Plenty of time. But he does need something of his to really catch people's attention and fix an image in peoples' minds. Goodness knows what though.
Starmer is awful, dull and clueless, as his actions in 2019 demonstrated.
He's also a nasty arsehole careerist.
While MPs like Luciana Berger were getting bullied out of the Labour Party he chose to serve in the Shadow Cabinet to further his own career and put forward Corbyn as PM.
Only those who refused to serve under Corbyn should have been considered as possible Labour Party leaders. A Labour led by Yvette Cooper would be a credible threat right now.
Absolutely, Boris Johnson would always sack the bullies and defend the bullied.
Well he did indeed sack his own trouble makers like Phil Hammond who were undermining the party and good riddance to them.
Have you any ever evidence that Phil Hammond bullied anyone?
Now contrast his behaviour when it comes to Priti Patel and the people she bullied.
Many being very unfair to poor Keir Starmer today.
I defy anyone to come up with a set of policies that appeal to Sadiq Khan's London, the red wall of the North and the old heartlands of Scotland at the same time.
May I refer the honourable member to my post of 12.56?
Some interesting ideas there, I grant you.
I "liked" it because I thought they were interesting, from a potential Labour perspective. I don't agree with most of it personally but unlike Starmer's gilts idea these are interesting and not yet conclusively disproved policies to think about.
A Celtic fan has denied sending an 'offensive' tweet about Captain Sir Tom Moore that read 'burn, auld fella, buuurn' a day after the war hero and NHS fundraiser's death.
Joseph Kelly, 35, from Castlemilk in Glasgow, allegedly tweeted on February 3: 'The only good Brit soldier is a deed one, burn auld fella, buuuuurn.' He was later charged under the Communications Act 2003.
I tried to catch up on Keir’s speech but could only find clips.
I then read, OK skimmed, the text.
Very very dull, I’m afraid.
He is better than Miliband, and obviously a million times better than Corbyn...but he is not able to project, or seemingly imagine, positive change.
Boris must be wheezing all the way to the bank, as it were.
He deserves some credit for at least starting work on identifying a vision for the post virus world. But I agree he is still at first base.
Is the government even thinking about the changes people may be demanding once the pandemic is behind us? The clown appears simply to want to return to promoting the sort of building projects that will make no more sense after the crisis than they did before it.
I think there's now the distinct possibility that Sir Keir could do worse than Jezza in 2019. Will the vaccine rollout be Boris's Falkland's moment? Hitherto, many liked Boris and thought he was a bit of a lad; but now - by eradicating Covid almost single-handedly - Boris has soared to the heights of domestic mega-competent and world statesman. His base will be rock solid because he socked one to the dastardly EU, and I can't see him not picking up some extra votes along the way. Moreover, it's perfectly possibility that Sir Keir will lose much of the support Jezza drummed up amongst the idealistic youth. What to do?
Many being very unfair to poor Keir Starmer today.
I defy anyone to come up with a set of policies that appeal to Sadiq Khan's London, the red wall of the North and the old heartlands of Scotland at the same time.
Indeed. Wilson managed it, though.
Every labour leader up to and including Blair could draw on the vast well of sanity of the mass manufacturing working class. Car workers, railwaymen, dockers, miners, engineering unions etc.
No statue topplers or reparations proposers there.
Mr. Dawning, hard to say. Long way to go from now to the next election.
2007, when politics was boring and all the politicians were the same, feels an awfully long time ago.
As an aside, we've had a financial crisis and a global flu pandemic this century. That does leave one or two other things from the 20th that might recur...
A Celtic fan has denied sending an 'offensive' tweet about Captain Sir Tom Moore that read 'burn, auld fella, buuurn' a day after the war hero and NHS fundraiser's death.
Joseph Kelly, 35, from Castlemilk in Glasgow, allegedly tweeted on February 3: 'The only good Brit soldier is a deed one, burn auld fella, buuuuurn.' He was later charged under the Communications Act 2003.
I mean, of course it's offensive to most people, but it's not incitement to violence and the barrier for criminal charges needs to be much, much higher than those words.
Do you know what?
I'm not so sure about that. If he'd just said "burn auld fella, burn" then that'd be grossly offensive but not in any way criminal.
Propagating a message online that "the only good British soldier is a dead one" could be incitement, and people have responded or been inspired by less in the past, and for me it's at least borderline.
I see where you're coming from, but haven't Irish Republicans been posting similar things for years now - including when actual British soldiers were in the firing line?
He isn't saying go and kill soldiers, rather he's just exclaiming his happiness that this particular aged veteran passed away.
My line would be that unless it's a clear incitement to violence or disorder, it's short of the mark. IMO there's a difference between wishing people were dead and asking others to do it.
We don't see the context of this guy's Twitter account either, so one Tweet might be either may out of context or part of a wider pattern of incitement.
Being a tw@ on Twitter shouldn't be illegal though.
Plenty of time. But he does need something of his to really catch people's attention and fix an image in peoples' minds. Goodness knows what though.
Starmer is awful, dull and clueless, as his actions in 2019 demonstrated.
He's also a nasty arsehole careerist.
While MPs like Luciana Berger were getting bullied out of the Labour Party he chose to serve in the Shadow Cabinet to further his own career and put forward Corbyn as PM.
Only those who refused to serve under Corbyn should have been considered as possible Labour Party leaders. A Labour led by Yvette Cooper would be a credible threat right now.
A Labour party led by Yvette Cooper or Liz Kendall would be at between 25 and 30%, equivalent for Labour to Davey's standing. There's simply a much smaller market for very overt professional centrism now.
I don't see much evidence Labour has faced up to its strategic conundrum.
They keep falling into traps: just look at how Kate Green criticised the government yesterday on free speech at universities by, um, retweeting the Daily Mirror, and saying the problem was confected. Others insist the Government is prosecuting a "culture war" - including our very own @SouthamObserver - whereas most people agree that retaining and explaining our heritage, without pulling it down or telling people what they should think about it, and discussing different views and letting people decide what they think is true, rather than restricting it and making it clear what the correct line is, just represents common sense.
Tory strategists know this very well, and they know Labour will take the bait every single time.
Btw, I think Starmer does get it more than most - it's just he tries to face in several different directions at once, rather than rise above it and lead them in one.
Plenty of time. But he does need something of his to really catch people's attention and fix an image in peoples' minds. Goodness knows what though.
Starmer is awful, dull and clueless, as his actions in 2019 demonstrated.
He's also a nasty arsehole careerist.
While MPs like Luciana Berger were getting bullied out of the Labour Party he chose to serve in the Shadow Cabinet to further his own career and put forward Corbyn as PM.
Only those who refused to serve under Corbyn should have been considered as possible Labour Party leaders. A Labour led by Yvette Cooper would be a credible threat right now.
Absolutely, Boris Johnson would always sack the bullies and defend the bullied.
Well he did indeed sack his own trouble makers like Phil Hammond who were undermining the party and good riddance to them.
Have you any evidence that Phil Hammond ever bullied anyone?
Now contrast his behaviour when it comes to Priti Patel and the people she bullied.
I never said he was a bully, I said he was a trouble maker.
Labour's problem in 2019 was antisemitism and Starmer snuggled up close to the ringleader. Tories problem in 2019 was something completely different and Boris excised the problem.
Many being very unfair to poor Keir Starmer today.
I defy anyone to come up with a set of policies that appeal to Sadiq Khan's London, the red wall of the North and the old heartlands of Scotland at the same time.
Indeed. Wilson managed it, though.
Every labour leader up to and including Blair could draw on the vast well of sanity of the mass manufacturing working class. Car workers, railwaymen, dockers, miners, engineering unions etc.
No statue topplers or reparations proposers there.
Statue topplers and trans militants are a tiny proportion of the population, just very over-represented on Twitter and therefore our very pliant and lazy media.
Keir doesn’t need them to win.
In fact he can only win if he ignores or is even hostile to them.
Many being very unfair to poor Keir Starmer today.
I defy anyone to come up with a set of policies that appeal to Sadiq Khan's London, the red wall of the North and the old heartlands of Scotland at the same time.
Legalisation of cannabis. Cut income tax for low paid by a lot. Devo max squared for Scotland, 6 counties and Wales. NHS covers all dental treatment. Universal broadband access. ( Make the free service shit and slow if too many people are offended by the poor having nice things. )
Pfizer vaccine unsurprisingly has the same efficacy dilution against the SA variant as AZ, Novavax and J&J. Hope that they are able to update it quickly and roll out a mutation busting booster jab in time for the autumn.
Meaningful jobs University fees Social care costs Childcare costs Supporting the police and the justice system Bringing society together
This is what people care about.
Meaningful jobs - yes University fees - only if paying for it Social care costs - only to avoid paying for it Childcare costs - only if paying for it Supporting the police - yes announcing more police = votes and the justice system - anyone looking at our justice system over the last few years would ask are you sure about that
Our justice system only looks good if you aren't involved in it in any form. if you look closely the delays for criminal cases or beyond criminal.
I think there's now the distinct possibility that Sir Keir could do worse than Jezza in 2019. Will the vaccine rollout be Boris's Falkland's moment? Hitherto, many liked Boris and thought he was a bit of a lad; but now - by eradicating Covid almost single-handedly - Boris has soared to the heights of domestic mega-competent and world statesman. His base will be rock solid because he socked one to the dastardly EU, and I can't see him not picking up some extra votes along the way. Moreover, it's perfectly possibility that Sir Keir will lose much of the support Jezza drummed up amongst the idealistic youth. What to do?
"Boris... by eradicating Covid almost single-handedly"
A Celtic fan has denied sending an 'offensive' tweet about Captain Sir Tom Moore that read 'burn, auld fella, buuurn' a day after the war hero and NHS fundraiser's death.
Joseph Kelly, 35, from Castlemilk in Glasgow, allegedly tweeted on February 3: 'The only good Brit soldier is a deed one, burn auld fella, buuuuurn.' He was later charged under the Communications Act 2003.
I mean, of course it's offensive to most people, but it's not incitement to violence and the barrier for criminal charges needs to be much, much higher than those words.
Do you know what?
I'm not so sure about that. If he'd just said "burn auld fella, burn" then that'd be grossly offensive but not in any way criminal.
Propagating a message online that "the only good British soldier is a dead one" could be incitement, and people have responded or been inspired by less in the past, and for me it's at least borderline.
I see where you're coming from, but haven't Irish Republicans been posting similar things for years now - including when actual British soldiers were in the firing line?
He isn't saying go and kill soldiers, rather he's just exclaiming his happiness that this particular aged veteran passed away.
My line would be that unless it's a clear incitement to violence or disorder, it's short of the mark. IMO there's a difference between wishing people were dead and asking others to do it.
We don't see the context of this guy's Twitter account either, so one Tweet might be either may out of context or part of a wider pattern of incitement.
Being a tw@ on Twitter shouldn't be illegal though.
Yes, and that was in a pre-social media age. Sometimes those remarks were reported - in the context of a news story or political argument - but that's different to providing them a platform where they can be amplified.
Like I said, I think it's borderline, but if you go beneath the headline on this I think it's more complex than just being grossly offensive, as I originally thought.
I might change my view too the more evidence I see!
That would be 5% of what exactly? Right now almost literally a few pricks - let's hope he joins them!
5% isn't actually anything beyond a meaningless gesture. The only sane options are provide as many as you can or let China take over even more of Africa.
Many being very unfair to poor Keir Starmer today.
I defy anyone to come up with a set of policies that appeal to Sadiq Khan's London, the red wall of the North and the old heartlands of Scotland at the same time.
Legalisation of cannabis. Cut income tax for low paid by a lot. Devo max squared for Scotland, 6 counties and Wales. NHS covers all dental treatment. Universal broadband access. ( Make the free service shit and slow if too many people are offended by the poor having nice things. )
NHS dentists being available would be a good start.
Many being very unfair to poor Keir Starmer today.
I defy anyone to come up with a set of policies that appeal to Sadiq Khan's London, the red wall of the North and the old heartlands of Scotland at the same time.
Legalisation of cannabis. Cut income tax for low paid by a lot. Devo max squared for Scotland, 6 counties and Wales. NHS covers all dental treatment. Universal broadband access. ( Make the free service shit and slow if too many people are offended by the poor having nice things. )
1 - If licensed, yes. 2 - The lowest paid don't really pay income tax. Reducing VAT would help them more. 3 - Yes 4 - Yes 5 - Meh
Many being very unfair to poor Keir Starmer today.
I defy anyone to come up with a set of policies that appeal to Sadiq Khan's London, the red wall of the North and the old heartlands of Scotland at the same time.
May I refer the honourable member to my post of 12.56?
Some interesting ideas there, I grant you.
I "liked" it because I thought they were interesting, from a potential Labour perspective. I don't agree with most of it personally but unlike Starmer's gilts idea these are interesting and not yet conclusively disproved policies to think about.
Exactly. I am not saying that I would support all of that program myself* and the implications of such a policy on employment when we are about to have a serious increase in unemployment would have to be thought about but the point is that the public and the media discussing SKS's ideas would be a huge step forward from the current Captain Hindsight mode that he has fallen into.
* In fairness I would support most of them but I am not as far to the right as you are.
I think there's now the distinct possibility that Sir Keir could do worse than Jezza in 2019. Will the vaccine rollout be Boris's Falkland's moment? Hitherto, many liked Boris and thought he was a bit of a lad; but now - by eradicating Covid almost single-handedly - Boris has soared to the heights of domestic mega-competent and world statesman. His base will be rock solid because he socked one to the dastardly EU, and I can't see him not picking up some extra votes along the way. Moreover, it's perfectly possibility that Sir Keir will lose much of the support Jezza drummed up amongst the idealistic youth. What to do?
I don't think he'll even win the reputation of being "mega-competent" but that's not really the point. On a big defining issue he got it right. And a lot of people warm to him and want him to do well. Reminds me a bit of Ronald Reagan, another sunny type, a celebrity, unreliable on details, but with an ability to reach out to working people. SIr Keir, of course, is more analagous to Jimmy Carter or Walter Mondale.
That would be 5% of what exactly? Right now almost literally a few pricks - let's hope he joins them!
5% isn't actually anything beyond a meaningless gesture. The only sane options are provide as many as you can or let China take over even more of Africa.
Indeed. The UK is sending more to Africa than we're going to use ourselves.
Many being very unfair to poor Keir Starmer today.
I defy anyone to come up with a set of policies that appeal to Sadiq Khan's London, the red wall of the North and the old heartlands of Scotland at the same time.
Legalisation of cannabis. Cut income tax for low paid by a lot. Devo max squared for Scotland, 6 counties and Wales. NHS covers all dental treatment. Universal broadband access. ( Make the free service shit and slow if too many people are offended by the poor having nice things. )
1 - If licensed, yes. 2 - The lowest paid don't really pay income tax. Reducing VAT would help them more. 3 - Yes 4 - Yes 5 - Meh
Broadband is actually one of the few things you could talk about without annoying people. You only have to look at children who don't have it at home to see the impact it's having on their education.
Internet really is an infrastructure requirement like roads that we need everyone to have some level of access to.
Edit to add - it doesn't even need to be broadband - subsidising 5g for rural areas attached to free low bandwidth sims would work as well.
That would be 5% of what exactly? Right now almost literally a few pricks - let's hope he joins them!
5% isn't actually anything beyond a meaningless gesture. The only sane options are provide as many as you can or let China take over even more of Africa.
Indeed. The UK is sending more to Africa than we're going to use ourselves.
5% is almost insulting.
Probably 200-300% more ultimately if all of our purchased vaccine comes good. Presumably he means immediately but in that event I would disagree. The death rate in Europe is at least as bad as elsewhere in the world and worse than most.
Many being very unfair to poor Keir Starmer today.
I defy anyone to come up with a set of policies that appeal to Sadiq Khan's London, the red wall of the North and the old heartlands of Scotland at the same time.
May I refer the honourable member to my post of 12.56?
Some interesting ideas there, I grant you.
I "liked" it because I thought they were interesting, from a potential Labour perspective. I don't agree with most of it personally but unlike Starmer's gilts idea these are interesting and not yet conclusively disproved policies to think about.
All leaders can afford to be harder on sections of the electorate that are always going to vote for them
If he wanted to unite Britain, Starmer would be much harder on the middle class (often public sector) professionals who are the bedrock of his vote, and who have done relatively well out of lockdown.
He would have strived much harder to help the poorly paid private sector workers who have been hammered or furloughed and so:-
He might have supported the public sector pay freeze above a certain salary level (50 grand?)
He might have agreed with some of the stuff the IEA put out on the NHS.
He might have opposed the lifting of the public sector golden goodbye cap.
He might have made the case that the public sector above a certain pay grade should bear some of the burden of the enormous cost of lockdown.
Many being very unfair to poor Keir Starmer today.
I defy anyone to come up with a set of policies that appeal to Sadiq Khan's London, the red wall of the North and the old heartlands of Scotland at the same time.
Legalisation of cannabis. Cut income tax for low paid by a lot. Devo max squared for Scotland, 6 counties and Wales. NHS covers all dental treatment. Universal broadband access. ( Make the free service shit and slow if too many people are offended by the poor having nice things. )
1 - If licensed, yes. 2 - The lowest paid don't really pay income tax. Reducing VAT would help them more. 3 - Yes 4 - Yes 5 - Meh
Broadband is actually one of the few things you could talk about without annoying people. You only have to look at children who don't have it at home to see the impact it's having on their education.
Internet really is an infrastructure requirement like roads that we need everyone to have some level of access to.
I think almost everyone in the country does have "some level of access" to broadband comparable to roads.
Almost any house in the country if you want to get a broadband contract and you have a laptop or computer or phone and are willing to pay the contract then you will have broadband.
If you don't have the laptop etc, don't pay for the broadband contract then that's more of an issue. But so too if you don't have a car and don't pay for car insurance then you can't drive on the road either.
Many being very unfair to poor Keir Starmer today.
I defy anyone to come up with a set of policies that appeal to Sadiq Khan's London, the red wall of the North and the old heartlands of Scotland at the same time.
Indeed. Wilson managed it, though.
Every labour leader up to and including Blair could draw on the vast well of sanity of the mass manufacturing working class. Car workers, railwaymen, dockers, miners, engineering unions etc.
No statue topplers or reparations proposers there.
Statue topplers and trans militants are a tiny proportion of the population, just very over-represented on Twitter and therefore our very pliant and lazy media.
Keir doesn’t need them to win.
In fact he can only win if he ignores or is even hostile to them.
You get it. But is he even leading his own team?
Why hasn't he reined in Kate Green?
He needs to find a centre-left, soft-left, way of explaining and justifying this to his base. Just like "tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime" straddled the line for Blair on criminal justice, Starmer needs something similar like "fair to women, fair to transwomen", in his speech, and "proud of, but also learning from, our past, for a more just future" on culture.
And then he needs to neutralise it by making it about 28th on his list of things he talks about from thereon in, and get the rest of the movement to stop bleating on about it all the time.
Hold on, Starmer is saying that the government will raise the money and then use it to invest in the private sector? Is he proposing a sovereign wealth fund? Who is going to do the investing, will he have fund managers that get paid £1m+ salaries/bonuses on staff to do it? Is he going to hand the civil service this money and have people with no experience in investing be put in charge of a multi-billion fund?
This raises so many questions.
I think you can be very confident that if this ever were to happen under a Labour government, the investing policy would be such that the quality of the actual investment case would be entirely irrelevant.
The idea of a domestically focussed sovereign wealth fund is hilarious to me. I don't see how anyone could take it seriously. You'd end up with a million and one agendas on how to invest the money and ultimately it ends up as a gigantic tracker fund or just gets wasted propping up failing business models.
One area it might be useful is house building. Council houses are already effectively a form of sovereign wealth fund. Moving the windfall gains from grant of planning permission from the private sector to the public sector makes sense to me.
Citizens Bonds is a great idea for Labour. Economically it's a shift towards collectivism and government intervention. Tick. Politically it will appeal to both the old base (Red Wall) and the new base (me). Double tick.
Keir Starmer has arrived.
Bonds are quite complicated as a retail offering. Coupons and tenor and duration and whatnot.
Not to say there won't be an illustrated guide making the simple argument about investment and interest but you must stop thinking that everyone out there is as sophisticated as you are.
Often made that way simply to confuse the unwary - and half the time the industry participants too. If "Citizens Bond" happens and it's complicated this will be a "tell" that all is not well and public money is being wasted on advisors from the City. Spoilt for choice but I give you PPI and securitization of student loans. Yuck
1. Scrapping tertiary fees 2. Legalising cannabis 3. EFTA entry 4. Replacing council tax with land tax, tapered over time. 5. Strengthening protections for free speech and personal privacy 6. A way of addressing Google/Facebook monopolies 7. Experiments with UBI 8. Scrapping the TV license fee 9. An end to Covid restrictions 10. PR for local govt
Many being very unfair to poor Keir Starmer today.
I defy anyone to come up with a set of policies that appeal to Sadiq Khan's London, the red wall of the North and the old heartlands of Scotland at the same time.
Indeed. Wilson managed it, though.
Every labour leader up to and including Blair could draw on the vast well of sanity of the mass manufacturing working class. Car workers, railwaymen, dockers, miners, engineering unions etc.
No statue topplers or reparations proposers there.
As a bit of an extensive but useful digression there, Labour has actually been a coalition of the metropolitan and the working class since the 1890s. The trade unionist, art historian and proto-feminist Lady Emilia Dilke was one of its first members.
In the 1960s and 1970s Labour wouldn't and couldn't have won without a metropolitan-heartland coalition. Wilson's very public embrace of The Beatles was all about that.
There are also distinctive modern identity conflicts that Starmer has to deal with too , I agree, but he may be up to the that.
Many being very unfair to poor Keir Starmer today.
I defy anyone to come up with a set of policies that appeal to Sadiq Khan's London, the red wall of the North and the old heartlands of Scotland at the same time.
Legalisation of cannabis. Cut income tax for low paid by a lot. Devo max squared for Scotland, 6 counties and Wales. NHS covers all dental treatment. Universal broadband access. ( Make the free service shit and slow if too many people are offended by the poor having nice things. )
1 - If licensed, yes. 2 - The lowest paid don't really pay income tax. Reducing VAT would help them more. 3 - Yes 4 - Yes 5 - Meh
Broadband is actually one of the few things you could talk about without annoying people. You only have to look at children who don't have it at home to see the impact it's having on their education.
Internet really is an infrastructure requirement like roads that we need everyone to have some level of access to.
Edit to add - it doesn't even need to be broadband - subsidising 5g for rural areas attached to free low bandwidth sims would work as well.
Absolutely. In urban areas they need to look at expanding the fibre rollout, starting in those places with crap ADSL at the moment. Fibre to the Home is a huge project, but necessary for 21st century ways of work, education and leisure.
In rural areas, investment in mobile data networks and even public Starlink stations would make a massive difference to often poor communities.
That would be 5% of what exactly? Right now almost literally a few pricks - let's hope he joins them!
5% isn't actually anything beyond a meaningless gesture. The only sane options are provide as many as you can or let China take over even more of Africa.
More investment in COVAX would be the sane solution - Africa needs billions of doses.
I think there's now the distinct possibility that Sir Keir could do worse than Jezza in 2019. Will the vaccine rollout be Boris's Falkland's moment? Hitherto, many liked Boris and thought he was a bit of a lad; but now - by eradicating Covid almost single-handedly - Boris has soared to the heights of domestic mega-competent and world statesman. His base will be rock solid because he socked one to the dastardly EU, and I can't see him not picking up some extra votes along the way. Moreover, it's perfectly possibility that Sir Keir will lose much of the support Jezza drummed up amongst the idealistic youth. What to do?
"Boris... by eradicating Covid almost single-handedly"
WTF??
I was referring to the perception rather than the reality. But the Falklands analogy is apposite: Maggie was credited with 'winning' the Falklands conflict, but it was her poor judgement that allowed the invasion in the first place and the situation was only rectified when others stepped in to sort out her mess. But she still reaped the political dividends - much to her opponents' immense irritation.
Many being very unfair to poor Keir Starmer today.
I defy anyone to come up with a set of policies that appeal to Sadiq Khan's London, the red wall of the North and the old heartlands of Scotland at the same time.
Legalisation of cannabis. Cut income tax for low paid by a lot. Devo max squared for Scotland, 6 counties and Wales. NHS covers all dental treatment. Universal broadband access. ( Make the free service shit and slow if too many people are offended by the poor having nice things. )
Income tax starts at £12,570 this year. How high do you move it?
That would be 5% of what exactly? Right now almost literally a few pricks - let's hope he joins them!
5% isn't actually anything beyond a meaningless gesture. The only sane options are provide as many as you can or let China take over even more of Africa.
Indeed. The UK is sending more to Africa than we're going to use ourselves.
5% is almost insulting.
Probably 200-300% more ultimately if all of our purchased vaccine comes good. Presumably he means immediately but in that event I would disagree. The death rate in Europe is at least as bad as elsewhere in the world and worse than most.
All countries at the moment need to reduce their own death rates - after that there is a difficult decision on when to switch to helping elsewhere but it's essential that we vaccinate the world so there is a lid on Covid cases as the more covid cases there are the greater the chance of a mutation we can't protect from.
I think there's now the distinct possibility that Sir Keir could do worse than Jezza in 2019. Will the vaccine rollout be Boris's Falkland's moment? Hitherto, many liked Boris and thought he was a bit of a lad; but now - by eradicating Covid almost single-handedly - Boris has soared to the heights of domestic mega-competent and world statesman. His base will be rock solid because he socked one to the dastardly EU, and I can't see him not picking up some extra votes along the way. Moreover, it's perfectly possibility that Sir Keir will lose much of the support Jezza drummed up amongst the idealistic youth. What to do?
Don’t know if he will do worse than Jezza in 2019 or not, but I think you’re pretty spot on with the scenario you paint
A Celtic fan has denied sending an 'offensive' tweet about Captain Sir Tom Moore that read 'burn, auld fella, buuurn' a day after the war hero and NHS fundraiser's death.
Joseph Kelly, 35, from Castlemilk in Glasgow, allegedly tweeted on February 3: 'The only good Brit soldier is a deed one, burn auld fella, buuuuurn.' He was later charged under the Communications Act 2003.
1. Scrapping tertiary fees 2. Legalising cannabis 3. EFTA entry 4. Replacing council tax with land tax, tapered over time. 5. Strengthening protections for free speech and personal privacy 6. A way of addressing Google/Facebook monopolies 7. Experiments with UBI 8. Scrapping the TV license fee 9. An end to Covid restrictions 10. PR for local govt
Very good, though I disagree with 7, would only agree with 8 if you mean funding from general taxation instead and I`m not sure about 4.
Many being very unfair to poor Keir Starmer today.
I defy anyone to come up with a set of policies that appeal to Sadiq Khan's London, the red wall of the North and the old heartlands of Scotland at the same time.
Legalisation of cannabis. Cut income tax for low paid by a lot. Devo max squared for Scotland, 6 counties and Wales. NHS covers all dental treatment. Universal broadband access. ( Make the free service shit and slow if too many people are offended by the poor having nice things. )
Income tax starts at £12,570 this year. How high do you move it?
Combined income taxes for the lowest paid are about 85p per pound at the minute.
Many being very unfair to poor Keir Starmer today.
I defy anyone to come up with a set of policies that appeal to Sadiq Khan's London, the red wall of the North and the old heartlands of Scotland at the same time.
Indeed. Wilson managed it, though.
Every labour leader up to and including Blair could draw on the vast well of sanity of the mass manufacturing working class. Car workers, railwaymen, dockers, miners, engineering unions etc.
No statue topplers or reparations proposers there.
Statue topplers and trans militants are a tiny proportion of the population, just very over-represented on Twitter and therefore our very pliant and lazy media.
Keir doesn’t need them to win.
In fact he can only win if he ignores or is even hostile to them.
You get it. But is he even leading his own team?
Why hasn't he reined in Kate Green?
He needs to find a centre-left, soft-left, way of explaining and justifying this to his base. Just like "tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime" straddled the line for Blair on criminal justice, Starmer needs something similar like "fair to women, fair to transwomen", in his speech, and "proud of, but also learning from, our past, for a more just future" on culture.
And then he needs to neutralise it by making it about 28th on his list of things he talks about from thereon in, and get the rest of the movement to stop bleating on about it all the time.
“Fair to women, fair to trans women” would probably see him ousted within days.
He just needs to say is that the great British virtue is to take people “as they come”, and if we follow that through we apply that to trans men and women as well.
Many being very unfair to poor Keir Starmer today.
I defy anyone to come up with a set of policies that appeal to Sadiq Khan's London, the red wall of the North and the old heartlands of Scotland at the same time.
Legalisation of cannabis. Cut income tax for low paid by a lot. Devo max squared for Scotland, 6 counties and Wales. NHS covers all dental treatment. Universal broadband access. ( Make the free service shit and slow if too many people are offended by the poor having nice things. )
Income tax starts at £12,570 this year. How high do you move it?
Combined income taxes for the lowest paid are about 85p per pound at the minute.
To be clear that's for those who are receiving a significant proportion of their total income from universal credit.
The problem with that is I do wonder whether universal credit will be cut back in the need to find money post Covid.
I tried to catch up on Keir’s speech but could only find clips.
I then read, OK skimmed, the text.
Very very dull, I’m afraid.
He is better than Miliband, and obviously a million times better than Corbyn...but he is not able to project, or seemingly imagine, positive change.
Boris must be wheezing all the way to the bank, as it were.
He deserves some credit for at least starting work on identifying a vision for the post virus world. But I agree he is still at first base.
Is the government even thinking about the changes people may be demanding once the pandemic is behind us? The clown appears simply to want to return to promoting the sort of building projects that will make no more sense after the crisis than they did before it.
I think there's now the distinct possibility that Sir Keir could do worse than Jezza in 2019. Will the vaccine rollout be Boris's Falkland's moment? Hitherto, many liked Boris and thought he was a bit of a lad; but now - by eradicating Covid almost single-handedly - Boris has soared to the heights of domestic mega-competent and world statesman. His base will be rock solid because he socked one to the dastardly EU, and I can't see him not picking up some extra votes along the way. Moreover, it's perfectly possibility that Sir Keir will lose much of the support Jezza drummed up amongst the idealistic youth. What to do?
"Boris... by eradicating Covid almost single-handedly"
WTF??
I was referring to the perception rather than the reality. But the Falklands analogy is apposite: Maggie was credited with 'winning' the Falklands conflict, but it was her poor judgement that allowed the invasion in the first place and the situation was only rectified when others stepped in to sort out her mess. But she still reaped the political dividends - much to her opponents' immense irritation.
I thought the problem was not Maggie but her FCO going off on manoeuvres and giving the impression the UK didn't care about the islands?
1. Scrapping tertiary fees 2. Legalising cannabis 3. EFTA entry 4. Replacing council tax with land tax, tapered over time. 5. Strengthening protections for free speech and personal privacy 6. A way of addressing Google/Facebook monopolies 7. Experiments with UBI 8. Scrapping the TV license fee 9. An end to Covid restrictions 10. PR for local govt
Very good, though I disagree with 7, would only agree with 8 if you mean funding from general taxation instead and I`m not sure about 4.
I favour a hypothecated “digital tax” to fund the BBC.
You deal with a threat by having the power to overcome it, not by collywobbling all the time. It is rather silly to see portentous warnings about 'global threats' on PB, but any suggestion of what we can do amounting to little more than - nothing unless America is doing it and tells us to help.
The lesson of history tells us we need to build up the Navy. I am not experienced in defence matters, but I would suggest that small carriers and crafts capable of moving fast and mounting effective, quick operations would be better than vast carriers that we can't afford the aircraft for. A truly independent and usable nuclear capability would also be a plus.
IANAE either but I think all militaries should be reviewing the Azerbaijan conflict very carefully. Cheap unmanned drones turned out to be key. I suspect that is the future of warfare with on the ground human involvement rapidly becoming less significant and less effective. We should probably be investing accordingly.
Yes, definitely, those too.
And speaking of un-manned defence, I also don't see why we can't bury torpedo tubes under the sea all around the UK coastline. Far more flexible and dangerous than a one-chance strategic nuke that everybody knows we'd never fire.
Many being very unfair to poor Keir Starmer today.
I defy anyone to come up with a set of policies that appeal to Sadiq Khan's London, the red wall of the North and the old heartlands of Scotland at the same time.
Legalisation of cannabis. Cut income tax for low paid by a lot. Devo max squared for Scotland, 6 counties and Wales. NHS covers all dental treatment. Universal broadband access. ( Make the free service shit and slow if too many people are offended by the poor having nice things. )
Income tax starts at £12,570 this year. How high do you move it?
Combined income taxes for the lowest paid are about 85p per pound at the minute.
To be clear that's for those who are receiving a significant proportion of their total income from universal credit.
The problem with that is I do wonder whether universal credit will be cut back in the need to find money post Covid.
He can send all those pseudo-scientific ones he won't use....
The crashing of Macron's reputation has been the steepest since the great fall of Aung San Suu Kyi (Nobel Booby Prize 1991).
It seems only the other day that pb.com was awash with encomia on the wise & thoughtful good European from Meeks & Co. Jupiter, they called him.
My recollection from classical mythology is that Jupiter was a notorious rapist, prone to arbitrary & pernicious acts of lying, rapacity and violence.
So, the name does seem appropriate for a mendacious, self-serving sociopath, now out-muscling Le Pen on the Nationalist Right.
Jupiter's moons were, by convention, named after the Classical version's conquests, willing or not. There are now 53 and they got up to 35 names before they had to switch to his decedents...
Many being very unfair to poor Keir Starmer today.
I defy anyone to come up with a set of policies that appeal to Sadiq Khan's London, the red wall of the North and the old heartlands of Scotland at the same time.
Indeed. Wilson managed it, though.
Every labour leader up to and including Blair could draw on the vast well of sanity of the mass manufacturing working class. Car workers, railwaymen, dockers, miners, engineering unions etc.
No statue topplers or reparations proposers there.
As a bit of an extensive but useful digression there, Labour has actually been a coalition of the metropolitan and the working class since the 1890s. The trade unionist, art historian and proto-feminist Lady Emilia Dilke was one of its first members.
In the 1960s and 1970s Labour wouldn't and couldn't have won without a metropolitan-heartland coalition. Wilson's very public embrace of The Beatles was all about that.
There are also distinctive modern identity conflicts that Starmer has to deal with too , I agree, but he may be up to the that.
If he really wanted to win, Starmer would go to the university lecturers, senior diversity officers, hospital administrators, human rights lawyers, charity bosses, top trade unionists, commentariat journalists etc.etc.etc. who are his bedrock and say
'you f8ckers have done outrageously well relatively since lockdown and I am coming to collect via taxes and salary cuts. The reason is that poor working class people in the private sector have had a horrible time. Now suck it up b8tches, because its not like you are going to be voting for Johnson, is it.''
Hold on, Starmer is saying that the government will raise the money and then use it to invest in the private sector? Is he proposing a sovereign wealth fund? Who is going to do the investing, will he have fund managers that get paid £1m+ salaries/bonuses on staff to do it? Is he going to hand the civil service this money and have people with no experience in investing be put in charge of a multi-billion fund?
This raises so many questions.
I think you can be very confident that if this ever were to happen under a Labour government, the investing policy would be such that the quality of the actual investment case would be entirely irrelevant.
The idea of a domestically focussed sovereign wealth fund is hilarious to me. I don't see how anyone could take it seriously. You'd end up with a million and one agendas on how to invest the money and ultimately it ends up as a gigantic tracker fund or just gets wasted propping up failing business models.
One area it might be useful is house building. Council houses are already effectively a form of sovereign wealth fund. Moving the windfall gains from grant of planning permission from the private sector to the public sector makes sense to me.
Citizens Bonds is a great idea for Labour. Economically it's a shift towards collectivism and government intervention. Tick. Politically it will appeal to both the old base (Red Wall) and the new base (me). Double tick.
Keir Starmer has arrived.
The British Recovery bit sounds good. But 'bond' is just one of those financial terms like 'security' or 'gross profit' that no one normal really understands.
The prospect of giving the middle class a better savings rate (and making them feel good about it because they're investing in Britain) might prove popular.
After all - George Osborne did something fairly similar I think without the investing in Britain bit? If he thought it was smart politics, it probably was.
Yep, this is a mood thing as much as anything. After the nightmare of Covid we rebuild together and we fund it together. All with a stake. All rooting for each other. The feel tone is "togetherness" and - this is key - of the optimistic not the "in adversity" variety. This is genius. Potentially. CitBond needs to be BIG and we need a stream of similarly themed policies between now and 2024. One question for each new one. "Does this fit our TOGETHER theme?" If not, it's out. But massive caveat: Save the best so the Cons don't steal. They are prone to this since they can't think for themselves
Many being very unfair to poor Keir Starmer today.
I defy anyone to come up with a set of policies that appeal to Sadiq Khan's London, the red wall of the North and the old heartlands of Scotland at the same time.
Many being very unfair to poor Keir Starmer today.
I defy anyone to come up with a set of policies that appeal to Sadiq Khan's London, the red wall of the North and the old heartlands of Scotland at the same time.
Indeed. Wilson managed it, though.
Every labour leader up to and including Blair could draw on the vast well of sanity of the mass manufacturing working class. Car workers, railwaymen, dockers, miners, engineering unions etc.
No statue topplers or reparations proposers there.
As a bit of an extensive but useful digression there, Labour has actually been a coalition of the metropolitan and the working class since the 1890s. The trade unionist, art historian and proto-feminist Lady Emilia Dilke was one of its first members.
In the 1960s and 1970s Labour wouldn't and couldn't have won without a metropolitan-heartland coalition. Wilson's very public embrace of The Beatles was all about that.
There are also distinctive modern identity conflicts that Starmer has to deal with too , I agree, but he may be up to the that.
If he really wanted to win, Starmer would go to the university lecturers, senior diversity officers, hospital administrators, human rights lawyers, charity bosses, top trade unionists, commentariat journalists etc.etc.etc. who are his bedrock and say
'you f8ckers have done outrageously well relatively since lockdown and I am coming to collect via taxes and salary cuts. The reason is that poor working class people in the private sector have had a horrible time. Now suck it up b8tches, because its not like you are going to be voting for Johnson, is it.''
He could win that way, big time.
Funnily enough, this would indeed probably see him take five, ten points ahead of the polls.
A Celtic fan has denied sending an 'offensive' tweet about Captain Sir Tom Moore that read 'burn, auld fella, buuurn' a day after the war hero and NHS fundraiser's death.
Joseph Kelly, 35, from Castlemilk in Glasgow, allegedly tweeted on February 3: 'The only good Brit soldier is a deed one, burn auld fella, buuuuurn.' He was later charged under the Communications Act 2003.
I mean, of course it's offensive to most people, but it's not incitement to violence and the barrier for criminal charges needs to be much, much higher than those words.
Do you know what?
I'm not so sure about that. If he'd just said "burn auld fella, burn" then that'd be grossly offensive but not in any way criminal.
Propagating a message online that "the only good British soldier is a dead one" could be incitement, and people have responded or been inspired by less in the past, and for me it's at least borderline.
I see where you're coming from, but haven't Irish Republicans been posting similar things for years now - including when actual British soldiers were in the firing line?
He isn't saying go and kill soldiers, rather he's just exclaiming his happiness that this particular aged veteran passed away.
My line would be that unless it's a clear incitement to violence or disorder, it's short of the mark. IMO there's a difference between wishing people were dead and asking others to do it.
We don't see the context of this guy's Twitter account either, so one Tweet might be either may out of context or part of a wider pattern of incitement.
Being a tw@ on Twitter shouldn't be illegal though.
Yes, and that was in a pre-social media age. Sometimes those remarks were reported - in the context of a news story or political argument - but that's different to providing them a platform where they can be amplified.
Like I said, I think it's borderline, but if you go beneath the headline on this I think it's more complex than just being grossly offensive, as I originally thought.
I might change my view too the more evidence I see!
We'd need to hear his views directly from him (voiced by David Tennant).
1. Scrapping tertiary fees 2. Legalising cannabis 3. EFTA entry 4. Replacing council tax with land tax, tapered over time. 5. Strengthening protections for free speech and personal privacy 6. A way of addressing Google/Facebook monopolies 7. Experiments with UBI 8. Scrapping the TV license fee 9. An end to Covid restrictions 10. PR for local govt
Very good, though I disagree with 7, would only agree with 8 if you mean funding from general taxation instead and I`m not sure about 4.
I favour a hypothecated “digital tax” to fund the BBC.
If I may be so bold as to suggest an addition to your list: bring the Open University back in to being a quasi-state university. It was a wonderful organisation which was subjected to Conservative vandalism for no good reason.
Hold on, Starmer is saying that the government will raise the money and then use it to invest in the private sector? Is he proposing a sovereign wealth fund? Who is going to do the investing, will he have fund managers that get paid £1m+ salaries/bonuses on staff to do it? Is he going to hand the civil service this money and have people with no experience in investing be put in charge of a multi-billion fund?
This raises so many questions.
I think you can be very confident that if this ever were to happen under a Labour government, the investing policy would be such that the quality of the actual investment case would be entirely irrelevant.
The idea of a domestically focussed sovereign wealth fund is hilarious to me. I don't see how anyone could take it seriously. You'd end up with a million and one agendas on how to invest the money and ultimately it ends up as a gigantic tracker fund or just gets wasted propping up failing business models.
One area it might be useful is house building. Council houses are already effectively a form of sovereign wealth fund. Moving the windfall gains from grant of planning permission from the private sector to the public sector makes sense to me.
Citizens Bonds is a great idea for Labour. Economically it's a shift towards collectivism and government intervention. Tick. Politically it will appeal to both the old base (Red Wall) and the new base (me). Double tick.
Keir Starmer has arrived.
The British Recovery bit sounds good. But 'bond' is just one of those financial terms like 'security' or 'gross profit' that no one normal really understands.
The prospect of giving the middle class a better savings rate (and making them feel good about it because they're investing in Britain) might prove popular.
After all - George Osborne did something fairly similar I think without the investing in Britain bit? If he thought it was smart politics, it probably was.
Yep, this is a mood thing as much as anything. After the nightmare of Covid we rebuild together and we fund it together. All with a stake. All rooting for each other. The feel tone is "togetherness" and - this is key - of the optimistic not the "in adversity" variety. This is genius. Potentially. CitBond needs to be BIG and we need a stream of similarly themed policies between now and 2024. One question for each new one. "Does this fit our TOGETHER theme?" If not, it's out. But massive caveat: Save the best so the Cons don't steal. They are prone to this since they can't think for themselves
So your answer to everything is communitarianism?
And you think that's genius?
Its a thought. Not sure how its any different to Corbynism though, except there's less banging on about Jews.
I think there's now the distinct possibility that Sir Keir could do worse than Jezza in 2019. Will the vaccine rollout be Boris's Falkland's moment? Hitherto, many liked Boris and thought he was a bit of a lad; but now - by eradicating Covid almost single-handedly - Boris has soared to the heights of domestic mega-competent and world statesman. His base will be rock solid because he socked one to the dastardly EU, and I can't see him not picking up some extra votes along the way. Moreover, it's perfectly possibility that Sir Keir will lose much of the support Jezza drummed up amongst the idealistic youth. What to do?
"Boris... by eradicating Covid almost single-handedly"
WTF??
I was referring to the perception rather than the reality. But the Falklands analogy is apposite: Maggie was credited with 'winning' the Falklands conflict, but it was her poor judgement that allowed the invasion in the first place and the situation was only rectified when others stepped in to sort out her mess. But she still reaped the political dividends - much to her opponents' immense irritation.
I thought the problem was not Maggie but her FCO going off on manoeuvres and giving the impression the UK didn't care about the islands?
It was more the fact that Thatcher endorsed the decision of John Nott and the MOD to announce in 1981 the withdrawal of HMS Endurance from the South Atlantic that made the Argentinians think the UK didn't want to protect the Falklands and South Georgia.
Many being very unfair to poor Keir Starmer today.
I defy anyone to come up with a set of policies that appeal to Sadiq Khan's London, the red wall of the North and the old heartlands of Scotland at the same time.
Legalisation of cannabis. Cut income tax for low paid by a lot. Devo max squared for Scotland, 6 counties and Wales. NHS covers all dental treatment. Universal broadband access. ( Make the free service shit and slow if too many people are offended by the poor having nice things. )
Income tax starts at £12,570 this year. How high do you move it?
Combined income taxes for the lowest paid are about 85p per pound at the minute.
To be clear that's for those who are receiving a significant proportion of their total income from universal credit.
The problem with that is I do wonder whether universal credit will be cut back in the need to find money post Covid.
Nobodies real tax rate should be 85%
Let alone the poorest.
Why not? The poor use the public services the most, they should contribute the most.
I think there's now the distinct possibility that Sir Keir could do worse than Jezza in 2019. Will the vaccine rollout be Boris's Falkland's moment? Hitherto, many liked Boris and thought he was a bit of a lad; but now - by eradicating Covid almost single-handedly - Boris has soared to the heights of domestic mega-competent and world statesman. His base will be rock solid because he socked one to the dastardly EU, and I can't see him not picking up some extra votes along the way. Moreover, it's perfectly possibility that Sir Keir will lose much of the support Jezza drummed up amongst the idealistic youth. What to do?
"Boris... by eradicating Covid almost single-handedly"
WTF??
I was referring to the perception rather than the reality. But the Falklands analogy is apposite: Maggie was credited with 'winning' the Falklands conflict, but it was her poor judgement that allowed the invasion in the first place and the situation was only rectified when others stepped in to sort out her mess. But she still reaped the political dividends - much to her opponents' immense irritation.
I thought the problem was not Maggie but her FCO going off on manoeuvres and giving the impression the UK didn't care about the islands?
Lord Carrington argued through thick and thin that we shouldn't give the Argies any impression that we were losing interest in the Falklands. Alas Maggie and John Nitt went ahead with their defence cuts, which was the catalyst.
Many being very unfair to poor Keir Starmer today.
I defy anyone to come up with a set of policies that appeal to Sadiq Khan's London, the red wall of the North and the old heartlands of Scotland at the same time.
Indeed. Wilson managed it, though.
Every labour leader up to and including Blair could draw on the vast well of sanity of the mass manufacturing working class. Car workers, railwaymen, dockers, miners, engineering unions etc.
No statue topplers or reparations proposers there.
As a bit of an extensive but useful digression there, Labour has actually been a coalition of the metropolitan and the working class since the 1890s. The trade unionist, art historian and proto-feminist Lady Emilia Dilke was one of its first members.
In the 1960s and 1970s Labour wouldn't and couldn't have won without a metropolitan-heartland coalition. Wilson's very public embrace of The Beatles was all about that.
There are also distinctive modern identity conflicts that Starmer has to deal with too , I agree, but he may be up to the that.
If he really wanted to win, Starmer would go to the university lecturers, senior diversity officers, hospital administrators, human rights lawyers, charity bosses, top trade unionists, commentariat journalists etc.etc.etc. who are his bedrock and say
'you f8ckers have done outrageously well relatively since lockdown and I am coming to collect via taxes and salary cuts. The reason is that poor working class people in the private sector have had a horrible time. Now suck it up b8tches, because its not like you are going to be voting for Johnson, is it.''
He could win that way, big time.
Blimey. Is Starmer too bland and safe for that approach?
Many being very unfair to poor Keir Starmer today.
I defy anyone to come up with a set of policies that appeal to Sadiq Khan's London, the red wall of the North and the old heartlands of Scotland at the same time.
Legalisation of cannabis. Cut income tax for low paid by a lot. Devo max squared for Scotland, 6 counties and Wales. NHS covers all dental treatment. Universal broadband access. ( Make the free service shit and slow if too many people are offended by the poor having nice things. )
Income tax starts at £12,570 this year. How high do you move it?
Combined income taxes for the lowest paid are about 85p per pound at the minute.
To be clear that's for those who are receiving a significant proportion of their total income from universal credit.
The problem with that is I do wonder whether universal credit will be cut back in the need to find money post Covid.
Nobodies real tax rate should be 85%
Let alone the poorest.
Why not? The poor use the public services the most, they should contribute the most.
You think taxing the poorest 85% of every extra pound they earn encourages them to work more and contribute more?
Plenty of time. But he does need something of his to really catch people's attention and fix an image in peoples' minds. Goodness knows what though.
Starmer is awful, dull and clueless, as his actions in 2019 demonstrated.
He's also a nasty arsehole careerist.
While MPs like Luciana Berger were getting bullied out of the Labour Party he chose to serve in the Shadow Cabinet to further his own career and put forward Corbyn as PM.
Only those who refused to serve under Corbyn should have been considered as possible Labour Party leaders. A Labour led by Yvette Cooper would be a credible threat right now.
A Labour party led by Yvette Cooper or Liz Kendall would probably be at between 25 and 30%, roughly equivalent for Labour to Davey's standing. There's simply a much smaller market for business-friendly centrism now among non-Tory voters than there was in the late '90s and early 2000s, and especially before the financial crisis and its damage to the most straightforward enthusiasts of globalisation.
Dr Rosena Allin-Khan MD is the hidden gem for Labour.
1. Scrapping tertiary fees 2. Legalising cannabis 3. EFTA entry 4. Replacing council tax with land tax, tapered over time. 5. Strengthening protections for free speech and personal privacy 6. A way of addressing Google/Facebook monopolies 7. Experiments with UBI 8. Scrapping the TV license fee 9. An end to Covid restrictions 10. PR for local govt
Yes, that is a strong set of policies for LDs, though I think ending the Covid restrictions is a bridge too far back to old style liberalism. I don't agree with most of them, but they would work for the LDs.
I also think that now that they are largely insignificant in national politics, they should be a bit more unconventional and 'different' in the way that they run their party. So instead of whips, and party lines, and perhaps even 'leaders', they sign up to a set of principles, and are then allowed to vote with their consciences at all times. I think that itself would have voter appeal.
Many being very unfair to poor Keir Starmer today.
I defy anyone to come up with a set of policies that appeal to Sadiq Khan's London, the red wall of the North and the old heartlands of Scotland at the same time.
Legalisation of cannabis. Cut income tax for low paid by a lot. Devo max squared for Scotland, 6 counties and Wales. NHS covers all dental treatment. Universal broadband access. ( Make the free service shit and slow if too many people are offended by the poor having nice things. )
Income tax starts at £12,570 this year. How high do you move it?
Combined income taxes for the lowest paid are about 85p per pound at the minute.
The simplest idea I can come up with is to remove withdrawal of benefit for when you get a job. Or make the withdrawal of benefit take a very, very long time to start.
So get a job and your benefits are unaffected for 2 years. Or something like that.
1. Scrapping tertiary fees 2. Legalising cannabis 3. EFTA entry 4. Replacing council tax with land tax, tapered over time. 5. Strengthening protections for free speech and personal privacy 6. A way of addressing Google/Facebook monopolies 7. Experiments with UBI 8. Scrapping the TV license fee 9. An end to Covid restrictions 10. PR for local govt
Very good, though I disagree with 7, would only agree with 8 if you mean funding from general taxation instead and I`m not sure about 4.
I favour a hypothecated “digital tax” to fund the BBC.
If I may be so bold as to suggest an addition to your list: bring the Open University back in to being a quasi-state university. It was a wonderful organisation which was subjected to Conservative vandalism for no good reason.
I actually favour a “National Skills Service” with the Open University at its core.
Many being very unfair to poor Keir Starmer today.
I defy anyone to come up with a set of policies that appeal to Sadiq Khan's London, the red wall of the North and the old heartlands of Scotland at the same time.
Legalisation of cannabis. Cut income tax for low paid by a lot. Devo max squared for Scotland, 6 counties and Wales. NHS covers all dental treatment. Universal broadband access. ( Make the free service shit and slow if too many people are offended by the poor having nice things. )
Income tax starts at £12,570 this year. How high do you move it?
Combined income taxes for the lowest paid are about 85p per pound at the minute.
The simplest idea I can come up with is to remove withdrawal of benefit for when you get a job. Or make the withdrawal of benefit take a very, very long time to start.
So get a job and your benefits are unaffected for 2 years. Or something like that.
Merge withdrawal of benefit, income tax and national insurance into one.
Hold on, Starmer is saying that the government will raise the money and then use it to invest in the private sector? Is he proposing a sovereign wealth fund? Who is going to do the investing, will he have fund managers that get paid £1m+ salaries/bonuses on staff to do it? Is he going to hand the civil service this money and have people with no experience in investing be put in charge of a multi-billion fund?
This raises so many questions.
I think you can be very confident that if this ever were to happen under a Labour government, the investing policy would be such that the quality of the actual investment case would be entirely irrelevant.
The idea of a domestically focussed sovereign wealth fund is hilarious to me. I don't see how anyone could take it seriously. You'd end up with a million and one agendas on how to invest the money and ultimately it ends up as a gigantic tracker fund or just gets wasted propping up failing business models.
One area it might be useful is house building. Council houses are already effectively a form of sovereign wealth fund. Moving the windfall gains from grant of planning permission from the private sector to the public sector makes sense to me.
Citizens Bonds is a great idea for Labour. Economically it's a shift towards collectivism and government intervention. Tick. Politically it will appeal to both the old base (Red Wall) and the new base (me). Double tick.
Keir Starmer has arrived.
Bonds are quite complicated as a retail offering. Coupons and tenor and duration and whatnot.
Not to say there won't be an illustrated guide making the simple argument about investment and interest but you must stop thinking that everyone out there is as sophisticated as you are.
I don't really get the point given that, for now at least, government can borrow both very long and very cheap.
Togetherness. Plus a nod to small savers. "Sick of getting nothing on our little nestegg. You work hard all your life ..."
A Celtic fan has denied sending an 'offensive' tweet about Captain Sir Tom Moore that read 'burn, auld fella, buuurn' a day after the war hero and NHS fundraiser's death.
Joseph Kelly, 35, from Castlemilk in Glasgow, allegedly tweeted on February 3: 'The only good Brit soldier is a deed one, burn auld fella, buuuuurn.' He was later charged under the Communications Act 2003.
I mean, of course it's offensive to most people, but it's not incitement to violence and the barrier for criminal charges needs to be much, much higher than those words.
Do you know what?
I'm not so sure about that. If he'd just said "burn auld fella, burn" then that'd be grossly offensive but not in any way criminal.
Propagating a message online that "the only good British soldier is a dead one" could be incitement, and people have responded or been inspired by less in the past, and for me it's at least borderline.
I see where you're coming from, but haven't Irish Republicans been posting similar things for years now - including when actual British soldiers were in the firing line?
He isn't saying go and kill soldiers, rather he's just exclaiming his happiness that this particular aged veteran passed away.
My line would be that unless it's a clear incitement to violence or disorder, it's short of the mark. IMO there's a difference between wishing people were dead and asking others to do it.
We don't see the context of this guy's Twitter account either, so one Tweet might be either may out of context or part of a wider pattern of incitement.
Being a tw@ on Twitter shouldn't be illegal though.
Yes, and that was in a pre-social media age. Sometimes those remarks were reported - in the context of a news story or political argument - but that's different to providing them a platform where they can be amplified.
Like I said, I think it's borderline, but if you go beneath the headline on this I think it's more complex than just being grossly offensive, as I originally thought.
I might change my view too the more evidence I see!
Indeed, I think we do need more context, which I think will come at the trial.
I would have thought the Tweets much more offensive in reaction to the violent death of a serving solider, such as Lee Rigby, than to the death of a very old and sick veteran.
Many being very unfair to poor Keir Starmer today.
I defy anyone to come up with a set of policies that appeal to Sadiq Khan's London, the red wall of the North and the old heartlands of Scotland at the same time.
Legalisation of cannabis. Cut income tax for low paid by a lot. Devo max squared for Scotland, 6 counties and Wales. NHS covers all dental treatment. Universal broadband access. ( Make the free service shit and slow if too many people are offended by the poor having nice things. )
Income tax starts at £12,570 this year. How high do you move it?
Combined income taxes for the lowest paid are about 85p per pound at the minute.
To be clear that's for those who are receiving a significant proportion of their total income from universal credit.
The problem with that is I do wonder whether universal credit will be cut back in the need to find money post Covid.
Nobodies real tax rate should be 85%
Let alone the poorest.
Why not? The poor use the public services the most, they should contribute the most.
You think taxing the poorest 85% of every extra pound they earn encourages them to work more and contribute more?
They just need to believe in themselves harder and they'll get a decent job.
I think there's now the distinct possibility that Sir Keir could do worse than Jezza in 2019. Will the vaccine rollout be Boris's Falkland's moment? Hitherto, many liked Boris and thought he was a bit of a lad; but now - by eradicating Covid almost single-handedly - Boris has soared to the heights of domestic mega-competent and world statesman. His base will be rock solid because he socked one to the dastardly EU, and I can't see him not picking up some extra votes along the way. Moreover, it's perfectly possibility that Sir Keir will lose much of the support Jezza drummed up amongst the idealistic youth. What to do?
Don’t know if he will do worse than Jezza in 2019 or not, but I think you’re pretty spot on with the scenario you paint
Agree as was your comment about him, as with others, competing against someone who is better at selling ideas to the British public than him.
I yield to no one in my estimation of Boris' ability and capability to be PM (very low). But you just can't help liking him on a personal level.
I have been at charity dinners where he was due to speak and, when it was rumoured that he had entered the building, there was a tangible buzz of excitement. Even, or rather especially from the old girls in pearls.
As anyone who is currently exposed to Scottish political social media will know, the atmosphere in the Yes camp is absolutely fetid. The latest imbroglio is over Wings over Scotland and trans-rights. TBH the intricacies are beyond me, on that one.
More materially, ScotGov looks set to ignore a vote in the Parliament demanding the publication of an OECD report on the dire state of Scotland's schools. It will be published after the election...
I doubt any of this will make much impact in May, but you have to wonder why Nicola should think Boris is bound by Scot Parl votes when she routinely ignore them herself.
1. Scrapping tertiary fees 2. Legalising cannabis 3. EFTA entry 4. Replacing council tax with land tax, tapered over time. 5. Strengthening protections for free speech and personal privacy 6. A way of addressing Google/Facebook monopolies 7. Experiments with UBI 8. Scrapping the TV license fee 9. An end to Covid restrictions 10. PR for local govt
A fair bit there I could agree with. Some I could not.
2,3,5 and 8 I would very much welcome.
Trouble with 1 is that I firmly believe the only way to scrap Tertiary fees is to also greatly reduce the number of students going into Tertiary education. Now I think that is a good idea as the 'Degree Industry' is a monster that has lost all control. But you need all the alternatives - particularly apprenticeships - in place and working before you can do that.
4 is something to look at but I think the number of necessary exemptions would make it impractical and make it too hefty on those who are not exempted to be practical.
6 is desirable but seems to be shorthand most of the time for destroying successful companies without anything viable to put in their place.
7 is wrongheaded for me. It is the taxpayer subsidising businesses which refuse to pay a reasonable wage. Increase the minimum wage and enforce rules controlling the gig economy to prevent avoidance. If a business cannot afford to pay a living wage to its workforce then it is not a viable business.
9 I agree with but only when the data says we can do it safely.
10 well, my views on PR are well known so I oppose this.
Amusing in parts but it rather catches the ennui of the time. Ruth's heart is not in it, Nicola's heart is not in it, Baillie didn't even stand for the leadership, its all kind of tired and depressing and sad.
Plenty of time. But he does need something of his to really catch people's attention and fix an image in peoples' minds. Goodness knows what though.
Starmer is awful, dull and clueless, as his actions in 2019 demonstrated.
He's also a nasty arsehole careerist.
While MPs like Luciana Berger were getting bullied out of the Labour Party he chose to serve in the Shadow Cabinet to further his own career and put forward Corbyn as PM.
Only those who refused to serve under Corbyn should have been considered as possible Labour Party leaders. A Labour led by Yvette Cooper would be a credible threat right now.
Many being very unfair to poor Keir Starmer today.
I defy anyone to come up with a set of policies that appeal to Sadiq Khan's London, the red wall of the North and the old heartlands of Scotland at the same time.
Legalisation of cannabis. Cut income tax for low paid by a lot. Devo max squared for Scotland, 6 counties and Wales. NHS covers all dental treatment. Universal broadband access. ( Make the free service shit and slow if too many people are offended by the poor having nice things. )
Income tax starts at £12,570 this year. How high do you move it?
Combined income taxes for the lowest paid are about 85p per pound at the minute.
To be clear that's for those who are receiving a significant proportion of their total income from universal credit.
The problem with that is I do wonder whether universal credit will be cut back in the need to find money post Covid.
Nobodies real tax rate should be 85%
Let alone the poorest.
Why not? The poor use the public services the most, they should contribute the most.
You think taxing the poorest 85% of every extra pound they earn encourages them to work more and contribute more?
They just need to believe in themselves harder and they'll get a decent job.
A Celtic fan has denied sending an 'offensive' tweet about Captain Sir Tom Moore that read 'burn, auld fella, buuurn' a day after the war hero and NHS fundraiser's death.
Joseph Kelly, 35, from Castlemilk in Glasgow, allegedly tweeted on February 3: 'The only good Brit soldier is a deed one, burn auld fella, buuuuurn.' He was later charged under the Communications Act 2003.
Many being very unfair to poor Keir Starmer today.
I defy anyone to come up with a set of policies that appeal to Sadiq Khan's London, the red wall of the North and the old heartlands of Scotland at the same time.
Legalisation of cannabis. Cut income tax for low paid by a lot. Devo max squared for Scotland, 6 counties and Wales. NHS covers all dental treatment. Universal broadband access. ( Make the free service shit and slow if too many people are offended by the poor having nice things. )
Income tax starts at £12,570 this year. How high do you move it?
Combined income taxes for the lowest paid are about 85p per pound at the minute.
To be clear that's for those who are receiving a significant proportion of their total income from universal credit.
The problem with that is I do wonder whether universal credit will be cut back in the need to find money post Covid.
Nobodies real tax rate should be 85%
Let alone the poorest.
Why not? The poor use the public services the most, they should contribute the most.
You think taxing the poorest 85% of every extra pound they earn encourages them to work more and contribute more?
They just need to believe in themselves harder and they'll get a decent job.
Have you seen the tables for today’s ComRes? I can’t seem to download them from their site
7 is wrongheaded for me. It is the taxpayer subsidising businesses which refuse to pay a reasonable wage. Increase the minimum wage and enforce rules controlling the gig economy to prevent avoidance. If a business cannot afford to pay a living wage to its workforce then it is not a viable business.
The minimum wage isn't the issue. The convoluted tax and benefit system is.
As it stands anyone working minimum wage is "earning" nearly £10 per hour. But anyone on UC, above the NI and IC thresholds is actually "earning" about £1 per hour net.
Increasing minimum wage doesn't actually increase take home pay very much when the tax system is reclaiming 85% of whatever an employer pays their employees.
Plenty of time. But he does need something of his to really catch people's attention and fix an image in peoples' minds. Goodness knows what though.
Starmer is awful, dull and clueless, as his actions in 2019 demonstrated.
He's also a nasty arsehole careerist.
While MPs like Luciana Berger were getting bullied out of the Labour Party he chose to serve in the Shadow Cabinet to further his own career and put forward Corbyn as PM.
Only those who refused to serve under Corbyn should have been considered as possible Labour Party leaders. A Labour led by Yvette Cooper would be a credible threat right now.
Many being very unfair to poor Keir Starmer today.
I defy anyone to come up with a set of policies that appeal to Sadiq Khan's London, the red wall of the North and the old heartlands of Scotland at the same time.
Dipping into Scotch left twitter there's more positivity about the SKS speech than one might expect , plenty of abuse as well naturlich. You'd never get poor betting against a certain proportion of the Scottish left being eternally willing to give Labour one more chance.
Many being very unfair to poor Keir Starmer today.
I defy anyone to come up with a set of policies that appeal to Sadiq Khan's London, the red wall of the North and the old heartlands of Scotland at the same time.
Legalisation of cannabis. Cut income tax for low paid by a lot. Devo max squared for Scotland, 6 counties and Wales. NHS covers all dental treatment. Universal broadband access. ( Make the free service shit and slow if too many people are offended by the poor having nice things. )
1 - If licensed, yes. 2 - The lowest paid don't really pay income tax. Reducing VAT would help them more. 3 - Yes 4 - Yes 5 - Meh
Broadband is actually one of the few things you could talk about without annoying people. You only have to look at children who don't have it at home to see the impact it's having on their education.
Internet really is an infrastructure requirement like roads that we need everyone to have some level of access to.
Edit to add - it doesn't even need to be broadband - subsidising 5g for rural areas attached to free low bandwidth sims would work as well.
Absolutely. In urban areas they need to look at expanding the fibre rollout, starting in those places with crap ADSL at the moment. Fibre to the Home is a huge project, but necessary for 21st century ways of work, education and leisure.
In rural areas, investment in mobile data networks and even public Starlink stations would make a massive difference to often poor communities.
Fibre to the home in rural settings is both feasible and economic so long as innovative techniques (e.g. micro-trenching and mole ploughing) are deployed and landowners waive Wayleave payments in return for their own improved connectivity. Laying fibre optics is also much easier across farmland and moorland than it is in built-up areas - I know from voluntarily managing projects to do both.
Amusing in parts but it rather catches the ennui of the time. Ruth's heart is not in it, Nicola's heart is not in it, Baillie didn't even stand for the leadership, its all kind of tired and depressing and sad.
Have nominations closed in the SLAB leadership contest?
It's a real shame. Sarwar is an undoubted improvement presentationally - when voters are chosing between SNP and Labour, it helps not to be telling people what's what in deep Yorkshire tones. However, JB seems to be a real political talent.
Many being very unfair to poor Keir Starmer today.
I defy anyone to come up with a set of policies that appeal to Sadiq Khan's London, the red wall of the North and the old heartlands of Scotland at the same time.
Legalisation of cannabis. Cut income tax for low paid by a lot. Devo max squared for Scotland, 6 counties and Wales. NHS covers all dental treatment. Universal broadband access. ( Make the free service shit and slow if too many people are offended by the poor having nice things. )
Income tax starts at £12,570 this year. How high do you move it?
Combined income taxes for the lowest paid are about 85p per pound at the minute.
To be clear that's for those who are receiving a significant proportion of their total income from universal credit.
The problem with that is I do wonder whether universal credit will be cut back in the need to find money post Covid.
Nobodies real tax rate should be 85%
Let alone the poorest.
Why not? The poor use the public services the most, they should contribute the most.
You think taxing the poorest 85% of every extra pound they earn encourages them to work more and contribute more?
They just need to believe in themselves harder and they'll get a decent job.
Currently bikes to get on in pursuit of a job are in very short supply and hideously overpriced; steal one?
7 is wrongheaded for me. It is the taxpayer subsidising businesses which refuse to pay a reasonable wage. Increase the minimum wage and enforce rules controlling the gig economy to prevent avoidance. If a business cannot afford to pay a living wage to its workforce then it is not a viable business.
The minimum wage isn't the issue. The convoluted tax and benefit system is.
As it stands anyone working minimum wage is "earning" nearly £10 per hour. But anyone on UC, above the NI and IC thresholds is actually "earning" about £1 per hour net.
Increasing minimum wage doesn't actually increase take home pay very much when the tax system is reclaiming 85% of whatever an employer pays their employees.
In addition, the benefits of experimenting with UBI in limited circumstances or areas means that everyones assumptions (whether pro or anti) could be tested in real-world scenarios.
1. Scrapping tertiary fees 2. Legalising cannabis 3. EFTA entry 4. Replacing council tax with land tax, tapered over time. 5. Strengthening protections for free speech and personal privacy 6. A way of addressing Google/Facebook monopolies 7. Experiments with UBI 8. Scrapping the TV license fee 9. An end to Covid restrictions 10. PR for local govt
1. Scrapping tertiary fees 2. Legalising cannabis 3. EFTA entry 4. Replacing council tax with land tax, tapered over time. 5. Strengthening protections for free speech and personal privacy 6. A way of addressing Google/Facebook monopolies 7. Experiments with UBI 8. Scrapping the TV license fee 9. An end to Covid restrictions 10. PR for local govt
An interesting LD prospectus. Needs some proposals for raising significant taxes to pay for it.
1 - Could cost £5bn a year. 2 - Hope that psychosis does not increase. Would tax on this pay for 1 and 8? 3 - Pros and cons to debate. Potentially might help LDs a little with the 52% they defined as thick racists, whilst keeping their FBPE tendency on board. 4 - Yes - though we have a fully worked out set of proposals from some time ago for adjusting Council Tax / Stamp Duty which are far better. IMO Land Tax is based far too heavily on future usage class guesses by bureaucrats, and the last set of published proposals had not thought through consequences in any serious way. 5 - Yes. 6 - Yes if not just a bandwagon a la Australia. 7 - Very questionable / shot in the dark. I prefer Experiments with Mice by Johnny Dankworth. 8 - Yes, but how to raise £4bn a year for the BBC? 9 - Yes 10 - Would this be combined with any changes? Tories currently planning to throw it all in the air again afaics.
Plenty of time. But he does need something of his to really catch people's attention and fix an image in peoples' minds. Goodness knows what though.
Starmer is awful, dull and clueless, as his actions in 2019 demonstrated.
He's also a nasty arsehole careerist.
While MPs like Luciana Berger were getting bullied out of the Labour Party he chose to serve in the Shadow Cabinet to further his own career and put forward Corbyn as PM.
Only those who refused to serve under Corbyn should have been considered as possible Labour Party leaders. A Labour led by Yvette Cooper would be a credible threat right now.
I keep hearing that argument from PB Conservatives as they cast around for some angle to attack Starmer on. The argument appeals only to those who would never vote Labour in a million years.
Starmer took Corbyn down, something that I had just about despaired of happening. For that he deserves and gets great credit.
It is very obviously the case that Starmer's task would have been much harder if he had positioned himself as an outspoken critic of Corbyn from the start. The likes of Hilary Benn or Yvette Cooper would probably not have won in 2020, even against the awful Long-Bailey.
Starmer was astute enough to realise what was the best course to get rid of Corbyn, distancing himself from Corbyn within the tent without being overtly disloyal, and he followed it. People know that he did what was necessary, why should that attract any criticism?
He's no more a careerist than any politician, and probably a lot less than most considering the career he gave up to stand as a humble Labour MP in 2015. What he is though is a very astute politician.
I thought that today's speech was very good, timely, and likely to appeal to those whose votes are up for grabs. The spirit of 1945. Referencing Attlee. War bonds. The equivalent of "and now win the peace" and all that. All good themes and ones which can provide a focus that Starmer can define himself around.
Region of Residence 1st dose 2nd dose Cumulative Total Doses to Date Total 422,576 4,497 427,073 East Of England 47,349 516 47,865 London 56,382 629 57,011 Midlands 76,874 767 77,641 North East And Yorkshire 72,853 950 73,803 North West 54,382 373 54,755 South East 66,156 826 66,982 South West 46,724 432 47,156
The panic is being held in the Church Hall today. Could everyone who wants to run round like a headless chicken please remember to put all the folding chairs away afterwards? Please?
Dipping into Scotch left twitter there's more positivity about the SKS speech than one might expect , plenty of abuse as well naturlich. You'd never get poor betting against a certain proportion of the Scottish left being eternally willing to give Labour one more chance.
Super easy for him to surprise on the upside too, I guess? He is starting from what must be the bottom.
Comments
Edited extra bit:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w-6u_y4dTpg
University fees
Social care costs
Childcare costs
Supporting the police and the justice system
Bringing society together
This is what people care about.
"Every time a British soldier dies, there's a holiday in my heart."
(Ben Hecht).
Is the government even thinking about the changes people may be demanding once the pandemic is behind us? The clown appears simply to want to return to promoting the sort of building projects that will make no more sense after the crisis than they did before it.
No statue topplers or reparations proposers there.
2007, when politics was boring and all the politicians were the same, feels an awfully long time ago.
As an aside, we've had a financial crisis and a global flu pandemic this century. That does leave one or two other things from the 20th that might recur...
He isn't saying go and kill soldiers, rather he's just exclaiming his happiness that this particular aged veteran passed away.
My line would be that unless it's a clear incitement to violence or disorder, it's short of the mark. IMO there's a difference between wishing people were dead and asking others to do it.
We don't see the context of this guy's Twitter account either, so one Tweet might be either may out of context or part of a wider pattern of incitement.
Being a tw@ on Twitter shouldn't be illegal though.
They keep falling into traps: just look at how Kate Green criticised the government yesterday on free speech at universities by, um, retweeting the Daily Mirror, and saying the problem was confected. Others insist the Government is prosecuting a "culture war" - including our very own @SouthamObserver - whereas most people agree that retaining and explaining our heritage, without pulling it down or telling people what they should think about it, and discussing different views and letting people decide what they think is true, rather than restricting it and making it clear what the correct line is, just represents common sense.
Tory strategists know this very well, and they know Labour will take the bait every single time.
Btw, I think Starmer does get it more than most - it's just he tries to face in several different directions at once, rather than rise above it and lead them in one.
Labour's problem in 2019 was antisemitism and Starmer snuggled up close to the ringleader. Tories problem in 2019 was something completely different and Boris excised the problem.
Keir doesn’t need them to win.
In fact he can only win if he ignores or is even hostile to them.
Cut income tax for low paid by a lot.
Devo max squared for Scotland, 6 counties and Wales.
NHS covers all dental treatment.
Universal broadband access. ( Make the free service shit and slow if too many people are offended by the poor having nice things. )
England batsmen Alex Hales, Jason Roy and Sam Billings, as well as spinner Adil Rashid, went unsold.
https://www.bbc.com/sport/cricket/56108972
Very surprising nobody wanted Hales.
University fees - only if paying for it
Social care costs - only to avoid paying for it
Childcare costs - only if paying for it
Supporting the police - yes announcing more police = votes
and the justice system - anyone looking at our justice system over the last few years would ask are you sure about that
Our justice system only looks good if you aren't involved in it in any form. if you look closely the delays for criminal cases or beyond criminal.
WTF??
Like I said, I think it's borderline, but if you go beneath the headline on this I think it's more complex than just being grossly offensive, as I originally thought.
I might change my view too the more evidence I see!
2 - The lowest paid don't really pay income tax. Reducing VAT would help them more.
3 - Yes
4 - Yes
5 - Meh
* In fairness I would support most of them but I am not as far to the right as you are.
5% is almost insulting.
Internet really is an infrastructure requirement like roads that we need everyone to have some level of access to.
Edit to add - it doesn't even need to be broadband - subsidising 5g for rural areas attached to free low bandwidth sims would work as well.
If he wanted to unite Britain, Starmer would be much harder on the middle class (often public sector) professionals who are the bedrock of his vote, and who have done relatively well out of lockdown.
He would have strived much harder to help the poorly paid private sector workers who have been hammered or furloughed and so:-
He might have supported the public sector pay freeze above a certain salary level (50 grand?)
He might have agreed with some of the stuff the IEA put out on the NHS.
He might have opposed the lifting of the public sector golden goodbye cap.
He might have made the case that the public sector above a certain pay grade should bear some of the burden of the enormous cost of lockdown.
Almost any house in the country if you want to get a broadband contract and you have a laptop or computer or phone and are willing to pay the contract then you will have broadband.
If you don't have the laptop etc, don't pay for the broadband contract then that's more of an issue. But so too if you don't have a car and don't pay for car insurance then you can't drive on the road either.
Why hasn't he reined in Kate Green?
He needs to find a centre-left, soft-left, way of explaining and justifying this to his base. Just like "tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime" straddled the line for Blair on criminal justice, Starmer needs something similar like "fair to women, fair to transwomen", in his speech, and "proud of, but also learning from, our past, for a more just future" on culture.
And then he needs to neutralise it by making it about 28th on his list of things he talks about from thereon in, and get the rest of the movement to stop bleating on about it all the time.
1. Scrapping tertiary fees
2. Legalising cannabis
3. EFTA entry
4. Replacing council tax with land tax, tapered over time.
5. Strengthening protections for free speech and personal privacy
6. A way of addressing Google/Facebook monopolies
7. Experiments with UBI
8. Scrapping the TV license fee
9. An end to Covid restrictions
10. PR for local govt
In the 1960s and 1970s Labour wouldn't and couldn't have won without a metropolitan-heartland coalition. Wilson's very public embrace of The Beatles was all about that.
There are also distinctive modern identity conflicts that Starmer has to deal with too , I agree, but he may be up to the that.
In rural areas, investment in mobile data networks and even public Starlink stations would make a massive difference to often poor communities.
He just needs to say is that the great British virtue is to take people “as they come”, and if we follow that through we apply that to trans men and women as well.
Kate Green needs be booted, and quickly.
The problem with that is I do wonder whether universal credit will be cut back in the need to find money post Covid.
https://labourlist.org/2021/02/starmer-calls-for-covid-recovery-bonds-and-boosted-funding-for-start-up-loans/
And speaking of un-manned defence, I also don't see why we can't bury torpedo tubes under the sea all around the UK coastline. Far more flexible and dangerous than a one-chance strategic nuke that everybody knows we'd never fire.
Let alone the poorest.
'you f8ckers have done outrageously well relatively since lockdown and I am coming to collect via taxes and salary cuts. The reason is that poor working class people in the private sector have had a horrible time. Now suck it up b8tches, because its not like you are going to be voting for Johnson, is it.''
He could win that way, big time.
It speaks to a truth.
https://www.thejournal.ie/broadcast-ban-uk-30-years-3816443-Jan2018/
And you think that's genius?
Its a thought. Not sure how its any different to Corbynism though, except there's less banging on about Jews.
I also think that now that they are largely insignificant in national politics, they should be a bit more unconventional and 'different' in the way that they run their party. So instead of whips, and party lines, and perhaps even 'leaders', they sign up to a set of principles, and are then allowed to vote with their consciences at all times. I think that itself would have voter appeal.
So get a job and your benefits are unaffected for 2 years. Or something like that.
This is often heard in the Red Wall, I bet.
I would have thought the Tweets much more offensive in reaction to the violent death of a serving solider, such as Lee Rigby, than to the death of a very old and sick veteran.
I yield to no one in my estimation of Boris' ability and capability to be PM (very low). But you just can't help liking him on a personal level.
I have been at charity dinners where he was due to speak and, when it was rumoured that he had entered the building, there was a tangible buzz of excitement. Even, or rather especially from the old girls in pearls.
https://www.conservativehome.com/thecolumnists/2021/02/henry-hill-theres-something-rotten-in-the-state-of-scotland-but-can-anyone-do-anything-about-it.html
As anyone who is currently exposed to Scottish political social media will know, the atmosphere in the Yes camp is absolutely fetid. The latest imbroglio is over Wings over Scotland and trans-rights. TBH the intricacies are beyond me, on that one.
More materially, ScotGov looks set to ignore a vote in the Parliament demanding the publication of an OECD report on the dire state of Scotland's schools. It will be published after the election...
I doubt any of this will make much impact in May, but you have to wonder why Nicola should think Boris is bound by Scot Parl votes when she routinely ignore them herself.
2,3,5 and 8 I would very much welcome.
Trouble with 1 is that I firmly believe the only way to scrap Tertiary fees is to also greatly reduce the number of students going into Tertiary education. Now I think that is a good idea as the 'Degree Industry' is a monster that has lost all control. But you need all the alternatives - particularly apprenticeships - in place and working before you can do that.
4 is something to look at but I think the number of necessary exemptions would make it impractical and make it too hefty on those who are not exempted to be practical.
6 is desirable but seems to be shorthand most of the time for destroying successful companies without anything viable to put in their place.
7 is wrongheaded for me. It is the taxpayer subsidising businesses which refuse to pay a reasonable wage. Increase the minimum wage and enforce rules controlling the gig economy to prevent avoidance. If a business cannot afford to pay a living wage to its workforce then it is not a viable business.
9 I agree with but only when the data says we can do it safely.
10 well, my views on PR are well known so I oppose this.
https://twitter.com/PeterAdamSmith/status/1362347648162942982
Do we have a category prize for this?
As it stands anyone working minimum wage is "earning" nearly £10 per hour. But anyone on UC, above the NI and IC thresholds is actually "earning" about £1 per hour net.
Increasing minimum wage doesn't actually increase take home pay very much when the tax system is reclaiming 85% of whatever an employer pays their employees.
It's a real shame. Sarwar is an undoubted improvement presentationally - when voters are chosing between SNP and Labour, it helps not to be telling people what's what in deep Yorkshire tones. However, JB seems to be a real political talent.
1 - Could cost £5bn a year.
2 - Hope that psychosis does not increase. Would tax on this pay for 1 and 8?
3 - Pros and cons to debate. Potentially might help LDs a little with the 52% they defined as thick racists, whilst keeping their FBPE tendency on board.
4 - Yes - though we have a fully worked out set of proposals from some time ago for adjusting Council Tax / Stamp Duty which are far better. IMO Land Tax is based far too heavily on future usage class guesses by bureaucrats, and the last set of published proposals had not thought through consequences in any serious way.
5 - Yes.
6 - Yes if not just a bandwagon a la Australia.
7 - Very questionable / shot in the dark. I prefer Experiments with Mice by Johnny Dankworth.
8 - Yes, but how to raise £4bn a year for the BBC?
9 - Yes
10 - Would this be combined with any changes? Tories currently planning to throw it all in the air again afaics.
Starmer took Corbyn down, something that I had just about despaired of happening. For that he deserves and gets great credit.
It is very obviously the case that Starmer's task would have been much harder if he had positioned himself as an outspoken critic of Corbyn from the start. The likes of Hilary Benn or Yvette Cooper would probably not have won in 2020, even against the awful Long-Bailey.
Starmer was astute enough to realise what was the best course to get rid of Corbyn, distancing himself from Corbyn within the tent without being overtly disloyal, and he followed it. People know that he did what was necessary, why should that attract any criticism?
He's no more a careerist than any politician, and probably a lot less than most considering the career he gave up to stand as a humble Labour MP in 2015. What he is though is a very astute politician.
I thought that today's speech was very good, timely, and likely to appeal to those whose votes are up for grabs. The spirit of 1945. Referencing Attlee. War bonds. The equivalent of "and now win the peace" and all that. All good themes and ones which can provide a focus that Starmer can define himself around.
Region of Residence 1st dose 2nd dose Cumulative Total Doses to Date
Total 422,576 4,497 427,073
East Of England 47,349 516 47,865
London 56,382 629 57,011
Midlands 76,874 767 77,641
North East And Yorkshire 72,853 950 73,803
North West 54,382 373 54,755
South East 66,156 826 66,982
South West 46,724 432 47,156
The panic is being held in the Church Hall today. Could everyone who wants to run round like a headless chicken please remember to put all the folding chairs away afterwards? Please?