Keir Starmer is considering appointing former Tory justice secretary David Gauke to head a review into sentencing policy in a move that could signal a radical change in approach towards short prison sentences.
Insiders denied suggestions circulating in Whitehall that Gauke’s candidacy, which is understood to have the backing of current justice secretary Shabana Mahmood, and Starmer himself, was being blocked by Starmer’s chief of staff, Sue Gray.
Kier Starmer may be crap, but he's also PM with a huge majority.
The extreme Tory members of PB (Casino, Alanbrooke, etc.) are still at the anger stage. We’ve had denial. We’ve still to reach the bargaining, depression and acceptance stages.
While agreeing with you, must also say that Labour stinking up the place (except for quashing riots?) has added both to the anger AND to the hope the political tide is turning AND imitating the Bay of Fundy with it's massive rises AND falls.
He almost injured himself trying not to say "white"...
Is that fair though? The interviewer hostilely suggests there’s no such thing as English identity, or that the very idea of it is somehow racist.
I think Jenrick acquits himself pretty well.
I have watched the clip linked to above again, carefully. The interviewer at no point says anything remotely like @Gardenwalker ’s claim. He does not say there is no such thing as English identity. He does not say the word “racist” or anything like it.
Gardenwalker, could you explain yourself? Why are you making things up?
Nope Gardenwalker is right on this one. Watch the full 8 minute interview and you will see that, although he may not say it directly, the interviewer clearly indicates that he believes it doesn't exist. I bow to no one in my dislike for Jenrick but this interviewer is being a typical gotcha fuckwit.
That doesn't mean I actually agree with Jenrick and hs claims about migration. In this instance they are both being fuckwits.
I have watched the clip linked to. If there's a longer version I can watch, can you point me to it?
Having watched it I still can't see the interviewer indicating or implying that he does not believe English identity exists, more that Jenrick can't credibly claim it's under threat by migration.
I would agree that there is an undercurrent of 'are you just talking about this as a dog whistle to attract racist parts of the Tory electorate' but, given the way in which English identity has at times been coopted by racists, I think that's a valid question an interviewer might ask.
Jenrick didn't do badly though, I agree. England has a rich and fascinating identity that can't and shouldn't be reduced to a soundbite. I'm suspicious of his reasons for making this a political issue but the interview wasn't awful.
I thought the interviewer was very good, If Jenricks replies weren't 'racist twaddle 'then I'd like to see what 'racist twaddle' could possibly look like. How long do you have to have been here before you become part of this rich history or as he implies for some peopke that will never be possible. It would like to hear his views on Palestine and whether they too have a unique identity which should be shielded from 'others'
On topic. Forgive me for not understanding the appeal of Robert Jenrick.
Lay the favourite?
His appeal is that he is a (Cambridge educated) lawyer.
The 2024 is the year of the lawyer.
Starmer, Jenrick, then Kamala Harris.
He is Cambridge educated (John's, history) but not a Cambridge lawyer.
Jenrick (St John's, Cambridge) v Starmer (St Edmund Hall, Oxford by way of Leeds) would be the first Oxford v Cambridge general election Varsity Match since Howard v Blair in 2005. Oxford won that one, though Cambridge won the last one before that when Baldwin (Trinity, Cambridge) beat Attlee (University College, Oxford) in 1935
Baldwin was the best Tory ever.
Got rid of the King.
To replace him with his brother as King who successfully with Churchill led us through WW2
Churchill the closet Shinner?
There is nothing so British as firing inconvenient Kings. Kings rule by divine right - if they fall off the throne, that’s God saying “You’re chips are done”.
Indeed. England can boast Edward II, Richard II, Henry VI, Richard III and James II.
Scotland can mention John, Mary, James I and James VII.
And both can boast of Edward VIII.
I’d add Charles I to the list, I think…
D'oh! I hadn't even thought of him.
Honestly, I'll lose my head next.
Add Harold d.1066, and Edward V.
Maud/Matilda?
She never took power. She was about to when the Londoners booted her out.
If we count her if we have to count Jane as well.
I’d forgotten her.
The most important question I think is who had the best play written about their downfall? I haven’t seen Edward II, but I hear it’s pretty good.
Just like expenses, it appears that once you become an MP, your moral compass gets switched off, and the pursuit of money over and above your earned wage becomes paramount. Political donations are perfectly legitimate as long as they are declared, above board and used for campaigning/running the office and suchlike. Where it starts to stink is the sheer amount of freebies MPs seem to attract, no matter what party they represent. If the PM needs a clothing allowance for them and a partner, then fair enough, make it part of the package and showcase the best of British, but can a cabinet minister really not afford to buy their own clothes? Now the other freebies are bit more stinky and complicated. No such thing as a free lunch and all that. Footie tickets and Swifty tickets? Get to fuck, they should be buying their own. Things like Charity Ball tickets are maybe more acceptable, but it's complicated. Ed Davey taking cash to care for his kid? A tough one, but on balance, I don't like it. Farage off to the States to support an injured mate? Unacceptable. It's gone on for years, but it needs to be stricter and all the freebies stopped. Free Gear Keir and Vicky Sponge have done us all a favour by really highlighting it.
THh thing is, MPs and cabinet ministers are wildy underpaid compared to their peers in any other walk of life. All this caterwauling is just going to make it an even more unattractive profession for talented people to consider.
But they are not underpaid copmpared to the majority of the UK population - and they are supposd to be wanting the job out of a sense of public duty and service not to line their own pockets.
Now that is a poor argument when talking about nurses and teachers who are on fuck all but not when you are talking about the Prime Minister who is already on a few quid short of £167,000 a year.
This is another failing of our adoption of this idea of professional politicians - politics as a career rather than as service.
pay peanuts, get monkeys, complain about the stink. so it goes
Except under no one's definition would £167K a year be described as peanuts. And as I said, politics is supposed to be about public service, not self enrichment.
He almost injured himself trying not to say "white"...
Is that fair though? The interviewer hostilely suggests there’s no such thing as English identity, or that the very idea of it is somehow racist.
I think Jenrick acquits himself pretty well.
I have watched the clip linked to above again, carefully. The interviewer at no point says anything remotely like @Gardenwalker ’s claim. He does not say there is no such thing as English identity. He does not say the word “racist” or anything like it.
Gardenwalker, could you explain yourself? Why are you making things up?
Nope Gardenwalker is right on this one. Watch the full 8 minute interview and you will see that, although he may not say it directly, the interviewer clearly indicates that he believes it doesn't exist. I bow to no one in my dislike for Jenrick but this interviewer is being a typical gotcha fuckwit.
That doesn't mean I actually agree with Jenrick and hs claims about migration. In this instance they are both being fuckwits.
I have watched the clip linked to. If there's a longer version I can watch, can you point me to it?
Having watched it I still can't see the interviewer indicating or implying that he does not believe English identity exists, more that Jenrick can't credibly claim it's under threat by migration.
I would agree that there is an undercurrent of 'are you just talking about this as a dog whistle to attract racist parts of the Tory electorate' but, given the way in which English identity has at times been coopted by racists, I think that's a valid question an interviewer might ask.
Jenrick didn't do badly though, I agree. England has a rich and fascinating identity that can't and shouldn't be reduced to a soundbite. I'm suspicious of his reasons for making this a political issue but the interview wasn't awful.
Yep I think that is a decent summary. As I said, I am of the general opinion that the way to tell if Jenrick is lying is if his lips are moving and his stuff about immigration is just garbage. My only point earlier was that I think the interviewer is particularly poor and that Jenrick's responses with regard to English Identity were the only ones anyone could reasonably give in the face of such stupid questions.
I quite like Rayner - at least she’s got some spark of life - but this could be fatal. The hypocrisy is off the dial
I mean I did New Year in New York in 2008 and it was north of £1,000 night then.
As an occasional travel writer, my guess is a trip like that would cost at least £6k and maybe much more
Why does she not admit that? Is there some rule about accepting sums over a certain level? Or is it just coz it looks so bad - “yeah I had a free ten grand holibobs, soz”
It's Labour's bloody class warfare that has come back to haunt them.
You cannot portray yourself as a man/woman of the people when you're cadging £6k holidays so best keep schtum about the latter.
I’m amazed at how rapidly this government has come apart.
It's very funny.
I hope the hubris is pure and they're flushed down the toilet of history as soon as possible.
Or four and a half years of them getting worse and worse and worse and worse...
You may have a point after five years, however you misremember the calamitous nature of the 2019 to 2024 Government. They were truly awful. If Team Starmer are even half as bad they will have worked hard to realise such an appalling achievement. I'm not saying it can't be done, but it is unlikely.
Labour's start to Government has been more, er, impactful than anyone could have guessed.
Boris took quite a while to collape. Starmer has gone on the B of the Bang.
Good evening
Listening to Laura Kuenssberg on BBC news just now she is expecting the Sunday papers to reveal more scandal on Labour's freebies
It's all very well the media exposing grifter Keith now but wouldn't it have been more helpful if they'd done it 6 months ago? 🤷♂️
Has the media exposed anything or has it just read MPs' declarations of interest and spun it against our pious prime minister? The only new fact is Lord Alli's pass.
Keir Starmer is considering appointing former Tory justice secretary David Gauke to head a review into sentencing policy in a move that could signal a radical change in approach towards short prison sentences.
Insiders denied suggestions circulating in Whitehall that Gauke’s candidacy, which is understood to have the backing of current justice secretary Shabana Mahmood, and Starmer himself, was being blocked by Starmer’s chief of staff, Sue Gray.
Bought some Tim Tams from Waitrose today, for amusement on account of their minor role in Brexit. Sadly, I must inform you that they are slightly better than Penguin bars. More expensive, though.
Two more flavours to try later: dark chocolate, and chewy caramel.
I bought the dark chocolate variety in Tescos a few days ago. Having had them first in Australia many years ago, I have to admit they did disappoint slightly.
Apart from Don Bradman and Shane Warne, is there anything from Australia that hasn’t disappointed?
Kylie Minogue.
Barry Humphries.
Actually yes, the famous Aussie foursome. Barry Humphries, Clive James, Germaine Greer and Robert Hughes. All made the world a better place in one way or another.
Germaine Greer is still going, albeit in an old folks home in Australia. Louis Theroux interviewed her, somewhat controversially, late last year.
Somewhat less controversially I suspect (hope?), Rick Stein interviewed Barry Humphries in one of his 'Wandering about Cornwall" series a year or two ago.
Sir Keir Starmer has a month to prove that his Government is not “fundamentally” dysfunctional, a senior Whitehall figure has said. In a warning shot to the Prime Minister, the source said Sue Gray was “not of the party” and that only he could get a grip on the worsening situation.
Does Mr Market decide when the government is dysfunctional?
Do you think the Telegraph has just one 'senior figure' who sees himself as 'deep throat' or do you think the whole story is a Telegraph invention? If this sounds far fetched look at the newspapers record since this new editor arrived.......
Strangely multiple people have also been independently briefing similar stories to the BBC and able to come up with accurate salary figure that few will have known....Its always about slagging off Sue Gray.
Sue Gray's problems are the party does not like her, and nor does the civil service. Her only protector is the prime minister, so her job is safe until Starmer tires of Gray always being the story. Ask Dominic Cummings how that feels.
Keir Starmer is considering appointing former Tory justice secretary David Gauke to head a review into sentencing policy in a move that could signal a radical change in approach towards short prison sentences.
Insiders denied suggestions circulating in Whitehall that Gauke’s candidacy, which is understood to have the backing of current justice secretary Shabana Mahmood, and Starmer himself, was being blocked by Starmer’s chief of staff, Sue Gray.
More briefing against Sue. Also, seems Timpson is locked in the cupboard.
Somebody doesn't like Sue Gray. Most people appear to know who is doing the briefing but only SKS can get rid of him. By all accounts he has good reason for keeping him at the moment.. But these things happen and that's why he gets the big bucks. As it happens I hear SKS is tough as nails and he WILL sort it out how ever much glass is broken
A group of Republicans this week rejected a bill that combined a six-month continuing resolution (CR) with the Trump-backed voting bill, tanking the legislation in a move that thwarted Speaker Mike Johnson’s (R-La.) funding strategy.
Now, as the Speaker prepares to defy Trump’s wishes and stage a vote on a “clean” three-month stopgap, rank-and-file Republicans are expected to back it — balking at the former president’s request. Republicans almost universally support the voting bill, but they say pushing the issue so intensely that it results in a shutdown would backfire on the party.
“Everybody wants to go home and campaign, and there are some, particularly that want to go home and campaign, because they’re in really tough races,” Rep. Gary Palmer (R-Ala.) said…
.. Trump for weeks has urged House Republicans to pair government funding with a conservative voting bill. Johnson fulfilled that request with his opening salvo in the government funding talks.
The former president, however, amped up his request last week, urging Republicans to shut down the government if they did not secure “absolute assurances on Election Security.” And he reiterated that position Wednesday, hours before the House rejected the six-month stopgap-plus-SAVE Act.
“If Republicans don’t get the SAVE Act, and every ounce of it, they should not agree to a Continuing Resolution in any way, shape, or form,” Trump posted on Truth Social, adding: “BE SMART, REPUBLICANS, YOU’VE BEEN PUSHED AROUND LONG ENOUGH BY THE DEMOCRATS. DON’T LET IT HAPPEN AGAIN. Remember, this is Biden/Harris’ fault, not yours…
Just come back from watching the fight at the pub....
This is such a golden period for British Boxing....I remember the days of Hagler, Hearns Duran and Leonard....But we have Fury, AJ, Dubois and others like Dillan Whyte....
What a fight tonight. AJ has nowhere to go, but Dubois was as sharp as a razor and as strong as an Ox...
Evening everyone. Spent most of today either doing, or travelling to and from, the Tube Challenge in London, where you get 15 random stations in an envelope and have to travel round them as quickly as possible. I came last with 5 hours 14 mins, lol.
Trump saying he can't do another debate because the early voting has already started.
Didn't stop him having a debate in October 2020.
Scared of getting his arse kicked again.
The signs here are that his support among female voters in particular is sinking, with women switching to Harris reassured by what they saw in that first debate. This could be enough to open up a winning margin in some of the swing states.
This is Starmer's problem. He is a lawyer, not a politician. The rules say you can take freebies so long as you declare them, and so he does take freebies and (eventually) declare them. It's politically obtuse even if strictly legal.
🔴 BREAKING: Unconfirmed reports of an explosion at an underground Iranian nuclear facility. According to local sources - a number of senior officials responsible for Iran’s nuclear program were killed in the explosion.
Evening everyone. Spent most of today either doing, or travelling to and from, the Tube Challenge in London, where you get 15 random stations in an envelope and have to travel round them as quickly as possible. I came last with 5 hours 14 mins, lol.
The sub crawl in Glasgow is more interesting. 15 stops (it's a loop) but you visit a bar for a drink between each stop.
Evening everyone. Spent most of today either doing, or travelling to and from, the Tube Challenge in London, where you get 15 random stations in an envelope and have to travel round them as quickly as possible. I came last with 5 hours 14 mins, lol.
I've visited all 612 stations in Greater London - but at a far more leisurely pace
A group of Republicans this week rejected a bill that combined a six-month continuing resolution (CR) with the Trump-backed voting bill, tanking the legislation in a move that thwarted Speaker Mike Johnson’s (R-La.) funding strategy.
Now, as the Speaker prepares to defy Trump’s wishes and stage a vote on a “clean” three-month stopgap, rank-and-file Republicans are expected to back it — balking at the former president’s request. Republicans almost universally support the voting bill, but they say pushing the issue so intensely that it results in a shutdown would backfire on the party.
“Everybody wants to go home and campaign, and there are some, particularly that want to go home and campaign, because they’re in really tough races,” Rep. Gary Palmer (R-Ala.) said…
.. Trump for weeks has urged House Republicans to pair government funding with a conservative voting bill. Johnson fulfilled that request with his opening salvo in the government funding talks.
The former president, however, amped up his request last week, urging Republicans to shut down the government if they did not secure “absolute assurances on Election Security.” And he reiterated that position Wednesday, hours before the House rejected the six-month stopgap-plus-SAVE Act.
“If Republicans don’t get the SAVE Act, and every ounce of it, they should not agree to a Continuing Resolution in any way, shape, or form,” Trump posted on Truth Social, adding: “BE SMART, REPUBLICANS, YOU’VE BEEN PUSHED AROUND LONG ENOUGH BY THE DEMOCRATS. DON’T LET IT HAPPEN AGAIN. Remember, this is Biden/Harris’ fault, not yours…
Personally feel this is what you might call, "a good time had by all" episode of political kabuki.
> Note that most US HOUSE REPUBLICANS voted FOR linking the Continuing Resolution with Proof-of-Citizenship voting this past week.
> Demonstrating HOUSE GOPer support for the linkage, thus boosting them with base GOPers and others who agree with PoC policy. While THIS week, they get to be quasi-responsible statespeople and NOT threaten federal spending in general and in their particular districts in particular.
> Further note that TRUMP gets to fulminate as per usual, yet again showing both his ideological (im)purity AND anti-estabishmentarianism, which also helps him persuade AND mobilize (as in voter turnout) swing and/or infrequent voters
> As for DEMOCRATS in general, we get satisfacation of frustrate DJT's knavish tricks and Speaker-Preacher Mike Johnson's alleged legislative agenda; or
> In the case of the THREE DEMOCRATS who voted FOR the CR+PoC last week, they are all in VERY close races, and were clearly given a pass by Hakim Jeffries to go against the Democratic flow, on the grounds that this will help them with their voters in October/November. They are Don Davis (NC CD1), Jared Golden (Maine CD2) and Marie Gluesenkamp Perez (WA CD3).
Just like expenses, it appears that once you become an MP, your moral compass gets switched off, and the pursuit of money over and above your earned wage becomes paramount. Political donations are perfectly legitimate as long as they are declared, above board and used for campaigning/running the office and suchlike. Where it starts to stink is the sheer amount of freebies MPs seem to attract, no matter what party they represent. If the PM needs a clothing allowance for them and a partner, then fair enough, make it part of the package and showcase the best of British, but can a cabinet minister really not afford to buy their own clothes? Now the other freebies are bit more stinky and complicated. No such thing as a free lunch and all that. Footie tickets and Swifty tickets? Get to fuck, they should be buying their own. Things like Charity Ball tickets are maybe more acceptable, but it's complicated. Ed Davey taking cash to care for his kid? A tough one, but on balance, I don't like it. Farage off to the States to support an injured mate? Unacceptable. It's gone on for years, but it needs to be stricter and all the freebies stopped. Free Gear Keir and Vicky Sponge have done us all a favour by really highlighting it.
THh thing is, MPs and cabinet ministers are wildy underpaid compared to their peers in any other walk of life. All this caterwauling is just going to make it an even more unattractive profession for talented people to consider.
But they are not underpaid copmpared to the majority of the UK population - and they are supposd to be wanting the job out of a sense of public duty and service not to line their own pockets.
Now that is a poor argument when talking about nurses and teachers who are on fuck all but not when you are talking about the Prime Minister who is already on a few quid short of £167,000 a year.
This is another failing of our adoption of this idea of professional politicians - politics as a career rather than as service.
pay peanuts, get monkeys, complain about the stink. so it goes
Except under no one's definition would £167K a year be described as peanuts. And as I said, politics is supposed to be about public service, not self enrichment.
For Prime Minster? It's not 1997 anymore.
Yes for PM. It is roughly the average of the other G7 countries for their heads of Government and is six times the average UK wage.
Sir Keir Starmer has a month to prove that his Government is not “fundamentally” dysfunctional, a senior Whitehall figure has said. In a warning shot to the Prime Minister, the source said Sue Gray was “not of the party” and that only he could get a grip on the worsening situation.
Does Mr Market decide when the government is dysfunctional?
Do you think the Telegraph has just one 'senior figure' who sees himself as 'deep throat' or do you think the whole story is a Telegraph invention? If this sounds far fetched look at the newspapers record since this new editor arrived.......
It's Deep Groat at the BoE to watch out for.
Am quoting this solely because, as a piece of wit, it deserves repeating.
The other distracting us that it's escalating the conflict with all of its enemies at once. 'Taking out' Iran is certainly not a realistic description.
IMV this BBC front-page headline highlights Starmer's problem:
"It is my job to sort out No 10 leaks, says Starmer"
No, Starmer. You may think your problem is the leaks. We - the great British public - thank the leakers. The information leaked is only damaging to you because you - and too many of your colleagues - have acted, at best, stupidly.
Here's a better thing to say: "It's my job to ensure all Labour ministers and MP act with more propriety. I'm sorry that we have not, so far."
A group of Republicans this week rejected a bill that combined a six-month continuing resolution (CR) with the Trump-backed voting bill, tanking the legislation in a move that thwarted Speaker Mike Johnson’s (R-La.) funding strategy.
Now, as the Speaker prepares to defy Trump’s wishes and stage a vote on a “clean” three-month stopgap, rank-and-file Republicans are expected to back it — balking at the former president’s request. Republicans almost universally support the voting bill, but they say pushing the issue so intensely that it results in a shutdown would backfire on the party.
“Everybody wants to go home and campaign, and there are some, particularly that want to go home and campaign, because they’re in really tough races,” Rep. Gary Palmer (R-Ala.) said…
.. Trump for weeks has urged House Republicans to pair government funding with a conservative voting bill. Johnson fulfilled that request with his opening salvo in the government funding talks.
The former president, however, amped up his request last week, urging Republicans to shut down the government if they did not secure “absolute assurances on Election Security.” And he reiterated that position Wednesday, hours before the House rejected the six-month stopgap-plus-SAVE Act.
“If Republicans don’t get the SAVE Act, and every ounce of it, they should not agree to a Continuing Resolution in any way, shape, or form,” Trump posted on Truth Social, adding: “BE SMART, REPUBLICANS, YOU’VE BEEN PUSHED AROUND LONG ENOUGH BY THE DEMOCRATS. DON’T LET IT HAPPEN AGAIN. Remember, this is Biden/Harris’ fault, not yours…
Personally feel this is what you might call, "a good time had by all" episode of political kabuki.
> Note that most US HOUSE REPUBLICANS voted FOR linking the Continuing Resolution with Proof-of-Citizenship voting this past week.
> Demonstrating HOUSE GOPer support for the linkage, thus boosting them with base GOPers and others who agree with PoC policy. While THIS week, they get to be quasi-responsible statespeople and NOT threaten federal spending in general and in their particular districts in particular.
> Further note that TRUMP gets to fulminate as per usual, yet again showing both his ideological (im)purity AND anti-estabishmentarianism, which also helps him persuade AND mobilize (as in voter turnout) swing and/or infrequent voters
> As for DEMOCRATS in general, we get satisfacation of frustrate DJT's knavish tricks and Speaker-Preacher Mike Johnson's alleged legislative agenda; or
> In the case of the THREE DEMOCRATS who voted FOR the CR+PoC last week, they are all in VERY close races, and were clearly given a pass by Hakim Jeffries to go against the Democratic flow, on the grounds that this will help them with their voters in October/November. They are Don Davis (NC CD1), Jared Golden (Maine CD2) and Marie Gluesenkamp Perez (WA CD3).
While that's a fair characterisation, there were plenty of Republicans in Congress, along with Trump, who actually wanted to pass that bill (even though it would never have made it through the Senate before the election).
A second term Trump, with a majority in Congress would almost certainly do so.
This is Starmer's problem. He is a lawyer, not a politician. The rules say you can take freebies so long as you declare them, and so he does take freebies and (eventually) declare them. It's politically obtuse even if strictly legal.
He also did not 'comply with the rules'. He repeatedly declared things late.
🔴 BREAKING: Unconfirmed reports of an explosion at an underground Iranian nuclear facility. According to local sources - a number of senior officials responsible for Iran’s nuclear program were killed in the explosion.
It was a coal mine, not a nuclear facility.
So unless it also doubles as a nuclear facility (which is possible, of course) the likeliest explanation is that poor safety features caused a gas build up which then ignited.
Sir Keir Starmer has a month to prove that his Government is not “fundamentally” dysfunctional, a senior Whitehall figure has said. In a warning shot to the Prime Minister, the source said Sue Gray was “not of the party” and that only he could get a grip on the worsening situation.
I called this the other day (and alluded to it in the header.)
No 10 was flat-footed in explaining the details in a way that would have muted the criticism. Reports that Starmer has been given an entire corporate box by Arsenal, worth about £8,000 a game, for security reasons were inaccurate.
The prime minister owns season tickets for him and his son, which he continues to pay for. He has been able to take two seats in a box, moving around each game so he is never in the same place twice, a requirement of his security team. Starmer has already twice paid the difference between the value of his seats and those he has been given. The sums are “a few hundred pounds”.
More understandably, his team has not been able to brief about the security threat, which sources say is much higher than it was when Cameron or Sunak sat in the stands. This is because Islamist extremists are targeting Starmer and senior cabinet ministers over the government’s approach to the war in Gaza.
Sir Keir Starmer has a month to prove that his Government is not “fundamentally” dysfunctional, a senior Whitehall figure has said. In a warning shot to the Prime Minister, the source said Sue Gray was “not of the party” and that only he could get a grip on the worsening situation.
IMV this BBC front-page headline highlights Starmer's problem:
"It is my job to sort out No 10 leaks, says Starmer"
No, Starmer. You may think your problem is the leaks. We - the great British public - thank the leakers. The information leaked is only damaging to you because you - and too many of your colleagues - have acted, at best, stupidly.
Here's a better thing to say: "It's my job to ensure all Labour ministers and MP act with more propriety. I'm sorry that we have not, so far."
I soon as I saw it this morning I thought the same. *WE* want to know this information. It's important. Starmer has basically said its better to keep things a secret than tell people.
(When I like a government it's a sure sign that the voters will kill it and bury it in a hole at the first opportunity they get.)
Except this is the same idea that they have come up with for at least the last 20 years. It sounds like something is happening but then the 'default permits' have so many caveats that it is no different to the existing system. It basically reveals that the government itself have been swallowed up by the blob. Expect no change at all, business as usual.
I called this the other day (and alluded to it in the header.)
No 10 was flat-footed in explaining the details in a way that would have muted the criticism. Reports that Starmer has been given an entire corporate box by Arsenal, worth about £8,000 a game, for security reasons were inaccurate.
The prime minister owns season tickets for him and his son, which he continues to pay for. He has been able to take two seats in a box, moving around each game so he is never in the same place twice, a requirement of his security team. Starmer has already twice paid the difference between the value of his seats and those he has been given. The sums are “a few hundred pounds”.
More understandably, his team has not been able to brief about the security threat, which sources say is much higher than it was when Cameron or Sunak sat in the stands. This is because Islamist extremists are targeting Starmer and senior cabinet ministers over the government’s approach to the war in Gaza.
Regarding Planning. The government need to a) sideline the civil service, b) announce an intention to set up a delivery unit and grant a series of outline planning permissions via acts of parliament, circumventing the existing planning system completely, then c) task civil servants with delivering X houses via the permissions that parliament has granted, with all the resources of the state thrown behind it, and under political direction. If you try and just meander along with the existing process of plan allocations, and then 'streamlining/reforming' the system, then it will just continue to stagnate.
I called this the other day (and alluded to it in the header.)
No 10 was flat-footed in explaining the details in a way that would have muted the criticism. Reports that Starmer has been given an entire corporate box by Arsenal, worth about £8,000 a game, for security reasons were inaccurate.
The prime minister owns season tickets for him and his son, which he continues to pay for. He has been able to take two seats in a box, moving around each game so he is never in the same place twice, a requirement of his security team. Starmer has already twice paid the difference between the value of his seats and those he has been given. The sums are “a few hundred pounds”.
More understandably, his team has not been able to brief about the security threat, which sources say is much higher than it was when Cameron or Sunak sat in the stands. This is because Islamist extremists are targeting Starmer and senior cabinet ministers over the government’s approach to the war in Gaza.
I'm just watching the women's Ironman world championship race from Nice. (*)
It's interesting, and I'm firmly on team Brit: Kat Matthew, India Lee, Fen Langridge. And especially Ruth Astle.
But the broadcasting... There's a women's race on, and the ticker at the bottom of the screen keeps on showing the men's standings in the championship, or even the men's transition times from a different race.
Oh, and congrats to Jo O'Regan, who came 12th overall at yesterday's Ironman Italy, who came 12th overall and won her age group by over half an hour. A lovely, friendly lady.
I called this the other day (and alluded to it in the header.)
No 10 was flat-footed in explaining the details in a way that would have muted the criticism. Reports that Starmer has been given an entire corporate box by Arsenal, worth about £8,000 a game, for security reasons were inaccurate.
The prime minister owns season tickets for him and his son, which he continues to pay for. He has been able to take two seats in a box, moving around each game so he is never in the same place twice, a requirement of his security team. Starmer has already twice paid the difference between the value of his seats and those he has been given. The sums are “a few hundred pounds”.
More understandably, his team has not been able to brief about the security threat, which sources say is much higher than it was when Cameron or Sunak sat in the stands. This is because Islamist extremists are targeting Starmer and senior cabinet ministers over the government’s approach to the war in Gaza.
A comprehensive explanation. I'm sure the Telegraph will be composing their apology as we speak....
If they had come out with that day 1 then people would have shrugged and moved on
Taking a week… I’m disinclined to believe them at this point
Also, he gave the most lawyerly defensive of responses when challenged on this.
The easy response was like most father's, I love taking my kids to the football, but becoming PM has made this more challenging. I hope to continue to be able to take them from time to time. However, following security advice, it isn't possible to sit in my usual seats, thus Arsenal have made seats in a box available, which I will pay the difference for. Story done and dusted.
I don't buy the I am in more danger than Sunak, because Israel / Gaza. The Sunak government position was even more pro-Israel and it was much more raw and much bigger demos every week with plenty of extremists emboldened to show their true colours.
Instead there he was again last weekend on a freebie to the Spurs in the company of lobbyists for the European Super League.
I called this the other day (and alluded to it in the header.)
No 10 was flat-footed in explaining the details in a way that would have muted the criticism. Reports that Starmer has been given an entire corporate box by Arsenal, worth about £8,000 a game, for security reasons were inaccurate.
The prime minister owns season tickets for him and his son, which he continues to pay for. He has been able to take two seats in a box, moving around each game so he is never in the same place twice, a requirement of his security team. Starmer has already twice paid the difference between the value of his seats and those he has been given. The sums are “a few hundred pounds”.
More understandably, his team has not been able to brief about the security threat, which sources say is much higher than it was when Cameron or Sunak sat in the stands. This is because Islamist extremists are targeting Starmer and senior cabinet ministers over the government’s approach to the war in Gaza.
Sir Keir Starmer has a month to prove that his Government is not “fundamentally” dysfunctional, a senior Whitehall figure has said. In a warning shot to the Prime Minister, the source said Sue Gray was “not of the party” and that only he could get a grip on the worsening situation.
Radio 4 tells me Starmer’s take away from all this is that it’s “his job to stop leaks from Downing Street”
I don't know who is advising him, but they want sacking. He just keeps the story going.
What was the thing Bad Al used to say about stories...they could and should have killed this within a couple of days. They all know what freebies they accepted and what they claimed there were for and its not a lot of leg work for journos to look them up.
Hang on, is there a suggestion that Starmer’s presence at the Emirates is making it a target for terrorists? Yeah, I’m not happy him coming if that’s the case.
Regarding Planning. The government need to a) sideline the civil service, b) announce an intention to set up a delivery unit and grant a series of outline planning permissions via acts of parliament, circumventing the existing planning system completely, then c) task civil servants with delivering X houses via the permissions that parliament has granted, with all the resources of the state thrown behind it, and under political direction. If you try and just meander along with the existing process of plan allocations, and then 'streamlining/reforming' the system, then it will just continue to stagnate.
Statutes don't automatically override all other legislation. It will face a range of the usual challenges in the courts.
Civil servants are better at documents than they are at bricklaying. Buildings are built by construction workers which can only be magically brought rapidly into being by migration, which is being decresed not increased.
Planning permission is no use unless someone thinks a profit can be made from the construction.
I called this the other day (and alluded to it in the header.)
No 10 was flat-footed in explaining the details in a way that would have muted the criticism. Reports that Starmer has been given an entire corporate box by Arsenal, worth about £8,000 a game, for security reasons were inaccurate.
The prime minister owns season tickets for him and his son, which he continues to pay for. He has been able to take two seats in a box, moving around each game so he is never in the same place twice, a requirement of his security team. Starmer has already twice paid the difference between the value of his seats and those he has been given. The sums are “a few hundred pounds”.
More understandably, his team has not been able to brief about the security threat, which sources say is much higher than it was when Cameron or Sunak sat in the stands. This is because Islamist extremists are targeting Starmer and senior cabinet ministers over the government’s approach to the war in Gaza.
A comprehensive explanation. I'm sure the Telegraph will be composing their apology as we speak....
If they had come out with that day 1 then people would have shrugged and moved on
Taking a week… I’m disinclined to believe them at this point
Also, he gave the most lawyerly defensive of responses when challenged on this.
The easy response was like most father's, I love taking my kids to the football, but becoming PM has made this more challenging. I hope to continue to be able to take them from time to time. However, following security advice, it isn't possible to sit in my usual seats, thus Arsenal have made seats in a box available, which I will pay the difference for. Story done and dusted.
I don't buy the I am in more danger than Sunak, because Israel / Gaza. The Sunak government position was even more pro-Israel and it was much more raw and much bigger demos every week with plenty of extremists emboldened to show their true colours.
Instead there he was again last weekend on a freebie to the Spurs in the company of lobbyists for the European Super League.
A die hard Arsenal fan taking a freebie to their rivals
Regarding Planning. The government need to a) sideline the civil service, b) announce an intention to set up a delivery unit and grant a series of outline planning permissions via acts of parliament, circumventing the existing planning system completely, then c) task civil servants with delivering X houses via the permissions that parliament has granted, with all the resources of the state thrown behind it, and under political direction. If you try and just meander along with the existing process of plan allocations, and then 'streamlining/reforming' the system, then it will just continue to stagnate.
Statutes don't automatically override all other legislation. It will face a range of the usual challenges in the courts.
Civil servants are better at documents than they are at bricklaying. Buildings are built by construction workers which can only be magically brought rapidly into being by migration, which is being decresed not increased.
Planning permission is no use unless someone thinks a profit can be made from the construction.
We have heard a lot about what the government won't be doing and how taxes are going up and more regulation. But ultimately the only solution to government not having enough money is growth and we have heard a lot less about how they plan to achieve this. Just saying build houses isn't enough. Hopefully after the budget we might get more clarity.
Regarding Planning. The government need to a) sideline the civil service, b) announce an intention to set up a delivery unit and grant a series of outline planning permissions via acts of parliament, circumventing the existing planning system completely, then c) task civil servants with delivering X houses via the permissions that parliament has granted, with all the resources of the state thrown behind it, and under political direction. If you try and just meander along with the existing process of plan allocations, and then 'streamlining/reforming' the system, then it will just continue to stagnate.
Statutes don't automatically override all other legislation. It will face a range of the usual challenges in the courts.
Civil servants are better at documents than they are at bricklaying. Buildings are built by construction workers which can only be magically brought rapidly into being by migration, which is being decresed not increased.
Planning permission is no use unless someone thinks a profit can be made from the construction.
We have heard a lot about what the government won't be doing and how taxes are going up and more regulation. But ultimately the only solution to government not having enough money is growth and we have heard a lot less about how they plan to achieve this. Just saying build houses isn't enough. Hopefully after the budget we might get more clarity.
In particular austerity is not a spur to growth. Axing infrastructure projects is the sort of short termism that got us where we are.
Regarding Planning. The government need to a) sideline the civil service, b) announce an intention to set up a delivery unit and grant a series of outline planning permissions via acts of parliament, circumventing the existing planning system completely, then c) task civil servants with delivering X houses via the permissions that parliament has granted, with all the resources of the state thrown behind it, and under political direction. If you try and just meander along with the existing process of plan allocations, and then 'streamlining/reforming' the system, then it will just continue to stagnate.
Statutes don't automatically override all other legislation. It will face a range of the usual challenges in the courts.
Civil servants are better at documents than they are at bricklaying. Buildings are built by construction workers which can only be magically brought rapidly into being by migration, which is being decresed not increased.
Planning permission is no use unless someone thinks a profit can be made from the construction.
Yes but to some degree you can legislate around this. There are provisions in statute for 'urgent crown development', also when they need to build an emergency lorry park or whatever, they just do a 'special development order'. They need to do the same thing for urban extensions or new towns. Lots of the sites in question will be far advanced through the existing planning system and many of the obstacles etc known. Of course there are challenges but they have to be taken on. The same legal challenges exist even after a site has been allocated in a local plan (a 5 year process) at the point of outline planning permission (2 years plus 1 year for an appeal, maybe 2 years more if there is a legal challenge). Essentially the route I am suggesting could shave about 6 years off a 10 year process.
They already have a delivery framework, where a government agency masterplans the sites in partnership with the private sector and they then get sold off to developers. Re 'delivery', it is a case of building the houses where there is high demand, and grant funding others in a considered way. I just don't think this needs to be all that difficult.
He almost injured himself trying not to say "white"...
Is that fair though? The interviewer hostilely suggests there’s no such thing as English identity, or that the very idea of it is somehow racist.
I think Jenrick acquits himself pretty well.
I have watched the clip linked to above again, carefully. The interviewer at no point says anything remotely like @Gardenwalker ’s claim. He does not say there is no such thing as English identity. He does not say the word “racist” or anything like it.
Gardenwalker, could you explain yourself? Why are you making things up?
Nope Gardenwalker is right on this one. Watch the full 8 minute interview and you will see that, although he may not say it directly, the interviewer clearly indicates that he believes it doesn't exist. I bow to no one in my dislike for Jenrick but this interviewer is being a typical gotcha fuckwit.
That doesn't mean I actually agree with Jenrick and hs claims about migration. In this instance they are both being fuckwits.
I have watched the clip linked to. If there's a longer version I can watch, can you point me to it?
Thank you for that longer clip. I watched it with interest. It proves Gardenwalker’s claims are fabrications. The journalist never calls Jenrick or anyone else or any idea racist or anything similar. At no point does the journalist evince any hostility to the idea that English identity exists. The journalist gives Jenrick plenty of time to put forward his views.
Jenrick, notably, at one point seeks to suggest that the journalist has an antipathy to the idea of English identity. You and Gardenwalker appear to be swallowing Jenrick’s rhetoric. But nothing the journalist says backs this up. Point me to a specific time point where you think the journalist “hostilely suggests there’s no such thing as English identity, or that the very idea of it is somehow racist”.
(When I like a government it's a sure sign that the voters will kill it and bury it in a hole at the first opportunity they get.)
Except this is the same idea that they have come up with for at least the last 20 years. It sounds like something is happening but then the 'default permits' have so many caveats that it is no different to the existing system. It basically reveals that the government itself have been swallowed up by the blob. Expect no change at all, business as usual.
Yes, the follow through is the key. I love the sound of it but I've been burned before, and things like reducing housing figures in London make new suspicious about seemingly positive stories about change.
In planning the usual position is no change, or an overegged tweak which does little more than add yet more bloody paperwork.
Keir Starmer is considering appointing former Tory justice secretary David Gauke to head a review into sentencing policy in a move that could signal a radical change in approach towards short prison sentences.
Insiders denied suggestions circulating in Whitehall that Gauke’s candidacy, which is understood to have the backing of current justice secretary Shabana Mahmood, and Starmer himself, was being blocked by Starmer’s chief of staff, Sue Gray.
Does everyone who questioned the Al Fayed story now accept that it was entirely appropriate to make it headline news ?
And it makes it all the more interesting that it was kept quiet (outside the pages of Private Eye) all these years.
The BBC documentary goes into this. The stories were reported on, to an extent, previously, which makes it all the more shameful that he still got away with it. There was a Vanity Fair article that accused him of bullying and sexual harassment. There was a TV documentary that went further, then later a Channel 4 Dispatches programme.
Keir Starmer is considering appointing former Tory justice secretary David Gauke to head a review into sentencing policy in a move that could signal a radical change in approach towards short prison sentences.
Insiders denied suggestions circulating in Whitehall that Gauke’s candidacy, which is understood to have the backing of current justice secretary Shabana Mahmood, and Starmer himself, was being blocked by Starmer’s chief of staff, Sue Gray.
I called this the other day (and alluded to it in the header.)
No 10 was flat-footed in explaining the details in a way that would have muted the criticism. Reports that Starmer has been given an entire corporate box by Arsenal, worth about £8,000 a game, for security reasons were inaccurate.
The prime minister owns season tickets for him and his son, which he continues to pay for. He has been able to take two seats in a box, moving around each game so he is never in the same place twice, a requirement of his security team. Starmer has already twice paid the difference between the value of his seats and those he has been given. The sums are “a few hundred pounds”.
More understandably, his team has not been able to brief about the security threat, which sources say is much higher than it was when Cameron or Sunak sat in the stands. This is because Islamist extremists are targeting Starmer and senior cabinet ministers over the government’s approach to the war in Gaza.
A comprehensive explanation. I'm sure the Telegraph will be composing their apology as we speak....
If they had come out with that day 1 then people would have shrugged and moved on
Taking a week… I’m disinclined to believe them at this point
Also, he gave the most lawyerly defensive of responses when challenged on this.
The easy response was like most father's, I love taking my kids to the football, but becoming PM has made this more challenging. I hope to continue to be able to take them from time to time. However, following security advice, it isn't possible to sit in my usual seats, thus Arsenal have made seats in a box available, which I will pay the difference for. Story done and dusted.
I don't buy the I am in more danger than Sunak, because Israel / Gaza. The Sunak government position was even more pro-Israel and it was much more raw and much bigger demos every week with plenty of extremists emboldened to show their true colours.
Instead there he was again last weekend on a freebie to the Spurs in the company of lobbyists for the European Super League.
Indeed. His mindset is entirely wrong. And his political skills are zero. Even Andrea Jenkyns would have realised that Spurs was a bad call
I called this the other day (and alluded to it in the header.)
No 10 was flat-footed in explaining the details in a way that would have muted the criticism. Reports that Starmer has been given an entire corporate box by Arsenal, worth about £8,000 a game, for security reasons were inaccurate.
The prime minister owns season tickets for him and his son, which he continues to pay for. He has been able to take two seats in a box, moving around each game so he is never in the same place twice, a requirement of his security team. Starmer has already twice paid the difference between the value of his seats and those he has been given. The sums are “a few hundred pounds”.
More understandably, his team has not been able to brief about the security threat, which sources say is much higher than it was when Cameron or Sunak sat in the stands. This is because Islamist extremists are targeting Starmer and senior cabinet ministers over the government’s approach to the war in Gaza.
A comprehensive explanation. I'm sure the Telegraph will be composing their apology as we speak....
If they had come out with that day 1 then people would have shrugged and moved on
Taking a week… I’m disinclined to believe them at this point
Also, he gave the most lawyerly defensive of responses when challenged on this.
The easy response was like most father's, I love taking my kids to the football, but becoming PM has made this more challenging. I hope to continue to be able to take them from time to time. However, following security advice, it isn't possible to sit in my usual seats, thus Arsenal have made seats in a box available, which I will pay the difference for. Story done and dusted.
I don't buy the I am in more danger than Sunak, because Israel / Gaza. The Sunak government position was even more pro-Israel and it was much more raw and much bigger demos every week with plenty of extremists emboldened to show their true colours.
Instead there he was again last weekend on a freebie to the Spurs in the company of lobbyists for the European Super League.
Indeed. His mindset is entirely wrong. And his political skills are zero. Even Andrea Jenkyns would have realised that Spurs was a bad call
What is quite insane is that, if his account is correct, that he didn’t come out with it at the start. It would have killed the story dead - and probably created some sympathy for him. Instead….
He almost injured himself trying not to say "white"...
Is that fair though? The interviewer hostilely suggests there’s no such thing as English identity, or that the very idea of it is somehow racist.
I think Jenrick acquits himself pretty well.
I have watched the clip linked to above again, carefully. The interviewer at no point says anything remotely like @Gardenwalker ’s claim. He does not say there is no such thing as English identity. He does not say the word “racist” or anything like it.
Gardenwalker, could you explain yourself? Why are you making things up?
Nope Gardenwalker is right on this one. Watch the full 8 minute interview and you will see that, although he may not say it directly, the interviewer clearly indicates that he believes it doesn't exist. I bow to no one in my dislike for Jenrick but this interviewer is being a typical gotcha fuckwit.
That doesn't mean I actually agree with Jenrick and hs claims about migration. In this instance they are both being fuckwits.
I have watched the clip linked to. If there's a longer version I can watch, can you point me to it?
Thank you for that longer clip. I watched it with interest. It proves Gardenwalker’s claims are fabrications. The journalist never calls Jenrick or anyone else or any idea racist or anything similar. At no point does the journalist evince any hostility to the idea that English identity exists. The journalist gives Jenrick plenty of time to put forward his views.
Jenrick, notably, at one point seeks to suggest that the journalist has an antipathy to the idea of English identity. You and Gardenwalker appear to be swallowing Jenrick’s rhetoric. But nothing the journalist says backs this up. Point me to a specific time point where you think the journalist “hostilely suggests there’s no such thing as English identity, or that the very idea of it is somehow racist”.
It is impossible to imagine an interviewer attempting such a hostile line of questioning about American identity, or - as Jenrick actually suggests himself - Scottish or Welsh identity.
Why?
Because there is a subtext here from the interviewer that English identity either doesn’t exist, or if it does, is some kind of code for whiteness. About half way through the interviewer attempts directly to expose Jenrick with a supposed gotcha, asking whether immigrants have contributed to English history.
Stop gaslighting the thread, @bondegezou, it’s quite obvious how the interviewer feels about English identity.
I called this the other day (and alluded to it in the header.)
No 10 was flat-footed in explaining the details in a way that would have muted the criticism. Reports that Starmer has been given an entire corporate box by Arsenal, worth about £8,000 a game, for security reasons were inaccurate.
The prime minister owns season tickets for him and his son, which he continues to pay for. He has been able to take two seats in a box, moving around each game so he is never in the same place twice, a requirement of his security team. Starmer has already twice paid the difference between the value of his seats and those he has been given. The sums are “a few hundred pounds”.
More understandably, his team has not been able to brief about the security threat, which sources say is much higher than it was when Cameron or Sunak sat in the stands. This is because Islamist extremists are targeting Starmer and senior cabinet ministers over the government’s approach to the war in Gaza.
A comprehensive explanation. I'm sure the Telegraph will be composing their apology as we speak....
If they had come out with that day 1 then people would have shrugged and moved on
Taking a week… I’m disinclined to believe them at this point
Who to believe... SKS or the Telegraph?
Given their recent record, that's easy.
Not the Telegraph.
When this first started I thought it was a bit pervy that the PM was letting another man dress his wife.
Now I find its a gay man dressing the PM like a toy.
Sir Ken Starmer.
I think clobbergate is very overdone. And I found the 'another man dressing his wife' angle very daft - as if normally it would be Starmer 'dressing his wife'. Pretty sure it's usually wives who run their husbands' wardobes, not the other way round.
'Shagpad-gate' on the other hand I find far more serious, because it involves the donor knowing absolutely intimate details of Ministers' lives. How regularly did they stay? Did they stay with anyone else consistently? These are 'stories', and if there were any stories, they would mean the noble Lord has Starmer's balls in a bag.
He almost injured himself trying not to say "white"...
Is that fair though? The interviewer hostilely suggests there’s no such thing as English identity, or that the very idea of it is somehow racist.
I think Jenrick acquits himself pretty well.
I have watched the clip linked to above again, carefully. The interviewer at no point says anything remotely like @Gardenwalker ’s claim. He does not say there is no such thing as English identity. He does not say the word “racist” or anything like it.
Gardenwalker, could you explain yourself? Why are you making things up?
Nope Gardenwalker is right on this one. Watch the full 8 minute interview and you will see that, although he may not say it directly, the interviewer clearly indicates that he believes it doesn't exist. I bow to no one in my dislike for Jenrick but this interviewer is being a typical gotcha fuckwit.
That doesn't mean I actually agree with Jenrick and hs claims about migration. In this instance they are both being fuckwits.
I have watched the clip linked to. If there's a longer version I can watch, can you point me to it?
Thank you for that longer clip. I watched it with interest. It proves Gardenwalker’s claims are fabrications. The journalist never calls Jenrick or anyone else or any idea racist or anything similar. At no point does the journalist evince any hostility to the idea that English identity exists. The journalist gives Jenrick plenty of time to put forward his views.
Jenrick, notably, at one point seeks to suggest that the journalist has an antipathy to the idea of English identity. You and Gardenwalker appear to be swallowing Jenrick’s rhetoric. But nothing the journalist says backs this up. Point me to a specific time point where you think the journalist “hostilely suggests there’s no such thing as English identity, or that the very idea of it is somehow racist”.
It is impossible to imagine an interviewer attempting such a hostile line of questioning about American identity, or - as Jenrick actually suggests himself - Scottish or Welsh identity.
Why?
Because there is a subtext here from the interviewer that English identity either doesn’t exist, or if it does, is some kind of code for whiteness. About half way through the interviewer attempts directly to expose Jenrick with a supposed gotcha, asking whether immigrants have contributed to English history.
Stop gaslighting the thread, @bondegezou, it’s quite obvious how the interviewer feels about English identity.
Some years ago, at a party, an argument got a bit heated. The guy (white, English) was getting increasingly irate in his instance there was no English identity, culture or even art.
The bit that had a number of us in stitches was that the French lady he was arguing with was an professional Art & Culture historian who taught in university, along with working at the Wallace, the British Museum and several others, in her career.
I called this the other day (and alluded to it in the header.)
No 10 was flat-footed in explaining the details in a way that would have muted the criticism. Reports that Starmer has been given an entire corporate box by Arsenal, worth about £8,000 a game, for security reasons were inaccurate.
The prime minister owns season tickets for him and his son, which he continues to pay for. He has been able to take two seats in a box, moving around each game so he is never in the same place twice, a requirement of his security team. Starmer has already twice paid the difference between the value of his seats and those he has been given. The sums are “a few hundred pounds”.
More understandably, his team has not been able to brief about the security threat, which sources say is much higher than it was when Cameron or Sunak sat in the stands. This is because Islamist extremists are targeting Starmer and senior cabinet ministers over the government’s approach to the war in Gaza.
A comprehensive explanation. I'm sure the Telegraph will be composing their apology as we speak....
If they had come out with that day 1 then people would have shrugged and moved on
Taking a week… I’m disinclined to believe them at this point
Who to believe... SKS or the Telegraph?
Given their recent record, that's easy.
Not the Telegraph.
When this first started I thought it was a bit pervy that the PM was letting another man dress his wife.
Now I find its a gay man dressing the PM like a toy.
Sir Ken Starmer.
I think clobbergate is very overdone. And I found the 'another man dressing his wife' angle very daft - as if normally it would be Starmer 'dressing his wife'. Pretty sure it's usually wives who run their husbands' wardobes, not the other way round.
'Shagpad-gate' on the other hand I find far more serious, because it involves the donor knowing absolutely intimate details of Ministers' lives. How regularly did they stay? Did they stay with anyone else consistently? These are 'stories', and if there were any stories, they would mean the noble Lord has Starmer's balls in a bag.
Which is exactly why big donors love the “invite the right mix of people for a weekend” at their country mansion.
(When I like a government it's a sure sign that the voters will kill it and bury it in a hole at the first opportunity they get.)
All wind. The current system is already default permission. You have to prove that there are valid reasons why houses should not be built. The issue of course is who decides what reasons are valid.
So this changes absolutely nothing in prcatice whilst sounding like they are doing something.
Other bits are better - high density is good if it means building 4 and 5 stories rather than 2. Copy the Europeans or the way we used to build pre 20th century.
He almost injured himself trying not to say "white"...
Is that fair though? The interviewer hostilely suggests there’s no such thing as English identity, or that the very idea of it is somehow racist.
I think Jenrick acquits himself pretty well.
I have watched the clip linked to above again, carefully. The interviewer at no point says anything remotely like @Gardenwalker ’s claim. He does not say there is no such thing as English identity. He does not say the word “racist” or anything like it.
Gardenwalker, could you explain yourself? Why are you making things up?
Nope Gardenwalker is right on this one. Watch the full 8 minute interview and you will see that, although he may not say it directly, the interviewer clearly indicates that he believes it doesn't exist. I bow to no one in my dislike for Jenrick but this interviewer is being a typical gotcha fuckwit.
That doesn't mean I actually agree with Jenrick and hs claims about migration. In this instance they are both being fuckwits.
I have watched the clip linked to. If there's a longer version I can watch, can you point me to it?
Thank you for that longer clip. I watched it with interest. It proves Gardenwalker’s claims are fabrications. The journalist never calls Jenrick or anyone else or any idea racist or anything similar. At no point does the journalist evince any hostility to the idea that English identity exists. The journalist gives Jenrick plenty of time to put forward his views.
Jenrick, notably, at one point seeks to suggest that the journalist has an antipathy to the idea of English identity. You and Gardenwalker appear to be swallowing Jenrick’s rhetoric. But nothing the journalist says backs this up. Point me to a specific time point where you think the journalist “hostilely suggests there’s no such thing as English identity, or that the very idea of it is somehow racist”.
It is impossible to imagine an interviewer attempting such a hostile line of questioning about American identity, or - as Jenrick actually suggests himself - Scottish or Welsh identity.
Why?
Because there is a subtext here from the interviewer that English identity either doesn’t exist, or if it does, is some kind of code for whiteness. About half way through the interviewer attempts directly to expose Jenrick with a supposed gotcha, asking whether immigrants have contributed to English history.
Stop gaslighting the thread, @bondegezou, it’s quite obvious how the interviewer feels about English identity.
Surely there are two versions of English identity. One is those of us who descend from Britons, Anglo-Saxons, Vikings, Normans. People who stopped coming here 1000 years ago. (Although in my case there is also some Huguenot). Yes we are white. There is an English ethnicity.
And then there are English people like TSE whose family came here much more recently. They are equally English but it's more of a "civic" Englishness. Plenty of English people don't share an English ethnic origin but can still be English.
He almost injured himself trying not to say "white"...
Is that fair though? The interviewer hostilely suggests there’s no such thing as English identity, or that the very idea of it is somehow racist.
I think Jenrick acquits himself pretty well.
I have watched the clip linked to above again, carefully. The interviewer at no point says anything remotely like @Gardenwalker ’s claim. He does not say there is no such thing as English identity. He does not say the word “racist” or anything like it.
Gardenwalker, could you explain yourself? Why are you making things up?
Nope Gardenwalker is right on this one. Watch the full 8 minute interview and you will see that, although he may not say it directly, the interviewer clearly indicates that he believes it doesn't exist. I bow to no one in my dislike for Jenrick but this interviewer is being a typical gotcha fuckwit.
That doesn't mean I actually agree with Jenrick and hs claims about migration. In this instance they are both being fuckwits.
I have watched the clip linked to. If there's a longer version I can watch, can you point me to it?
Thank you for that longer clip. I watched it with interest. It proves Gardenwalker’s claims are fabrications. The journalist never calls Jenrick or anyone else or any idea racist or anything similar. At no point does the journalist evince any hostility to the idea that English identity exists. The journalist gives Jenrick plenty of time to put forward his views.
Jenrick, notably, at one point seeks to suggest that the journalist has an antipathy to the idea of English identity. You and Gardenwalker appear to be swallowing Jenrick’s rhetoric. But nothing the journalist says backs this up. Point me to a specific time point where you think the journalist “hostilely suggests there’s no such thing as English identity, or that the very idea of it is somehow racist”.
It is impossible to imagine an interviewer attempting such a hostile line of questioning about American identity, or - as Jenrick actually suggests himself - Scottish or Welsh identity.
Why?
Because there is a subtext here from the interviewer that English identity either doesn’t exist, or if it does, is some kind of code for whiteness. About half way through the interviewer attempts directly to expose Jenrick with a supposed gotcha, asking whether immigrants have contributed to English history.
Stop gaslighting the thread, @bondegezou, it’s quite obvious how the interviewer feels about English identity.
Some years ago, at a party, an argument got a bit heated. The guy (white, English) was getting increasingly irate in his instance there was no English identity, culture or even art.
The bit that had a number of us in stitches was that the French lady he was arguing with was an professional Art & Culture historian who taught in university, along with working at the Wallace, the British Museum and several others, in her career.
We all kept quiet and let the demolition proceed.
You see this sort of thing more online - often in the fallacious approach of if something is hard to precisely define it must therefore not be a real thing - and I typically regard it as a kind of English exceptionalism.
In paritcular the type of exceptionalism that sees England as exceptionally bad, or pretty bog standard national tropes and trends, seen in a lot of places, as being very unusual and an example of England thinking itself to be exceptional.
Or more pithily, that there is nothing very exceptional about exceptionalism.
I called this the other day (and alluded to it in the header.)
No 10 was flat-footed in explaining the details in a way that would have muted the criticism. Reports that Starmer has been given an entire corporate box by Arsenal, worth about £8,000 a game, for security reasons were inaccurate.
The prime minister owns season tickets for him and his son, which he continues to pay for. He has been able to take two seats in a box, moving around each game so he is never in the same place twice, a requirement of his security team. Starmer has already twice paid the difference between the value of his seats and those he has been given. The sums are “a few hundred pounds”.
More understandably, his team has not been able to brief about the security threat, which sources say is much higher than it was when Cameron or Sunak sat in the stands. This is because Islamist extremists are targeting Starmer and senior cabinet ministers over the government’s approach to the war in Gaza.
A comprehensive explanation. I'm sure the Telegraph will be composing their apology as we speak....
If they had come out with that day 1 then people would have shrugged and moved on
Taking a week… I’m disinclined to believe them at this point
Who to believe... SKS or the Telegraph?
Given their recent record, that's easy.
Not the Telegraph.
When this first started I thought it was a bit pervy that the PM was letting another man dress his wife.
Now I find its a gay man dressing the PM like a toy.
Sir Ken Starmer.
I think clobbergate is very overdone. And I found the 'another man dressing his wife' angle very daft - as if normally it would be Starmer 'dressing his wife'. Pretty sure it's usually wives who run their husbands' wardobes, not the other way round.
'Shagpad-gate' on the other hand I find far more serious, because it involves the donor knowing absolutely intimate details of Ministers' lives. How regularly did they stay? Did they stay with anyone else consistently? These are 'stories', and if there were any stories, they would mean the noble Lord has Starmer's balls in a bag.
Which is exactly why big donors love the “invite the right mix of people for a weekend” at their country mansion.
Once you get inside people’s friendship groups….
If there was not a personal benefit to 'donating' to get really intimate access to the great and the good, why does it cost so much to get that access in the first place?
(I suppose if you are fortunate your parents paid the cost by paying the schools fees at Eton or wherever, so you are in the friend group early on).
He almost injured himself trying not to say "white"...
Is that fair though? The interviewer hostilely suggests there’s no such thing as English identity, or that the very idea of it is somehow racist.
I think Jenrick acquits himself pretty well.
I have watched the clip linked to above again, carefully. The interviewer at no point says anything remotely like @Gardenwalker ’s claim. He does not say there is no such thing as English identity. He does not say the word “racist” or anything like it.
Gardenwalker, could you explain yourself? Why are you making things up?
Nope Gardenwalker is right on this one. Watch the full 8 minute interview and you will see that, although he may not say it directly, the interviewer clearly indicates that he believes it doesn't exist. I bow to no one in my dislike for Jenrick but this interviewer is being a typical gotcha fuckwit.
That doesn't mean I actually agree with Jenrick and hs claims about migration. In this instance they are both being fuckwits.
I have watched the clip linked to. If there's a longer version I can watch, can you point me to it?
Thank you for that longer clip. I watched it with interest. It proves Gardenwalker’s claims are fabrications. The journalist never calls Jenrick or anyone else or any idea racist or anything similar. At no point does the journalist evince any hostility to the idea that English identity exists. The journalist gives Jenrick plenty of time to put forward his views.
Jenrick, notably, at one point seeks to suggest that the journalist has an antipathy to the idea of English identity. You and Gardenwalker appear to be swallowing Jenrick’s rhetoric. But nothing the journalist says backs this up. Point me to a specific time point where you think the journalist “hostilely suggests there’s no such thing as English identity, or that the very idea of it is somehow racist”.
It is impossible to imagine an interviewer attempting such a hostile line of questioning about American identity, or - as Jenrick actually suggests himself - Scottish or Welsh identity.
Why?
Because there is a subtext here from the interviewer that English identity either doesn’t exist, or if it does, is some kind of code for whiteness. About half way through the interviewer attempts directly to expose Jenrick with a supposed gotcha, asking whether immigrants have contributed to English history.
Stop gaslighting the thread, @bondegezou, it’s quite obvious how the interviewer feels about English identity.
Surely there are two versions of English identity. One is those of us who descend from Britons, Anglo-Saxons, Vikings, Normans. People who stopped coming here 1000 years ago. (Although in my case there is also some Huguenot). Yes we are white. There is an English ethnicity.
And then there are English people like TSE whose family came here much more recently. They are equally English but it's more of a "civic" Englishness. Plenty of English people don't share an English ethnic origin but can still be English.
Speaking as a non-English person (though of about 50% English descent), I like think about an everyday Englishness which encompasses a real variety of experience that is perhaps mostly unified by a sense of character or temperament - and a “deep” Englishness, which I find is best summoned by staring at the faded flag of some county regiment in a remote parish church.
A third Englishness - the kind of gaudy celebration of the football team - or the kind referenced in that recent toe-curling article in the Guardian - I prefer not to engage with at all.
Comments
https://thehill.com/homenews/house/4891309-trump-shutdown-voting-government-funding-house-republicans/
… House Republicans are overwhelmingly dismissing former President Trump’s calls for a government shutdown in the absence of a proof-of-citizenship voting bill being signed into law, a public break from the GOP presidential nominee in the lead-up to the November election.
A group of Republicans this week rejected a bill that combined a six-month continuing resolution (CR) with the Trump-backed voting bill, tanking the legislation in a move that thwarted Speaker Mike Johnson’s (R-La.) funding strategy.
Now, as the Speaker prepares to defy Trump’s wishes and stage a vote on a “clean” three-month stopgap, rank-and-file Republicans are expected to back it — balking at the former president’s request. Republicans almost universally support the voting bill, but they say pushing the issue so intensely that it results in a shutdown would backfire on the party.
“Everybody wants to go home and campaign, and there are some, particularly that want to go home and campaign, because they’re in really tough races,” Rep. Gary Palmer (R-Ala.) said…
.. Trump for weeks has urged House Republicans to pair government funding with a conservative voting bill. Johnson fulfilled that request with his opening salvo in the government funding talks.
The former president, however, amped up his request last week, urging Republicans to shut down the government if they did not secure “absolute assurances on Election Security.” And he reiterated that position Wednesday, hours before the House rejected the six-month stopgap-plus-SAVE Act.
“If Republicans don’t get the SAVE Act, and every ounce of it, they should not agree to a Continuing Resolution in any way, shape, or form,” Trump posted on Truth Social, adding: “BE SMART, REPUBLICANS, YOU’VE BEEN PUSHED AROUND LONG ENOUGH BY THE DEMOCRATS. DON’T LET IT HAPPEN AGAIN. Remember, this is Biden/Harris’ fault, not yours…
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/ce3w2qkx1xlo
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2024/sep/21/we-have-done-more-in-11-weeks-than-the-tories-did-in-11-years-keir-starmer-defends-his-record
This is such a golden period for British Boxing....I remember the days of Hagler, Hearns Duran and Leonard....But we have Fury, AJ, Dubois and others like Dillan Whyte....
What a fight tonight. AJ has nowhere to go, but Dubois was as sharp as a razor and as strong as an Ox...
Hamas
Hezbollah
Iran
> Note that most US HOUSE REPUBLICANS voted FOR linking the Continuing Resolution with Proof-of-Citizenship voting this past week.
> Demonstrating HOUSE GOPer support for the linkage, thus boosting them with base GOPers and others who agree with PoC policy. While THIS week, they get to be quasi-responsible statespeople and NOT threaten federal spending in general and in their particular districts in particular.
> Further note that TRUMP gets to fulminate as per usual, yet again showing both his ideological (im)purity AND anti-estabishmentarianism, which also helps him persuade AND mobilize (as in voter turnout) swing and/or infrequent voters
> As for DEMOCRATS in general, we get satisfacation of frustrate DJT's knavish tricks and Speaker-Preacher Mike Johnson's alleged legislative agenda; or
> In the case of the THREE DEMOCRATS who voted FOR the CR+PoC last week, they are all in VERY close races, and were clearly given a pass by Hakim Jeffries to go against the Democratic flow, on the grounds that this will help them with their voters in October/November. They are Don Davis (NC CD1), Jared Golden (Maine CD2) and Marie Gluesenkamp Perez (WA CD3).
Reckon one should exercise caution to ensure NOT dropping ones soap in the showers.
'Taking out' Iran is certainly not a realistic description.
"It is my job to sort out No 10 leaks, says Starmer"
No, Starmer. You may think your problem is the leaks. We - the great British public - thank the leakers. The information leaked is only damaging to you because you - and too many of your colleagues - have acted, at best, stupidly.
Here's a better thing to say:
"It's my job to ensure all Labour ministers and MP act with more propriety. I'm sorry that we have not, so far."
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c20j3z5xnn0o
https://bsky.app/profile/liamthorp.bsky.social/post/3l4oxxbjwgt2j
(When I like a government it's a sure sign that the voters will kill it and bury it in a hole at the first opportunity they get.)
A second term Trump, with a majority in Congress would almost certainly do so.
Which, at best, is incompetent.
Well, the TSMC Arizona factory is now up and running and making chips, and it's ahead of schedule.
https://x.com/Noahpinion/status/1837583903609262336
Mr. B (from yesterday), me, make errors in history? How very dare you!
F1: time to sleepily peruse the markets. Most surprised by the respective Ferrari/Verstappen positions.
At the launch site...
https://x.com/MeNMyRC1/status/1837611953734537377
So unless it also doubles as a nuclear facility (which is possible, of course) the likeliest explanation is that poor safety features caused a gas build up which then ignited.
https://enormo-haddock.blogspot.com/2024/09/singapore-pre-race-2024.html
Taking a week… I’m disinclined to believe them at this point
*WE* want to know this information. It's important. Starmer has basically said its better to keep things a secret than tell people.
I thought he was a human rights lawyer?
If you try and just meander along with the existing process of plan allocations, and then 'streamlining/reforming' the system, then it will just continue to stagnate.
Not the Telegraph.
It's interesting, and I'm firmly on team Brit: Kat Matthew, India Lee, Fen Langridge. And especially Ruth Astle.
But the broadcasting... There's a women's race on, and the ticker at the bottom of the screen keeps on showing the men's standings in the championship, or even the men's transition times from a different race.
Oh, and congrats to Jo O'Regan, who came 12th overall at yesterday's Ironman Italy, who came 12th overall and won her age group by over half an hour. A lovely, friendly lady.
(*) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1HiN6GoCfGI
The easy response was like most father's, I love taking my kids to the football, but becoming PM has made this more challenging. I hope to continue to be able to take them from time to time. However, following security advice, it isn't possible to sit in my usual seats, thus Arsenal have made seats in a box available, which I will pay the difference for. Story done and dusted.
I don't buy the I am in more danger than Sunak, because Israel / Gaza. The Sunak government position was even more pro-Israel and it was much more raw and much bigger demos every week with plenty of extremists emboldened to show their true colours.
Instead there he was again last weekend on a freebie to the Spurs in the company of lobbyists for the European Super League.
Now I find its a gay man dressing the PM like a toy.
Sir Ken Starmer.
What was the thing Bad Al used to say about stories...they could and should have killed this within a couple of days. They all know what freebies they accepted and what they claimed there were for and its not a lot of leg work for journos to look them up.
Civil servants are better at documents than they are at bricklaying. Buildings are built by construction workers which can only be magically brought rapidly into being by migration, which is being decresed not increased.
Planning permission is no use unless someone thinks a profit can be made from the construction.
https://x.com/kateferguson4/status/1837597975574708260?s=61&t=LYVEHh2mqFy1oUJAdCfe-Q
Presumably he was cheering on their opponents.
NEW THREAD
They already have a delivery framework, where a government agency masterplans the sites in partnership with the private sector and they then get sold off to developers. Re 'delivery', it is a case of building the houses where there is high demand, and grant funding others in a considered way. I just don't think this needs to be all that difficult.
Jenrick, notably, at one point seeks to suggest that the journalist has an antipathy to the idea of English identity. You and Gardenwalker appear to be swallowing Jenrick’s rhetoric. But nothing the journalist says backs this up. Point me to a specific time point where you think the journalist “hostilely suggests there’s no such thing as English identity, or that the very idea of it is somehow racist”.
In planning the usual position is no change, or an overegged tweak which does little more than add yet more bloody paperwork.
Why?
Because there is a subtext here from the interviewer that English identity either doesn’t exist, or if it does, is some kind of code for whiteness. About half way through the interviewer attempts directly to expose Jenrick with a supposed gotcha, asking whether immigrants have contributed to English history.
Stop gaslighting the thread, @bondegezou, it’s quite obvious how the interviewer feels about English identity.
'Shagpad-gate' on the other hand I find far more serious, because it involves the donor knowing absolutely intimate details of Ministers' lives. How regularly did they stay? Did they stay with anyone else consistently? These are 'stories', and if there were any stories, they would mean the noble Lord has Starmer's balls in a bag.
The bit that had a number of us in stitches was that the French lady he was arguing with was an professional Art & Culture historian who taught in university, along with working at the Wallace, the British Museum and several
others, in her career.
We all kept quiet and let the demolition proceed.
Once you get inside people’s friendship groups….
So this changes absolutely nothing in prcatice whilst sounding like they are doing something.
Other bits are better - high density is good if it means building 4 and 5 stories rather than 2. Copy the Europeans or the way we used to build pre 20th century.
And then there are English people like TSE whose family came here much more recently. They are equally English but it's more of a "civic" Englishness. Plenty of English people don't share an English ethnic origin but can still be English.
In paritcular the type of exceptionalism that sees England as exceptionally bad, or pretty bog standard national tropes and trends, seen in a lot of places, as being very unusual and an example of England thinking itself to be exceptional.
Or more pithily, that there is nothing very exceptional about exceptionalism.
(I suppose if you are fortunate your parents paid the cost by paying the schools fees at Eton or wherever, so you are in the friend group early on).
A third Englishness - the kind of gaudy celebration of the football team - or the kind referenced in that recent toe-curling article in the Guardian - I prefer not to engage with at all.