps
But you supported Boris Johnson, the most stupid PM in my vast political memory, had Liz Truss not come long to make him look moderately clever. And I know, he went to Oxford. What did he do at Oxford? Classics. Sounds rather clever doesn't it, and even if you don't want to imagine that he might have been accepted in the way described in Porterhouse Blue, it should be remembered that only a tiny percentage of A-level students, even in those days, studied Latin and Greek. It was, and still is, I believe, the easiest subject area to gain access to Oxbridge colleges other than Land Economy.
It was Boris who beat Corbyn, Boris who got Brexit done and had Boris still been leader the Tories would not be heading for near annihilation but would be on 200 seats+ with Reform well under 10% still. We therefore would have a pro Ukraine leader of the right still, not a surging Farage and his Putin apologies. The markets would not have reacted so badly to Truss' budget either as there would have been no Truss budget and no PM Kwarteng.
So no I make NO apologies for backing Boris with his Classics degree rather than Truss and Sunak's PPE degrees. Fat lot of good they did them!
Any muppet could have beaten Corbyn at that point, and just to remind you, you voted Remain. Boris Johnson was a liar and a law breaker; a Trump-lite who has been a disaster for the Tories and the country. It would have been so much better for everyone if Stanley had worn a condom.
Possibly the worst decision this court has made, and heaven knows it's been a utter shitshow since Trump's appointments. It's an enormous power grab by the Court at the expense of Congress, and demonstrates a contempt for the stare decisis doctrine that is deeper than the Dodds decision.
Kagan's dissent is well argued, and appropriately scathing. She made a point of reading it from the bench.
Legally the argument that obstruction charges must include proof that defendants tried to tamper with or destroy documents holds some weight. It was a fairly clear 6-3 opinion in favour of the judgement as well
Brexit Britain could benefit from a flight to safety from the political chaos engulfing the US and EU.
This will compensate for all the dynamic wealthy patriots who'll be leaving for Dubai due to Labour wokeness and high taxes.
Oh please don't tell me that you, as an accountant, agree with that twat who wrote in The Guardian that we should be pleased that wealthy people are leaving.
To alter the quote from Blackadder, many Labour voters brains are so minute , that if a hungry cannibal cracked one of their heads open, there wouldn't be enough to cover a small water biscuit.
Yes. On this we agree. Even by the standards of the Guardian, that was one of the stupidest articles I have ever read. “Hooray all the evil wealthy tax payers are leaving. The fact they are leaving and not willing to pay massive taxes PROVES they are evil so we should be glad they’re going”
Where do you even begin with an argument that dumb?
Don't get sick. Don't get old. As a certain Welsh Windbag said.
But that was said of the Tories. Labour's Britain is going to be a hell-hole of diminishing services if that "Eat the Rich!" mentality is as popular amongst the new intake as seems likely.
My worry is not that they’re all secret or even open Marxists. They’re not clever enough for that
And that is my worry. That they are dumb as rocks. All of them. At least you knew Blair was clever and perceptive and Brown had a massive if weird brain
These guys? Sometimes I wonder about starmer. I mean he must be bright because he made it to DPP. I wish he’d evidence it a little more. Yet he doesn’t have a favourite novel or poem. He never dreams. He speaks of himself in the third person. He has zero sense of humour and no idea of “telling a story”. If he’s intelligent it must be a highly narrow kind of intelligence
Says in Starmer's biography his A level grades were 2 Bs and a C. Now admittedly that included Maths and a Science which are more difficult and overall still clearly above average but does suggest he is hardly brain of Britain either.
Intelligence wise as PM he will probably be another John Major or Jim Callaghan with a bit more metropolitan flair but not a great cultural hinterland either
You really are an educational elitist.
Who cares if Mr Thickie Starmer is thicker than Mr Clever Sunak? Starmer has graduated from the school of hard knocks as a child of a tradesman.
If you believe the last sentence I have a bridge to sell you. And it is Sir Thickie if you don't mind.
He actually ended up graduating from the rather featherbedded St Edmund Hall Oxford via the perfectly respectable Leeds University. Essentially he is middle class by any measure, but the dinosaur class obsessed Labour Party want him to be seen as a working class lad. Laughable.
Excuse me. The class obsessed poster outraged at Starmer's mediocre higher education performance was not a member of the Labour party but a former Conservative councillor from Epping Forest.
Yes, but you've got to give him a bit of joy ffs!
I don't wish to be cruel, but seeing HYUFD pass judgement on people's youth-time educational attainment as though that were the only indicator of intelligence, reminds me of a fat bloke in our pub who goes on about the England players not being fit enough.
I am not running to be PM, nor is the fat bloke in the England team. That is the job they are highly paid for.
I also never said Starmer was thick but he is clearly not going to be in the top rank of our PMs by intelligence. Intelligence isn't the be all and end all for PMs, judgement, empathy and competence matters too but it helps
But you supported Boris Johnson, the most stupid PM in my vast political memory, had Liz Truss not come long to make him look moderately clever. And I know, he went to Oxford. What did he do at Oxford? Classics. Sounds rather clever doesn't it, and even if you don't want to imagine that he might have been accepted in the way described in Porterhouse Blue, it should be remembered that only a tiny percentage of A-level students, even in those days, studied Latin and Greek. It was, and still is, I believe, the easiest subject area to gain access to Oxbridge colleges other than Land Economy.
It was Boris who beat Corbyn, Boris who got Brexit done and had Boris still been leader the Tories would not be heading for near annihilation but would be on 200 seats+ with Reform well under 10% still. We therefore would have a pro Ukraine leader of the right still, not a surging Farage and his Putin apologies. The markets would not have reacted so badly to Truss' budget either as there would have been no Truss budget and no PM Kwarteng.
So no I make NO apologies for backing Boris with his Classics degree rather than Truss and Sunak's PPE degrees. Fat lot of good they did them!
Where does the rumour of Sunak's maths 'till 18' ability come from? Has anyone ever challenged him, Countdown style, to do some maths? It's certainly not borne out by his career as Chancellor.
Possibly the worst decision this court has made, and heaven knows it's been a utter shitshow since Trump's appointments. It's an enormous power grab by the Court at the expense of Congress, and demonstrates a contempt for the stare decisis doctrine that is deeper than the Dodds decision.
Kagan's dissent is well argued, and appropriately scathing. She made a point of reading it from the bench.
Legally the argument that obstruction charges must include proof that defendants tried to tamper with or destroy documents holds some weight. It was a fairly clear 6-3 opinion in favour of the judgement as well
Brexit Britain could benefit from a flight to safety from the political chaos engulfing the US and EU.
This will compensate for all the dynamic wealthy patriots who'll be leaving for Dubai due to Labour wokeness and high taxes.
Oh please don't tell me that you, as an accountant, agree with that twat who wrote in The Guardian that we should be pleased that wealthy people are leaving.
To alter the quote from Blackadder, many Labour voters brains are so minute , that if a hungry cannibal cracked one of their heads open, there wouldn't be enough to cover a small water biscuit.
Yes. On this we agree. Even by the standards of the Guardian, that was one of the stupidest articles I have ever read. “Hooray all the evil wealthy tax payers are leaving. The fact they are leaving and not willing to pay massive taxes PROVES they are evil so we should be glad they’re going”
Where do you even begin with an argument that dumb?
Don't get sick. Don't get old. As a certain Welsh Windbag said.
But that was said of the Tories. Labour's Britain is going to be a hell-hole of diminishing services if that "Eat the Rich!" mentality is as popular amongst the new intake as seems likely.
My worry is not that they’re all secret or even open Marxists. They’re not clever enough for that
And that is my worry. That they are dumb as rocks. All of them. At least you knew Blair was clever and perceptive and Brown had a massive if weird brain
These guys? Sometimes I wonder about starmer. I mean he must be bright because he made it to DPP. I wish he’d evidence it a little more. Yet he doesn’t have a favourite novel or poem. He never dreams. He speaks of himself in the third person. He has zero sense of humour and no idea of “telling a story”. If he’s intelligent it must be a highly narrow kind of intelligence
Says in Starmer's biography his A level grades were 2 Bs and a C. Now admittedly that included Maths and a Science which are more difficult and overall still clearly above average but does suggest he is hardly brain of Britain either.
Intelligence wise as PM he will probably be another John Major or Jim Callaghan with a bit more metropolitan flair but not a great cultural hinterland either
You really are an educational elitist.
Who cares if Mr Thickie Starmer is thicker than Mr Clever Sunak? Starmer has graduated from the school of hard knocks as a child of a tradesman.
If you believe the last sentence I have a bridge to sell you. And it is Sir Thickie if you don't mind.
He actually ended up graduating from the rather featherbedded St Edmund Hall Oxford via the perfectly respectable Leeds University. Essentially he is middle class by any measure, but the dinosaur class obsessed Labour Party want him to be seen as a working class lad. Laughable.
Excuse me. The class obsessed poster outraged at Starmer's mediocre higher education performance was not a member of the Labour party but a former Conservative councillor from Epping Forest.
Yes, but you've got to give him a bit of joy ffs!
I don't wish to be cruel, but seeing HYUFD pass judgement on people's youth-time educational attainment as though that were the only indicator of intelligence, reminds me of a fat bloke in our pub who goes on about the England players not being fit enough.
I am not running to be PM, nor is the fat bloke in the England team. That is the job they are highly paid for.
I also never said Starmer was thick but he is clearly not going to be in the top rank of our PMs by intelligence. Intelligence isn't the be all and end all for PMs, judgement, empathy and competence matters too but it helps
But you supported Boris Johnson, the most stupid PM in my vast political memory, had Liz Truss not come long to make him look moderately clever. And I know, he went to Oxford. What did he do at Oxford? Classics. Sounds rather clever doesn't it, and even if you don't want to imagine that he might have been accepted in the way described in Porterhouse Blue, it should be remembered that only a tiny percentage of A-level students, even in those days, studied Latin and Greek. It was, and still is, I believe, the easiest subject area to gain access to Oxbridge colleges other than Land Economy.
It was Boris who beat Corbyn, Boris who got Brexit done and had Boris still been leader the Tories would not be heading for near annihilation but would be on 200 seats+ with Reform well under 10% still. We therefore would have a pro Ukraine leader of the right still, not a surging Farage and his Putin apologies. The markets would not have reacted so badly to Truss' budget either as there would have been no Truss budget and no PM Kwarteng.
So no I make NO apologies for backing Boris with his Classics degree rather than Truss and Sunak's PPE degrees. Fat lot of good they did them!
Any muppet could have beaten Corbyn at that point, and just to remind you, you voted Remain. Boris Johnson was a liar and a law breaker; a Trump-lite who has been a disaster for the Tories and the country. It would have been so much better for everyone if Stanley had worn a condom.
No they couldn't, May failed to do so in 2017 and Hunt wouldn't have done either. Yes I voted Remain but I also respected the referendum result.
On current trends all removing Boris has done is increased tenfold the chances of PM Farage within a decade instead
I don't think these attacks on Reform will work. The aim is to try and destroy them by revealing their 'true nature' but it just keeps getting shrugged off by Farage. So the attacks fail, and the by product is that the discourse is normalised. It feels like the overton window shifting.
Yes. There is a fashion on TikTok for young kids in France and Germany to say “yeah I’m a racist so fucking what”
The term has lost a lot of its negative power through overuse and now it has a kind of mildly transgressive chic - which kids love of course. That’s how you shock the elders these days. Say “yeah I’m a racist” on TikTok. Cue heart attack in your parents
Saying “fuck the toreeez” and going to Glastonbury is what people like @Heathener do
Again I don’t believe Britain will be immune from this trend, we are merely behind the curve
Is Britain ahead, behind or on a totally different curve? Time will tell. Brexit and Johnson gave the populist mad right wing nonsense thing a bad name with anyone under 50
My thinking is Brexit has delayed our swerve to the populist right - but not necessarily averted it. We gave people the vote and they vented their anger - that has bought us time
With that time we need to see a proper right wing government emerge that will actually do proper right wing things. Then maybe we can dodge the whole Le Pen shit altogether -
But if that doesn’t happen then it seems inevitable to me that we will follow Italy France Sweden the USA Holland etc
So after 14 years of Tory government and the implementation of the totemic political project of the populist reactionary right, our next move must be to the populist reactionary right, otherwise we might swing too far to the right.
What an unwelcome prognosis (!) for anybody on the left or centre or centre right of politics, ie the majority of people. Have you checked with them? I bet you haven't. Because what I reckon they'd say, most of them, is how about we give good government a whirl first? It's been a while since we tried that.
I’m not saying this is great nor am I expressing a desire for this
I am extrapolating from the facts as they are. And as we now know, I am extremely good at this
Be afraid, be very afraid
And now I’m going back to e-biking pointlessly around grassy Breton clifftops in the sun while listening to Jacques Loussier do Bach. Who know that could be such fun?
You need to discover e-biking around London . An E-Brompton is required, that could stash under small tables in posh restaurants.
Fairly eyewatering prices at £3k, but worth it and improving for the image.
If you were a speccie columnist you could take it in, and cause the cyclopaths there to have a small fit.
@SquawkCNBC · 5h "My focus group all came in undecided from swing states, 12 of the 14 swung to Donald Trump. Only one to Joe Biden," says @FrankLuntz on how his focus group reacted to last night's debate.
I don't think these attacks on Reform will work. The aim is to try and destroy them by revealing their 'true nature' but it just keeps getting shrugged off by Farage. So the attacks fail, and the by product is that the discourse is normalised. It feels like the overton window shifting.
Yes. There is a fashion on TikTok for young kids in France and Germany to say “yeah I’m a racist so fucking what”
The term has lost a lot of its negative power through overuse and now it has a kind of mildly transgressive chic - which kids love of course. That’s how you shock the elders these days. Say “yeah I’m a racist” on TikTok. Cue heart attack in your parents
Saying “fuck the toreeez” and going to Glastonbury is what people like @Heathener do
Again I don’t believe Britain will be immune from this trend, we are merely behind the curve
Is Britain ahead, behind or on a totally different curve? Time will tell. Brexit and Johnson gave the populist mad right wing nonsense thing a bad name with anyone under 50
My thinking is Brexit has delayed our swerve to the populist right - but not necessarily averted it. We gave people the vote and they vented their anger - that has bought us time
With that time we need to see a proper right wing government emerge that will actually do proper right wing things. Then maybe we can dodge the whole Le Pen shit altogether -
But if that doesn’t happen then it seems inevitable to me that we will follow Italy France Sweden the USA Holland etc
I agree with your basic premise, it’s just that I don’t think they want right wing polices so much as a Government that does what it is told to.
Brexit was a cry of frustration because nobody ever listened to the public saying they wanted to go no further. And then they got disenchanted that it still didn’t happen, and we got 2019.
But I think it has led to volatility meaning Starmer isn’t guaranteed his second term, and the Tories aren’t guaranteed to replace him.
Boris Johnson fucked up in setting the post-Brexit income thresholds too low, which resulted in far more people coming than was anticipated.
His successors were then slow - very slow - to recognize this.
I find it astonishing that it wasn't recognized by either Johnson or Sunak (and his Home Secretaries) that numbers coming were way above forecast, and were resulting in much higher net migration than was the case when the UK was part of the EU.
And here Starmer is a very lucky General.
Firstly, higher income thresholds were put in place for visas. Now, you can argue that £38,700 is still too low (or alternatively that it is far too simplistic, given that a 21 year old earning £39k is very different to a 45 year old), but it is still almost 40% above the old threshold. That means that a very substantial number of people who were eligible for visas before, are no longer eligible. And it is Starmer who who will see the benefit.
Secondly, a large chunk of the increase in net immigration in the last three years has been student numbers. We've gone from 180k student (and dependent) visas issued a year to something like 600k. Based on experience most of those people will go home at the end of their courses. But there is an approximately three year period during which the number of students (and dependents) resident in the UK is rising fast. Once you get to the 3 or 4 year anniversary - and particularly if it is matched by smaller numbers of students coming - then the net impact falls dramatically.
Starmer, if he does absolutely nothing, will be Prime Minister, when net immigration numbers fall quite significantly. Because maths.
It's interesting. Starmer obviously faces huge challenges but there's also a lot of low hanging fruit the Tories were too inept/late in acting to pluck that means a Labour government could be fairly mediocre and yet run in 2029 on modest improvements on issues the public care about and ask people to stick with them over the Tories (or whatever springs up in their place if the wipeout is total).
A second term is where Labour are most likely to fall apart as its voters start demanding the bigger things on their wishlist and their voter coalition could crack apart. It will also be when, even absent an unknown crisis or scandal, Starmer would face questions about when he would leave and thus the factionalism would be back.
Brexit Britain could benefit from a flight to safety from the political chaos engulfing the US and EU.
This will compensate for all the dynamic wealthy patriots who'll be leaving for Dubai due to Labour wokeness and high taxes.
Oh please don't tell me that you, as an accountant, agree with that twat who wrote in The Guardian that we should be pleased that wealthy people are leaving.
To alter the quote from Blackadder, many Labour voters brains are so minute , that if a hungry cannibal cracked one of their heads open, there wouldn't be enough to cover a small water biscuit.
Yes. On this we agree. Even by the standards of the Guardian, that was one of the stupidest articles I have ever read. “Hooray all the evil wealthy tax payers are leaving. The fact they are leaving and not willing to pay massive taxes PROVES they are evil so we should be glad they’re going”
Where do you even begin with an argument that dumb?
Don't get sick. Don't get old. As a certain Welsh Windbag said.
But that was said of the Tories. Labour's Britain is going to be a hell-hole of diminishing services if that "Eat the Rich!" mentality is as popular amongst the new intake as seems likely.
My worry is not that they’re all secret or even open Marxists. They’re not clever enough for that
And that is my worry. That they are dumb as rocks. All of them. At least you knew Blair was clever and perceptive and Brown had a massive if weird brain
These guys? Sometimes I wonder about starmer. I mean he must be bright because he made it to DPP. I wish he’d evidence it a little more. Yet he doesn’t have a favourite novel or poem. He never dreams. He speaks of himself in the third person. He has zero sense of humour and no idea of “telling a story”. If he’s intelligent it must be a highly narrow kind of intelligence
Says in Starmer's biography his A level grades were 2 Bs and a C. Now admittedly that included Maths and a Science which are more difficult and overall still clearly above average but does suggest he is hardly brain of Britain either.
Intelligence wise as PM he will probably be another John Major or Jim Callaghan with a bit more metropolitan flair but not a great cultural hinterland either
You really are an educational elitist.
Who cares if Mr Thickie Starmer is thicker than Mr Clever Sunak? Starmer has graduated from the school of hard knocks as a child of a tradesman.
If you believe the last sentence I have a bridge to sell you. And it is Sir Thickie if you don't mind.
He actually ended up graduating from the rather featherbedded St Edmund Hall Oxford via the perfectly respectable Leeds University. Essentially he is middle class by any measure, but the dinosaur class obsessed Labour Party want him to be seen as a working class lad. Laughable.
Excuse me. The class obsessed poster outraged at Starmer's mediocre higher education performance was not a member of the Labour party but a former Conservative councillor from Epping Forest.
Yes, but you've got to give him a bit of joy ffs!
I don't wish to be cruel, but seeing HYUFD pass judgement on people's youth-time educational attainment as though that were the only indicator of intelligence, reminds me of a fat bloke in our pub who goes on about the England players not being fit enough.
I am not running to be PM, nor is the fat bloke in the England team. That is the job they are highly paid for.
I also never said Starmer was thick but he is clearly not going to be in the top rank of our PMs by intelligence. Intelligence isn't the be all and end all for PMs, judgement, empathy and competence matters too but it helps
But you supported Boris Johnson, the most stupid PM in my vast political memory, had Liz Truss not come long to make him look moderately clever. And I know, he went to Oxford. What did he do at Oxford? Classics. Sounds rather clever doesn't it, and even if you don't want to imagine that he might have been accepted in the way described in Porterhouse Blue, it should be remembered that only a tiny percentage of A-level students, even in those days, studied Latin and Greek. It was, and still is, I believe, the easiest subject area to gain access to Oxbridge colleges other than Land Economy.
It was Boris who beat Corbyn, Boris who got Brexit done and had Boris still been leader the Tories would not be heading for near annihilation but would be on 200 seats+ with Reform well under 10% still. We therefore would have a pro Ukraine leader of the right still, not a surging Farage and his Putin apologies. The markets would not have reacted so badly to Truss' budget either as there would have been no Truss budget and no PM Kwarteng.
So no I make NO apologies for backing Boris with his Classics degree rather than Truss and Sunak's PPE degrees. Fat lot of good they did them!
Any muppet could have beaten Corbyn at that point, and just to remind you, you voted Remain. Boris Johnson was a liar and a law breaker; a Trump-lite who has been a disaster for the Tories and the country. It would have been so much better for everyone if Stanley had worn a condom.
No they couldn't, May failed to do so in 2017 and Hunt wouldn't have done either. Yes I voted Remain but I also respected the referendum result.
On current trends all removing Boris has done is increased tenfold the chances of PM Farage within a decade instead
God, you are so deluded. You said in a previous post that you are not applying to be PM. Let us just rejoice at that news.
As far as I can tell, the 25% tax free allowance doesn’t have any sort of expiry date, so perhaps he actually misspoke.
I don’t deny that they are going to tax way more than they’re currently saying, but I don’t really have an issue with that.
Speaking as someone who is likely younger than a lot of other PBers, it’s been frustrating as all hell to see how this country has become lucrative as anything for a small segment of the population who all bought their houses 30 years ago for about £10, went to university for free, and now spend their days opposing everything that could possibly bring some more growth so we can bloody well pay for their pensions.
The Tory government that has continually bribed the grey vote has on the other hand imposed a de facto graduate tax on the young, and frankly, the Tory vote share amongst people under 50 should absolutely terrify all Tories who want a return to government anytime soon.
I say this all as someone who has done pretty decently for themselves so far - this imbalance will define the next generation of politics. I have a lot of friends who are seriously contemplating more lucrative moves abroad - and most of them don’t even work in careers where that’s a common occurrence!
TL;DR if Starmer has a secret tax agenda - good - and unlike a lot of people who might say this I have no problems paying more tax myself either, if it’s coupled with fixing some long standing problems (the ridiculousness of how Council Tax is lower for Buckingham Palace than for 46% of households in the country - despite the fact that a ton of it is funding Adult Social Care - it doesn’t make any sense!!!) https://x.com/pjtheeconomist/status/1753361450809110922?s=46
Labour have the chance of a lifetime to use a supermajority to get all the unpopular things done quickly. I am not necessarily convinced they will - and if they squander it I will certainly look elsewhere in 2029.
End the CGT exemption for primary residences. Watch the boomers squeal.
A sizeable number of people see a country where they bought a semi detached house for £130,000 in 1995 off a single person’s salary, see it be worth £963,000 in 2024, and then are bloody outraged that the state should perhaps take a bit of that in a country when they pass it down to their children, whilst millions of people are living with their parents in their 30s and 40s and may never own a home. “Can’t we cut benefits instead?” they ask.
No need to increase taxes, just construction and get prices back down to £130k and affordable off a single person's salary let alone a full time couple being unable to afford a deposit. Problem solved.
Travelled from Totnes to London Paddington this morning - and in nearly three hours of train travel, never saw a single political poster.
What election?
Why would anyone expect to see political posters from a train anyway? The view from trains is almost entirely the back of houses, green and virtually uninhabited countryside - or HS2 construction works. Political posters go into front windows or onto stakes at front doors.
My station's on a line from Paddington too.. And I've scarcely seen a political poster from that line in 25 years. But walk the ten minutes from the station to our house, and you'll be inundated with LD and Labour posters in what's been a safe Tory seat throughout every voter's lifetime..
What makes this election different is the remarkable number of Labour posters (because boundary changes make a Labour win here dramatically less improbable than any other time this century) and the spectacular absence of Tory ones. Many of those Tory posters used to go into fields empty of any animals but cows - and the silent rebellion of Britain's tenant farmers against their Tory-voting landlords isn't a sign of apathy, but one more reason the Tories are about to be shellacked.
When the Tories have even lost the cows' vote, they are well and truly, er, burgered.
Anybody who claims the a tide of political opinion in the medium or distant future going inevitably this way or that is talking out of their arse. There are no tides, there is no whig history or a bastard cousin thereof.
Anybody who wishcasts their own views as inevitable under the flimsy disguise of regret is trying to demoralise political opponents into inaction or anticipatory obedience: fight back against that shit.
Anybody who has to claim they are "extreme good at this" is trying to convince themselves as much as anyone else.
On the day that my long held prediction that: Biden is senile, it’s going to get worse, ignoring it is stupid and will end in disaster - has come spectacularly true (despite much mockery on here throughout) - this comment doesn’t really have the impact you hope
For some reason I am good at spotting random facts and quickly working out their inevitable consequences, meaning, end. I’m not sure why. I wonder if it’s because I’m good at plotting stories to tell my kids. That’s a form of extrapolation - the plot has to work
I am absolutely shit at turning this gift of historical-political extrapolation into money, which is quite frustrating
Brexit Britain could benefit from a flight to safety from the political chaos engulfing the US and EU.
This will compensate for all the dynamic wealthy patriots who'll be leaving for Dubai due to Labour wokeness and high taxes.
Oh please don't tell me that you, as an accountant, agree with that twat who wrote in The Guardian that we should be pleased that wealthy people are leaving.
To alter the quote from Blackadder, many Labour voters brains are so minute , that if a hungry cannibal cracked one of their heads open, there wouldn't be enough to cover a small water biscuit.
Yes. On this we agree. Even by the standards of the Guardian, that was one of the stupidest articles I have ever read. “Hooray all the evil wealthy tax payers are leaving. The fact they are leaving and not willing to pay massive taxes PROVES they are evil so we should be glad they’re going”
Where do you even begin with an argument that dumb?
Don't get sick. Don't get old. As a certain Welsh Windbag said.
But that was said of the Tories. Labour's Britain is going to be a hell-hole of diminishing services if that "Eat the Rich!" mentality is as popular amongst the new intake as seems likely.
My worry is not that they’re all secret or even open Marxists. They’re not clever enough for that
And that is my worry. That they are dumb as rocks. All of them. At least you knew Blair was clever and perceptive and Brown had a massive if weird brain
These guys? Sometimes I wonder about starmer. I mean he must be bright because he made it to DPP. I wish he’d evidence it a little more. Yet he doesn’t have a favourite novel or poem. He never dreams. He speaks of himself in the third person. He has zero sense of humour and no idea of “telling a story”. If he’s intelligent it must be a highly narrow kind of intelligence
Says in Starmer's biography his A level grades were 2 Bs and a C. Now admittedly that included Maths and a Science which are more difficult and overall still clearly above average but does suggest he is hardly brain of Britain either.
Intelligence wise as PM he will probably be another John Major or Jim Callaghan with a bit more metropolitan flair but not a great cultural hinterland either
You really are an educational elitist.
Who cares if Mr Thickie Starmer is thicker than Mr Clever Sunak? Starmer has graduated from the school of hard knocks as a child of a tradesman.
If you believe the last sentence I have a bridge to sell you. And it is Sir Thickie if you don't mind.
He actually ended up graduating from the rather featherbedded St Edmund Hall Oxford via the perfectly respectable Leeds University. Essentially he is middle class by any measure, but the dinosaur class obsessed Labour Party want him to be seen as a working class lad. Laughable.
Excuse me. The class obsessed poster outraged at Starmer's mediocre higher education performance was not a member of the Labour party but a former Conservative councillor from Epping Forest.
Yes, but you've got to give him a bit of joy ffs!
I don't wish to be cruel, but seeing HYUFD pass judgement on people's youth-time educational attainment as though that were the only indicator of intelligence, reminds me of a fat bloke in our pub who goes on about the England players not being fit enough.
I am not running to be PM, nor is the fat bloke in the England team. That is the job they are highly paid for.
I also never said Starmer was thick but he is clearly not going to be in the top rank of our PMs by intelligence. Intelligence isn't the be all and end all for PMs, judgement, empathy and competence matters too but it helps
But you supported Boris Johnson, the most stupid PM in my vast political memory, had Liz Truss not come long to make him look moderately clever. And I know, he went to Oxford. What did he do at Oxford? Classics. Sounds rather clever doesn't it, and even if you don't want to imagine that he might have been accepted in the way described in Porterhouse Blue, it should be remembered that only a tiny percentage of A-level students, even in those days, studied Latin and Greek. It was, and still is, I believe, the easiest subject area to gain access to Oxbridge colleges other than Land Economy.
It was Boris who beat Corbyn, Boris who got Brexit done and had Boris still been leader the Tories would not be heading for near annihilation but would be on 200 seats+ with Reform well under 10% still. We therefore would have a pro Ukraine leader of the right still, not a surging Farage and his Putin apologies. The markets would not have reacted so badly to Truss' budget either as there would have been no Truss budget and no PM Kwarteng.
So no I make NO apologies for backing Boris with his Classics degree rather than Truss and Sunak's PPE degrees. Fat lot of good they did them!
Any muppet could have beaten Corbyn at that point, and just to remind you, you voted Remain. Boris Johnson was a liar and a law breaker; a Trump-lite who has been a disaster for the Tories and the country. It would have been so much better for everyone if Stanley had worn a condom.
No they couldn't, May failed to do so in 2017 and Hunt wouldn't have done either. Yes I voted Remain but I also respected the referendum result.
On current trends all removing Boris has done is increased tenfold the chances of PM Farage within a decade instead
God, you are so deluded. You said in a previous post that you are not applying to be PM. Let us just rejoice at that news.
You will probably get PM Farage within a decade instead as I said and thoroughly deserve it!
Brexit Britain could benefit from a flight to safety from the political chaos engulfing the US and EU.
This will compensate for all the dynamic wealthy patriots who'll be leaving for Dubai due to Labour wokeness and high taxes.
Oh please don't tell me that you, as an accountant, agree with that twat who wrote in The Guardian that we should be pleased that wealthy people are leaving.
To alter the quote from Blackadder, many Labour voters brains are so minute , that if a hungry cannibal cracked one of their heads open, there wouldn't be enough to cover a small water biscuit.
Yes. On this we agree. Even by the standards of the Guardian, that was one of the stupidest articles I have ever read. “Hooray all the evil wealthy tax payers are leaving. The fact they are leaving and not willing to pay massive taxes PROVES they are evil so we should be glad they’re going”
Where do you even begin with an argument that dumb?
Don't get sick. Don't get old. As a certain Welsh Windbag said.
But that was said of the Tories. Labour's Britain is going to be a hell-hole of diminishing services if that "Eat the Rich!" mentality is as popular amongst the new intake as seems likely.
My worry is not that they’re all secret or even open Marxists. They’re not clever enough for that
And that is my worry. That they are dumb as rocks. All of them. At least you knew Blair was clever and perceptive and Brown had a massive if weird brain
These guys? Sometimes I wonder about starmer. I mean he must be bright because he made it to DPP. I wish he’d evidence it a little more. Yet he doesn’t have a favourite novel or poem. He never dreams. He speaks of himself in the third person. He has zero sense of humour and no idea of “telling a story”. If he’s intelligent it must be a highly narrow kind of intelligence
Says in Starmer's biography his A level grades were 2 Bs and a C. Now admittedly that included Maths and a Science which are more difficult and overall still clearly above average but does suggest he is hardly brain of Britain either.
Intelligence wise as PM he will probably be another John Major or Jim Callaghan with a bit more metropolitan flair but not a great cultural hinterland either
You really are an educational elitist.
Who cares if Mr Thickie Starmer is thicker than Mr Clever Sunak? Starmer has graduated from the school of hard knocks as a child of a tradesman.
If you believe the last sentence I have a bridge to sell you. And it is Sir Thickie if you don't mind.
He actually ended up graduating from the rather featherbedded St Edmund Hall Oxford via the perfectly respectable Leeds University. Essentially he is middle class by any measure, but the dinosaur class obsessed Labour Party want him to be seen as a working class lad. Laughable.
Excuse me. The class obsessed poster outraged at Starmer's mediocre higher education performance was not a member of the Labour party but a former Conservative councillor from Epping Forest.
Yes, but you've got to give him a bit of joy ffs!
I don't wish to be cruel, but seeing HYUFD pass judgement on people's youth-time educational attainment as though that were the only indicator of intelligence, reminds me of a fat bloke in our pub who goes on about the England players not being fit enough.
I am not running to be PM, nor is the fat bloke in the England team. That is the job they are highly paid for.
I also never said Starmer was thick but he is clearly not going to be in the top rank of our PMs by intelligence. Intelligence isn't the be all and end all for PMs, judgement, empathy and competence matters too but it helps
But you supported Boris Johnson, the most stupid PM in my vast political memory, had Liz Truss not come long to make him look moderately clever. And I know, he went to Oxford. What did he do at Oxford? Classics. Sounds rather clever doesn't it, and even if you don't want to imagine that he might have been accepted in the way described in Porterhouse Blue, it should be remembered that only a tiny percentage of A-level students, even in those days, studied Latin and Greek. It was, and still is, I believe, the easiest subject area to gain access to Oxbridge colleges other than Land Economy.
It was Boris who beat Corbyn, Boris who got Brexit done and had Boris still been leader the Tories would not be heading for near annihilation but would be on 200 seats+ with Reform well under 10% still. We therefore would have a pro Ukraine leader of the right still, not a surging Farage and his Putin apologies. The markets would not have reacted so badly to Truss' budget either as there would have been no Truss budget and no PM Kwarteng.
So no I make NO apologies for backing Boris with his Classics degree rather than Truss and Sunak's PPE degrees. Fat lot of good they did them!
Where does the rumour of Sunak's maths 'till 18' ability come from? Has anyone ever challenged him, Countdown style, to do some maths? It's certainly not borne out by his career as Chancellor.
Many businesses would no longer exist if he hadn't intervened during the pandemic. With Hunt he has also done a pretty good job in stabilising things since the Truss clusterfuck and inflation is now in a good place. None of this is noticed of course, because the herd is not nuanced enough.
Brexit Britain could benefit from a flight to safety from the political chaos engulfing the US and EU.
This will compensate for all the dynamic wealthy patriots who'll be leaving for Dubai due to Labour wokeness and high taxes.
Oh please don't tell me that you, as an accountant, agree with that twat who wrote in The Guardian that we should be pleased that wealthy people are leaving.
To alter the quote from Blackadder, many Labour voters brains are so minute , that if a hungry cannibal cracked one of their heads open, there wouldn't be enough to cover a small water biscuit.
Yes. On this we agree. Even by the standards of the Guardian, that was one of the stupidest articles I have ever read. “Hooray all the evil wealthy tax payers are leaving. The fact they are leaving and not willing to pay massive taxes PROVES they are evil so we should be glad they’re going”
Where do you even begin with an argument that dumb?
Don't get sick. Don't get old. As a certain Welsh Windbag said.
But that was said of the Tories. Labour's Britain is going to be a hell-hole of diminishing services if that "Eat the Rich!" mentality is as popular amongst the new intake as seems likely.
My worry is not that they’re all secret or even open Marxists. They’re not clever enough for that
And that is my worry. That they are dumb as rocks. All of them. At least you knew Blair was clever and perceptive and Brown had a massive if weird brain
These guys? Sometimes I wonder about starmer. I mean he must be bright because he made it to DPP. I wish he’d evidence it a little more. Yet he doesn’t have a favourite novel or poem. He never dreams. He speaks of himself in the third person. He has zero sense of humour and no idea of “telling a story”. If he’s intelligent it must be a highly narrow kind of intelligence
Says in Starmer's biography his A level grades were 2 Bs and a C. Now admittedly that included Maths and a Science which are more difficult and overall still clearly above average but does suggest he is hardly brain of Britain either.
Intelligence wise as PM he will probably be another John Major or Jim Callaghan with a bit more metropolitan flair but not a great cultural hinterland either
You really are an educational elitist.
Who cares if Mr Thickie Starmer is thicker than Mr Clever Sunak? Starmer has graduated from the school of hard knocks as a child of a tradesman.
If you believe the last sentence I have a bridge to sell you. And it is Sir Thickie if you don't mind.
He actually ended up graduating from the rather featherbedded St Edmund Hall Oxford via the perfectly respectable Leeds University. Essentially he is middle class by any measure, but the dinosaur class obsessed Labour Party want him to be seen as a working class lad. Laughable.
Excuse me. The class obsessed poster outraged at Starmer's mediocre higher education performance was not a member of the Labour party but a former Conservative councillor from Epping Forest.
Yes, but you've got to give him a bit of joy ffs!
I don't wish to be cruel, but seeing HYUFD pass judgement on people's youth-time educational attainment as though that were the only indicator of intelligence, reminds me of a fat bloke in our pub who goes on about the England players not being fit enough.
I am not running to be PM, nor is the fat bloke in the England team. That is the job they are highly paid for.
I also never said Starmer was thick but he is clearly not going to be in the top rank of our PMs by intelligence. Intelligence isn't the be all and end all for PMs, judgement, empathy and competence matters too but it helps
But you supported Boris Johnson, the most stupid PM in my vast political memory, had Liz Truss not come long to make him look moderately clever. And I know, he went to Oxford. What did he do at Oxford? Classics. Sounds rather clever doesn't it, and even if you don't want to imagine that he might have been accepted in the way described in Porterhouse Blue, it should be remembered that only a tiny percentage of A-level students, even in those days, studied Latin and Greek. It was, and still is, I believe, the easiest subject area to gain access to Oxbridge colleges other than Land Economy.
It was Boris who beat Corbyn, Boris who got Brexit done and had Boris still been leader the Tories would not be heading for near annihilation but would be on 200 seats+ with Reform well under 10% still. We therefore would have a pro Ukraine leader of the right still, not a surging Farage and his Putin apologies. The markets would not have reacted so badly to Truss' budget either as there would have been no Truss budget and no PM Kwarteng.
So no I make NO apologies for backing Boris with his Classics degree rather than Truss and Sunak's PPE degrees. Fat lot of good they did them!
Any muppet could have beaten Corbyn at that point, and just to remind you, you voted Remain. Boris Johnson was a liar and a law breaker; a Trump-lite who has been a disaster for the Tories and the country. It would have been so much better for everyone if Stanley had worn a condom.
No they couldn't, May failed to do so in 2017 and Hunt wouldn't have done either. Yes I voted Remain but I also respected the referendum result.
On current trends all removing Boris has done is increased tenfold the chances of PM Farage within a decade instead
God, you are so deluded. You said in a previous post that you are not applying to be PM. Let us just rejoice at that news.
You will probably get PM Farage within a decade instead as I said and thoroughly deserve it!
This country is never going to elect that fascist, racist and quite right so!
As far as I can tell, the 25% tax free allowance doesn’t have any sort of expiry date, so perhaps he actually misspoke.
I don’t deny that they are going to tax way more than they’re currently saying, but I don’t really have an issue with that.
Speaking as someone who is likely younger than a lot of other PBers, it’s been frustrating as all hell to see how this country has become lucrative as anything for a small segment of the population who all bought their houses 30 years ago for about £10, went to university for free, and now spend their days opposing everything that could possibly bring some more growth so we can bloody well pay for their pensions.
The Tory government that has continually bribed the grey vote has on the other hand, among many other measures, imposed a de facto graduate tax on the young, and frankly, the Tory vote share amongst people under 50 should absolutely terrify all Tories who want a return to government anytime soon.
I say this all as someone who has done pretty decently for themselves so far - this imbalance will define the next generation of politics. I have a lot of friends who are seriously contemplating more lucrative moves abroad - and most of them don’t even work in careers where that’s a common occurrence!
And yet some people would prefer to live in a country where they can sit like Smaug atop their pile of Gold, complain that the young don’t know the meaning of hard work, and enjoy a lifestyle of being slightly well-off in a country where nothing bloody works properly, and the young who support their lifestyle have all fled for pastures new. But it’s okay - at least the modern train that could aid the nation’s economy won’t be within 2 miles of their house, blocking the views - we absolutely couldn’t have that!
TL;DR if Starmer has a secret tax agenda - good - and unlike a lot of people who might say this I have no problems paying more tax myself either, if it’s coupled with fixing some long standing problems (the ridiculousness of how Council Tax is lower for Buckingham Palace than for 46% of households in the country - despite the fact that a ton of it is funding Adult Social Care - it doesn’t make any sense!!!) https://x.com/pjtheeconomist/status/1753361450809110922?s=46
Labour have the chance of a lifetime to use a supermajority to get all the unpopular things done quickly. I am not necessarily convinced they will - and if they squander it I will certainly look elsewhere in 2029.
I would guess that labour will be excessively cautious in practice. Who else do you expect to vote for? All parties target the same demographic.
It is worth noting that Co/efficient is the pollster that the Trump campaign contracts to perform polls. It is also worth noting that Co/efficient was almost the only pollster showing Kari Lake ahead (and by a large margin too) in the 2022 Arizona race.
Doesn't mean they are wrong, but you do need to bear this in mind.
Someone was writing about the scenario where if the LD’s were close to the Tories in seats and then a few Lab MPs defected so the LD’s had more seats that the Tories and so became the Official Opposition. Has this ever happened before, as in the opposition changing control outside of an election? Sorry if I missed it being mentioned before.
@SquawkCNBC · 5h "My focus group all came in undecided from swing states, 12 of the 14 swung to Donald Trump. Only one to Joe Biden," says @FrankLuntz on how his focus group reacted to last night's debate.
Travelled from Totnes to London Paddington this morning - and in nearly three hours of train travel, never saw a single political poster.
What election?
Why would anyone expect to see political posters from a train anyway? The view from trains is almost entirely the back of houses, green and virtually uninhabited countryside - or HS2 construction works. Political posters go into front windows or onto stakes at front doors.
My station's on a line from Paddington too.. And I've scarcely seen a political poster from that line in 25 years. But walk the ten minutes from the station to our house, and you'll be inundated with LD and Labour posters in what's been a safe Tory seat throughout every voter's lifetime..
What makes this election different is the remarkable number of Labour posters (because boundary changes make a Labour win here dramatically less improbable than any other time this century) and the spectacular absence of Tory ones. Many of those Tory posters used to go into fields empty of any animals but cows - and the silent rebellion of Britain's tenant farmers against their Tory-voting landlords isn't a sign of apathy, but one more reason the Tories are about to be shellacked.
When the Tories have even lost the cows' vote, they are well and truly, er, burgered.
Someone was writing about the scenario where if the LD’s were close to the Tories in seats and then a few Lab MPs defected so the LD’s had more seats that the Tories and so became the Official Opposition. Has this ever happened before, as in the opposition changing control outside of an election? Sorry if I missed it being mentioned before.
In that scenario the Tories would merge with Reform within a year unless we got PR
@SquawkCNBC · 5h "My focus group all came in undecided from swing states, 12 of the 14 swung to Donald Trump. Only one to Joe Biden," says @FrankLuntz on how his focus group reacted to last night's debate.
Travelled from Totnes to London Paddington this morning - and in nearly three hours of train travel, never saw a single political poster.
What election?
Why would anyone expect to see political posters from a train anyway? The view from trains is almost entirely the back of houses, green and virtually uninhabited countryside - or HS2 construction works. Political posters go into front windows or onto stakes at front doors.
My station's on a line from Paddington too.. And I've scarcely seen a political poster from that line in 25 years. But walk the ten minutes from the station to our house, and you'll be inundated with LD and Labour posters in what's been a safe Tory seat throughout every voter's lifetime..
What makes this election different is the remarkable number of Labour posters (because boundary changes make a Labour win here dramatically less improbable than any other time this century) and the spectacular absence of Tory ones. Many of those Tory posters used to go into fields empty of any animals but cows - and the silent rebellion of Britain's tenant farmers against their Tory-voting landlords isn't a sign of apathy, but one more reason the Tories are about to be shellacked.
When the Tories have even lost the cows' vote, they are well and truly, er, burgered.
Someone was writing about the scenario where if the LD’s were close to the Tories in seats and then a few Lab MPs defected so the LD’s had more seats that the Tories and so became the Official Opposition. Has this ever happened before, as in the opposition changing control outside of an election? Sorry if I missed it being mentioned before.
In that scenario the Tories would merge with Reform within a year unless we got PR
And a few Tory MPs would also shift to the Lib Dems...
Remember that for many people Reform are toxic....
Brexit Britain could benefit from a flight to safety from the political chaos engulfing the US and EU.
This will compensate for all the dynamic wealthy patriots who'll be leaving for Dubai due to Labour wokeness and high taxes.
Oh please don't tell me that you, as an accountant, agree with that twat who wrote in The Guardian that we should be pleased that wealthy people are leaving.
To alter the quote from Blackadder, many Labour voters brains are so minute , that if a hungry cannibal cracked one of their heads open, there wouldn't be enough to cover a small water biscuit.
Yes. On this we agree. Even by the standards of the Guardian, that was one of the stupidest articles I have ever read. “Hooray all the evil wealthy tax payers are leaving. The fact they are leaving and not willing to pay massive taxes PROVES they are evil so we should be glad they’re going”
Where do you even begin with an argument that dumb?
Don't get sick. Don't get old. As a certain Welsh Windbag said.
But that was said of the Tories. Labour's Britain is going to be a hell-hole of diminishing services if that "Eat the Rich!" mentality is as popular amongst the new intake as seems likely.
My worry is not that they’re all secret or even open Marxists. They’re not clever enough for that
And that is my worry. That they are dumb as rocks. All of them. At least you knew Blair was clever and perceptive and Brown had a massive if weird brain
These guys? Sometimes I wonder about starmer. I mean he must be bright because he made it to DPP. I wish he’d evidence it a little more. Yet he doesn’t have a favourite novel or poem. He never dreams. He speaks of himself in the third person. He has zero sense of humour and no idea of “telling a story”. If he’s intelligent it must be a highly narrow kind of intelligence
Says in Starmer's biography his A level grades were 2 Bs and a C. Now admittedly that included Maths and a Science which are more difficult and overall still clearly above average but does suggest he is hardly brain of Britain either.
Intelligence wise as PM he will probably be another John Major or Jim Callaghan with a bit more metropolitan flair but not a great cultural hinterland either
You really are an educational elitist.
Who cares if Mr Thickie Starmer is thicker than Mr Clever Sunak? Starmer has graduated from the school of hard knocks as a child of a tradesman.
If you believe the last sentence I have a bridge to sell you. And it is Sir Thickie if you don't mind.
He actually ended up graduating from the rather featherbedded St Edmund Hall Oxford via the perfectly respectable Leeds University. Essentially he is middle class by any measure, but the dinosaur class obsessed Labour Party want him to be seen as a working class lad. Laughable.
Excuse me. The class obsessed poster outraged at Starmer's mediocre higher education performance was not a member of the Labour party but a former Conservative councillor from Epping Forest.
Yes, but you've got to give him a bit of joy ffs!
I don't wish to be cruel, but seeing HYUFD pass judgement on people's youth-time educational attainment as though that were the only indicator of intelligence, reminds me of a fat bloke in our pub who goes on about the England players not being fit enough.
I am not running to be PM, nor is the fat bloke in the England team. That is the job they are highly paid for.
I also never said Starmer was thick but he is clearly not going to be in the top rank of our PMs by intelligence. Intelligence isn't the be all and end all for PMs, judgement, empathy and competence matters too but it helps
But you supported Boris Johnson, the most stupid PM in my vast political memory, had Liz Truss not come long to make him look moderately clever. And I know, he went to Oxford. What did he do at Oxford? Classics. Sounds rather clever doesn't it, and even if you don't want to imagine that he might have been accepted in the way described in Porterhouse Blue, it should be remembered that only a tiny percentage of A-level students, even in those days, studied Latin and Greek. It was, and still is, I believe, the easiest subject area to gain access to Oxbridge colleges other than Land Economy.
It was Boris who beat Corbyn, Boris who got Brexit done and had Boris still been leader the Tories would not be heading for near annihilation but would be on 200 seats+ with Reform well under 10% still. We therefore would have a pro Ukraine leader of the right still, not a surging Farage and his Putin apologies. The markets would not have reacted so badly to Truss' budget either as there would have been no Truss budget and no PM Kwarteng.
So no I make NO apologies for backing Boris with his Classics degree rather than Truss and Sunak's PPE degrees. Fat lot of good they did them!
Any muppet could have beaten Corbyn at that point, and just to remind you, you voted Remain. Boris Johnson was a liar and a law breaker; a Trump-lite who has been a disaster for the Tories and the country. It would have been so much better for everyone if Stanley had worn a condom.
No they couldn't, May failed to do so in 2017 and Hunt wouldn't have done either. Yes I voted Remain but I also respected the referendum result.
On current trends all removing Boris has done is increased tenfold the chances of PM Farage within a decade instead
God, you are so deluded. You said in a previous post that you are not applying to be PM. Let us just rejoice at that news.
You will probably get PM Farage within a decade instead as I said and thoroughly deserve it!
Playground stuff HY. Boris Johnson was a cretin and a buffoon. Most people have woken up to that. Keep taking the tablets.
Brexit Britain could benefit from a flight to safety from the political chaos engulfing the US and EU.
This will compensate for all the dynamic wealthy patriots who'll be leaving for Dubai due to Labour wokeness and high taxes.
Oh please don't tell me that you, as an accountant, agree with that twat who wrote in The Guardian that we should be pleased that wealthy people are leaving.
To alter the quote from Blackadder, many Labour voters brains are so minute , that if a hungry cannibal cracked one of their heads open, there wouldn't be enough to cover a small water biscuit.
Yes. On this we agree. Even by the standards of the Guardian, that was one of the stupidest articles I have ever read. “Hooray all the evil wealthy tax payers are leaving. The fact they are leaving and not willing to pay massive taxes PROVES they are evil so we should be glad they’re going”
Where do you even begin with an argument that dumb?
Don't get sick. Don't get old. As a certain Welsh Windbag said.
But that was said of the Tories. Labour's Britain is going to be a hell-hole of diminishing services if that "Eat the Rich!" mentality is as popular amongst the new intake as seems likely.
My worry is not that they’re all secret or even open Marxists. They’re not clever enough for that
And that is my worry. That they are dumb as rocks. All of them. At least you knew Blair was clever and perceptive and Brown had a massive if weird brain
These guys? Sometimes I wonder about starmer. I mean he must be bright because he made it to DPP. I wish he’d evidence it a little more. Yet he doesn’t have a favourite novel or poem. He never dreams. He speaks of himself in the third person. He has zero sense of humour and no idea of “telling a story”. If he’s intelligent it must be a highly narrow kind of intelligence
Says in Starmer's biography his A level grades were 2 Bs and a C. Now admittedly that included Maths and a Science which are more difficult and overall still clearly above average but does suggest he is hardly brain of Britain either.
Intelligence wise as PM he will probably be another John Major or Jim Callaghan with a bit more metropolitan flair but not a great cultural hinterland either
You really are an educational elitist.
Who cares if Mr Thickie Starmer is thicker than Mr Clever Sunak? Starmer has graduated from the school of hard knocks as a child of a tradesman.
If you believe the last sentence I have a bridge to sell you. And it is Sir Thickie if you don't mind.
He actually ended up graduating from the rather featherbedded St Edmund Hall Oxford via the perfectly respectable Leeds University. Essentially he is middle class by any measure, but the dinosaur class obsessed Labour Party want him to be seen as a working class lad. Laughable.
Excuse me. The class obsessed poster outraged at Starmer's mediocre higher education performance was not a member of the Labour party but a former Conservative councillor from Epping Forest.
Yes, but you've got to give him a bit of joy ffs!
I don't wish to be cruel, but seeing HYUFD pass judgement on people's youth-time educational attainment as though that were the only indicator of intelligence, reminds me of a fat bloke in our pub who goes on about the England players not being fit enough.
I am not running to be PM, nor is the fat bloke in the England team. That is the job they are highly paid for.
I also never said Starmer was thick but he is clearly not going to be in the top rank of our PMs by intelligence. Intelligence isn't the be all and end all for PMs, judgement, empathy and competence matters too but it helps
But you supported Boris Johnson, the most stupid PM in my vast political memory, had Liz Truss not come long to make him look moderately clever. And I know, he went to Oxford. What did he do at Oxford? Classics. Sounds rather clever doesn't it, and even if you don't want to imagine that he might have been accepted in the way described in Porterhouse Blue, it should be remembered that only a tiny percentage of A-level students, even in those days, studied Latin and Greek. It was, and still is, I believe, the easiest subject area to gain access to Oxbridge colleges other than Land Economy.
It was Boris who beat Corbyn, Boris who got Brexit done and had Boris still been leader the Tories would not be heading for near annihilation but would be on 200 seats+ with Reform well under 10% still. We therefore would have a pro Ukraine leader of the right still, not a surging Farage and his Putin apologies. The markets would not have reacted so badly to Truss' budget either as there would have been no Truss budget and no PM Kwarteng.
So no I make NO apologies for backing Boris with his Classics degree rather than Truss and Sunak's PPE degrees. Fat lot of good they did them!
Any muppet could have beaten Corbyn at that point, and just to remind you, you voted Remain. Boris Johnson was a liar and a law breaker; a Trump-lite who has been a disaster for the Tories and the country. It would have been so much better for everyone if Stanley had worn a condom.
No they couldn't, May failed to do so in 2017 and Hunt wouldn't have done either. Yes I voted Remain but I also respected the referendum result.
On current trends all removing Boris has done is increased tenfold the chances of PM Farage within a decade instead
God, you are so deluded. You said in a previous post that you are not applying to be PM. Let us just rejoice at that news.
You will probably get PM Farage within a decade instead as I said and thoroughly deserve it!
This country is never going to elect that fascist, racist and quite right so!
In a world where Trump is heading back to the White House potentially and where Le Pen's party is heading for most seats in the legislative elections on Sunday I would not be sure of that at all.
Farage is more charismatic than Starmer, if he takes over the rump Tories and the economy is poor under a Labour government he could become PM on just 30% of the vote with FPTP if Reform overtook Labour
Omg this poll is in line with pp Lab: 38% Ref: 21% Con: 18% LD: 11%
No idea if the Daily Express pollster is any good.
But Baxtered it gives something like
LABOUR 453 LD 74 CON 50 REF 29 (!) GREEN 3 SNP 18
The Tories have voters everywhere. Reform have voters everywhere. Reform are relatively unpopular in Scotland (8%), London, and fairly unpopular in the leafy shires. All those places probably have more Tories living in them as a percentage of their voter tallies than Reform do. So where does the inefficiency of the Reform vote lie? Where are they stacking up all these voters in unwinnable seats to beat the Tories soundly but still lose so heavily on seat count? Yes the Tories have ground game and incumbency, but that would surely be accounted for in the topline figures? Surely the RefUK vote actually has the potential to be quite efficient?
Comments
His successors were then slow - very slow - to recognize this.
I find it astonishing that it wasn't recognized by either Johnson or Sunak (and his Home Secretaries) that numbers coming were way above forecast, and were resulting in much higher net migration than was the case when the UK was part of the EU.
And here Starmer is a very lucky General.
Firstly, higher income thresholds were put in place for visas. Now, you can argue that £38,700 is still too low (or alternatively that it is far too simplistic, given that a 21 year old earning £39k is very different to a 45 year old), but it is still almost 40% above the old threshold. That means that a very substantial number of people who were eligible for visas before, are no longer eligible. And it is Starmer who who will see the benefit.
Secondly, a large chunk of the increase in net immigration in the last three years has been student numbers. We've gone from 180k student (and dependent) visas issued a year to something like 600k. Based on experience most of those people will go home at the end of their courses. But there is an approximately three year period during which the number of students (and dependents) resident in the UK is rising fast. Once you get to the 3 or 4 year anniversary - and particularly if it is matched by smaller numbers of students coming - then the net impact falls dramatically.
Starmer, if he does absolutely nothing, will be Prime Minister, when net immigration numbers fall quite significantly. Because maths.
But they ain't tellin'....
@PolitlcsUK
🚨 NEW: Reform UK is now three points ahead of the Tories in the latest poll
Labour: 38% (-1)
Reform UK: 21% (+1)
Conservatives: 18% (-1)
Lib Dems: 11% (-1)
Greens: 7% (+1)
SNP: 2% (-1)
Other: 3% (+2)
Via @WStoneInsight, on 26-27 June
2,012 adults
Changes w/ 19-20 June
Labour can double tax rates if they like, but twice nothing is still nothing.
Though considering the shambles that we have had for the last decade with people experienced in government, no experience may well be a major step up!
Wastrel degrees like Sociology, Politics, Philosophy and Classics all need to be banned by the new Conservative Government next Friday as irrelevant to modern living.
I wish I could have read something practically useful like Media Studies. Back in my day many non-Law and non-Stem degrees were academic nonsense!
The student one I think is ripe for abuse and I am sceptical that most will go home after three years, because actually a very big percentage already stayed and that was before a surge in people coming from third world nations who have no desire to return home.
Where my wife works the firm regular uses agency staff and the agency staff are almost always migrants who barely speak English and many of them have their phones playing university lectures on zoom in the background while they're getting on with their job. I don't think that's someone especially interested in the lecture.
London gets off.
There's a festival or something going on. Multiple cops on the platform. Must be a rough one.
EDIT: There's a huge line of portaloos. Last chance for a shit 'til Monday....
She's eighty four years old and has been performing for more than seventy of them
This is her latest track, Worthy, released ten days ago
https://youtu.be/9wYU_4xDn8Y
I love it
Lab: 38%
Ref: 21%
Con: 18%
LD: 11%
https://yougov.co.uk/politics/articles/49877-ethnic-minority-britons-at-the-2024-general-election
But fuck it, not law.
Fine but the wrong sequence. The populist right can stick around as long as they like and try to get elected. Then we will have those policies. Until that day they can go whistle as far as I'm concerned. And since we're about to embark on 5 years, probably 10, of centre left Labour government I hope their lips are in good working order.
https://x.com/wethinkpolling/status/1806719530925711447
https://amp.theguardian.com/politics/article/2024/jun/28/stamp-duty-for-first-time-buyers-would-rise-in-2025-under-labour-government
As far as I can tell, the 25% tax free allowance doesn’t have any sort of expiry date, so perhaps he actually misspoke.
I don’t deny that they are going to tax way more than they’re currently saying, but I don’t really have an issue with that.
Speaking as someone who is likely younger than a lot of other PBers, it’s been frustrating as all hell to see how this country has become lucrative as anything for a small segment of the population who all bought their houses 30 years ago for about £10, went to university for free, and now spend their days opposing everything that could possibly bring some more growth so we can bloody well pay for their pensions.
The Tory government that has continually bribed the grey vote has on the other hand, among many other measures, imposed a de facto graduate tax on the young, and frankly, the Tory vote share amongst people under 50 should absolutely terrify all Tories who want a return to government anytime soon.
I say this all as someone who has done pretty decently for themselves so far - this imbalance will define the next generation of politics. I have a lot of friends who are seriously contemplating more lucrative moves abroad - and most of them don’t even work in careers where that’s a common occurrence!
And yet some people would prefer to live in a country where they can sit like Smaug atop their pile of Gold, complain that the young don’t know the meaning of hard work, and enjoy a lifestyle of being slightly well-off in a country where nothing bloody works properly, and the young who support their lifestyle have all fled for pastures new. But it’s okay - at least the modern train that could aid the nation’s economy won’t be within 2 miles of their house, blocking the views - we absolutely couldn’t have that!
TL;DR if Starmer has a secret tax agenda - good - and unlike a lot of people who might say this I have no problems paying more tax myself either, if it’s coupled with fixing some long standing problems (the ridiculousness of how Council Tax is lower for Buckingham Palace than for 46% of households in the country - despite the fact that a ton of it is funding Adult Social Care - it doesn’t make any sense!!!) https://x.com/pjtheeconomist/status/1753361450809110922?s=46
Labour have the chance of a lifetime to use a supermajority to get all the unpopular things done quickly. I am not necessarily convinced they will - and if they squander it I will certainly look elsewhere in 2029.
SC overturns Chevron.
https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/23pdf/22-451_7m58.pdf
Now, you can do that by getting a new visa (like a skilled worker one) or by marrying a Brit. (Both of which are a hell of a lot easier if you are in the UK as a student already.) But it does mean that most students return home.
Migration Observatory has a good article on it here: https://migrationobservatory.ox.ac.uk/resources/briefings/student-migration-to-the-uk/
The stat that most stood out to me was that, if you looked at the cohort from 2010, then after five years 19% had managed to get new visas, while 1% had indefinite leave to remain.
I suspect that you will see very different patterns by nationality. Americans and Chinese students are probably near certain to return, while African students will be most keen to find a way to stay, with Indians in the middle.
Someone has money.
What a man. He walked next to MLK Jr.
You had to be a world class rower or the heir to a massive estate.
So no I make NO apologies for backing Boris with his Classics degree rather than Truss and Sunak's PPE degrees. Fat lot of good they did them!
FFS.
Trump wins the election this weekend it seems.
But Starmer could be a lucky general there too as it seems that loophole that got exploited has been closed in which case again numbers could fall without him taking any action there either.
I'd swap two of those for one Pops show
But not the one when she held my hand and squeezed it (at Under The Bridge, under the Chelsea stadium). I remember thinking after that I was now one degree of touching from MLK
It's also not more than 1pt different for any party since their last poll, and their polls over the whole election period only appear to have tracked the general trend.
It's an enormous power grab by the Court at the expense of Congress, and demonstrates a contempt for the stare decisis doctrine that is deeper than the Dodds decision.
Kagan's dissent is well argued, and appropriately scathing. She made a point of reading it from the bench.
(not casting any aspersions on you specifically btw!)
Jun 27-28
You wife's colleagues are coming the UK and working while "studying", but they still need to qualify for a visa once their studies are over. They can get a two year "graduate visa" extension, but after that, unless they have a skilled worker visa or have managed to marry, then they'll be off back home.
Currently serving his 16th term of office.
On current trends all removing Boris has done is increased tenfold the chances of PM Farage within a decade instead
Fairly eyewatering prices at £3k, but worth it and improving for the image.
If you were a speccie columnist you could take it in, and cause the cyclopaths there to have a small fit.
https://x.com/politics_polls/status/1806733244424912988
Squawk Box
@SquawkCNBC
·
5h
"My focus group all came in undecided from swing states, 12 of the 14 swung to Donald Trump. Only one to Joe Biden," says @FrankLuntz on how his focus group reacted to last night's debate.
https://x.com/SquawkCNBC/status/1806646419576525260
A second term is where Labour are most likely to fall apart as its voters start demanding the bigger things on their wishlist and their voter coalition could crack apart. It will also be when, even absent an unknown crisis or scandal, Starmer would face questions about when he would leave and thus the factionalism would be back.
But Baxtered it gives something like
LABOUR 453
LD 74
CON 50
REF 29 (!)
GREEN 3
SNP 18
For some reason I am good at spotting random facts and quickly working out their inevitable consequences, meaning, end. I’m not sure why. I wonder if it’s because I’m good at plotting stories to tell my kids. That’s a form of extrapolation - the plot has to work
I am absolutely shit at turning this gift of historical-political extrapolation into money, which is quite frustrating
Doesn't mean they are wrong, but you do need to bear this in mind.
Someone was writing about the scenario where if the LD’s were close to the Tories in seats and then a few Lab MPs defected so the LD’s had more seats that the Tories and so became the Official Opposition. Has this ever happened before, as in the opposition changing control outside of an election? Sorry if I missed it being mentioned before.
Remember that for many people Reform are toxic....
Farage is more charismatic than Starmer, if he takes over the rump Tories and the economy is poor under a Labour government he could become PM on just 30% of the vote with FPTP if Reform overtook Labour