At some point people will have to address the question - "If you want a 'nicer' internet, are you prepared to pay up front for it?"
How on earth do you access it for free? It costs me a freaking fortune every month.
I signed up for Starlink at my place in France this week - 100€/month! I guess that Martian colony is going be expensive.
Starlink is a massive game-changer, if it works even half as well as trailed. Bringing high-speed internet to rural communities across the world.
In theory we can get ADSL at our house but in practice its sometimes fucked or really slow when it's not fucked. The cables appear to be attached to the pole with bailing twine and optimism so every time a cow farts in the adjacent field it comes down. Bretagne...
I think Starlink are on a collision course with governments in several jurisdictions who will not be amped on Starlink's direct to the customer unregulated model.
Starlink meeting china is going to be a sight to behold but it's going to have significant impact in the Middle East where the price won't be so much of an issue.
Starlink won't operate in Russia, for example - there was a preemptive ban, but I'm not sure if they even applied for a license.
The terminals are geo-fenced. That is, since they require exact positioning to work, they use GPS to locate themselves. If they are outside their assigned location, they won't work. Movable terminals will come later apparently.
The law is quite clear. To transmit in the territory of a given country, you require a license (nearly everywhere). So Starlink is going through the list of countries in the UN, applying for licenses.
They have stated that they will use the geo-fencing to prevent usage, even of the future mobile terminals, in countries that refuse a license.
The idea that they are going to become sky pirates is entertaining, but not borne out by the facts.
Yes, most of the jurisdictional issues have been kicked into the long grass.
Their first customers are going to be:
1. Rural Americans and Canadians - tens of millions of them who are still on dialup, slow ADSL or Comcast.
2. Low-latency traders, who are prepared to pay five or even six figures a month to get a signal from London to New York 10ms faster than a fibre cable.
3. Maritime and aviation users, again prepared to pay a premium for a much better product than existing satellite internet coverage.
4. Emergency aid workers such as the UN, delivering connectivity to areas of natural disasters and wars.
5. Group 1 but in other countries. Start with the friendly ones in Europe, Australia, Africa, who want to build out infrastructure for whom this represents a massive cost saving over traditional cable and fibre networks.
6. Now for the politically difficult bits of the world - Russia, China etc.
The first few groups are going to be able to eat up all the available bandwidth for the next few years, they're well over-subscribed for everything they can offer at the moment.
The aim is to create a trillion dollar, global service provider.
Starting a fight with nuclear armed, permanent members of the UN Security Council (Russia and China), doesn't fit with that business plan.
Stalink will be be obeying all the rules...
Starlink will make Musk richer than god when it IPOs.
At some point people will have to address the question - "If you want a 'nicer' internet, are you prepared to pay up front for it?"
How on earth do you access it for free? It costs me a freaking fortune every month.
I signed up for Starlink at my place in France this week - 100€/month! I guess that Martian colony is going be expensive.
Starlink is a massive game-changer, if it works even half as well as trailed. Bringing high-speed internet to rural communities across the world.
In theory we can get ADSL at our house but in practice its sometimes fucked or really slow when it's not fucked. The cables appear to be attached to the pole with bailing twine and optimism so every time a cow farts in the adjacent field it comes down. Bretagne...
I think Starlink are on a collision course with governments in several jurisdictions who will not be amped on Starlink's direct to the customer unregulated model.
Starlink meeting china is going to be a sight to behold but it's going to have significant impact in the Middle East where the price won't be so much of an issue.
Starlink won't operate in Russia, for example - there was a preemptive ban, but I'm not sure if they even applied for a license.
The terminals are geo-fenced. That is, since they require exact positioning to work, they use GPS to locate themselves. If they are outside their assigned location, they won't work. Movable terminals will come later apparently.
The law is quite clear. To transmit in the territory of a given country, you require a license (nearly everywhere). So Starlink is going through the list of countries in the UN, applying for licenses.
They have stated that they will use the geo-fencing to prevent usage, even of the future mobile terminals, in countries that refuse a license.
The idea that they are going to become sky pirates is entertaining, but not borne out by the facts.
Yes, most of the jurisdictional issues have been kicked into the long grass.
Their first customers are going to be:
1. Rural Americans and Canadians - tens of millions of them who are still on dialup, slow ADSL or Comcast.
2. Low-latency traders, who are prepared to pay five or even six figures a month to get a signal from London to New York 10ms faster than a fibre cable.
3. Maritime and aviation users, again prepared to pay a premium for a much better product than existing satellite internet coverage.
4. Emergency aid workers such as the UN, delivering connectivity to areas of natural disasters and wars.
5. Group 1 but in other countries. Start with the friendly ones in Europe, Australia, Africa, who want to build out infrastructure for whom this represents a massive cost saving over traditional cable and fibre networks.
6. Now for the politically difficult bits of the world - Russia, China etc.
The first few groups are going to be able to eat up all the available bandwidth for the next few years, they're well over-subscribed for everything they can offer at the moment.
The aim is to create a trillion dollar, global service provider.
Starting a fight with nuclear armed, permanent members of the UN Security Council (Russia and China), doesn't fit with that business plan.
Stalink will be be obeying all the rules...
Indeed. The global scale of it makes the numbers quite astonishing, you only need 10m subscribers at $100/mo to turn over $12bn a year. They'll likely get that, just in North America within a few months. The premium users probably add a couple more billion, for little additional effort.
They're throwing these satellites up for way less than $1m a piece, thanks to reusable rockets, the whole thing is going to be a huge money-spinner for SpaceX so there's really no need to rock the boat.
Crazy point - it is just a side business. Musk originally thought that with cheap launch someone else would be making cheap satellites.
But the traditional satellite makers were more like the Oxford boat builders* - they didn't want to change.
So he setup yet another business - Starlink.
And the whole point is the money to go to Mars - hence his plans to IPO and get the money as soon as he can.
*Rowing eights etc. They hand built, slowly. So China etc ate their lunch and their boat houses are often flats now....
Oh indeed, he was amazed that more people didn't take advantage of an order of magnitude change in launch costs.
At some point people will have to address the question - "If you want a 'nicer' internet, are you prepared to pay up front for it?"
How on earth do you access it for free? It costs me a freaking fortune every month.
I signed up for Starlink at my place in France this week - 100€/month! I guess that Martian colony is going be expensive.
Starlink is a massive game-changer, if it works even half as well as trailed. Bringing high-speed internet to rural communities across the world.
In theory we can get ADSL at our house but in practice its sometimes fucked or really slow when it's not fucked. The cables appear to be attached to the pole with bailing twine and optimism so every time a cow farts in the adjacent field it comes down. Bretagne...
I think Starlink are on a collision course with governments in several jurisdictions who will not be amped on Starlink's direct to the customer unregulated model.
Starlink meeting china is going to be a sight to behold but it's going to have significant impact in the Middle East where the price won't be so much of an issue.
Starlink won't operate in Russia, for example - there was a preemptive ban, but I'm not sure if they even applied for a license.
The terminals are geo-fenced. That is, since they require exact positioning to work, they use GPS to locate themselves. If they are outside their assigned location, they won't work. Movable terminals will come later apparently.
The law is quite clear. To transmit in the territory of a given country, you require a license (nearly everywhere). So Starlink is going through the list of countries in the UN, applying for licenses.
They have stated that they will use the geo-fencing to prevent usage, even of the future mobile terminals, in countries that refuse a license.
The idea that they are going to become sky pirates is entertaining, but not borne out by the facts.
Yes, most of the jurisdictional issues have been kicked into the long grass.
Their first customers are going to be:
1. Rural Americans and Canadians - tens of millions of them who are still on dialup, slow ADSL or Comcast.
2. Low-latency traders, who are prepared to pay five or even six figures a month to get a signal from London to New York 10ms faster than a fibre cable.
3. Maritime and aviation users, again prepared to pay a premium for a much better product than existing satellite internet coverage.
4. Emergency aid workers such as the UN, delivering connectivity to areas of natural disasters and wars.
5. Group 1 but in other countries. Start with the friendly ones in Europe, Australia, Africa, who want to build out infrastructure for whom this represents a massive cost saving over traditional cable and fibre networks.
6. Now for the politically difficult bits of the world - Russia, China etc.
The first few groups are going to be able to eat up all the available bandwidth for the next few years, they're well over-subscribed for everything they can offer at the moment.
How are Oneweb doing?
They seem to have only 110 satellites in orbit right now, of a planned 6,372 (reduced from 47,844). Starlink has 1,145 of an approved 12,000 and is asking for a further 33,000 licenses.
Starlink can have a much higher future launch cadence with SpaceX so can get first mover advantage, whereas Oneweb needs more infrequent Soyuz launches. It also is selling directly to the customer whereas Oneweb is looking to become part of the global backbone to telecomms companies. I think the UK Gov't's investment in Oneweb (Please tell me we have equity for our cash !) will prove a good one but Starlink will be the larger global business.
The frequency allocations alone, for OneWeb, are worth 10s of billions.
Hopefully the UK state didn't "do a Von Der Leyen" when it came to putting in the $1B to rescue them from bankruptcy.
Up early for the ludicrous 2-hour delivery "window" so, rather than starting the proper job,......
Excellent piece @Richard_Tyndall and all too symptomatic of the attack not so much on democracy per se but what makes democracy effective and that's plurality.
There's two sides to this - first, creating a climate in which all opinions can be freely and fairly expressed. It's called Freedom of Speech and while this liberal authoritarian chafes at some of the pernicious nonsense he is forced to endure on this site, I wouldn't have it any other way. Democracy and the process thrives on serious lively debate between opposing viewpoints - it has done since Athens and does so still.
The other aspect is not the freedom of speech but the fairness of speech. It's all very well saying people have Freedom of Speech but the Internet doesn't just provide that. It allows for individual or sectional viewpoints to be expressed ad infinitum and usually ad nauseam. The echo chambers exist usually because opposing views are chased out by the volume of posts from those on the other side.
I often remind new posters on here their first post is usually their best and the quality of posts in inversely proportional to their frequency - by the time you are at your 40,000th post there aren't many surprises left.
The echo chambers also exist because many people feel comfortable only reading views that accord with their own. All the legislation in the world can't force the minority view on the majority if the majority doesn't want to see it or hear it.
That's the tough thing with plurality - so many only want to hear confirmation or affirmation. They don't want to be challenged or to argue.
This leads to compartmentalisation of opinion - we are seeing it in the news market where the BBC is under constant attack primarily by those who want only their version of the truth to be broadcast. Before, they had no option but give a man (or woman) enough money and they'll change the way you think so we're going to have GB News which I suspect won't always be friendly to Labour.
Money talks, minds follow you might say.
As is quite common I agree with a lot of what you wrote, but not all of it.
But "won't always be friendly to Labour"? Did you phrase that right?
No news source should always be friendly to a party, if it is it's not a news site but a partisan hack source (eg The Canary when Corbyn was PM).
On TV at the moment there's definitely left leaning "news" (Channel 4) already. Even without getting into an argument about the BBC.
Was it Cameron or Osborne who remarked when facing a hostile press during the Brexit campaign, that this must be what it was like to be Labour in a general election?
As for C4 and BBC News, which are required to be neutral, complaints of bias sound like Trump's complaints of voter fraud: lots of allegations but no evidence presented to the courts.
At some point people will have to address the question - "If you want a 'nicer' internet, are you prepared to pay up front for it?"
How on earth do you access it for free? It costs me a freaking fortune every month.
I signed up for Starlink at my place in France this week - 100€/month! I guess that Martian colony is going be expensive.
Starlink is a massive game-changer, if it works even half as well as trailed. Bringing high-speed internet to rural communities across the world.
In theory we can get ADSL at our house but in practice its sometimes fucked or really slow when it's not fucked. The cables appear to be attached to the pole with bailing twine and optimism so every time a cow farts in the adjacent field it comes down. Bretagne...
I think Starlink are on a collision course with governments in several jurisdictions who will not be amped on Starlink's direct to the customer unregulated model.
Starlink meeting china is going to be a sight to behold but it's going to have significant impact in the Middle East where the price won't be so much of an issue.
Starlink won't operate in Russia, for example - there was a preemptive ban, but I'm not sure if they even applied for a license.
The terminals are geo-fenced. That is, since they require exact positioning to work, they use GPS to locate themselves. If they are outside their assigned location, they won't work. Movable terminals will come later apparently.
The law is quite clear. To transmit in the territory of a given country, you require a license (nearly everywhere). So Starlink is going through the list of countries in the UN, applying for licenses.
They have stated that they will use the geo-fencing to prevent usage, even of the future mobile terminals, in countries that refuse a license.
The idea that they are going to become sky pirates is entertaining, but not borne out by the facts.
Yes, most of the jurisdictional issues have been kicked into the long grass.
Their first customers are going to be:
1. Rural Americans and Canadians - tens of millions of them who are still on dialup, slow ADSL or Comcast.
2. Low-latency traders, who are prepared to pay five or even six figures a month to get a signal from London to New York 10ms faster than a fibre cable.
3. Maritime and aviation users, again prepared to pay a premium for a much better product than existing satellite internet coverage.
4. Emergency aid workers such as the UN, delivering connectivity to areas of natural disasters and wars.
5. Group 1 but in other countries. Start with the friendly ones in Europe, Australia, Africa, who want to build out infrastructure for whom this represents a massive cost saving over traditional cable and fibre networks.
6. Now for the politically difficult bits of the world - Russia, China etc.
The first few groups are going to be able to eat up all the available bandwidth for the next few years, they're well over-subscribed for everything they can offer at the moment.
How are Oneweb doing?
They seem to have only 110 satellites in orbit right now, of a planned 6,372 (reduced from 47,844). Starlink has 1,145 of an approved 12,000 and is asking for a further 33,000 licenses.
Starlink can have a much higher future launch cadence with SpaceX so can get first mover advantage, whereas Oneweb needs more infrequent Soyuz launches. It also is selling directly to the customer whereas Oneweb is looking to become part of the global backbone to telecomms companies. I think the UK Gov't's investment in Oneweb (Please tell me we have equity for our cash !) will prove a good one but Starlink will be the larger global business.
The frequency allocations alone, for OneWeb, are worth 10s of billions.
Hopefully the UK state didn't "do a Von Der Leyen" when it came to putting in the $1B to rescue them from bankruptcy.
Wouldn't "doing a von der Leyen" in this instance be screaming at Musk for doing better and throwing toy at him crying that its all unfair?
At some point people will have to address the question - "If you want a 'nicer' internet, are you prepared to pay up front for it?"
How on earth do you access it for free? It costs me a freaking fortune every month.
I signed up for Starlink at my place in France this week - 100€/month! I guess that Martian colony is going be expensive.
Starlink is a massive game-changer, if it works even half as well as trailed. Bringing high-speed internet to rural communities across the world.
In theory we can get ADSL at our house but in practice its sometimes fucked or really slow when it's not fucked. The cables appear to be attached to the pole with bailing twine and optimism so every time a cow farts in the adjacent field it comes down. Bretagne...
I think Starlink are on a collision course with governments in several jurisdictions who will not be amped on Starlink's direct to the customer unregulated model.
Starlink meeting china is going to be a sight to behold but it's going to have significant impact in the Middle East where the price won't be so much of an issue.
Starlink won't operate in Russia, for example - there was a preemptive ban, but I'm not sure if they even applied for a license.
The terminals are geo-fenced. That is, since they require exact positioning to work, they use GPS to locate themselves. If they are outside their assigned location, they won't work. Movable terminals will come later apparently.
The law is quite clear. To transmit in the territory of a given country, you require a license (nearly everywhere). So Starlink is going through the list of countries in the UN, applying for licenses.
They have stated that they will use the geo-fencing to prevent usage, even of the future mobile terminals, in countries that refuse a license.
The idea that they are going to become sky pirates is entertaining, but not borne out by the facts.
Yes, most of the jurisdictional issues have been kicked into the long grass.
Their first customers are going to be:
1. Rural Americans and Canadians - tens of millions of them who are still on dialup, slow ADSL or Comcast.
2. Low-latency traders, who are prepared to pay five or even six figures a month to get a signal from London to New York 10ms faster than a fibre cable.
3. Maritime and aviation users, again prepared to pay a premium for a much better product than existing satellite internet coverage.
4. Emergency aid workers such as the UN, delivering connectivity to areas of natural disasters and wars.
5. Group 1 but in other countries. Start with the friendly ones in Europe, Australia, Africa, who want to build out infrastructure for whom this represents a massive cost saving over traditional cable and fibre networks.
6. Now for the politically difficult bits of the world - Russia, China etc.
The first few groups are going to be able to eat up all the available bandwidth for the next few years, they're well over-subscribed for everything they can offer at the moment.
How are Oneweb doing?
They're slower than Starlink, but now have a somewhat different business model based on partnerships with existing telecoms. They also have a lot of valuable spectrum allocations.
Good article, Richard. Not a hot topic of mine but I think I agree with you. Not sure. I seem to be in a conceptual tizz on this one. On the one hand I'm not too fussed about privacy, data mining and on-selling, that side of things. I probably ought to be but I'm just not. It doesn't feel like a massive deal to me in the grand scheme of things. I don't care if I'm being watched so long as everyone else is. I don't care if data from my online life is being used for marketing purposes. On the other hand I really am concerned about the post-truth society, people inhabiting their own silos, believing stuff that is a complete load of cobblers, and the big tech platforms do much to facilitate this. So I do see the benefit of regulation in this area. I don't think the net should be a no-go zone for governments.
At some point people will have to address the question - "If you want a 'nicer' internet, are you prepared to pay up front for it?"
How on earth do you access it for free? It costs me a freaking fortune every month.
I signed up for Starlink at my place in France this week - 100€/month! I guess that Martian colony is going be expensive.
Starlink is a massive game-changer, if it works even half as well as trailed. Bringing high-speed internet to rural communities across the world.
In theory we can get ADSL at our house but in practice its sometimes fucked or really slow when it's not fucked. The cables appear to be attached to the pole with bailing twine and optimism so every time a cow farts in the adjacent field it comes down. Bretagne...
I think Starlink are on a collision course with governments in several jurisdictions who will not be amped on Starlink's direct to the customer unregulated model.
Starlink meeting china is going to be a sight to behold but it's going to have significant impact in the Middle East where the price won't be so much of an issue.
Starlink won't operate in Russia, for example - there was a preemptive ban, but I'm not sure if they even applied for a license.
The terminals are geo-fenced. That is, since they require exact positioning to work, they use GPS to locate themselves. If they are outside their assigned location, they won't work. Movable terminals will come later apparently.
The law is quite clear. To transmit in the territory of a given country, you require a license (nearly everywhere). So Starlink is going through the list of countries in the UN, applying for licenses.
They have stated that they will use the geo-fencing to prevent usage, even of the future mobile terminals, in countries that refuse a license.
The idea that they are going to become sky pirates is entertaining, but not borne out by the facts.
Yes, most of the jurisdictional issues have been kicked into the long grass.
Their first customers are going to be:
1. Rural Americans and Canadians - tens of millions of them who are still on dialup, slow ADSL or Comcast.
2. Low-latency traders, who are prepared to pay five or even six figures a month to get a signal from London to New York 10ms faster than a fibre cable.
3. Maritime and aviation users, again prepared to pay a premium for a much better product than existing satellite internet coverage.
4. Emergency aid workers such as the UN, delivering connectivity to areas of natural disasters and wars.
5. Group 1 but in other countries. Start with the friendly ones in Europe, Australia, Africa, who want to build out infrastructure for whom this represents a massive cost saving over traditional cable and fibre networks.
6. Now for the politically difficult bits of the world - Russia, China etc.
The first few groups are going to be able to eat up all the available bandwidth for the next few years, they're well over-subscribed for everything they can offer at the moment.
The aim is to create a trillion dollar, global service provider.
Starting a fight with nuclear armed, permanent members of the UN Security Council (Russia and China), doesn't fit with that business plan.
Stalink will be be obeying all the rules...
Indeed. The global scale of it makes the numbers quite astonishing, you only need 10m subscribers at $100/mo to turn over $12bn a year. They'll likely get that, just in North America within a few months. The premium users probably add a couple more billion, for little additional effort.
They're throwing these satellites up for way less than $1m a piece, thanks to reusable rockets, the whole thing is going to be a huge money-spinner for SpaceX so there's really no need to rock the boat.
Crazy point - it is just a side business. Musk originally thought that with cheap launch someone else would be making cheap satellites.
But the traditional satellite makers were more like the Oxford boat builders* - they didn't want to change.
So he setup yet another business - Starlink.
And the whole point is the money to go to Mars - hence his plans to IPO and get the money as soon as he can.
*Rowing eights etc. They hand built, slowly. So China etc ate their lunch and their boat houses are often flats now....
@HYUFD You've picked the best poll for Labour there, one that could well be an outlier.
In fairness I like an outlier poll as well but it is the one that has Starmer's Labour on the same score as 2019 Labour and many points behind 2017 Labour.
Ed himself is left of the Blairites (probably somewhere in the centre of Labour party IMO) but he was driven by the right wing ghouls filling his cabinet so the end result was not a Labour left led party in GE 2015.
Ed Miliband was the leftwing candidate in 2010 against his brother David who was the candidate of the Labour right in the final round, Starmer in 2019 is the first candidate from the Labour right to win a contested Labour leadership election since Blair in 1994 (Brown being unopposed in 2007)
Arguably Diane Abbot was the left wing candidate. Ed was the most left wing option that could beat David. If Corbyn had been challenged by McDonnell with a more right leaning platform than Corbyn it wouldn't make McDonnell a member of the Labour right.
He was more left wing than David but that doesn't make him left (I mean it could) but TBH my feeling was always that Ed's cabinet drove him rightwards, he said after 2017 he should have gone for a manifesto like that, the reason he didn't go with he beliefs was his right wing cabinet.
@Yorkcity Happy with Johnson winning, no. Happy enough with the people kicking me to lose, yes.
A bizarre thread attempting to defend the indefensible. Facebook is a disgusting organisation which, and this is the most bizarre aspect of RT's one-sided thread, constantly data mines to invade and intrude into personal privacy. One of its most egregious examples is in its new data privacy invasion rules on WhatsApp, which Facebook owns.
Let's be clear about this. It has nothing to do with freedom. It has everything to do with profit. The more Facebook can invade your privacy, the more it can manipulate what you see, when you see it, and what you can be coerced into buying. Facebook and Google are duopolies controlling around 65% of your access to the news and where a monopoly exists you can be certain that there your freedom and right to access any news you like ... ends.
As I say, a bizarre article. Richard has pinned his ultra-libertarian ideals to the wrong mast.
Facebook certainly doesn't control 65% of access to news.
Top 10 UK news sources (per OFCOM).
1. BBC1 2. ITV 3. Facebook 4. Sky News (TV) 5. BBC website 6. BBC News Channel 7. Channel 4 8. Daily Mail 9. Twitter 10. Google
@HYUFD You've picked the best poll for Labour there, one that could well be an outlier.
In fairness I like an outlier poll as well but it is the one that has Starmer's Labour on the same score as 2019 Labour and many points behind 2017 Labour.
Ed himself is left of the Blairites (probably somewhere in the centre of Labour party IMO) but he was driven by the right wing ghouls filling his cabinet so the end result was not a Labour left led party in GE 2015.
Ed Miliband was the leftwing candidate in 2010 against his brother David who was the candidate of the Labour right in the final round, Starmer in 2019 is the first candidate from the Labour right to win a contested Labour leadership election since Blair in 1994 (Brown being unopposed in 2007)
Arguably Diane Abbot was the left wing candidate. Ed was the most left wing option that could beat David. If Corbyn had been challenged by McDonnell with a more right leaning platform than Corbyn it wouldn't make McDonnell a member of the Labour right.
He was more left wing than David but that doesn't make him left (I mean it could) but TBH my feeling was always that Ed's cabinet drove him rightwards, he said after 2017 he should have gone for a manifesto like that, the reason he didn't go with he beliefs was his right wing cabinet.
@Yorkcity Happy with Johnson winning, no. Happy enough with the people kicking me to lose, yes.
Do you agree that the people Starmer needs to win over to become PM, mostly voted for the Conservatives (and SNP) in 2019?
"It’s the responsibility of politicians, not scientists, to balance the risks of Covid against the social, economic and political impacts of the measures taken against it. Scientists themselves say so, again and again."
Meanwhile, the Twitter response to Keith Cardboard's relaunch speech was predictable. The hard left can't accept that people have rejected them twice, so any failure of "the right" gets them excited for prospects of a return to true socialism.
Having listened to the speech live I still can't tell you what he said as he didn't say much and what he did say was so bland and tedious as to make you zone out. Reading some of the reportage he was pro-business partnerships and anti-poverty - all good things but missing the so what factor.
Politics is sales, and sadly for Labour they have no idea what punters actually want, hence being Here to Here and agreeing with the government about the pressing need to cut funding for school breakfast clubs. Starmer is Milliband - nice but crap, someone who means well, probably genuinely wants to do good, but is so "other" that people won't listen or care what he says.
I would argue Labour should try again with a new leader but like the Tories I struggle to see who they replace their crap leader with.
Well, Starmer still has a couple of years at least until a likely election date and hopefully he can make some progress. Another big Tory win could easily see the wounded Labour membership draw the wrong conclusions - again - and bring back the loony Left in a 2015-style fit of pique. Most likely we then turn into a Japanese-style one-party democracy; or the Tories make such a hash of things further down the line (or simply fall victim to traditional voter fatigue with long-serving administrations) that the loonies actually get to run the country. Neither prospect is particularly appealing.
TBH if the party does worse than Corbyn 2017 before Corbyn and does worse than Corbyn 2017 after Corbyn then surely the argument that even though they are all evil people and don't at all deserve representation and it is better to lose with millions of votes less....
That the Labour party marching over to the right is actually the less electorally sound position starts to have to be accepted even if you would prefer a different reality.
I realise that for a lot of people here that conveniently the right leader of the Labour party is one they prefer politically (guilty here also) but if the facts (with recent elections being the best facts we have in this regard) point to a left wing Labour doing better electorally than a right wing Labour then surely it would be crazy for Labour not to go for a left wing leader if Starmer fails.
I mean are Labour there to try and win votes or to please the commentariat and right wing people on PB?
Starmer *is* a left wing Labour leader. Very left wing, in fact. He may be to the right of Corbyn, which is hardly surprising given even Lenin was slightly to the right of him on many issues, but he’s to the left of Kinnock. Foot would be a fair comparison.
The question is, can he make that into a widely appealing policy offering? So far, he seems to have struggled.
I think I have said this before but for me actions > words.
Starmer has said lots of left wing stuff in the past, abolishing the monarchy for example a long time ago but his actions since becoming Labour leader have all been towards the right of the party. I mean Tony Blair was some kind of far left when he was younger as well but the better guide to how he would govern was his time as Labour leader (and then to the right of that)
You can make a good argument for Starmer being somewhere in the middle of the party before his election as Labour leader, it is why many Corbyn supporters voted for him and some even more than just voted for him. If Starmer were to fight for reelection as Labour leader (he should be okay, checks only needed with left wing leaders) it seem very likely that he would either be the candidate for right wing members of the Labour party (unless trumped by another from the Labour right) rather than the candidate for the left.
Prior to becoming Labour leader he mostly had just words, now he has actions and for me someone's actions are a much better window to their true beliefs than their words.
I don't have a problem with lawyers* (if anything I guess this is a compliment to their skill) but especially in such a profession almost anybody competent should be able to weave together something word wise that is completely removed from their beliefs but convincing.
*lawyers/solicitors or whatever else you law nerds call yourselves!
Just to point out the obvious, Corbyn *said* lots of left wing stuff, but he didn’t *do* anything left wing in government for the very simple reason he never got there. So judged by your metric he is in fact quite right wing.
What Starmer is trying to do is get Labour back to government so they can at least do some left wing things, even if they can’t do the lot.
He has calculated the way to do that is to tack towards the centre on some things to peel off soft Tory voters.
Can he do it? So far, so underwhelming. But at least he is trying.
If we're judging by actions then Corbyn ushered in an eighty seat majority for the Tories, nearly a decade after the Tories entered Downing Street.
Thanks Jezziah! 👍
That was the first election since 1865 where a governing party that had lost seats at a previous election made a net gain of them, and the first time ever a party that had been in government for nine years or more increased their majority.
It was a stunningly bad performance by Labour from every metric. It just should not have happened.
Fantastic that it did though.
For us, not the left.
For *you* PhilIip not *us* please. I never voted for Johnson.
It was a very bad result for anyone who wants proper two party democracy. In fact, just about the worst imaginable.
"Us" on the right.
And in my eyes the country, but that's just my opinion.
And in my opinion for those who want proper two party democracy since it should have provided a wake up call to the left rather than them wanting a "one more heave" approach.
I agree it should. But it clearly hasn’t.
The fact Keith won instead of Wrong Daily shows they've at least learned some lessons. Not enough perhaps but some. But even he's pretty left of centre.
Possibly one more teachable moment in 2024 then it can sink in? Happy for them to get as many lessons as they need.
The problem here is claiming Keith as left wing when his entire tenure as Labour leader has consisted of kicking the left for the rights entertainment is going to be a hard sell...
He's not kicking the left. He is the left. He's kicking the extreme far left.
I support the Tories. I recognise both Boris Johnson and David Cameron as right wing.
I have no problems whatsoever with either Boris or Dave "kicking" the extreme far right. Indeed I welcome it.
TBH in Conservative terms the example probably would be Dave kicking Boris' ass, I can't imagine it would actually be too welcome in reality...
Okay extreme far left (a new one I think, bit of a mouthful though too many words) is pretty much just considered left in Labour circles, nationalising railways and opposing war and such pretty common place outside of Blairite circles in the party TBH, sorry if this comes as bad news but 'extreme far left' is pretty much just regular mainstream left...
There is lots of left (not great in population numbers) that wouldn't vote for Corbyn even as a compromise (whilst some communist party or another did advise voting Labour in 2015)
"In Labour circle" and "in the country" are too very different things though.
Labour are to the left of the country. If you're to the left of Labour, then of course you're even further to the left of the country. If you're in the right of Labour, then you're still in the left overall.
Its like arguing between shades of red. You can have rose, crimson and blood red. Starmer's Labour may be rose red, while Corbyn's blood red might say they're a deeper shade of red - that doesn't make those who prefer rose red are actually wanting blue.
I'm pretty sure most of my posts have claimed Starmer as representing the right of Labour, so still red but some very pale shade, I mean you could argue about the parties stretching to centrist but my main claim has been Starmer represents the right of Labour (not the right of the country) and that it is electorally on that part of Labour if he does worse than the left of Labour.
Also if we can make the argument part of Labour is extreme far left on the basis of political positioning, it is the left party thus its left is extreme far left, can't we make that same argument with the Tories? they are right thus their right is extreme far right?
Yes we sort of can. When Tories pander to their extremes like electing IDS then the Tories lose.
Parties that pander to their base tend to lose in this nation, parties that target the voters win.
Though the Tories expel the extreme far right so they're not in the party. Labour have let the extreme far left squat in Labour for decades.
IDS never lost a general election and probably would have done at least as well as Howard did in 2005. Thatcher won 3 general elections from the right.
Yes, leaders also need to win the centre too, see Cameron and Blair but leaders who only target the centre and lose their base can also lose, see the LDs in 2015 or May's Tories in early 2019 if their base also has an alternative party to go to
Thatcher was to the right but she also targeted the centre. She moved the centre be her right.
She remade the country to be to the right of where it was and brought the public with her. That's the difference.
Thatcher would never have succeeded without policies like Right To Buy. By introducing Right To Buy she transformed and brought people on the journey with her.
In 1979 Jim Callaghan was the more centrist of the 2 main party leaders, Thatcher won that election from the right and yes she did shift the centre towards her, as indeed did Attlee in 1945, Thatcher and Attlee bringing in the biggest changes in our domestic policy since WW2.
She remained on the right in 1983 and 1987 but because Labour moved left under Foot and Kinnock she was able to win bigger majorities than she had in 1979
The SDP helped by splitting the vote and giving those large majorities. The conservatives in GE have not had that problem.
"It’s the responsibility of politicians, not scientists, to balance the risks of Covid against the social, economic and political impacts of the measures taken against it. Scientists themselves say so, again and again."
I do think, however, that we will find that far more of the IT payments have spilled into February than usual. Ours certainly did and the government permitted it without penalty. Even allowing for that, however, I very much doubt that there has been a worse context for a budget since at least 2009 when Darling under instructions for his boss tried to pretend that nothing had changed.
I don't think that will be the line this time but surely there has to be some hint as to how these shortfalls are going to be filled in the medium term?
"It’s the responsibility of politicians, not scientists, to balance the risks of Covid against the social, economic and political impacts of the measures taken against it. Scientists themselves say so, again and again."
That summation is very good. I do, however, accept the difficulty wherein there are people who might say that, but actually they just want decision X and don't care about balancing. Like people banging on about needing more consultation or 'unbiased' inquiry figures, when what they actually want is their preferred option to be decided.
Excellent news on Uber having to treat their drivers as employees, this loophole in the law needed to be closed for a long time, many big companies like Amazon, Uber etc have exploited their so called "contractors" for to long, leading to a real depreciation in worker rights over the last few years.
Thanks for the article @Richard_Tyndall. A couple of things to point out.
1. Facebook essentially piggybacks off the publishers' content to attract readers. The reason why advertisers have migrated large chunks of their spend to Facebook is because of the audience it offers and one of the key reasons why FB has been able to get their audience is because of the news content it offers. So FB (and all the online companies) have done very well out of the trade but the publishers have not. If the online companies had recognised this fact and not so tight, they would not be in the position they are facing now;
2. Yes, the tax is a crude method and everyone recognises that but sometimes a blunt tool is better than none. What Facebook could have done is did what Google is doing and reach deals with publishers to pay them for their content, which would be a Godsend to the industry. Instead, it has decided to fight.
3. Yes, I expect them to lose. The problem for these social media companies is that, to many Governments, they have crossed the line and now are seen as blatantly attempting to hijack powers generally reserved for Governments. In that regards, the social media companies' bans on Trump (and what happened on Parler) may turn out to have been a massive blunder. It made Governments realise these companies would take the ultimate step and dictate discourse. The Australian law introduction pre-dates the ban but it is one of the core reasons why you now have Modi threatening Twitter in India and the key reason for legislation brought in by states such as Florida to regulate social media.
Please select whether you trust Boris Johnson or Keir Starmer more to do each of the following actions.
Looking at the answers with a significant gap between the two men, it seems people would like to go out for a night out with Boris while Sir Keir stays in and assembles their flat pack furniture
SKS as a practical baby-sitter.
Boris? "Legend....."
I suppose it depends on one's idea of organising a fun night out. I doubt Starmer would have the slightest idea where to go to procure hookers and class A drugs.
In which case he learned bugger all in his time at the CPS.....
Up early for the ludicrous 2-hour delivery "window" so, rather than starting the proper job,......
Excellent piece @Richard_Tyndall and all too symptomatic of the attack not so much on democracy per se but what makes democracy effective and that's plurality.
There's two sides to this - first, creating a climate in which all opinions can be freely and fairly expressed. It's called Freedom of Speech and while this liberal authoritarian chafes at some of the pernicious nonsense he is forced to endure on this site, I wouldn't have it any other way. Democracy and the process thrives on serious lively debate between opposing viewpoints - it has done since Athens and does so still.
The other aspect is not the freedom of speech but the fairness of speech. It's all very well saying people have Freedom of Speech but the Internet doesn't just provide that. It allows for individual or sectional viewpoints to be expressed ad infinitum and usually ad nauseam. The echo chambers exist usually because opposing views are chased out by the volume of posts from those on the other side.
I often remind new posters on here their first post is usually their best and the quality of posts in inversely proportional to their frequency - by the time you are at your 40,000th post there aren't many surprises left.
The echo chambers also exist because many people feel comfortable only reading views that accord with their own. All the legislation in the world can't force the minority view on the majority if the majority doesn't want to see it or hear it.
That's the tough thing with plurality - so many only want to hear confirmation or affirmation. They don't want to be challenged or to argue.
This leads to compartmentalisation of opinion - we are seeing it in the news market where the BBC is under constant attack primarily by those who want only their version of the truth to be broadcast. Before, they had no option but give a man (or woman) enough money and they'll change the way you think so we're going to have GB News which I suspect won't always be friendly to Labour.
Money talks, minds follow you might say.
As is quite common I agree with a lot of what you wrote, but not all of it.
But "won't always be friendly to Labour"? Did you phrase that right?
No news source should always be friendly to a party, if it is it's not a news site but a partisan hack source (eg The Canary when Corbyn was PM).
On TV at the moment there's definitely left leaning "news" (Channel 4) already. Even without getting into an argument about the BBC.
Was it Cameron or Osborne who remarked when facing a hostile press during the Brexit campaign, that this must be what it was like to be Labour in a general election?
As for C4 and BBC News, which are required to be neutral, complaints of bias sound like Trump's complaints of voter fraud: lots of allegations but no evidence presented to the courts.
Well GB News will be required to be every bit as neutral as Channel 4 already is. So what's the problem?
I don't think that will be the line this time but surely there has to be some hint as to how these shortfalls are going to be filled in the medium term?
The point here is that has absolutely nothing to do with freedom. Nothing to do with the end of the world wide web, vast swathes of which are not 'free' however much a First Amendment adoring Richard Tyndall might wish. Nothing to do with a nasty Government trying to control the news.
Richard is, unfortunately, doomed by a belief that Government is inherently bad and business is inherently good.
Facebook isn't in a battle about who controls the news. It's in a battle for money. Your money. Your data = your money.
It's all about profit. So don't portray this as some seismic battle of Good vs Evil. Governments try to take money, of course, but don't let that blindside you into thinking that Facebook is some Robin Hood figure in this fight.
Where does Richard try and blindside us into thinking FB is Robin Hood? He merely says that on balance given the core issue is pay to link then FB are the side to support in this argument.
The point here is that has absolutely nothing to do with freedom. Nothing to do with the end of the world wide web, vast swathes of which are not 'free' however much a First Amendment adoring Richard Tyndall might wish. Nothing to do with a nasty Government trying to control the news.
Richard is, unfortunately, doomed by a belief that Government is inherently bad and business is inherently good.
Facebook isn't in a battle about who controls the news. It's in a battle for money. Your money. Your data = your money.
It's all about profit. So don't portray this as some seismic battle of Good vs Evil. Governments try to take money, of course, but don't let that blindside you into thinking that Facebook is some Robin Hood figure in this fight.
So you agree with link taxes and meme bans even though they would destroy sites like this? Do you not think that makes you a hypocrite for even posting here?
There are few if any goodies here, and lots of baddies. I think all PB readers would like to keep links and so on free. The universally accessible link is a novelty for lawyers and taxers everywhere and they don't know what to do with it.
I do think, however, that we will find that far more of the IT payments have spilled into February than usual. Ours certainly did and the government permitted it without penalty. Even allowing for that, however, I very much doubt that there has been a worse context for a budget since at least 2009 when Darling under instructions for his boss tried to pretend that nothing had changed.
I don't think that will be the line this time but surely there has to be some hint as to how these shortfalls are going to be filled in the medium term?
Please select whether you trust Boris Johnson or Keir Starmer more to do each of the following actions.
Looking at the answers with a significant gap between the two men, it seems people would like to go out for a night out with Boris while Sir Keir stays in and assembles their flat pack furniture
SKS as a practical baby-sitter.
Boris? "Legend....."
I suppose it depends on one's idea of organising a fun night out. I doubt Starmer would have the slightest idea where to go to procure hookers and class A drugs.
In which case he learned bugger all in his time at the CPS.....
He lives in Camden (or near it). Plenty of both round there.
I suppose it depends on one's idea of organising a fun night out. I doubt Starmer would have the slightest idea where to go to procure hookers and class A drugs.
Perhaps one of the other lawyers in the Labour Party could help SKS out ?
Maybe Keith "we need to get this party started" Vaz.
Meanwhile, the Twitter response to Keith Cardboard's relaunch speech was predictable. The hard left can't accept that people have rejected them twice, so any failure of "the right" gets them excited for prospects of a return to true socialism.
Having listened to the speech live I still can't tell you what he said as he didn't say much and what he did say was so bland and tedious as to make you zone out. Reading some of the reportage he was pro-business partnerships and anti-poverty - all good things but missing the so what factor.
Politics is sales, and sadly for Labour they have no idea what punters actually want, hence being Here to Here and agreeing with the government about the pressing need to cut funding for school breakfast clubs. Starmer is Milliband - nice but crap, someone who means well, probably genuinely wants to do good, but is so "other" that people won't listen or care what he says.
I would argue Labour should try again with a new leader but like the Tories I struggle to see who they replace their crap leader with.
Well, Starmer still has a couple of years at least until a likely election date and hopefully he can make some progress. Another big Tory win could easily see the wounded Labour membership draw the wrong conclusions - again - and bring back the loony Left in a 2015-style fit of pique. Most likely we then turn into a Japanese-style one-party democracy; or the Tories make such a hash of things further down the line (or simply fall victim to traditional voter fatigue with long-serving administrations) that the loonies actually get to run the country. Neither prospect is particularly appealing.
TBH if the party does worse than Corbyn 2017 before Corbyn and does worse than Corbyn 2017 after Corbyn then surely the argument that even though they are all evil people and don't at all deserve representation and it is better to lose with millions of votes less....
That the Labour party marching over to the right is actually the less electorally sound position starts to have to be accepted even if you would prefer a different reality.
I realise that for a lot of people here that conveniently the right leader of the Labour party is one they prefer politically (guilty here also) but if the facts (with recent elections being the best facts we have in this regard) point to a left wing Labour doing better electorally than a right wing Labour then surely it would be crazy for Labour not to go for a left wing leader if Starmer fails.
I mean are Labour there to try and win votes or to please the commentariat and right wing people on PB?
Starmer *is* a left wing Labour leader. Very left wing, in fact. He may be to the right of Corbyn, which is hardly surprising given even Lenin was slightly to the right of him on many issues, but he’s to the left of Kinnock. Foot would be a fair comparison.
The question is, can he make that into a widely appealing policy offering? So far, he seems to have struggled.
I think I have said this before but for me actions > words.
Starmer has said lots of left wing stuff in the past, abolishing the monarchy for example a long time ago but his actions since becoming Labour leader have all been towards the right of the party. I mean Tony Blair was some kind of far left when he was younger as well but the better guide to how he would govern was his time as Labour leader (and then to the right of that)
You can make a good argument for Starmer being somewhere in the middle of the party before his election as Labour leader, it is why many Corbyn supporters voted for him and some even more than just voted for him. If Starmer were to fight for reelection as Labour leader (he should be okay, checks only needed with left wing leaders) it seem very likely that he would either be the candidate for right wing members of the Labour party (unless trumped by another from the Labour right) rather than the candidate for the left.
Prior to becoming Labour leader he mostly had just words, now he has actions and for me someone's actions are a much better window to their true beliefs than their words.
I don't have a problem with lawyers* (if anything I guess this is a compliment to their skill) but especially in such a profession almost anybody competent should be able to weave together something word wise that is completely removed from their beliefs but convincing.
*lawyers/solicitors or whatever else you law nerds call yourselves!
Just to point out the obvious, Corbyn *said* lots of left wing stuff, but he didn’t *do* anything left wing in government for the very simple reason he never got there. So judged by your metric he is in fact quite right wing.
What Starmer is trying to do is get Labour back to government so they can at least do some left wing things, even if they can’t do the lot.
He has calculated the way to do that is to tack towards the centre on some things to peel off soft Tory voters.
Can he do it? So far, so underwhelming. But at least he is trying.
If we're judging by actions then Corbyn ushered in an eighty seat majority for the Tories, nearly a decade after the Tories entered Downing Street.
Thanks Jezziah! 👍
That was the first election since 1865 where a governing party that had lost seats at a previous election made a net gain of them, and the first time ever a party that had been in government for nine years or more increased their majority.
It was a stunningly bad performance by Labour from every metric. It just should not have happened.
Fantastic that it did though.
For us, not the left.
For *you* PhilIip not *us* please. I never voted for Johnson.
It was a very bad result for anyone who wants proper two party democracy. In fact, just about the worst imaginable.
"Us" on the right.
And in my eyes the country, but that's just my opinion.
And in my opinion for those who want proper two party democracy since it should have provided a wake up call to the left rather than them wanting a "one more heave" approach.
I agree it should. But it clearly hasn’t.
The fact Keith won instead of Wrong Daily shows they've at least learned some lessons. Not enough perhaps but some. But even he's pretty left of centre.
Possibly one more teachable moment in 2024 then it can sink in? Happy for them to get as many lessons as they need.
The problem here is claiming Keith as left wing when his entire tenure as Labour leader has consisted of kicking the left for the rights entertainment is going to be a hard sell...
He's not kicking the left. He is the left. He's kicking the extreme far left.
I support the Tories. I recognise both Boris Johnson and David Cameron as right wing.
I have no problems whatsoever with either Boris or Dave "kicking" the extreme far right. Indeed I welcome it.
TBH in Conservative terms the example probably would be Dave kicking Boris' ass, I can't imagine it would actually be too welcome in reality...
Okay extreme far left (a new one I think, bit of a mouthful though too many words) is pretty much just considered left in Labour circles, nationalising railways and opposing war and such pretty common place outside of Blairite circles in the party TBH, sorry if this comes as bad news but 'extreme far left' is pretty much just regular mainstream left...
There is lots of left (not great in population numbers) that wouldn't vote for Corbyn even as a compromise (whilst some communist party or another did advise voting Labour in 2015)
"In Labour circle" and "in the country" are too very different things though.
Labour are to the left of the country. If you're to the left of Labour, then of course you're even further to the left of the country. If you're in the right of Labour, then you're still in the left overall.
Its like arguing between shades of red. You can have rose, crimson and blood red. Starmer's Labour may be rose red, while Corbyn's blood red might say they're a deeper shade of red - that doesn't make those who prefer rose red are actually wanting blue.
I'm pretty sure most of my posts have claimed Starmer as representing the right of Labour, so still red but some very pale shade, I mean you could argue about the parties stretching to centrist but my main claim has been Starmer represents the right of Labour (not the right of the country) and that it is electorally on that part of Labour if he does worse than the left of Labour.
Also if we can make the argument part of Labour is extreme far left on the basis of political positioning, it is the left party thus its left is extreme far left, can't we make that same argument with the Tories? they are right thus their right is extreme far right?
Yes we sort of can. When Tories pander to their extremes like electing IDS then the Tories lose.
Parties that pander to their base tend to lose in this nation, parties that target the voters win.
Though the Tories expel the extreme far right so they're not in the party. Labour have let the extreme far left squat in Labour for decades.
IDS never lost a general election and probably would have done at least as well as Howard did in 2005. Thatcher won 3 general elections from the right.
Yes, leaders also need to win the centre too, see Cameron and Blair but leaders who only target the centre and lose their base can also lose, see the LDs in 2015 or May's Tories in early 2019 if their base also has an alternative party to go to
Thatcher was to the right but she also targeted the centre. She moved the centre be her right.
She remade the country to be to the right of where it was and brought the public with her. That's the difference.
Thatcher would never have succeeded without policies like Right To Buy. By introducing Right To Buy she transformed and brought people on the journey with her.
In 1979 Jim Callaghan was the more centrist of the 2 main party leaders, Thatcher won that election from the right and yes she did shift the centre towards her, as indeed did Attlee in 1945, Thatcher and Attlee bringing in the biggest changes in our domestic policy since WW2.
She remained on the right in 1983 and 1987 but because Labour moved left under Foot and Kinnock she was able to win bigger majorities than she had in 1979
The SDP helped by splitting the vote and giving those large majorities. The conservatives in GE have not had that problem.
The SDP didn't "split the vote" they offered up something completely different to Labour.
Indeed I think studied found that SDP voters forced choice preferred Thatcher's Tories to Foot's Labour.
The notion you can add two completely different parties voted together is mad.
Very good article, thanks @Richard_Tyndall. I think it is spot-on except in one respect: I think it's the Australian government which is going to lose this fight. Their policy is barmy, as Facebook has convincingly shown by implementing it.
Meanwhile, the Twitter response to Keith Cardboard's relaunch speech was predictable. The hard left can't accept that people have rejected them twice, so any failure of "the right" gets them excited for prospects of a return to true socialism.
Having listened to the speech live I still can't tell you what he said as he didn't say much and what he did say was so bland and tedious as to make you zone out. Reading some of the reportage he was pro-business partnerships and anti-poverty - all good things but missing the so what factor.
Politics is sales, and sadly for Labour they have no idea what punters actually want, hence being Here to Here and agreeing with the government about the pressing need to cut funding for school breakfast clubs. Starmer is Milliband - nice but crap, someone who means well, probably genuinely wants to do good, but is so "other" that people won't listen or care what he says.
I would argue Labour should try again with a new leader but like the Tories I struggle to see who they replace their crap leader with.
Well, Starmer still has a couple of years at least until a likely election date and hopefully he can make some progress. Another big Tory win could easily see the wounded Labour membership draw the wrong conclusions - again - and bring back the loony Left in a 2015-style fit of pique. Most likely we then turn into a Japanese-style one-party democracy; or the Tories make such a hash of things further down the line (or simply fall victim to traditional voter fatigue with long-serving administrations) that the loonies actually get to run the country. Neither prospect is particularly appealing.
TBH if the party does worse than Corbyn 2017 before Corbyn and does worse than Corbyn 2017 after Corbyn then surely the argument that even though they are all evil people and don't at all deserve representation and it is better to lose with millions of votes less....
That the Labour party marching over to the right is actually the less electorally sound position starts to have to be accepted even if you would prefer a different reality.
I realise that for a lot of people here that conveniently the right leader of the Labour party is one they prefer politically (guilty here also) but if the facts (with recent elections being the best facts we have in this regard) point to a left wing Labour doing better electorally than a right wing Labour then surely it would be crazy for Labour not to go for a left wing leader if Starmer fails.
I mean are Labour there to try and win votes or to please the commentariat and right wing people on PB?
Starmer *is* a left wing Labour leader. Very left wing, in fact. He may be to the right of Corbyn, which is hardly surprising given even Lenin was slightly to the right of him on many issues, but he’s to the left of Kinnock. Foot would be a fair comparison.
The question is, can he make that into a widely appealing policy offering? So far, he seems to have struggled.
I think I have said this before but for me actions > words.
Starmer has said lots of left wing stuff in the past, abolishing the monarchy for example a long time ago but his actions since becoming Labour leader have all been towards the right of the party. I mean Tony Blair was some kind of far left when he was younger as well but the better guide to how he would govern was his time as Labour leader (and then to the right of that)
You can make a good argument for Starmer being somewhere in the middle of the party before his election as Labour leader, it is why many Corbyn supporters voted for him and some even more than just voted for him. If Starmer were to fight for reelection as Labour leader (he should be okay, checks only needed with left wing leaders) it seem very likely that he would either be the candidate for right wing members of the Labour party (unless trumped by another from the Labour right) rather than the candidate for the left.
Prior to becoming Labour leader he mostly had just words, now he has actions and for me someone's actions are a much better window to their true beliefs than their words.
I don't have a problem with lawyers* (if anything I guess this is a compliment to their skill) but especially in such a profession almost anybody competent should be able to weave together something word wise that is completely removed from their beliefs but convincing.
*lawyers/solicitors or whatever else you law nerds call yourselves!
Just to point out the obvious, Corbyn *said* lots of left wing stuff, but he didn’t *do* anything left wing in government for the very simple reason he never got there. So judged by your metric he is in fact quite right wing.
What Starmer is trying to do is get Labour back to government so they can at least do some left wing things, even if they can’t do the lot.
He has calculated the way to do that is to tack towards the centre on some things to peel off soft Tory voters.
Can he do it? So far, so underwhelming. But at least he is trying.
If we're judging by actions then Corbyn ushered in an eighty seat majority for the Tories, nearly a decade after the Tories entered Downing Street.
Thanks Jezziah! 👍
That was the first election since 1865 where a governing party that had lost seats at a previous election made a net gain of them, and the first time ever a party that had been in government for nine years or more increased their majority.
It was a stunningly bad performance by Labour from every metric. It just should not have happened.
Fantastic that it did though.
For us, not the left.
For *you* PhilIip not *us* please. I never voted for Johnson.
It was a very bad result for anyone who wants proper two party democracy. In fact, just about the worst imaginable.
"Us" on the right.
And in my eyes the country, but that's just my opinion.
And in my opinion for those who want proper two party democracy since it should have provided a wake up call to the left rather than them wanting a "one more heave" approach.
I agree it should. But it clearly hasn’t.
The fact Keith won instead of Wrong Daily shows they've at least learned some lessons. Not enough perhaps but some. But even he's pretty left of centre.
Possibly one more teachable moment in 2024 then it can sink in? Happy for them to get as many lessons as they need.
The problem here is claiming Keith as left wing when his entire tenure as Labour leader has consisted of kicking the left for the rights entertainment is going to be a hard sell...
He's not kicking the left. He is the left. He's kicking the extreme far left.
I support the Tories. I recognise both Boris Johnson and David Cameron as right wing.
I have no problems whatsoever with either Boris or Dave "kicking" the extreme far right. Indeed I welcome it.
TBH in Conservative terms the example probably would be Dave kicking Boris' ass, I can't imagine it would actually be too welcome in reality...
Okay extreme far left (a new one I think, bit of a mouthful though too many words) is pretty much just considered left in Labour circles, nationalising railways and opposing war and such pretty common place outside of Blairite circles in the party TBH, sorry if this comes as bad news but 'extreme far left' is pretty much just regular mainstream left...
There is lots of left (not great in population numbers) that wouldn't vote for Corbyn even as a compromise (whilst some communist party or another did advise voting Labour in 2015)
"In Labour circle" and "in the country" are too very different things though.
Labour are to the left of the country. If you're to the left of Labour, then of course you're even further to the left of the country. If you're in the right of Labour, then you're still in the left overall.
Its like arguing between shades of red. You can have rose, crimson and blood red. Starmer's Labour may be rose red, while Corbyn's blood red might say they're a deeper shade of red - that doesn't make those who prefer rose red are actually wanting blue.
I'm pretty sure most of my posts have claimed Starmer as representing the right of Labour, so still red but some very pale shade, I mean you could argue about the parties stretching to centrist but my main claim has been Starmer represents the right of Labour (not the right of the country) and that it is electorally on that part of Labour if he does worse than the left of Labour.
Also if we can make the argument part of Labour is extreme far left on the basis of political positioning, it is the left party thus its left is extreme far left, can't we make that same argument with the Tories? they are right thus their right is extreme far right?
Yes we sort of can. When Tories pander to their extremes like electing IDS then the Tories lose.
Parties that pander to their base tend to lose in this nation, parties that target the voters win.
Though the Tories expel the extreme far right so they're not in the party. Labour have let the extreme far left squat in Labour for decades.
IDS never lost a general election and probably would have done at least as well as Howard did in 2005. Thatcher won 3 general elections from the right.
Yes, leaders also need to win the centre too, see Cameron and Blair but leaders who only target the centre and lose their base can also lose, see the LDs in 2015 or May's Tories in early 2019 if their base also has an alternative party to go to
Thatcher was to the right but she also targeted the centre. She moved the centre be her right.
She remade the country to be to the right of where it was and brought the public with her. That's the difference.
Thatcher would never have succeeded without policies like Right To Buy. By introducing Right To Buy she transformed and brought people on the journey with her.
In 1979 Jim Callaghan was the more centrist of the 2 main party leaders, Thatcher won that election from the right and yes she did shift the centre towards her, as indeed did Attlee in 1945, Thatcher and Attlee bringing in the biggest changes in our domestic policy since WW2.
She remained on the right in 1983 and 1987 but because Labour moved left under Foot and Kinnock she was able to win bigger majorities than she had in 1979
The SDP helped by splitting the vote and giving those large majorities. The conservatives in GE have not had that problem.
The SDP vote only rose in 1983 and 1987 as Labour went left under Foot and Kinnock.
In 2019 May's Tories faced a fatal split on the right with the Brexit Party until Boris replaced her and reunited the right of centre vote
Good article, Richard. Not a hot topic of mine but I think I agree with you. Not sure. I seem to be in a conceptual tizz on this one. On the one hand I'm not too fussed about privacy, data mining and on-selling, that side of things. I probably ought to be but I'm just not. It doesn't feel like a massive deal to me in the grand scheme of things. I don't care if I'm being watched so long as everyone else is. I don't care if data from my online life is being used for marketing purposes. On the other hand I really am concerned about the post-truth society, people inhabiting their own silos, believing stuff that is a complete load of cobblers, and the big tech platforms do much to facilitate this. So I do see the benefit of regulation in this area. I don't think the net should be a no-go zone for governments.
I don't think there is a single thing I disagree with you in this posting. This whole article is not an argument against further controls on Facebook or Google. There are areas where I strongly think they are necessary including making some realistic* assessment of profits in each country and taxing the companies accordingly. But what Australia and the EU are attempting will have effects far beyond scraping some cash out of big companies.
*By realistic I mean an assessment of how valuable the market is to the company in each country rather than what they claim their profits are
I do think, however, that we will find that far more of the IT payments have spilled into February than usual. Ours certainly did and the government permitted it without penalty. Even allowing for that, however, I very much doubt that there has been a worse context for a budget since at least 2009 when Darling under instructions for his boss tried to pretend that nothing had changed.
I don't think that will be the line this time but surely there has to be some hint as to how these shortfalls are going to be filled in the medium term?
For this year the medium term solution should be "end the pandemic, start the recovery."
@HYUFD You've picked the best poll for Labour there, one that could well be an outlier.
In fairness I like an outlier poll as well but it is the one that has Starmer's Labour on the same score as 2019 Labour and many points behind 2017 Labour.
Ed himself is left of the Blairites (probably somewhere in the centre of Labour party IMO) but he was driven by the right wing ghouls filling his cabinet so the end result was not a Labour left led party in GE 2015.
Ed Miliband was the leftwing candidate in 2010 against his brother David who was the candidate of the Labour right in the final round, Starmer in 2019 is the first candidate from the Labour right to win a contested Labour leadership election since Blair in 1994 (Brown being unopposed in 2007)
Arguably Diane Abbot was the left wing candidate. Ed was the most left wing option that could beat David. If Corbyn had been challenged by McDonnell with a more right leaning platform than Corbyn it wouldn't make McDonnell a member of the Labour right.
He was more left wing than David but that doesn't make him left (I mean it could) but TBH my feeling was always that Ed's cabinet drove him rightwards, he said after 2017 he should have gone for a manifesto like that, the reason he didn't go with he beliefs was his right wing cabinet.
@Yorkcity Happy with Johnson winning, no. Happy enough with the people kicking me to lose, yes.
Do you agree that the people Starmer needs to win over to become PM, mostly voted for the Conservatives (and SNP) in 2019?
To varying degrees he needs people who voted Conservative in 2019, SNP in 2019 and Labour in either 2017 and/or 2019. His approach so far seems to have pissed off the latter group without winning much of the former groups.
I can't see Labour winning the next election short of Black Wednesday, or several days worth maybe.... for a future election Labour win the most realistic scenario IMO short of Black Wednesday is either 2017+ or pretty much 2017 but with a less popular Conservative party or a split right wing vote.
I do think, however, that we will find that far more of the IT payments have spilled into February than usual. Ours certainly did and the government permitted it without penalty. Even allowing for that, however, I very much doubt that there has been a worse context for a budget since at least 2009 when Darling under instructions for his boss tried to pretend that nothing had changed.
I don't think that will be the line this time but surely there has to be some hint as to how these shortfalls are going to be filled in the medium term?
That's terrible, £19bn year on year change to the January figures. Good point about the income tax numbers, many of which will have been deferred until February.
It's also worth noting that those income taxes relate to the year ending Apr 2020, so a lot of the pandemic losses will not be reflected until this time next year.
Not a good time to be the Chancellor, he's going to be doing a lot of thinking of the unthinkable in advance of the Budget. Don't envy anyone in that position at the moment.
At some point people will have to address the question - "If you want a 'nicer' internet, are you prepared to pay up front for it?"
How on earth do you access it for free? It costs me a freaking fortune every month.
I signed up for Starlink at my place in France this week - 100€/month! I guess that Martian colony is going be expensive.
Starlink is a massive game-changer, if it works even half as well as trailed. Bringing high-speed internet to rural communities across the world.
In theory we can get ADSL at our house but in practice its sometimes fucked or really slow when it's not fucked. The cables appear to be attached to the pole with bailing twine and optimism so every time a cow farts in the adjacent field it comes down. Bretagne...
I think Starlink are on a collision course with governments in several jurisdictions who will not be amped on Starlink's direct to the customer unregulated model.
Starlink meeting china is going to be a sight to behold but it's going to have significant impact in the Middle East where the price won't be so much of an issue.
Starlink won't operate in Russia, for example - there was a preemptive ban, but I'm not sure if they even applied for a license.
The terminals are geo-fenced. That is, since they require exact positioning to work, they use GPS to locate themselves. If they are outside their assigned location, they won't work. Movable terminals will come later apparently.
The law is quite clear. To transmit in the territory of a given country, you require a license (nearly everywhere). So Starlink is going through the list of countries in the UN, applying for licenses.
They have stated that they will use the geo-fencing to prevent usage, even of the future mobile terminals, in countries that refuse a license.
The idea that they are going to become sky pirates is entertaining, but not borne out by the facts.
Yes, most of the jurisdictional issues have been kicked into the long grass.
Their first customers are going to be:
1. Rural Americans and Canadians - tens of millions of them who are still on dialup, slow ADSL or Comcast.
2. Low-latency traders, who are prepared to pay five or even six figures a month to get a signal from London to New York 10ms faster than a fibre cable.
3. Maritime and aviation users, again prepared to pay a premium for a much better product than existing satellite internet coverage.
4. Emergency aid workers such as the UN, delivering connectivity to areas of natural disasters and wars.
5. Group 1 but in other countries. Start with the friendly ones in Europe, Australia, Africa, who want to build out infrastructure for whom this represents a massive cost saving over traditional cable and fibre networks.
6. Now for the politically difficult bits of the world - Russia, China etc.
The first few groups are going to be able to eat up all the available bandwidth for the next few years, they're well over-subscribed for everything they can offer at the moment.
How are Oneweb doing?
They're slower than Starlink, but now have a somewhat different business model based on partnerships with existing telecoms. They also have a lot of valuable spectrum allocations.
@HYUFD You've picked the best poll for Labour there, one that could well be an outlier.
In fairness I like an outlier poll as well but it is the one that has Starmer's Labour on the same score as 2019 Labour and many points behind 2017 Labour.
Ed himself is left of the Blairites (probably somewhere in the centre of Labour party IMO) but he was driven by the right wing ghouls filling his cabinet so the end result was not a Labour left led party in GE 2015.
Ed Miliband was the leftwing candidate in 2010 against his brother David who was the candidate of the Labour right in the final round, Starmer in 2019 is the first candidate from the Labour right to win a contested Labour leadership election since Blair in 1994 (Brown being unopposed in 2007)
Arguably Diane Abbot was the left wing candidate. Ed was the most left wing option that could beat David. If Corbyn had been challenged by McDonnell with a more right leaning platform than Corbyn it wouldn't make McDonnell a member of the Labour right.
He was more left wing than David but that doesn't make him left (I mean it could) but TBH my feeling was always that Ed's cabinet drove him rightwards, he said after 2017 he should have gone for a manifesto like that, the reason he didn't go with he beliefs was his right wing cabinet.
@Yorkcity Happy with Johnson winning, no. Happy enough with the people kicking me to lose, yes.
David Miliband was the main candidate of the Labour right in 2010 and he lost, most of Abbott's vote went to Ed Miliband after she was eliminated in the first round.
Please select whether you trust Boris Johnson or Keir Starmer more to do each of the following actions.
If I was Starmer I'd be gutted not to have a large lead on repaying a borrowed £5 against Johnson of all people.
The one that shocked me was Johnson's 18 point lead on "Buy a round for their friends at the pub" - he clearly wins on the conviviality front (fun night out +22) but I'm surprised there's that big a gap on a "trust" issue....
Interesting numbers from the article I posted earlier.
"In recent UK history, the worst years for flu deaths were 1976 and 1999, when more than 60,000 people in England and Wales died from influenza or pneumonia."
I do think, however, that we will find that far more of the IT payments have spilled into February than usual. Ours certainly did and the government permitted it without penalty. Even allowing for that, however, I very much doubt that there has been a worse context for a budget since at least 2009 when Darling under instructions for his boss tried to pretend that nothing had changed.
I don't think that will be the line this time but surely there has to be some hint as to how these shortfalls are going to be filled in the medium term?
For this year the medium term solution should be "end the pandemic, start the recovery."
No more austere than that.
It needs to be well-steered, well-incentivised private capital leading that recovery.
In it a member of SPI-M is quoted as saying - “There is a big debate about whether to allow a big wave of infection after vaccination in the 50s and above”. Now, I don't think that will happen, but the fact they are even still HAVING a debate at that level that essentially goes back to the herd immunity policy of 12-months ago (save only for the protection of vaccination rather than telling older folk to stay at home) does speak volumes to me.
I do think, however, that we will find that far more of the IT payments have spilled into February than usual. Ours certainly did and the government permitted it without penalty. Even allowing for that, however, I very much doubt that there has been a worse context for a budget since at least 2009 when Darling under instructions for his boss tried to pretend that nothing had changed.
I don't think that will be the line this time but surely there has to be some hint as to how these shortfalls are going to be filled in the medium term?
That's terrible, £19bn year on year change to the January figures. Good point about the income tax numbers, many of which will have been deferred until February.
It's also worth noting that those income taxes relate to the year ending Apr 2020, so a lot of the pandemic losses will not be reflected until this time next year.
Not a good time to be the Chancellor, he's going to be doing a lot of thinking of the unthinkable in advance of the Budget. Don't envy anyone in that position at the moment.
He shouldn't be yet.
Next budget after this one if it's still bad he should be. But if the pandemic ends this year, we recover and January next year is say £18bn better than this January then won't that be a good thing?
I do think, however, that we will find that far more of the IT payments have spilled into February than usual. Ours certainly did and the government permitted it without penalty. Even allowing for that, however, I very much doubt that there has been a worse context for a budget since at least 2009 when Darling under instructions for his boss tried to pretend that nothing had changed.
I don't think that will be the line this time but surely there has to be some hint as to how these shortfalls are going to be filled in the medium term?
For this year the medium term solution should be "end the pandemic, start the recovery."
No more austere than that.
It needs to be well-steered, well-incentivised private capital leading that recovery.
The Government doesn't have the money.
Tax cuts should be the order of the day. Get money circulating through the economy building up a recovery that can then be taxed in the future.
Please select whether you trust Boris Johnson or Keir Starmer more to do each of the following actions.
If I was Starmer I'd be gutted not to have a large lead on repaying a borrowed £5 against Johnson of all people.
The one that shocked me was Johnson's 18 point lead on "Buy a round for their friends at the pub" - he clearly wins on the conviviality front (fun night out +22) but I'm surprised there's that big a gap on a "trust" issue....
I don't think the "buy a round" replies are motivated by a lack of trust in Sir Keir are they? More that he is just not one of the lads/good fun.
I keep banging on about it, but I think a LotO needs to have the charisma to sell their vision to the public at Election time better than the sitting PM does theirs, and I can't see Sir Keir being able to manage it.
Please select whether you trust Boris Johnson or Keir Starmer more to do each of the following actions.
If I was Starmer I'd be gutted not to have a large lead on repaying a borrowed £5 against Johnson of all people.
I'm also not persuaded that Boris is more likely than Keir to buy a round for his friends at the pub. He would offer, then harrumph and announce he's forgotten his wallet, can somebody lend me £50?
Yes, but I think it is the stat that is the most telling. At the moment, we're heading towards a Dubya vs Kerry-style contest at the next GE; that question, I'd suggest, is the best proxy for 'likeability'.
Interesting numbers from the article I posted earlier.
"In recent UK history, the worst years for flu deaths were 1976 and 1999, when more than 60,000 people in England and Wales died from influenza or pneumonia."
At some point people will have to address the question - "If you want a 'nicer' internet, are you prepared to pay up front for it?"
How on earth do you access it for free? It costs me a freaking fortune every month.
I signed up for Starlink at my place in France this week - 100€/month! I guess that Martian colony is going be expensive.
Starlink is a massive game-changer, if it works even half as well as trailed. Bringing high-speed internet to rural communities across the world.
In theory we can get ADSL at our house but in practice its sometimes fucked or really slow when it's not fucked. The cables appear to be attached to the pole with bailing twine and optimism so every time a cow farts in the adjacent field it comes down. Bretagne...
I think Starlink are on a collision course with governments in several jurisdictions who will not be amped on Starlink's direct to the customer unregulated model.
Starlink meeting china is going to be a sight to behold but it's going to have significant impact in the Middle East where the price won't be so much of an issue.
Starlink won't operate in Russia, for example - there was a preemptive ban, but I'm not sure if they even applied for a license.
The terminals are geo-fenced. That is, since they require exact positioning to work, they use GPS to locate themselves. If they are outside their assigned location, they won't work. Movable terminals will come later apparently.
The law is quite clear. To transmit in the territory of a given country, you require a license (nearly everywhere). So Starlink is going through the list of countries in the UN, applying for licenses.
They have stated that they will use the geo-fencing to prevent usage, even of the future mobile terminals, in countries that refuse a license.
The idea that they are going to become sky pirates is entertaining, but not borne out by the facts.
Yes, most of the jurisdictional issues have been kicked into the long grass.
Their first customers are going to be:
1. Rural Americans and Canadians - tens of millions of them who are still on dialup, slow ADSL or Comcast.
2. Low-latency traders, who are prepared to pay five or even six figures a month to get a signal from London to New York 10ms faster than a fibre cable.
3. Maritime and aviation users, again prepared to pay a premium for a much better product than existing satellite internet coverage.
4. Emergency aid workers such as the UN, delivering connectivity to areas of natural disasters and wars.
5. Group 1 but in other countries. Start with the friendly ones in Europe, Australia, Africa, who want to build out infrastructure for whom this represents a massive cost saving over traditional cable and fibre networks.
6. Now for the politically difficult bits of the world - Russia, China etc.
The first few groups are going to be able to eat up all the available bandwidth for the next few years, they're well over-subscribed for everything they can offer at the moment.
How are Oneweb doing?
They're slower than Starlink, but now have a somewhat different business model based on partnerships with existing telecoms. They also have a lot of valuable spectrum allocations.
So - good deal by UK Govt?
Probably yes, on a purely financial basis. Definitely yes, on keeping the project going and the jobs that will be created by it.
Not usually a fan of government intervention, but in this case I suspect there are also underlying military uses for the technology. At the time of the investment, there was a political row with the EU over Galileo, so it made sense in that context.
If it was me then all the sectors of the economy that have been devastated by the pandemic, like hospitality and tourism, I would look to eliminate tax on them for two years.
Eg the pubs and restaurants, like Miss Cyclefree Jr's, that have been forced to close and pay the price of the pandemic - I would look to zero rate Business Rates and zero rate VAT for a two year period.
That will mean more borrowing for the next two years but when the two year VAT free holiday expires there should be a healthy sector that has survived in order to then be taxed in the future.
It would be sound long term rather than short term economics and also a short term thank you to those who have disproportionately suffered.
I do think, however, that we will find that far more of the IT payments have spilled into February than usual. Ours certainly did and the government permitted it without penalty. Even allowing for that, however, I very much doubt that there has been a worse context for a budget since at least 2009 when Darling under instructions for his boss tried to pretend that nothing had changed.
I don't think that will be the line this time but surely there has to be some hint as to how these shortfalls are going to be filled in the medium term?
For this year the medium term solution should be "end the pandemic, start the recovery."
No more austere than that.
It needs to be well-steered, well-incentivised private capital leading that recovery.
The Government doesn't have the money.
Tax cuts should be the order of the day. Get money circulating through the economy building up a recovery that can then be taxed in the future.
People have plenty of money at the moment with nothing to spend it on. There is a huge pent up demand.
Thanks for the article @Richard_Tyndall. A couple of things to point out.
1. Facebook essentially piggybacks off the publishers' content to attract readers. The reason why advertisers have migrated large chunks of their spend to Facebook is because of the audience it offers and one of the key reasons why FB has been able to get their audience is because of the news content it offers. So FB (and all the online companies) have done very well out of the trade but the publishers have not. If the online companies had recognised this fact and not so tight, they would not be in the position they are facing now;
2. Yes, the tax is a crude method and everyone recognises that but sometimes a blunt tool is better than none. What Facebook could have done is did what Google is doing and reach deals with publishers to pay them for their content, which would be a Godsend to the industry. Instead, it has decided to fight.
3. Yes, I expect them to lose. The problem for these social media companies is that, to many Governments, they have crossed the line and now are seen as blatantly attempting to hijack powers generally reserved for Governments. In that regards, the social media companies' bans on Trump (and what happened on Parler) may turn out to have been a massive blunder. It made Governments realise these companies would take the ultimate step and dictate discourse. The Australian law introduction pre-dates the ban but it is one of the core reasons why you now have Modi threatening Twitter in India and the key reason for legislation brought in by states such as Florida to regulate social media.
As far as I can see this is completely wrong. Facebook does not piggyback any news content at all. What it does is allow its users to link to news articles. Something that actually the news providers already have the power to stop if they wished to by firewalling. Try linking to an article from the Times and see how far that gets you.
The news providers benefit from being linked to. Indeed that is why they start screaming when Facebook stops allowing people to link to them - as was the case in Spain and now Australia.
On your second point Google has control over what links it puts on its sites and so can choose whether or not to pay on that basis. Facebook does not have the same control - it can only allow or block. Hence the reason it has quite properly blocked links to Australian media outlets. It is abiding by the law. The fact that the Australian Government were too stupid to foresee this outcome is entirely their own fault.
And basically the summary of your third point is that you believe Governments should be allowed to control the free dissemination of information and discourse. Something I would absolutely and vehemently oppose.
Please select whether you trust Boris Johnson or Keir Starmer more to do each of the following actions.
If I was Starmer I'd be gutted not to have a large lead on repaying a borrowed £5 against Johnson of all people.
The one that shocked me was Johnson's 18 point lead on "Buy a round for their friends at the pub" - he clearly wins on the conviviality front (fun night out +22) but I'm surprised there's that big a gap on a "trust" issue....
I don't think the "buy a round" replies are motivated by a lack of trust in Sir Keir are they? More that he is just not one of the lads/good fun.
I keep banging on about it, but I think a LotO needs to have the charisma to sell their vision to the public at Election time better than the sitting PM does theirs, and I can't see Sir Keir being able to manage it.
Not always, see 1945 when Attlee won, 1970 when Heath won and 1992 when Major won despite being the less charismatic leaders.
See also France in 2012 when Hollande beat Sarkozy despite being the duller of the 2 and 2020 in the US when Biden won despite being less charismatic than Trump.
Charisma normally wins but if the government and incumbent leader is unpopular, serious but dull can beat charismatic
Thanks for the article @Richard_Tyndall. A couple of things to point out.
1. Facebook essentially piggybacks off the publishers' content to attract readers. The reason why advertisers have migrated large chunks of their spend to Facebook is because of the audience it offers and one of the key reasons why FB has been able to get their audience is because of the news content it offers. So FB (and all the online companies) have done very well out of the trade but the publishers have not. If the online companies had recognised this fact and not so tight, they would not be in the position they are facing now;
2. Yes, the tax is a crude method and everyone recognises that but sometimes a blunt tool is better than none. What Facebook could have done is did what Google is doing and reach deals with publishers to pay them for their content, which would be a Godsend to the industry. Instead, it has decided to fight.
3. Yes, I expect them to lose. The problem for these social media companies is that, to many Governments, they have crossed the line and now are seen as blatantly attempting to hijack powers generally reserved for Governments. In that regards, the social media companies' bans on Trump (and what happened on Parler) may turn out to have been a massive blunder. It made Governments realise these companies would take the ultimate step and dictate discourse. The Australian law introduction pre-dates the ban but it is one of the core reasons why you now have Modi threatening Twitter in India and the key reason for legislation brought in by states such as Florida to regulate social media.
1) It is not a tax its a payment to link to the newpaper site 2) Facebook absolutely didn't get its audience from news and google news does not contain advertising 3) When spain tried this and google pulled out traffic to those news sites dropped by I think about 20%.
Seems very much to me that its newspapers piggybacking of google and facebook here
Meanwhile, the Twitter response to Keith Cardboard's relaunch speech was predictable. The hard left can't accept that people have rejected them twice, so any failure of "the right" gets them excited for prospects of a return to true socialism.
Having listened to the speech live I still can't tell you what he said as he didn't say much and what he did say was so bland and tedious as to make you zone out. Reading some of the reportage he was pro-business partnerships and anti-poverty - all good things but missing the so what factor.
Politics is sales, and sadly for Labour they have no idea what punters actually want, hence being Here to Here and agreeing with the government about the pressing need to cut funding for school breakfast clubs. Starmer is Milliband - nice but crap, someone who means well, probably genuinely wants to do good, but is so "other" that people won't listen or care what he says.
I would argue Labour should try again with a new leader but like the Tories I struggle to see who they replace their crap leader with.
Well, Starmer still has a couple of years at least until a likely election date and hopefully he can make some progress. Another big Tory win could easily see the wounded Labour membership draw the wrong conclusions - again - and bring back the loony Left in a 2015-style fit of pique. Most likely we then turn into a Japanese-style one-party democracy; or the Tories make such a hash of things further down the line (or simply fall victim to traditional voter fatigue with long-serving administrations) that the loonies actually get to run the country. Neither prospect is particularly appealing.
TBH if the party does worse than Corbyn 2017 before Corbyn and does worse than Corbyn 2017 after Corbyn then surely the argument that even though they are all evil people and don't at all deserve representation and it is better to lose with millions of votes less....
That the Labour party marching over to the right is actually the less electorally sound position starts to have to be accepted even if you would prefer a different reality.
I realise that for a lot of people here that conveniently the right leader of the Labour party is one they prefer politically (guilty here also) but if the facts (with recent elections being the best facts we have in this regard) point to a left wing Labour doing better electorally than a right wing Labour then surely it would be crazy for Labour not to go for a left wing leader if Starmer fails.
I mean are Labour there to try and win votes or to please the commentariat and right wing people on PB?
Starmer *is* a left wing Labour leader. Very left wing, in fact. He may be to the right of Corbyn, which is hardly surprising given even Lenin was slightly to the right of him on many issues, but he’s to the left of Kinnock. Foot would be a fair comparison.
The question is, can he make that into a widely appealing policy offering? So far, he seems to have struggled.
I think I have said this before but for me actions > words.
Starmer has said lots of left wing stuff in the past, abolishing the monarchy for example a long time ago but his actions since becoming Labour leader have all been towards the right of the party. I mean Tony Blair was some kind of far left when he was younger as well but the better guide to how he would govern was his time as Labour leader (and then to the right of that)
You can make a good argument for Starmer being somewhere in the middle of the party before his election as Labour leader, it is why many Corbyn supporters voted for him and some even more than just voted for him. If Starmer were to fight for reelection as Labour leader (he should be okay, checks only needed with left wing leaders) it seem very likely that he would either be the candidate for right wing members of the Labour party (unless trumped by another from the Labour right) rather than the candidate for the left.
Prior to becoming Labour leader he mostly had just words, now he has actions and for me someone's actions are a much better window to their true beliefs than their words.
I don't have a problem with lawyers* (if anything I guess this is a compliment to their skill) but especially in such a profession almost anybody competent should be able to weave together something word wise that is completely removed from their beliefs but convincing.
*lawyers/solicitors or whatever else you law nerds call yourselves!
Just to point out the obvious, Corbyn *said* lots of left wing stuff, but he didn’t *do* anything left wing in government for the very simple reason he never got there. So judged by your metric he is in fact quite right wing.
What Starmer is trying to do is get Labour back to government so they can at least do some left wing things, even if they can’t do the lot.
He has calculated the way to do that is to tack towards the centre on some things to peel off soft Tory voters.
Can he do it? So far, so underwhelming. But at least he is trying.
If we're judging by actions then Corbyn ushered in an eighty seat majority for the Tories, nearly a decade after the Tories entered Downing Street.
Thanks Jezziah! 👍
That was the first election since 1865 where a governing party that had lost seats at a previous election made a net gain of them, and the first time ever a party that had been in government for nine years or more increased their majority.
It was a stunningly bad performance by Labour from every metric. It just should not have happened.
Fantastic that it did though.
For us, not the left.
For *you* PhilIip not *us* please. I never voted for Johnson.
It was a very bad result for anyone who wants proper two party democracy. In fact, just about the worst imaginable.
"Us" on the right.
And in my eyes the country, but that's just my opinion.
And in my opinion for those who want proper two party democracy since it should have provided a wake up call to the left rather than them wanting a "one more heave" approach.
I agree it should. But it clearly hasn’t.
The fact Keith won instead of Wrong Daily shows they've at least learned some lessons. Not enough perhaps but some. But even he's pretty left of centre.
Possibly one more teachable moment in 2024 then it can sink in? Happy for them to get as many lessons as they need.
The problem here is claiming Keith as left wing when his entire tenure as Labour leader has consisted of kicking the left for the rights entertainment is going to be a hard sell...
He's not kicking the left. He is the left. He's kicking the extreme far left.
I support the Tories. I recognise both Boris Johnson and David Cameron as right wing.
I have no problems whatsoever with either Boris or Dave "kicking" the extreme far right. Indeed I welcome it.
TBH in Conservative terms the example probably would be Dave kicking Boris' ass, I can't imagine it would actually be too welcome in reality...
Okay extreme far left (a new one I think, bit of a mouthful though too many words) is pretty much just considered left in Labour circles, nationalising railways and opposing war and such pretty common place outside of Blairite circles in the party TBH, sorry if this comes as bad news but 'extreme far left' is pretty much just regular mainstream left...
There is lots of left (not great in population numbers) that wouldn't vote for Corbyn even as a compromise (whilst some communist party or another did advise voting Labour in 2015)
"In Labour circle" and "in the country" are too very different things though.
Labour are to the left of the country. If you're to the left of Labour, then of course you're even further to the left of the country. If you're in the right of Labour, then you're still in the left overall.
Its like arguing between shades of red. You can have rose, crimson and blood red. Starmer's Labour may be rose red, while Corbyn's blood red might say they're a deeper shade of red - that doesn't make those who prefer rose red are actually wanting blue.
I'm pretty sure most of my posts have claimed Starmer as representing the right of Labour, so still red but some very pale shade, I mean you could argue about the parties stretching to centrist but my main claim has been Starmer represents the right of Labour (not the right of the country) and that it is electorally on that part of Labour if he does worse than the left of Labour.
Also if we can make the argument part of Labour is extreme far left on the basis of political positioning, it is the left party thus its left is extreme far left, can't we make that same argument with the Tories? they are right thus their right is extreme far right?
Yes we sort of can. When Tories pander to their extremes like electing IDS then the Tories lose.
Parties that pander to their base tend to lose in this nation, parties that target the voters win.
Though the Tories expel the extreme far right so they're not in the party. Labour have let the extreme far left squat in Labour for decades.
IDS never lost a general election and probably would have done at least as well as Howard did in 2005. Thatcher won 3 general elections from the right.
Yes, leaders also need to win the centre too, see Cameron and Blair but leaders who only target the centre and lose their base can also lose, see the LDs in 2015 or May's Tories in early 2019 if their base also has an alternative party to go to
Thatcher was to the right but she also targeted the centre. She moved the centre be her right.
She remade the country to be to the right of where it was and brought the public with her. That's the difference.
Thatcher would never have succeeded without policies like Right To Buy. By introducing Right To Buy she transformed and brought people on the journey with her.
In 1979 Jim Callaghan was the more centrist of the 2 main party leaders, Thatcher won that election from the right and yes she did shift the centre towards her, as indeed did Attlee in 1945, Thatcher and Attlee bringing in the biggest changes in our domestic policy since WW2.
She remained on the right in 1983 and 1987 but because Labour moved left under Foot and Kinnock she was able to win bigger majorities than she had in 1979
Mrs Thatcher won in 79 largely because of a series of union related problems that culminated in the Winter of Discontent. Those of us that can just about remember the power cuts, the shortages and the rubbish piled up in the streets know it was horrendous. Callahan was a decent man, but the "beer and sandwiches" relationship with the union barons of the time was too much for many voters and they wanted change. Margaret Thatcher and her shadow cabinet were not seen as extreme at the time either. It was only later that she tacked to the right when Labour famously went even further left under Foot and then replaced him with the Windbag, who was not seen to be Prime ministerial . These were the days when people preferred not to have clowns as their PM!
Please select whether you trust Boris Johnson or Keir Starmer more to do each of the following actions.
Looking at the answers with a significant gap between the two men, it seems people would like to go out for a night out with Boris while Sir Keir stays in and assembles their flat pack furniture
SKS as a practical baby-sitter.
Boris? "Legend....."
I suppose it depends on one's idea of organising a fun night out. I doubt Starmer would have the slightest idea where to go to procure hookers and class A drugs.
Meanwhile, the Twitter response to Keith Cardboard's relaunch speech was predictable. The hard left can't accept that people have rejected them twice, so any failure of "the right" gets them excited for prospects of a return to true socialism.
Having listened to the speech live I still can't tell you what he said as he didn't say much and what he did say was so bland and tedious as to make you zone out. Reading some of the reportage he was pro-business partnerships and anti-poverty - all good things but missing the so what factor.
Politics is sales, and sadly for Labour they have no idea what punters actually want, hence being Here to Here and agreeing with the government about the pressing need to cut funding for school breakfast clubs. Starmer is Milliband - nice but crap, someone who means well, probably genuinely wants to do good, but is so "other" that people won't listen or care what he says.
I would argue Labour should try again with a new leader but like the Tories I struggle to see who they replace their crap leader with.
Well, Starmer still has a couple of years at least until a likely election date and hopefully he can make some progress. Another big Tory win could easily see the wounded Labour membership draw the wrong conclusions - again - and bring back the loony Left in a 2015-style fit of pique. Most likely we then turn into a Japanese-style one-party democracy; or the Tories make such a hash of things further down the line (or simply fall victim to traditional voter fatigue with long-serving administrations) that the loonies actually get to run the country. Neither prospect is particularly appealing.
TBH if the party does worse than Corbyn 2017 before Corbyn and does worse than Corbyn 2017 after Corbyn then surely the argument that even though they are all evil people and don't at all deserve representation and it is better to lose with millions of votes less....
That the Labour party marching over to the right is actually the less electorally sound position starts to have to be accepted even if you would prefer a different reality.
I realise that for a lot of people here that conveniently the right leader of the Labour party is one they prefer politically (guilty here also) but if the facts (with recent elections being the best facts we have in this regard) point to a left wing Labour doing better electorally than a right wing Labour then surely it would be crazy for Labour not to go for a left wing leader if Starmer fails.
I mean are Labour there to try and win votes or to please the commentariat and right wing people on PB?
Starmer *is* a left wing Labour leader. Very left wing, in fact. He may be to the right of Corbyn, which is hardly surprising given even Lenin was slightly to the right of him on many issues, but he’s to the left of Kinnock. Foot would be a fair comparison.
The question is, can he make that into a widely appealing policy offering? So far, he seems to have struggled.
I think I have said this before but for me actions > words.
Starmer has said lots of left wing stuff in the past, abolishing the monarchy for example a long time ago but his actions since becoming Labour leader have all been towards the right of the party. I mean Tony Blair was some kind of far left when he was younger as well but the better guide to how he would govern was his time as Labour leader (and then to the right of that)
You can make a good argument for Starmer being somewhere in the middle of the party before his election as Labour leader, it is why many Corbyn supporters voted for him and some even more than just voted for him. If Starmer were to fight for reelection as Labour leader (he should be okay, checks only needed with left wing leaders) it seem very likely that he would either be the candidate for right wing members of the Labour party (unless trumped by another from the Labour right) rather than the candidate for the left.
Prior to becoming Labour leader he mostly had just words, now he has actions and for me someone's actions are a much better window to their true beliefs than their words.
I don't have a problem with lawyers* (if anything I guess this is a compliment to their skill) but especially in such a profession almost anybody competent should be able to weave together something word wise that is completely removed from their beliefs but convincing.
*lawyers/solicitors or whatever else you law nerds call yourselves!
Just to point out the obvious, Corbyn *said* lots of left wing stuff, but he didn’t *do* anything left wing in government for the very simple reason he never got there. So judged by your metric he is in fact quite right wing.
What Starmer is trying to do is get Labour back to government so they can at least do some left wing things, even if they can’t do the lot.
He has calculated the way to do that is to tack towards the centre on some things to peel off soft Tory voters.
Can he do it? So far, so underwhelming. But at least he is trying.
If we're judging by actions then Corbyn ushered in an eighty seat majority for the Tories, nearly a decade after the Tories entered Downing Street.
Thanks Jezziah! 👍
That was the first election since 1865 where a governing party that had lost seats at a previous election made a net gain of them, and the first time ever a party that had been in government for nine years or more increased their majority.
It was a stunningly bad performance by Labour from every metric. It just should not have happened.
Fantastic that it did though.
For us, not the left.
For *you* PhilIip not *us* please. I never voted for Johnson.
It was a very bad result for anyone who wants proper two party democracy. In fact, just about the worst imaginable.
"Us" on the right.
And in my eyes the country, but that's just my opinion.
And in my opinion for those who want proper two party democracy since it should have provided a wake up call to the left rather than them wanting a "one more heave" approach.
I agree it should. But it clearly hasn’t.
The fact Keith won instead of Wrong Daily shows they've at least learned some lessons. Not enough perhaps but some. But even he's pretty left of centre.
Possibly one more teachable moment in 2024 then it can sink in? Happy for them to get as many lessons as they need.
The problem here is claiming Keith as left wing when his entire tenure as Labour leader has consisted of kicking the left for the rights entertainment is going to be a hard sell...
He's not kicking the left. He is the left. He's kicking the extreme far left.
I support the Tories. I recognise both Boris Johnson and David Cameron as right wing.
I have no problems whatsoever with either Boris or Dave "kicking" the extreme far right. Indeed I welcome it.
TBH in Conservative terms the example probably would be Dave kicking Boris' ass, I can't imagine it would actually be too welcome in reality...
Okay extreme far left (a new one I think, bit of a mouthful though too many words) is pretty much just considered left in Labour circles, nationalising railways and opposing war and such pretty common place outside of Blairite circles in the party TBH, sorry if this comes as bad news but 'extreme far left' is pretty much just regular mainstream left...
There is lots of left (not great in population numbers) that wouldn't vote for Corbyn even as a compromise (whilst some communist party or another did advise voting Labour in 2015)
"In Labour circle" and "in the country" are too very different things though.
Labour are to the left of the country. If you're to the left of Labour, then of course you're even further to the left of the country. If you're in the right of Labour, then you're still in the left overall.
Its like arguing between shades of red. You can have rose, crimson and blood red. Starmer's Labour may be rose red, while Corbyn's blood red might say they're a deeper shade of red - that doesn't make those who prefer rose red are actually wanting blue.
I'm pretty sure most of my posts have claimed Starmer as representing the right of Labour, so still red but some very pale shade, I mean you could argue about the parties stretching to centrist but my main claim has been Starmer represents the right of Labour (not the right of the country) and that it is electorally on that part of Labour if he does worse than the left of Labour.
Also if we can make the argument part of Labour is extreme far left on the basis of political positioning, it is the left party thus its left is extreme far left, can't we make that same argument with the Tories? they are right thus their right is extreme far right?
Yes we sort of can. When Tories pander to their extremes like electing IDS then the Tories lose.
Parties that pander to their base tend to lose in this nation, parties that target the voters win.
Though the Tories expel the extreme far right so they're not in the party. Labour have let the extreme far left squat in Labour for decades.
IDS never lost a general election and probably would have done at least as well as Howard did in 2005. Thatcher won 3 general elections from the right.
Yes, leaders also need to win the centre too, see Cameron and Blair but leaders who only target the centre and lose their base can also lose, see the LDs in 2015 or May's Tories in early 2019 if their base also has an alternative party to go to
Thatcher was to the right but she also targeted the centre. She moved the centre be her right.
She remade the country to be to the right of where it was and brought the public with her. That's the difference.
Thatcher would never have succeeded without policies like Right To Buy. By introducing Right To Buy she transformed and brought people on the journey with her.
In 1979 Jim Callaghan was the more centrist of the 2 main party leaders, Thatcher won that election from the right and yes she did shift the centre towards her, as indeed did Attlee in 1945, Thatcher and Attlee bringing in the biggest changes in our domestic policy since WW2.
She remained on the right in 1983 and 1987 but because Labour moved left under Foot and Kinnock she was able to win bigger majorities than she had in 1979
The SDP helped by splitting the vote and giving those large majorities. The conservatives in GE have not had that problem.
The SDP didn't "split the vote" they offered up something completely different to Labour.
Indeed I think studied found that SDP voters forced choice preferred Thatcher's Tories to Foot's Labour.
The notion you can add two completely different parties voted together is mad.
Before the Falklands the SDP were polling like they could form a government. However in the 83 87 GE they polled enough under FPTP , which is designed for a two party system. To help create the huge conservative majorities by not winning many seats.
I do think, however, that we will find that far more of the IT payments have spilled into February than usual. Ours certainly did and the government permitted it without penalty. Even allowing for that, however, I very much doubt that there has been a worse context for a budget since at least 2009 when Darling under instructions for his boss tried to pretend that nothing had changed.
I don't think that will be the line this time but surely there has to be some hint as to how these shortfalls are going to be filled in the medium term?
For this year the medium term solution should be "end the pandemic, start the recovery."
No more austere than that.
It needs to be well-steered, well-incentivised private capital leading that recovery.
The Government doesn't have the money.
Tax cuts should be the order of the day. Get money circulating through the economy building up a recovery that can then be taxed in the future.
People have plenty of money at the moment with nothing to spend it on. There is a huge pent up demand.
Some people do. Not all. Some businesses are on their knees. People associated with them are too.
My proposal of a 2 year tax holiday for those who have disproportionately suffered would allow those who have pent up cash and demand to spend with those on their knees and would restore the economy PDQ.
Please select whether you trust Boris Johnson or Keir Starmer more to do each of the following actions.
If I was Starmer I'd be gutted not to have a large lead on repaying a borrowed £5 against Johnson of all people.
I'm also not persuaded that Boris is more likely than Keir to buy a round for his friends at the pub. He would offer, then harrumph and announce he's forgotten his wallet, can somebody lend me £50?
That's really just saying you don't think the polling is trustworthy though- it doesn't really matter what the truth is if it is possible to know, it is the public's perception that helps us try to work out who is likely to be PM after the next GE .
@HYUFD You've picked the best poll for Labour there, one that could well be an outlier.
In fairness I like an outlier poll as well but it is the one that has Starmer's Labour on the same score as 2019 Labour and many points behind 2017 Labour.
Ed himself is left of the Blairites (probably somewhere in the centre of Labour party IMO) but he was driven by the right wing ghouls filling his cabinet so the end result was not a Labour left led party in GE 2015.
Ed Miliband was the leftwing candidate in 2010 against his brother David who was the candidate of the Labour right in the final round, Starmer in 2019 is the first candidate from the Labour right to win a contested Labour leadership election since Blair in 1994 (Brown being unopposed in 2007)
Arguably Diane Abbot was the left wing candidate. Ed was the most left wing option that could beat David. If Corbyn had been challenged by McDonnell with a more right leaning platform than Corbyn it wouldn't make McDonnell a member of the Labour right.
He was more left wing than David but that doesn't make him left (I mean it could) but TBH my feeling was always that Ed's cabinet drove him rightwards, he said after 2017 he should have gone for a manifesto like that, the reason he didn't go with he beliefs was his right wing cabinet.
@Yorkcity Happy with Johnson winning, no. Happy enough with the people kicking me to lose, yes.
Do you agree that the people Starmer needs to win over to become PM, mostly voted for the Conservatives (and SNP) in 2019?
To varying degrees he needs people who voted Conservative in 2019, SNP in 2019 and Labour in either 2017 and/or 2019. His approach so far seems to have pissed off the latter group without winning much of the former groups.
I can't see Labour winning the next election short of Black Wednesday, or several days worth maybe.... for a future election Labour win the most realistic scenario IMO short of Black Wednesday is either 2017+ or pretty much 2017 but with a less popular Conservative party or a split right wing vote.
For how many more (lost) general election cycles are you going to cling to the fantasy of GE2017?
Please select whether you trust Boris Johnson or Keir Starmer more to do each of the following actions.
If I was Starmer I'd be gutted not to have a large lead on repaying a borrowed £5 against Johnson of all people.
The one that shocked me was Johnson's 18 point lead on "Buy a round for their friends at the pub" - he clearly wins on the conviviality front (fun night out +22) but I'm surprised there's that big a gap on a "trust" issue....
I don't think the "buy a round" replies are motivated by a lack of trust in Sir Keir are they? More that he is just not one of the lads/good fun.
He's a lawyer. He's the unhumorous old git who no-one actually likes who sits at the end of the bar.
Maybe now and then someone buys him a drink because they feel sorry for him. They maybe say a polite word to him to him, but he starts muttering about "British Recovery bonds", and they edge away.
(I'm afraid Labour made the wrong choice -- it is already obvious).
Meanwhile, the Twitter response to Keith Cardboard's relaunch speech was predictable. The hard left can't accept that people have rejected them twice, so any failure of "the right" gets them excited for prospects of a return to true socialism.
Having listened to the speech live I still can't tell you what he said as he didn't say much and what he did say was so bland and tedious as to make you zone out. Reading some of the reportage he was pro-business partnerships and anti-poverty - all good things but missing the so what factor.
Politics is sales, and sadly for Labour they have no idea what punters actually want, hence being Here to Here and agreeing with the government about the pressing need to cut funding for school breakfast clubs. Starmer is Milliband - nice but crap, someone who means well, probably genuinely wants to do good, but is so "other" that people won't listen or care what he says.
I would argue Labour should try again with a new leader but like the Tories I struggle to see who they replace their crap leader with.
Well, Starmer still has a couple of years at least until a likely election date and hopefully he can make some progress. Another big Tory win could easily see the wounded Labour membership draw the wrong conclusions - again - and bring back the loony Left in a 2015-style fit of pique. Most likely we then turn into a Japanese-style one-party democracy; or the Tories make such a hash of things further down the line (or simply fall victim to traditional voter fatigue with long-serving administrations) that the loonies actually get to run the country. Neither prospect is particularly appealing.
TBH if the party does worse than Corbyn 2017 before Corbyn and does worse than Corbyn 2017 after Corbyn then surely the argument that even though they are all evil people and don't at all deserve representation and it is better to lose with millions of votes less....
That the Labour party marching over to the right is actually the less electorally sound position starts to have to be accepted even if you would prefer a different reality.
I realise that for a lot of people here that conveniently the right leader of the Labour party is one they prefer politically (guilty here also) but if the facts (with recent elections being the best facts we have in this regard) point to a left wing Labour doing better electorally than a right wing Labour then surely it would be crazy for Labour not to go for a left wing leader if Starmer fails.
I mean are Labour there to try and win votes or to please the commentariat and right wing people on PB?
Starmer *is* a left wing Labour leader. Very left wing, in fact. He may be to the right of Corbyn, which is hardly surprising given even Lenin was slightly to the right of him on many issues, but he’s to the left of Kinnock. Foot would be a fair comparison.
The question is, can he make that into a widely appealing policy offering? So far, he seems to have struggled.
I think I have said this before but for me actions > words.
Starmer has said lots of left wing stuff in the past, abolishing the monarchy for example a long time ago but his actions since becoming Labour leader have all been towards the right of the party. I mean Tony Blair was some kind of far left when he was younger as well but the better guide to how he would govern was his time as Labour leader (and then to the right of that)
You can make a good argument for Starmer being somewhere in the middle of the party before his election as Labour leader, it is why many Corbyn supporters voted for him and some even more than just voted for him. If Starmer were to fight for reelection as Labour leader (he should be okay, checks only needed with left wing leaders) it seem very likely that he would either be the candidate for right wing members of the Labour party (unless trumped by another from the Labour right) rather than the candidate for the left.
Prior to becoming Labour leader he mostly had just words, now he has actions and for me someone's actions are a much better window to their true beliefs than their words.
I don't have a problem with lawyers* (if anything I guess this is a compliment to their skill) but especially in such a profession almost anybody competent should be able to weave together something word wise that is completely removed from their beliefs but convincing.
*lawyers/solicitors or whatever else you law nerds call yourselves!
Just to point out the obvious, Corbyn *said* lots of left wing stuff, but he didn’t *do* anything left wing in government for the very simple reason he never got there. So judged by your metric he is in fact quite right wing.
What Starmer is trying to do is get Labour back to government so they can at least do some left wing things, even if they can’t do the lot.
He has calculated the way to do that is to tack towards the centre on some things to peel off soft Tory voters.
Can he do it? So far, so underwhelming. But at least he is trying.
If we're judging by actions then Corbyn ushered in an eighty seat majority for the Tories, nearly a decade after the Tories entered Downing Street.
Thanks Jezziah! 👍
That was the first election since 1865 where a governing party that had lost seats at a previous election made a net gain of them, and the first time ever a party that had been in government for nine years or more increased their majority.
It was a stunningly bad performance by Labour from every metric. It just should not have happened.
Fantastic that it did though.
For us, not the left.
For *you* PhilIip not *us* please. I never voted for Johnson.
It was a very bad result for anyone who wants proper two party democracy. In fact, just about the worst imaginable.
"Us" on the right.
And in my eyes the country, but that's just my opinion.
And in my opinion for those who want proper two party democracy since it should have provided a wake up call to the left rather than them wanting a "one more heave" approach.
I agree it should. But it clearly hasn’t.
The fact Keith won instead of Wrong Daily shows they've at least learned some lessons. Not enough perhaps but some. But even he's pretty left of centre.
Possibly one more teachable moment in 2024 then it can sink in? Happy for them to get as many lessons as they need.
The problem here is claiming Keith as left wing when his entire tenure as Labour leader has consisted of kicking the left for the rights entertainment is going to be a hard sell...
He's not kicking the left. He is the left. He's kicking the extreme far left.
I support the Tories. I recognise both Boris Johnson and David Cameron as right wing.
I have no problems whatsoever with either Boris or Dave "kicking" the extreme far right. Indeed I welcome it.
TBH in Conservative terms the example probably would be Dave kicking Boris' ass, I can't imagine it would actually be too welcome in reality...
Okay extreme far left (a new one I think, bit of a mouthful though too many words) is pretty much just considered left in Labour circles, nationalising railways and opposing war and such pretty common place outside of Blairite circles in the party TBH, sorry if this comes as bad news but 'extreme far left' is pretty much just regular mainstream left...
There is lots of left (not great in population numbers) that wouldn't vote for Corbyn even as a compromise (whilst some communist party or another did advise voting Labour in 2015)
"In Labour circle" and "in the country" are too very different things though.
Labour are to the left of the country. If you're to the left of Labour, then of course you're even further to the left of the country. If you're in the right of Labour, then you're still in the left overall.
Its like arguing between shades of red. You can have rose, crimson and blood red. Starmer's Labour may be rose red, while Corbyn's blood red might say they're a deeper shade of red - that doesn't make those who prefer rose red are actually wanting blue.
I'm pretty sure most of my posts have claimed Starmer as representing the right of Labour, so still red but some very pale shade, I mean you could argue about the parties stretching to centrist but my main claim has been Starmer represents the right of Labour (not the right of the country) and that it is electorally on that part of Labour if he does worse than the left of Labour.
Also if we can make the argument part of Labour is extreme far left on the basis of political positioning, it is the left party thus its left is extreme far left, can't we make that same argument with the Tories? they are right thus their right is extreme far right?
Yes we sort of can. When Tories pander to their extremes like electing IDS then the Tories lose.
Parties that pander to their base tend to lose in this nation, parties that target the voters win.
Though the Tories expel the extreme far right so they're not in the party. Labour have let the extreme far left squat in Labour for decades.
IDS never lost a general election and probably would have done at least as well as Howard did in 2005. Thatcher won 3 general elections from the right.
Yes, leaders also need to win the centre too, see Cameron and Blair but leaders who only target the centre and lose their base can also lose, see the LDs in 2015 or May's Tories in early 2019 if their base also has an alternative party to go to
Thatcher was to the right but she also targeted the centre. She moved the centre be her right.
She remade the country to be to the right of where it was and brought the public with her. That's the difference.
Thatcher would never have succeeded without policies like Right To Buy. By introducing Right To Buy she transformed and brought people on the journey with her.
In 1979 Jim Callaghan was the more centrist of the 2 main party leaders, Thatcher won that election from the right and yes she did shift the centre towards her, as indeed did Attlee in 1945, Thatcher and Attlee bringing in the biggest changes in our domestic policy since WW2.
She remained on the right in 1983 and 1987 but because Labour moved left under Foot and Kinnock she was able to win bigger majorities than she had in 1979
The SDP helped by splitting the vote and giving those large majorities. The conservatives in GE have not had that problem.
The SDP didn't "split the vote" they offered up something completely different to Labour.
Indeed I think studied found that SDP voters forced choice preferred Thatcher's Tories to Foot's Labour.
The notion you can add two completely different parties voted together is mad.
Before the Falklands the SDP were polling like they could form a government. However in the 83 87 GE they polled enough under FPTP , which is designed for a two party system. To help create the huge conservative majorities by not winning many seats.
But the studies said that if there were a forced choice those SDP voters preferred Tories anyway over Labour. So what's the issue?
You can't claim them as anti Tory without also claiming them as anti Labour. The split notion is garbage.
Uber drivers must be classed as employees.....that huge ruling.
All those companies with what look like already unsustainable business models like deliveroo are going to be screwed if they also have to guarantee minimum wage and provide in work benefits.
Uber are worse than Facebook in the list of scummy companies. They lost $6bn last year, while treating everyone like dirt and ruining several industries in the process.
The whole food delivery app business is hilarious in operation from a business perspective - there's simply no way to make money delivering food for free, but tens of billions of dollars of VC capital seem to think it's possible.
They don't do it for free by any means.
Last I saw they were taking about 30% of the ticket price of the order, plus a delivery charge often too.
It looks 'free' or a nominal charge to the consumer, but they're taking a large cut (30% as you say) from the restaurant. Restaurants can live with that as a promotion, but not on a permanent basis, and many are moving away from these platforms as a result. With a number of competing platforms looking for market share, they're also spending big money on traditional advertising, marketing and promotions of their own, to the point that they're all losing vast amounts of cash. It's a totally unsustainable business model - unless you've a monopoly and can dictate prices.
That's not what I see when I order something from a restaurant I know IRL: they charge the delivery fee on top of the menu price (and I throw in a tip to the driver as well). It is worth it to me as I have been shielding since I don't know when and I am an indifferent cook at the best of times. It is particularly good at the end of a full day of online teaching when I am often knackered.
Meanwhile, the Twitter response to Keith Cardboard's relaunch speech was predictable. The hard left can't accept that people have rejected them twice, so any failure of "the right" gets them excited for prospects of a return to true socialism.
Having listened to the speech live I still can't tell you what he said as he didn't say much and what he did say was so bland and tedious as to make you zone out. Reading some of the reportage he was pro-business partnerships and anti-poverty - all good things but missing the so what factor.
Politics is sales, and sadly for Labour they have no idea what punters actually want, hence being Here to Here and agreeing with the government about the pressing need to cut funding for school breakfast clubs. Starmer is Milliband - nice but crap, someone who means well, probably genuinely wants to do good, but is so "other" that people won't listen or care what he says.
I would argue Labour should try again with a new leader but like the Tories I struggle to see who they replace their crap leader with.
Well, Starmer still has a couple of years at least until a likely election date and hopefully he can make some progress. Another big Tory win could easily see the wounded Labour membership draw the wrong conclusions - again - and bring back the loony Left in a 2015-style fit of pique. Most likely we then turn into a Japanese-style one-party democracy; or the Tories make such a hash of things further down the line (or simply fall victim to traditional voter fatigue with long-serving administrations) that the loonies actually get to run the country. Neither prospect is particularly appealing.
TBH if the party does worse than Corbyn 2017 before Corbyn and does worse than Corbyn 2017 after Corbyn then surely the argument that even though they are all evil people and don't at all deserve representation and it is better to lose with millions of votes less....
That the Labour party marching over to the right is actually the less electorally sound position starts to have to be accepted even if you would prefer a different reality.
I realise that for a lot of people here that conveniently the right leader of the Labour party is one they prefer politically (guilty here also) but if the facts (with recent elections being the best facts we have in this regard) point to a left wing Labour doing better electorally than a right wing Labour then surely it would be crazy for Labour not to go for a left wing leader if Starmer fails.
I mean are Labour there to try and win votes or to please the commentariat and right wing people on PB?
Starmer *is* a left wing Labour leader. Very left wing, in fact. He may be to the right of Corbyn, which is hardly surprising given even Lenin was slightly to the right of him on many issues, but he’s to the left of Kinnock. Foot would be a fair comparison.
The question is, can he make that into a widely appealing policy offering? So far, he seems to have struggled.
I think I have said this before but for me actions > words.
Starmer has said lots of left wing stuff in the past, abolishing the monarchy for example a long time ago but his actions since becoming Labour leader have all been towards the right of the party. I mean Tony Blair was some kind of far left when he was younger as well but the better guide to how he would govern was his time as Labour leader (and then to the right of that)
You can make a good argument for Starmer being somewhere in the middle of the party before his election as Labour leader, it is why many Corbyn supporters voted for him and some even more than just voted for him. If Starmer were to fight for reelection as Labour leader (he should be okay, checks only needed with left wing leaders) it seem very likely that he would either be the candidate for right wing members of the Labour party (unless trumped by another from the Labour right) rather than the candidate for the left.
Prior to becoming Labour leader he mostly had just words, now he has actions and for me someone's actions are a much better window to their true beliefs than their words.
I don't have a problem with lawyers* (if anything I guess this is a compliment to their skill) but especially in such a profession almost anybody competent should be able to weave together something word wise that is completely removed from their beliefs but convincing.
*lawyers/solicitors or whatever else you law nerds call yourselves!
Just to point out the obvious, Corbyn *said* lots of left wing stuff, but he didn’t *do* anything left wing in government for the very simple reason he never got there. So judged by your metric he is in fact quite right wing.
What Starmer is trying to do is get Labour back to government so they can at least do some left wing things, even if they can’t do the lot.
He has calculated the way to do that is to tack towards the centre on some things to peel off soft Tory voters.
Can he do it? So far, so underwhelming. But at least he is trying.
If we're judging by actions then Corbyn ushered in an eighty seat majority for the Tories, nearly a decade after the Tories entered Downing Street.
Thanks Jezziah! 👍
That was the first election since 1865 where a governing party that had lost seats at a previous election made a net gain of them, and the first time ever a party that had been in government for nine years or more increased their majority.
It was a stunningly bad performance by Labour from every metric. It just should not have happened.
Fantastic that it did though.
For us, not the left.
For *you* PhilIip not *us* please. I never voted for Johnson.
It was a very bad result for anyone who wants proper two party democracy. In fact, just about the worst imaginable.
"Us" on the right.
And in my eyes the country, but that's just my opinion.
And in my opinion for those who want proper two party democracy since it should have provided a wake up call to the left rather than them wanting a "one more heave" approach.
I agree it should. But it clearly hasn’t.
The fact Keith won instead of Wrong Daily shows they've at least learned some lessons. Not enough perhaps but some. But even he's pretty left of centre.
Possibly one more teachable moment in 2024 then it can sink in? Happy for them to get as many lessons as they need.
The problem here is claiming Keith as left wing when his entire tenure as Labour leader has consisted of kicking the left for the rights entertainment is going to be a hard sell...
He's not kicking the left. He is the left. He's kicking the extreme far left.
I support the Tories. I recognise both Boris Johnson and David Cameron as right wing.
I have no problems whatsoever with either Boris or Dave "kicking" the extreme far right. Indeed I welcome it.
TBH in Conservative terms the example probably would be Dave kicking Boris' ass, I can't imagine it would actually be too welcome in reality...
Okay extreme far left (a new one I think, bit of a mouthful though too many words) is pretty much just considered left in Labour circles, nationalising railways and opposing war and such pretty common place outside of Blairite circles in the party TBH, sorry if this comes as bad news but 'extreme far left' is pretty much just regular mainstream left...
There is lots of left (not great in population numbers) that wouldn't vote for Corbyn even as a compromise (whilst some communist party or another did advise voting Labour in 2015)
"In Labour circle" and "in the country" are too very different things though.
Labour are to the left of the country. If you're to the left of Labour, then of course you're even further to the left of the country. If you're in the right of Labour, then you're still in the left overall.
Its like arguing between shades of red. You can have rose, crimson and blood red. Starmer's Labour may be rose red, while Corbyn's blood red might say they're a deeper shade of red - that doesn't make those who prefer rose red are actually wanting blue.
I'm pretty sure most of my posts have claimed Starmer as representing the right of Labour, so still red but some very pale shade, I mean you could argue about the parties stretching to centrist but my main claim has been Starmer represents the right of Labour (not the right of the country) and that it is electorally on that part of Labour if he does worse than the left of Labour.
Also if we can make the argument part of Labour is extreme far left on the basis of political positioning, it is the left party thus its left is extreme far left, can't we make that same argument with the Tories? they are right thus their right is extreme far right?
Yes we sort of can. When Tories pander to their extremes like electing IDS then the Tories lose.
Parties that pander to their base tend to lose in this nation, parties that target the voters win.
Though the Tories expel the extreme far right so they're not in the party. Labour have let the extreme far left squat in Labour for decades.
IDS never lost a general election and probably would have done at least as well as Howard did in 2005. Thatcher won 3 general elections from the right.
Yes, leaders also need to win the centre too, see Cameron and Blair but leaders who only target the centre and lose their base can also lose, see the LDs in 2015 or May's Tories in early 2019 if their base also has an alternative party to go to
Thatcher was to the right but she also targeted the centre. She moved the centre be her right.
She remade the country to be to the right of where it was and brought the public with her. That's the difference.
Thatcher would never have succeeded without policies like Right To Buy. By introducing Right To Buy she transformed and brought people on the journey with her.
In 1979 Jim Callaghan was the more centrist of the 2 main party leaders, Thatcher won that election from the right and yes she did shift the centre towards her, as indeed did Attlee in 1945, Thatcher and Attlee bringing in the biggest changes in our domestic policy since WW2.
She remained on the right in 1983 and 1987 but because Labour moved left under Foot and Kinnock she was able to win bigger majorities than she had in 1979
Mrs Thatcher won in 79 largely because of a series of union related problems that culminated in the Winter of Discontent. Those of us that can just about remember the power cuts, the shortages and the rubbish piled up in the streets know it was horrendous. Callahan was a decent man, but the "beer and sandwiches" relationship with the union barons of the time was too much for many voters and they wanted change. Margaret Thatcher and her shadow cabinet were not seen as extreme at the time either. It was only later that she tacked to the right when Labour famously went even further left under Foot and then replaced him with the Windbag, who was not seen to be Prime ministerial . These were the days when people preferred not to have clowns as their PM!
The 2019 election was between 2 clowns, it just happens that a lot of people don't regard Corbyn as one.
Please select whether you trust Boris Johnson or Keir Starmer more to do each of the following actions.
Looking at the answers with a significant gap between the two men, it seems people would like to go out for a night out with Boris while Sir Keir stays in and assembles their flat pack furniture
SKS as a practical baby-sitter.
Boris? "Legend....."
I suppose it depends on one's idea of organising a fun night out. I doubt Starmer would have the slightest idea where to go to procure hookers and class A drugs.
Me neither, now you come to mention it.
Barrister's clerks know everything. If you gave them 24 hours notice, they could put you in touch with somebody who get you everything from a hooker to a surface-to-air missile.
Those who live in the real world might be interesting in reading Labour's own report on its GE2019 defeat; in particular how to build a winning coalition for the future:
I summarise the three choices Labour have below - route 2 are currently fooling themselves that Starmer in trying to pursue route 3 is actually pursuing route 1.
I'll leave you to draw your own conclusions about which route this report concludes is the only way Labour return to Government.
"The analysis conducted by Datapraxis identified three options, summarised as:
1. A strategy which prioritises almost exclusively winning back lost Leave voters and “Red Wall” seats by combining left economic policies with strong emphasis on controls on immigration and less social liberalism. This would assume the current voter coalition is retained which is a risky assumption to make. It could yield a higher vote share than in 2019, but would likely lead to losing a significant number of socially liberal voters to the Greens, the Lib Dems and/or the Nationalists, leaving Labour well below its 2017 vote share, with lots of younger voters abstaining too.
2. A strategy which combines a move to the centre on economic issues with mild social liberalism tempered by a “tough-on-crime” posture could also deliver a better result than 2019, but would likely lead to the loss of some left-wing and younger voters to the Greens, Liberal Democrats, nationalists or abstention, without making any significant advances among socially conservative Brexit swing voters. Again, this could improve on the 2019 vote share but remain below that of 2017.
3. More difficult to execute than either of these approaches, but more likely to attract a coalition of voters broad enough to return Labour to government, would be a strategy that builds greater public support for a big change economic agenda, that is seen as credible and morally essential, rooted in people’s real lives and communities. This economic agenda would need to sit alongside a robust story of community and national pride, while bridging social and cultural divisions. The message of change would aim to enthuse and mobilise existing support and younger voters while at the same time being grounded in community, place and family, to speak to former “leave-minded” Labour voters. The bridging approach across divides would need to neutralise cultural and social tensions. Such a strategy could achieve more than 40% vote share, but would require an exceptional leadership team able to navigate building and winning trust of this very diverse voter coalition."
I do think, however, that we will find that far more of the IT payments have spilled into February than usual. Ours certainly did and the government permitted it without penalty. Even allowing for that, however, I very much doubt that there has been a worse context for a budget since at least 2009 when Darling under instructions for his boss tried to pretend that nothing had changed.
I don't think that will be the line this time but surely there has to be some hint as to how these shortfalls are going to be filled in the medium term?
That's terrible, £19bn year on year change to the January figures. Good point about the income tax numbers, many of which will have been deferred until February.
It's also worth noting that those income taxes relate to the year ending Apr 2020, so a lot of the pandemic losses will not be reflected until this time next year.
Not a good time to be the Chancellor, he's going to be doing a lot of thinking of the unthinkable in advance of the Budget. Don't envy anyone in that position at the moment.
He shouldn't be yet.
Next budget after this one if it's still bad he should be. But if the pandemic ends this year, we recover and January next year is say £18bn better than this January then won't that be a good thing?
Oh I agree. My ideas of the unthinkable are things like merging IT and NI, increasing tax breaks for R&D, rejig of business rates - and on the other side things like ending the 40% pension relief.
His target needs to be to get those who have spent the past year saving - mostly people on £30k-£100k salaries - spending and investing, and not on foreign holidays.
Uber drivers must be classed as employees.....that huge ruling.
All those companies with what look like already unsustainable business models like deliveroo are going to be screwed if they also have to guarantee minimum wage and provide in work benefits.
Uber are worse than Facebook in the list of scummy companies. They lost $6bn last year, while treating everyone like dirt and ruining several industries in the process.
The whole food delivery app business is hilarious in operation from a business perspective - there's simply no way to make money delivering food for free, but tens of billions of dollars of VC capital seem to think it's possible.
They don't do it for free by any means.
Last I saw they were taking about 30% of the ticket price of the order, plus a delivery charge often too.
It looks 'free' or a nominal charge to the consumer, but they're taking a large cut (30% as you say) from the restaurant. Restaurants can live with that as a promotion, but not on a permanent basis, and many are moving away from these platforms as a result. With a number of competing platforms looking for market share, they're also spending big money on traditional advertising, marketing and promotions of their own, to the point that they're all losing vast amounts of cash. It's a totally unsustainable business model - unless you've a monopoly and can dictate prices.
That's not what I see when I order something from a restaurant I know IRL: they charge the delivery fee on top of the menu price (and I throw in a tip to the driver as well). It is worth it to me as I have been shielding since I don't know when and I am an indifferent cook at the best of times. It is particularly good at the end of a full day of online teaching when I am often knackered.
Deliveroo - 30% service charge paid by takeaway (so hidden from you) + delivery fee on top.
Those who live in the real world might be interesting in reading Labour's own report on its GE2019 defeat; in particular how to build a winning coalition for the future:
I summarise the three choices Labour have below - route 2 are currently fooling themselves that Starmer in trying to pursue route 3 is actually pursuing route 1.
I'll leave you to draw your own conclusions about which route this report concludes is the only way Labour return to Government.
"The analysis conducted by Datapraxis identified three options, summarised as:
1. A strategy which prioritises almost exclusively winning back lost Leave voters and “Red Wall” seats by combining left economic policies with strong emphasis on controls on immigration and less social liberalism. This would assume the current voter coalition is retained which is a risky assumption to make. It could yield a higher vote share than in 2019, but would likely lead to losing a significant number of socially liberal voters to the Greens, the Lib Dems and/or the Nationalists, leaving Labour well below its 2017 vote share, with lots of younger voters abstaining too.
2. A strategy which combines a move to the centre on economic issues with mild social liberalism tempered by a “tough-on-crime” posture could also deliver a better result than 2019, but would likely lead to the loss of some left-wing and younger voters to the Greens, Liberal Democrats, nationalists or abstention, without making any significant advances among socially conservative Brexit swing voters. Again, this could improve on the 2019 vote share but remain below that of 2017.
3. More difficult to execute than either of these approaches, but more likely to attract a coalition of voters broad enough to return Labour to government, would be a strategy that builds greater public support for a big change economic agenda, that is seen as credible and morally essential, rooted in people’s real lives and communities. This economic agenda would need to sit alongside a robust story of community and national pride, while bridging social and cultural divisions. The message of change would aim to enthuse and mobilise existing support and younger voters while at the same time being grounded in community, place and family, to speak to former “leave-minded” Labour voters. The bridging approach across divides would need to neutralise cultural and social tensions. Such a strategy could achieve more than 40% vote share, but would require an exceptional leadership team able to navigate building and winning trust of this very diverse voter coalition."
I do think, however, that we will find that far more of the IT payments have spilled into February than usual. Ours certainly did and the government permitted it without penalty. Even allowing for that, however, I very much doubt that there has been a worse context for a budget since at least 2009 when Darling under instructions for his boss tried to pretend that nothing had changed.
I don't think that will be the line this time but surely there has to be some hint as to how these shortfalls are going to be filled in the medium term?
For this year the medium term solution should be "end the pandemic, start the recovery."
No more austere than that.
It needs to be well-steered, well-incentivised private capital leading that recovery.
The Government doesn't have the money.
Tax cuts should be the order of the day. Get money circulating through the economy building up a recovery that can then be taxed in the future.
People have plenty of money at the moment with nothing to spend it on. There is a huge pent up demand.
Some people do. Not all. Some businesses are on their knees. People associated with them are too.
My proposal of a 2 year tax holiday for those who have disproportionately suffered would allow those who have pent up cash and demand to spend with those on their knees and would restore the economy PDQ.
A restored economy would pay its taxes in time.
The economy is mad at the moment, the Construction Industry has never been busier, labour rates are increasing all the time.
We have double the amount of work we had 2 years ago and double the labour. 10 months ago we worried about the future of our business. We are now turning down work.
January/Feburary are normally quite times in Construction.
We permanently advertise on Indeed and get no applications.
Once lockdown is ended the economy will grow massively
Please select whether you trust Boris Johnson or Keir Starmer more to do each of the following actions.
If I was Starmer I'd be gutted not to have a large lead on repaying a borrowed £5 against Johnson of all people.
The one that shocked me was Johnson's 18 point lead on "Buy a round for their friends at the pub" - he clearly wins on the conviviality front (fun night out +22) but I'm surprised there's that big a gap on a "trust" issue....
I don't think the "buy a round" replies are motivated by a lack of trust in Sir Keir are they? More that he is just not one of the lads/good fun.
I keep banging on about it, but I think a LotO needs to have the charisma to sell their vision to the public at Election time better than the sitting PM does theirs, and I can't see Sir Keir being able to manage it.
Not always, see 1945 when Attlee won, 1970 when Heath won and 1992 when Major won despite being the less charismatic leaders.
See also France in 2012 when Hollande beat Sarkozy despite being the duller of the 2 and 2020 in the US when Biden won despite being less charismatic than Trump.
Charisma normally wins but if the government and incumbent leader is unpopular, serious but dull can beat charismatic
For starters, Major was the incumbent, not LotO.
The world has moved on since the 40s and 70s. It is probably a more shallow, celebrity obsessed place, for better or worse.
Biden beat Trump but not by as much as the polls predicted. Biden won by 4.4% and, according to Wiki, the polls for the last year of the race had him 7.9% in front. So, yes, of course, charisma/personality is not the only thing, my point really is that it is it is a kind of hidden bonus that VI/Leader ratings don't pick up on. There is probably a % boost, maybe 10% extra on their party's VI polling, that the more charismatic candidate adds to their side when votes are cast.
I do think, however, that we will find that far more of the IT payments have spilled into February than usual. Ours certainly did and the government permitted it without penalty. Even allowing for that, however, I very much doubt that there has been a worse context for a budget since at least 2009 when Darling under instructions for his boss tried to pretend that nothing had changed.
I don't think that will be the line this time but surely there has to be some hint as to how these shortfalls are going to be filled in the medium term?
That's terrible, £19bn year on year change to the January figures. Good point about the income tax numbers, many of which will have been deferred until February.
It's also worth noting that those income taxes relate to the year ending Apr 2020, so a lot of the pandemic losses will not be reflected until this time next year.
Not a good time to be the Chancellor, he's going to be doing a lot of thinking of the unthinkable in advance of the Budget. Don't envy anyone in that position at the moment.
He shouldn't be yet.
Next budget after this one if it's still bad he should be. But if the pandemic ends this year, we recover and January next year is say £18bn better than this January then won't that be a good thing?
Oh I agree. My ideas of the unthinkable are things like merging IT and NI, increasing tax breaks for R&D, rejig of business rates - and on the other side things like ending the 40% pension relief.
His target needs to be to get those who have spent the past year saving - mostly people on £30k-£100k salaries - spending and investing, and not on foreign holidays.
If I get one more linkedIn request about R&D tax credits applications I will scream, I get them daily.
Excellent news on Uber having to treat their drivers as employees, this loophole in the law needed to be closed for a long time, many big companies like Amazon, Uber etc have exploited their so called "contractors" for to long, leading to a real depreciation in worker rights over the last few years.
Funny thing about the Uber judgement: from casual observation (aka anecdata) many drivers now carry more than one phone and take whatever job comes first, be it from Uber or a local cab firm. The judgement might strengthen Uber's hand in stopping this. But I claim no industry expertise; it is just that I use cabs most days.
Please select whether you trust Boris Johnson or Keir Starmer more to do each of the following actions.
If I was Starmer I'd be gutted not to have a large lead on repaying a borrowed £5 against Johnson of all people.
The one that shocked me was Johnson's 18 point lead on "Buy a round for their friends at the pub" - he clearly wins on the conviviality front (fun night out +22) but I'm surprised there's that big a gap on a "trust" issue....
I don't think the "buy a round" replies are motivated by a lack of trust in Sir Keir are they? More that he is just not one of the lads/good fun.
He's a lawyer. He's the unhumorous old git who no-one actually likes who sits at the end of the bar.
Maybe now and then someone buys him a drink because they feel sorry for him. They maybe say a polite word to him to him, but he starts muttering about "British Recovery bonds", and they edge away.
(I'm afraid Labour made the wrong choice -- it is already obvious).
...and he keeps moaning at the person everyone thinks is a good laugh! Not an easy position for Sir Keir to find himself in - that of a fun sponge. It probably isn't fair either, but, much as some would like us all to be immune to the charm of a blagger, most aren't
I summarise the three choices Labour have below - route 2 are currently fooling themselves that Starmer in trying to pursue route 3 is actually pursuing route 1.
I'll leave you to draw your own conclusions about which route this report concludes is the only way Labour return to Government.
"The analysis conducted by Datapraxis identified three options, summarised as:
1. A strategy which prioritises almost exclusively winning back lost Leave voters and “Red Wall” seats by combining left economic policies with strong emphasis on controls on immigration and less social liberalism. This would assume the current voter coalition is retained which is a risky assumption to make. It could yield a higher vote share than in 2019, but would likely lead to losing a significant number of socially liberal voters to the Greens, the Lib Dems and/or the Nationalists, leaving Labour well below its 2017 vote share, with lots of younger voters abstaining too.
2. A strategy which combines a move to the centre on economic issues with mild social liberalism tempered by a “tough-on-crime” posture could also deliver a better result than 2019, but would likely lead to the loss of some left-wing and younger voters to the Greens, Liberal Democrats, nationalists or abstention, without making any significant advances among socially conservative Brexit swing voters. Again, this could improve on the 2019 vote share but remain below that of 2017.
3. More difficult to execute than either of these approaches, but more likely to attract a coalition of voters broad enough to return Labour to government, would be a strategy that builds greater public support for a big change economic agenda, that is seen as credible and morally essential, rooted in people’s real lives and communities. This economic agenda would need to sit alongside a robust story of community and national pride, while bridging social and cultural divisions. The message of change would aim to enthuse and mobilise existing support and younger voters while at the same time being grounded in community, place and family, to speak to former “leave-minded” Labour voters. The bridging approach across divides would need to neutralise cultural and social tensions. Such a strategy could achieve more than 40% vote share, but would require an exceptional leadership team able to navigate building and winning trust of this very diverse voter coalition."
There's always the unspeakable clause 4:
4. Find ourselves another Tony Blair......
What it doesn't say is that route 1 would yield more seats than route 2 even if both didn't return them to Government.
I'd say route 1 would get them up to 260-270 seats, on maybe a very efficient 35-36% of the vote, route 2 is a hiding to nothing, probably 34-35% of the vote but with only 230-240 seats - max, and route 3 can get them to 300-320 seats on 40-42% of the vote.
They need a 21st Century "Blair" for the 350-380 seats, Scotland, and lots of votes from older core Conservative groups too.
I can't say that either Boris or Starmer would be good fun on a night out. Starmer is too dull, and Boris would be looking round the pub trying to find someone more important to talk to, or, if he couldn't find anyone important, would be directing all his attention to the barmaid.
I summarise the three choices Labour have below - route 2 are currently fooling themselves that Starmer in trying to pursue route 3 is actually pursuing route 1.
I'll leave you to draw your own conclusions about which route this report concludes is the only way Labour return to Government.
"The analysis conducted by Datapraxis identified three options, summarised as:
1. A strategy which prioritises almost exclusively winning back lost Leave voters and “Red Wall” seats by combining left economic policies with strong emphasis on controls on immigration and less social liberalism. This would assume the current voter coalition is retained which is a risky assumption to make. It could yield a higher vote share than in 2019, but would likely lead to losing a significant number of socially liberal voters to the Greens, the Lib Dems and/or the Nationalists, leaving Labour well below its 2017 vote share, with lots of younger voters abstaining too.
2. A strategy which combines a move to the centre on economic issues with mild social liberalism tempered by a “tough-on-crime” posture could also deliver a better result than 2019, but would likely lead to the loss of some left-wing and younger voters to the Greens, Liberal Democrats, nationalists or abstention, without making any significant advances among socially conservative Brexit swing voters. Again, this could improve on the 2019 vote share but remain below that of 2017.
3. More difficult to execute than either of these approaches, but more likely to attract a coalition of voters broad enough to return Labour to government, would be a strategy that builds greater public support for a big change economic agenda, that is seen as credible and morally essential, rooted in people’s real lives and communities. This economic agenda would need to sit alongside a robust story of community and national pride, while bridging social and cultural divisions. The message of change would aim to enthuse and mobilise existing support and younger voters while at the same time being grounded in community, place and family, to speak to former “leave-minded” Labour voters. The bridging approach across divides would need to neutralise cultural and social tensions. Such a strategy could achieve more than 40% vote share, but would require an exceptional leadership team able to navigate building and winning trust of this very diverse voter coalition."
There's always the unspeakable clause 4:
4. Find ourselves another Tony Blair......
What it doesn't say is that route 1 would yield more seats than route 2 even if both didn't return them to Government.
I'd say route 1 would get them up to 260-270 seats, on maybe a very efficient 35-36% of the vote, route 2 is a hiding to nothing, probably 34-35% of the vote but with only 230-240 seats - max, and route 3 can get them to 300-320 seats on 40-42% of the vote.
They need a 21st Century "Blair" for the 350-380 seats, Scotland, and lots of votes from older core Conservative groups too.
Labour doesn't need to do a Blair to get into Government.
Route 1 would likely give Starmer enough to become PM with SNP and LD support
Please select whether you trust Boris Johnson or Keir Starmer more to do each of the following actions.
If I was Starmer I'd be gutted not to have a large lead on repaying a borrowed £5 against Johnson of all people.
The one that shocked me was Johnson's 18 point lead on "Buy a round for their friends at the pub" - he clearly wins on the conviviality front (fun night out +22) but I'm surprised there's that big a gap on a "trust" issue....
I don't think the "buy a round" replies are motivated by a lack of trust in Sir Keir are they? More that he is just not one of the lads/good fun.
I keep banging on about it, but I think a LotO needs to have the charisma to sell their vision to the public at Election time better than the sitting PM does theirs, and I can't see Sir Keir being able to manage it.
Not always, see 1945 when Attlee won, 1970 when Heath won and 1992 when Major won despite being the less charismatic leaders.
See also France in 2012 when Hollande beat Sarkozy despite being the duller of the 2 and 2020 in the US when Biden won despite being less charismatic than Trump.
Charisma normally wins but if the government and incumbent leader is unpopular, serious but dull can beat charismatic
For starters, Major was the incumbent, not LotO.
The world has moved on since the 40s and 70s. It is probably a more shallow, celebrity obsessed place, for better or worse.
Biden beat Trump but not by as much as the polls predicted. Biden won by 4.4% and, according to Wiki, the polls for the last year of the race had him 7.9% in front. So, yes, of course, charisma/personality is not the only thing, my point really is that it is it is a kind of hidden bonus that VI/Leader ratings don't pick up on. There is probably a % boost, maybe 10% extra on their party's VI polling, that the more charismatic candidate adds to their side when votes are cast.
Major was but Attlee wasn't in 1945, nor was Heath in 1970 and nor was Hollande in France in 2012 nor indeed was Biden in the US last year.
I agree charisma helped Trump close the gap in 2020, as it did for Sarkozy in France in 2012 but Biden and Hollande still narrowly beat them
@HYUFD You've picked the best poll for Labour there, one that could well be an outlier.
In fairness I like an outlier poll as well but it is the one that has Starmer's Labour on the same score as 2019 Labour and many points behind 2017 Labour.
Ed himself is left of the Blairites (probably somewhere in the centre of Labour party IMO) but he was driven by the right wing ghouls filling his cabinet so the end result was not a Labour left led party in GE 2015.
Ed Miliband was the leftwing candidate in 2010 against his brother David who was the candidate of the Labour right in the final round, Starmer in 2019 is the first candidate from the Labour right to win a contested Labour leadership election since Blair in 1994 (Brown being unopposed in 2007)
Arguably Diane Abbot was the left wing candidate. Ed was the most left wing option that could beat David. If Corbyn had been challenged by McDonnell with a more right leaning platform than Corbyn it wouldn't make McDonnell a member of the Labour right.
He was more left wing than David but that doesn't make him left (I mean it could) but TBH my feeling was always that Ed's cabinet drove him rightwards, he said after 2017 he should have gone for a manifesto like that, the reason he didn't go with he beliefs was his right wing cabinet.
@Yorkcity Happy with Johnson winning, no. Happy enough with the people kicking me to lose, yes.
Do you agree that the people Starmer needs to win over to become PM, mostly voted for the Conservatives (and SNP) in 2019?
To varying degrees he needs people who voted Conservative in 2019, SNP in 2019 and Labour in either 2017 and/or 2019. His approach so far seems to have pissed off the latter group without winning much of the former groups.
I can't see Labour winning the next election short of Black Wednesday, or several days worth maybe.... for a future election Labour win the most realistic scenario IMO short of Black Wednesday is either 2017+ or pretty much 2017 but with a less popular Conservative party or a split right wing vote.
For how many more (lost) general election cycles are you going to cling to the fantasy of GE2017?
The right of Labour base a large part of their argument (to run the party because they are more electable) around 1983 and 1997. Markus Rashford has been born and turned into a superstar since the latter, Ronaldo and Messi have been born and become the worlds best football players living full football careers since the latter (along with the fall of the Berlin Wall, the Soviet Union and the creation of some new European countries) 2017 seems a hell of a lot more relevant than dates in the distant past.
So if your argument is nobody in the Labour party should be able to claim that they are more electable based on past events then I am okay with that, it is usually a crutch the right goes to to claim electability based on the past.
If you want to argue that 2017 should be ignored by the left but the right should get to use events from decades ago then I am afraid that is bias on your part.
If your argument is that I have been spreading falsehoods regarding the 2017 election I am happy to be corrected.
I do think, however, that we will find that far more of the IT payments have spilled into February than usual. Ours certainly did and the government permitted it without penalty. Even allowing for that, however, I very much doubt that there has been a worse context for a budget since at least 2009 when Darling under instructions for his boss tried to pretend that nothing had changed.
I don't think that will be the line this time but surely there has to be some hint as to how these shortfalls are going to be filled in the medium term?
That's terrible, £19bn year on year change to the January figures. Good point about the income tax numbers, many of which will have been deferred until February.
It's also worth noting that those income taxes relate to the year ending Apr 2020, so a lot of the pandemic losses will not be reflected until this time next year.
Not a good time to be the Chancellor, he's going to be doing a lot of thinking of the unthinkable in advance of the Budget. Don't envy anyone in that position at the moment.
He shouldn't be yet.
Next budget after this one if it's still bad he should be. But if the pandemic ends this year, we recover and January next year is say £18bn better than this January then won't that be a good thing?
Oh I agree. My ideas of the unthinkable are things like merging IT and NI, increasing tax breaks for R&D, rejig of business rates - and on the other side things like ending the 40% pension relief.
His target needs to be to get those who have spent the past year saving - mostly people on £30k-£100k salaries - spending and investing, and not on foreign holidays.
I agree with all that except pension relief on which I don't have a solid opinion, but I don't think anyone should be targeted for tax rises. Those ideas are good in their own right not tax increases.
Those who've spent the past year saving shouldn't be raided for taxes, they should be encouraged to spend with those who've spent the past year unable to take in business.
Those who live in the real world might be interesting in reading Labour's own report on its GE2019 defeat; in particular how to build a winning coalition for the future:
I summarise the three choices Labour have below - route 2 are currently fooling themselves that Starmer in trying to pursue route 3 is actually pursuing route 1.
I'll leave you to draw your own conclusions about which route this report concludes is the only way Labour return to Government.
"The analysis conducted by Datapraxis identified three options, summarised as:
1. A strategy which prioritises almost exclusively winning back lost Leave voters and “Red Wall” seats by combining left economic policies with strong emphasis on controls on immigration and less social liberalism. This would assume the current voter coalition is retained which is a risky assumption to make. It could yield a higher vote share than in 2019, but would likely lead to losing a significant number of socially liberal voters to the Greens, the Lib Dems and/or the Nationalists, leaving Labour well below its 2017 vote share, with lots of younger voters abstaining too.
2. A strategy which combines a move to the centre on economic issues with mild social liberalism tempered by a “tough-on-crime” posture could also deliver a better result than 2019, but would likely lead to the loss of some left-wing and younger voters to the Greens, Liberal Democrats, nationalists or abstention, without making any significant advances among socially conservative Brexit swing voters. Again, this could improve on the 2019 vote share but remain below that of 2017.
3. More difficult to execute than either of these approaches, but more likely to attract a coalition of voters broad enough to return Labour to government, would be a strategy that builds greater public support for a big change economic agenda, that is seen as credible and morally essential, rooted in people’s real lives and communities. This economic agenda would need to sit alongside a robust story of community and national pride, while bridging social and cultural divisions. The message of change would aim to enthuse and mobilise existing support and younger voters while at the same time being grounded in community, place and family, to speak to former “leave-minded” Labour voters. The bridging approach across divides would need to neutralise cultural and social tensions. Such a strategy could achieve more than 40% vote share, but would require an exceptional leadership team able to navigate building and winning trust of this very diverse voter coalition."
Labour's was a rubbish report. It missed that (broken record!) CCHQ and Boris systematically looted everything popular from Labour's (and hence Corbyn's) 2017 platform. Boris ran against everything Cameron and May stood for. Boris won on anti-austerity, reversing police cuts, boosting public spending and expanding the NHS. Even free broadband (except Boris was providing the infrastructure free to ISPs).
And that is Starmer's and Labour's problem now and in 2024. Boris shot all their foxes.
Starmer's current tactic, from reopening schools to recovery bonds, is to take an idea already being discussed by Conservatives and advocate doing it slightly quicker or better. Fine for looking clever when Boris picks it up but it is not going to win an election.
Please select whether you trust Boris Johnson or Keir Starmer more to do each of the following actions.
If I was Starmer I'd be gutted not to have a large lead on repaying a borrowed £5 against Johnson of all people.
The one that shocked me was Johnson's 18 point lead on "Buy a round for their friends at the pub" - he clearly wins on the conviviality front (fun night out +22) but I'm surprised there's that big a gap on a "trust" issue....
I don't think the "buy a round" replies are motivated by a lack of trust in Sir Keir are they? More that he is just not one of the lads/good fun.
He's a lawyer. He's the unhumorous old git who no-one actually likes who sits at the end of the bar.
Maybe now and then someone buys him a drink because they feel sorry for him. They maybe say a polite word to him to him, but he starts muttering about "British Recovery bonds", and they edge away.
(I'm afraid Labour made the wrong choice -- it is already obvious).
That rather implies they had something better on offer. To be honest I've now forgotten who else was on offer.
The one thing I do remember was that the Labour record of no woman ever beating any man in a leadership election was upheld, although they have a much better record in the deputy-leader role.
Please select whether you trust Boris Johnson or Keir Starmer more to do each of the following actions.
If I was Starmer I'd be gutted not to have a large lead on repaying a borrowed £5 against Johnson of all people.
The one that shocked me was Johnson's 18 point lead on "Buy a round for their friends at the pub" - he clearly wins on the conviviality front (fun night out +22) but I'm surprised there's that big a gap on a "trust" issue....
I don't think the "buy a round" replies are motivated by a lack of trust in Sir Keir are they? More that he is just not one of the lads/good fun.
I keep banging on about it, but I think a LotO needs to have the charisma to sell their vision to the public at Election time better than the sitting PM does theirs, and I can't see Sir Keir being able to manage it.
Not always, see 1945 when Attlee won, 1970 when Heath won and 1992 when Major won despite being the less charismatic leaders.
See also France in 2012 when Hollande beat Sarkozy despite being the duller of the 2 and 2020 in the US when Biden won despite being less charismatic than Trump.
Charisma normally wins but if the government and incumbent leader is unpopular, serious but dull can beat charismatic
For starters, Major was the incumbent, not LotO.
The world has moved on since the 40s and 70s. It is probably a more shallow, celebrity obsessed place, for better or worse.
Biden beat Trump but not by as much as the polls predicted. Biden won by 4.4% and, according to Wiki, the polls for the last year of the race had him 7.9% in front. So, yes, of course, charisma/personality is not the only thing, my point really is that it is it is a kind of hidden bonus that VI/Leader ratings don't pick up on. There is probably a % boost, maybe 10% extra on their party's VI polling, that the more charismatic candidate adds to their side when votes are cast.
Major was but Attlee wasn't in 1945, nor was Heath in 1970 and nor was Hollande in France in 2012 nor indeed was Biden in the US last year.
I agree charisma helped Trump close the gap in 2020, as it did for Sarkozy in France in 2012 but Biden and Hollande still narrowly beat them
Maybe I erred previously in saying that the candidate with more charisma wins every time (although I was referring to the UK since 1979, and Major is the only one to win without it, according to IPSOS-MORI polls). The helpful thing to know, as far as analysing polls is concerned, is that the candidate with more charisma/personality seems to out do their polling when it comes to votes being counted. It is like a hidden bonus/winning tie breaker for them
Please select whether you trust Boris Johnson or Keir Starmer more to do each of the following actions.
If I was Starmer I'd be gutted not to have a large lead on repaying a borrowed £5 against Johnson of all people.
The one that shocked me was Johnson's 18 point lead on "Buy a round for their friends at the pub" - he clearly wins on the conviviality front (fun night out +22) but I'm surprised there's that big a gap on a "trust" issue....
I don't think the "buy a round" replies are motivated by a lack of trust in Sir Keir are they? More that he is just not one of the lads/good fun.
I keep banging on about it, but I think a LotO needs to have the charisma to sell their vision to the public at Election time better than the sitting PM does theirs, and I can't see Sir Keir being able to manage it.
Not always, see 1945 when Attlee won, 1970 when Heath won and 1992 when Major won despite being the less charismatic leaders.
See also France in 2012 when Hollande beat Sarkozy despite being the duller of the 2 and 2020 in the US when Biden won despite being less charismatic than Trump.
Charisma normally wins but if the government and incumbent leader is unpopular, serious but dull can beat charismatic
For starters, Major was the incumbent, not LotO.
The world has moved on since the 40s and 70s. It is probably a more shallow, celebrity obsessed place, for better or worse.
Biden beat Trump but not by as much as the polls predicted. Biden won by 4.4% and, according to Wiki, the polls for the last year of the race had him 7.9% in front. So, yes, of course, charisma/personality is not the only thing, my point really is that it is it is a kind of hidden bonus that VI/Leader ratings don't pick up on. There is probably a % boost, maybe 10% extra on their party's VI polling, that the more charismatic candidate adds to their side when votes are cast.
Major was but Attlee wasn't in 1945, nor was Heath in 1970 and nor was Hollande in France in 2012 nor indeed was Biden in the US last year.
I agree charisma helped Trump close the gap in 2020, as it did for Sarkozy in France in 2012 but Biden and Hollande still narrowly beat them
Attlee had been the deputy Prime Minister as Lord President of the Council and the de facto Prime Minister on domestic affairs just two months before. So he did actually have some grounds to claim incumbency.
I do think, however, that we will find that far more of the IT payments have spilled into February than usual. Ours certainly did and the government permitted it without penalty. Even allowing for that, however, I very much doubt that there has been a worse context for a budget since at least 2009 when Darling under instructions for his boss tried to pretend that nothing had changed.
I don't think that will be the line this time but surely there has to be some hint as to how these shortfalls are going to be filled in the medium term?
For this year the medium term solution should be "end the pandemic, start the recovery."
No more austere than that.
It needs to be well-steered, well-incentivised private capital leading that recovery.
The Government doesn't have the money.
Tax cuts should be the order of the day. Get money circulating through the economy building up a recovery that can then be taxed in the future.
People have plenty of money at the moment with nothing to spend it on. There is a huge pent up demand.
Some people do. Not all. Some businesses are on their knees. People associated with them are too.
My proposal of a 2 year tax holiday for those who have disproportionately suffered would allow those who have pent up cash and demand to spend with those on their knees and would restore the economy PDQ.
A restored economy would pay its taxes in time.
The economy is mad at the moment, the Construction Industry has never been busier, labour rates are increasing all the time.
We have double the amount of work we had 2 years ago and double the labour. 10 months ago we worried about the future of our business. We are now turning down work.
January/Feburary are normally quite times in Construction.
We permanently advertise on Indeed and get no applications.
Once lockdown is ended the economy will grow massively
fuel price pressures also being signalled on the news this morning.
Wage price pressures + commodity price pressures = Inflation is making a comeback. Long interest rates are already starting to adjust accordingly.
You do NOT want to be borrowing untold billion in government bonds over the next 18 months.
Please select whether you trust Boris Johnson or Keir Starmer more to do each of the following actions.
Looking at the answers with a significant gap between the two men, it seems people would like to go out for a night out with Boris while Sir Keir stays in and assembles their flat pack furniture
SKS as a practical baby-sitter.
Boris? "Legend....."
I suppose it depends on one's idea of organising a fun night out. I doubt Starmer would have the slightest idea where to go to procure hookers and class A drugs.
Me neither, now you come to mention it.
Barrister's clerks know everything. If you gave them 24 hours notice, they could put you in touch with somebody who get you everything from a hooker to a surface-to-air missile.
Please select whether you trust Boris Johnson or Keir Starmer more to do each of the following actions.
If I was Starmer I'd be gutted not to have a large lead on repaying a borrowed £5 against Johnson of all people.
The one that shocked me was Johnson's 18 point lead on "Buy a round for their friends at the pub" - he clearly wins on the conviviality front (fun night out +22) but I'm surprised there's that big a gap on a "trust" issue....
I don't think the "buy a round" replies are motivated by a lack of trust in Sir Keir are they? More that he is just not one of the lads/good fun.
He's a lawyer. He's the unhumorous old git who no-one actually likes who sits at the end of the bar.
Maybe now and then someone buys him a drink because they feel sorry for him. They maybe say a polite word to him to him, but he starts muttering about "British Recovery bonds", and they edge away.
(I'm afraid Labour made the wrong choice -- it is already obvious).
That rather implies they had something better on offer. To be honest I've now forgotten who else was on offer.
The one thing I do remember was that the Labour record of no woman ever beating any man in a leadership election was upheld, although they have a much better record in the deputy-leader role.
It’s even more embarrassing when you remember Starmer was the only man in the leadership race.
Until the vaccinations are sufficiently widespread to take a bite out of R, any release of lockdown will bring us back over 1.
However, vaccination of the vulnerable categories can massively reduce death and hospitalisation. The problem is that in the case of hospitalisation, this requires a much wider cohort.
So you need to vaccinate a considerable proportion of the population before you can turn COVID into a "flu level" illness.
Hence the talk of going to a rapid 1st jab for everyone over 40.
he also picks up on the fact that everyone being workers means the organisation being paid for the ride isn't a none VAT registered self employed driver but Uber itself (in which case VAT should be being paid on the entire bill).
Comments
I'm very much up for the Starlink IPO.
As for C4 and BBC News, which are required to be neutral, complaints of bias sound like Trump's complaints of voter fraud: lots of allegations but no evidence presented to the courts.
https://www.theverge.com/2021/2/16/22286603/spacex-funding-starlink-starship-investors
I don't think they'll have much problem raising the $10bn or so they need to spend getting the thing up and generating revenue.
He was more left wing than David but that doesn't make him left (I mean it could) but TBH my feeling was always that Ed's cabinet drove him rightwards, he said after 2017 he should have gone for a manifesto like that, the reason he didn't go with he beliefs was his right wing cabinet.
@Yorkcity Happy with Johnson winning, no. Happy enough with the people kicking me to lose, yes.
"It’s the responsibility of politicians, not scientists, to balance the risks of Covid against the social, economic and political impacts of the measures taken against it. Scientists themselves say so, again and again."
The conservatives in GE have not had that problem.
I do think, however, that we will find that far more of the IT payments have spilled into February than usual. Ours certainly did and the government permitted it without penalty. Even allowing for that, however, I very much doubt that there has been a worse context for a budget since at least 2009 when Darling under instructions for his boss tried to pretend that nothing had changed.
I don't think that will be the line this time but surely there has to be some hint as to how these shortfalls are going to be filled in the medium term?
It's very easy to say it without meaning it.
1. Facebook essentially piggybacks off the publishers' content to attract readers. The reason why advertisers have migrated large chunks of their spend to Facebook is because of the audience it offers and one of the key reasons why FB has been able to get their audience is because of the news content it offers. So FB (and all the online companies) have done very well out of the trade but the publishers have not. If the online companies had recognised this fact and not so tight, they would not be in the position they are facing now;
2. Yes, the tax is a crude method and everyone recognises that but sometimes a blunt tool is better than none. What Facebook could have done is did what Google is doing and reach deals with publishers to pay them for their content, which would be a Godsend to the industry. Instead, it has decided to fight.
3. Yes, I expect them to lose. The problem for these social media companies is that, to many Governments, they have crossed the line and now are seen as blatantly attempting to hijack powers generally reserved for Governments. In that regards, the social media companies' bans on Trump (and what happened on Parler) may turn out to have been a massive blunder. It made Governments realise these companies would take the ultimate step and dictate discourse. The Australian law introduction pre-dates the ban but it is one of the core reasons why you now have Modi threatening Twitter in India and the key reason for legislation brought in by states such as Florida to regulate social media.
Maybe Keith "we need to get this party started" Vaz.
Bring your own poppers.
Indeed I think studied found that SDP voters forced choice preferred Thatcher's Tories to Foot's Labour.
The notion you can add two completely different parties voted together is mad.
In 2019 May's Tories faced a fatal split on the right with the Brexit Party until Boris replaced her and reunited the right of centre vote
*By realistic I mean an assessment of how valuable the market is to the company in each country rather than what they claim their profits are
No more austere than that.
I can't see Labour winning the next election short of Black Wednesday, or several days worth maybe.... for a future election Labour win the most realistic scenario IMO short of Black Wednesday is either 2017+ or pretty much 2017 but with a less popular Conservative party or a split right wing vote.
Getting rid of news links would make it a more pleasant place to visit tbh.
It's also worth noting that those income taxes relate to the year ending Apr 2020, so a lot of the pandemic losses will not be reflected until this time next year.
Not a good time to be the Chancellor, he's going to be doing a lot of thinking of the unthinkable in advance of the Budget. Don't envy anyone in that position at the moment.
"In recent UK history, the worst years for flu deaths were 1976 and 1999, when more than 60,000 people in England and Wales died from influenza or pneumonia."
https://unherd.com/2021/02/boris-needs-to-take-a-risk/
I dont remember anything on the news in 1999 about flu and pneumonia causing so many deaths.
The Government doesn't have the money.
https://www.ft.com/content/100df7f6-d79c-4382-9e39-d7f3e859bae5 (£)
In it a member of SPI-M is quoted as saying - “There is a big debate about whether to allow a big wave of infection after vaccination in the 50s and above”. Now, I don't think that will happen, but the fact they are even still HAVING a debate at that level that essentially goes back to the herd immunity policy of 12-months ago (save only for the protection of vaccination rather than telling older folk to stay at home) does speak volumes to me.
Next budget after this one if it's still bad he should be. But if the pandemic ends this year, we recover and January next year is say £18bn better than this January then won't that be a good thing?
I keep banging on about it, but I think a LotO needs to have the charisma to sell their vision to the public at Election time better than the sitting PM does theirs, and I can't see Sir Keir being able to manage it.
Not usually a fan of government intervention, but in this case I suspect there are also underlying military uses for the technology. At the time of the investment, there was a political row with the EU over Galileo, so it made sense in that context.
Eg the pubs and restaurants, like Miss Cyclefree Jr's, that have been forced to close and pay the price of the pandemic - I would look to zero rate Business Rates and zero rate VAT for a two year period.
That will mean more borrowing for the next two years but when the two year VAT free holiday expires there should be a healthy sector that has survived in order to then be taxed in the future.
It would be sound long term rather than short term economics and also a short term thank you to those who have disproportionately suffered.
The news providers benefit from being linked to. Indeed that is why they start screaming when Facebook stops allowing people to link to them - as was the case in Spain and now Australia.
On your second point Google has control over what links it puts on its sites and so can choose whether or not to pay on that basis. Facebook does not have the same control - it can only allow or block. Hence the reason it has quite properly blocked links to Australian media outlets. It is abiding by the law. The fact that the Australian Government were too stupid to foresee this outcome is entirely their own fault.
And basically the summary of your third point is that you believe Governments should be allowed to control the free dissemination of information and discourse. Something I would absolutely and vehemently oppose.
See also France in 2012 when Hollande beat Sarkozy despite being the duller of the 2 and 2020 in the US when Biden won despite being less charismatic than Trump.
Charisma normally wins but if the government and incumbent leader is unpopular, serious but dull can beat charismatic
2) Facebook absolutely didn't get its audience from news and google news does not contain advertising
3) When spain tried this and google pulled out traffic to those news sites dropped by I think about 20%.
Seems very much to me that its newspapers piggybacking of google and facebook here
However in the 83 87 GE they polled enough under FPTP , which is designed for a two party system.
To help create the huge conservative majorities by not winning many seats.
My proposal of a 2 year tax holiday for those who have disproportionately suffered would allow those who have pent up cash and demand to spend with those on their knees and would restore the economy PDQ.
A restored economy would pay its taxes in time.
Maybe now and then someone buys him a drink because they feel sorry for him. They maybe say a polite word to him to him, but he starts muttering about "British Recovery bonds", and they edge away.
(I'm afraid Labour made the wrong choice -- it is already obvious).
You can't claim them as anti Tory without also claiming them as anti Labour. The split notion is garbage.
https://twitter.com/ScotNational/status/1362717816714059776?s=20
It is worth it to me as I have been shielding since I don't know when and I am an indifferent cook at the best of times. It is particularly good at the end of a full day of online teaching when I am often knackered.
https://electionreview.labourtogether.uk/chapters/building-a-winning-coalition-for-the-future
I summarise the three choices Labour have below - route 2 are currently fooling themselves that Starmer in trying to pursue route 3 is actually pursuing route 1.
I'll leave you to draw your own conclusions about which route this report concludes is the only way Labour return to Government.
"The analysis conducted by Datapraxis identified three options, summarised as:
1. A strategy which prioritises almost exclusively winning back lost Leave voters and “Red Wall” seats by combining left economic policies with strong emphasis on controls on immigration and less social liberalism. This would assume the current voter coalition is retained which is a risky assumption to make. It could yield a higher vote share than in 2019, but would likely lead to losing a significant number of socially liberal voters to the Greens, the Lib Dems and/or the Nationalists, leaving Labour well below its 2017 vote share, with lots of younger voters abstaining too.
2. A strategy which combines a move to the centre on economic issues with mild social liberalism tempered by a “tough-on-crime” posture could also deliver a better result than 2019, but would likely lead to the loss of some left-wing and younger voters to the Greens, Liberal Democrats, nationalists or abstention, without making any significant advances among socially conservative Brexit swing voters. Again, this could improve on the 2019 vote share but remain below that of 2017.
3. More difficult to execute than either of these approaches, but more likely to attract a coalition of voters broad enough to return Labour to government, would be a strategy that builds greater public support for a big change economic agenda, that is seen as credible and morally essential, rooted in people’s real lives and communities. This economic agenda would need to sit alongside a robust story of community and national pride, while bridging social and cultural divisions. The message of change would aim to enthuse and mobilise existing support and younger voters while at the same time being grounded in community, place and family, to speak to former “leave-minded” Labour voters. The bridging approach across divides would need to neutralise cultural and social tensions. Such a strategy could achieve more than 40% vote share, but would require an exceptional leadership team able to navigate building and winning trust of this very diverse voter coalition."
His target needs to be to get those who have spent the past year saving - mostly people on £30k-£100k salaries - spending and investing, and not on foreign holidays.
4. Find ourselves another Tony Blair......
We have double the amount of work we had 2 years ago and double the labour. 10 months ago we worried about the future of our business. We are now turning down work.
January/Feburary are normally quite times in Construction.
We permanently advertise on Indeed and get no applications.
Once lockdown is ended the economy will grow massively
The world has moved on since the 40s and 70s. It is probably a more shallow, celebrity obsessed place, for better or worse.
Biden beat Trump but not by as much as the polls predicted. Biden won by 4.4% and, according to Wiki, the polls for the last year of the race had him 7.9% in front. So, yes, of course, charisma/personality is not the only thing, my point really is that it is it is a kind of hidden bonus that VI/Leader ratings don't pick up on. There is probably a % boost, maybe 10% extra on their party's VI polling, that the more charismatic candidate adds to their side when votes are cast.
I think RCS put it best when he said there are many times that Facebook have been the villain of the piece, but this isn't one of them.
https://twitter.com/fact_covid/status/1362717307034820608
I'd say route 1 would get them up to 260-270 seats, on maybe a very efficient 35-36% of the vote, route 2 is a hiding to nothing, probably 34-35% of the vote but with only 230-240 seats - max, and route 3 can get them to 300-320 seats on 40-42% of the vote.
They need a 21st Century "Blair" for the 350-380 seats, Scotland, and lots of votes from older core Conservative groups too.
Route 1 would likely give Starmer enough to become PM with SNP and LD support
I agree charisma helped Trump close the gap in 2020, as it did for Sarkozy in France in 2012 but Biden and Hollande still narrowly beat them
https://twitter.com/ClarkeMicah/status/1362720393476382737?s=20
So if your argument is nobody in the Labour party should be able to claim that they are more electable based on past events then I am okay with that, it is usually a crutch the right goes to to claim electability based on the past.
If you want to argue that 2017 should be ignored by the left but the right should get to use events from decades ago then I am afraid that is bias on your part.
If your argument is that I have been spreading falsehoods regarding the 2017 election I am happy to be corrected.
Those who've spent the past year saving shouldn't be raided for taxes, they should be encouraged to spend with those who've spent the past year unable to take in business.
And that is Starmer's and Labour's problem now and in 2024. Boris shot all their foxes.
Starmer's current tactic, from reopening schools to recovery bonds, is to take an idea already being discussed by Conservatives and advocate doing it slightly quicker or better. Fine for looking clever when Boris picks it up but it is not going to win an election.
The one thing I do remember was that the Labour record of no woman ever beating any man in a leadership election was upheld, although they have a much better record in the deputy-leader role.
Wage price pressures + commodity price pressures = Inflation is making a comeback. Long interest rates are already starting to adjust accordingly.
You do NOT want to be borrowing untold billion in government bonds over the next 18 months.
I agree. This is about who controls the dissemination of news.
For the Australian government that needs to be Murdoch.
However, vaccination of the vulnerable categories can massively reduce death and hospitalisation. The problem is that in the case of hospitalisation, this requires a much wider cohort.
So you need to vaccinate a considerable proportion of the population before you can turn COVID into a "flu level" illness.
Hence the talk of going to a rapid 1st jab for everyone over 40.
https://twitter.com/garius/status/1362723609006006274
he also picks up on the fact that everyone being workers means the organisation being paid for the ride isn't a none VAT registered self employed driver but Uber itself (in which case VAT should be being paid on the entire bill).