Constant screen stimulation is mentally exhausting.
It's damaging kids. We apparently spend £900mn on ed-tech it a year from the education budget - that's not small change.
We learned better with paper and textbooks (this shit was coming in during my middle years in school), and our grandparents learned even better with slates and reciting their times tables.
I'm not an old man yelling at clouds or anything, but given I don't think kids are any dumber than they were 30 years ago, when you hear about kids supposedly unable to concentrate beyond 15 minutes to even watch a film, which is self evidently damaging, there's an obvious culprit there.
Came here 20 years ago from Somalia, did voluntary work, got a degree, worked in the public sector, became a councillor and seems like he’s done a good job.
… in reply to…
Also: the Lord Mayor isn't really 'running' the city, is he? He's a figurehead - he gets to wear the mayoral regalia. He's like a municipal constitutional monarch.
I'm right up the immigration-sceptic end of the spectrum, but I can't get exercised about this at all. He looks to me very much like he's integrating. This is what we want, surely?
Same here
I think it’s nice to see a positive story of Somali migration and integration and actual economic participation for a change
In fact, this post crystallises one of my problems with Reform. I have so many complaints about immigration. The sheer numbers of undesirable immigrants crossing in boats. The criminal elements it introduces. The refusal to deal with the criminal elements robustly. The bending-over-backwards to put the needs and in some cases wants of (some) immigrants before the needs of our own people. The sheer amount of money we’re spending on immigrants (while, simultaneously, and puzzlingly, making it very hard and expensive for immigrants from places like Canada). The sheer squalor of places like Cheetham Hill. The depression of wages. But that very much isn’t to say I have an aversion to all immigrants or all immigration. I recognise the benefits. What I want is for immigrants to buy into Britishness. This is what most of the immigrants I know do. My daughter’s football and cricket clubs are peppered with immigrants and their families. For immigrants – like this guy in Britsol, willing to don silly British clothes – who want to buy into Britishness: this is absolutely brilliant. I love it. It’s not only great for Britain, but great that Britishness is something that people like this want to adopt. I think my views on this are perfectly mainstream.
A perfectly good case could have been made opposing ‘bad’ immigration while welcoming ‘good’. I’d say it would have been popular. Once again, Reform had an electoral open goal which they’ve judiciously aimed a good 45 degrees right of.
I agree, but I think what you miss is that Reform don’t want what we want. We see an integrated immigrant becoming Lord Mayor and think, "great, more of the same please".
For at least part of Reform’s coalition, the objection isn’t just illegal immigration or failed integration. It’s demographic and cultural change itself. From that perspective, Goodwin’s post isn’t a blunder at all. It’s entirely consistent.
To want to nudge the future in a particular direction is politics. To address what has already happened WRT who is lawfully living here by attacking its foundations and opposing assimilation, and wanting to demonise and reverse it is a starting point for the genuine fascist.
Yes, exactly. Opposing future policy is one thing. Looking at someone lawfully here, visibly assimilated, civically engaged, and then objecting anyway is quite another.
At that point the issue clearly isn’t failed integration. It’s that integration has succeeded, and some people still don’t like the result. - If successful assimilation still counts as a problem, then assimilation was never really the test.
Matt Goodwin @GoodwinMJ · Jun 29 A citizenship that belongs to everybody belongs to no one.
If anybody can become British, or English, then Britishness & Englishness no longer exist.
If the only thing that defines a people is that they welcome others then they no longer exist, either.
What an imbecile.
Citizenship does not belong to everybody, it belongs to everybody who has it only. A French citizen living in France is not British.
If anybody living here adopts British citizenship or being English then Britishness and Englishness do not cease to exist, it just has another person who is that. With the rights and responsibilities associated with citizenship.
He's not an imbecile, he's just trying to intellectually dress up a point that he doesn't want certain people to be able to become citizens so it sounds like a grand philosophical stance rather than just that he hates and fears those people.
There's definitely been a shift online in the last 18 months, and not a happy one, from arguments about assimilation and limitations on immigration, towards an argument that even assimilation is not enough, or is impossible, or is undesirable even if it is possible.
There's a market for open racism in this country which is larger than most people would like. It's not the majority like the Lowe's and Goodwins of the world think, but it's probably still a few million, and capable of drawing in even more if disguised.
Though to.an extent, it was always there. Remember Nigel moaning about people having conversations in (gasps) not-English on the train?
There's a case- though one I'd want to interrogate- for"it doesn't matter where people are from, as long as they integrate". The reason to interrogate that is... how and how far? There's a balance between being who you were and becoming who you are. (A bit of expat experience is very salutary for exploring that.)
But if Britishness is really something you'll can't attain for a few generations, even if you play entirely by the rules, then include me out
"“You cannot have more Milibands than women in the top jobs. That kind of thing matters”.
I am not re-entering this market, but given Labour’s longstanding women problem I think Andy Burnham might end up appointing a woman as Chancellor although I can understand why people might want to lump on Pat McFadden."
When you think about the fact that there are over 400 Labour MPs on the Government benches right now, what does it say about the current state of the Westminster Labour party when it decided it needed a former MP to be parachuted into Parliament via a by-election to make their current leader and PM to resign while they then sit back and allow him to crowned their new party leader and PM without even a contest? And then to even be considering parachuting another former Labour MP into the House of Lords to become the new Foreign Secretary?!
And lets not even get into Labour's long standing woman problem whereby over the last few decades they seem to have become a token equality PR exercise on the back benches and in the Cabinet while heaven forbid that one of them might finally be seen to be talented enough to be not only be considered but then elected as a Labour leader or PM. At this rate we might finally see a female US President before we see the Labour party elect a woman to lead their party.
And while the Labour party continue to go through the motions of performative activisim when it comes to claiming to be a progressive party they continue to be anything but while they keep selecting mediocre place men to the party leadership and token women to the Cabinet and backbenches. Say what you like about the Conservative party, but they designed a leadership frame work that awards achievement while ruthlessly making it far easier to oust failure while the Labour leadership framework achieves the exact opposite.
What ever you think of Margaret Thatcher, she will always remain an icon to me simple because as a teenager I watched her break the biggest political glass ceiling in UK politics to become leader of the Conservative party. But also back then if you had told me that nearly fifty years on the Labour party had still not managed to ever elect a female leader I would have been genuinely surprised, but now not so much....
I have often thought that Labour’s women problem is somehow emblematic of the problems with the left’s approach to solving problems in general - i.e. that it focuses on fixing outcomes rather than causes because doing so is easier than addressing said causes. Because, in turn, those causes often have cultural roots that require answering difficult personal or political questions.
The Conservatives have at this point had /three/ female prime ministers. (Yes, one of them was slightly batshit, but that’s even better evidence for their lack of sexism!) Labour? None.
Power is taken, not given: if you rely on someone else to grant you power then you don’t really have that power at all; it’s on loan & can be taken away from you at any time by the grantor. So it is with politicians & positions of power: they go to those who have the political power to take them. If Labour has been unable to appoint female politicians to high office, you can’t solve that problem by mandating appointments from amongst the few female politicians who do make it - all you are really doing is announcing that these people have no real power within the system & are dependent on others ceding power to them. If you decide to appoint them they will turn out to be toothless & ineffective because they have no actual power base to draw upon.
The interesting question is: why have no female politicians within the Labour party been able to take and hold (OK, 2 out 3) power in the way that Thatcher, May or Truss did? It’s entirely plausible that sexism is the answer, but it’s not the kind of sexism that the Party wants to acknowledge - it’s the sexism of a membership who don’t respect female politicians which in turn means that those female politicians cannot create a power base within the party which allows them to take power for themselves.
You cannot solve this with post-hoc thumb on the scales of political appointments because doing so ignores the real underlying power dynamics which exist whoever gets appointed.
(This analysis would probably make me persona non grata within the Party, which is why I would be a terrible politician.)
We're dealing with a very small sample size. It might be that the Tories and Labour have an equal propensity to having a female PM, but it's just chance that the Tories are on 3 and Labour on 0.
If we take Thatcher as breaking the glass ceiling and consider PMs since her...
Conservative: 4M, 3F Labour: 4M (shortly), 0F
That's not statistically significant (Fisher exact text, p = 0.26).
You can only apply a statistic test if you define the thing you’re testing against? “Party A is not sexist” is different to “Party A is less sexist than Party B”.
Since Thatcher there have been eleven appointed leaders of the Conservative party, of which 3 have been women. Over the same period, if we regard Burnham’s elevation as inevitable, there have been ten appointed leaders of the Labour party, none of whom have been women. (Two women have taken over the post as acting leader when the leader died or stepped down.)
Maybe I should ask my statistician offspring for some statistical tests to apply to these numbers
(It might be interesting to run the same analyses for cabinet post appointees.)
On those numbers, ignoring the acting leaders, you get a Fisher exact p of 0.21, not significant. That's testing are Parties A and B equally sexist.
If we're testing is Party A sexist... well, the numbers are still tiny. For the Conservative Party, 3/11 leaders gives an estimated proportion of female leaders = 27%, with a 95% confidence interval of 6-61%. We would naively expect 50% if the party is not sexist, so there's insufficient evidence here to claim the party is sexist.
Do that for Labour and 0/10 leaders and the estimated proportion of female leaders = 0% obviously, but with a 95% confidence interval of 0-31%. That is different from 50%, so perhaps that is evidence the party is sexist. However, I would argue that we know there was sexism in the past. Labour only got near to equal gender representation in the Parliamentary party in 2015 (and the Tories never have). Since then, we've had 4 Labour leaders (inc. Burnham), so again the estimated proportion of female leaders = 0%, but with a 95% confidence interval now of 0-60%. So there isn't evidence that the party is recently sexist in leader choice.
You can keep moving the statistical goal-posts as often as you like but the Conservatives have elected four female leaders & Labour have elected none. It’s a bad look.
Well, I've now corrected those numbers: see edit above.
I agree the optics are bad, whatever the stats say. The stats can't say much because the numbers are small.
Labour has spent decades championing descriptive representation, quotas, all-women shortlists and equality initiatives, yet has never elected a woman leader.
The Conservatives have traditionally opposed most of those mechanisms, yet have produced multiple female leaders.
That’s undeniably awkward for Labour’s self-image, even if it’s largely a function of contingent political history rather than institutional sexism.
My suspicion is the explanation is much more mundane than either side wants. Conservative leadership contests tend to be brutal Darwinian affairs where the parliamentary party and membership ruthlessly discard yesterday’s favourite. Labour leaderships are much more likely to produce a long period where one dominant faction controls succession. Once the dominant figures happened to be Blair, Brown, Miliband, Corbyn and Starmer, the opportunities for anyone else, male or female, became remarkably scarce.
Though on the other hand the Tory party defenestrated 3 of those 4 female leaders, with 4th on borrowed time...
Thinking about it further. It is over 4 decades since a Female Tory leader gained seats at a General Election.
On current polling Badenoch also loses seats.
Apart from Margaret Thatcher, has a female leader of any party gained seats?
To be fair, she gained seats in two of her three elections, and only dropped a few in 1987.
Starmer and Reeves did not keep Burnham in the loop on the DIP apparently:
Burnham says he 'didn't have all the details' of defence investment plan with £5bn black hole
Andy Burnham has said he was not included in the recent discussions about the government's defence investment plan, but emphasised how seriously he takes national security.
It comes after Sir Keir Starmer unveiled a £15bn defence spending uplift over the next four years - but left £4.7bn of that to be found at the next budget, which looks set to be Andy Burnham's first as PM.
Asked if he was aware that he would have this gap to fill, Burnham said: "I didn't have all of the details. I wasn't in all of the discussions.
"But to be fair, you know, the government had had an internal process ongoing."
Asked if he views it as a hand grenade thrown at him by the outgoing PM, Burnham replied: "I regard it as something that the country has to face up to very seriously.
"We're in a changing world. The nature of the threat is changing.
"What I can say to you tonight is I will take my responsibilities fully to fund the defence investment plan.
"If I am in the position to do so, I will take those responsibilities extremely seriously. No compromise on the security of the nation."
Amid rampant speculation about who will be in Andy Burnham's cabinet, assuming he is unopposed in the Labour leadership contest, the PM-in-waiting was asked if he has decided who his chancellor will be.
He told LBC: "No, I haven't made those decisions and deliberately not.
"I think it's been a little frustrating for me in the last sort of 10 days, two weeks, because kind of Westminster goes into its normal mode and it wants to endlessly speculate about personalities before policy and before direction.
"And I very deliberately have said, no, I'm going to set out a new direction for the country. And I did that on Monday."
Burnham said more broadly that he wants to include all wings of the Labour Party in his cabinet, pointing to his stated ambition to bring a "freshness" to politics.
"What I am putting forward here is a very different approach. When it comes to the political direction, that is not up for negotiation," he said.
"But then to deliver that change, to come back to your question, I want there to be the most inclusive approach to building the team so that all parts of the party, can see themselves represented within it."
Burnham denied that he is "disappointed" by the number of people in the Labour parliamentary party scrambling for jobs in his government, but added that he wants to ensure that people understand his political direction and "consider what their contribution to delivering that new direction for the country might be".
It's never been hard to criticise Farage, but the 'dodgy/corrupt' angle has never had so much ammunition.
The nice thing about it for debating purposes is there's very little counter beyond waving your hands a d saying it's not a bit deal.
On the flip side Trump is even more blatantly corrupt and still has 40% support.
On the flip flip side Farage seems to have a ceiling of 35% or so. And most of the other 65% seem willing to vote tactically to keep him out.
But I suspect he's done for now anyway; the crypto £5m will never go away.
On the flip flip flip side, Governments lose, oppositions don't win. Starmer is on his way out, Burnham provides hope. That has resulted in some soft Reform support going back to Labour, and if Burnham proves to be a muppet, it will probably go back again.
Amid rampant speculation about who will be in Andy Burnham's cabinet, assuming he is unopposed in the Labour leadership contest, the PM-in-waiting was asked if he has decided who his chancellor will be.
He told LBC: "No, I haven't made those decisions and deliberately not.
"I think it's been a little frustrating for me in the last sort of 10 days, two weeks, because kind of Westminster goes into its normal mode and it wants to endlessly speculate about personalities before policy and before direction.
"And I very deliberately have said, no, I'm going to set out a new direction for the country. And I did that on Monday."
Burnham said more broadly that he wants to include all wings of the Labour Party in his cabinet, pointing to his stated ambition to bring a "freshness" to politics.
"What I am putting forward here is a very different approach. When it comes to the political direction, that is not up for negotiation," he said.
"But then to deliver that change, to come back to your question, I want there to be the most inclusive approach to building the team so that all parts of the party, can see themselves represented within it."
Burnham denied that he is "disappointed" by the number of people in the Labour parliamentary party scrambling for jobs in his government, but added that he wants to ensure that people understand his political direction and "consider what their contribution to delivering that new direction for the country might be".
I read that as bad for Milliband. Maybe that's just me.
Amid rampant speculation about who will be in Andy Burnham's cabinet, assuming he is unopposed in the Labour leadership contest, the PM-in-waiting was asked if he has decided who his chancellor will be.
He told LBC: "No, I haven't made those decisions and deliberately not.
"I think it's been a little frustrating for me in the last sort of 10 days, two weeks, because kind of Westminster goes into its normal mode and it wants to endlessly speculate about personalities before policy and before direction.
"And I very deliberately have said, no, I'm going to set out a new direction for the country. And I did that on Monday."
Burnham said more broadly that he wants to include all wings of the Labour Party in his cabinet, pointing to his stated ambition to bring a "freshness" to politics.
"What I am putting forward here is a very different approach. When it comes to the political direction, that is not up for negotiation," he said.
"But then to deliver that change, to come back to your question, I want there to be the most inclusive approach to building the team so that all parts of the party, can see themselves represented within it."
Burnham denied that he is "disappointed" by the number of people in the Labour parliamentary party scrambling for jobs in his government, but added that he wants to ensure that people understand his political direction and "consider what their contribution to delivering that new direction for the country might be".
This is slightly disingenuous. Without 'endless speculation about personalities' Burnham would not be an MP, there would not have been a by election, and he would not be PM later this month.
I see we're back to that old chestnut of Jus Sanguinis vs Jus Soli.
The Americans do the latter - most of the rest of the world does the former so the answer to @Andy_JS's question from earlier - if the child of two British parents is born in Japan, that does not make the child Japanese though I believe if the child lives in Japan for 10 years, he or she can apply for Japanese citizenship.
Jus sanguinis is being taken too literally by some - a child born of parents, one of whom is a citizen, is a citizen and that right of citizenship includes EU Settled Status or ILR. Those seeking to remove ILR status would therefore remove citizenship of children born to parents with ILR status and that may be the intention, I don't know.
Came here 20 years ago from Somalia, did voluntary work, got a degree, worked in the public sector, became a councillor and seems like he’s done a good job.
… in reply to…
Also: the Lord Mayor isn't really 'running' the city, is he? He's a figurehead - he gets to wear the mayoral regalia. He's like a municipal constitutional monarch.
I'm right up the immigration-sceptic end of the spectrum, but I can't get exercised about this at all. He looks to me very much like he's integrating. This is what we want, surely?
Same here
I think it’s nice to see a positive story of Somali migration and integration and actual economic participation for a change
In fact, this post crystallises one of my problems with Reform. I have so many complaints about immigration. The sheer numbers of undesirable immigrants crossing in boats. The criminal elements it introduces. The refusal to deal with the criminal elements robustly. The bending-over-backwards to put the needs and in some cases wants of (some) immigrants before the needs of our own people. The sheer amount of money we’re spending on immigrants (while, simultaneously, and puzzlingly, making it very hard and expensive for immigrants from places like Canada). The sheer squalor of places like Cheetham Hill. The depression of wages. But that very much isn’t to say I have an aversion to all immigrants or all immigration. I recognise the benefits. What I want is for immigrants to buy into Britishness. This is what most of the immigrants I know do. My daughter’s football and cricket clubs are peppered with immigrants and their families. For immigrants – like this guy in Britsol, willing to don silly British clothes – who want to buy into Britishness: this is absolutely brilliant. I love it. It’s not only great for Britain, but great that Britishness is something that people like this want to adopt. I think my views on this are perfectly mainstream.
A perfectly good case could have been made opposing ‘bad’ immigration while welcoming ‘good’. I’d say it would have been popular. Once again, Reform had an electoral open goal which they’ve judiciously aimed a good 45 degrees right of.
I agree, but I think what you miss is that Reform don’t want what we want. We see an integrated immigrant becoming Lord Mayor and think, "great, more of the same please".
For at least part of Reform’s coalition, the objection isn’t just illegal immigration or failed integration. It’s demographic and cultural change itself. From that perspective, Goodwin’s post isn’t a blunder at all. It’s entirely consistent.
To want to nudge the future in a particular direction is politics. To address what has already happened WRT who is lawfully living here by attacking its foundations and opposing assimilation, and wanting to demonise and reverse it is a starting point for the genuine fascist.
Yes, exactly. Opposing future policy is one thing. Looking at someone lawfully here, visibly assimilated, civically engaged, and then objecting anyway is quite another.
At that point the issue clearly isn’t failed integration. It’s that integration has succeeded, and some people still don’t like the result. - If successful assimilation still counts as a problem, then assimilation was never really the test.
But people absolutely can become British. Britishness is a civic nationality that has long encompassed multiple ethnicities and national identities. If Britishness cannot be acquired, then successful integration is impossible by definition.
Now the real question, is he conflating nationality with ethnicity accidentally or deliberately
Nearly no one defines being English, Welsh, Scottish in terms of ethnicity.
The question of whether post-war non-white immigrants can be described as "English" as distinct from "British" crops up rather a lot, especially when the anti-woke right post. I think they can and I advance Rishi Sunak as the prime example. Others do not, including IIRC Suella Braverman, and definitely Goodwin and others of similar stance. We need a word for this group.
My wife has never considered herself to be English. British by naturalisation, yes, but not English.
IIRC John Barnes, star of the England team, has never considered himself to be English.
John Barnes was born in Jamaica and only moved to England when he was 12, so you can see why he might say that.
Well fair enough, but I'd say he shouldn't really have been playing for England then.
I don't know what the rules are to play football for England, it's never been a realistic enough prospect for me to look into it.
anybody in last couple of hundred years was English or anyone spent a few weeks there and if brilliant then you are in
"“You cannot have more Milibands than women in the top jobs. That kind of thing matters”.
I am not re-entering this market, but given Labour’s longstanding women problem I think Andy Burnham might end up appointing a woman as Chancellor although I can understand why people might want to lump on Pat McFadden."
When you think about the fact that there are over 400 Labour MPs on the Government benches right now, what does it say about the current state of the Westminster Labour party when it decided it needed a former MP to be parachuted into Parliament via a by-election to make their current leader and PM to resign while they then sit back and allow him to crowned their new party leader and PM without even a contest? And then to even be considering parachuting another former Labour MP into the House of Lords to become the new Foreign Secretary?!
And lets not even get into Labour's long standing woman problem whereby over the last few decades they seem to have become a token equality PR exercise on the back benches and in the Cabinet while heaven forbid that one of them might finally be seen to be talented enough to be not only be considered but then elected as a Labour leader or PM. At this rate we might finally see a female US President before we see the Labour party elect a woman to lead their party.
And while the Labour party continue to go through the motions of performative activisim when it comes to claiming to be a progressive party they continue to be anything but while they keep selecting mediocre place men to the party leadership and token women to the Cabinet and backbenches. Say what you like about the Conservative party, but they designed a leadership frame work that awards achievement while ruthlessly making it far easier to oust failure while the Labour leadership framework achieves the exact opposite.
What ever you think of Margaret Thatcher, she will always remain an icon to me simple because as a teenager I watched her break the biggest political glass ceiling in UK politics to become leader of the Conservative party. But also back then if you had told me that nearly fifty years on the Labour party had still not managed to ever elect a female leader I would have been genuinely surprised, but now not so much....
I have often thought that Labour’s women problem is somehow emblematic of the problems with the left’s approach to solving problems in general - i.e. that it focuses on fixing outcomes rather than causes because doing so is easier than addressing said causes. Because, in turn, those causes often have cultural roots that require answering difficult personal or political questions.
The Conservatives have at this point had /three/ female prime ministers. (Yes, one of them was slightly batshit, but that’s even better evidence for their lack of sexism!) Labour? None.
Power is taken, not given: if you rely on someone else to grant you power then you don’t really have that power at all; it’s on loan & can be taken away from you at any time by the grantor. So it is with politicians & positions of power: they go to those who have the political power to take them. If Labour has been unable to appoint female politicians to high office, you can’t solve that problem by mandating appointments from amongst the few female politicians who do make it - all you are really doing is announcing that these people have no real power within the system & are dependent on others ceding power to them. If you decide to appoint them they will turn out to be toothless & ineffective because they have no actual power base to draw upon.
The interesting question is: why have no female politicians within the Labour party been able to take and hold (OK, 2 out 3) power in the way that Thatcher, May or Truss did? It’s entirely plausible that sexism is the answer, but it’s not the kind of sexism that the Party wants to acknowledge - it’s the sexism of a membership who don’t respect female politicians which in turn means that those female politicians cannot create a power base within the party which allows them to take power for themselves.
You cannot solve this with post-hoc thumb on the scales of political appointments because doing so ignores the real underlying power dynamics which exist whoever gets appointed.
(This analysis would probably make me persona non grata within the Party, which is why I would be a terrible politician.)
We're dealing with a very small sample size. It might be that the Tories and Labour have an equal propensity to having a female PM, but it's just chance that the Tories are on 3 and Labour on 0.
If we take Thatcher as breaking the glass ceiling and consider PMs since her...
Conservative: 4M, 3F Labour: 4M (shortly), 0F
That's not statistically significant (Fisher exact text, p = 0.26).
You can only apply a statistic test if you define the thing you’re testing against? “Party A is not sexist” is different to “Party A is less sexist than Party B”.
Since Thatcher there have been eleven appointed leaders of the Conservative party, of which 3 have been women. Over the same period, if we regard Burnham’s elevation as inevitable, there have been ten appointed leaders of the Labour party, none of whom have been women. (Two women have taken over the post as acting leader when the leader died or stepped down.)
Maybe I should ask my statistician offspring for some statistical tests to apply to these numbers
(It might be interesting to run the same analyses for cabinet post appointees.)
On those numbers, ignoring the acting leaders, you get a Fisher exact p of 0.21, not significant. That's testing are Parties A and B equally sexist.
If we're testing is Party A sexist... well, the numbers are still tiny. For the Conservative Party, 3/11 leaders gives an estimated proportion of female leaders = 27%, with a 95% confidence interval of 6-61%. We would naively expect 50% if the party is not sexist, so there's insufficient evidence here to claim the party is sexist.
Do that for Labour and 0/10 leaders and the estimated proportion of female leaders = 0% obviously, but with a 95% confidence interval of 0-31%. That is different from 50%, so perhaps that is evidence the party is sexist. However, I would argue that we know there was sexism in the past. Labour only got near to equal gender representation in the Parliamentary party in 2015 (and the Tories never have). Since then, we've had 4 Labour leaders (inc. Burnham), so again the estimated proportion of female leaders = 0%, but with a 95% confidence interval now of 0-60%. So there isn't evidence that the party is recently sexist in leader choice.
You can keep moving the statistical goal-posts as often as you like but the Conservatives have elected four female leaders & Labour have elected none. It’s a bad look.
Well, I've now corrected those numbers: see edit above.
I agree the optics are bad, whatever the stats say. The stats can't say much because the numbers are small.
Labour has spent decades championing descriptive representation, quotas, all-women shortlists and equality initiatives, yet has never elected a woman leader.
The Conservatives have traditionally opposed most of those mechanisms, yet have produced multiple female leaders.
That’s undeniably awkward for Labour’s self-image, even if it’s largely a function of contingent political history rather than institutional sexism.
My suspicion is the explanation is much more mundane than either side wants. Conservative leadership contests tend to be brutal Darwinian affairs where the parliamentary party and membership ruthlessly discard yesterday’s favourite. Labour leaderships are much more likely to produce a long period where one dominant faction controls succession. Once the dominant figures happened to be Blair, Brown, Miliband, Corbyn and Starmer, the opportunities for anyone else, male or female, became remarkably scarce.
Though on the other hand the Tory party defenestrated 3 of those 4 female leaders, with 4th on borrowed time...
Thinking about it further. It is over 4 decades since a Female Tory leader gained seats at a General Election.
On current polling Badenoch also loses seats.
Apart from Margaret Thatcher, has a female leader of any party gained seats?
Nicola Sturgeon.
Went from 6 MPs to 56 MPs although she probably didn't notice given her attention to detail.
The SNP do tend to yo-yo on seats thesedays, might be 30-50 next time up from 8, if they're lucky, though with any luck Labour will rebound to make that much harder.
on your bike, the London regional labour donkeys can just GTF
Betting post, WRT the year of next election. Does anyone think that about 7/1 is value for a general election in 2028? Older readers will remember the time when it was normal for PMs to go to the country after four years, sometime in the fifth year, if the going looked prosperous. By the end of 2028 Burnham will have done two years+ and UK plc will be a cornucopia of joy and prosperity tiny bit more hopeful than it is now.
Last time around the Scottish pubs got licence extensions to watch an England game at an odd time. I suspect that the Scottish government will do the same again but they need to make a quick decision. There is going to be a severe shortage of maracas, sombreros and dodgy moustaches.
I was in Inverness during the 2007 rugby World Cup. I wasn’t really that confident England would beat Australia so wasn’t really keen to watch in an Inverness pub. But while shopping with the wife I saw it was close so went in. Was amazed to find the pub mostly supporting England. I can only assume a lot of English folk around. Now I think about it I was there for the Loch Ness mrarthon. So maybe there were a few runners like me. Main point it there will surely be people interested in watching it.
not in the middle of the night for me. I did not either for Scotland , absolute crap
Returned home today. Strange to think, looking at the crowds of commuters all enjoying a sunny Thursday evening drink outside Liverpool Street, that this may be the coolest day between now and at least mid July.
We had complaints when we were in the high 30s, which London is not designed for, but the forecast over the next 2 weeks of consistent high 20s and dipping into low 30s with no rain for 2 weeks is idyllic.
London isn't designed for anything, it evolved over time like everywhere else, with the exception of places like Milton Keynes!
Good argument for evolution I'd say!
Seriously millions of people from the UK go abroad to places like Greece and Turkey every year and go outside and sit drinking beer in 30+ temps everyday for a fortnight.
Why on earth are we getting or knickers in a twist over the lack of AC as if hot weather is a cloud of radioactive fallout!
As ever, Harrington makes good points, some of which may be true and/or I agree with. Let's go thru them
1: the disciplinary and control models She makes a good point: pre-21st century oppression took the form of discipline - if you do not obey I will hurt you - wheras 21st century takes the form of control - if you do not obey I will change things so you stop. The former requires treating individuals as units (or sub-units of a group), the latter requires or enables treating characteristics of individuals, not the individuals as individuals per se. I'm not sure I agree with this and put forward religious wars or slavery as counter-examples.
2: the importance of borders I agree with her but I would point out that i) this requires a re-adoption of nationalism - if you have borders, then they have to bound something - and ii) that the importance of borders is a subset of the importance of thresholds. Which brings me to...
3: the boundary between “child” and “adult” At last somebody else has pointed this out. I have been saying for years on PB that we need a bright line between "this person is a child" and "this person is a adult". Everybody disagrees with me, but blurring the line results in adultised children and infantilised adults and makes the country stupid.
4: doctor-worship In my assisted suicide article, I pointed out that you solve moral problems with judges, not doctors. But British doctor-worship results in doctors coercing outcomes against patient consent, which is exactly wrong. And her example was...
5: the draft conversion bill This bill contains a clause permitting coerced conversion if the person is a medic working in healthcare [section 1 subsection (3)]. Gender-critical people object to this because it permits doctors but not parents to convert children. Trans people object to this because it permits doctors to convert children. I object to this because everybody has forgotten that gay conversion therapy used to be permitted medical policy and this clause would have permitted Alan Turing's conversion therapy. Harrington is OK with the trans conversion but is correct with the doctor-worship bit.
6: right-wing use of control models She may be onto something when she says the right can use control models to engineer society, eg on criminal gangs. Me being a person who likes freedom I dislike things that cropped up in "Minority Report" and prefer "innocent until proven guilty", "no pre-crime", "punish the guilty but not the innocent" and the primacy of freedom of the individual and autonomy under the law.
Came here 20 years ago from Somalia, did voluntary work, got a degree, worked in the public sector, became a councillor and seems like he’s done a good job.
… in reply to…
Also: the Lord Mayor isn't really 'running' the city, is he? He's a figurehead - he gets to wear the mayoral regalia. He's like a municipal constitutional monarch.
I'm right up the immigration-sceptic end of the spectrum, but I can't get exercised about this at all. He looks to me very much like he's integrating. This is what we want, surely?
Same here
I think it’s nice to see a positive story of Somali migration and integration and actual economic participation for a change
In fact, this post crystallises one of my problems with Reform. I have so many complaints about immigration. The sheer numbers of undesirable immigrants crossing in boats. The criminal elements it introduces. The refusal to deal with the criminal elements robustly. The bending-over-backwards to put the needs and in some cases wants of (some) immigrants before the needs of our own people. The sheer amount of money we’re spending on immigrants (while, simultaneously, and puzzlingly, making it very hard and expensive for immigrants from places like Canada). The sheer squalor of places like Cheetham Hill. The depression of wages. But that very much isn’t to say I have an aversion to all immigrants or all immigration. I recognise the benefits. What I want is for immigrants to buy into Britishness. This is what most of the immigrants I know do. My daughter’s football and cricket clubs are peppered with immigrants and their families. For immigrants – like this guy in Britsol, willing to don silly British clothes – who want to buy into Britishness: this is absolutely brilliant. I love it. It’s not only great for Britain, but great that Britishness is something that people like this want to adopt. I think my views on this are perfectly mainstream.
A perfectly good case could have been made opposing ‘bad’ immigration while welcoming ‘good’. I’d say it would have been popular. Once again, Reform had an electoral open goal which they’ve judiciously aimed a good 45 degrees right of.
I agree, but I think what you miss is that Reform don’t want what we want. We see an integrated immigrant becoming Lord Mayor and think, "great, more of the same please".
For at least part of Reform’s coalition, the objection isn’t just illegal immigration or failed integration. It’s demographic and cultural change itself. From that perspective, Goodwin’s post isn’t a blunder at all. It’s entirely consistent.
To want to nudge the future in a particular direction is politics. To address what has already happened WRT who is lawfully living here by attacking its foundations and opposing assimilation, and wanting to demonise and reverse it is a starting point for the genuine fascist.
Yes, exactly. Opposing future policy is one thing. Looking at someone lawfully here, visibly assimilated, civically engaged, and then objecting anyway is quite another.
At that point the issue clearly isn’t failed integration. It’s that integration has succeeded, and some people still don’t like the result. - If successful assimilation still counts as a problem, then assimilation was never really the test.
But people absolutely can become British. Britishness is a civic nationality that has long encompassed multiple ethnicities and national identities. If Britishness cannot be acquired, then successful integration is impossible by definition.
Now the real question, is he conflating nationality with ethnicity accidentally or deliberately
Nearly no one defines being English, Welsh, Scottish in terms of ethnicity.
The question of whether post-war non-white immigrants can be described as "English" as distinct from "British" crops up rather a lot, especially when the anti-woke right post. I think they can and I advance Rishi Sunak as the prime example. Others do not, including IIRC Suella Braverman, and definitely Goodwin and others of similar stance. We need a word for this group.
My wife has never considered herself to be English. British by naturalisation, yes, but not English.
IIRC John Barnes, star of the England team, has never considered himself to be English.
John Barnes was born in Jamaica and only moved to England when he was 12, so you can see why he might say that.
Well fair enough, but I'd say he shouldn't really have been playing for England then.
I don't know what the rules are to play football for England, it's never been a realistic enough prospect for me to look into it.
anybody in last couple of hundred years was English or anyone spent a few weeks there and if brilliant then you are in
Are you calling the England team brilliant then?
At last, some optimism for our chances. I am no longer alone.
Came here 20 years ago from Somalia, did voluntary work, got a degree, worked in the public sector, became a councillor and seems like he’s done a good job.
… in reply to…
Also: the Lord Mayor isn't really 'running' the city, is he? He's a figurehead - he gets to wear the mayoral regalia. He's like a municipal constitutional monarch.
I'm right up the immigration-sceptic end of the spectrum, but I can't get exercised about this at all. He looks to me very much like he's integrating. This is what we want, surely?
Same here
I think it’s nice to see a positive story of Somali migration and integration and actual economic participation for a change
In fact, this post crystallises one of my problems with Reform. I have so many complaints about immigration. The sheer numbers of undesirable immigrants crossing in boats. The criminal elements it introduces. The refusal to deal with the criminal elements robustly. The bending-over-backwards to put the needs and in some cases wants of (some) immigrants before the needs of our own people. The sheer amount of money we’re spending on immigrants (while, simultaneously, and puzzlingly, making it very hard and expensive for immigrants from places like Canada). The sheer squalor of places like Cheetham Hill. The depression of wages. But that very much isn’t to say I have an aversion to all immigrants or all immigration. I recognise the benefits. What I want is for immigrants to buy into Britishness. This is what most of the immigrants I know do. My daughter’s football and cricket clubs are peppered with immigrants and their families. For immigrants – like this guy in Britsol, willing to don silly British clothes – who want to buy into Britishness: this is absolutely brilliant. I love it. It’s not only great for Britain, but great that Britishness is something that people like this want to adopt. I think my views on this are perfectly mainstream.
A perfectly good case could have been made opposing ‘bad’ immigration while welcoming ‘good’. I’d say it would have been popular. Once again, Reform had an electoral open goal which they’ve judiciously aimed a good 45 degrees right of.
I agree, but I think what you miss is that Reform don’t want what we want. We see an integrated immigrant becoming Lord Mayor and think, "great, more of the same please".
For at least part of Reform’s coalition, the objection isn’t just illegal immigration or failed integration. It’s demographic and cultural change itself. From that perspective, Goodwin’s post isn’t a blunder at all. It’s entirely consistent.
To want to nudge the future in a particular direction is politics. To address what has already happened WRT who is lawfully living here by attacking its foundations and opposing assimilation, and wanting to demonise and reverse it is a starting point for the genuine fascist.
Yes, exactly. Opposing future policy is one thing. Looking at someone lawfully here, visibly assimilated, civically engaged, and then objecting anyway is quite another.
At that point the issue clearly isn’t failed integration. It’s that integration has succeeded, and some people still don’t like the result. - If successful assimilation still counts as a problem, then assimilation was never really the test.
Matt Goodwin @GoodwinMJ · Jun 29 A citizenship that belongs to everybody belongs to no one.
If anybody can become British, or English, then Britishness & Englishness no longer exist.
If the only thing that defines a people is that they welcome others then they no longer exist, either.
What an imbecile.
Citizenship does not belong to everybody, it belongs to everybody who has it only. A French citizen living in France is not British.
If anybody living here adopts British citizenship or being English then Britishness and Englishness do not cease to exist, it just has another person who is that. With the rights and responsibilities associated with citizenship.
He's not an imbecile, he's just trying to intellectually dress up a point that he doesn't want certain people to be able to become citizens so it sounds like a grand philosophical stance rather than just that he hates and fears those people.
There's definitely been a shift online in the last 18 months, and not a happy one, from arguments about assimilation and limitations on immigration, towards an argument that even assimilation is not enough, or is impossible, or is undesirable even if it is possible.
There's a market for open racism in this country which is larger than most people would like. It's not the majority like the Lowe's and Goodwins of the world think, but it's probably still a few million, and capable of drawing in even more if disguised.
Though to.an extent, it was always there. Remember Nigel moaning about people having conversations in (gasps) not-English on the train?
There's a case- though one I'd want to interrogate- for"it doesn't matter where people are from, as long as they integrate". The reason to interrogate that is... how and how far? There's a balance between being who you were and becoming who you are. (A bit of expat experience is very salutary for exploring that.)
But if Britishness is really something you'll can't attain for a few generations, even if you play entirely by the rules, then include me out
Amid rampant speculation about who will be in Andy Burnham's cabinet, assuming he is unopposed in the Labour leadership contest, the PM-in-waiting was asked if he has decided who his chancellor will be.
He told LBC: "No, I haven't made those decisions and deliberately not.
"I think it's been a little frustrating for me in the last sort of 10 days, two weeks, because kind of Westminster goes into its normal mode and it wants to endlessly speculate about personalities before policy and before direction.
"And I very deliberately have said, no, I'm going to set out a new direction for the country. And I did that on Monday."
Burnham said more broadly that he wants to include all wings of the Labour Party in his cabinet, pointing to his stated ambition to bring a "freshness" to politics.
"What I am putting forward here is a very different approach. When it comes to the political direction, that is not up for negotiation," he said.
"But then to deliver that change, to come back to your question, I want there to be the most inclusive approach to building the team so that all parts of the party, can see themselves represented within it."
Burnham denied that he is "disappointed" by the number of people in the Labour parliamentary party scrambling for jobs in his government, but added that he wants to ensure that people understand his political direction and "consider what their contribution to delivering that new direction for the country might be".
I read that as bad for Milliband. Maybe that's just me.
Hopefully for a good few more of the donkeys as well, the cabinet is full of dross.
Returned home today. Strange to think, looking at the crowds of commuters all enjoying a sunny Thursday evening drink outside Liverpool Street, that this may be the coolest day between now and at least mid July.
We had complaints when we were in the high 30s, which London is not designed for, but the forecast over the next 2 weeks of consistent high 20s and dipping into low 30s with no rain for 2 weeks is idyllic.
It was looking that way, but let me reel off the UK maxima from this evening’s 15 day GFS run (actual maxes are usually 1 or 2C above these). Starts quite nice, then just keeps going.
27,30,30,32,32,34,32,33,36,37,35,35,35,37,40,33
The temperatures in France are a whole other ballgame. Not looking forward to being there mid-month. It’s already 32C in the downstairs study according to my weather station.
Come on, you know that accuracy drops off massively after 5 days. That 40 has as much validity as the endless beasts from the east in winter. It may happen, sure, but let’s see.
Even 32 is warmer than I would like for London. I think the sensible London max is about 27.
Came here 20 years ago from Somalia, did voluntary work, got a degree, worked in the public sector, became a councillor and seems like he’s done a good job.
… in reply to…
Also: the Lord Mayor isn't really 'running' the city, is he? He's a figurehead - he gets to wear the mayoral regalia. He's like a municipal constitutional monarch.
I'm right up the immigration-sceptic end of the spectrum, but I can't get exercised about this at all. He looks to me very much like he's integrating. This is what we want, surely?
Same here
I think it’s nice to see a positive story of Somali migration and integration and actual economic participation for a change
In fact, this post crystallises one of my problems with Reform. I have so many complaints about immigration. The sheer numbers of undesirable immigrants crossing in boats. The criminal elements it introduces. The refusal to deal with the criminal elements robustly. The bending-over-backwards to put the needs and in some cases wants of (some) immigrants before the needs of our own people. The sheer amount of money we’re spending on immigrants (while, simultaneously, and puzzlingly, making it very hard and expensive for immigrants from places like Canada). The sheer squalor of places like Cheetham Hill. The depression of wages. But that very much isn’t to say I have an aversion to all immigrants or all immigration. I recognise the benefits. What I want is for immigrants to buy into Britishness. This is what most of the immigrants I know do. My daughter’s football and cricket clubs are peppered with immigrants and their families. For immigrants – like this guy in Britsol, willing to don silly British clothes – who want to buy into Britishness: this is absolutely brilliant. I love it. It’s not only great for Britain, but great that Britishness is something that people like this want to adopt. I think my views on this are perfectly mainstream.
A perfectly good case could have been made opposing ‘bad’ immigration while welcoming ‘good’. I’d say it would have been popular. Once again, Reform had an electoral open goal which they’ve judiciously aimed a good 45 degrees right of.
I agree, but I think what you miss is that Reform don’t want what we want. We see an integrated immigrant becoming Lord Mayor and think, "great, more of the same please".
For at least part of Reform’s coalition, the objection isn’t just illegal immigration or failed integration. It’s demographic and cultural change itself. From that perspective, Goodwin’s post isn’t a blunder at all. It’s entirely consistent.
To want to nudge the future in a particular direction is politics. To address what has already happened WRT who is lawfully living here by attacking its foundations and opposing assimilation, and wanting to demonise and reverse it is a starting point for the genuine fascist.
Yes, exactly. Opposing future policy is one thing. Looking at someone lawfully here, visibly assimilated, civically engaged, and then objecting anyway is quite another.
At that point the issue clearly isn’t failed integration. It’s that integration has succeeded, and some people still don’t like the result. - If successful assimilation still counts as a problem, then assimilation was never really the test.
Matt Goodwin @GoodwinMJ · Jun 29 A citizenship that belongs to everybody belongs to no one.
If anybody can become British, or English, then Britishness & Englishness no longer exist.
If the only thing that defines a people is that they welcome others then they no longer exist, either.
What an imbecile.
Citizenship does not belong to everybody, it belongs to everybody who has it only. A French citizen living in France is not British.
If anybody living here adopts British citizenship or being English then Britishness and Englishness do not cease to exist, it just has another person who is that. With the rights and responsibilities associated with citizenship.
He's not an imbecile, he's just trying to intellectually dress up a point that he doesn't want certain people to be able to become citizens so it sounds like a grand philosophical stance rather than just that he hates and fears those people.
There's definitely been a shift online in the last 18 months, and not a happy one, from arguments about assimilation and limitations on immigration, towards an argument that even assimilation is not enough, or is impossible, or is undesirable even if it is possible.
There's a market for open racism in this country which is larger than most people would like. It's not the majority like the Lowe's and Goodwins of the world think, but it's probably still a few million, and capable of drawing in even more if disguised.
Though to.an extent, it was always there. Remember Nigel moaning about people having conversations in (gasps) not-English on the train?
There's a case- though one I'd want to interrogate- for"it doesn't matter where people are from, as long as they integrate". The reason to interrogate that is... how and how far? There's a balance between being who you were and becoming who you are. (A bit of expat experience is very salutary for exploring that.)
But if Britishness is really something you'll can't attain for a few generations, even if you play entirely by the rules, then include me out
Well I would have preferred it if the Manchester Arena bomber, for example, had chosen to integrate rather tham rejecting British culture. I like British culture. I don't want it to turn into someghing else. People are welcome to come here if they choose to adopt British culture, but if they would prefer to reject it in favour of their own, I'd rather they didn't come. I don't think this is unreasonable.
Explains succinctly why the Scottish political class will never preside over independence. Ultimately not enough voters are going to support an establishment that has become a sect.
"One of the most important speeches made by a Scottish public figure in recent years was largely ignored by the media. You’re left to conclude that the message and the person delivering it made them feel uncomfortable. It really ought to have done.
"The speaker was Kate Forbes, former deputy first minister, and perhaps the most able politician to have emerged from Scotland in the devolved era. More than a few people I know who voted No in 2014 have told me they’d seriously consider moving to Yes at a future referendum campaign if Ms Forbes was leading it.
"She commanded a level of popular personal support across Scotland that those party colleagues who betrayed her could never match. People who disagreed with Ms Forbes’ economic vision for Scotland admired her for sticking by her principles.
"Instead, the party leadership turned on her and hounded her out of politics because she was a Christian who hadn’t – unlike her boss, John Swinney – compromised her values and beliefs for personal gain."
Came here 20 years ago from Somalia, did voluntary work, got a degree, worked in the public sector, became a councillor and seems like he’s done a good job.
… in reply to…
Also: the Lord Mayor isn't really 'running' the city, is he? He's a figurehead - he gets to wear the mayoral regalia. He's like a municipal constitutional monarch.
I'm right up the immigration-sceptic end of the spectrum, but I can't get exercised about this at all. He looks to me very much like he's integrating. This is what we want, surely?
Same here
I think it’s nice to see a positive story of Somali migration and integration and actual economic participation for a change
In fact, this post crystallises one of my problems with Reform. I have so many complaints about immigration. The sheer numbers of undesirable immigrants crossing in boats. The criminal elements it introduces. The refusal to deal with the criminal elements robustly. The bending-over-backwards to put the needs and in some cases wants of (some) immigrants before the needs of our own people. The sheer amount of money we’re spending on immigrants (while, simultaneously, and puzzlingly, making it very hard and expensive for immigrants from places like Canada). The sheer squalor of places like Cheetham Hill. The depression of wages. But that very much isn’t to say I have an aversion to all immigrants or all immigration. I recognise the benefits. What I want is for immigrants to buy into Britishness. This is what most of the immigrants I know do. My daughter’s football and cricket clubs are peppered with immigrants and their families. For immigrants – like this guy in Britsol, willing to don silly British clothes – who want to buy into Britishness: this is absolutely brilliant. I love it. It’s not only great for Britain, but great that Britishness is something that people like this want to adopt. I think my views on this are perfectly mainstream.
A perfectly good case could have been made opposing ‘bad’ immigration while welcoming ‘good’. I’d say it would have been popular. Once again, Reform had an electoral open goal which they’ve judiciously aimed a good 45 degrees right of.
I agree, but I think what you miss is that Reform don’t want what we want. We see an integrated immigrant becoming Lord Mayor and think, "great, more of the same please".
For at least part of Reform’s coalition, the objection isn’t just illegal immigration or failed integration. It’s demographic and cultural change itself. From that perspective, Goodwin’s post isn’t a blunder at all. It’s entirely consistent.
To want to nudge the future in a particular direction is politics. To address what has already happened WRT who is lawfully living here by attacking its foundations and opposing assimilation, and wanting to demonise and reverse it is a starting point for the genuine fascist.
Yes, exactly. Opposing future policy is one thing. Looking at someone lawfully here, visibly assimilated, civically engaged, and then objecting anyway is quite another.
At that point the issue clearly isn’t failed integration. It’s that integration has succeeded, and some people still don’t like the result. - If successful assimilation still counts as a problem, then assimilation was never really the test.
Matt Goodwin @GoodwinMJ · Jun 29 A citizenship that belongs to everybody belongs to no one.
If anybody can become British, or English, then Britishness & Englishness no longer exist.
If the only thing that defines a people is that they welcome others then they no longer exist, either.
What an imbecile.
Citizenship does not belong to everybody, it belongs to everybody who has it only. A French citizen living in France is not British.
If anybody living here adopts British citizenship or being English then Britishness and Englishness do not cease to exist, it just has another person who is that. With the rights and responsibilities associated with citizenship.
He's not an imbecile, he's just trying to intellectually dress up a point that he doesn't want certain people to be able to become citizens so it sounds like a grand philosophical stance rather than just that he hates and fears those people.
There's definitely been a shift online in the last 18 months, and not a happy one, from arguments about assimilation and limitations on immigration, towards an argument that even assimilation is not enough, or is impossible, or is undesirable even if it is possible.
There's a market for open racism in this country which is larger than most people would like. It's not the majority like the Lowe's and Goodwins of the world think, but it's probably still a few million, and capable of drawing in even more if disguised.
Though to.an extent, it was always there. Remember Nigel moaning about people having conversations in (gasps) not-English on the train?
There's a case- though one I'd want to interrogate- for"it doesn't matter where people are from, as long as they integrate". The reason to interrogate that is... how and how far? There's a balance between being who you were and becoming who you are. (A bit of expat experience is very salutary for exploring that.)
But if Britishness is really something you'll can't attain for a few generations, even if you play entirely by the rules, then include me out
Amid rampant speculation about who will be in Andy Burnham's cabinet, assuming he is unopposed in the Labour leadership contest, the PM-in-waiting was asked if he has decided who his chancellor will be.
He told LBC: "No, I haven't made those decisions and deliberately not.
"I think it's been a little frustrating for me in the last sort of 10 days, two weeks, because kind of Westminster goes into its normal mode and it wants to endlessly speculate about personalities before policy and before direction.
"And I very deliberately have said, no, I'm going to set out a new direction for the country. And I did that on Monday."
Burnham said more broadly that he wants to include all wings of the Labour Party in his cabinet, pointing to his stated ambition to bring a "freshness" to politics.
"What I am putting forward here is a very different approach. When it comes to the political direction, that is not up for negotiation," he said.
"But then to deliver that change, to come back to your question, I want there to be the most inclusive approach to building the team so that all parts of the party, can see themselves represented within it."
Burnham denied that he is "disappointed" by the number of people in the Labour parliamentary party scrambling for jobs in his government, but added that he wants to ensure that people understand his political direction and "consider what their contribution to delivering that new direction for the country might be".
This is slightly disingenuous. Without 'endless speculation about personalities' Burnham would not be an MP, there would not have been a by election, and he would not be PM later this month.
I guess he means he would like that to stop now he has reached the top - a classic leader.
Returned home today. Strange to think, looking at the crowds of commuters all enjoying a sunny Thursday evening drink outside Liverpool Street, that this may be the coolest day between now and at least mid July.
We had complaints when we were in the high 30s, which London is not designed for, but the forecast over the next 2 weeks of consistent high 20s and dipping into low 30s with no rain for 2 weeks is idyllic.
It was looking that way, but let me reel off the UK maxima from this evening’s 15 day GFS run (actual maxes are usually 1 or 2C above these). Starts quite nice, then just keeps going.
27,30,30,32,32,34,32,33,36,37,35,35,35,37,40,33
The temperatures in France are a whole other ballgame. Not looking forward to being there mid-month. It’s already 32C in the downstairs study according to my weather station.
Come on, you know that accuracy drops off massively after 5 days. That 40 has as much validity as the endless beasts from the east in winter. It may happen, sure, but let’s see.
Even 32 is warmer than I would like for London. I think the sensible London max is about 27.
As ever, Harrington makes good points, some of which may be true and/or I agree with. Let's go thru them
1: the disciplinary and control models She makes a good point: pre-21st century oppression took the form of discipline - if you do not obey I will hurt you - wheras 21st century takes the form of control - if you do not obey I will change things so you stop. The former requires treating individuals as units (or sub-units of a group), the latter requires or enables treating characteristics of individuals, not the individuals as individuals per se. I'm not sure I agree with this and put forward religious wars or slavery as counter-examples.
2: the importance of borders I agree with her but I would point out that i) this requires a re-adoption of nationalism - if you have borders, then they have to bound something - and ii) that the importance of borders is a subset of the importance of thresholds. Which brings me to...
3: the boundary between “child” and “adult” At last somebody else has pointed this out. I have been saying for years on PB that we need a bright line between "this person is a child" and "this person is a adult". Everybody disagrees with me, but blurring the line results in adultised children and infantilised adults and makes the country stupid.
4: doctor-worship In my assisted suicide article, I pointed out that you solve moral problems with judges, not doctors. But British doctor-worship results in doctors coercing outcomes against patient consent, which is exactly wrong. And her example was...
5: the draft conversion bill This bill contains a clause permitting coerced conversion if the person is a medic working in healthcare [section 1 subsection (3)]. Gender-critical people object to this because it permits doctors but not parents to convert children. Trans people object to this because it permits doctors to convert children. I object to this because everybody has forgotten that gay conversion therapy used to be permitted medical policy and this clause would have permitted Alan Turing's conversion therapy. Harrington is OK with the trans conversion but is correct with the doctor-worship bit.
6: right-wing use of control models She may be onto something when she says the right can use control models to engineer society, eg on criminal gangs. Me being a person who likes freedom I dislike things that cropped up in "Minority Report" and prefer "innocent until proven guilty", "no pre-crime", "punish the guilty but not the innocent" and the primacy of freedom of the individual and autonomy under the law.
But I think the right have forgotten that.
On point 3 I don't think there will ever be a crystal clear line that applies in all contexts, but I do think our conflicting attitudes have led to the phenomenon you describe, where we simultaneously talk up the views, rights, and maturity of young people, whilst also treating everyone (but particularly younger adults) like they cannot be trusted to be adults.
Betting post, WRT the year of next election. Does anyone think that about 7/1 is value for a general election in 2028? Older readers will remember the time when it was normal for PMs to go to the country after four years, sometime in the fifth year, if the going looked prosperous. By the end of 2028 Burnham will have done two years+ and UK plc will be a cornucopia of joy and prosperity tiny bit more hopeful than it is now.
Yes it is value, but I do not need to wait two years (or more) for a 7/1 shot.
I've always found Matt Goodwin fairly unlikeable, even some years ago. This Tweet seems like he's just begging to be cancelled and persecuted by someone, anyone!
Clearly he'd be more comfortable in Restore, and they'd be quite glad to have him - if they're going to find 600 candidates they will be fielding a lot worse.
I would imagine Mr Lowe will have some standards and a failed Reform candidate probably doesn't meet them.
If you think that Rupert Lowe has 595 odd MP candidates who are better and less nutty than Matt Goodwin, I have a bridge to sell you.
I've always found Matt Goodwin fairly unlikeable, even some years ago. This Tweet seems like he's just begging to be cancelled and persecuted by someone, anyone!
Clearly he'd be more comfortable in Restore, and they'd be quite glad to have him - if they're going to find 600 candidates they will be fielding a lot worse.
I would imagine Mr Lowe will have some standards and a failed Reform candidate probably doesn't meet them.
If you think that Rupert Lowe has 595 odd MP candidates who are better and less nutty than Matt Goodwin, I have a bridge to sell you.
I think it's quite likely that Lowe has 595 odd MP candidates.
Returned home today. Strange to think, looking at the crowds of commuters all enjoying a sunny Thursday evening drink outside Liverpool Street, that this may be the coolest day between now and at least mid July.
We had complaints when we were in the high 30s, which London is not designed for, but the forecast over the next 2 weeks of consistent high 20s and dipping into low 30s with no rain for 2 weeks is idyllic.
It was looking that way, but let me reel off the UK maxima from this evening’s 15 day GFS run (actual maxes are usually 1 or 2C above these). Starts quite nice, then just keeps going.
27,30,30,32,32,34,32,33,36,37,35,35,35,37,40,33
The temperatures in France are a whole other ballgame. Not looking forward to being there mid-month. It’s already 32C in the downstairs study according to my weather station.
Come on, you know that accuracy drops off massively after 5 days. That 40 has as much validity as the endless beasts from the east in winter. It may happen, sure, but let’s see.
Even 32 is warmer than I would like for London. I think the sensible London max is about 27.
Mortality goes up past something like 23.
It largely depends on the humidity.
85F in dry heat can be pleasant, while 85F with 95% humidity is torture.
But it's something nobody ever seems to talk about.
Came here 20 years ago from Somalia, did voluntary work, got a degree, worked in the public sector, became a councillor and seems like he’s done a good job.
… in reply to…
Also: the Lord Mayor isn't really 'running' the city, is he? He's a figurehead - he gets to wear the mayoral regalia. He's like a municipal constitutional monarch.
I'm right up the immigration-sceptic end of the spectrum, but I can't get exercised about this at all. He looks to me very much like he's integrating. This is what we want, surely?
Same here
I think it’s nice to see a positive story of Somali migration and integration and actual economic participation for a change
In fact, this post crystallises one of my problems with Reform. I have so many complaints about immigration. The sheer numbers of undesirable immigrants crossing in boats. The criminal elements it introduces. The refusal to deal with the criminal elements robustly. The bending-over-backwards to put the needs and in some cases wants of (some) immigrants before the needs of our own people. The sheer amount of money we’re spending on immigrants (while, simultaneously, and puzzlingly, making it very hard and expensive for immigrants from places like Canada). The sheer squalor of places like Cheetham Hill. The depression of wages. But that very much isn’t to say I have an aversion to all immigrants or all immigration. I recognise the benefits. What I want is for immigrants to buy into Britishness. This is what most of the immigrants I know do. My daughter’s football and cricket clubs are peppered with immigrants and their families. For immigrants – like this guy in Britsol, willing to don silly British clothes – who want to buy into Britishness: this is absolutely brilliant. I love it. It’s not only great for Britain, but great that Britishness is something that people like this want to adopt. I think my views on this are perfectly mainstream.
A perfectly good case could have been made opposing ‘bad’ immigration while welcoming ‘good’. I’d say it would have been popular. Once again, Reform had an electoral open goal which they’ve judiciously aimed a good 45 degrees right of.
I agree, but I think what you miss is that Reform don’t want what we want. We see an integrated immigrant becoming Lord Mayor and think, "great, more of the same please".
For at least part of Reform’s coalition, the objection isn’t just illegal immigration or failed integration. It’s demographic and cultural change itself. From that perspective, Goodwin’s post isn’t a blunder at all. It’s entirely consistent.
To want to nudge the future in a particular direction is politics. To address what has already happened WRT who is lawfully living here by attacking its foundations and opposing assimilation, and wanting to demonise and reverse it is a starting point for the genuine fascist.
Yes, exactly. Opposing future policy is one thing. Looking at someone lawfully here, visibly assimilated, civically engaged, and then objecting anyway is quite another.
At that point the issue clearly isn’t failed integration. It’s that integration has succeeded, and some people still don’t like the result. - If successful assimilation still counts as a problem, then assimilation was never really the test.
Matt Goodwin @GoodwinMJ · Jun 29 A citizenship that belongs to everybody belongs to no one.
If anybody can become British, or English, then Britishness & Englishness no longer exist.
If the only thing that defines a people is that they welcome others then they no longer exist, either.
What an imbecile.
Citizenship does not belong to everybody, it belongs to everybody who has it only. A French citizen living in France is not British.
If anybody living here adopts British citizenship or being English then Britishness and Englishness do not cease to exist, it just has another person who is that. With the rights and responsibilities associated with citizenship.
He's not an imbecile, he's just trying to intellectually dress up a point that he doesn't want certain people to be able to become citizens so it sounds like a grand philosophical stance rather than just that he hates and fears those people.
There's definitely been a shift online in the last 18 months, and not a happy one, from arguments about assimilation and limitations on immigration, towards an argument that even assimilation is not enough, or is impossible, or is undesirable even if it is possible.
There's a market for open racism in this country which is larger than most people would like. It's not the majority like the Lowe's and Goodwins of the world think, but it's probably still a few million, and capable of drawing in even more if disguised.
Though to.an extent, it was always there. Remember Nigel moaning about people having conversations in (gasps) not-English on the train?
There's a case- though one I'd want to interrogate- for"it doesn't matter where people are from, as long as they integrate". The reason to interrogate that is... how and how far? There's a balance between being who you were and becoming who you are. (A bit of expat experience is very salutary for exploring that.)
But if Britishness is really something you'll can't attain for a few generations, even if you play entirely by the rules, then include me out
Speaking in not-English! In my local town the day before yesterday I had a conversation with a man who had lived in north Cumberland all his life, about the same age as me, and Farage would not have comprehended a single word of what he said, such was his dialect.
As ever, Harrington makes good points, some of which may be true and/or I agree with. Let's go thru them
1: the disciplinary and control models She makes a good point: pre-21st century oppression took the form of discipline - if you do not obey I will hurt you - wheras 21st century takes the form of control - if you do not obey I will change things so you stop. The former requires treating individuals as units (or sub-units of a group), the latter requires or enables treating characteristics of individuals, not the individuals as individuals per se. I'm not sure I agree with this and put forward religious wars or slavery as counter-examples.
2: the importance of borders I agree with her but I would point out that i) this requires a re-adoption of nationalism - if you have borders, then they have to bound something - and ii) that the importance of borders is a subset of the importance of thresholds. Which brings me to...
3: the boundary between “child” and “adult” At last somebody else has pointed this out. I have been saying for years on PB that we need a bright line between "this person is a child" and "this person is a adult". Everybody disagrees with me, but blurring the line results in adultised children and infantilised adults and makes the country stupid.
4: doctor-worship In my assisted suicide article, I pointed out that you solve moral problems with judges, not doctors. But British doctor-worship results in doctors coercing outcomes against patient consent, which is exactly wrong. And her example was...
5: the draft conversion bill This bill contains a clause permitting coerced conversion if the person is a medic working in healthcare [section 1 subsection (3)]. Gender-critical people object to this because it permits doctors but not parents to convert children. Trans people object to this because it permits doctors to convert children. I object to this because everybody has forgotten that gay conversion therapy used to be permitted medical policy and this clause would have permitted Alan Turing's conversion therapy. Harrington is OK with the trans conversion but is correct with the doctor-worship bit.
6: right-wing use of control models She may be onto something when she says the right can use control models to engineer society, eg on criminal gangs. Me being a person who likes freedom I dislike things that cropped up in "Minority Report" and prefer "innocent until proven guilty", "no pre-crime", "punish the guilty but not the innocent" and the primacy of freedom of the individual and autonomy under the law.
Returned home today. Strange to think, looking at the crowds of commuters all enjoying a sunny Thursday evening drink outside Liverpool Street, that this may be the coolest day between now and at least mid July.
We had complaints when we were in the high 30s, which London is not designed for, but the forecast over the next 2 weeks of consistent high 20s and dipping into low 30s with no rain for 2 weeks is idyllic.
It was looking that way, but let me reel off the UK maxima from this evening’s 15 day GFS run (actual maxes are usually 1 or 2C above these). Starts quite nice, then just keeps going.
27,30,30,32,32,34,32,33,36,37,35,35,35,37,40,33
The temperatures in France are a whole other ballgame. Not looking forward to being there mid-month. It’s already 32C in the downstairs study according to my weather station.
Come on, you know that accuracy drops off massively after 5 days. That 40 has as much validity as the endless beasts from the east in winter. It may happen, sure, but let’s see.
Even 32 is warmer than I would like for London. I think the sensible London max is about 27.
Mortality goes up past something like 23.
It largely depends on the humidity.
85F in dry heat can be pleasant, while 85F with 95% humidity is torture.
But it's something nobody ever seems to talk about.
It's just too dry a topic for good conversation imo.
Came here 20 years ago from Somalia, did voluntary work, got a degree, worked in the public sector, became a councillor and seems like he’s done a good job.
… in reply to…
Also: the Lord Mayor isn't really 'running' the city, is he? He's a figurehead - he gets to wear the mayoral regalia. He's like a municipal constitutional monarch.
I'm right up the immigration-sceptic end of the spectrum, but I can't get exercised about this at all. He looks to me very much like he's integrating. This is what we want, surely?
Same here
I think it’s nice to see a positive story of Somali migration and integration and actual economic participation for a change
In fact, this post crystallises one of my problems with Reform. I have so many complaints about immigration. The sheer numbers of undesirable immigrants crossing in boats. The criminal elements it introduces. The refusal to deal with the criminal elements robustly. The bending-over-backwards to put the needs and in some cases wants of (some) immigrants before the needs of our own people. The sheer amount of money we’re spending on immigrants (while, simultaneously, and puzzlingly, making it very hard and expensive for immigrants from places like Canada). The sheer squalor of places like Cheetham Hill. The depression of wages. But that very much isn’t to say I have an aversion to all immigrants or all immigration. I recognise the benefits. What I want is for immigrants to buy into Britishness. This is what most of the immigrants I know do. My daughter’s football and cricket clubs are peppered with immigrants and their families. For immigrants – like this guy in Britsol, willing to don silly British clothes – who want to buy into Britishness: this is absolutely brilliant. I love it. It’s not only great for Britain, but great that Britishness is something that people like this want to adopt. I think my views on this are perfectly mainstream.
A perfectly good case could have been made opposing ‘bad’ immigration while welcoming ‘good’. I’d say it would have been popular. Once again, Reform had an electoral open goal which they’ve judiciously aimed a good 45 degrees right of.
I agree, but I think what you miss is that Reform don’t want what we want. We see an integrated immigrant becoming Lord Mayor and think, "great, more of the same please".
For at least part of Reform’s coalition, the objection isn’t just illegal immigration or failed integration. It’s demographic and cultural change itself. From that perspective, Goodwin’s post isn’t a blunder at all. It’s entirely consistent.
To want to nudge the future in a particular direction is politics. To address what has already happened WRT who is lawfully living here by attacking its foundations and opposing assimilation, and wanting to demonise and reverse it is a starting point for the genuine fascist.
Yes, exactly. Opposing future policy is one thing. Looking at someone lawfully here, visibly assimilated, civically engaged, and then objecting anyway is quite another.
At that point the issue clearly isn’t failed integration. It’s that integration has succeeded, and some people still don’t like the result. - If successful assimilation still counts as a problem, then assimilation was never really the test.
Matt Goodwin @GoodwinMJ · Jun 29 A citizenship that belongs to everybody belongs to no one.
If anybody can become British, or English, then Britishness & Englishness no longer exist.
If the only thing that defines a people is that they welcome others then they no longer exist, either.
What an imbecile.
Citizenship does not belong to everybody, it belongs to everybody who has it only. A French citizen living in France is not British.
If anybody living here adopts British citizenship or being English then Britishness and Englishness do not cease to exist, it just has another person who is that. With the rights and responsibilities associated with citizenship.
He's not an imbecile, he's just trying to intellectually dress up a point that he doesn't want certain people to be able to become citizens so it sounds like a grand philosophical stance rather than just that he hates and fears those people.
There's definitely been a shift online in the last 18 months, and not a happy one, from arguments about assimilation and limitations on immigration, towards an argument that even assimilation is not enough, or is impossible, or is undesirable even if it is possible.
There's a market for open racism in this country which is larger than most people would like. It's not the majority like the Lowe's and Goodwins of the world think, but it's probably still a few million, and capable of drawing in even more if disguised.
Though to.an extent, it was always there. Remember Nigel moaning about people having conversations in (gasps) not-English on the train?
There's a case- though one I'd want to interrogate- for"it doesn't matter where people are from, as long as they integrate". The reason to interrogate that is... how and how far? There's a balance between being who you were and becoming who you are. (A bit of expat experience is very salutary for exploring that.)
But if Britishness is really something you'll can't attain for a few generations, even if you play entirely by the rules, then include me out
Well I would have preferred it if the Manchester Arena bomber, for example, had chosen to integrate rather tham rejecting British culture. I like British culture. I don't want it to turn into someghing else. People are welcome to come here if they choose to adopt British culture, but if they would prefer to reject it in favour of their own, I'd rather they didn't come. I don't think this is unreasonable.
British culture? Not definable. People will give different answers as to what it is. We don't want ghetto-isation, we want mixing and matching of different backgrounds and perspectives, I agree with that. But the main obligation IMO - shared by immigrants and non-immigrants alike - is to live within the law. Agitate to change any particular one if you feel strongly about it, sure, but live within it. The Manchester bomber didn't do that. His failure in that regard was abject.
Returned home today. Strange to think, looking at the crowds of commuters all enjoying a sunny Thursday evening drink outside Liverpool Street, that this may be the coolest day between now and at least mid July.
We had complaints when we were in the high 30s, which London is not designed for, but the forecast over the next 2 weeks of consistent high 20s and dipping into low 30s with no rain for 2 weeks is idyllic.
It was looking that way, but let me reel off the UK maxima from this evening’s 15 day GFS run (actual maxes are usually 1 or 2C above these). Starts quite nice, then just keeps going.
27,30,30,32,32,34,32,33,36,37,35,35,35,37,40,33
The temperatures in France are a whole other ballgame. Not looking forward to being there mid-month. It’s already 32C in the downstairs study according to my weather station.
Come on, you know that accuracy drops off massively after 5 days. That 40 has as much validity as the endless beasts from the east in winter. It may happen, sure, but let’s see.
Even 32 is warmer than I would like for London. I think the sensible London max is about 27.
Mortality goes up past something like 23.
So does fun, barbecues and many other good things like that.
Is someone born in Japan to two British parents automatically Japanese?
My Engilsh friend moved to Japan and had a kid there with his Japanese wife. That kid has grown up in Japan, but came to the UK for her undergrad degree. Is she Japanese or British or both?
You know what? I think she's a very nice person and I am bored by this exclusionary nonsense.
Japanese with British nationality as well.
I am bored by your idea that nations and borders don't matter.
Returned home today. Strange to think, looking at the crowds of commuters all enjoying a sunny Thursday evening drink outside Liverpool Street, that this may be the coolest day between now and at least mid July.
We had complaints when we were in the high 30s, which London is not designed for, but the forecast over the next 2 weeks of consistent high 20s and dipping into low 30s with no rain for 2 weeks is idyllic.
It was looking that way, but let me reel off the UK maxima from this evening’s 15 day GFS run (actual maxes are usually 1 or 2C above these). Starts quite nice, then just keeps going.
27,30,30,32,32,34,32,33,36,37,35,35,35,37,40,33
The temperatures in France are a whole other ballgame. Not looking forward to being there mid-month. It’s already 32C in the downstairs study according to my weather station.
Come on, you know that accuracy drops off massively after 5 days. That 40 has as much validity as the endless beasts from the east in winter. It may happen, sure, but let’s see.
Even 32 is warmer than I would like for London. I think the sensible London max is about 27.
Mortality goes up past something like 23.
It largely depends on the humidity.
85F in dry heat can be pleasant, while 85F with 95% humidity is torture.
But it's something nobody ever seems to talk about.
It's just too dry a topic for good conversation imo.
Betting post, WRT the year of next election. Does anyone think that about 7/1 is value for a general election in 2028? Older readers will remember the time when it was normal for PMs to go to the country after four years, sometime in the fifth year, if the going looked prosperous. By the end of 2028 Burnham will have done two years+ and UK plc will be a cornucopia of joy and prosperity tiny bit more hopeful than it is now.
Yes it is value, but I do not need to wait two years (or more) for a 7/1 shot.
As ever, Harrington makes good points, some of which may be true and/or I agree with. Let's go thru them
1: the disciplinary and control models She makes a good point: pre-21st century oppression took the form of discipline - if you do not obey I will hurt you - wheras 21st century takes the form of control - if you do not obey I will change things so you stop. The former requires treating individuals as units (or sub-units of a group), the latter requires or enables treating characteristics of individuals, not the individuals as individuals per se. I'm not sure I agree with this and put forward religious wars or slavery as counter-examples.
2: the importance of borders I agree with her but I would point out that i) this requires a re-adoption of nationalism - if you have borders, then they have to bound something - and ii) that the importance of borders is a subset of the importance of thresholds. Which brings me to...
3: the boundary between “child” and “adult” At last somebody else has pointed this out. I have been saying for years on PB that we need a bright line between "this person is a child" and "this person is a adult". Everybody disagrees with me, but blurring the line results in adultised children and infantilised adults and makes the country stupid.
4: doctor-worship In my assisted suicide article, I pointed out that you solve moral problems with judges, not doctors. But British doctor-worship results in doctors coercing outcomes against patient consent, which is exactly wrong. And her example was...
5: the draft conversion bill This bill contains a clause permitting coerced conversion if the person is a medic working in healthcare [section 1 subsection (3)]. Gender-critical people object to this because it permits doctors but not parents to convert children. Trans people object to this because it permits doctors to convert children. I object to this because everybody has forgotten that gay conversion therapy used to be permitted medical policy and this clause would have permitted Alan Turing's conversion therapy. Harrington is OK with the trans conversion but is correct with the doctor-worship bit.
6: right-wing use of control models She may be onto something when she says the right can use control models to engineer society, eg on criminal gangs. Me being a person who likes freedom I dislike things that cropped up in "Minority Report" and prefer "innocent until proven guilty", "no pre-crime", "punish the guilty but not the innocent" and the primacy of freedom of the individual and autonomy under the law.
But I think the right have forgotten that.
On 3, the blurring the line between adults and children, we see one aspect of this only today with the re-sentencing of the rape boys. At a wider view, raising the school leaving age from 15 or 16 to 21 leaves a huge grey area.
On 2, borders, there is also the distinction between anti-racism and multiculturalism, which Goodwin has alluded to throughout this thread.
On 6, control models, is that confined to the right?
Betting post, WRT the year of next election. Does anyone think that about 7/1 is value for a general election in 2028? Older readers will remember the time when it was normal for PMs to go to the country after four years, sometime in the fifth year, if the going looked prosperous. By the end of 2028 Burnham will have done two years+ and UK plc will be a cornucopia of joy and prosperity tiny bit more hopeful than it is now.
And, you will realise your mistake, admit it on here, and vote Conservative again.
Comments
There's a case- though one I'd want to interrogate- for"it doesn't matter where people are from, as long as they integrate". The reason to interrogate that is... how and how far? There's a balance between being who you were and becoming who you are. (A bit of expat experience is very salutary for exploring that.)
But if Britishness is really something you'll can't attain for a few generations, even if you play entirely by the rules, then include me out
But I suspect he's done for now anyway; the crypto £5m will never go away.
Burnham says he 'didn't have all the details' of defence investment plan with £5bn black hole
Andy Burnham has said he was not included in the recent discussions about the government's defence investment plan, but emphasised how seriously he takes national security.
It comes after Sir Keir Starmer unveiled a £15bn defence spending uplift over the next four years - but left £4.7bn of that to be found at the next budget, which looks set to be Andy Burnham's first as PM.
Asked if he was aware that he would have this gap to fill, Burnham said: "I didn't have all of the details. I wasn't in all of the discussions.
"But to be fair, you know, the government had had an internal process ongoing."
Asked if he views it as a hand grenade thrown at him by the outgoing PM, Burnham replied: "I regard it as something that the country has to face up to very seriously.
"We're in a changing world. The nature of the threat is changing.
"What I can say to you tonight is I will take my responsibilities fully to fund the defence investment plan.
"If I am in the position to do so, I will take those responsibilities extremely seriously. No compromise on the security of the nation."
Burnham: I haven't chosen my chancellor yet
Amid rampant speculation about who will be in Andy Burnham's cabinet, assuming he is unopposed in the Labour leadership contest, the PM-in-waiting was asked if he has decided who his chancellor will be.
He told LBC: "No, I haven't made those decisions and deliberately not.
"I think it's been a little frustrating for me in the last sort of 10 days, two weeks, because kind of Westminster goes into its normal mode and it wants to endlessly speculate about personalities before policy and before direction.
"And I very deliberately have said, no, I'm going to set out a new direction for the country. And I did that on Monday."
Burnham said more broadly that he wants to include all wings of the Labour Party in his cabinet, pointing to his stated ambition to bring a "freshness" to politics.
"What I am putting forward here is a very different approach. When it comes to the political direction, that is not up for negotiation," he said.
"But then to deliver that change, to come back to your question, I want there to be the most inclusive approach to building the team so that all parts of the party, can see themselves represented within it."
Burnham denied that he is "disappointed" by the number of people in the Labour parliamentary party scrambling for jobs in his government, but added that he wants to ensure that people understand his political direction and "consider what their contribution to delivering that new direction for the country might be".
I see we're back to that old chestnut of Jus Sanguinis vs Jus Soli.
The Americans do the latter - most of the rest of the world does the former so the answer to @Andy_JS's question from earlier - if the child of two British parents is born in Japan, that does not make the child Japanese though I believe if the child lives in Japan for 10 years, he or she can apply for Japanese citizenship.
Jus sanguinis is being taken too literally by some - a child born of parents, one of whom is a citizen, is a citizen and that right of citizenship includes EU Settled Status or ILR. Those seeking to remove ILR status would therefore remove citizenship of children born to parents with ILR status and that may be the intention, I don't know.
cornucopia of joy and prosperitytiny bit more hopeful than it is now.1: the disciplinary and control models
She makes a good point: pre-21st century oppression took the form of discipline - if you do not obey I will hurt you - wheras 21st century takes the form of control - if you do not obey I will change things so you stop. The former requires treating individuals as units (or sub-units of a group), the latter requires or enables treating characteristics of individuals, not the individuals as individuals per se. I'm not sure I agree with this and put forward religious wars or slavery as counter-examples.
2: the importance of borders
I agree with her but I would point out that i) this requires a re-adoption of nationalism - if you have borders, then they have to bound something - and ii) that the importance of borders is a subset of the importance of thresholds. Which brings me to...
3: the boundary between “child” and “adult”
At last somebody else has pointed this out. I have been saying for years on PB that we need a bright line between "this person is a child" and "this person is a adult". Everybody disagrees with me, but blurring the line results in adultised children and infantilised adults and makes the country stupid.
4: doctor-worship
In my assisted suicide article, I pointed out that you solve moral problems with judges, not doctors. But British doctor-worship results in doctors coercing outcomes against patient consent, which is exactly wrong. And her example was...
5: the draft conversion bill
This bill contains a clause permitting coerced conversion if the person is a medic working in healthcare [section 1 subsection (3)]. Gender-critical people object to this because it permits doctors but not parents to convert children. Trans people object to this because it permits doctors to convert children. I object to this because everybody has forgotten that gay conversion therapy used to be permitted medical policy and this clause would have permitted Alan Turing's conversion therapy. Harrington is OK with the trans conversion but is correct with the doctor-worship bit.
6: right-wing use of control models
She may be onto something when she says the right can use control models to engineer society, eg on criminal gangs. Me being a person who likes freedom I dislike things that cropped up in "Minority Report" and prefer "innocent until proven guilty", "no pre-crime", "punish the guilty but not the innocent" and the primacy of freedom of the individual and autonomy under the law.
But I think the right have forgotten that.
At last, some optimism for our chances. I am no longer alone.
https://www.classicfm.com/discover-music/periods-genres/national-anthems/spanish-national-anthem-no-words/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R1ul9iBhpVM
I like British culture. I don't want it to turn into someghing else. People are welcome to come here if they choose to adopt British culture, but if they would prefer to reject it in favour of their own, I'd rather they didn't come. I don't think this is unreasonable.
https://www.heraldscotland.com/politics/holyrood/26245377.kate-forbes-christian-conscience-scotlands-new-culture-war/
Explains succinctly why the Scottish political class will never preside over independence. Ultimately not enough voters are going to support an establishment that has become a sect.
"One of the most important speeches made by a Scottish public figure in recent years was largely ignored by the media. You’re left to conclude that the message and the person delivering it made them feel uncomfortable. It really ought to have done.
"The speaker was Kate Forbes, former deputy first minister, and perhaps the most able politician to have emerged from Scotland in the devolved era. More than a few people I know who voted No in 2014 have told me they’d seriously consider moving to Yes at a future referendum campaign if Ms Forbes was leading it.
"She commanded a level of popular personal support across Scotland that those party colleagues who betrayed her could never match. People who disagreed with Ms Forbes’ economic vision for Scotland admired her for sticking by her principles.
"Instead, the party leadership turned on her and hounded her out of politics because she was a Christian who hadn’t – unlike her boss, John Swinney – compromised her values and beliefs for personal gain."
85F in dry heat can be pleasant, while 85F with 95% humidity is torture.
But it's something nobody ever seems to talk about.
Its summer. Enjoy it!
I am bored by your idea that nations and borders don't matter.
On 2, borders, there is also the distinction between anti-racism and multiculturalism, which Goodwin has alluded to throughout this thread.
On 6, control models, is that confined to the right?
"Andy Burnham: My London manifesto for good growth and devolution | The Standard" https://www.standard.co.uk/news/politics/andy-burham-london-pitch-good-growth-devolution-b1288126.html