I think IDS and Cleverly have got away with this one. BBC reporting "Conservatives" are wholly opposed to his return. Jenrick gets a specific name check. Starmer as the incumbent takes 100% of the responsibility for this.
'The incoming Archbishop of Canterbury has been urged to scrap plans to spend £100m over the Church of England's historical links to slavery.
In a letter seen by the Sunday Times, external, a group of Conservative MPs and peers has urged Dame Sarah Mullally to stop the Church from spending the money.
They claim the funds can only legally be spent on churches and the payment of clergy wages.
In a statement to the paper, the Church Commissioners said that arrangements for the fund were being "developed transparently - in line with charity law".
Mullally, who currently serves as the Bishop of London, will take up her new role as the first-ever female Archbishop of Canterbury next month.
The Church of England's slavery links proposal was announced in January 2023, external following the publication of a report into the Church's historical links to transatlantic slavery.
The report, external, requested by the Church's financing arm - the Church Commissioners - found that a fund established by Queen Anne in 1704 to help poor Anglican clergy was used to finance "great evil".
According to the report, the fund, known as Queen Anne's Bounty, invested in African chattel enslavement and took donations derived from it.
After the report's publication, the then-Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, said he was "deeply sorry" for the links and said action would be taken to address the Church's "shameful past".
The Church Commissioners announced a new £100m fund, committed over a nine-year period, to be spent on "a programme of investment, research and engagement" in communities damaged by the enslavement of African people during the transatlantic slave trade.
However, in their letter to Mullally, MPs and peers have urged the Church to focus on "strengthening parishes" rather than on pursuing what they describe as "high-profile and legally dubious vanity projects".' https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cx2e7w03067o
There are a couple of things going on here. I'm not at all sure there is a viable legal case - there will be various precedents in a period since 1704, but I doubt they will try it.
There's obviously populist right politics, with a seach for attention - this is people like Lam, Philp and Lord Biggar (Regent College Vancouver, and Latimer House, Cambridge, amongst others).
But politically it will be interesting, and for pressure they will leverage Parliamentary on normally non-contentious Church of England legislation in the Ecclesiastical Committee, and gum up the works.
That was a game Danny Kruger was playing last autumn.
Indeed, this is populism.
While sympathetic though to the MPs and peers pushing more funds for Parishes, if any income from the 1704 bounty can be directly linked to investments in slave trading companies I can see why the C of E commissioners are doing what they are proposing. That income, only that income mind, should be used to fund projects in Africa and the Caribbean and maybe support churches with large Black British congregations England.
I know a few aristocratic families maybe even the King are also looking at their assets to see if they can make reparations for any income from slavery. Older companies like Barclays and Greene King and Lloyds of London and RBS (now Natwest) are also potentially affected. Greene King is looking into reparations and Lloyds of London invests in BAME projects as a result, as did RBS. Oxbridge colleges and some of the oldest public schools too could be implicated, some colleges increasing scholarships for black students from the Caribbean and Africa https://www.theguardian.com/business/2020/jun/18/barclays-hsbc-and-lloyds-among-uk-banks-that-had-links-to-slavery
IMHO, if money is being used for good purposes, 2-300 years down the line, it has lost its taint. More than a few people who have created fortunes did so by unethical means.
I'm intrigued. Who do you have in mind that made their fortunes by ethical means?
'The incoming Archbishop of Canterbury has been urged to scrap plans to spend £100m over the Church of England's historical links to slavery.
In a letter seen by the Sunday Times, external, a group of Conservative MPs and peers has urged Dame Sarah Mullally to stop the Church from spending the money.
They claim the funds can only legally be spent on churches and the payment of clergy wages.
In a statement to the paper, the Church Commissioners said that arrangements for the fund were being "developed transparently - in line with charity law".
Mullally, who currently serves as the Bishop of London, will take up her new role as the first-ever female Archbishop of Canterbury next month.
The Church of England's slavery links proposal was announced in January 2023, external following the publication of a report into the Church's historical links to transatlantic slavery.
The report, external, requested by the Church's financing arm - the Church Commissioners - found that a fund established by Queen Anne in 1704 to help poor Anglican clergy was used to finance "great evil".
According to the report, the fund, known as Queen Anne's Bounty, invested in African chattel enslavement and took donations derived from it.
After the report's publication, the then-Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, said he was "deeply sorry" for the links and said action would be taken to address the Church's "shameful past".
The Church Commissioners announced a new £100m fund, committed over a nine-year period, to be spent on "a programme of investment, research and engagement" in communities damaged by the enslavement of African people during the transatlantic slave trade.
However, in their letter to Mullally, MPs and peers have urged the Church to focus on "strengthening parishes" rather than on pursuing what they describe as "high-profile and legally dubious vanity projects".' https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cx2e7w03067o
There are a couple of things going on here. I'm not at all sure there is a viable legal case - there will be various precedents in a period since 1704, but I doubt they will try it.
There's obviously populist right politics, with a seach for attention - this is people like Lam, Philp and Lord Biggar (Regent College Vancouver, and Latimer House, Cambridge, amongst others).
But politically it will be interesting, and for pressure they will leverage Parliamentary on normally non-contentious Church of England legislation in the Ecclesiastical Committee, and gum up the works.
That was a game Danny Kruger was playing last autumn.
Indeed, this is populism.
While sympathetic though to the MPs and peers pushing more funds for Parishes, if any income from the 1704 bounty can be directly linked to investments in slave trading companies I can see why the C of E commissioners are doing what they are proposing. That income, only that income mind, should be used to fund projects in Africa and the Caribbean and maybe support churches with large Black British congregations England.
I know a few aristocratic families maybe even the King are also looking at their assets to see if they can make reparations for any income from slavery. Older companies like Barclays and Greene King and Lloyds of London and RBS (now Natwest) are also potentially affected. Greene King is looking into reparations and Lloyds of London invests in BAME projects as a result, as did RBS. Oxbridge colleges and some of the oldest public schools too could be implicated, some colleges increasing scholarships for black students from the Caribbean and Africa https://www.theguardian.com/business/2020/jun/18/barclays-hsbc-and-lloyds-among-uk-banks-that-had-links-to-slavery
IMHO, if money is being used for good purposes, 2-300 years down the line, it has lost its taint. More than a few people who have created fortunes did so by unethical means.
I'm intrigued. Who do you have in mind that made their fortunes by ethical means?
The truth is all the traditional "centre right" have left is the fact Trump annoys "the lefties" so much so they can troll away on that to their heart's content rather than asking themselves why the opposition to the "centre left" is now coming from the populists like Farage and Trump rather than from traditional conservatives like Badenoch.
I don't think it's controversial to say that the population in most democracies has turned away from centrist politicians, for understandable reasons, and that right-wing populists have been more successful at winning the support of discontented voters than left-wing populists.
Can't blame Righties for consoling themselves with that. I'm sure I'd feel the same if the roles were reversed.
Not in Canada or Australia earlier this year where the centre left won, nor in the French legislative elections where the far left won most seats.
Only in Argentina and Italy and Israel beyond the US have the rightwing populists clearly won in terms of the developed world
The guy in Argentina is an improvement on the Peronists they usually have.
Milei is also more a small state economic libertarian than a white nationalist and protectionist, closer to Osborne economically than a Farage or Trump style culture warrior
I think IDS and Cleverly have got away with this one. BBC reporting "Conservatives" are wholly opposed to his return. Jenrick gets a specific name check. Starmer as the incumbent takes 100% of the responsibility for this.
Though I doubt Labour voters will care and Tories need some Labour tactical votes in seats Reform are challenging the Tory incumbent
'The incoming Archbishop of Canterbury has been urged to scrap plans to spend £100m over the Church of England's historical links to slavery.
In a letter seen by the Sunday Times, external, a group of Conservative MPs and peers has urged Dame Sarah Mullally to stop the Church from spending the money.
They claim the funds can only legally be spent on churches and the payment of clergy wages.
In a statement to the paper, the Church Commissioners said that arrangements for the fund were being "developed transparently - in line with charity law".
Mullally, who currently serves as the Bishop of London, will take up her new role as the first-ever female Archbishop of Canterbury next month.
The Church of England's slavery links proposal was announced in January 2023, external following the publication of a report into the Church's historical links to transatlantic slavery.
The report, external, requested by the Church's financing arm - the Church Commissioners - found that a fund established by Queen Anne in 1704 to help poor Anglican clergy was used to finance "great evil".
According to the report, the fund, known as Queen Anne's Bounty, invested in African chattel enslavement and took donations derived from it.
After the report's publication, the then-Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, said he was "deeply sorry" for the links and said action would be taken to address the Church's "shameful past".
The Church Commissioners announced a new £100m fund, committed over a nine-year period, to be spent on "a programme of investment, research and engagement" in communities damaged by the enslavement of African people during the transatlantic slave trade.
However, in their letter to Mullally, MPs and peers have urged the Church to focus on "strengthening parishes" rather than on pursuing what they describe as "high-profile and legally dubious vanity projects".' https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cx2e7w03067o
There are a couple of things going on here. I'm not at all sure there is a viable legal case - there will be various precedents in a period since 1704, but I doubt they will try it.
There's obviously populist right politics, with a seach for attention - this is people like Lam, Philp and Lord Biggar (Regent College Vancouver, and Latimer House, Cambridge, amongst others).
But politically it will be interesting, and for pressure they will leverage Parliamentary on normally non-contentious Church of England legislation in the Ecclesiastical Committee, and gum up the works.
That was a game Danny Kruger was playing last autumn.
Indeed, this is populism.
While sympathetic though to the MPs and peers pushing more funds for Parishes, if any income from the 1704 bounty can be directly linked to investments in slave trading companies I can see why the C of E commissioners are doing what they are proposing. That income, only that income mind, should be used to fund projects in Africa and the Caribbean and maybe support churches with large Black British congregations England.
I know a few aristocratic families maybe even the King are also looking at their assets to see if they can make reparations for any income from slavery. Older companies like Barclays and Greene King and Lloyds of London and RBS (now Natwest) are also potentially affected. Greene King is looking into reparations and Lloyds of London invests in BAME projects as a result, as did RBS. Oxbridge colleges and some of the oldest public schools too could be implicated, some colleges increasing scholarships for black students from the Caribbean and Africa https://www.theguardian.com/business/2020/jun/18/barclays-hsbc-and-lloyds-among-uk-banks-that-had-links-to-slavery
As I understand the mechanism, it is a UK based fund to support "development" type activities as you describe, which to my eye is a robust model. I think I see similarities to the Church Urban Fund from 1984-5, which was set up top raise £18m to be burnt through over 2 or 3 decades to fund £40m of projects, but in fact has turned into a permanent institution which is a repository of expertise for hundreds of projects, and provides some funding.
I think it was also an important model for how to do it for other institutions.
I'm generally impressed with how the Church Commissioners have operated since I have taken an interest (which is 1980s; I sill have my copy of Faith in the City), and they have been excellent investment managers. I'd be up for a debate about their support for the mission of the church another time - but not today .
I think IDS and Cleverly have got away with this one. BBC reporting "Conservatives" are wholly opposed to his return. Jenrick gets a specific name check. Starmer as the incumbent takes 100% of the responsibility for this.
Though I doubt Labour voters will care and Tories need some Labour tactical votes in seats Reform are challenging the Tory incumbent
I don't see Labour voters who want to avoid a right wing Reform Government will be minded to vote for candidates representing a right wing Conservative Party.
I think IDS and Cleverly have got away with this one. BBC reporting "Conservatives" are wholly opposed to his return. Jenrick gets a specific name check. Starmer as the incumbent takes 100% of the responsibility for this.
Though I doubt Labour voters will care and Tories need some Labour tactical votes in seats Reform are challenging the Tory incumbent
I don't see Labour voters who want to avoid a right wing Reform Government will be minded to vote for candidates representing a right wing Conservative Party.
'The incoming Archbishop of Canterbury has been urged to scrap plans to spend £100m over the Church of England's historical links to slavery.
In a letter seen by the Sunday Times, external, a group of Conservative MPs and peers has urged Dame Sarah Mullally to stop the Church from spending the money.
They claim the funds can only legally be spent on churches and the payment of clergy wages.
In a statement to the paper, the Church Commissioners said that arrangements for the fund were being "developed transparently - in line with charity law".
Mullally, who currently serves as the Bishop of London, will take up her new role as the first-ever female Archbishop of Canterbury next month.
The Church of England's slavery links proposal was announced in January 2023, external following the publication of a report into the Church's historical links to transatlantic slavery.
The report, external, requested by the Church's financing arm - the Church Commissioners - found that a fund established by Queen Anne in 1704 to help poor Anglican clergy was used to finance "great evil".
According to the report, the fund, known as Queen Anne's Bounty, invested in African chattel enslavement and took donations derived from it.
After the report's publication, the then-Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, said he was "deeply sorry" for the links and said action would be taken to address the Church's "shameful past".
The Church Commissioners announced a new £100m fund, committed over a nine-year period, to be spent on "a programme of investment, research and engagement" in communities damaged by the enslavement of African people during the transatlantic slave trade.
However, in their letter to Mullally, MPs and peers have urged the Church to focus on "strengthening parishes" rather than on pursuing what they describe as "high-profile and legally dubious vanity projects".' https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cx2e7w03067o
There are a couple of things going on here. I'm not at all sure there is a viable legal case - there will be various precedents in a period since 1704, but I doubt they will try it.
There's obviously populist right politics, with a seach for attention - this is people like Lam, Philp and Lord Biggar (Regent College Vancouver, and Latimer House, Cambridge, amongst others).
But politically it will be interesting, and for pressure they will leverage Parliamentary on normally non-contentious Church of England legislation in the Ecclesiastical Committee, and gum up the works.
That was a game Danny Kruger was playing last autumn.
Indeed, this is populism.
While sympathetic though to the MPs and peers pushing more funds for Parishes, if any income from the 1704 bounty can be directly linked to investments in slave trading companies I can see why the C of E commissioners are doing what they are proposing. That income, only that income mind, should be used to fund projects in Africa and the Caribbean and maybe support churches with large Black British congregations England.
I know a few aristocratic families maybe even the King are also looking at their assets to see if they can make reparations for any income from slavery. Older companies like Barclays and Greene King and Lloyds of London and RBS (now Natwest) are also potentially affected. Greene King is looking into reparations and Lloyds of London invests in BAME projects as a result, as did RBS. Oxbridge colleges and some of the oldest public schools too could be implicated, some colleges increasing scholarships for black students from the Caribbean and Africa https://www.theguardian.com/business/2020/jun/18/barclays-hsbc-and-lloyds-among-uk-banks-that-had-links-to-slavery
It is self-evident there was substantial fraud as we would call it now with the acquisition of properties with funds from Queen Anne's Bounty at the time. A property was bought by someone associated with the church and then miraculously it became worth 50% more when he sold it on to augment some curacy somewhere. This seems to have been standard practice in the dozens of examples I have seen. BUT the Bounty had to buy property for endowment within England as far as I know - they had to be within a half day riding distance from the benefice which they augmented. That rules out all normal purchases outside England. I think they might have made some extra-ordinary purchases in Ireland but know of no examples in the West Indies or New England.
There were I think 50 or 60 holdings bought by Queen Anne's Bounty in Ewecross wapentake of the West Riding alone. In part this was because they were generally smaller and so more of a size to augment a single benefice. But, many were split into two or even more complex divisions. This led to crazy situations where farmhouses were divided into two or a barn was re-designated as a house but with no sturctural change.
In the generality to have any chance of augmentation from the bounty you needed a private matching gift so even the premise of the assertion made by the current CofE is wrong. Financing of the CofE inevitably took a tumble with the Tithe Commutation Act of 1836 - truly it was feeding the fat church cat with slices of its own tail. After that it was only a mattr of time that the church would seize all the bounty lands from the Curacies to which they had been given. It was only after that that financial misconduct could and did occur and all that including tithe commutation that was post-slavery.
The real scandal of Queen Anne's Bounty was that it bought lands at the height of property values, allowed the central church to seize them and then sell them off in the 1920s and 1930s when they were worthless. That is the mad economics of Gordon Brown two generations before his time. The present CofE should be looking to recovering those moneys from the heirs of the Church Commissioners involved, because in the real world the disposal of the lands was just as fraudulent as their acquisition.
The truth is all the traditional "centre right" have left is the fact Trump annoys "the lefties" so much so they can troll away on that to their heart's content rather than asking themselves why the opposition to the "centre left" is now coming from the populists like Farage and Trump rather than from traditional conservatives like Badenoch.
I don't think it's controversial to say that the population in most democracies has turned away from centrist politicians, for understandable reasons, and that right-wing populists have been more successful at winning the support of discontented voters than left-wing populists.
Can't blame Righties for consoling themselves with that. I'm sure I'd feel the same if the roles were reversed.
This is something that interests me a great deal. Why does the populism of the right have greater appeal than that of the left?
My tentative theory. Because it speaks to feelings of ethno-cultural identity and nationalism whilst not scaring people (esp rich potential backers) with anti-capitalist rhetoric.
I don't think it's anything to do with the ideas particularly. The Right have simply been better, more imaginative, while the Left have been stuck obsessing over the defeats of the 70s and 80s, and so they haven't argued their case well, or adjusted their ideas to fit the modern world.
You think anti-capitalism is as easy a sell in developed western societies as anti-immigration? I don't. I think without that identity and nationalism angle you're left with something that has quite a low ceiling of electoral support. But I could be wrong. Hope I am actually. Polanski will provide some evidence either way. He's charismatic and slick on the comms. Definitely a 'today' politician not stuck in a past era like eg Corbyn. So let's see where he polls compared to Farage at the GE.
A more imaginative left would have more to say about the future they want to create, rather than what they oppose in the status quo.
For example, the Right aren't simply anti-immigration. They are also selling an idealised vision of the past that has been lost and can be regained.
So in very simple terms I would say that the battle between the populist right and left would be between nostalgia and utopia - but the utopia is largely missing from the left's offer at the moment.
Yes, nice way of expressing it. And to tie back to my thesis, it takes an enormous amount of effort, skill, imagination and intellect to conceptualise and present a viable anti-capitalist model as the basis for economic life. That's why powerful critiques of capitalism are ten a penny but successful alternatives are hens teeth. It's a very high bar (once you've exhausted the rhetorical appeal of 'tax the rich'). The 'nostalgia' offer (with notes of xenophobia and parochialism) is much easier to formulate and get across. Make XYZ great again. Our country. Us v them. Borders. The flag. Our people. Charity begins at Home etc etc. It's not hard to promote all that stuff when there's dissatisfaction with the status quo.
The truth is all the traditional "centre right" have left is the fact Trump annoys "the lefties" so much so they can troll away on that to their heart's content rather than asking themselves why the opposition to the "centre left" is now coming from the populists like Farage and Trump rather than from traditional conservatives like Badenoch.
I don't think it's controversial to say that the population in most democracies has turned away from centrist politicians, for understandable reasons, and that right-wing populists have been more successful at winning the support of discontented voters than left-wing populists.
Can't blame Righties for consoling themselves with that. I'm sure I'd feel the same if the roles were reversed.
Not in Canada or Australia earlier this year where the centre left won, nor in the French legislative elections where the far left won most seats.
Only in Argentina and Italy and Israel beyond the US have the rightwing populists clearly won in terms of the developed world
The guy in Argentina is an improvement on the Peronists they usually have.
He is basically implementing the IMF playbook on the economy.
The Peronists were (and are) the Right Populists.
Milei is about the reaction to the mess that they (and chunks of the Left) created.
I think IDS and Cleverly have got away with this one. BBC reporting "Conservatives" are wholly opposed to his return. Jenrick gets a specific name check. Starmer as the incumbent takes 100% of the responsibility for this.
Though I doubt Labour voters will care and Tories need some Labour tactical votes in seats Reform are challenging the Tory incumbent
I don't see Labour voters who want to avoid a right wing Reform Government will be minded to vote for candidates representing a right wing Conservative Party.
I think IDS and Cleverly have got away with this one. BBC reporting "Conservatives" are wholly opposed to his return. Jenrick gets a specific name check. Starmer as the incumbent takes 100% of the responsibility for this.
Though I doubt Labour voters will care and Tories need some Labour tactical votes in seats Reform are challenging the Tory incumbent
I don't see Labour voters who want to avoid a right wing Reform Government will be minded to vote for candidates representing a right wing Conservative Party.
Polls are notoriously bad at predicting what people are likely to do in the future. Polling suggested that if Donald Trump were convicted of a felony, many Republicans would refuse to vote for him. As it turned out, they did so overwhelmingly.
I think it unlikely that in practice, many left wing voters would cross over, to support the Conservatives.
'The incoming Archbishop of Canterbury has been urged to scrap plans to spend £100m over the Church of England's historical links to slavery.
In a letter seen by the Sunday Times, external, a group of Conservative MPs and peers has urged Dame Sarah Mullally to stop the Church from spending the money.
They claim the funds can only legally be spent on churches and the payment of clergy wages.
In a statement to the paper, the Church Commissioners said that arrangements for the fund were being "developed transparently - in line with charity law".
Mullally, who currently serves as the Bishop of London, will take up her new role as the first-ever female Archbishop of Canterbury next month.
The Church of England's slavery links proposal was announced in January 2023, external following the publication of a report into the Church's historical links to transatlantic slavery.
The report, external, requested by the Church's financing arm - the Church Commissioners - found that a fund established by Queen Anne in 1704 to help poor Anglican clergy was used to finance "great evil".
According to the report, the fund, known as Queen Anne's Bounty, invested in African chattel enslavement and took donations derived from it.
After the report's publication, the then-Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, said he was "deeply sorry" for the links and said action would be taken to address the Church's "shameful past".
The Church Commissioners announced a new £100m fund, committed over a nine-year period, to be spent on "a programme of investment, research and engagement" in communities damaged by the enslavement of African people during the transatlantic slave trade.
However, in their letter to Mullally, MPs and peers have urged the Church to focus on "strengthening parishes" rather than on pursuing what they describe as "high-profile and legally dubious vanity projects".' https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cx2e7w03067o
There are a couple of things going on here. I'm not at all sure there is a viable legal case - there will be various precedents in a period since 1704, but I doubt they will try it.
There's obviously populist right politics, with a seach for attention - this is people like Lam, Philp and Lord Biggar (Regent College Vancouver, and Latimer House, Cambridge, amongst others).
But politically it will be interesting, and for pressure they will leverage Parliamentary on normally non-contentious Church of England legislation in the Ecclesiastical Committee, and gum up the works.
That was a game Danny Kruger was playing last autumn.
Indeed, this is populism.
While sympathetic though to the MPs and peers pushing more funds for Parishes, if any income from the 1704 bounty can be directly linked to investments in slave trading companies I can see why the C of E commissioners are doing what they are proposing. That income, only that income mind, should be used to fund projects in Africa and the Caribbean and maybe support churches with large Black British congregations England.
I know a few aristocratic families maybe even the King are also looking at their assets to see if they can make reparations for any income from slavery. Older companies like Barclays and Greene King and Lloyds of London and RBS (now Natwest) are also potentially affected. Greene King is looking into reparations and Lloyds of London invests in BAME projects as a result, as did RBS. Oxbridge colleges and some of the oldest public schools too could be implicated, some colleges increasing scholarships for black students from the Caribbean and Africa https://www.theguardian.com/business/2020/jun/18/barclays-hsbc-and-lloyds-among-uk-banks-that-had-links-to-slavery
It is self-evident there was substantial fraud as we would call it now with the acquisition of properties with funds from Queen Anne's Bounty at the time. A property was bought by someone associated with the church and then miraculously it became worth 50% more when he sold it on to augment some curacy somewhere. This seems to have been standard practice in the dozens of examples I have seen. BUT the Bounty had to buy property for endowment within England as far as I know - they had to be within a half day riding distance from the benefice which they augmented. That rules out all normal purchases outside England. I think they might have made some extra-ordinary purchases in Ireland but know of no examples in the West Indies or New England.
There were I think 50 or 60 holdings bought by Queen Anne's Bounty in Ewecross wapentake of the West Riding alone. In part this was because they were generally smaller and so more of a size to augment a single benefice. But, many were split into two or even more complex divisions. This led to crazy situations where farmhouses were divided into two or a barn was re-designated as a house but with no sturctural change.
In the generality to have any chance of augmentation from the bounty you needed a private matching gift so even the premise of the assertion made by the current CofE is wrong. Financing of the CofE inevitably took a tumble with the Tithe Commutation Act of 1836 - truly it was feeding the fat church cat with slices of its own tail. After that it was only a mattr of time that the church would seize all the bounty lands from the Curacies to which they had been given. It was only after that that financial misconduct could and did occur and all that including tithe commutation that was post-slavery.
The real scandal of Queen Anne's Bounty was that it bought lands at the height of property values, allowed the central church to seize them and then sell them off in the 1920s and 1930s when they were worthless. That is the mad economics of Gordon Brown two generations before his time. The present CofE should be looking to recovering those moneys from the heirs of the Church Commissioners involved, because in the real world the disposal of the lands was just as fraudulent as their acquisition.
But, none of that had anything to do with slaves.
I agree with much of that.
Plenty of old Georgian rectories were also sold off too in the last century and now appear on the pages of Country Life or in Savills brochures and are owned by bankers, corporate lawyers, business executives etc.
Saying the C of E gained no income from investments in the slave trade in the 17th and 18th centuries though is unlikely even if the extent they did can be overstated
The truth is all the traditional "centre right" have left is the fact Trump annoys "the lefties" so much so they can troll away on that to their heart's content rather than asking themselves why the opposition to the "centre left" is now coming from the populists like Farage and Trump rather than from traditional conservatives like Badenoch.
I don't think it's controversial to say that the population in most democracies has turned away from centrist politicians, for understandable reasons, and that right-wing populists have been more successful at winning the support of discontented voters than left-wing populists.
Can't blame Righties for consoling themselves with that. I'm sure I'd feel the same if the roles were reversed.
This is something that interests me a great deal. Why does the populism of the right have greater appeal than that of the left?
My tentative theory. Because it speaks to feelings of ethno-cultural identity and nationalism whilst not scaring people (esp rich potential backers) with anti-capitalist rhetoric.
I don't think it's anything to do with the ideas particularly. The Right have simply been better, more imaginative, while the Left have been stuck obsessing over the defeats of the 70s and 80s, and so they haven't argued their case well, or adjusted their ideas to fit the modern world.
You think anti-capitalism is as easy a sell in developed western societies as anti-immigration? I don't. I think without that identity and nationalism angle you're left with something that has quite a low ceiling of electoral support. But I could be wrong. Hope I am actually. Polanski will provide some evidence either way. He's charismatic and slick on the comms. Definitely a 'today' politician not stuck in a past era like eg Corbyn. So let's see where he polls compared to Farage at the GE.
A more imaginative left would have more to say about the future they want to create, rather than what they oppose in the status quo.
For example, the Right aren't simply anti-immigration. They are also selling an idealised vision of the past that has been lost and can be regained.
So in very simple terms I would say that the battle between the populist right and left would be between nostalgia and utopia - but the utopia is largely missing from the left's offer at the moment.
Yes, nice way of expressing it. And to tie back to my thesis, it takes an enormous amount of effort, skill, imagination and intellect to conceptualise and present a viable anti-capitalist model as the basis for economic life. That's why powerful critiques of capitalism are ten a penny but successful alternatives are hens teeth. It's a very high bar (once you've exhausted the rhetorical appeal of 'tax the rich'). The 'nostalgia' offer (with notes of xenophobia and parochialism) is much easier to formulate and get across. Make XYZ great again. Our country. Us v them. Borders. The flag. Our people. Charity begins at Home etc etc. It's not hard to promote all that stuff when there's dissatisfaction with the status quo.
Too many people do sufficiently well out of capitalism, tempered by social democracy, to make anti-capitalism electorally viable.
I think IDS and Cleverly have got away with this one. BBC reporting "Conservatives" are wholly opposed to his return. Jenrick gets a specific name check. Starmer as the incumbent takes 100% of the responsibility for this.
Though I doubt Labour voters will care and Tories need some Labour tactical votes in seats Reform are challenging the Tory incumbent
I don't see Labour voters who want to avoid a right wing Reform Government will be minded to vote for candidates representing a right wing Conservative Party.
I think IDS and Cleverly have got away with this one. BBC reporting "Conservatives" are wholly opposed to his return. Jenrick gets a specific name check. Starmer as the incumbent takes 100% of the responsibility for this.
Though I doubt Labour voters will care and Tories need some Labour tactical votes in seats Reform are challenging the Tory incumbent
I don't see Labour voters who want to avoid a right wing Reform Government will be minded to vote for candidates representing a right wing Conservative Party.
Polls are notoriously bad at predicting what people are likely to do in the future. Polling suggested that if Donald Trump were convicted of a felony, many Republicans would refuse to vote for him. As it turned out, they did so overwhelmingly.
I think it unlikely that in practice, many left wing voters would cross over, to support the Conservatives.
Most Trump voters in the end voted for Trump, no surprise there. Trump of course ended up with no jail time anyway, it was arguably a misdemeanour he was convicted of therefore, not a felony.
Most Labour or LD voters still would not vote Tory. In a Labour or LD held seat they would of course vote Labour or LD not Tory.
In a seat like mine though, Brentwood and Ongar, where the Tories won with Reform second even in 2024? Plenty of Labour or LD voters may hold their nose and vote for Tory MP Alex Burghart to beat Farage and Reform, as I said even more so if Cleverly led the Tories.
The truth is all the traditional "centre right" have left is the fact Trump annoys "the lefties" so much so they can troll away on that to their heart's content rather than asking themselves why the opposition to the "centre left" is now coming from the populists like Farage and Trump rather than from traditional conservatives like Badenoch.
I don't think it's controversial to say that the population in most democracies has turned away from centrist politicians, for understandable reasons, and that right-wing populists have been more successful at winning the support of discontented voters than left-wing populists.
Can't blame Righties for consoling themselves with that. I'm sure I'd feel the same if the roles were reversed.
This is something that interests me a great deal. Why does the populism of the right have greater appeal than that of the left?
My tentative theory. Because it speaks to feelings of ethno-cultural identity and nationalism whilst not scaring people (esp rich potential backers) with anti-capitalist rhetoric.
It gives people open licence to indulge their worst instincts while left populism still pays at least lip service to idealism (even if calculating opportunist can still use it to do bad stuff). So liberating to wave banners saying ‘kill em all’, set migrant hotels on fire, fire off Hitler salutes and aspire to traffic women. Best of all you can construct a shaky edifice of virtue by saying you’re slicing away the hypocrisy of woke lefties and cutting to the chase of what being a human being is all about.
And of course becoming the most passionate opponent of misogyny and homophobia wherever it rears its head so long as the head it's rearing is a Muslim one.
The truth is all the traditional "centre right" have left is the fact Trump annoys "the lefties" so much so they can troll away on that to their heart's content rather than asking themselves why the opposition to the "centre left" is now coming from the populists like Farage and Trump rather than from traditional conservatives like Badenoch.
I don't think it's controversial to say that the population in most democracies has turned away from centrist politicians, for understandable reasons, and that right-wing populists have been more successful at winning the support of discontented voters than left-wing populists.
Can't blame Righties for consoling themselves with that. I'm sure I'd feel the same if the roles were reversed.
This is something that interests me a great deal. Why does the populism of the right have greater appeal than that of the left?
My tentative theory. Because it speaks to feelings of ethno-cultural identity and nationalism whilst not scaring people (esp rich potential backers) with anti-capitalist rhetoric.
I don't think it's anything to do with the ideas particularly. The Right have simply been better, more imaginative, while the Left have been stuck obsessing over the defeats of the 70s and 80s, and so they haven't argued their case well, or adjusted their ideas to fit the modern world.
You think anti-capitalism is as easy a sell in developed western societies as anti-immigration? I don't. I think without that identity and nationalism angle you're left with something that has quite a low ceiling of electoral support. But I could be wrong. Hope I am actually. Polanski will provide some evidence either way. He's charismatic and slick on the comms. Definitely a 'today' politician not stuck in a past era like eg Corbyn. So let's see where he polls compared to Farage at the GE.
A more imaginative left would have more to say about the future they want to create, rather than what they oppose in the status quo.
For example, the Right aren't simply anti-immigration. They are also selling an idealised vision of the past that has been lost and can be regained.
So in very simple terms I would say that the battle between the populist right and left would be between nostalgia and utopia - but the utopia is largely missing from the left's offer at the moment.
Yes, nice way of expressing it. And to tie back to my thesis, it takes an enormous amount of effort, skill, imagination and intellect to conceptualise and present a viable anti-capitalist model as the basis for economic life. That's why powerful critiques of capitalism are ten a penny but successful alternatives are hens teeth. It's a very high bar (once you've exhausted the rhetorical appeal of 'tax the rich'). The 'nostalgia' offer (with notes of xenophobia and parochialism) is much easier to formulate and get across. Make XYZ great again. Our country. Us v them. Borders. The flag. Our people. Charity begins at Home etc etc. It's not hard to promote all that stuff when there's dissatisfaction with the status quo.
Too many people do sufficiently well out of capitalism, tempered by social democracy, to make anti-capitalism electorally viable.
If you rent your property and work in the public sector or live on benefits and don't have wealthy parents though, why wouldn't you vote for socialism? Plenty of those voters in inner cities and hence socialists win there.
Americans are tired of so much winning, as Trump predicted from the start.
Americans tired of Trump winning at their literal expense, yes.
And yet 4.3% year on year gdp growth in q3…
The Americans have this weird habit of giving an annualised figure for each quarter which is both pointless and ridiculous. The US economy has not grown 4.3% in the last year. It had a surprisingly good quarter where it achieved just over 1% growth at a time when the statistics are seriously affected by both the prolonged shut down in the previous quarter and some bounce back from that.
Trump is right that the US (and the UK) have very serious and long term problems with their balance of payments which are damaging future prosperity. He is very wrong to believe that wide scale (as opposed to targeted) tariffs are any kind of a solution to this.
'The incoming Archbishop of Canterbury has been urged to scrap plans to spend £100m over the Church of England's historical links to slavery.
In a letter seen by the Sunday Times, external, a group of Conservative MPs and peers has urged Dame Sarah Mullally to stop the Church from spending the money.
They claim the funds can only legally be spent on churches and the payment of clergy wages.
In a statement to the paper, the Church Commissioners said that arrangements for the fund were being "developed transparently - in line with charity law".
Mullally, who currently serves as the Bishop of London, will take up her new role as the first-ever female Archbishop of Canterbury next month.
The Church of England's slavery links proposal was announced in January 2023, external following the publication of a report into the Church's historical links to transatlantic slavery.
The report, external, requested by the Church's financing arm - the Church Commissioners - found that a fund established by Queen Anne in 1704 to help poor Anglican clergy was used to finance "great evil".
According to the report, the fund, known as Queen Anne's Bounty, invested in African chattel enslavement and took donations derived from it.
After the report's publication, the then-Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, said he was "deeply sorry" for the links and said action would be taken to address the Church's "shameful past".
The Church Commissioners announced a new £100m fund, committed over a nine-year period, to be spent on "a programme of investment, research and engagement" in communities damaged by the enslavement of African people during the transatlantic slave trade.
However, in their letter to Mullally, MPs and peers have urged the Church to focus on "strengthening parishes" rather than on pursuing what they describe as "high-profile and legally dubious vanity projects".' https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cx2e7w03067o
There are a couple of things going on here. I'm not at all sure there is a viable legal case - there will be various precedents in a period since 1704, but I doubt they will try it.
There's obviously populist right politics, with a seach for attention - this is people like Lam, Philp and Lord Biggar (Regent College Vancouver, and Latimer House, Cambridge, amongst others).
But politically it will be interesting, and for pressure they will leverage Parliamentary on normally non-contentious Church of England legislation in the Ecclesiastical Committee, and gum up the works.
That was a game Danny Kruger was playing last autumn.
Indeed, this is populism.
While sympathetic though to the MPs and peers pushing more funds for Parishes, if any income from the 1704 bounty can be directly linked to investments in slave trading companies I can see why the C of E commissioners are doing what they are proposing. That income, only that income mind, should be used to fund projects in Africa and the Caribbean and maybe support churches with large Black British congregations England.
I know a few aristocratic families maybe even the King are also looking at their assets to see if they can make reparations for any income from slavery. Older companies like Barclays and Greene King and Lloyds of London and RBS (now Natwest) are also potentially affected. Greene King is looking into reparations and Lloyds of London invests in BAME projects as a result, as did RBS. Oxbridge colleges and some of the oldest public schools too could be implicated, some colleges increasing scholarships for black students from the Caribbean and Africa https://www.theguardian.com/business/2020/jun/18/barclays-hsbc-and-lloyds-among-uk-banks-that-had-links-to-slavery
It is self-evident there was substantial fraud as we would call it now with the acquisition of properties with funds from Queen Anne's Bounty at the time. A property was bought by someone associated with the church and then miraculously it became worth 50% more when he sold it on to augment some curacy somewhere. This seems to have been standard practice in the dozens of examples I have seen. BUT the Bounty had to buy property for endowment within England as far as I know - they had to be within a half day riding distance from the benefice which they augmented. That rules out all normal purchases outside England. I think they might have made some extra-ordinary purchases in Ireland but know of no examples in the West Indies or New England.
There were I think 50 or 60 holdings bought by Queen Anne's Bounty in Ewecross wapentake of the West Riding alone. In part this was because they were generally smaller and so more of a size to augment a single benefice. But, many were split into two or even more complex divisions. This led to crazy situations where farmhouses were divided into two or a barn was re-designated as a house but with no sturctural change.
In the generality to have any chance of augmentation from the bounty you needed a private matching gift so even the premise of the assertion made by the current CofE is wrong. Financing of the CofE inevitably took a tumble with the Tithe Commutation Act of 1836 - truly it was feeding the fat church cat with slices of its own tail. After that it was only a mattr of time that the church would seize all the bounty lands from the Curacies to which they had been given. It was only after that that financial misconduct could and did occur and all that including tithe commutation that was post-slavery.
The real scandal of Queen Anne's Bounty was that it bought lands at the height of property values, allowed the central church to seize them and then sell them off in the 1920s and 1930s when they were worthless. That is the mad economics of Gordon Brown two generations before his time. The present CofE should be looking to recovering those moneys from the heirs of the Church Commissioners involved, because in the real world the disposal of the lands was just as fraudulent as their acquisition.
But, none of that had anything to do with slaves.
I agree with much of that.
Plenty of old Georgian rectories were also sold off too in the last century and now appear on the pages of Country Life or in Savills brochures and are owned by bankers, corporate lawyers, business executives etc.
Saying the C of E gained no income from investments in the slave trade in the 17th and 18th centuries though is unlikely even if the extent they did can be overstated
What I am saying it was impossible for Queen Anne's Bounty Augmentations. It might have happened with the Queen Anne's Bounty Fund but again that is unlikely. What was done with then historic glebe lands not bought with bounty funds is a different matter. It is an example of the woolly thinking associated with the abortion which is the modern CofE to conflate the two.
I hope Trump’s poor ratings are as much to do with disgust at his corruption and imbecilic behaviour as with the economy. Firstly because that would say something good about the American people. Secondly because if it's mainly about the economy it leaves open the chance of a bounceback. There's no way he's going to get less corrupt or become less of an imbecile. That's unidirectional and only going to get worse. The US economy, however, is a beast of awesome size, strength and resilience. I can easily imagine it picking up and motoring for a period under any president including this one.
It isn't, 50% of US voters elected Trump last year regardless of his behaviour. His declining ratings are entirely due to rising cost of living as a result of his tariffs
The cringe factor seeing that semi-senile imbecile representing their country must be considerable; worse even than we had to endure with that twat Johnson in charge.
I think IDS and Cleverly have got away with this one. BBC reporting "Conservatives" are wholly opposed to his return. Jenrick gets a specific name check. Starmer as the incumbent takes 100% of the responsibility for this.
Though I doubt Labour voters will care and Tories need some Labour tactical votes in seats Reform are challenging the Tory incumbent
I don't see Labour voters who want to avoid a right wing Reform Government will be minded to vote for candidates representing a right wing Conservative Party.
Americans are tired of so much winning, as Trump predicted from the start.
Americans tired of Trump winning at their literal expense, yes.
And yet 4.3% year on year gdp growth in q3…
As I was saying.
I have no problem saying I think Trump’s government on the whole has been doing a remarkably good job. For sure there is still a lingering faux pas in saying you think so, wouldn’t be a huge surprise if the polls are off.
I, in turn, think it has been doing a terrible job (seen purely from a US viewpoint).
The USA’s long-term strategic interests are being undermined, by its own government. Tariffs are imposing higher prices, on US consumers and businesses. The rule of law is ignored by an administration, which functions as a kleptocracy.
The only word to argue about in that description is "functions". The US federal administration becomes more dysfunctional by the day.
'The incoming Archbishop of Canterbury has been urged to scrap plans to spend £100m over the Church of England's historical links to slavery.
In a letter seen by the Sunday Times, external, a group of Conservative MPs and peers has urged Dame Sarah Mullally to stop the Church from spending the money.
They claim the funds can only legally be spent on churches and the payment of clergy wages.
In a statement to the paper, the Church Commissioners said that arrangements for the fund were being "developed transparently - in line with charity law".
Mullally, who currently serves as the Bishop of London, will take up her new role as the first-ever female Archbishop of Canterbury next month.
The Church of England's slavery links proposal was announced in January 2023, external following the publication of a report into the Church's historical links to transatlantic slavery.
The report, external, requested by the Church's financing arm - the Church Commissioners - found that a fund established by Queen Anne in 1704 to help poor Anglican clergy was used to finance "great evil".
According to the report, the fund, known as Queen Anne's Bounty, invested in African chattel enslavement and took donations derived from it.
After the report's publication, the then-Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, said he was "deeply sorry" for the links and said action would be taken to address the Church's "shameful past".
The Church Commissioners announced a new £100m fund, committed over a nine-year period, to be spent on "a programme of investment, research and engagement" in communities damaged by the enslavement of African people during the transatlantic slave trade.
However, in their letter to Mullally, MPs and peers have urged the Church to focus on "strengthening parishes" rather than on pursuing what they describe as "high-profile and legally dubious vanity projects".' https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cx2e7w03067o
There are a couple of things going on here. I'm not at all sure there is a viable legal case - there will be various precedents in a period since 1704, but I doubt they will try it.
There's obviously populist right politics, with a seach for attention - this is people like Lam, Philp and Lord Biggar (Regent College Vancouver, and Latimer House, Cambridge, amongst others).
But politically it will be interesting, and for pressure they will leverage Parliamentary on normally non-contentious Church of England legislation in the Ecclesiastical Committee, and gum up the works.
That was a game Danny Kruger was playing last autumn.
Indeed, this is populism.
While sympathetic though to the MPs and peers pushing more funds for Parishes, if any income from the 1704 bounty can be directly linked to investments in slave trading companies I can see why the C of E commissioners are doing what they are proposing. That income, only that income mind, should be used to fund projects in Africa and the Caribbean and maybe support churches with large Black British congregations England.
I know a few aristocratic families maybe even the King are also looking at their assets to see if they can make reparations for any income from slavery. Older companies like Barclays and Greene King and Lloyds of London and RBS (now Natwest) are also potentially affected. Greene King is looking into reparations and Lloyds of London invests in BAME projects as a result, as did RBS. Oxbridge colleges and some of the oldest public schools too could be implicated, some colleges increasing scholarships for black students from the Caribbean and Africa https://www.theguardian.com/business/2020/jun/18/barclays-hsbc-and-lloyds-among-uk-banks-that-had-links-to-slavery
It is self-evident there was substantial fraud as we would call it now with the acquisition of properties with funds from Queen Anne's Bounty at the time. A property was bought by someone associated with the church and then miraculously it became worth 50% more when he sold it on to augment some curacy somewhere. This seems to have been standard practice in the dozens of examples I have seen. BUT the Bounty had to buy property for endowment within England as far as I know - they had to be within a half day riding distance from the benefice which they augmented. That rules out all normal purchases outside England. I think they might have made some extra-ordinary purchases in Ireland but know of no examples in the West Indies or New England.
There were I think 50 or 60 holdings bought by Queen Anne's Bounty in Ewecross wapentake of the West Riding alone. In part this was because they were generally smaller and so more of a size to augment a single benefice. But, many were split into two or even more complex divisions. This led to crazy situations where farmhouses were divided into two or a barn was re-designated as a house but with no sturctural change.
In the generality to have any chance of augmentation from the bounty you needed a private matching gift so even the premise of the assertion made by the current CofE is wrong. Financing of the CofE inevitably took a tumble with the Tithe Commutation Act of 1836 - truly it was feeding the fat church cat with slices of its own tail. After that it was only a mattr of time that the church would seize all the bounty lands from the Curacies to which they had been given. It was only after that that financial misconduct could and did occur and all that including tithe commutation that was post-slavery.
The real scandal of Queen Anne's Bounty was that it bought lands at the height of property values, allowed the central church to seize them and then sell them off in the 1920s and 1930s when they were worthless. That is the mad economics of Gordon Brown two generations before his time. The present CofE should be looking to recovering those moneys from the heirs of the Church Commissioners involved, because in the real world the disposal of the lands was just as fraudulent as their acquisition.
But, none of that had anything to do with slaves.
Thank-you. I'd have to look up that detail.
There is also that the CCs have funds from sources other than Queen Anne's Bounty.
And - one we have not noted - that there is an invitation for other bodies to lock in to the structure the CCs are proposing to provide a total £1bn endowment, beyond the £100m seed corn the CCs are proposing.
“Unfortunately the Iranian nuclear project isn’t dedicated to the extermination of the white man”.
For all the handwringing this morning about Trump, at least he instinctively knows that swathes of the west are committing societal suicide by pandering to these guys. Thanks to our woke immigration policies from Blair onwards, we have become a sewer for the human effluent that autocracies everywhere (correctly) want rid of.
“Unfortunately the Iranian nuclear project isn’t dedicated to the extermination of the white man”.
For all the handwringing this morning about Trump, at least he instinctively knows that swathes of the west are committing societal suicide by pandering to these guys. Thanks to our woke immigration policies from Blair onwards, we have become a sewer for the human effluent that autocracies everywhere (correctly) want rid of.
“Unfortunately the Iranian nuclear project isn’t dedicated to the extermination of the white man”.
For all the handwringing this morning about Trump, at least he instinctively knows that swathes of the west are committing societal suicide by pandering to these guys. Thanks to our woke immigration policies from Blair onwards, we have become a sewer for the human effluent that autocracies everywhere (correctly) want rid of.
Even at Xmas time, you can’t restrain yourself from calling refugees “human effluent”? What would Jesus do?
I hope Trump’s poor ratings are as much to do with disgust at his corruption and imbecilic behaviour as with the economy. Firstly because that would say something good about the American people. Secondly because if it's mainly about the economy it leaves open the chance of a bounceback. There's no way he's going to get less corrupt or become less of an imbecile. That's unidirectional and only going to get worse. The US economy, however, is a beast of awesome size, strength and resilience. I can easily imagine it picking up and motoring for a period under any president including this one.
It isn't, 50% of US voters elected Trump last year regardless of his behaviour. His declining ratings are entirely due to rising cost of living as a result of his tariffs
The cringe factor seeing that semi-senile imbecile representing their country must be considerable; worse even than we had to endure with that twat Johnson in charge.
You forget most Trump and Johnson voters are/were white working class, non graduates who don't want too many immigrants and are nationalist.
Not slightly snobbish, graduate, socially liberal globalists on a relatively high income like you
The truth is all the traditional "centre right" have left is the fact Trump annoys "the lefties" so much so they can troll away on that to their heart's content rather than asking themselves why the opposition to the "centre left" is now coming from the populists like Farage and Trump rather than from traditional conservatives like Badenoch.
I don't think it's controversial to say that the population in most democracies has turned away from centrist politicians, for understandable reasons, and that right-wing populists have been more successful at winning the support of discontented voters than left-wing populists.
Can't blame Righties for consoling themselves with that. I'm sure I'd feel the same if the roles were reversed.
This is something that interests me a great deal. Why does the populism of the right have greater appeal than that of the left?
My tentative theory. Because it speaks to feelings of ethno-cultural identity and nationalism whilst not scaring people (esp rich potential backers) with anti-capitalist rhetoric.
I don't think it's anything to do with the ideas particularly. The Right have simply been better, more imaginative, while the Left have been stuck obsessing over the defeats of the 70s and 80s, and so they haven't argued their case well, or adjusted their ideas to fit the modern world.
You think anti-capitalism is as easy a sell in developed western societies as anti-immigration? I don't. I think without that identity and nationalism angle you're left with something that has quite a low ceiling of electoral support. But I could be wrong. Hope I am actually. Polanski will provide some evidence either way. He's charismatic and slick on the comms. Definitely a 'today' politician not stuck in a past era like eg Corbyn. So let's see where he polls compared to Farage at the GE.
A more imaginative left would have more to say about the future they want to create, rather than what they oppose in the status quo.
For example, the Right aren't simply anti-immigration. They are also selling an idealised vision of the past that has been lost and can be regained.
So in very simple terms I would say that the battle between the populist right and left would be between nostalgia and utopia - but the utopia is largely missing from the left's offer at the moment.
Yes, nice way of expressing it. And to tie back to my thesis, it takes an enormous amount of effort, skill, imagination and intellect to conceptualise and present a viable anti-capitalist model as the basis for economic life. That's why powerful critiques of capitalism are ten a penny but successful alternatives are hens teeth. It's a very high bar (once you've exhausted the rhetorical appeal of 'tax the rich'). The 'nostalgia' offer (with notes of xenophobia and parochialism) is much easier to formulate and get across. Make XYZ great again. Our country. Us v them. Borders. The flag. Our people. Charity begins at Home etc etc. It's not hard to promote all that stuff when there's dissatisfaction with the status quo.
Too many people do sufficiently well out of capitalism, tempered by social democracy, to make anti-capitalism electorally viable.
Is essentially what I'm saying yes. So for populism to succeed at the ballot box it needs that identity, nostalgia, nationalism angle, which means the right wing variety is favoured, the Trumps, Farages, LePens, Wilders, AfDs of this world. The xenophobia and nativism is a feature not a bug. It's key to their appeal. The populist left, who do not push these buttons, they might win a big city every now and again but that's the limit so long as there's little public appetite for radical left economic prescriptions.
I think IDS and Cleverly have got away with this one. BBC reporting "Conservatives" are wholly opposed to his return. Jenrick gets a specific name check. Starmer as the incumbent takes 100% of the responsibility for this.
Though I doubt Labour voters will care and Tories need some Labour tactical votes in seats Reform are challenging the Tory incumbent
I don't see Labour voters who want to avoid a right wing Reform Government will be minded to vote for candidates representing a right wing Conservative Party.
'The incoming Archbishop of Canterbury has been urged to scrap plans to spend £100m over the Church of England's historical links to slavery.
In a letter seen by the Sunday Times, external, a group of Conservative MPs and peers has urged Dame Sarah Mullally to stop the Church from spending the money.
They claim the funds can only legally be spent on churches and the payment of clergy wages.
In a statement to the paper, the Church Commissioners said that arrangements for the fund were being "developed transparently - in line with charity law".
Mullally, who currently serves as the Bishop of London, will take up her new role as the first-ever female Archbishop of Canterbury next month.
The Church of England's slavery links proposal was announced in January 2023, external following the publication of a report into the Church's historical links to transatlantic slavery.
The report, external, requested by the Church's financing arm - the Church Commissioners - found that a fund established by Queen Anne in 1704 to help poor Anglican clergy was used to finance "great evil".
According to the report, the fund, known as Queen Anne's Bounty, invested in African chattel enslavement and took donations derived from it.
After the report's publication, the then-Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, said he was "deeply sorry" for the links and said action would be taken to address the Church's "shameful past".
The Church Commissioners announced a new £100m fund, committed over a nine-year period, to be spent on "a programme of investment, research and engagement" in communities damaged by the enslavement of African people during the transatlantic slave trade.
However, in their letter to Mullally, MPs and peers have urged the Church to focus on "strengthening parishes" rather than on pursuing what they describe as "high-profile and legally dubious vanity projects".' https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cx2e7w03067o
There are a couple of things going on here. I'm not at all sure there is a viable legal case - there will be various precedents in a period since 1704, but I doubt they will try it.
There's obviously populist right politics, with a seach for attention - this is people like Lam, Philp and Lord Biggar (Regent College Vancouver, and Latimer House, Cambridge, amongst others).
But politically it will be interesting, and for pressure they will leverage Parliamentary on normally non-contentious Church of England legislation in the Ecclesiastical Committee, and gum up the works.
That was a game Danny Kruger was playing last autumn.
Indeed, this is populism.
While sympathetic though to the MPs and peers pushing more funds for Parishes, if any income from the 1704 bounty can be directly linked to investments in slave trading companies I can see why the C of E commissioners are doing what they are proposing. That income, only that income mind, should be used to fund projects in Africa and the Caribbean and maybe support churches with large Black British congregations England.
I know a few aristocratic families maybe even the King are also looking at their assets to see if they can make reparations for any income from slavery. Older companies like Barclays and Greene King and Lloyds of London and RBS (now Natwest) are also potentially affected. Greene King is looking into reparations and Lloyds of London invests in BAME projects as a result, as did RBS. Oxbridge colleges and some of the oldest public schools too could be implicated, some colleges increasing scholarships for black students from the Caribbean and Africa https://www.theguardian.com/business/2020/jun/18/barclays-hsbc-and-lloyds-among-uk-banks-that-had-links-to-slavery
It is self-evident there was substantial fraud as we would call it now with the acquisition of properties with funds from Queen Anne's Bounty at the time. A property was bought by someone associated with the church and then miraculously it became worth 50% more when he sold it on to augment some curacy somewhere. This seems to have been standard practice in the dozens of examples I have seen. BUT the Bounty had to buy property for endowment within England as far as I know - they had to be within a half day riding distance from the benefice which they augmented. That rules out all normal purchases outside England. I think they might have made some extra-ordinary purchases in Ireland but know of no examples in the West Indies or New England.
There were I think 50 or 60 holdings bought by Queen Anne's Bounty in Ewecross wapentake of the West Riding alone. In part this was because they were generally smaller and so more of a size to augment a single benefice. But, many were split into two or even more complex divisions. This led to crazy situations where farmhouses were divided into two or a barn was re-designated as a house but with no sturctural change.
In the generality to have any chance of augmentation from the bounty you needed a private matching gift so even the premise of the assertion made by the current CofE is wrong. Financing of the CofE inevitably took a tumble with the Tithe Commutation Act of 1836 - truly it was feeding the fat church cat with slices of its own tail. After that it was only a mattr of time that the church would seize all the bounty lands from the Curacies to which they had been given. It was only after that that financial misconduct could and did occur and all that including tithe commutation that was post-slavery.
The real scandal of Queen Anne's Bounty was that it bought lands at the height of property values, allowed the central church to seize them and then sell them off in the 1920s and 1930s when they were worthless. That is the mad economics of Gordon Brown two generations before his time. The present CofE should be looking to recovering those moneys from the heirs of the Church Commissioners involved, because in the real world the disposal of the lands was just as fraudulent as their acquisition.
But, none of that had anything to do with slaves.
According to Wikipedia, a lot of the Bounty was left invested in the Bounty, which gave the benefices a good rate of interest. Some of this was invested in the South Seas Company. Also, the Bounty itself received benefactions from slave traders such as Edward Colston. The reparation activity has been going on since 2022
“Unfortunately the Iranian nuclear project isn’t dedicated to the extermination of the white man”.
For all the handwringing this morning about Trump, at least he instinctively knows that swathes of the west are committing societal suicide by pandering to these guys. Thanks to our woke immigration policies from Blair onwards, we have become a sewer for the human effluent that autocracies everywhere (correctly) want rid of.
Even at Xmas time, you can’t restrain yourself from calling refugees “human effluent”? What would Jesus do?
Chuckle. He’s a guy who has repeatedly incited racially based violence and murder including against children. I have no problem calling him human effluent and look forward to the next government deporting him.
The truth is all the traditional "centre right" have left is the fact Trump annoys "the lefties" so much so they can troll away on that to their heart's content rather than asking themselves why the opposition to the "centre left" is now coming from the populists like Farage and Trump rather than from traditional conservatives like Badenoch.
I don't think it's controversial to say that the population in most democracies has turned away from centrist politicians, for understandable reasons, and that right-wing populists have been more successful at winning the support of discontented voters than left-wing populists.
Can't blame Righties for consoling themselves with that. I'm sure I'd feel the same if the roles were reversed.
This is something that interests me a great deal. Why does the populism of the right have greater appeal than that of the left?
My tentative theory. Because it speaks to feelings of ethno-cultural identity and nationalism whilst not scaring people (esp rich potential backers) with anti-capitalist rhetoric.
I don't think it's anything to do with the ideas particularly. The Right have simply been better, more imaginative, while the Left have been stuck obsessing over the defeats of the 70s and 80s, and so they haven't argued their case well, or adjusted their ideas to fit the modern world.
You think anti-capitalism is as easy a sell in developed western societies as anti-immigration? I don't. I think without that identity and nationalism angle you're left with something that has quite a low ceiling of electoral support. But I could be wrong. Hope I am actually. Polanski will provide some evidence either way. He's charismatic and slick on the comms. Definitely a 'today' politician not stuck in a past era like eg Corbyn. So let's see where he polls compared to Farage at the GE.
A more imaginative left would have more to say about the future they want to create, rather than what they oppose in the status quo.
For example, the Right aren't simply anti-immigration. They are also selling an idealised vision of the past that has been lost and can be regained.
So in very simple terms I would say that the battle between the populist right and left would be between nostalgia and utopia - but the utopia is largely missing from the left's offer at the moment.
Yes, nice way of expressing it. And to tie back to my thesis, it takes an enormous amount of effort, skill, imagination and intellect to conceptualise and present a viable anti-capitalist model as the basis for economic life. That's why powerful critiques of capitalism are ten a penny but successful alternatives are hens teeth. It's a very high bar (once you've exhausted the rhetorical appeal of 'tax the rich'). The 'nostalgia' offer (with notes of xenophobia and parochialism) is much easier to formulate and get across. Make XYZ great again. Our country. Us v them. Borders. The flag. Our people. Charity begins at Home etc etc. It's not hard to promote all that stuff when there's dissatisfaction with the status quo.
Too many people do sufficiently well out of capitalism, tempered by social democracy, to make anti-capitalism electorally viable.
If you rent your property and work in the public sector or live on benefits and don't have wealthy parents though, why wouldn't you vote for socialism? Plenty of those voters in inner cities and hence socialists win there.
Other than schoolboy politician Zack, and he will just accidentally deliver (like Corbyn before him) Conservative Governments, how do I vote to achieve my socialist panacea? Red-Tory Labour certainly aren't the answer.
“Unfortunately the Iranian nuclear project isn’t dedicated to the extermination of the white man”.
For all the handwringing this morning about Trump, at least he instinctively knows that swathes of the west are committing societal suicide by pandering to these guys. Thanks to our woke immigration policies from Blair onwards, we have become a sewer for the human effluent that autocracies everywhere (correctly) want rid of.
The truth is all the traditional "centre right" have left is the fact Trump annoys "the lefties" so much so they can troll away on that to their heart's content rather than asking themselves why the opposition to the "centre left" is now coming from the populists like Farage and Trump rather than from traditional conservatives like Badenoch.
I don't think it's controversial to say that the population in most democracies has turned away from centrist politicians, for understandable reasons, and that right-wing populists have been more successful at winning the support of discontented voters than left-wing populists.
Can't blame Righties for consoling themselves with that. I'm sure I'd feel the same if the roles were reversed.
This is something that interests me a great deal. Why does the populism of the right have greater appeal than that of the left?
My tentative theory. Because it speaks to feelings of ethno-cultural identity and nationalism whilst not scaring people (esp rich potential backers) with anti-capitalist rhetoric.
I don't think it's anything to do with the ideas particularly. The Right have simply been better, more imaginative, while the Left have been stuck obsessing over the defeats of the 70s and 80s, and so they haven't argued their case well, or adjusted their ideas to fit the modern world.
You think anti-capitalism is as easy a sell in developed western societies as anti-immigration? I don't. I think without that identity and nationalism angle you're left with something that has quite a low ceiling of electoral support. But I could be wrong. Hope I am actually. Polanski will provide some evidence either way. He's charismatic and slick on the comms. Definitely a 'today' politician not stuck in a past era like eg Corbyn. So let's see where he polls compared to Farage at the GE.
A more imaginative left would have more to say about the future they want to create, rather than what they oppose in the status quo.
For example, the Right aren't simply anti-immigration. They are also selling an idealised vision of the past that has been lost and can be regained.
So in very simple terms I would say that the battle between the populist right and left would be between nostalgia and utopia - but the utopia is largely missing from the left's offer at the moment.
Yes, nice way of expressing it. And to tie back to my thesis, it takes an enormous amount of effort, skill, imagination and intellect to conceptualise and present a viable anti-capitalist model as the basis for economic life. That's why powerful critiques of capitalism are ten a penny but successful alternatives are hens teeth. It's a very high bar (once you've exhausted the rhetorical appeal of 'tax the rich'). The 'nostalgia' offer (with notes of xenophobia and parochialism) is much easier to formulate and get across. Make XYZ great again. Our country. Us v them. Borders. The flag. Our people. Charity begins at Home etc etc. It's not hard to promote all that stuff when there's dissatisfaction with the status quo.
Too many people do sufficiently well out of capitalism, tempered by social democracy, to make anti-capitalism electorally viable.
Is essentially what I'm saying yes. So for populism to succeed at the ballot box it needs that identity, nostalgia, nationalism angle, which means the right wing variety is favoured, the Trumps, Farages, LePens, Wilders, AfDs of this world. The xenophobia and nativism is a feature not a bug. It's key to their appeal. The populist left, who do not push these buttons, they might win a big city every now and again but that's the limit so long as there's little public appetite for radical left economic prescriptions.
Yet beyond Trump none of those parties and leaders have won either and even Trump lost in 2020.
The French far left though won most seats in 2024, Corbyn got close to becoming PM in 2017 and Sanders nearly won the Dem nomination in 2016 and 2020 and Linke are growing in Germany. So it is not just rightwing populism making gains, even though the more centrist parties and leaders normally still scrape home
“Unfortunately the Iranian nuclear project isn’t dedicated to the extermination of the white man”.
For all the handwringing this morning about Trump, at least he instinctively knows that swathes of the west are committing societal suicide by pandering to these guys. Thanks to our woke immigration policies from Blair onwards, we have become a sewer for the human effluent that autocracies everywhere (correctly) want rid of.
Who are we getting from Trump's America then?
Quite a number of pharmacologists although our government typically missed a trick in really putting out the welcome (ha) mat for them.
I think IDS and Cleverly have got away with this one. BBC reporting "Conservatives" are wholly opposed to his return. Jenrick gets a specific name check. Starmer as the incumbent takes 100% of the responsibility for this.
Though I doubt Labour voters will care and Tories need some Labour tactical votes in seats Reform are challenging the Tory incumbent
I don't see Labour voters who want to avoid a right wing Reform Government will be minded to vote for candidates representing a right wing Conservative Party.
22% of 14% (FoN) total next GE voter intention is what, circa 3%?
Divided by the proportion who live in a Tory/Reform marginal of course.
And I imagine most of those will still be giving a Labour VI.
Most but a quarter of Labour and LD voters tactically voting for their Tory MP could be enough for them to hold a seat Reform would otherwise win
I just wonder how many people would be contemplating a tactical vote this far out from the election, I imagine most would just give a general political preference.
The truth is all the traditional "centre right" have left is the fact Trump annoys "the lefties" so much so they can troll away on that to their heart's content rather than asking themselves why the opposition to the "centre left" is now coming from the populists like Farage and Trump rather than from traditional conservatives like Badenoch.
I don't think it's controversial to say that the population in most democracies has turned away from centrist politicians, for understandable reasons, and that right-wing populists have been more successful at winning the support of discontented voters than left-wing populists.
Can't blame Righties for consoling themselves with that. I'm sure I'd feel the same if the roles were reversed.
This is something that interests me a great deal. Why does the populism of the right have greater appeal than that of the left?
My tentative theory. Because it speaks to feelings of ethno-cultural identity and nationalism whilst not scaring people (esp rich potential backers) with anti-capitalist rhetoric.
I don't think it's anything to do with the ideas particularly. The Right have simply been better, more imaginative, while the Left have been stuck obsessing over the defeats of the 70s and 80s, and so they haven't argued their case well, or adjusted their ideas to fit the modern world.
You think anti-capitalism is as easy a sell in developed western societies as anti-immigration? I don't. I think without that identity and nationalism angle you're left with something that has quite a low ceiling of electoral support. But I could be wrong. Hope I am actually. Polanski will provide some evidence either way. He's charismatic and slick on the comms. Definitely a 'today' politician not stuck in a past era like eg Corbyn. So let's see where he polls compared to Farage at the GE.
A more imaginative left would have more to say about the future they want to create, rather than what they oppose in the status quo.
For example, the Right aren't simply anti-immigration. They are also selling an idealised vision of the past that has been lost and can be regained.
So in very simple terms I would say that the battle between the populist right and left would be between nostalgia and utopia - but the utopia is largely missing from the left's offer at the moment.
Yes, nice way of expressing it. And to tie back to my thesis, it takes an enormous amount of effort, skill, imagination and intellect to conceptualise and present a viable anti-capitalist model as the basis for economic life. That's why powerful critiques of capitalism are ten a penny but successful alternatives are hens teeth. It's a very high bar (once you've exhausted the rhetorical appeal of 'tax the rich'). The 'nostalgia' offer (with notes of xenophobia and parochialism) is much easier to formulate and get across. Make XYZ great again. Our country. Us v them. Borders. The flag. Our people. Charity begins at Home etc etc. It's not hard to promote all that stuff when there's dissatisfaction with the status quo.
Too many people do sufficiently well out of capitalism, tempered by social democracy, to make anti-capitalism electorally viable.
If you rent your property and work in the public sector or live on benefits and don't have wealthy parents though, why wouldn't you vote for socialism? Plenty of those voters in inner cities and hence socialists win there.
Other than schoolboy politician Zack, and he will just accidentally deliver (like Corbyn before him) Conservative Governments, how do I vote to achieve my socialist panacea? Red-Tory Labour certainly aren't the answer.
Green as you say or hope for maybe Rayner to become Labour leader or at a push Burnham
“Unfortunately the Iranian nuclear project isn’t dedicated to the extermination of the white man”.
For all the handwringing this morning about Trump, at least he instinctively knows that swathes of the west are committing societal suicide by pandering to these guys. Thanks to our woke immigration policies from Blair onwards, we have become a sewer for the human effluent that autocracies everywhere (correctly) want rid of.
Even at Xmas time, you can’t restrain yourself from calling refugees “human effluent”? What would Jesus do?
Chuckle. He’s a guy who has repeatedly incited racially based violence and murder including against children. I have no problem calling him human effluent and look forward to the next government deporting him.
But you didn’t call this one person “effluent”. You used that term about a large number of refugees from “Blair onwards”.
I think IDS and Cleverly have got away with this one. BBC reporting "Conservatives" are wholly opposed to his return. Jenrick gets a specific name check. Starmer as the incumbent takes 100% of the responsibility for this.
Though I doubt Labour voters will care and Tories need some Labour tactical votes in seats Reform are challenging the Tory incumbent
I don't see Labour voters who want to avoid a right wing Reform Government will be minded to vote for candidates representing a right wing Conservative Party.
22% of 14% (FoN) total next GE voter intention is what, circa 3%?
Divided by the proportion who live in a Tory/Reform marginal of course.
And I imagine most of those will still be giving a Labour VI.
Most but a quarter of Labour and LD voters tactically voting for their Tory MP could be enough for them to hold a seat Reform would otherwise win
I just wonder how many people would be contemplating a tactical vote this far out from the election, I imagine most would just give a general political preference.
The Yougov poll was specifically on tactical voting. LDs were most likely to tactically vote Tory to beat Reform, 33% of LDs would vote Tory in a Tory held seat to see off Farage's candidate. 22% of Labour voters would also do so, fewer but still significant and even 11% of Green voters would hold their noses, take the smelling salts and disinfectant for after their ballot had been cast but still vote for their Tory MP to prevent having a Reform MP replacing them
'The incoming Archbishop of Canterbury has been urged to scrap plans to spend £100m over the Church of England's historical links to slavery.
In a letter seen by the Sunday Times, external, a group of Conservative MPs and peers has urged Dame Sarah Mullally to stop the Church from spending the money.
They claim the funds can only legally be spent on churches and the payment of clergy wages.
In a statement to the paper, the Church Commissioners said that arrangements for the fund were being "developed transparently - in line with charity law".
Mullally, who currently serves as the Bishop of London, will take up her new role as the first-ever female Archbishop of Canterbury next month.
The Church of England's slavery links proposal was announced in January 2023, external following the publication of a report into the Church's historical links to transatlantic slavery.
The report, external, requested by the Church's financing arm - the Church Commissioners - found that a fund established by Queen Anne in 1704 to help poor Anglican clergy was used to finance "great evil".
According to the report, the fund, known as Queen Anne's Bounty, invested in African chattel enslavement and took donations derived from it.
After the report's publication, the then-Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, said he was "deeply sorry" for the links and said action would be taken to address the Church's "shameful past".
The Church Commissioners announced a new £100m fund, committed over a nine-year period, to be spent on "a programme of investment, research and engagement" in communities damaged by the enslavement of African people during the transatlantic slave trade.
However, in their letter to Mullally, MPs and peers have urged the Church to focus on "strengthening parishes" rather than on pursuing what they describe as "high-profile and legally dubious vanity projects".' https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cx2e7w03067o
There are a couple of things going on here. I'm not at all sure there is a viable legal case - there will be various precedents in a period since 1704, but I doubt they will try it.
There's obviously populist right politics, with a seach for attention - this is people like Lam, Philp and Lord Biggar (Regent College Vancouver, and Latimer House, Cambridge, amongst others).
But politically it will be interesting, and for pressure they will leverage Parliamentary on normally non-contentious Church of England legislation in the Ecclesiastical Committee, and gum up the works.
That was a game Danny Kruger was playing last autumn.
Indeed, this is populism.
While sympathetic though to the MPs and peers pushing more funds for Parishes, if any income from the 1704 bounty can be directly linked to investments in slave trading companies I can see why the C of E commissioners are doing what they are proposing. That income, only that income mind, should be used to fund projects in Africa and the Caribbean and maybe support churches with large Black British congregations England.
I know a few aristocratic families maybe even the King are also looking at their assets to see if they can make reparations for any income from slavery. Older companies like Barclays and Greene King and Lloyds of London and RBS (now Natwest) are also potentially affected. Greene King is looking into reparations and Lloyds of London invests in BAME projects as a result, as did RBS. Oxbridge colleges and some of the oldest public schools too could be implicated, some colleges increasing scholarships for black students from the Caribbean and Africa https://www.theguardian.com/business/2020/jun/18/barclays-hsbc-and-lloyds-among-uk-banks-that-had-links-to-slavery
These cranks will never be satisfied by this virtuous rent seeking.
They want trillions not the odd £100 million.
Given them an inch and they will take a mile and we already have a sizeable minority in Labour supporting this.
I think IDS and Cleverly have got away with this one. BBC reporting "Conservatives" are wholly opposed to his return. Jenrick gets a specific name check. Starmer as the incumbent takes 100% of the responsibility for this.
Though I doubt Labour voters will care and Tories need some Labour tactical votes in seats Reform are challenging the Tory incumbent
I don't see Labour voters who want to avoid a right wing Reform Government will be minded to vote for candidates representing a right wing Conservative Party.
22% of 14% (FoN) total next GE voter intention is what, circa 3%?
Divided by the proportion who live in a Tory/Reform marginal of course.
And I imagine most of those will still be giving a Labour VI.
Most but a quarter of Labour and LD voters tactically voting for their Tory MP could be enough for them to hold a seat Reform would otherwise win
I just wonder how many people would be contemplating a tactical vote this far out from the election, I imagine most would just give a general political preference.
The Yougov poll was specifically on tactical voting. LDs were most likely to tactically vote Tory to beat Reform, 33% of LDs would vote Tory in a Tory held seat to see off Farage's candidate. 22% of Labour voters would also do so, fewer but still significant and even 11% of Green voters would hold their noses, take the smelling salts and disinfectant for after their ballot had been cast but still vote for their Tory MP to prevent having a Reform MP replacing them
I think IDS and Cleverly have got away with this one. BBC reporting "Conservatives" are wholly opposed to his return. Jenrick gets a specific name check. Starmer as the incumbent takes 100% of the responsibility for this.
I think Starmer and Labour get away with it due to the time of year and no one really cares about the news.
They’re lucky.
IDS’s retraction really reflects poorly on his judgement.
I think IDS and Cleverly have got away with this one. BBC reporting "Conservatives" are wholly opposed to his return. Jenrick gets a specific name check. Starmer as the incumbent takes 100% of the responsibility for this.
I think Starmer and Labour get away with it due to the time of year and no one really cares about the news.
They’re lucky.
IDS’s retraction really reflects poorly on his judgement.
That statement suggests he possesses some level of judgement.
The truth is all the traditional "centre right" have left is the fact Trump annoys "the lefties" so much so they can troll away on that to their heart's content rather than asking themselves why the opposition to the "centre left" is now coming from the populists like Farage and Trump rather than from traditional conservatives like Badenoch.
I don't think it's controversial to say that the population in most democracies has turned away from centrist politicians, for understandable reasons, and that right-wing populists have been more successful at winning the support of discontented voters than left-wing populists.
Can't blame Righties for consoling themselves with that. I'm sure I'd feel the same if the roles were reversed.
This is something that interests me a great deal. Why does the populism of the right have greater appeal than that of the left?
My tentative theory. Because it speaks to feelings of ethno-cultural identity and nationalism whilst not scaring people (esp rich potential backers) with anti-capitalist rhetoric.
It gives people open licence to indulge their worst instincts while left populism still pays at least lip service to idealism (even if calculating opportunist can still use it to do bad stuff). So liberating to wave banners saying ‘kill em all’, set migrant hotels on fire, fire off Hitler salutes and aspire to traffic women. Best of all you can construct a shaky edifice of virtue by saying you’re slicing away the hypocrisy of woke lefties and cutting to the chase of what being a human being is all about.
And of course becoming the most passionate opponent of misogyny and homophobia wherever it rears its head so long as the head it's rearing is a Muslim one.
Listening to the clip in the header, istm to be startlingly complacent. To wit:
"You look at some of his biggest policy achievements from this past year — the elimination of Iran’s nuclear capacities, cracking down on the southern border, basically eliminating illegal immigration across the southern border, keeping women’s spaces for women — these are all issues where he is not just above water with voters, he’s overwhelmingly supported by 80% to 90% of Americans on these key issues.”
This is a few days before health insurance premiums start spiking by amounts varying from 10% (for some employer funded programmes) to 114% (on average) for the 24 million people on Affordable Care programmes (roughly household incomes under 60-90k depending on how many people).
I'm not sure if "strikes on Iran" will be a dominant political question, no matter how many wars Mr Trump invents.
“Unfortunately the Iranian nuclear project isn’t dedicated to the extermination of the white man”.
For all the handwringing this morning about Trump, at least he instinctively knows that swathes of the west are committing societal suicide by pandering to these guys. Thanks to our woke immigration policies from Blair onwards, we have become a sewer for the human effluent that autocracies everywhere (correctly) want rid of.
Even at Xmas time, you can’t restrain yourself from calling refugees “human effluent”? What would Jesus do?
Chuckle. He’s a guy who has repeatedly incited racially based violence and murder including against children. I have no problem calling him human effluent and look forward to the next government deporting him.
But you didn’t call this one person “effluent”. You used that term about a large number of refugees from “Blair onwards”.
I don’t use the word refugees, you did. But yes, we have become a sewer for many thousands of people who do not recognise rape as immoral and who wish harm on infidels. Suicidal empathy is a very apt description of where our society has found itself.
The truth is all the traditional "centre right" have left is the fact Trump annoys "the lefties" so much so they can troll away on that to their heart's content rather than asking themselves why the opposition to the "centre left" is now coming from the populists like Farage and Trump rather than from traditional conservatives like Badenoch.
I don't think it's controversial to say that the population in most democracies has turned away from centrist politicians, for understandable reasons, and that right-wing populists have been more successful at winning the support of discontented voters than left-wing populists.
Can't blame Righties for consoling themselves with that. I'm sure I'd feel the same if the roles were reversed.
This is something that interests me a great deal. Why does the populism of the right have greater appeal than that of the left?
My tentative theory. Because it speaks to feelings of ethno-cultural identity and nationalism whilst not scaring people (esp rich potential backers) with anti-capitalist rhetoric.
It gives people open licence to indulge their worst instincts while left populism still pays at least lip service to idealism (even if calculating opportunist can still use it to do bad stuff). So liberating to wave banners saying ‘kill em all’, set migrant hotels on fire, fire off Hitler salutes and aspire to traffic women. Best of all you can construct a shaky edifice of virtue by saying you’re slicing away the hypocrisy of woke lefties and cutting to the chase of what being a human being is all about.
And of course becoming the most passionate opponent of misogyny and homophobia wherever it rears its head so long as the head it's rearing is a Muslim one.
As opposed to those who reflexively mitigate those sentiments from said people so they can burnish their halo and proclaim their lack of prejudice as a badge of honour.
“Unfortunately the Iranian nuclear project isn’t dedicated to the extermination of the white man”.
For all the handwringing this morning about Trump, at least he instinctively knows that swathes of the west are committing societal suicide by pandering to these guys. Thanks to our woke immigration policies from Blair onwards, we have become a sewer for the human effluent that autocracies everywhere (correctly) want rid of.
Even at Xmas time, you can’t restrain yourself from calling refugees “human effluent”? What would Jesus do?
Chuckle. He’s a guy who has repeatedly incited racially based violence and murder including against children. I have no problem calling him human effluent and look forward to the next government deporting him.
But you didn’t call this one person “effluent”. You used that term about a large number of refugees from “Blair onwards”.
I don’t use the word refugees, you did. But yes, we have become a sewer for many thousands of people who do not recognise rape as immoral and who wish harm on infidels. Suicidal empathy is a very apt description of where our society has found itself.
It does seem that no one bothered to check his credentials, before deciding that he was an unjustly persecuted human rights activist.
I think IDS and Cleverly have got away with this one. BBC reporting "Conservatives" are wholly opposed to his return. Jenrick gets a specific name check. Starmer as the incumbent takes 100% of the responsibility for this.
I think Starmer and Labour get away with it due to the time of year and no one really cares about the news.
They’re lucky.
IDS’s retraction really reflects poorly on his judgement.
That statement suggests he possesses some level of judgement.
'The incoming Archbishop of Canterbury has been urged to scrap plans to spend £100m over the Church of England's historical links to slavery.
In a letter seen by the Sunday Times, external, a group of Conservative MPs and peers has urged Dame Sarah Mullally to stop the Church from spending the money.
They claim the funds can only legally be spent on churches and the payment of clergy wages.
In a statement to the paper, the Church Commissioners said that arrangements for the fund were being "developed transparently - in line with charity law".
Mullally, who currently serves as the Bishop of London, will take up her new role as the first-ever female Archbishop of Canterbury next month.
The Church of England's slavery links proposal was announced in January 2023, external following the publication of a report into the Church's historical links to transatlantic slavery.
The report, external, requested by the Church's financing arm - the Church Commissioners - found that a fund established by Queen Anne in 1704 to help poor Anglican clergy was used to finance "great evil".
According to the report, the fund, known as Queen Anne's Bounty, invested in African chattel enslavement and took donations derived from it.
After the report's publication, the then-Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, said he was "deeply sorry" for the links and said action would be taken to address the Church's "shameful past".
The Church Commissioners announced a new £100m fund, committed over a nine-year period, to be spent on "a programme of investment, research and engagement" in communities damaged by the enslavement of African people during the transatlantic slave trade.
However, in their letter to Mullally, MPs and peers have urged the Church to focus on "strengthening parishes" rather than on pursuing what they describe as "high-profile and legally dubious vanity projects".' https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cx2e7w03067o
There are a couple of things going on here. I'm not at all sure there is a viable legal case - there will be various precedents in a period since 1704, but I doubt they will try it.
There's obviously populist right politics, with a seach for attention - this is people like Lam, Philp and Lord Biggar (Regent College Vancouver, and Latimer House, Cambridge, amongst others).
But politically it will be interesting, and for pressure they will leverage Parliamentary on normally non-contentious Church of England legislation in the Ecclesiastical Committee, and gum up the works.
That was a game Danny Kruger was playing last autumn.
Indeed, this is populism.
While sympathetic though to the MPs and peers pushing more funds for Parishes, if any income from the 1704 bounty can be directly linked to investments in slave trading companies I can see why the C of E commissioners are doing what they are proposing. That income, only that income mind, should be used to fund projects in Africa and the Caribbean and maybe support churches with large Black British congregations England.
I know a few aristocratic families maybe even the King are also looking at their assets to see if they can make reparations for any income from slavery. Older companies like Barclays and Greene King and Lloyds of London and RBS (now Natwest) are also potentially affected. Greene King is looking into reparations and Lloyds of London invests in BAME projects as a result, as did RBS. Oxbridge colleges and some of the oldest public schools too could be implicated, some colleges increasing scholarships for black students from the Caribbean and Africa https://www.theguardian.com/business/2020/jun/18/barclays-hsbc-and-lloyds-among-uk-banks-that-had-links-to-slavery
These cranks will never be satisfied by this virtuous rent seeking.
They want trillions not the odd £100 million.
Given them an inch and they will take a mile and we already have a sizeable minority in Labour supporting this.
Also the legal company involved in the so called equal pay shakedown is getting involved. It was part of the recent conference.
They can all see another gravy train at the taxpayers expense and the opportunity to white knight these nations and feel good.
I hold NatWest stock. They need to focus on managing the business and delivering for shareholders. Not this crap.
That's not a gravy train at the taxpayers' expense.
JRCT operate from an endowment created by Joseph Rowntree, and they are looking at their own responsibility related to their own asset base which dates back to 1904.
Like you - I'm less comfortable with campaigning charities (or lawyers) trying to extract money from the general tax base. That needs to be a political conversation. Politicians are not very good at doing careful thought over a decently long period.
I think IDS and Cleverly have got away with this one. BBC reporting "Conservatives" are wholly opposed to his return. Jenrick gets a specific name check. Starmer as the incumbent takes 100% of the responsibility for this.
I think Starmer and Labour get away with it due to the time of year and no one really cares about the news.
They’re lucky.
IDS’s retraction really reflects poorly on his judgement.
That statement suggests he possesses some level of judgement.
Indeed, IDS was no great orator or intellectual but voters didn't actually dislike him that much. He is at least honest as he showed on this issue and that contrasted with Blair. Howard was a better Commons performer but too much of a lawyer like Blair unlike ex army captain IDS,
A September 2003 Yougov poll for instance had the Duncan Smith led Conservatives on 32% Labour on 31% and the LDs on 30%. UKIP on 2% and the BNP on 2%.
Kemi and the Tories would give their eye teeth for numbers like that now
The truth is all the traditional "centre right" have left is the fact Trump annoys "the lefties" so much so they can troll away on that to their heart's content rather than asking themselves why the opposition to the "centre left" is now coming from the populists like Farage and Trump rather than from traditional conservatives like Badenoch.
I don't think it's controversial to say that the population in most democracies has turned away from centrist politicians, for understandable reasons, and that right-wing populists have been more successful at winning the support of discontented voters than left-wing populists.
Can't blame Righties for consoling themselves with that. I'm sure I'd feel the same if the roles were reversed.
This is something that interests me a great deal. Why does the populism of the right have greater appeal than that of the left?
My tentative theory. Because it speaks to feelings of ethno-cultural identity and nationalism whilst not scaring people (esp rich potential backers) with anti-capitalist rhetoric.
I don't think it's anything to do with the ideas particularly. The Right have simply been better, more imaginative, while the Left have been stuck obsessing over the defeats of the 70s and 80s, and so they haven't argued their case well, or adjusted their ideas to fit the modern world.
You think anti-capitalism is as easy a sell in developed western societies as anti-immigration? I don't. I think without that identity and nationalism angle you're left with something that has quite a low ceiling of electoral support. But I could be wrong. Hope I am actually. Polanski will provide some evidence either way. He's charismatic and slick on the comms. Definitely a 'today' politician not stuck in a past era like eg Corbyn. So let's see where he polls compared to Farage at the GE.
A more imaginative left would have more to say about the future they want to create, rather than what they oppose in the status quo.
For example, the Right aren't simply anti-immigration. They are also selling an idealised vision of the past that has been lost and can be regained.
So in very simple terms I would say that the battle between the populist right and left would be between nostalgia and utopia - but the utopia is largely missing from the left's offer at the moment.
Yes, nice way of expressing it. And to tie back to my thesis, it takes an enormous amount of effort, skill, imagination and intellect to conceptualise and present a viable anti-capitalist model as the basis for economic life. That's why powerful critiques of capitalism are ten a penny but successful alternatives are hens teeth. It's a very high bar (once you've exhausted the rhetorical appeal of 'tax the rich'). The 'nostalgia' offer (with notes of xenophobia and parochialism) is much easier to formulate and get across. Make XYZ great again. Our country. Us v them. Borders. The flag. Our people. Charity begins at Home etc etc. It's not hard to promote all that stuff when there's dissatisfaction with the status quo.
Too many people do sufficiently well out of capitalism, tempered by social democracy, to make anti-capitalism electorally viable.
Is essentially what I'm saying yes. So for populism to succeed at the ballot box it needs that identity, nostalgia, nationalism angle, which means the right wing variety is favoured, the Trumps, Farages, LePens, Wilders, AfDs of this world. The xenophobia and nativism is a feature not a bug. It's key to their appeal. The populist left, who do not push these buttons, they might win a big city every now and again but that's the limit so long as there's little public appetite for radical left economic prescriptions.
Yet beyond Trump none of those parties and leaders have won either and even Trump lost in 2020.
The French far left though won most seats in 2024, Corbyn got close to becoming PM in 2017 and Sanders nearly won the Dem nomination in 2016 and 2020 and Linke are growing in Germany. So it is not just rightwing populism making gains, even though the more centrist parties and leaders normally still scrape home
I take your point. With populism in general on the rise some of it does find a left wing receptacle. But most of it finds a right wing one and my contention is that this is largely because that is where you find the appeal to retro identity-based nationalism.
'The incoming Archbishop of Canterbury has been urged to scrap plans to spend £100m over the Church of England's historical links to slavery.
In a letter seen by the Sunday Times, external, a group of Conservative MPs and peers has urged Dame Sarah Mullally to stop the Church from spending the money.
They claim the funds can only legally be spent on churches and the payment of clergy wages.
In a statement to the paper, the Church Commissioners said that arrangements for the fund were being "developed transparently - in line with charity law".
Mullally, who currently serves as the Bishop of London, will take up her new role as the first-ever female Archbishop of Canterbury next month.
The Church of England's slavery links proposal was announced in January 2023, external following the publication of a report into the Church's historical links to transatlantic slavery.
The report, external, requested by the Church's financing arm - the Church Commissioners - found that a fund established by Queen Anne in 1704 to help poor Anglican clergy was used to finance "great evil".
According to the report, the fund, known as Queen Anne's Bounty, invested in African chattel enslavement and took donations derived from it.
After the report's publication, the then-Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, said he was "deeply sorry" for the links and said action would be taken to address the Church's "shameful past".
The Church Commissioners announced a new £100m fund, committed over a nine-year period, to be spent on "a programme of investment, research and engagement" in communities damaged by the enslavement of African people during the transatlantic slave trade.
However, in their letter to Mullally, MPs and peers have urged the Church to focus on "strengthening parishes" rather than on pursuing what they describe as "high-profile and legally dubious vanity projects".' https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cx2e7w03067o
There are a couple of things going on here. I'm not at all sure there is a viable legal case - there will be various precedents in a period since 1704, but I doubt they will try it.
There's obviously populist right politics, with a seach for attention - this is people like Lam, Philp and Lord Biggar (Regent College Vancouver, and Latimer House, Cambridge, amongst others).
But politically it will be interesting, and for pressure they will leverage Parliamentary on normally non-contentious Church of England legislation in the Ecclesiastical Committee, and gum up the works.
That was a game Danny Kruger was playing last autumn.
Indeed, this is populism.
While sympathetic though to the MPs and peers pushing more funds for Parishes, if any income from the 1704 bounty can be directly linked to investments in slave trading companies I can see why the C of E commissioners are doing what they are proposing. That income, only that income mind, should be used to fund projects in Africa and the Caribbean and maybe support churches with large Black British congregations England.
I know a few aristocratic families maybe even the King are also looking at their assets to see if they can make reparations for any income from slavery. Older companies like Barclays and Greene King and Lloyds of London and RBS (now Natwest) are also potentially affected. Greene King is looking into reparations and Lloyds of London invests in BAME projects as a result, as did RBS. Oxbridge colleges and some of the oldest public schools too could be implicated, some colleges increasing scholarships for black students from the Caribbean and Africa https://www.theguardian.com/business/2020/jun/18/barclays-hsbc-and-lloyds-among-uk-banks-that-had-links-to-slavery
These cranks will never be satisfied by this virtuous rent seeking.
They want trillions not the odd £100 million.
Given them an inch and they will take a mile and we already have a sizeable minority in Labour supporting this.
I think IDS and Cleverly have got away with this one. BBC reporting "Conservatives" are wholly opposed to his return. Jenrick gets a specific name check. Starmer as the incumbent takes 100% of the responsibility for this.
I think Starmer and Labour get away with it due to the time of year and no one really cares about the news.
They’re lucky.
IDS’s retraction really reflects poorly on his judgement.
That statement suggests he possesses some level of judgement.
Indeed, IDS was no great orator or intellectual but voters didn't actually dislike him that much. He is at least honest as he showed on this issue and that contrasted with Blair. Howard was a better Commons performer but too much of a lawyer like Blair unlike ex army captain IDS,
A September 2003 Yougov poll for instance had the Duncan Smith led Conservatives on 32% Labour on 31% and the LDs on 30%. UKIP on 2% and the BNP on 2%.
Kemi and the Tories would give their eye teeth for numbers like that now
At least honest? Well, except for lying about his education. Or the role his wife was being paid for.
He was somewhat hamstrung from the start by being at best second choice among MPs, and having the personality of a cabbage, and the voice of an asthmatic frog, and taking over literally days after 9/11. But he played a bad hand remarkably badly.
It is strange to think he is the only leader of the Conservative Party to have lost and therefore been actually directly removed by a confidence vote. Admittedly Thatcher, May, Johnson were all fatally damaged but technically they all won.
'The incoming Archbishop of Canterbury has been urged to scrap plans to spend £100m over the Church of England's historical links to slavery.
In a letter seen by the Sunday Times, external, a group of Conservative MPs and peers has urged Dame Sarah Mullally to stop the Church from spending the money.
They claim the funds can only legally be spent on churches and the payment of clergy wages.
In a statement to the paper, the Church Commissioners said that arrangements for the fund were being "developed transparently - in line with charity law".
Mullally, who currently serves as the Bishop of London, will take up her new role as the first-ever female Archbishop of Canterbury next month.
The Church of England's slavery links proposal was announced in January 2023, external following the publication of a report into the Church's historical links to transatlantic slavery.
The report, external, requested by the Church's financing arm - the Church Commissioners - found that a fund established by Queen Anne in 1704 to help poor Anglican clergy was used to finance "great evil".
According to the report, the fund, known as Queen Anne's Bounty, invested in African chattel enslavement and took donations derived from it.
After the report's publication, the then-Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, said he was "deeply sorry" for the links and said action would be taken to address the Church's "shameful past".
The Church Commissioners announced a new £100m fund, committed over a nine-year period, to be spent on "a programme of investment, research and engagement" in communities damaged by the enslavement of African people during the transatlantic slave trade.
However, in their letter to Mullally, MPs and peers have urged the Church to focus on "strengthening parishes" rather than on pursuing what they describe as "high-profile and legally dubious vanity projects".' https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cx2e7w03067o
There are a couple of things going on here. I'm not at all sure there is a viable legal case - there will be various precedents in a period since 1704, but I doubt they will try it.
There's obviously populist right politics, with a seach for attention - this is people like Lam, Philp and Lord Biggar (Regent College Vancouver, and Latimer House, Cambridge, amongst others).
But politically it will be interesting, and for pressure they will leverage Parliamentary on normally non-contentious Church of England legislation in the Ecclesiastical Committee, and gum up the works.
That was a game Danny Kruger was playing last autumn.
Indeed, this is populism.
While sympathetic though to the MPs and peers pushing more funds for Parishes, if any income from the 1704 bounty can be directly linked to investments in slave trading companies I can see why the C of E commissioners are doing what they are proposing. That income, only that income mind, should be used to fund projects in Africa and the Caribbean and maybe support churches with large Black British congregations England.
I know a few aristocratic families maybe even the King are also looking at their assets to see if they can make reparations for any income from slavery. Older companies like Barclays and Greene King and Lloyds of London and RBS (now Natwest) are also potentially affected. Greene King is looking into reparations and Lloyds of London invests in BAME projects as a result, as did RBS. Oxbridge colleges and some of the oldest public schools too could be implicated, some colleges increasing scholarships for black students from the Caribbean and Africa https://www.theguardian.com/business/2020/jun/18/barclays-hsbc-and-lloyds-among-uk-banks-that-had-links-to-slavery
These cranks will never be satisfied by this virtuous rent seeking.
They want trillions not the odd £100 million.
Given them an inch and they will take a mile and we already have a sizeable minority in Labour supporting this.
Also the legal company involved in the so called equal pay shakedown is getting involved. It was part of the recent conference.
They can all see another gravy train at the taxpayers expense and the opportunity to white knight these nations and feel good.
I hold NatWest stock. They need to focus on managing the business and delivering for shareholders. Not this crap.
That's not a gravy train at the taxpayers' expense.
.
I never said it was. I said it’s something they can see. Especially given the trajectory. I think they are positioning themselves for what they expect to come.
There is a growing movement in Labour supporting this. The Guardian is a cheerleader for it too posting regular favourable articles.
There are regular conferences from the APPG supported by organisations who I think can see it coming.
Listening to the clip in the header, istm to be startlingly complacent. To wit:
"You look at some of his biggest policy achievements from this past year — the elimination of Iran’s nuclear capacities, cracking down on the southern border, basically eliminating illegal immigration across the southern border, keeping women’s spaces for women — these are all issues where he is not just above water with voters, he’s overwhelmingly supported by 80% to 90% of Americans on these key issues.”
This is a few days before health insurance premiums start spiking by amounts varying from 10% (for some employer funded programmes) to 114% (on average) for the 24 million people on Affordable Care programmes (roughly household incomes under 60-90k depending on how many people).
I'm not sure if "strikes on Iran" will be a dominant political question, no matter how many wars Mr Trump invents.
I can’t wait til this fucking clown show is over.
I’m hoping the Supreme Court hands his his ass on tariffs.
Listening to the clip in the header, istm to be startlingly complacent. To wit:
"You look at some of his biggest policy achievements from this past year — the elimination of Iran’s nuclear capacities, cracking down on the southern border, basically eliminating illegal immigration across the southern border, keeping women’s spaces for women — these are all issues where he is not just above water with voters, he’s overwhelmingly supported by 80% to 90% of Americans on these key issues.”
This is a few days before health insurance premiums start spiking by amounts varying from 10% (for some employer funded programmes) to 114% (on average) for the 24 million people on Affordable Care programmes (roughly household incomes under 60-90k depending on how many people).
I'm not sure if "strikes on Iran" will be a dominant political question, no matter how many wars Mr Trump invents.
I can’t wait til this fucking clown show is over.
I’m hoping the Supreme Court hands his his ass on tariffs.
I'm with you on that one.
I'm still sticking to my view that what it will really need is another period of similar import to reconstruction, as happened with the three Constitutional Amendments (13, 14, 15) from the 1860s which were subsequently - if I have my history right - undermined by Jim Crow laws.
Their rating for the Greens is absurd, nearly 5% higher than most other polls and they have Labour too low as a result. Their Reform and Tory and LD ratings are about average, maybe Reform fractionally higher and the Tories a little lower than other polls
n=1, with all that is implied by the following, but my Labour voting public servant (and highly educated) granddaughter is definitely talking about voting Green next time. Very disillusioned with Labour.
Yes but most under 30s also voted for Corbyn. The Greens only lead Labour with 18-24s with Yougov, Labour lead the Greens with all age groups over 25. With over 50s the Greens are still 5th, behind Reform, the Tories and Labour and even still behind the LDs https://yougov.co.uk/topics/politics/trackers/voting-intention?crossBreak=65plus
Granddaughter would probably have been a Corbyn voter originally. Although she did, she tells me, vote Conservative once, as an anti UKIP tactical vote.
Mr Starmer's Government are planning a Coup de Kent.
They say the aim is to create a pretext for ministers to send in a central government commissioner to take over all or part of its operations.
Mr Tice said: “We have strong reason to believe what they’re trying to do is sow a loss of confidence in one of our councils and they’ve targeted Kent.
I think IDS and Cleverly have got away with this one. BBC reporting "Conservatives" are wholly opposed to his return. Jenrick gets a specific name check. Starmer as the incumbent takes 100% of the responsibility for this.
I think Starmer and Labour get away with it due to the time of year and no one really cares about the news.
They’re lucky.
IDS’s retraction really reflects poorly on his judgement.
That statement suggests he possesses some level of judgement.
Indeed, IDS was no great orator or intellectual but voters didn't actually dislike him that much. He is at least honest as he showed on this issue and that contrasted with Blair. Howard was a better Commons performer but too much of a lawyer like Blair unlike ex army captain IDS,
A September 2003 Yougov poll for instance had the Duncan Smith led Conservatives on 32% Labour on 31% and the LDs on 30%. UKIP on 2% and the BNP on 2%.
Kemi and the Tories would give their eye teeth for numbers like that now
At least honest? Well, except for lying about his education. Or the role his wife was being paid for.
He was somewhat hamstrung from the start by being at best second choice among MPs, and having the personality of a cabbage, and the voice of an asthmatic frog, and taking over literally days after 9/11. But he played a bad hand remarkably badly.
It is strange to think he is the only leader of the Conservative Party to have lost and therefore been actually directly removed by a confidence vote. Admittedly Thatcher, May, Johnson were all fatally damaged but technically they all won.
Did he? In 2002 the Conservatives got 34% of the vote and gained 238 councillors and 9 councils. In the 2003 local elections the Conservatives got 35% NEV and gained 31 councils and won an extra 566 Tory councillors.
In 2005 he would likely have done about the same as Howard did. Indeed in purely electoral terms in terms of progress made for the party between when the leader took office and when they left office this century, IDS was certainly a better Tory leader than Sunak and Truss and May and Hague and at the moment it looks like, Kemi too
I think IDS and Cleverly have got away with this one. BBC reporting "Conservatives" are wholly opposed to his return. Jenrick gets a specific name check. Starmer as the incumbent takes 100% of the responsibility for this.
I think Starmer and Labour get away with it due to the time of year and no one really cares about the news.
They’re lucky.
IDS’s retraction really reflects poorly on his judgement.
That statement suggests he possesses some level of judgement.
Indeed, IDS was no great orator or intellectual but voters didn't actually dislike him that much. He is at least honest as he showed on this issue and that contrasted with Blair. Howard was a better Commons performer but too much of a lawyer like Blair unlike ex army captain IDS,
A September 2003 Yougov poll for instance had the Duncan Smith led Conservatives on 32% Labour on 31% and the LDs on 30%. UKIP on 2% and the BNP on 2%.
Kemi and the Tories would give their eye teeth for numbers like that now
At least honest? Well, except for lying about his education. Or the role his wife was being paid for.
He was somewhat hamstrung from the start by being at best second choice among MPs, and having the personality of a cabbage, and the voice of an asthmatic frog, and taking over literally days after 9/11. But he played a bad hand remarkably badly.
It is strange to think he is the only leader of the Conservative Party to have lost and therefore been actually directly removed by a confidence vote. Admittedly Thatcher, May, Johnson were all fatally damaged but technically they all won.
Come to think of it, I suppose Heath lost in 1975.
Listening to the clip in the header, istm to be startlingly complacent. To wit:
"You look at some of his biggest policy achievements from this past year — the elimination of Iran’s nuclear capacities, cracking down on the southern border, basically eliminating illegal immigration across the southern border, keeping women’s spaces for women — these are all issues where he is not just above water with voters, he’s overwhelmingly supported by 80% to 90% of Americans on these key issues.”
This is a few days before health insurance premiums start spiking by amounts varying from 10% (for some employer funded programmes) to 114% (on average) for the 24 million people on Affordable Care programmes (roughly household incomes under 60-90k depending on how many people).
I'm not sure if "strikes on Iran" will be a dominant political question, no matter how many wars Mr Trump invents.
I can’t wait til this fucking clown show is over.
I’m hoping the Supreme Court hands his his ass on tariffs.
I'm with you on that one.
I'm still sticking to my view that what it will really need is another period of similar import to reconstruction, as happened with the three Constitutional Amendments (13, 14, 15) from the 1960s which were subsequently - if I have my history right - undermined by Jim Crow laws.
'The incoming Archbishop of Canterbury has been urged to scrap plans to spend £100m over the Church of England's historical links to slavery.
In a letter seen by the Sunday Times, external, a group of Conservative MPs and peers has urged Dame Sarah Mullally to stop the Church from spending the money.
They claim the funds can only legally be spent on churches and the payment of clergy wages.
In a statement to the paper, the Church Commissioners said that arrangements for the fund were being "developed transparently - in line with charity law".
Mullally, who currently serves as the Bishop of London, will take up her new role as the first-ever female Archbishop of Canterbury next month.
The Church of England's slavery links proposal was announced in January 2023, external following the publication of a report into the Church's historical links to transatlantic slavery.
The report, external, requested by the Church's financing arm - the Church Commissioners - found that a fund established by Queen Anne in 1704 to help poor Anglican clergy was used to finance "great evil".
According to the report, the fund, known as Queen Anne's Bounty, invested in African chattel enslavement and took donations derived from it.
After the report's publication, the then-Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, said he was "deeply sorry" for the links and said action would be taken to address the Church's "shameful past".
The Church Commissioners announced a new £100m fund, committed over a nine-year period, to be spent on "a programme of investment, research and engagement" in communities damaged by the enslavement of African people during the transatlantic slave trade.
However, in their letter to Mullally, MPs and peers have urged the Church to focus on "strengthening parishes" rather than on pursuing what they describe as "high-profile and legally dubious vanity projects".' https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cx2e7w03067o
There are a couple of things going on here. I'm not at all sure there is a viable legal case - there will be various precedents in a period since 1704, but I doubt they will try it.
There's obviously populist right politics, with a seach for attention - this is people like Lam, Philp and Lord Biggar (Regent College Vancouver, and Latimer House, Cambridge, amongst others).
But politically it will be interesting, and for pressure they will leverage Parliamentary on normally non-contentious Church of England legislation in the Ecclesiastical Committee, and gum up the works.
That was a game Danny Kruger was playing last autumn.
Indeed, this is populism.
While sympathetic though to the MPs and peers pushing more funds for Parishes, if any income from the 1704 bounty can be directly linked to investments in slave trading companies I can see why the C of E commissioners are doing what they are proposing. That income, only that income mind, should be used to fund projects in Africa and the Caribbean and maybe support churches with large Black British congregations England.
I know a few aristocratic families maybe even the King are also looking at their assets to see if they can make reparations for any income from slavery. Older companies like Barclays and Greene King and Lloyds of London and RBS (now Natwest) are also potentially affected. Greene King is looking into reparations and Lloyds of London invests in BAME projects as a result, as did RBS. Oxbridge colleges and some of the oldest public schools too could be implicated, some colleges increasing scholarships for black students from the Caribbean and Africa https://www.theguardian.com/business/2020/jun/18/barclays-hsbc-and-lloyds-among-uk-banks-that-had-links-to-slavery
These cranks will never be satisfied by this virtuous rent seeking.
They want trillions not the odd £100 million.
Given them an inch and they will take a mile and we already have a sizeable minority in Labour supporting this.
Also the legal company involved in the so called equal pay shakedown is getting involved. It was part of the recent conference.
They can all see another gravy train at the taxpayers expense and the opportunity to white knight these nations and feel good.
I hold NatWest stock. They need to focus on managing the business and delivering for shareholders. Not this crap.
That's not a gravy train at the taxpayers' expense.
.
I never said it was. I said it’s something they can see. Especially given the trajectory. I think they are positioning themselves for what they expect to come.
There is a growing movement in Labour supporting this. The Guardian is a cheerleader for it too posting regular favourable articles.
There are regular conferences from the APPG supported by organisations who I think can see it coming.
History is littered with villains who sought to launder their reputations through charitable donations. Not just through money earned from slavery, but also piracy, child labour, appalling business practices, corruption in public office, seizure of monastic lands etc. But, I don’t see why that should be any concern of a charity in the here and now - provided that their endowment is actually being used for charitable purposes.
Mr Starmer's Government are planning a Coup de Kent.
They say the aim is to create a pretext for ministers to send in a central government commissioner to take over all or part of its operations.
Mr Tice said: “We have strong reason to believe what they’re trying to do is sow a loss of confidence in one of our councils and they’ve targeted Kent.
The truth is all the traditional "centre right" have left is the fact Trump annoys "the lefties" so much so they can troll away on that to their heart's content rather than asking themselves why the opposition to the "centre left" is now coming from the populists like Farage and Trump rather than from traditional conservatives like Badenoch.
I don't think it's controversial to say that the population in most democracies has turned away from centrist politicians, for understandable reasons, and that right-wing populists have been more successful at winning the support of discontented voters than left-wing populists.
Can't blame Righties for consoling themselves with that. I'm sure I'd feel the same if the roles were reversed.
This is something that interests me a great deal. Why does the populism of the right have greater appeal than that of the left?
My tentative theory. Because it speaks to feelings of ethno-cultural identity and nationalism whilst not scaring people (esp rich potential backers) with anti-capitalist rhetoric.
It gives people open licence to indulge their worst instincts while left populism still pays at least lip service to idealism (even if calculating opportunist can still use it to do bad stuff). So liberating to wave banners saying ‘kill em all’, set migrant hotels on fire, fire off Hitler salutes and aspire to traffic women. Best of all you can construct a shaky edifice of virtue by saying you’re slicing away the hypocrisy of woke lefties and cutting to the chase of what being a human being is all about.
And of course becoming the most passionate opponent of misogyny and homophobia wherever it rears its head so long as the head it's rearing is a Muslim one.
As opposed to those who reflexively mitigate those sentiments from said people so they can burnish their halo and proclaim their lack of prejudice as a badge of honour.
The truth is all the traditional "centre right" have left is the fact Trump annoys "the lefties" so much so they can troll away on that to their heart's content rather than asking themselves why the opposition to the "centre left" is now coming from the populists like Farage and Trump rather than from traditional conservatives like Badenoch.
I don't think it's controversial to say that the population in most democracies has turned away from centrist politicians, for understandable reasons, and that right-wing populists have been more successful at winning the support of discontented voters than left-wing populists.
Can't blame Righties for consoling themselves with that. I'm sure I'd feel the same if the roles were reversed.
Not in Canada or Australia earlier this year where the centre left won, nor in the French legislative elections where the far left won most seats.
Only in Argentina and Italy and Israel beyond the US have the rightwing populists clearly won in terms of the developed world
Is Donald Trump’s problem that he’s too good at his job? – politicalbetting.com
Kaylee McGhee White argued on "The Five" that President Donald Trump himself is to blame — because he's done too good of a job. https://t.co/dnRc2zKOUu
If you think he is working for the US then it’s been pretty poor.
If you think he is working for the Trump Organisation (to enrich himself and his family) and for himself (to ensure that he is centre of attention) then he’s done pretty
The truth is all the traditional "centre right" have left is the fact Trump annoys "the lefties" so much so they can troll away on that to their heart's content rather than asking themselves why the opposition to the "centre left" is now coming from the populists like Farage and Trump rather than from traditional conservatives like Badenoch.
I don't think it's controversial to say that the population in most democracies has turned away from centrist politicians, for understandable reasons, and that right-wing populists have been more successful at winning the support of discontented voters than left-wing populists.
Can't blame Righties for consoling themselves with that. I'm sure I'd feel the same if the roles were reversed.
This is something that interests me a great deal. Why does the populism of the right have greater appeal than that of the left?
My tentative theory. Because it speaks to feelings of ethno-cultural identity and nationalism whilst not scaring people (esp rich potential backers) with anti-capitalist rhetoric.
It gives people open licence to indulge their worst instincts while left populism still pays at least lip service to idealism (even if calculating opportunist can still use it to do bad stuff). So liberating to wave banners saying ‘kill em all’, set migrant hotels on fire, fire off Hitler salutes and aspire to traffic women. Best of all you can construct a shaky edifice of virtue by saying you’re slicing away the hypocrisy of woke lefties and cutting to the chase of what being a human being is all about.
And of course becoming the most passionate opponent of misogyny and homophobia wherever it rears its head so long as the head it's rearing is a Muslim one.
Mr Starmer's Government are planning a Coup de Kent.
They say the aim is to create a pretext for ministers to send in a central government commissioner to take over all or part of its operations.
Mr Tice said: “We have strong reason to believe what they’re trying to do is sow a loss of confidence in one of our councils and they’ve targeted Kent.
Mr Starmer's Government are planning a Coup de Kent.
They say the aim is to create a pretext for ministers to send in a central government commissioner to take over all or part of its operations.
Mr Tice said: “We have strong reason to believe what they’re trying to do is sow a loss of confidence in one of our councils and they’ve targeted Kent.
(Politically, I think they will be operating with 10 bargepoles joined together end to end.)
Finger on the pulse of Kent from his desert tent. Here's an idea. Stop people imagining you might be incompetent by being competent.
Kent has the advantage of being in the Eastern Hemisphere and therefore not being of interest to the USA (although what they're doing wrt Gaza, Iran, etc I don't know)
“Unfortunately the Iranian nuclear project isn’t dedicated to the extermination of the white man”.
For all the handwringing this morning about Trump, at least he instinctively knows that swathes of the west are committing societal suicide by pandering to these guys. Thanks to our woke immigration policies from Blair onwards, we have become a sewer for the human effluent that autocracies everywhere (correctly) want rid of.
Even at Xmas time, you can’t restrain yourself from calling refugees “human effluent”? What would Jesus do?
Imprison them and then export them to El Salvador?
I think IDS and Cleverly have got away with this one. BBC reporting "Conservatives" are wholly opposed to his return. Jenrick gets a specific name check. Starmer as the incumbent takes 100% of the responsibility for this.
Though I doubt Labour voters will care and Tories need some Labour tactical votes in seats Reform are challenging the Tory incumbent
I don't see Labour voters who want to avoid a right wing Reform Government will be minded to vote for candidates representing a right wing Conservative Party.
Mr Starmer's Government are planning a Coup de Kent.
They say the aim is to create a pretext for ministers to send in a central government commissioner to take over all or part of its operations.
Mr Tice said: “We have strong reason to believe what they’re trying to do is sow a loss of confidence in one of our councils and they’ve targeted Kent.
"Sir Keir Starmer has been criticised for welcoming the arrival of Egyptian pro-democracy activist Alaa Abdel Fattah to the UK - after historical social media messages emerged showing the campaigner apparently calling for Zionists to be killed."
Honestly Starmer’s statements were basically pro forma pablum for a PM.
What it really shows up is the sheer incompetence of the Downing Street machine. Can you imagine Ali Campbell, or Tim Bell, not have had a junior crawl through the social media history* to see if there was anything embarrassing? Or not escalating it (although it’s intriguing that Starmer’s first line of defence is to throw his team under the bus again). Unless they didn’t see anything wrong in his statements…
As an aside, why does Starmer insist on being called “Sir Keir”? I know it’s his official title and all that but no other knights that I know actually use it. Not even John Major or Tony Blair do…
I think there is a case to be made that many who lambast Trump actually agree with what he says but daren't admit it to themselves and their friends.
Go on, then, make the case.
Are you calling it "silent Trump syndrome"?
Sort of.. its your job to dispute what I say. How many Democrats think there's too many illegal immigrants.. too much shite being imported from China at or below cost probably....
There have been lots of people worried about the scale of US (and European) imports from China for many years. I also "agree" with Trump on motherhood and apple pie being good things.
This is not a concession to his world view or politics at all, or a sign that he was willing to say things out loud that other people thought but weren't willing to say.
I don't get the argument that being worried about a trade deficit with China is a uniquely Trumpian idea.
I understand the mindset of the Chinese communist party reasonably well having seen it up close. There are wings within it that have considered themselves at war with the US (ergo the west) for basically the whole 21st century. Much of their economic policy should be seen through this lens. The hoots of derision when that wet George Osborne rolled out the red carpet for them in London still ring in my ears today. I recall too Condi Rice apologising to a conference in Asia, for admitting China to the WTO, as the gravest mistake of the GW Bush era.
Trump’s focus on China is merely reflective of how I imagine the US security apparatus sees the world. Much of his foreign policy needs to be seen through this prism, that the US now considers itself in a great power struggle with an openly hostile budding superpower. So it is busy reshaping the global map and tying up loose ends and distractions.
At what cost though?
The same objectives could have been achieved without threatening Canada and Greenland and breaking the western alliance
The truth is all the traditional "centre right" have left is the fact Trump annoys "the lefties" so much so they can troll away on that to their heart's content rather than asking themselves why the opposition to the "centre left" is now coming from the populists like Farage and Trump rather than from traditional conservatives like Badenoch.
I don't think it's controversial to say that the population in most democracies has turned away from centrist politicians, for understandable reasons, and that right-wing populists have been more successful at winning the support of discontented voters than left-wing populists.
Can't blame Righties for consoling themselves with that. I'm sure I'd feel the same if the roles were reversed.
This is something that interests me a great deal. Why does the populism of the right have greater appeal than that of the left?
My tentative theory. Because it speaks to feelings of ethno-cultural identity and nationalism whilst not scaring people (esp rich potential backers) with anti-capitalist rhetoric.
I don't think it's anything to do with the ideas particularly. The Right have simply been better, more imaginative, while the Left have been stuck obsessing over the defeats of the 70s and 80s, and so they haven't argued their case well, or adjusted their ideas to fit the modern world.
You think anti-capitalism is as easy a sell in developed western societies as anti-immigration? I don't. I think without that identity and nationalism angle you're left with something that has quite a low ceiling of electoral support. But I could be wrong. Hope I am actually. Polanski will provide some evidence either way. He's charismatic and slick on the comms. Definitely a 'today' politician not stuck in a past era like eg Corbyn. So let's see where he polls compared to Farage at the GE.
A more imaginative left would have more to say about the future they want to create, rather than what they oppose in the status quo.
For example, the Right aren't simply anti-immigration. They are also selling an idealised vision of the past that has been lost and can be regained.
So in very simple terms I would say that the battle between the populist right and left would be between nostalgia and utopia - but the utopia is largely missing from the left's offer at the moment.
Yes, nice way of expressing it. And to tie back to my thesis, it takes an enormous amount of effort, skill, imagination and intellect to conceptualise and present a viable anti-capitalist model as the basis for economic life. That's why powerful critiques of capitalism are ten a penny but successful alternatives are hens teeth. It's a very high bar (once you've exhausted the rhetorical appeal of 'tax the rich'). The 'nostalgia' offer (with notes of xenophobia and parochialism) is much easier to formulate and get across. Make XYZ great again. Our country. Us v them. Borders. The flag. Our people. Charity begins at Home etc etc. It's not hard to promote all that stuff when there's dissatisfaction with the status quo.
Too many people do sufficiently well out of capitalism, tempered by social democracy, to make anti-capitalism electorally viable.
Is essentially what I'm saying yes. So for populism to succeed at the ballot box it needs that identity, nostalgia, nationalism angle, which means the right wing variety is favoured, the Trumps, Farages, LePens, Wilders, AfDs of this world. The xenophobia and nativism is a feature not a bug. It's key to their appeal. The populist left, who do not push these buttons, they might win a big city every now and again but that's the limit so long as there's little public appetite for radical left economic prescriptions.
But Populism feeds off discontent. If Populism is doing well it's because the electorate are not happy with the status quo, and don't feel that they are benefitting from it.
No reason why the Left shouldn't benefit from that as much as the Right.
Mr Starmer's Government are planning a Coup de Kent.
They say the aim is to create a pretext for ministers to send in a central government commissioner to take over all or part of its operations.
Mr Tice said: “We have strong reason to believe what they’re trying to do is sow a loss of confidence in one of our councils and they’ve targeted Kent.
Mr Starmer's Government are planning a Coup de Kent.
They say the aim is to create a pretext for ministers to send in a central government commissioner to take over all or part of its operations.
Mr Tice said: “We have strong reason to believe what they’re trying to do is sow a loss of confidence in one of our councils and they’ve targeted Kent.
(Politically, I think they will be operating with 10 bargepoles joined together end to end.)
Finger on the pulse of Kent from his desert tent. Here's an idea. Stop people imagining you might be incompetent by being competent.
The Government playbook is growingly sinister isn't it. Don't have elections, and where the mistake of having one has been made, try to undermine the undesirable outcome. Good luck to them trying to sell taking Kent into special measures when Labour is doing so swimmingly in Birmingham.
Canada were extremely fortunate to have the option of a genuinely competent and serious crisis manager at the time that their erstwhile closest ally, the US, was going off the rails and they took it. The refusal of Canada to submit to American bullying and responding in practical ways is both an object lesson for us and an inspiration of where we need to go. The United States is no longer a serious country. If they were they would not have elected Donald J Trump once, let alone twice. They are not a reliable friend, they are not really a friend at all.
Starmer has considered it his duty (no doubt with enormous personal distaste) to suck up to Trump, to shower him with flattery and praise and take trivial handouts in return. Carney has shown what serious people do when faced with such a disastrous change in a once reliable friend. It is a better path both for self respect and for practical results. It is the path we should follow.
The truth is all the traditional "centre right" have left is the fact Trump annoys "the lefties" so much so they can troll away on that to their heart's content rather than asking themselves why the opposition to the "centre left" is now coming from the populists like Farage and Trump rather than from traditional conservatives like Badenoch.
I don't think it's controversial to say that the population in most democracies has turned away from centrist politicians, for understandable reasons, and that right-wing populists have been more successful at winning the support of discontented voters than left-wing populists.
Can't blame Righties for consoling themselves with that. I'm sure I'd feel the same if the roles were reversed.
This is something that interests me a great deal. Why does the populism of the right have greater appeal than that of the left?
My tentative theory. Because it speaks to feelings of ethno-cultural identity and nationalism whilst not scaring people (esp rich potential backers) with anti-capitalist rhetoric.
I don't think it's anything to do with the ideas particularly. The Right have simply been better, more imaginative, while the Left have been stuck obsessing over the defeats of the 70s and 80s, and so they haven't argued their case well, or adjusted their ideas to fit the modern world.
You think anti-capitalism is as easy a sell in developed western societies as anti-immigration? I don't. I think without that identity and nationalism angle you're left with something that has quite a low ceiling of electoral support. But I could be wrong. Hope I am actually. Polanski will provide some evidence either way. He's charismatic and slick on the comms. Definitely a 'today' politician not stuck in a past era like eg Corbyn. So let's see where he polls compared to Farage at the GE.
A more imaginative left would have more to say about the future they want to create, rather than what they oppose in the status quo.
For example, the Right aren't simply anti-immigration. They are also selling an idealised vision of the past that has been lost and can be regained.
So in very simple terms I would say that the battle between the populist right and left would be between nostalgia and utopia - but the utopia is largely missing from the left's offer at the moment.
Yes, nice way of expressing it. And to tie back to my thesis, it takes an enormous amount of effort, skill, imagination and intellect to conceptualise and present a viable anti-capitalist model as the basis for economic life. That's why powerful critiques of capitalism are ten a penny but successful alternatives are hens teeth. It's a very high bar (once you've exhausted the rhetorical appeal of 'tax the rich'). The 'nostalgia' offer (with notes of xenophobia and parochialism) is much easier to formulate and get across. Make XYZ great again. Our country. Us v them. Borders. The flag. Our people. Charity begins at Home etc etc. It's not hard to promote all that stuff when there's dissatisfaction with the status quo.
Too many people do sufficiently well out of capitalism, tempered by social democracy, to make anti-capitalism electorally viable.
Is essentially what I'm saying yes. So for populism to succeed at the ballot box it needs that identity, nostalgia, nationalism angle, which means the right wing variety is favoured, the Trumps, Farages, LePens, Wilders, AfDs of this world. The xenophobia and nativism is a feature not a bug. It's key to their appeal. The populist left, who do not push these buttons, they might win a big city every now and again but that's the limit so long as there's little public appetite for radical left economic prescriptions.
But Populism feeds off discontent. If Populism is doing well it's because the electorate are not happy with the status quo, and don't feel that they are benefitting from it.
No reason why the Left shouldn't benefit from that as much as the Right.
There is a reason - that we're suffering an economic and social breakdown as a direct result of nearly three decades of state socialism. The right are urging a change of direction; the left are saying we didn't tax, spend and regulate enough. That's clearly not a convincing argument to most.
I think IDS and Cleverly have got away with this one. BBC reporting "Conservatives" are wholly opposed to his return. Jenrick gets a specific name check. Starmer as the incumbent takes 100% of the responsibility for this.
I think Starmer and Labour get away with it due to the time of year and no one really cares about the news.
They’re lucky.
IDS’s retraction really reflects poorly on his judgement.
That statement suggests he possesses some level of judgement.
I think there is a case to be made that many who lambast Trump actually agree with what he says but daren't admit it to themselves and their friends.
Go on, then, make the case.
Are you calling it "silent Trump syndrome"?
Sort of.. its your job to dispute what I say. How many Democrats think there's too many illegal immigrants.. too much shite being imported from China at or below cost probably....
There have been lots of people worried about the scale of US (and European) imports from China for many years. I also "agree" with Trump on motherhood and apple pie being good things.
This is not a concession to his world view or politics at all, or a sign that he was willing to say things out loud that other people thought but weren't willing to say.
I don't get the argument that being worried about a trade deficit with China is a uniquely Trumpian idea.
I understand the mindset of the Chinese communist party reasonably well having seen it up close. There are wings within it that have considered themselves at war with the US (ergo the west) for basically the whole 21st century. Much of their economic policy should be seen through this lens. The hoots of derision when that wet George Osborne rolled out the red carpet for them in London still ring in my ears today. I recall too Condi Rice apologising to a conference in Asia, for admitting China to the WTO, as the gravest mistake of the GW Bush era.
Trump’s focus on China is merely reflective of how I imagine the US security apparatus sees the world. Much of his foreign policy needs to be seen through this prism, that the US now considers itself in a great power struggle with an openly hostile budding superpower. So it is busy reshaping the global map and tying up loose ends and distractions.
Trump’s principal focus is on lining his own family’s pockets, and those of his immediate supporters, and pursuing grudges against those he thinks have wronged him.
If China offered the right price, Taiwan would be sacrificed by Trump.
The US already says Taiwan is part of One China, Taiwan has never been recognised as an independent nation by the US since the 1970s.
Japan is likely getting nukes, Taiwan should follow suit
You keep saying this. It has never been recognised as independent.
My understanding was the change in the 70s was whether PRC or ROC was regarded as the sovereign representative of the Chinese people?
However given that Taiwan/Formosa was only part of the Chinese Empire for a very short period of have thought self determination and an independent future is the “right” way forward. But that collides with heartland theory.
The truth is all the traditional "centre right" have left is the fact Trump annoys "the lefties" so much so they can troll away on that to their heart's content rather than asking themselves why the opposition to the "centre left" is now coming from the populists like Farage and Trump rather than from traditional conservatives like Badenoch.
I don't think it's controversial to say that the population in most democracies has turned away from centrist politicians, for understandable reasons, and that right-wing populists have been more successful at winning the support of discontented voters than left-wing populists.
Can't blame Righties for consoling themselves with that. I'm sure I'd feel the same if the roles were reversed.
This is something that interests me a great deal. Why does the populism of the right have greater appeal than that of the left?
My tentative theory. Because it speaks to feelings of ethno-cultural identity and nationalism whilst not scaring people (esp rich potential backers) with anti-capitalist rhetoric.
I don't think it's anything to do with the ideas particularly. The Right have simply been better, more imaginative, while the Left have been stuck obsessing over the defeats of the 70s and 80s, and so they haven't argued their case well, or adjusted their ideas to fit the modern world.
You think anti-capitalism is as easy a sell in developed western societies as anti-immigration? I don't. I think without that identity and nationalism angle you're left with something that has quite a low ceiling of electoral support. But I could be wrong. Hope I am actually. Polanski will provide some evidence either way. He's charismatic and slick on the comms. Definitely a 'today' politician not stuck in a past era like eg Corbyn. So let's see where he polls compared to Farage at the GE.
A more imaginative left would have more to say about the future they want to create, rather than what they oppose in the status quo.
For example, the Right aren't simply anti-immigration. They are also selling an idealised vision of the past that has been lost and can be regained.
So in very simple terms I would say that the battle between the populist right and left would be between nostalgia and utopia - but the utopia is largely missing from the left's offer at the moment.
Yes, nice way of expressing it. And to tie back to my thesis, it takes an enormous amount of effort, skill, imagination and intellect to conceptualise and present a viable anti-capitalist model as the basis for economic life. That's why powerful critiques of capitalism are ten a penny but successful alternatives are hens teeth. It's a very high bar (once you've exhausted the rhetorical appeal of 'tax the rich'). The 'nostalgia' offer (with notes of xenophobia and parochialism) is much easier to formulate and get across. Make XYZ great again. Our country. Us v them. Borders. The flag. Our people. Charity begins at Home etc etc. It's not hard to promote all that stuff when there's dissatisfaction with the status quo.
Too many people do sufficiently well out of capitalism, tempered by social democracy, to make anti-capitalism electorally viable.
Is essentially what I'm saying yes. So for populism to succeed at the ballot box it needs that identity, nostalgia, nationalism angle, which means the right wing variety is favoured, the Trumps, Farages, LePens, Wilders, AfDs of this world. The xenophobia and nativism is a feature not a bug. It's key to their appeal. The populist left, who do not push these buttons, they might win a big city every now and again but that's the limit so long as there's little public appetite for radical left economic prescriptions.
But Populism feeds off discontent. If Populism is doing well it's because the electorate are not happy with the status quo, and don't feel that they are benefitting from it.
No reason why the Left shouldn't benefit from that as much as the Right.
It does feed of discontent, yes. I've explained why I think the right is benefitting more than the left.
The truth is all the traditional "centre right" have left is the fact Trump annoys "the lefties" so much so they can troll away on that to their heart's content rather than asking themselves why the opposition to the "centre left" is now coming from the populists like Farage and Trump rather than from traditional conservatives like Badenoch.
I don't think it's controversial to say that the population in most democracies has turned away from centrist politicians, for understandable reasons, and that right-wing populists have been more successful at winning the support of discontented voters than left-wing populists.
Can't blame Righties for consoling themselves with that. I'm sure I'd feel the same if the roles were reversed.
This is something that interests me a great deal. Why does the populism of the right have greater appeal than that of the left?
My tentative theory. Because it speaks to feelings of ethno-cultural identity and nationalism whilst not scaring people (esp rich potential backers) with anti-capitalist rhetoric.
I don't think it's anything to do with the ideas particularly. The Right have simply been better, more imaginative, while the Left have been stuck obsessing over the defeats of the 70s and 80s, and so they haven't argued their case well, or adjusted their ideas to fit the modern world.
You think anti-capitalism is as easy a sell in developed western societies as anti-immigration? I don't. I think without that identity and nationalism angle you're left with something that has quite a low ceiling of electoral support. But I could be wrong. Hope I am actually. Polanski will provide some evidence either way. He's charismatic and slick on the comms. Definitely a 'today' politician not stuck in a past era like eg Corbyn. So let's see where he polls compared to Farage at the GE.
A more imaginative left would have more to say about the future they want to create, rather than what they oppose in the status quo.
For example, the Right aren't simply anti-immigration. They are also selling an idealised vision of the past that has been lost and can be regained.
So in very simple terms I would say that the battle between the populist right and left would be between nostalgia and utopia - but the utopia is largely missing from the left's offer at the moment.
Yes, nice way of expressing it. And to tie back to my thesis, it takes an enormous amount of effort, skill, imagination and intellect to conceptualise and present a viable anti-capitalist model as the basis for economic life. That's why powerful critiques of capitalism are ten a penny but successful alternatives are hens teeth. It's a very high bar (once you've exhausted the rhetorical appeal of 'tax the rich'). The 'nostalgia' offer (with notes of xenophobia and parochialism) is much easier to formulate and get across. Make XYZ great again. Our country. Us v them. Borders. The flag. Our people. Charity begins at Home etc etc. It's not hard to promote all that stuff when there's dissatisfaction with the status quo.
Too many people do sufficiently well out of capitalism, tempered by social democracy, to make anti-capitalism electorally viable.
If you rent your property and work in the public sector or live on benefits and don't have wealthy parents though, why wouldn't you vote for socialism? Plenty of those voters in inner cities and hence socialists win there.
Other than schoolboy politician Zack, and he will just accidentally deliver (like Corbyn before him) Conservative Governments, how do I vote to achieve my socialist panacea? Red-Tory Labour certainly aren't the answer.
Perhap enough voters understand that your "socialist panacea" is far more dangerous than well meaning - and ensure it never gets a chance to prove how disastrous it would be?
I think IDS and Cleverly have got away with this one. BBC reporting "Conservatives" are wholly opposed to his return. Jenrick gets a specific name check. Starmer as the incumbent takes 100% of the responsibility for this.
I think Starmer and Labour get away with it due to the time of year and no one really cares about the news.
They’re lucky.
IDS’s retraction really reflects poorly on his judgement.
That statement suggests he possesses some level of judgement.
"Sir Keir Starmer has been criticised for welcoming the arrival of Egyptian pro-democracy activist Alaa Abdel Fattah to the UK - after historical social media messages emerged showing the campaigner apparently calling for Zionists to be killed."
Honestly Starmer’s statements were basically pro forma pablum for a PM.
What it really shows up is the sheer incompetence of the Downing Street machine. Can you imagine Ali Campbell, or Tim Bell, not have had a junior crawl through the social media history* to see if there was anything embarrassing? Or not escalating it (although it’s intriguing that Starmer’s first line of defence is to throw his team under the bus again). Unless they didn’t see anything wrong in his statements…
As an aside, why does Starmer insist on being called “Sir Keir”? I know it’s his official title and all that but no other knights that I know actually use it. Not even John Major or Tony Blair do…
(* I know, pedant, but the point still stands)
Where are you getting that info that he insists on being called Sir Keir?
The truth is all the traditional "centre right" have left is the fact Trump annoys "the lefties" so much so they can troll away on that to their heart's content rather than asking themselves why the opposition to the "centre left" is now coming from the populists like Farage and Trump rather than from traditional conservatives like Badenoch.
I don't think it's controversial to say that the population in most democracies has turned away from centrist politicians, for understandable reasons, and that right-wing populists have been more successful at winning the support of discontented voters than left-wing populists.
Can't blame Righties for consoling themselves with that. I'm sure I'd feel the same if the roles were reversed.
Not in Canada or Australia earlier this year where the centre left won, nor in the French legislative elections where the far left won most seats.
Only in Argentina and Italy and Israel beyond the US have the rightwing populists clearly won in terms of the developed world
... and Chile
Also Turkey, Hungary, Mexico and Brazil.
And the Philippines and India, depending on your definition of 'developed'.
"Sir Keir Starmer has been criticised for welcoming the arrival of Egyptian pro-democracy activist Alaa Abdel Fattah to the UK - after historical social media messages emerged showing the campaigner apparently calling for Zionists to be killed."
Honestly Starmer’s statements were basically pro forma pablum for a PM.
What it really shows up is the sheer incompetence of the Downing Street machine. Can you imagine Ali Campbell, or Tim Bell, not have had a junior crawl through the social media history* to see if there was anything embarrassing? Or not escalating it (although it’s intriguing that Starmer’s first line of defence is to throw his team under the bus again). Unless they didn’t see anything wrong in his statements…
As an aside, why does Starmer insist on being called “Sir Keir”? I know it’s his official title and all that but no other knights that I know actually use it. Not even John Major or Tony Blair do…
(* I know, pedant, but the point still stands)
Where are you getting that info that he insists on being called Sir Keir?
Yeah I’m not having that. When he pretends that people come up to him in the street with their concerns, he makes out they call him ‘Keir’ in an everyman kind of way
Mr Starmer's Government are planning a Coup de Kent.
They say the aim is to create a pretext for ministers to send in a central government commissioner to take over all or part of its operations.
Mr Tice said: “We have strong reason to believe what they’re trying to do is sow a loss of confidence in one of our councils and they’ve targeted Kent.
The truth is all the traditional "centre right" have left is the fact Trump annoys "the lefties" so much so they can troll away on that to their heart's content rather than asking themselves why the opposition to the "centre left" is now coming from the populists like Farage and Trump rather than from traditional conservatives like Badenoch.
I don't think it's controversial to say that the population in most democracies has turned away from centrist politicians, for understandable reasons, and that right-wing populists have been more successful at winning the support of discontented voters than left-wing populists.
Can't blame Righties for consoling themselves with that. I'm sure I'd feel the same if the roles were reversed.
This is something that interests me a great deal. Why does the populism of the right have greater appeal than that of the left?
My tentative theory. Because it speaks to feelings of ethno-cultural identity and nationalism whilst not scaring people (esp rich potential backers) with anti-capitalist rhetoric.
I don't think it's anything to do with the ideas particularly. The Right have simply been better, more imaginative, while the Left have been stuck obsessing over the defeats of the 70s and 80s, and so they haven't argued their case well, or adjusted their ideas to fit the modern world.
You think anti-capitalism is as easy a sell in developed western societies as anti-immigration? I don't. I think without that identity and nationalism angle you're left with something that has quite a low ceiling of electoral support. But I could be wrong. Hope I am actually. Polanski will provide some evidence either way. He's charismatic and slick on the comms. Definitely a 'today' politician not stuck in a past era like eg Corbyn. So let's see where he polls compared to Farage at the GE.
A more imaginative left would have more to say about the future they want to create, rather than what they oppose in the status quo.
For example, the Right aren't simply anti-immigration. They are also selling an idealised vision of the past that has been lost and can be regained.
So in very simple terms I would say that the battle between the populist right and left would be between nostalgia and utopia - but the utopia is largely missing from the left's offer at the moment.
Yes, nice way of expressing it. And to tie back to my thesis, it takes an enormous amount of effort, skill, imagination and intellect to conceptualise and present a viable anti-capitalist model as the basis for economic life. That's why powerful critiques of capitalism are ten a penny but successful alternatives are hens teeth. It's a very high bar (once you've exhausted the rhetorical appeal of 'tax the rich'). The 'nostalgia' offer (with notes of xenophobia and parochialism) is much easier to formulate and get across. Make XYZ great again. Our country. Us v them. Borders. The flag. Our people. Charity begins at Home etc etc. It's not hard to promote all that stuff when there's dissatisfaction with the status quo.
Too many people do sufficiently well out of capitalism, tempered by social democracy, to make anti-capitalism electorally viable.
If you rent your property and work in the public sector or live on benefits and don't have wealthy parents though, why wouldn't you vote for socialism? Plenty of those voters in inner cities and hence socialists win there.
Other than schoolboy politician Zack, and he will just accidentally deliver (like Corbyn before him) Conservative Governments, how do I vote to achieve my socialist panacea? Red-Tory Labour certainly aren't the answer.
Perhap enough voters understand that your "socialist panacea" is far more dangerous than well meaning - and ensure it never gets a chance to prove how disastrous it would be?
My question was somewhat rhetorical. Although driving around Havana in 1950s Americana has a certain romance to it.
I doubt we will ever see the likes of the Little World of Don Camillo in the UK, although I have a growing concern that we might see the extreme right wing alternative under Comrade Farage.
"Sir Keir Starmer has been criticised for welcoming the arrival of Egyptian pro-democracy activist Alaa Abdel Fattah to the UK - after historical social media messages emerged showing the campaigner apparently calling for Zionists to be killed."
Honestly Starmer’s statements were basically pro forma pablum for a PM.
What it really shows up is the sheer incompetence of the Downing Street machine. Can you imagine Ali Campbell, or Tim Bell, not have had a junior crawl through the social media history* to see if there was anything embarrassing? Or not escalating it (although it’s intriguing that Starmer’s first line of defence is to throw his team under the bus again). Unless they didn’t see anything wrong in his statements…
As an aside, why does Starmer insist on being called “Sir Keir”? I know it’s his official title and all that but no other knights that I know actually use it. Not even John Major or Tony Blair do…
(* I know, pedant, but the point still stands)
Where are you getting that info that he insists on being called Sir Keir?
Yeah I’m not having that. When he pretends that people come up to him in the street with their concerns, he makes out they call him ‘Keir’ in an everyman kind of way
If I ever recognised him on the street I'm sure I'd end up addressing him as "Keir Ends In R" by accident. Sometimes something just sticks in the head.
'The incoming Archbishop of Canterbury has been urged to scrap plans to spend £100m over the Church of England's historical links to slavery.
In a letter seen by the Sunday Times, external, a group of Conservative MPs and peers has urged Dame Sarah Mullally to stop the Church from spending the money.
They claim the funds can only legally be spent on churches and the payment of clergy wages.
In a statement to the paper, the Church Commissioners said that arrangements for the fund were being "developed transparently - in line with charity law".
Mullally, who currently serves as the Bishop of London, will take up her new role as the first-ever female Archbishop of Canterbury next month.
The Church of England's slavery links proposal was announced in January 2023, external following the publication of a report into the Church's historical links to transatlantic slavery.
The report, external, requested by the Church's financing arm - the Church Commissioners - found that a fund established by Queen Anne in 1704 to help poor Anglican clergy was used to finance "great evil".
According to the report, the fund, known as Queen Anne's Bounty, invested in African chattel enslavement and took donations derived from it.
After the report's publication, the then-Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, said he was "deeply sorry" for the links and said action would be taken to address the Church's "shameful past".
The Church Commissioners announced a new £100m fund, committed over a nine-year period, to be spent on "a programme of investment, research and engagement" in communities damaged by the enslavement of African people during the transatlantic slave trade.
However, in their letter to Mullally, MPs and peers have urged the Church to focus on "strengthening parishes" rather than on pursuing what they describe as "high-profile and legally dubious vanity projects".' https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cx2e7w03067o
There are a couple of things going on here. I'm not at all sure there is a viable legal case - there will be various precedents in a period since 1704, but I doubt they will try it.
There's obviously populist right politics, with a seach for attention - this is people like Lam, Philp and Lord Biggar (Regent College Vancouver, and Latimer House, Cambridge, amongst others).
But politically it will be interesting, and for pressure they will leverage Parliamentary on normally non-contentious Church of England legislation in the Ecclesiastical Committee, and gum up the works.
That was a game Danny Kruger was playing last autumn.
Indeed, this is populism.
While sympathetic though to the MPs and peers pushing more funds for Parishes, if any income from the 1704 bounty can be directly linked to investments in slave trading companies I can see why the C of E commissioners are doing what they are proposing. That income, only that income mind, should be used to fund projects in Africa and the Caribbean and maybe support churches with large Black British congregations England.
I know a few aristocratic families maybe even the King are also looking at their assets to see if they can make reparations for any income from slavery. Older companies like Barclays and Greene King and Lloyds of London and RBS (now Natwest) are also potentially affected. Greene King is looking into reparations and Lloyds of London invests in BAME projects as a result, as did RBS. Oxbridge colleges and some of the oldest public schools too could be implicated, some colleges increasing scholarships for black students from the Caribbean and Africa https://www.theguardian.com/business/2020/jun/18/barclays-hsbc-and-lloyds-among-uk-banks-that-had-links-to-slavery
It is self-evident there was substantial fraud as we would call it now with the acquisition of properties with funds from Queen Anne's Bounty at the time. A property was bought by someone associated with the church and then miraculously it became worth 50% more when he sold it on to augment some curacy somewhere. This seems to have been standard practice in the dozens of examples I have seen. BUT the Bounty had to buy property for endowment within England as far as I know - they had to be within a half day riding distance from the benefice which they augmented. That rules out all normal purchases outside England. I think they might have made some extra-ordinary purchases in Ireland but know of no examples in the West Indies or New England.
There were I think 50 or 60 holdings bought by Queen Anne's Bounty in Ewecross wapentake of the West Riding alone. In part this was because they were generally smaller and so more of a size to augment a single benefice. But, many were split into two or even more complex divisions. This led to crazy situations where farmhouses were divided into two or a barn was re-designated as a house but with no sturctural change.
In the generality to have any chance of augmentation from the bounty you needed a private matching gift so even the premise of the assertion made by the current CofE is wrong. Financing of the CofE inevitably took a tumble with the Tithe Commutation Act of 1836 - truly it was feeding the fat church cat with slices of its own tail. After that it was only a mattr of time that the church would seize all the bounty lands from the Curacies to which they had been given. It was only after that that financial misconduct could and did occur and all that including tithe commutation that was post-slavery.
The real scandal of Queen Anne's Bounty was that it bought lands at the height of property values, allowed the central church to seize them and then sell them off in the 1920s and 1930s when they were worthless. That is the mad economics of Gordon Brown two generations before his time. The present CofE should be looking to recovering those moneys from the heirs of the Church Commissioners involved, because in the real world the disposal of the lands was just as fraudulent as their acquisition.
But, none of that had anything to do with slaves.
I’m still grumpy about the 12 houses in Fleet Street that the Diocese of London stole from my local church. They “managed” them on behalf of the church wardens, “lost” the title deeds and then “judged” that they had been granted to the Diocese by the local church in return for a fixed annual income of £12.50 per year. Which they still pay.
Mr Starmer's Government are planning a Coup de Kent.
They say the aim is to create a pretext for ministers to send in a central government commissioner to take over all or part of its operations.
Mr Tice said: “We have strong reason to believe what they’re trying to do is sow a loss of confidence in one of our councils and they’ve targeted Kent.
I fucking hate Christmas. Honestly, same idiocy every year. Absurd pressure on people to buy presents to give to people who don't want them. What a waste of time.
I fucking hate Christmas. Honestly, same idiocy every year. Absurd pressure on people to buy presents to give to people who don't want them. What a waste of time.
Comments
It doesn't fill me with any joy.
I think it was also an important model for how to do it for other institutions.
I'm generally impressed with how the Church Commissioners have operated since I have taken an interest (which is 1980s; I sill have my copy of Faith in the City), and they have been excellent investment managers. I'd be up for a debate about their support for the mission of the church another time - but not today
Yougov found 22% of Labour voters would tactically vote Conservative in a Conservative v Reform marginal seat. That number would likely be higher if say Cleverly was Tory leader
https://yougov.co.uk/politics/articles/51713-is-tactical-voting-more-of-a-threat-or-opportunity-for-reform-uk
There were I think 50 or 60 holdings bought by Queen Anne's Bounty in Ewecross wapentake of the West Riding alone. In part this was because they were generally smaller and so more of a size to augment a single benefice. But, many were split into two or even more complex divisions. This led to crazy situations where farmhouses were divided into two or a barn was re-designated as a house but with no sturctural change.
In the generality to have any chance of augmentation from the bounty you needed a private matching gift so even the premise of the assertion made by the current CofE is wrong. Financing of the CofE inevitably took a tumble with the Tithe Commutation Act of 1836 - truly it was feeding the fat church cat with slices of its own tail. After that it was only a mattr of time that the church would seize all the bounty lands from the Curacies to which they had been given. It was only after that that financial misconduct could and did occur and all that including tithe commutation that was post-slavery.
The real scandal of Queen Anne's Bounty was that it bought lands at the height of property values, allowed the central church to seize them and then sell them off in the 1920s and 1930s when they were worthless. That is the mad economics of Gordon Brown two generations before his time. The present CofE should be looking to recovering those moneys from the heirs of the Church Commissioners involved, because in the real world the disposal of the lands was just as fraudulent as their acquisition.
But, none of that had anything to do with slaves.
The Peronists were (and are) the Right Populists.
Milei is about the reaction to the mess that they (and chunks of the Left) created.
I think it unlikely that in practice, many left wing voters would cross over, to support the Conservatives.
Plenty of old Georgian rectories were also sold off too in the last century and now appear on the pages of Country Life or in Savills brochures and are owned by bankers, corporate lawyers, business executives etc.
Saying the C of E gained no income from investments in the slave trade in the 17th and 18th centuries though is unlikely even if the extent they did can be overstated
Most Labour or LD voters still would not vote Tory. In a Labour or LD held seat they would of course vote Labour or LD not Tory.
In a seat like mine though, Brentwood and Ongar, where the Tories won with Reform second even in 2024? Plenty of Labour or LD voters may hold their nose and vote for Tory MP Alex Burghart to beat Farage and Reform, as I said even more so if Cleverly led the Tories.
Trump is right that the US (and the UK) have very serious and long term problems with their balance of payments which are damaging future prosperity. He is very wrong to believe that wide scale (as opposed to targeted) tariffs are any kind of a solution to this.
There is also that the CCs have funds from sources other than Queen Anne's Bounty.
And - one we have not noted - that there is an invitation for other bodies to lock in to the structure the CCs are proposing to provide a total £1bn endowment, beyond the £100m seed corn the CCs are proposing.
“Unfortunately the Iranian nuclear project isn’t dedicated to the extermination of the white man”.
For all the handwringing this morning about Trump, at least he instinctively knows that swathes of the west are committing societal suicide by pandering to these guys. Thanks to our woke immigration policies from Blair onwards, we have become a sewer for the human effluent that autocracies everywhere (correctly) want rid of.
Not slightly snobbish, graduate, socially liberal globalists on a relatively high income like you
The French far left though won most seats in 2024, Corbyn got close to becoming PM in 2017 and Sanders nearly won the Dem nomination in 2016 and 2020 and Linke are growing in Germany. So it is not just rightwing populism making gains, even though the more centrist parties and leaders normally still scrape home
https://yougov.co.uk/politics/articles/51713-is-tactical-voting-more-of-a-threat-or-opportunity-for-reform-uk
They want trillions not the odd £100 million.
Given them an inch and they will take a mile and we already have a sizeable minority in Labour supporting this.
https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2025/dec/25/reparations-caribbean-africa-britain-restorative-justice-slavery
Charities are already gearing up for this. See job ad below.
https://jrct.org.uk/job-vacancies
Also the legal company involved in the so called equal pay shakedown is getting involved. It was part of the recent conference.
They can all see another gravy train at the taxpayers expense and the opportunity to white knight these nations and feel good.
I hold NatWest stock. They need to focus on managing the business and delivering for shareholders. Not this crap.
They’re lucky.
IDS’s retraction really reflects poorly on his judgement.
"You look at some of his biggest policy achievements from this past year — the elimination of Iran’s nuclear capacities, cracking down on the southern border, basically eliminating illegal immigration across the southern border, keeping women’s spaces for women — these are all issues where he is not just above water with voters, he’s overwhelmingly supported by 80% to 90% of Americans on these key issues.”
This is a few days before health insurance premiums start spiking by amounts varying from 10% (for some employer funded programmes) to 114% (on average) for the 24 million people on Affordable Care programmes (roughly household incomes under 60-90k depending on how many people).
I'm not sure if "strikes on Iran" will be a dominant political question, no matter how many wars Mr Trump invents.
JRCT operate from an endowment created by Joseph Rowntree, and they are looking at their own responsibility related to their own asset base which dates back to 1904.
Like you - I'm less comfortable with campaigning charities (or lawyers) trying to extract money from the general tax base. That needs to be a political conversation. Politicians are not very good at doing careful thought over a decently long period.
A September 2003 Yougov poll for instance had the Duncan Smith led Conservatives on 32% Labour on 31% and the LDs on 30%. UKIP on 2% and the BNP on 2%.
Kemi and the Tories would give their eye teeth for numbers like that now
https://d25d2506sfb94s.cloudfront.net/today_uk_import/YG-Archives-pol-dTel-SeptTracker-030929.pdf
NEW: Foreign Office condemns Abd el-Fattah’s past social media posts as ‘abhorrent’ but defends decision to let him travel to the UK
He was somewhat hamstrung from the start by being at best second choice among MPs, and having the personality of a cabbage, and the voice of an asthmatic frog, and taking over literally days after 9/11. But he played a bad hand remarkably badly.
It is strange to think he is the only leader of the Conservative Party to have lost and therefore been actually directly removed by a confidence vote. Admittedly Thatcher, May, Johnson were all fatally damaged but technically they all won.
There is a growing movement in Labour supporting this. The Guardian is a cheerleader for it too posting regular favourable articles.
There are regular conferences from the APPG supported by organisations who I think can see it coming.
I’m hoping the Supreme Court hands his his ass on tariffs.
I'm still sticking to my view that what it will really need is another period of similar import to reconstruction, as happened with the three Constitutional Amendments (13, 14, 15) from the 1860s which were subsequently - if I have my history right - undermined by Jim Crow laws.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reconstruction_Amendments
Mr Starmer's Government are planning a Coup de Kent.
They say the aim is to create a pretext for ministers to send in a central government commissioner to take over all or part of its operations.
Mr Tice said: “We have strong reason to believe what they’re trying to do is sow a loss of confidence in one of our councils and they’ve targeted Kent.
“We’re very suspicious they’re going to send in commissioners on a spurious narrative – either over the Christmas period or immediately into the New Year – and take control of the council, saying we’re incompetent and can’t run it.
https://www.kentonline.co.uk/kent/news/reform-accuses-labour-of-plotting-coup-for-control-of-kcc-334231/
(Politically, I think they will be operating with 10 bargepoles joined together end to end.)
In 2005 he would likely have done about the same as Howard did. Indeed in purely electoral terms in terms of progress made for the party between when the leader took office and when they left office this century, IDS was certainly a better Tory leader than Sunak and Truss and May and Hague and at the moment it looks like, Kemi too
Equally, Chamberlain won in 1940.
Position accordingly.
Hopefully he loses the house and we have a couple of years of not a lot.
If you think he is working for the US then it’s been pretty poor.
If you think he is working for the Trump Organisation (to enrich himself and his family) and for himself (to ensure that he is centre of attention) then he’s done pretty
Here's an idea. Stop people imagining you might be incompetent by being competent.
What it really shows up is the sheer incompetence of the Downing Street machine. Can you imagine Ali Campbell, or Tim Bell, not have had a junior crawl through the social media history* to see if there was anything embarrassing? Or not escalating it (although it’s intriguing that Starmer’s first line of defence is to throw his team under the bus again). Unless they didn’t see anything wrong in his statements…
As an aside, why does Starmer insist on being called “Sir Keir”? I know it’s his official title and all that but no other knights that I know actually use it. Not even John Major or Tony Blair do…
(* I know, pedant, but the point still stands)
The same objectives could have been achieved without threatening Canada and Greenland and breaking the western alliance
No reason why the Left shouldn't benefit from that as much as the Right.
The current Govt did it with Croydon.
Brum was 2023, along with Woking and Nottingham.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Section_114_notice
Canada were extremely fortunate to have the option of a genuinely competent and serious crisis manager at the time that their erstwhile closest ally, the US, was going off the rails and they took it. The refusal of Canada to submit to American bullying and responding in practical ways is both an object lesson for us and an inspiration of where we need to go. The United States is no longer a serious country. If they were they would not have elected Donald J Trump once, let alone twice. They are not a reliable friend, they are not really a friend at all.
Starmer has considered it his duty (no doubt with enormous personal distaste) to suck up to Trump, to shower him with flattery and praise and take trivial handouts in return. Carney has shown what serious people do when faced with such a disastrous change in a once reliable friend. It is a better path both for self respect and for practical results. It is the path we should follow.
However given that Taiwan/Formosa was only part of the Chinese Empire for a very short period of have thought self determination and an independent future is the “right” way forward. But that collides with heartland theory.
And the Philippines and India, depending on your definition of 'developed'.
It would be just politics based on political opponents.
I doubt we will ever see the likes of the Little World of Don Camillo in the UK, although I have a growing concern that we might see the extreme right wing alternative under Comrade Farage.
https://x.com/lewis_goodall/status/2005300670895968324?s=61