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Reeves puts herself in the frame as Starmer’s successor – politicalbetting.com

SystemSystem Posts: 11,002
edited October 2021 in General
imageReeves puts herself in the frame as Starmer’s successor – politicalbetting.com

The one person who appears to have come out best from the Budget is the Shadow Chancellor, Rachel Reeves who gave the first response in place of Starmer who is isolating because of COVID.

Read the full story here

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Comments

  • IshmaelZIshmaelZ Posts: 21,830
    First
  • OmniumOmnium Posts: 9,688
    She did pretty well yesterday, and I thought was even better this morning on R4. Quite a shock to see a Labour figure doing well!
  • HeathenerHeathener Posts: 5,096
    I watched neither Sunak nor Reeves and have paid almost no attention to the Budget because it would be pandering to politicians.

    However, someone - a middle of the road floating voter - did email me to say how good Rachel Reeves was. So he concurs with Mike.
  • rottenboroughrottenborough Posts: 58,038
    Couldn't agree more with the header.

    If it becomes clear that finally it is time for a woman to head Lab, then who else is there unless Yvette runs again?

    Incidentally, I seem to dimly recall Reeves being tipped as future leader material in Newstatesman years and years ago, when she was a new MP.

  • tlg86tlg86 Posts: 25,164

    Couldn't agree more with the header.

    If it becomes clear that finally it is time for a woman to head Lab, then who else is there unless Yvette runs again?

    Incidentally, I seem to dimly recall Reeves being tipped as future leader material in Newstatesman years and years ago, when she was a new MP.

    Unlike Yvette Cooper, Reeves has a safe seat.
  • HeathenerHeathener Posts: 5,096
    Leon said:

    Heathener said:

    Leon said:

    Scott_xP said:

    If taxes have to go up because of a permanent 2% hit to the economy caused by COVID, what happens to taxes when Brexit causes a 4% permanent hit?
    https://twitter.com/DavidGauke/status/1453623675077361668

    David Gauke, part of the group of pro EU politicians who failed to win the case to remain and just cannot concede they lost

    Maybe if they had made a better case they could have won it
    Yes, but back to the point he raises. The official numbers show the cost of Brexit being double the cost of Covid. We need tax rises and they're blaming Covid. Logically we will need bigger tax rises and they won't blame Brexit...
    It's a fallacious argument. The reason covid implies tax rises is because of the amount of government borrowing. Any direct costs of Brexit are nothing compared to furlough, etc.
    Brexit is lost revenue.
    Furlough is lost revenue *and* increased cost.

    Brexit is mostly projected, but not all.
    Exports to EU are already failing to follow Rest of World performance.
    We decided to Brexit. W
    This is a very loose comment.

    'We' was 52% against 48%, in other words hardly deserving of your all-inclusive pronoun, but in some ways the bigger issue is that we didn't vote for Brexit. We didn't really vote for anything. No one know what the hell we were voting for. The devil in the detail only emerged later and I guarantee you that if we'd known the monster we were about to unleash the country would not have voted for it.
    What makes you think I disagree on this point?

    I’ve said many times that Cameron was suicidally complacent about his EU referendum [...]

    It would have roiled and split the Leave campaign and Cameron would have romped home.

    Instead he loftily assumed he was cruising to victory, because he is an arrogant Etonian who fatally over-estimated his own abilities. Because that’s what Eton does. It fills you with self assurance. Often unjustified
    It's also because 'he' had just won Indyref, even causing The Queen to purr with pleasure, and thus carried all his self-preening arrogance into the Brexit vote.

    Brexit is, without question, the greatest mistake Britain as a nation has made. It eclipses all other colonial, military and foreign policy errors combined.
  • SelebianSelebian Posts: 7,254
    I had a small bet on her after the conference. Happy with that so far. She was probably a bit long as soon as she became shadow chancellor, but the previous incumbent did sink without trace (I actually can't remember who it was).
  • It seems the French filched fishing boat was UK-flagged, but is owned by a Canadian company.

    Does that make any difference to anything?
  • rottenboroughrottenborough Posts: 58,038
    Of course her performance begs the question as to why on earth Starmer had Dodds in as shadow CoE?

    What was he thinking?
  • SelebianSelebian Posts: 7,254

    Couldn't agree more with the header.

    If it becomes clear that finally it is time for a woman to head Lab, then who else is there unless Yvette runs again?

    Incidentally, I seem to dimly recall Reeves being tipped as future leader material in Newstatesman years and years ago, when she was a new MP.

    Not sure how good NS tips are, but I do distinctly remember the Guardian tipping Starmer as future leader when he was first running for parliament. I read it and thought: nah, he's too dull. Shows what I know.

    Mind you, they tip everyone, I think. I remember similar Dan Jarvis articles. Stopped clocks...
  • SelebianSelebian Posts: 7,254

    It seems the French filched fishing boat was UK-flagged, but is owned by a Canadian company.

    Does that make any difference to anything?

    Flag of inconvenience, in this case?
  • sladeslade Posts: 1,921
    A large crop of local by-elections today with the Conservatives on the defensive. They are defending 6 seats; in Bolton, Wrexham, and 2 each in South Kesteven and South Staffs. Labour are defending in Luton and UKIP are not defending one in Carlisle.
  • It seems the French filched fishing boat was UK-flagged, but is owned by a Canadian company.

    Does that make any difference to anything?

    If it was fishing where it shouldn't have been (and I don't know the detail yet) then how it was flagged or who owned it is immaterial.
  • TheScreamingEaglesTheScreamingEagles Posts: 113,957
    edited October 2021
    Leeds has had several great Labour MPs such as Denis Healey, I fear Reeves is more Richard Burgon territory.

    Although she did turn down a job at Goldman Sachs which means Reeves isn't all bad.
  • LeonLeon Posts: 46,222
    Heathener said:

    Leon said:

    Heathener said:

    Leon said:

    Scott_xP said:

    If taxes have to go up because of a permanent 2% hit to the economy caused by COVID, what happens to taxes when Brexit causes a 4% permanent hit?
    https://twitter.com/DavidGauke/status/1453623675077361668

    David Gauke, part of the group of pro EU politicians who failed to win the case to remain and just cannot concede they lost

    Maybe if they had made a better case they could have won it
    Yes, but back to the point he raises. The official numbers show the cost of Brexit being double the cost of Covid. We need tax rises and they're blaming Covid. Logically we will need bigger tax rises and they won't blame Brexit...
    It's a fallacious argument. The reason covid implies tax rises is because of the amount of government borrowing. Any direct costs of Brexit are nothing compared to furlough, etc.
    Brexit is lost revenue.
    Furlough is lost revenue *and* increased cost.

    Brexit is mostly projected, but not all.
    Exports to EU are already failing to follow Rest of World performance.
    We decided to Brexit. W
    This is a very loose comment.

    'We' was 52% against 48%, in other words hardly deserving of your all-inclusive pronoun, but in some ways the bigger issue is that we didn't vote for Brexit. We didn't really vote for anything. No one know what the hell we were voting for. The devil in the detail only emerged later and I guarantee you that if we'd known the monster we were about to unleash the country would not have voted for it.
    What makes you think I disagree on this point?

    I’ve said many times that Cameron was suicidally complacent about his EU referendum [...]

    It would have roiled and split the Leave campaign and Cameron would have romped home.

    Instead he loftily assumed he was cruising to victory, because he is an arrogant Etonian who fatally over-estimated his own abilities. Because that’s what Eton does. It fills you with self assurance. Often unjustified
    It's also because 'he' had just won Indyref, even causing The Queen to purr with pleasure, and thus carried all his self-preening arrogance into the Brexit vote.

    Brexit is, without question, the greatest mistake Britain as a nation has made. It eclipses all other colonial, military and foreign policy errors combined.
    You’ll be unsurprised to hear that I completely disagree on Brexit.

    Brexit means Brexit. When people ask for a dividend or benefit of Brexit, I say ‘Brexit’. That’s it. Brexit IS the benefit of Brexit. We now rule ourselves. We can elect and eject all the politicians who make the decisions, and THEY cannot hide behind ‘rules from Brussels’

    Will aspects of this be painful and costly? For sure. Just like having a kid is horribly and unavoidably expensive
  • Couldn't agree more with the header.

    If it becomes clear that finally it is time for a woman to head Lab, then who else is there unless Yvette runs again?

    Incidentally, I seem to dimly recall Reeves being tipped as future leader material in Newstatesman years and years ago, when she was a new MP.

    I strongly suspect Yvette Cooper would have won the last election. And whilst that might have caused some complications with regard to Brexit I think that otherwise it would probably have been a good thing even though I am in no way a Labour supporter. .
  • tlg86tlg86 Posts: 25,164

    Couldn't agree more with the header.

    If it becomes clear that finally it is time for a woman to head Lab, then who else is there unless Yvette runs again?

    Incidentally, I seem to dimly recall Reeves being tipped as future leader material in Newstatesman years and years ago, when she was a new MP.

    I strongly suspect Yvette Cooper would have won the last election. And whilst that might have caused some complications with regard to Brexit I think that otherwise it would probably have been a good thing even though I am in no way a Labour supporter. .
    That sounds like a thread header to me! I'd be very interested to read your thinking. I know people like to bash Corbyn for Brexit, the moderates - including Starmer - very much played their part in getting us to where we are today.
  • AnabobazinaAnabobazina Posts: 19,598
    Omnium said:

    She did pretty well yesterday, and I thought was even better this morning on R4. Quite a shock to see a Labour figure doing well!

    Weren't you denigrating her last night? I might be confusing you with another poster – if so, sorry.
  • AnabobazinaAnabobazina Posts: 19,598

    Of course her performance begs the question as to why on earth Starmer had Dodds in as shadow CoE?

    What was he thinking?


    A mystery for the ages. Who knows?
  • OmniumOmnium Posts: 9,688

    Omnium said:

    She did pretty well yesterday, and I thought was even better this morning on R4. Quite a shock to see a Labour figure doing well!

    Weren't you denigrating her last night? I might be confusing you with another poster – if so, sorry.
    No - I said last night that I didn't quite see her performance as good as others had suggested. It was ok, but not much more. Today on the radio I thought was better.
  • AnabobazinaAnabobazina Posts: 19,598

    Leeds has had several great Labour MPs such as Denis Healey, I fear Reeves is more Richard Burgon territory.

    Another ludicrous post from you that suggests you know as much about Labour politics as you do about the Glaswegian food scene.
  • Philip_ThompsonPhilip_Thompson Posts: 65,826
    edited October 2021
    A much better potential leader than Mogadon Man.

    Labour will be making a serious mistake if they don't eject him before the next election. So I don't think they will.
  • tlg86 said:

    Couldn't agree more with the header.

    If it becomes clear that finally it is time for a woman to head Lab, then who else is there unless Yvette runs again?

    Incidentally, I seem to dimly recall Reeves being tipped as future leader material in Newstatesman years and years ago, when she was a new MP.

    I strongly suspect Yvette Cooper would have won the last election. And whilst that might have caused some complications with regard to Brexit I think that otherwise it would probably have been a good thing even though I am in no way a Labour supporter. .
    That sounds like a thread header to me! I'd be very interested to read your thinking. I know people like to bash Corbyn for Brexit, the moderates - including Starmer - very much played their part in getting us to where we are today.
    This is such revisionist history that has become accepted as fact, I'm hopefully going to cover this in a thread header the weekend after next.

    This is from July 2019.

    John McDonnell has piled pressure on Jeremy Corbyn for Labour to back Remain in a second referendum “sooner rather than later”.

    The shadow Chancellor, who said he would vote and campaign to stay in the EU in another public vote, has urged the party leader to take a new position ahead of a potential Boris Johnson government.

    Speaking to the BBC's Andrew Marr Show, the Labour frontbencher admitted time was running out as Mr Corbyn continued talks with trade unions over the party’s next step.


    https://www.politicshome.com/news/article/john-mcdonnell-piles-pressure-on-jeremy-corbyn-to-back-remain-in-second-referendum

    Corbyn's own supporters were pushing him for a second referendum well before the moderates.

    It is easier for so many people to pin the blame solely on Starmer and the moderates but the people Corbyn listens to were pushing him for a second referendum well before that.
  • AnabobazinaAnabobazina Posts: 19,598

    Couldn't agree more with the header.

    If it becomes clear that finally it is time for a woman to head Lab, then who else is there unless Yvette runs again?

    Incidentally, I seem to dimly recall Reeves being tipped as future leader material in Newstatesman years and years ago, when she was a new MP.

    I strongly suspect Yvette Cooper would have won the last election. And whilst that might have caused some complications with regard to Brexit I think that otherwise it would probably have been a good thing even though I am in no way a Labour supporter. .
    It would be interesting to see how many centre-right PBers would lend their votes to a Cooper/Reeves-led Labour Party. Both women have serious credentials and are firmly on the right of the party.
  • TheScreamingEaglesTheScreamingEagles Posts: 113,957
    edited October 2021

    Leeds has had several great Labour MPs such as Denis Healey, I fear Reeves is more Richard Burgon territory.

    Another ludicrous post from you that suggests you know as much about Labour politics as you do about the Glaswegian food scene.
    I worked in Leeds for several years, several friends of mine were and are fairly active in the Leeds and West Yorkshire labour scene.

    As for Glaswegian food, you need a sense of humour, up to quite recently I had plans to spend a week in Glasgow in next month.

    Then Blondie postponed, the gits.
  • AnabobazinaAnabobazina Posts: 19,598
    Omnium said:

    Omnium said:

    She did pretty well yesterday, and I thought was even better this morning on R4. Quite a shock to see a Labour figure doing well!

    Weren't you denigrating her last night? I might be confusing you with another poster – if so, sorry.
    No - I said last night that I didn't quite see her performance as good as others had suggested. It was ok, but not much more. Today on the radio I thought was better.
    Okay, fair enough. Apologies. I'll dig out her Today programme appearance. If you know the timing, let me know, if not, don't sweat it. I'll find it!
  • YBarddCwscYBarddCwsc Posts: 7,172
    edited October 2021

    Couldn't agree more with the header.

    If it becomes clear that finally it is time for a woman to head Lab, then who else is there unless Yvette runs again?

    Incidentally, I seem to dimly recall Reeves being tipped as future leader material in Newstatesman years and years ago, when she was a new MP.

    I strongly suspect Yvette Cooper would have won the last election. And whilst that might have caused some complications with regard to Brexit I think that otherwise it would probably have been a good thing even though I am in no way a Labour supporter. .
    I honestly doubt it.

    Yvette lost to Jeremy Corbyn .... because she was conflicted and did not really want the job of Leader of the Labour Party.

    Yvette would have lost to Boris ... for the same reason.

    Yvette does not herself have the confidence that she could do these jobs. She does not have the hunger to win.

    Lack of confidence is a killer in politics.

    Whether you actually have the ability to be a good PM is immaterial compared to having the boundless self-belief that you will be a good PM. Our Etonians know this all to well.

    "Why do you want to be Prime Minister?"

    “Because I think I’d be rather good at it.”
  • AnabobazinaAnabobazina Posts: 19,598

    Leeds has had several great Labour MPs such as Denis Healey, I fear Reeves is more Richard Burgon territory.

    Another ludicrous post from you that suggests you know as much about Labour politics as you do about the Glaswegian food scene.
    I worked in Leeds for several years, several friends of mine were and are fairly active in the Leeds and West Yorkshire labour scene.

    As for Glaswegian food, you need a sense of humour, up to quite recently I had plans to spend a week in Glasgow in next month.

    Then Blondie postponed, the gits.
    Your 'sense of humour' usually involves posting stereotypes of cities/regions that some people might take seriously. Even if they don't, I should imagine Weegies are wholeheartedly sick of tired 'gags' about deep-fried Mars bars.
  • eekeek Posts: 24,797

    Leeds has had several great Labour MPs such as Denis Healey, I fear Reeves is more Richard Burgon territory.

    Another ludicrous post from you that suggests you know as much about Labour politics as you do about the Glaswegian food scene.
    I worked in Leeds for several years, several friends of mine were and are fairly active in the Leeds and West Yorkshire labour scene.

    As for Glaswegian food, you need a sense of humour, up to quite recently I had plans to spend a week in Glasgow in next month.

    Then Blondie postponed, the gits.
    The problem is that no-one sane goes near politics anymore. There are easier ways to make money and I suspect way easier ways to make a difference.
  • squareroot2squareroot2 Posts: 6,287
    Labour rag bigs up Rachel Reeves. Why is that going to be remembered?. It needs a sustained performance not a one eyed bigging up from a Labour rag.
  • GardenwalkerGardenwalker Posts: 20,812

    Leeds has had several great Labour MPs such as Denis Healey, I fear Reeves is more Richard Burgon territory.

    Another ludicrous post from you that suggests you know as much about Labour politics as you do about the Glaswegian food scene.
    I worked in Leeds for several years, several friends of mine were and are fairly active in the Leeds and West Yorkshire labour scene.

    As for Glaswegian food, you need a sense of humour, up to quite recently I had plans to spend a week in Glasgow in next month.

    Then Blondie postponed, the gits.
    Your 'sense of humour' usually involves posting stereotypes of cities/regions that some people might take seriously. Even if they don't, I should imagine Weegies are wholeheartedly sick of tired 'gags' about deep-fried Mars bars.
    Glasgow has the best food in Scotland.
    TSE needs to update his shtick.
  • tlg86tlg86 Posts: 25,164

    tlg86 said:

    Couldn't agree more with the header.

    If it becomes clear that finally it is time for a woman to head Lab, then who else is there unless Yvette runs again?

    Incidentally, I seem to dimly recall Reeves being tipped as future leader material in Newstatesman years and years ago, when she was a new MP.

    I strongly suspect Yvette Cooper would have won the last election. And whilst that might have caused some complications with regard to Brexit I think that otherwise it would probably have been a good thing even though I am in no way a Labour supporter. .
    That sounds like a thread header to me! I'd be very interested to read your thinking. I know people like to bash Corbyn for Brexit, the moderates - including Starmer - very much played their part in getting us to where we are today.
    This is such revisionist history that has become accepted as fact, I'm hopefully going to cover this in a thread header the weekend after next.

    This is from July 2019.

    John McDonnell has piled pressure on Jeremy Corbyn for Labour to back Remain in a second referendum “sooner rather than later”.

    The shadow Chancellor, who said he would vote and campaign to stay in the EU in another public vote, has urged the party leader to take a new position ahead of a potential Boris Johnson government.

    Speaking to the BBC's Andrew Marr Show, the Labour frontbencher admitted time was running out as Mr Corbyn continued talks with trade unions over the party’s next step.


    https://www.politicshome.com/news/article/john-mcdonnell-piles-pressure-on-jeremy-corbyn-to-back-remain-in-second-referendum

    Corbyn's own supporters were pushing him for a second referendum well before the moderates.

    It is easier for so many people to pin the blame solely on Starmer and the moderates but the people Corbyn listens to were pushing him for a second referendum well before that.
    Starmer et al could have voted for May's deal.
  • kle4kle4 Posts: 91,392
    Heathener said:

    Leon said:

    Heathener said:

    Leon said:

    Scott_xP said:

    If taxes have to go up because of a permanent 2% hit to the economy caused by COVID, what happens to taxes when Brexit causes a 4% permanent hit?
    https://twitter.com/DavidGauke/status/1453623675077361668

    David Gauke, part of the group of pro EU politicians who failed to win the case to remain and just cannot concede they lost

    Maybe if they had made a better case they could have won it
    Yes, but back to the point he raises. The official numbers show the cost of Brexit being double the cost of Covid. We need tax rises and they're blaming Covid. Logically we will need bigger tax rises and they won't blame Brexit...
    It's a fallacious argument. The reason covid implies tax rises is because of the amount of government borrowing. Any direct costs of Brexit are nothing compared to furlough, etc.
    Brexit is lost revenue.
    Furlough is lost revenue *and* increased cost.

    Brexit is mostly projected, but not all.
    Exports to EU are already failing to follow Rest of World performance.
    We decided to Brexit. W
    This is a very loose comment.

    'We' was 52% against 48%, in other words hardly deserving of your all-inclusive pronoun, but in some ways the bigger issue is that we didn't vote for Brexit. We didn't really vote for anything. No one know what the hell we were voting for. The devil in the detail only emerged later and I guarantee you that if we'd known the monster we were about to unleash the country would not have voted for it.
    What makes you think I disagree on this point?

    I’ve said many times that Cameron was suicidally complacent about his EU referendum [...]

    It would have roiled and split the Leave campaign and Cameron would have romped home.

    Instead he loftily assumed he was cruising to victory, because he is an arrogant Etonian who fatally over-estimated his own abilities. Because that’s what Eton does. It fills you with self assurance. Often unjustified
    It's also because 'he' had just won Indyref, even causing The Queen to purr with pleasure, and thus carried all his self-preening arrogance into the Brexit vote.

    Brexit is, without question, the greatest mistake Britain as a nation has made. It eclipses all other colonial, military and foreign policy errors combined.
    Thank goodness its pushed mass slavery off the top spot!
  • OmniumOmnium Posts: 9,688

    Omnium said:

    Omnium said:

    She did pretty well yesterday, and I thought was even better this morning on R4. Quite a shock to see a Labour figure doing well!

    Weren't you denigrating her last night? I might be confusing you with another poster – if so, sorry.
    No - I said last night that I didn't quite see her performance as good as others had suggested. It was ok, but not much more. Today on the radio I thought was better.
    Okay, fair enough. Apologies. I'll dig out her Today programme appearance. If you know the timing, let me know, if not, don't sweat it. I'll find it!
    A little before 8am I think.

    She has a couple of other potential pluses as a future leader - firstly she's actually in parliament, and secondly if she can start to talk some sort of economic sense it starts to address the greatest weakness that Labour have had in the last many years (I'd actually say forever.. :))
  • AnabobazinaAnabobazina Posts: 19,598

    Leeds has had several great Labour MPs such as Denis Healey, I fear Reeves is more Richard Burgon territory.

    Another ludicrous post from you that suggests you know as much about Labour politics as you do about the Glaswegian food scene.
    I worked in Leeds for several years, several friends of mine were and are fairly active in the Leeds and West Yorkshire labour scene.

    As for Glaswegian food, you need a sense of humour, up to quite recently I had plans to spend a week in Glasgow in next month.

    Then Blondie postponed, the gits.
    Your 'sense of humour' usually involves posting stereotypes of cities/regions that some people might take seriously. Even if they don't, I should imagine Weegies are wholeheartedly sick of tired 'gags' about deep-fried Mars bars.
    Glasgow has the best food in Scotland.
    TSE needs to update his shtick.
    Indeed.
  • dixiedeandixiedean Posts: 27,835
    Having the West Coast Mainline closed due to flooding would be the perfect start to Cop 26.
  • GardenwalkerGardenwalker Posts: 20,812
    eek said:

    Leeds has had several great Labour MPs such as Denis Healey, I fear Reeves is more Richard Burgon territory.

    Another ludicrous post from you that suggests you know as much about Labour politics as you do about the Glaswegian food scene.
    I worked in Leeds for several years, several friends of mine were and are fairly active in the Leeds and West Yorkshire labour scene.

    As for Glaswegian food, you need a sense of humour, up to quite recently I had plans to spend a week in Glasgow in next month.

    Then Blondie postponed, the gits.
    The problem is that no-one sane goes near politics anymore. There are easier ways to make money and I suspect way easier ways to make a difference.
    MP wages haven’t kept pace with the professions. They should be on £200k a piece.
  • kle4kle4 Posts: 91,392
    edited October 2021
    Nice gesture, but what a fix! What of the punters expecting an open contest of merit screwed by mass support and decency?

    https://order-order.com/2021/10/28/sir-david-amesss-dog-crowned-westminster-dog-of-the-year/
  • tlg86tlg86 Posts: 25,164
    dixiedean said:

    Having the West Coast Mainline closed due to flooding would be the perfect start to Cop 26.

    Good to see the unions didn't pass up the opportunity to milk the tax payer:

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-59071375
  • LeonLeon Posts: 46,222
    kle4 said:

    Heathener said:

    Leon said:

    Heathener said:

    Leon said:

    Scott_xP said:

    If taxes have to go up because of a permanent 2% hit to the economy caused by COVID, what happens to taxes when Brexit causes a 4% permanent hit?
    https://twitter.com/DavidGauke/status/1453623675077361668

    David Gauke, part of the group of pro EU politicians who failed to win the case to remain and just cannot concede they lost

    Maybe if they had made a better case they could have won it
    Yes, but back to the point he raises. The official numbers show the cost of Brexit being double the cost of Covid. We need tax rises and they're blaming Covid. Logically we will need bigger tax rises and they won't blame Brexit...
    It's a fallacious argument. The reason covid implies tax rises is because of the amount of government borrowing. Any direct costs of Brexit are nothing compared to furlough, etc.
    Brexit is lost revenue.
    Furlough is lost revenue *and* increased cost.

    Brexit is mostly projected, but not all.
    Exports to EU are already failing to follow Rest of World performance.
    We decided to Brexit. W
    This is a very loose comment.

    'We' was 52% against 48%, in other words hardly deserving of your all-inclusive pronoun, but in some ways the bigger issue is that we didn't vote for Brexit. We didn't really vote for anything. No one know what the hell we were voting for. The devil in the detail only emerged later and I guarantee you that if we'd known the monster we were about to unleash the country would not have voted for it.
    What makes you think I disagree on this point?

    I’ve said many times that Cameron was suicidally complacent about his EU referendum [...]

    It would have roiled and split the Leave campaign and Cameron would have romped home.

    Instead he loftily assumed he was cruising to victory, because he is an arrogant Etonian who fatally over-estimated his own abilities. Because that’s what Eton does. It fills you with self assurance. Often unjustified
    It's also because 'he' had just won Indyref, even causing The Queen to purr with pleasure, and thus carried all his self-preening arrogance into the Brexit vote.

    Brexit is, without question, the greatest mistake Britain as a nation has made. It eclipses all other colonial, military and foreign policy errors combined.
    Thank goodness its pushed mass slavery off the top spot!
    And World War One. People always overstate the horror of that error. OK Yes we could have stayed neutral in the Great War, thereby saving a million British lives and a trillion pounds, and probably ensuring we kept the Empire for another century, but what’s that compared to the error of leaving the Customs Union thus adding significant paperwork?
  • RobDRobD Posts: 58,941
    tlg86 said:

    dixiedean said:

    Having the West Coast Mainline closed due to flooding would be the perfect start to Cop 26.

    Good to see the unions didn't pass up the opportunity to milk the tax payer:

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-59071375
    A £300 COP payment. What's that all about?
  • AnabobazinaAnabobazina Posts: 19,598
    edited October 2021
    Omnium said:

    Omnium said:

    Omnium said:

    She did pretty well yesterday, and I thought was even better this morning on R4. Quite a shock to see a Labour figure doing well!

    Weren't you denigrating her last night? I might be confusing you with another poster – if so, sorry.
    No - I said last night that I didn't quite see her performance as good as others had suggested. It was ok, but not much more. Today on the radio I thought was better.
    Okay, fair enough. Apologies. I'll dig out her Today programme appearance. If you know the timing, let me know, if not, don't sweat it. I'll find it!
    A little before 8am I think.

    She has a couple of other potential pluses as a future leader - firstly she's actually in parliament, and secondly if she can start to talk some sort of economic sense it starts to address the greatest weakness that Labour have had in the last many years (I'd actually say forever.. :))
    Thanks – that's really helpful. I found it.

    Time code is 01:50:25 for those that are interested in listening.

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m0010xnp
  • FarooqFarooq Posts: 10,775
    tlg86 said:

    dixiedean said:

    Having the West Coast Mainline closed due to flooding would be the perfect start to Cop 26.

    Good to see the unions didn't pass up the opportunity to milk the tax payer:

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-59071375
    2.5% pay rise? What's the problem?
  • kle4kle4 Posts: 91,392

    Couldn't agree more with the header.

    If it becomes clear that finally it is time for a woman to head Lab, then who else is there unless Yvette runs again?

    Incidentally, I seem to dimly recall Reeves being tipped as future leader material in Newstatesman years and years ago, when she was a new MP.

    I strongly suspect Yvette Cooper would have won the last election. And whilst that might have caused some complications with regard to Brexit I think that otherwise it would probably have been a good thing even though I am in no way a Labour supporter. .
    I honestly doubt it.

    Yvette lost to Jeremy Corbyn .... because she was conflicted and did not really want the job of Leader of the Labour Party.

    Yvette would have lost to Boris ... for the same reason.

    Yvette does not herself have the confidence that she could do these jobs. She does not have the hunger to win.

    Lack of confidence is a killer in politics.

    Whether you actually have the ability to be a good PM is immaterial compared to having the boundless self-belief that you will be a good PM. Our Etonians know this all to well.

    "Why do you want to be Prime Minister?"

    “Because I think I’d be rather good at it.”
    Arrogance and ruthlessness, in the right amounts, are pretty handy as leadership skills. They become a problem after awhile as they grow and your positive aspects fade.
  • OldKingColeOldKingCole Posts: 31,715

    It seems the French filched fishing boat was UK-flagged, but is owned by a Canadian company.

    Does that make any difference to anything?

    Was it flying the Red Ensign. I seem to recall Sunak making a lot of the ability to/desirability of yesterday.
    Not sure whether he REALLY knew what he was talking about.
  • GardenwalkerGardenwalker Posts: 20,812
    edited October 2021
    Leon said:

    kle4 said:

    Heathener said:

    Leon said:

    Heathener said:

    Leon said:

    Scott_xP said:

    If taxes have to go up because of a permanent 2% hit to the economy caused by COVID, what happens to taxes when Brexit causes a 4% permanent hit?
    https://twitter.com/DavidGauke/status/1453623675077361668

    David Gauke, part of the group of pro EU politicians who failed to win the case to remain and just cannot concede they lost

    Maybe if they had made a better case they could have won it
    Yes, but back to the point he raises. The official numbers show the cost of Brexit being double the cost of Covid. We need tax rises and they're blaming Covid. Logically we will need bigger tax rises and they won't blame Brexit...
    It's a fallacious argument. The reason covid implies tax rises is because of the amount of government borrowing. Any direct costs of Brexit are nothing compared to furlough, etc.
    Brexit is lost revenue.
    Furlough is lost revenue *and* increased cost.

    Brexit is mostly projected, but not all.
    Exports to EU are already failing to follow Rest of World performance.
    We decided to Brexit. W
    This is a very loose comment.

    'We' was 52% against 48%, in other words hardly deserving of your all-inclusive pronoun, but in some ways the bigger issue is that we didn't vote for Brexit. We didn't really vote for anything. No one know what the hell we were voting for. The devil in the detail only emerged later and I guarantee you that if we'd known the monster we were about to unleash the country would not have voted for it.
    What makes you think I disagree on this point?

    I’ve said many times that Cameron was suicidally complacent about his EU referendum [...]

    It would have roiled and split the Leave campaign and Cameron would have romped home.

    Instead he loftily assumed he was cruising to victory, because he is an arrogant Etonian who fatally over-estimated his own abilities. Because that’s what Eton does. It fills you with self assurance. Often unjustified
    It's also because 'he' had just won Indyref, even causing The Queen to purr with pleasure, and thus carried all his self-preening arrogance into the Brexit vote.

    Brexit is, without question, the greatest mistake Britain as a nation has made. It eclipses all other colonial, military and foreign policy errors combined.
    Thank goodness its pushed mass slavery off the top spot!
    And World War One. People always overstate the horror of that error. OK Yes we could have stayed neutral in the Great War, thereby saving a million British lives and a trillion pounds, and probably ensuring we kept the Empire for another century, but what’s that compared to the error of leaving the Customs Union thus adding significant paperwork?
    Yeah but WW1 inspired some great poetry and ushered in Expressionism, Surrealism, and Modernism.

    Brexit has Farage doing £80-a-pop Cameo shout-outs.
  • Northern_AlNorthern_Al Posts: 7,459

    Of course her performance begs the question as to why on earth Starmer had Dodds in as shadow CoE?

    What was he thinking?

    Dodds is very brainy, and on the left of the party; Reeves on the right. Following his leadership victory, Starmer had to have a balanced SC given the platform he stood on. Unfortunately, it turned out that while Dodds wrote and spoke sense, she was presentationally a disaster.
  • Statutory requirement to remind folk that Rishi may not in fact be as clever as he thinks he is.

    https://twitter.com/harry_horton/status/1453663444297715712?s=21
  • williamglennwilliamglenn Posts: 47,786
    China is copying French diplomacy.

    https://twitter.com/globaltimesnews/status/1453281055075676167

    The despicable act of some people in Czech is doomed to fail. We advise them to change course ASAP, otherwise they will suffer the consequences, Chinese FM said on #Czech's inviting #Taiwan’s Joseph Wu for a visit.
  • dixiedeandixiedean Posts: 27,835
    tlg86 said:

    dixiedean said:

    Having the West Coast Mainline closed due to flooding would be the perfect start to Cop 26.

    Good to see the unions didn't pass up the opportunity to milk the tax payer:

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-59071375
    We will create a high wage economy!
    No. Not like that!
  • GardenwalkerGardenwalker Posts: 20,812

    Of course her performance begs the question as to why on earth Starmer had Dodds in as shadow CoE?

    What was he thinking?

    Dodds is very brainy, and on the left of the party; Reeves on the right. Following his leadership victory, Starmer had to have a balanced SC given the platform he stood on. Unfortunately, it turned out that while Dodds wrote and spoke sense, she was presentationally a disaster.
    She was not a disaster.
    She just wasn’t ready for what must be a critical role.

    Keir fucked up, the error is really his, not hers.
  • TimSTimS Posts: 9,151
    Trouble is Reeves seems to make a very good shadow chancellor. Like Brown in the 1990s. We have this tendency in politics and business to promote people out of jobs they are very good at, and sometimes that's not the right answer. Labour needs someone convincing on the economic and public finances.

    She is also quite serious and downbeat (again like Brown). Not a shiny smiley optimist. Given that's also Keir's problem, ideally they would have a fun loving, cheery optimistic leader supported by the clunking fist of an all-destroying shadow CoE.
  • dixiedeandixiedean Posts: 27,835

    China is copying French diplomacy.

    https://twitter.com/globaltimesnews/status/1453281055075676167

    The despicable act of some people in Czech is doomed to fail. We advise them to change course ASAP, otherwise they will suffer the consequences, Chinese FM said on #Czech's inviting #Taiwan’s Joseph Wu for a visit.

    Been the policy for many decades.
    Including when Cameron and Osborne were drooling over the moolah.
  • GardenwalkerGardenwalker Posts: 20,812

    China is copying French diplomacy.

    https://twitter.com/globaltimesnews/status/1453281055075676167

    The despicable act of some people in Czech is doomed to fail. We advise them to change course ASAP, otherwise they will suffer the consequences, Chinese FM said on #Czech's inviting #Taiwan’s Joseph Wu for a visit.

    China is a bully. Czechia should respond in kind. It would be highly amusing.
  • LeonLeon Posts: 46,222

    China is copying French diplomacy.

    https://twitter.com/globaltimesnews/status/1453281055075676167

    The despicable act of some people in Czech is doomed to fail. We advise them to change course ASAP, otherwise they will suffer the consequences, Chinese FM said on #Czech's inviting #Taiwan’s Joseph Wu for a visit.

    China is behaving quite oddly (like France, as you note). They are completely fucking up Hong Kong, for instance. Destroying it as a hub and a finance centre, frightening away foreign business. Why? Don’t they care? How does it benefit them?

    There must be a faction of super-nationalists under Xi who are willing to damage the Chinese economy just to show the power of the party and the will of ‘the nation’. This does not bode well for Taiwan
  • MalmesburyMalmesbury Posts: 43,612

    Leon said:

    kle4 said:

    Heathener said:

    Leon said:

    Heathener said:

    Leon said:

    Scott_xP said:

    If taxes have to go up because of a permanent 2% hit to the economy caused by COVID, what happens to taxes when Brexit causes a 4% permanent hit?
    https://twitter.com/DavidGauke/status/1453623675077361668

    David Gauke, part of the group of pro EU politicians who failed to win the case to remain and just cannot concede they lost

    Maybe if they had made a better case they could have won it
    Yes, but back to the point he raises. The official numbers show the cost of Brexit being double the cost of Covid. We need tax rises and they're blaming Covid. Logically we will need bigger tax rises and they won't blame Brexit...
    It's a fallacious argument. The reason covid implies tax rises is because of the amount of government borrowing. Any direct costs of Brexit are nothing compared to furlough, etc.
    Brexit is lost revenue.
    Furlough is lost revenue *and* increased cost.

    Brexit is mostly projected, but not all.
    Exports to EU are already failing to follow Rest of World performance.
    We decided to Brexit. W
    This is a very loose comment.

    'We' was 52% against 48%, in other words hardly deserving of your all-inclusive pronoun, but in some ways the bigger issue is that we didn't vote for Brexit. We didn't really vote for anything. No one know what the hell we were voting for. The devil in the detail only emerged later and I guarantee you that if we'd known the monster we were about to unleash the country would not have voted for it.
    What makes you think I disagree on this point?

    I’ve said many times that Cameron was suicidally complacent about his EU referendum [...]

    It would have roiled and split the Leave campaign and Cameron would have romped home.

    Instead he loftily assumed he was cruising to victory, because he is an arrogant Etonian who fatally over-estimated his own abilities. Because that’s what Eton does. It fills you with self assurance. Often unjustified
    It's also because 'he' had just won Indyref, even causing The Queen to purr with pleasure, and thus carried all his self-preening arrogance into the Brexit vote.

    Brexit is, without question, the greatest mistake Britain as a nation has made. It eclipses all other colonial, military and foreign policy errors combined.
    Thank goodness its pushed mass slavery off the top spot!
    And World War One. People always overstate the horror of that error. OK Yes we could have stayed neutral in the Great War, thereby saving a million British lives and a trillion pounds, and probably ensuring we kept the Empire for another century, but what’s that compared to the error of leaving the Customs Union thus adding significant paperwork?
    Yeah but WW1 inspired some great poetry and ushered in Expressionism, Surrealism, and Modernism.

    Brexit has Farage doing £80-a-pop Cameo shout-outs.
    1) If we had stayed out of WWI, the Germans would have won in short order.
    2) So, the German Empire, Kaiser etc would have stayed intact
    3) Given that the German Empire embraced war as a Good thing, and it had worked twice (1870 and 1914)
    4) And that they were planning for WII as part of their planned reparations demands....
    5) The Kaiser Wilhelm instate will probably have a bunch more scientists....

    So in about 1940 or so, the highly militaristic German Empire would get some good news about bigger and better bangs. Just in time for the next war.....
  • Andy_JSAndy_JS Posts: 26,279
    Rachel Reeves would be an improvement on Keir Starmer.
  • dixiedeandixiedean Posts: 27,835
    TimS said:

    Trouble is Reeves seems to make a very good shadow chancellor. Like Brown in the 1990s. We have this tendency in politics and business to promote people out of jobs they are very good at, and sometimes that's not the right answer. Labour needs someone convincing on the economic and public finances.

    She is also quite serious and downbeat (again like Brown). Not a shiny smiley optimist. Given that's also Keir's problem, ideally they would have a fun loving, cheery optimistic leader supported by the clunking fist of an all-destroying shadow CoE.

    So what they need is a cheery, fun-loving Northern woman?
    Pity Victoria Wood died.
  • Dura_AceDura_Ace Posts: 12,880



    Brexit has Farage doing £80-a-pop Cameo shout-outs.

    TIOCFAIDH AR LA!
  • GardenwalkerGardenwalker Posts: 20,812
    edited October 2021

    Statutory requirement to remind folk that Rishi may not in fact be as clever as he thinks he is.

    https://twitter.com/harry_horton/status/1453663444297715712?s=21

    There seems to be a groupthink in the Treasury that is “too clever by half”.

    Brown, Osborne, Rishi all afflicted.

    Darling and Hammond seemed to escape by virtue of being totally dull.

    There should be a “Defund the Treasury” movement in this country. They’ve been fucking up the Uk for too long.
  • kle4kle4 Posts: 91,392
    Leon said:

    China is copying French diplomacy.

    https://twitter.com/globaltimesnews/status/1453281055075676167

    The despicable act of some people in Czech is doomed to fail. We advise them to change course ASAP, otherwise they will suffer the consequences, Chinese FM said on #Czech's inviting #Taiwan’s Joseph Wu for a visit.

    China is behaving quite oddly (like France, as you note). They are completely fucking up Hong Kong, for instance. Destroying it as a hub and a finance centre, frightening away foreign business. Why? Don’t they care? How does it benefit them?

    There must be a faction of super-nationalists under Xi who are willing to damage the Chinese economy just to show the power of the party and the will of ‘the nation’. This does not bode well for Taiwan
    The question is how much damage will it really do? The CCP and most of China probably regard, with HK at least, that some amount can easily be bourne, as the overall position of being too big to ignore completely presumably still holds true.

    They certainly don't have a 'talk soft' strategy anymore, that's for sure. Some of the diplomatic statements come across like wrestling or boxing promos (both of those are equally theatrical and fake).
  • Farooq said:

    tlg86 said:

    dixiedean said:

    Having the West Coast Mainline closed due to flooding would be the perfect start to Cop 26.

    Good to see the unions didn't pass up the opportunity to milk the tax payer:

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-59071375
    2.5% pay rise? What's the problem?
    Thank goodness PB Tories have got over their brief obsession with high wages and trebles all round for everyone. The planet is healing.
  • kle4kle4 Posts: 91,392

    Farooq said:

    tlg86 said:

    dixiedean said:

    Having the West Coast Mainline closed due to flooding would be the perfect start to Cop 26.

    Good to see the unions didn't pass up the opportunity to milk the tax payer:

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-59071375
    2.5% pay rise? What's the problem?
    Thank goodness PB Tories have got over their brief obsession with high wages and trebles all round for everyone. The planet is healing.
    1 negative comment and 1 quetioning comment is indicative of that? I'd want a few more data points.
  • GardenwalkerGardenwalker Posts: 20,812
    Dura_Ace said:



    Brexit has Farage doing £80-a-pop Cameo shout-outs.

    TIOCFAIDH AR LA!
    As art goes, it’s less Steve McQueen’s “Hunger”, and more Paul McCartney’s “Give Ireland Back To the Irish”.
  • MalmesburyMalmesbury Posts: 43,612
    dixiedean said:

    China is copying French diplomacy.

    https://twitter.com/globaltimesnews/status/1453281055075676167

    The despicable act of some people in Czech is doomed to fail. We advise them to change course ASAP, otherwise they will suffer the consequences, Chinese FM said on #Czech's inviting #Taiwan’s Joseph Wu for a visit.

    Been the policy for many decades.
    Including when Cameron and Osborne were drooling over the moolah.
    Anyone remember that when the Chinese Premier visited London, in the early years of the first Blair government, that all kinds of arcane laws were used to arrest protestors carrying offensive signs.

    Such as "Remember Tibet".
  • Northern_AlNorthern_Al Posts: 7,459

    Of course her performance begs the question as to why on earth Starmer had Dodds in as shadow CoE?

    What was he thinking?

    Dodds is very brainy, and on the left of the party; Reeves on the right. Following his leadership victory, Starmer had to have a balanced SC given the platform he stood on. Unfortunately, it turned out that while Dodds wrote and spoke sense, she was presentationally a disaster.
    She was not a disaster.
    She just wasn’t ready for what must be a critical role.

    Keir fucked up, the error is really his, not hers.
    I didn't say she was a disaster. I said she was presentationally a disaster, as most PBers, of all stripes agreed. I rate her, actually. She's now overseeing policy, a crucial but less public-facing role. Nor did I say it was her fault, not Starmer's. I was merely explaining the appointment, trying to be helpful.
  • GardenwalkerGardenwalker Posts: 20,812
    dixiedean said:

    TimS said:

    Trouble is Reeves seems to make a very good shadow chancellor. Like Brown in the 1990s. We have this tendency in politics and business to promote people out of jobs they are very good at, and sometimes that's not the right answer. Labour needs someone convincing on the economic and public finances.

    She is also quite serious and downbeat (again like Brown). Not a shiny smiley optimist. Given that's also Keir's problem, ideally they would have a fun loving, cheery optimistic leader supported by the clunking fist of an all-destroying shadow CoE.

    So what they need is a cheery, fun-loving Northern woman?
    Pity Victoria Wood died.
    Actually, I think you’ll find that “Acorn Antiques” is essentially running the country.
  • GardenwalkerGardenwalker Posts: 20,812

    Of course her performance begs the question as to why on earth Starmer had Dodds in as shadow CoE?

    What was he thinking?

    Dodds is very brainy, and on the left of the party; Reeves on the right. Following his leadership victory, Starmer had to have a balanced SC given the platform he stood on. Unfortunately, it turned out that while Dodds wrote and spoke sense, she was presentationally a disaster.
    She was not a disaster.
    She just wasn’t ready for what must be a critical role.

    Keir fucked up, the error is really his, not hers.
    I didn't say she was a disaster. I said she was presentationally a disaster, as most PBers, of all stripes agreed. I rate her, actually. She's now overseeing policy, a crucial but less public-facing role. Nor did I say it was her fault, not Starmer's. I was merely explaining the appointment, trying to be helpful.
    Fair enough.
  • TheuniondivvieTheuniondivvie Posts: 39,748
    edited October 2021
    kle4 said:

    Farooq said:

    tlg86 said:

    dixiedean said:

    Having the West Coast Mainline closed due to flooding would be the perfect start to Cop 26.

    Good to see the unions didn't pass up the opportunity to milk the tax payer:

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-59071375
    2.5% pay rise? What's the problem?
    Thank goodness PB Tories have got over their brief obsession with high wages and trebles all round for everyone. The planet is healing.
    1 negative comment and 1 quetioning comment is indicative of that? I'd want a few more data points.
    You missed the whole ‘skills shortages, culled pigs and queues at petrol stations are great cos they’ll drive up wages and are in any case definitely nothing to do with Brexit’ spasm? I’ll leave you to do your own catching up.
  • dixiedean said:

    tlg86 said:

    dixiedean said:

    Having the West Coast Mainline closed due to flooding would be the perfect start to Cop 26.

    Good to see the unions didn't pass up the opportunity to milk the tax payer:

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-59071375
    We will create a high wage economy!
    No. Not like that!
    Agreed, definitely not via strikes.

    Via the market. Supply and demand.
  • CookieCookie Posts: 11,183
    kle4 said:

    Leon said:

    China is copying French diplomacy.

    https://twitter.com/globaltimesnews/status/1453281055075676167

    The despicable act of some people in Czech is doomed to fail. We advise them to change course ASAP, otherwise they will suffer the consequences, Chinese FM said on #Czech's inviting #Taiwan’s Joseph Wu for a visit.

    China is behaving quite oddly (like France, as you note). They are completely fucking up Hong Kong, for instance. Destroying it as a hub and a finance centre, frightening away foreign business. Why? Don’t they care? How does it benefit them?

    There must be a faction of super-nationalists under Xi who are willing to damage the Chinese economy just to show the power of the party and the will of ‘the nation’. This does not bode well for Taiwan
    The question is how much damage will it really do? The CCP and most of China probably regard, with HK at least, that some amount can easily be bourne, as the overall position of being too big to ignore completely presumably still holds true.

    They certainly don't have a 'talk soft' strategy anymore, that's for sure. Some of the diplomatic statements come across like wrestling or boxing promos (both of those are equally theatrical and fake).
    My neighbourhood - Sale East - is apparently the number 1 recipient of HK immigrants over the last 18 months. Without wanting to be unparochial, I can't really see why. Nor have I noticed any at all. Still, seemingly the estate agents are inundated. Years' rents are being offered up front. I can see why - what's a year's rent against getting out while you still can?
  • MalmesburyMalmesbury Posts: 43,612
    kle4 said:

    Leon said:

    China is copying French diplomacy.

    https://twitter.com/globaltimesnews/status/1453281055075676167

    The despicable act of some people in Czech is doomed to fail. We advise them to change course ASAP, otherwise they will suffer the consequences, Chinese FM said on #Czech's inviting #Taiwan’s Joseph Wu for a visit.

    China is behaving quite oddly (like France, as you note). They are completely fucking up Hong Kong, for instance. Destroying it as a hub and a finance centre, frightening away foreign business. Why? Don’t they care? How does it benefit them?

    There must be a faction of super-nationalists under Xi who are willing to damage the Chinese economy just to show the power of the party and the will of ‘the nation’. This does not bode well for Taiwan
    The question is how much damage will it really do? The CCP and most of China probably regard, with HK at least, that some amount can easily be bourne, as the overall position of being too big to ignore completely presumably still holds true.

    They certainly don't have a 'talk soft' strategy anymore, that's for sure. Some of the diplomatic statements come across like wrestling or boxing promos (both of those are equally theatrical and fake).
    Some of it is that they don't think they have to pretend, anymore. The Chinese diplomatic service used to filter a lot of stuff - now Xi & Co. feel they can speak directly.

    Part of it is worries over the future. If the West pivots away from "buy everything from China" to, say, "buy from a bunch of countries including a lot more from India" then that will alter the balance of power considerably.
  • LostPasswordLostPassword Posts: 14,772
    .
    TimS said:

    Trouble is Reeves seems to make a very good shadow chancellor. Like Brown in the 1990s. We have this tendency in politics and business to promote people out of jobs they are very good at, and sometimes that's not the right answer. Labour needs someone convincing on the economic and public finances.

    She is also quite serious and downbeat (again like Brown). Not a shiny smiley optimist. Given that's also Keir's problem, ideally they would have a fun loving, cheery optimistic leader supported by the clunking fist of an all-destroying shadow CoE.

    Yes. The biggest problem with making Reev
    Leon said:

    China is copying French diplomacy.

    https://twitter.com/globaltimesnews/status/1453281055075676167

    The despicable act of some people in Czech is doomed to fail. We advise them to change course ASAP, otherwise they will suffer the consequences, Chinese FM said on #Czech's inviting #Taiwan’s Joseph Wu for a visit.

    China is behaving quite oddly (like France, as you note). They are completely fucking up Hong Kong, for instance. Destroying it as a hub and a finance centre, frightening away foreign business. Why? Don’t they care? How does it benefit them?

    There must be a faction of super-nationalists under Xi who are willing to damage the Chinese economy just to show the power of the party and the will of ‘the nation’. This does not bode well for Taiwan
    The number one priority for a dictator is to protect their position of power. Any threat, real or imagined, must be countered, and so dissent of any sort cannot be tolerated.

    This is also why they're so robust in trying to police criticism from outside of China. Everyone must agree. Everything else is secondary.
  • LeonLeon Posts: 46,222

    Leon said:

    kle4 said:

    Heathener said:

    Leon said:

    Heathener said:

    Leon said:

    Scott_xP said:

    If taxes have to go up because of a permanent 2% hit to the economy caused by COVID, what happens to taxes when Brexit causes a 4% permanent hit?
    https://twitter.com/DavidGauke/status/1453623675077361668

    David Gauke, part of the group of pro EU politicians who failed to win the case to remain and just cannot concede they lost

    Maybe if they had made a better case they could have won it
    Yes, but back to the point he raises. The official numbers show the cost of Brexit being double the cost of Covid. We need tax rises and they're blaming Covid. Logically we will need bigger tax rises and they won't blame Brexit...
    It's a fallacious argument. The reason covid implies tax rises is because of the amount of government borrowing. Any direct costs of Brexit are nothing compared to furlough, etc.
    Brexit is lost revenue.
    Furlough is lost revenue *and* increased cost.

    Brexit is mostly projected, but not all.
    Exports to EU are already failing to follow Rest of World performance.
    We decided to Brexit. W
    This is a very loose comment.

    'We' was 52% against 48%, in other words hardly deserving of your all-inclusive pronoun, but in some ways the bigger issue is that we didn't vote for Brexit. We didn't really vote for anything. No one know what the hell we were voting for. The devil in the detail only emerged later and I guarantee you that if we'd known the monster we were about to unleash the country would not have voted for it.
    What makes you think I disagree on this point?

    I’ve said many times that Cameron was suicidally complacent about his EU referendum [...]

    It would have roiled and split the Leave campaign and Cameron would have romped home.

    Instead he loftily assumed he was cruising to victory, because he is an arrogant Etonian who fatally over-estimated his own abilities. Because that’s what Eton does. It fills you with self assurance. Often unjustified
    It's also because 'he' had just won Indyref, even causing The Queen to purr with pleasure, and thus carried all his self-preening arrogance into the Brexit vote.

    Brexit is, without question, the greatest mistake Britain as a nation has made. It eclipses all other colonial, military and foreign policy errors combined.
    Thank goodness its pushed mass slavery off the top spot!
    And World War One. People always overstate the horror of that error. OK Yes we could have stayed neutral in the Great War, thereby saving a million British lives and a trillion pounds, and probably ensuring we kept the Empire for another century, but what’s that compared to the error of leaving the Customs Union thus adding significant paperwork?
    Yeah but WW1 inspired some great poetry and ushered in Expressionism, Surrealism, and Modernism.

    Brexit has Farage doing £80-a-pop Cameo shout-outs.
    1) If we had stayed out of WWI, the Germans would have won in short order.
    2) So, the German Empire, Kaiser etc would have stayed intact
    3) Given that the German Empire embraced war as a Good thing, and it had worked twice (1870 and 1914)
    4) And that they were planning for WII as part of their planned reparations demands....
    5) The Kaiser Wilhelm instate will probably have a bunch more scientists....

    So in about 1940 or so, the highly militaristic German Empire would get some good news about bigger and better bangs. Just in time for the next war.....
    Germany winning quickly could also have been a very very good thing = no Hitler, no Nazis, no WW2, probably no Russian Revolution, no communism, no USSR, no Mao, no PRChina, no Cold War

    It might have been an unimaginably nicer world and better century, albeit with a stronger Germany dominant in mainland Europe. A price worth paying?
  • The Mirror had it “‘Demolition woman Rachel Reeves smashed the Chancellor’s Budget brick by brick'”.

    "Stop a kamikaze Brexit, then trigger an election this autumn after leaving impotent Johnson fretting in Number 10 on October 31, and Corbyn could find himself in Downing Street... Miss his October 31 deadline and deflated Johnson will be worried by a buoyant Brexit Party, Nigel Farage’s right-wing mob posing a bigger threat to the Tories than Labour, just as he once did with UKIP." - The Mirror, 4 September 2019

    it has been a long time since a Labour figure has got such good coverage
    In the Mirror? May as well quote the New Statesman or HuffPost.
  • dixiedeandixiedean Posts: 27,835

    dixiedean said:

    China is copying French diplomacy.

    https://twitter.com/globaltimesnews/status/1453281055075676167

    The despicable act of some people in Czech is doomed to fail. We advise them to change course ASAP, otherwise they will suffer the consequences, Chinese FM said on #Czech's inviting #Taiwan’s Joseph Wu for a visit.

    Been the policy for many decades.
    Including when Cameron and Osborne were drooling over the moolah.
    Anyone remember that when the Chinese Premier visited London, in the early years of the first Blair government, that all kinds of arcane laws were used to arrest protestors carrying offensive signs.

    Such as "Remember Tibet".
    Indeed. New Labour was as complicit.
  • OmniumOmnium Posts: 9,688
    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    kle4 said:

    Heathener said:

    Leon said:

    Heathener said:

    Leon said:

    Scott_xP said:

    If taxes have to go up because of a permanent 2% hit to the economy caused by COVID, what happens to taxes when Brexit causes a 4% permanent hit?
    https://twitter.com/DavidGauke/status/1453623675077361668

    David Gauke, part of the group of pro EU politicians who failed to win the case to remain and just cannot concede they lost

    Maybe if they had made a better case they could have won it
    Yes, but back to the point he raises. The official numbers show the cost of Brexit being double the cost of Covid. We need tax rises and they're blaming Covid. Logically we will need bigger tax rises and they won't blame Brexit...
    It's a fallacious argument. The reason covid implies tax rises is because of the amount of government borrowing. Any direct costs of Brexit are nothing compared to furlough, etc.
    Brexit is lost revenue.
    Furlough is lost revenue *and* increased cost.

    Brexit is mostly projected, but not all.
    Exports to EU are already failing to follow Rest of World performance.
    We decided to Brexit. W
    This is a very loose comment.

    'We' was 52% against 48%, in other words hardly deserving of your all-inclusive pronoun, but in some ways the bigger issue is that we didn't vote for Brexit. We didn't really vote for anything. No one know what the hell we were voting for. The devil in the detail only emerged later and I guarantee you that if we'd known the monster we were about to unleash the country would not have voted for it.
    What makes you think I disagree on this point?

    I’ve said many times that Cameron was suicidally complacent about his EU referendum [...]

    It would have roiled and split the Leave campaign and Cameron would have romped home.

    Instead he loftily assumed he was cruising to victory, because he is an arrogant Etonian who fatally over-estimated his own abilities. Because that’s what Eton does. It fills you with self assurance. Often unjustified
    It's also because 'he' had just won Indyref, even causing The Queen to purr with pleasure, and thus carried all his self-preening arrogance into the Brexit vote.

    Brexit is, without question, the greatest mistake Britain as a nation has made. It eclipses all other colonial, military and foreign policy errors combined.
    Thank goodness its pushed mass slavery off the top spot!
    And World War One. People always overstate the horror of that error. OK Yes we could have stayed neutral in the Great War, thereby saving a million British lives and a trillion pounds, and probably ensuring we kept the Empire for another century, but what’s that compared to the error of leaving the Customs Union thus adding significant paperwork?
    Yeah but WW1 inspired some great poetry and ushered in Expressionism, Surrealism, and Modernism.

    Brexit has Farage doing £80-a-pop Cameo shout-outs.
    1) If we had stayed out of WWI, the Germans would have won in short order.
    2) So, the German Empire, Kaiser etc would have stayed intact
    3) Given that the German Empire embraced war as a Good thing, and it had worked twice (1870 and 1914)
    4) And that they were planning for WII as part of their planned reparations demands....
    5) The Kaiser Wilhelm instate will probably have a bunch more scientists....

    So in about 1940 or so, the highly militaristic German Empire would get some good news about bigger and better bangs. Just in time for the next war.....
    Germany winning quickly could also have been a very very good thing = no Hitler, no Nazis, no WW2, probably no Russian Revolution, no communism, no USSR, no Mao, no PRChina, no Cold War

    It might have been an unimaginably nicer world and better century, albeit with a stronger Germany dominant in mainland Europe. A price worth paying?
    Hard to see it would have turned out worse really. But probably very bad in different ways.
  • LeonLeon Posts: 46,222

    .

    TimS said:

    Trouble is Reeves seems to make a very good shadow chancellor. Like Brown in the 1990s. We have this tendency in politics and business to promote people out of jobs they are very good at, and sometimes that's not the right answer. Labour needs someone convincing on the economic and public finances.

    She is also quite serious and downbeat (again like Brown). Not a shiny smiley optimist. Given that's also Keir's problem, ideally they would have a fun loving, cheery optimistic leader supported by the clunking fist of an all-destroying shadow CoE.

    Yes. The biggest problem with making Reev
    Leon said:

    China is copying French diplomacy.

    https://twitter.com/globaltimesnews/status/1453281055075676167

    The despicable act of some people in Czech is doomed to fail. We advise them to change course ASAP, otherwise they will suffer the consequences, Chinese FM said on #Czech's inviting #Taiwan’s Joseph Wu for a visit.

    China is behaving quite oddly (like France, as you note). They are completely fucking up Hong Kong, for instance. Destroying it as a hub and a finance centre, frightening away foreign business. Why? Don’t they care? How does it benefit them?

    There must be a faction of super-nationalists under Xi who are willing to damage the Chinese economy just to show the power of the party and the will of ‘the nation’. This does not bode well for Taiwan
    The number one priority for a dictator is to protect their position of power. Any threat, real or imagined, must be countered, and so dissent of any sort cannot be tolerated.

    This is also why they're so robust in trying to police criticism from outside of China. Everyone must agree. Everything else is secondary.
    This is a remarkable article showing how China now tries to bully or silence non-Chinese critics of China OUTSIDE China

    https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/wuhan-clan-the-price-i-paid-for-my-lab-leak-expose
  • MalmesburyMalmesbury Posts: 43,612
    Cookie said:

    kle4 said:

    Leon said:

    China is copying French diplomacy.

    https://twitter.com/globaltimesnews/status/1453281055075676167

    The despicable act of some people in Czech is doomed to fail. We advise them to change course ASAP, otherwise they will suffer the consequences, Chinese FM said on #Czech's inviting #Taiwan’s Joseph Wu for a visit.

    China is behaving quite oddly (like France, as you note). They are completely fucking up Hong Kong, for instance. Destroying it as a hub and a finance centre, frightening away foreign business. Why? Don’t they care? How does it benefit them?

    There must be a faction of super-nationalists under Xi who are willing to damage the Chinese economy just to show the power of the party and the will of ‘the nation’. This does not bode well for Taiwan
    The question is how much damage will it really do? The CCP and most of China probably regard, with HK at least, that some amount can easily be bourne, as the overall position of being too big to ignore completely presumably still holds true.

    They certainly don't have a 'talk soft' strategy anymore, that's for sure. Some of the diplomatic statements come across like wrestling or boxing promos (both of those are equally theatrical and fake).
    My neighbourhood - Sale East - is apparently the number 1 recipient of HK immigrants over the last 18 months. Without wanting to be unparochial, I can't really see why. Nor have I noticed any at all. Still, seemingly the estate agents are inundated. Years' rents are being offered up front. I can see why - what's a year's rent against getting out while you still can?
    You can understand buying a flat in London in this context.

    - Invest in a property in London, getting the money out of China
    - Get an income from it outside China
    - Have the right to go visit your property, under the investment visa rules....

    So a safe nest egg aboard *and* an escape route. According to my Chinese co-workers, it is common for the rich end of the middle-classes and above to buy such properties in the names of everyone in the family. One each, as it were. One chap knows a girl who got the job, while a student in London, of managing the 3 floors of flats rented out by the family - she lives in one of the flats.
  • CookieCookie Posts: 11,183

    Leon said:

    kle4 said:

    Heathener said:

    Leon said:

    Heathener said:

    Leon said:

    Scott_xP said:

    If taxes have to go up because of a permanent 2% hit to the economy caused by COVID, what happens to taxes when Brexit causes a 4% permanent hit?
    https://twitter.com/DavidGauke/status/1453623675077361668

    David Gauke, part of the group of pro EU politicians who failed to win the case to remain and just cannot concede they lost

    Maybe if they had made a better case they could have won it
    Yes, but back to the point he raises. The official numbers show the cost of Brexit being double the cost of Covid. We need tax rises and they're blaming Covid. Logically we will need bigger tax rises and they won't blame Brexit...
    It's a fallacious argument. The reason covid implies tax rises is because of the amount of government borrowing. Any direct costs of Brexit are nothing compared to furlough, etc.
    Brexit is lost revenue.
    Furlough is lost revenue *and* increased cost.

    Brexit is mostly projected, but not all.
    Exports to EU are already failing to follow Rest of World performance.
    We decided to Brexit. W
    This is a very loose comment.

    'We' was 52% against 48%, in other words hardly deserving of your all-inclusive pronoun, but in some ways the bigger issue is that we didn't vote for Brexit. We didn't really vote for anything. No one know what the hell we were voting for. The devil in the detail only emerged later and I guarantee you that if we'd known the monster we were about to unleash the country would not have voted for it.
    What makes you think I disagree on this point?

    I’ve said many times that Cameron was suicidally complacent about his EU referendum [...]

    It would have roiled and split the Leave campaign and Cameron would have romped home.

    Instead he loftily assumed he was cruising to victory, because he is an arrogant Etonian who fatally over-estimated his own abilities. Because that’s what Eton does. It fills you with self assurance. Often unjustified
    It's also because 'he' had just won Indyref, even causing The Queen to purr with pleasure, and thus carried all his self-preening arrogance into the Brexit vote.

    Brexit is, without question, the greatest mistake Britain as a nation has made. It eclipses all other colonial, military and foreign policy errors combined.
    Thank goodness its pushed mass slavery off the top spot!
    And World War One. People always overstate the horror of that error. OK Yes we could have stayed neutral in the Great War, thereby saving a million British lives and a trillion pounds, and probably ensuring we kept the Empire for another century, but what’s that compared to the error of leaving the Customs Union thus adding significant paperwork?
    Yeah but WW1 inspired some great poetry and ushered in Expressionism, Surrealism, and Modernism.

    Brexit has Farage doing £80-a-pop Cameo shout-outs.
    I think there's a bit of a myth grown up about WW1 being a pointless war. We could have stayed out of it, though there would have been costs for us - reputational damage, most obviously, but also a continent dominated vy a militaristic Germany would not necessarily have been in our best interests. But it was also, I think, the right thing to do. Pre WW1 France was not, civilisationally, unlike pre WW1 Britain. Pre WW1 Germany was, from the perspective of the 21st century west, a rather darker and more primitive place.
    I think. Others may be better informed.
  • Statutory requirement to remind folk that Rishi may not in fact be as clever as he thinks he is.

    https://twitter.com/harry_horton/status/1453663444297715712?s=21

    Blah blah four dimensional chess, if you rebut this you're putting out the government's key message for them...

    The reason we have a taboo on deliberate lying is that it's blooming effective in the short term but corrodes conversation in the long term.
  • MalmesburyMalmesbury Posts: 43,612
    dixiedean said:

    dixiedean said:

    China is copying French diplomacy.

    https://twitter.com/globaltimesnews/status/1453281055075676167

    The despicable act of some people in Czech is doomed to fail. We advise them to change course ASAP, otherwise they will suffer the consequences, Chinese FM said on #Czech's inviting #Taiwan’s Joseph Wu for a visit.

    Been the policy for many decades.
    Including when Cameron and Osborne were drooling over the moolah.
    Anyone remember that when the Chinese Premier visited London, in the early years of the first Blair government, that all kinds of arcane laws were used to arrest protestors carrying offensive signs.

    Such as "Remember Tibet".
    Indeed. New Labour was as complicit.
    It started, in the UK before that, with the negotiations over Hong Kong. Don't rock the boat etc.

    During the negotiations was one thing (the deal was probably the best possible outcome, incidentally). The problem was that afterwards, it became department policy for the Foreign Office. In the sense of policy at the civil service level, irrespective of party government.

    So everything began to be filtered through a "must be nice to the Chinese government" filter.
  • LostPasswordLostPassword Posts: 14,772

    Leon said:

    kle4 said:

    Heathener said:

    Leon said:

    Heathener said:

    Leon said:

    Scott_xP said:

    If taxes have to go up because of a permanent 2% hit to the economy caused by COVID, what happens to taxes when Brexit causes a 4% permanent hit?
    https://twitter.com/DavidGauke/status/1453623675077361668

    David Gauke, part of the group of pro EU politicians who failed to win the case to remain and just cannot concede they lost

    Maybe if they had made a better case they could have won it
    Yes, but back to the point he raises. The official numbers show the cost of Brexit being double the cost of Covid. We need tax rises and they're blaming Covid. Logically we will need bigger tax rises and they won't blame Brexit...
    It's a fallacious argument. The reason covid implies tax rises is because of the amount of government borrowing. Any direct costs of Brexit are nothing compared to furlough, etc.
    Brexit is lost revenue.
    Furlough is lost revenue *and* increased cost.

    Brexit is mostly projected, but not all.
    Exports to EU are already failing to follow Rest of World performance.
    We decided to Brexit. W
    This is a very loose comment.

    'We' was 52% against 48%, in other words hardly deserving of your all-inclusive pronoun, but in some ways the bigger issue is that we didn't vote for Brexit. We didn't really vote for anything. No one know what the hell we were voting for. The devil in the detail only emerged later and I guarantee you that if we'd known the monster we were about to unleash the country would not have voted for it.
    What makes you think I disagree on this point?

    I’ve said many times that Cameron was suicidally complacent about his EU referendum [...]

    It would have roiled and split the Leave campaign and Cameron would have romped home.

    Instead he loftily assumed he was cruising to victory, because he is an arrogant Etonian who fatally over-estimated his own abilities. Because that’s what Eton does. It fills you with self assurance. Often unjustified
    It's also because 'he' had just won Indyref, even causing The Queen to purr with pleasure, and thus carried all his self-preening arrogance into the Brexit vote.

    Brexit is, without question, the greatest mistake Britain as a nation has made. It eclipses all other colonial, military and foreign policy errors combined.
    Thank goodness its pushed mass slavery off the top spot!
    And World War One. People always overstate the horror of that error. OK Yes we could have stayed neutral in the Great War, thereby saving a million British lives and a trillion pounds, and probably ensuring we kept the Empire for another century, but what’s that compared to the error of leaving the Customs Union thus adding significant paperwork?
    Yeah but WW1 inspired some great poetry and ushered in Expressionism, Surrealism, and Modernism.

    Brexit has Farage doing £80-a-pop Cameo shout-outs.
    1) If we had stayed out of WWI, the Germans would have won in short order.
    2) So, the German Empire, Kaiser etc would have stayed intact
    3) Given that the German Empire embraced war as a Good thing, and it had worked twice (1870 and 1914)
    4) And that they were planning for WII as part of their planned reparations demands....
    5) The Kaiser Wilhelm instate will probably have a bunch more scientists....

    So in about 1940 or so, the highly militaristic German Empire would get some good news about bigger and better bangs. Just in time for the next war.....
    WWI where Britain initially keeps out may well have ended up a lot like the Napoleonic Wars. Britain fighting primarily a naval and economic war against a European continent that has been temporarily united by military force.

    Would the Germans have been able to keep a Continental European empire together for longer than the French? Would Russia once again prove to be too big for a Western European power to overcome? Would Britain be able to maintain its naval superiority?

    I can see many ways in which it might have worked out better for Britain.
  • Cookie said:

    Leon said:

    kle4 said:

    Heathener said:

    Leon said:

    Heathener said:

    Leon said:

    Scott_xP said:

    If taxes have to go up because of a permanent 2% hit to the economy caused by COVID, what happens to taxes when Brexit causes a 4% permanent hit?
    https://twitter.com/DavidGauke/status/1453623675077361668

    David Gauke, part of the group of pro EU politicians who failed to win the case to remain and just cannot concede they lost

    Maybe if they had made a better case they could have won it
    Yes, but back to the point he raises. The official numbers show the cost of Brexit being double the cost of Covid. We need tax rises and they're blaming Covid. Logically we will need bigger tax rises and they won't blame Brexit...
    It's a fallacious argument. The reason covid implies tax rises is because of the amount of government borrowing. Any direct costs of Brexit are nothing compared to furlough, etc.
    Brexit is lost revenue.
    Furlough is lost revenue *and* increased cost.

    Brexit is mostly projected, but not all.
    Exports to EU are already failing to follow Rest of World performance.
    We decided to Brexit. W
    This is a very loose comment.

    'We' was 52% against 48%, in other words hardly deserving of your all-inclusive pronoun, but in some ways the bigger issue is that we didn't vote for Brexit. We didn't really vote for anything. No one know what the hell we were voting for. The devil in the detail only emerged later and I guarantee you that if we'd known the monster we were about to unleash the country would not have voted for it.
    What makes you think I disagree on this point?

    I’ve said many times that Cameron was suicidally complacent about his EU referendum [...]

    It would have roiled and split the Leave campaign and Cameron would have romped home.

    Instead he loftily assumed he was cruising to victory, because he is an arrogant Etonian who fatally over-estimated his own abilities. Because that’s what Eton does. It fills you with self assurance. Often unjustified
    It's also because 'he' had just won Indyref, even causing The Queen to purr with pleasure, and thus carried all his self-preening arrogance into the Brexit vote.

    Brexit is, without question, the greatest mistake Britain as a nation has made. It eclipses all other colonial, military and foreign policy errors combined.
    Thank goodness its pushed mass slavery off the top spot!
    And World War One. People always overstate the horror of that error. OK Yes we could have stayed neutral in the Great War, thereby saving a million British lives and a trillion pounds, and probably ensuring we kept the Empire for another century, but what’s that compared to the error of leaving the Customs Union thus adding significant paperwork?
    Yeah but WW1 inspired some great poetry and ushered in Expressionism, Surrealism, and Modernism.

    Brexit has Farage doing £80-a-pop Cameo shout-outs.
    I think there's a bit of a myth grown up about WW1 being a pointless war. We could have stayed out of it, though there would have been costs for us - reputational damage, most obviously, but also a continent dominated vy a militaristic Germany would not necessarily have been in our best interests. But it was also, I think, the right thing to do. Pre WW1 France was not, civilisationally, unlike pre WW1 Britain. Pre WW1 Germany was, from the perspective of the 21st century west, a rather darker and more primitive place.
    I think. Others may be better informed.
    Dunno about that, there’s a case to be made that pre WWI France was the most institutionally antisemtic country in Western Europe, and therefore open to a Gallic final solution. Their enthusiastic embrace of the German version doesn’t really contradict that hypothesis.
  • MalmesburyMalmesbury Posts: 43,612
    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    kle4 said:

    Heathener said:

    Leon said:

    Heathener said:

    Leon said:

    Scott_xP said:

    If taxes have to go up because of a permanent 2% hit to the economy caused by COVID, what happens to taxes when Brexit causes a 4% permanent hit?
    https://twitter.com/DavidGauke/status/1453623675077361668

    David Gauke, part of the group of pro EU politicians who failed to win the case to remain and just cannot concede they lost

    Maybe if they had made a better case they could have won it
    Yes, but back to the point he raises. The official numbers show the cost of Brexit being double the cost of Covid. We need tax rises and they're blaming Covid. Logically we will need bigger tax rises and they won't blame Brexit...
    It's a fallacious argument. The reason covid implies tax rises is because of the amount of government borrowing. Any direct costs of Brexit are nothing compared to furlough, etc.
    Brexit is lost revenue.
    Furlough is lost revenue *and* increased cost.

    Brexit is mostly projected, but not all.
    Exports to EU are already failing to follow Rest of World performance.
    We decided to Brexit. W
    This is a very loose comment.

    'We' was 52% against 48%, in other words hardly deserving of your all-inclusive pronoun, but in some ways the bigger issue is that we didn't vote for Brexit. We didn't really vote for anything. No one know what the hell we were voting for. The devil in the detail only emerged later and I guarantee you that if we'd known the monster we were about to unleash the country would not have voted for it.
    What makes you think I disagree on this point?

    I’ve said many times that Cameron was suicidally complacent about his EU referendum [...]

    It would have roiled and split the Leave campaign and Cameron would have romped home.

    Instead he loftily assumed he was cruising to victory, because he is an arrogant Etonian who fatally over-estimated his own abilities. Because that’s what Eton does. It fills you with self assurance. Often unjustified
    It's also because 'he' had just won Indyref, even causing The Queen to purr with pleasure, and thus carried all his self-preening arrogance into the Brexit vote.

    Brexit is, without question, the greatest mistake Britain as a nation has made. It eclipses all other colonial, military and foreign policy errors combined.
    Thank goodness its pushed mass slavery off the top spot!
    And World War One. People always overstate the horror of that error. OK Yes we could have stayed neutral in the Great War, thereby saving a million British lives and a trillion pounds, and probably ensuring we kept the Empire for another century, but what’s that compared to the error of leaving the Customs Union thus adding significant paperwork?
    Yeah but WW1 inspired some great poetry and ushered in Expressionism, Surrealism, and Modernism.

    Brexit has Farage doing £80-a-pop Cameo shout-outs.
    1) If we had stayed out of WWI, the Germans would have won in short order.
    2) So, the German Empire, Kaiser etc would have stayed intact
    3) Given that the German Empire embraced war as a Good thing, and it had worked twice (1870 and 1914)
    4) And that they were planning for WII as part of their planned reparations demands....
    5) The Kaiser Wilhelm instate will probably have a bunch more scientists....

    So in about 1940 or so, the highly militaristic German Empire would get some good news about bigger and better bangs. Just in time for the next war.....
    Germany winning quickly could also have been a very very good thing = no Hitler, no Nazis, no WW2, probably no Russian Revolution, no communism, no USSR, no Mao, no PRChina, no Cold War

    It might have been an unimaginably nicer world and better century, albeit with a stronger Germany dominant in mainland Europe. A price worth paying?
    You think having a united, stronger German Empire first to have nuclear weapons, and literarily believing in War as the ultimate good, would be a great outcome?
  • rottenboroughrottenborough Posts: 58,038

    Stephen Pollard
    @stephenpollard
    Labour has a really strong Treasury team in
    @RachelReevesMP
    and
    @bphillipsonMP


    Bridget Phillipson is - by quite a long way - the best Labour interviewee I've heard in recent years. She speaks normally and engages. Surely a star of the next decade or so
  • algarkirkalgarkirk Posts: 10,341
    edited October 2021

    Couldn't agree more with the header.

    If it becomes clear that finally it is time for a woman to head Lab, then who else is there unless Yvette runs again?

    Incidentally, I seem to dimly recall Reeves being tipped as future leader material in Newstatesman years and years ago, when she was a new MP.

    I strongly suspect Yvette Cooper would have won the last election. And whilst that might have caused some complications with regard to Brexit I think that otherwise it would probably have been a good thing even though I am in no way a Labour supporter. .
    It would be interesting to see how many centre-right PBers would lend their votes to a Cooper/Reeves-led Labour Party. Both women have serious credentials and are firmly on the right of the party.
    This centrist would give it active consideration, but it depends on whether they can develop a convincing post Brexit narrative ('we are against it but have to live with it' is not a recipe for government) and how clearly they have dealt with the anti Semitic, UK loathing, 'Tory scum' tendency.

    Any labour leader also needs either to show that they can win about 127 extra seats, or that they have a convincing account of how Labour can lead a Lab/SNP/LD alliance.

    All three require hard binary choices, the very thing politicians hate most.

  • Leon said:

    Leon said:

    kle4 said:

    Heathener said:

    Leon said:

    Heathener said:

    Leon said:

    Scott_xP said:

    If taxes have to go up because of a permanent 2% hit to the economy caused by COVID, what happens to taxes when Brexit causes a 4% permanent hit?
    https://twitter.com/DavidGauke/status/1453623675077361668

    David Gauke, part of the group of pro EU politicians who failed to win the case to remain and just cannot concede they lost

    Maybe if they had made a better case they could have won it
    Yes, but back to the point he raises. The official numbers show the cost of Brexit being double the cost of Covid. We need tax rises and they're blaming Covid. Logically we will need bigger tax rises and they won't blame Brexit...
    It's a fallacious argument. The reason covid implies tax rises is because of the amount of government borrowing. Any direct costs of Brexit are nothing compared to furlough, etc.
    Brexit is lost revenue.
    Furlough is lost revenue *and* increased cost.

    Brexit is mostly projected, but not all.
    Exports to EU are already failing to follow Rest of World performance.
    We decided to Brexit. W
    This is a very loose comment.

    'We' was 52% against 48%, in other words hardly deserving of your all-inclusive pronoun, but in some ways the bigger issue is that we didn't vote for Brexit. We didn't really vote for anything. No one know what the hell we were voting for. The devil in the detail only emerged later and I guarantee you that if we'd known the monster we were about to unleash the country would not have voted for it.
    What makes you think I disagree on this point?

    I’ve said many times that Cameron was suicidally complacent about his EU referendum [...]

    It would have roiled and split the Leave campaign and Cameron would have romped home.

    Instead he loftily assumed he was cruising to victory, because he is an arrogant Etonian who fatally over-estimated his own abilities. Because that’s what Eton does. It fills you with self assurance. Often unjustified
    It's also because 'he' had just won Indyref, even causing The Queen to purr with pleasure, and thus carried all his self-preening arrogance into the Brexit vote.

    Brexit is, without question, the greatest mistake Britain as a nation has made. It eclipses all other colonial, military and foreign policy errors combined.
    Thank goodness its pushed mass slavery off the top spot!
    And World War One. People always overstate the horror of that error. OK Yes we could have stayed neutral in the Great War, thereby saving a million British lives and a trillion pounds, and probably ensuring we kept the Empire for another century, but what’s that compared to the error of leaving the Customs Union thus adding significant paperwork?
    Yeah but WW1 inspired some great poetry and ushered in Expressionism, Surrealism, and Modernism.

    Brexit has Farage doing £80-a-pop Cameo shout-outs.
    1) If we had stayed out of WWI, the Germans would have won in short order.
    2) So, the German Empire, Kaiser etc would have stayed intact
    3) Given that the German Empire embraced war as a Good thing, and it had worked twice (1870 and 1914)
    4) And that they were planning for WII as part of their planned reparations demands....
    5) The Kaiser Wilhelm instate will probably have a bunch more scientists....

    So in about 1940 or so, the highly militaristic German Empire would get some good news about bigger and better bangs. Just in time for the next war.....
    Germany winning quickly could also have been a very very good thing = no Hitler, no Nazis, no WW2, probably no Russian Revolution, no communism, no USSR, no Mao, no PRChina, no Cold War

    It might have been an unimaginably nicer world and better century, albeit with a stronger Germany dominant in mainland Europe. A price worth paying?
    Absolutely not. The Germans were an incredibly militaristic nation. The Nazis were a product of their time and their country.

    If the German Empire had won WWI swiftly then it wouldn't have taken long before there was another war, this time with them starting from an even stronger starting point.
  • Northern_AlNorthern_Al Posts: 7,459
    TimS said:

    Trouble is Reeves seems to make a very good shadow chancellor. Like Brown in the 1990s. We have this tendency in politics and business to promote people out of jobs they are very good at, and sometimes that's not the right answer. Labour needs someone convincing on the economic and public finances.

    She is also quite serious and downbeat (again like Brown). Not a shiny smiley optimist. Given that's also Keir's problem, ideally they would have a fun loving, cheery optimistic leader supported by the clunking fist of an all-destroying shadow CoE.

    I agree with pretty much all that. Brown's leadership ambitions were his eventual downfall. Reeves should stay where she is and give substance to Labour's economic ambitions.

    It's similar for the Tories, with people talking up the chances of Sunak, and to a lesser extent Truss, as next leader. Just because they're perceived as good in their current jobs doesn't mean that they'd make good leaders. In Truss's case, I think it's highly unlikely.

    It's a bit like promoting the most brilliant teachers to be head teachers. It's often a disaster. Different skill sets and all that.
  • CookieCookie Posts: 11,183

    Cookie said:

    Leon said:

    kle4 said:

    Heathener said:

    Leon said:

    Heathener said:

    Leon said:

    Scott_xP said:

    If taxes have to go up because of a permanent 2% hit to the economy caused by COVID, what happens to taxes when Brexit causes a 4% permanent hit?
    https://twitter.com/DavidGauke/status/1453623675077361668

    David Gauke, part of the group of pro EU politicians who failed to win the case to remain and just cannot concede they lost

    Maybe if they had made a better case they could have won it
    Yes, but back to the point he raises. The official numbers show the cost of Brexit being double the cost of Covid. We need tax rises and they're blaming Covid. Logically we will need bigger tax rises and they won't blame Brexit...
    It's a fallacious argument. The reason covid implies tax rises is because of the amount of government borrowing. Any direct costs of Brexit are nothing compared to furlough, etc.
    Brexit is lost revenue.
    Furlough is lost revenue *and* increased cost.

    Brexit is mostly projected, but not all.
    Exports to EU are already failing to follow Rest of World performance.
    We decided to Brexit. W
    This is a very loose comment.

    'We' was 52% against 48%, in other words hardly deserving of your all-inclusive pronoun, but in some ways the bigger issue is that we didn't vote for Brexit. We didn't really vote for anything. No one know what the hell we were voting for. The devil in the detail only emerged later and I guarantee you that if we'd known the monster we were about to unleash the country would not have voted for it.
    What makes you think I disagree on this point?

    I’ve said many times that Cameron was suicidally complacent about his EU referendum [...]

    It would have roiled and split the Leave campaign and Cameron would have romped home.

    Instead he loftily assumed he was cruising to victory, because he is an arrogant Etonian who fatally over-estimated his own abilities. Because that’s what Eton does. It fills you with self assurance. Often unjustified
    It's also because 'he' had just won Indyref, even causing The Queen to purr with pleasure, and thus carried all his self-preening arrogance into the Brexit vote.

    Brexit is, without question, the greatest mistake Britain as a nation has made. It eclipses all other colonial, military and foreign policy errors combined.
    Thank goodness its pushed mass slavery off the top spot!
    And World War One. People always overstate the horror of that error. OK Yes we could have stayed neutral in the Great War, thereby saving a million British lives and a trillion pounds, and probably ensuring we kept the Empire for another century, but what’s that compared to the error of leaving the Customs Union thus adding significant paperwork?
    Yeah but WW1 inspired some great poetry and ushered in Expressionism, Surrealism, and Modernism.

    Brexit has Farage doing £80-a-pop Cameo shout-outs.
    I think there's a bit of a myth grown up about WW1 being a pointless war. We could have stayed out of it, though there would have been costs for us - reputational damage, most obviously, but also a continent dominated vy a militaristic Germany would not necessarily have been in our best interests. But it was also, I think, the right thing to do. Pre WW1 France was not, civilisationally, unlike pre WW1 Britain. Pre WW1 Germany was, from the perspective of the 21st century west, a rather darker and more primitive place.
    I think. Others may be better informed.
    Dunno about that, there’s a case to be made that pre WWI France was the most institutionally antisemtic country in Western Europe, and therefore open to a Gallic final solution. Their enthusiastic embrace of the German version doesn’t really contradict that hypothesis.
    Mm - fair point.
  • Northern_AlNorthern_Al Posts: 7,459


    Stephen Pollard
    @stephenpollard
    Labour has a really strong Treasury team in
    @RachelReevesMP
    and
    @bphillipsonMP


    Bridget Phillipson is - by quite a long way - the best Labour interviewee I've heard in recent years. She speaks normally and engages. Surely a star of the next decade or so

    Attentive readers may note that I was tipping Bridget for great things over a year ago. Very sharp, comes over very well, north-eastern MP.
  • I almost always laugh at moral panics anyway but this moral panic has to be the most absurd I've ever seen: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-59075823

    Apparently schools are worried that children are acting out games from Squid Games during break time.

    That's right we're panicking about children acting out games . . . from a series where adult contestants play children's games.

    Children playing children's games. Oh won't somebody please think of the children!
  • LeonLeon Posts: 46,222
    The Putney Debates began on this day in 1647


    “I think that the poorest he that is in England hath a life to live as the greatest he ... the poorest man in England is not at all bound in a strict sense to that Government that he hath not had a voice to put himself under.”

    Thomas Rainsborough (1610-1648)

    Brexit was seeded in the 17th century

    https://twitter.com/englishradical/status/1453634900536532992?s=21
  • kle4kle4 Posts: 91,392

    kle4 said:

    Farooq said:

    tlg86 said:

    dixiedean said:

    Having the West Coast Mainline closed due to flooding would be the perfect start to Cop 26.

    Good to see the unions didn't pass up the opportunity to milk the tax payer:

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-59071375
    2.5% pay rise? What's the problem?
    Thank goodness PB Tories have got over their brief obsession with high wages and trebles all round for everyone. The planet is healing.
    1 negative comment and 1 quetioning comment is indicative of that? I'd want a few more data points.
    You missed the whole ‘skills shortages, culled pigs and queues at petrol stations are great cos they’ll drive up wages and are in any case definitely nothing to do with Brexit’ spasm? I’ll leave you to do your own catching up.
    There really is no need to always be so oversensitive.

    Yes, I was referring to the specific comment about the 2.5% rise the unions managed to get (and good for them), thanks for detailing it was a broader point you were making.
  • algarkirkalgarkirk Posts: 10,341


    Stephen Pollard
    @stephenpollard
    Labour has a really strong Treasury team in
    @RachelReevesMP
    and
    @bphillipsonMP


    Bridget Phillipson is - by quite a long way - the best Labour interviewee I've heard in recent years. She speaks normally and engages. Surely a star of the next decade or so

    But not in a safe seat. (Though, despite the figures, I think she will hold it next time).

  • LostPasswordLostPassword Posts: 14,772

    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    kle4 said:

    Heathener said:

    Leon said:

    Heathener said:

    Leon said:

    Scott_xP said:

    If taxes have to go up because of a permanent 2% hit to the economy caused by COVID, what happens to taxes when Brexit causes a 4% permanent hit?
    https://twitter.com/DavidGauke/status/1453623675077361668

    David Gauke, part of the group of pro EU politicians who failed to win the case to remain and just cannot concede they lost

    Maybe if they had made a better case they could have won it
    Yes, but back to the point he raises. The official numbers show the cost of Brexit being double the cost of Covid. We need tax rises and they're blaming Covid. Logically we will need bigger tax rises and they won't blame Brexit...
    It's a fallacious argument. The reason covid implies tax rises is because of the amount of government borrowing. Any direct costs of Brexit are nothing compared to furlough, etc.
    Brexit is lost revenue.
    Furlough is lost revenue *and* increased cost.

    Brexit is mostly projected, but not all.
    Exports to EU are already failing to follow Rest of World performance.
    We decided to Brexit. W
    This is a very loose comment.

    'We' was 52% against 48%, in other words hardly deserving of your all-inclusive pronoun, but in some ways the bigger issue is that we didn't vote for Brexit. We didn't really vote for anything. No one know what the hell we were voting for. The devil in the detail only emerged later and I guarantee you that if we'd known the monster we were about to unleash the country would not have voted for it.
    What makes you think I disagree on this point?

    I’ve said many times that Cameron was suicidally complacent about his EU referendum [...]

    It would have roiled and split the Leave campaign and Cameron would have romped home.

    Instead he loftily assumed he was cruising to victory, because he is an arrogant Etonian who fatally over-estimated his own abilities. Because that’s what Eton does. It fills you with self assurance. Often unjustified
    It's also because 'he' had just won Indyref, even causing The Queen to purr with pleasure, and thus carried all his self-preening arrogance into the Brexit vote.

    Brexit is, without question, the greatest mistake Britain as a nation has made. It eclipses all other colonial, military and foreign policy errors combined.
    Thank goodness its pushed mass slavery off the top spot!
    And World War One. People always overstate the horror of that error. OK Yes we could have stayed neutral in the Great War, thereby saving a million British lives and a trillion pounds, and probably ensuring we kept the Empire for another century, but what’s that compared to the error of leaving the Customs Union thus adding significant paperwork?
    Yeah but WW1 inspired some great poetry and ushered in Expressionism, Surrealism, and Modernism.

    Brexit has Farage doing £80-a-pop Cameo shout-outs.
    1) If we had stayed out of WWI, the Germans would have won in short order.
    2) So, the German Empire, Kaiser etc would have stayed intact
    3) Given that the German Empire embraced war as a Good thing, and it had worked twice (1870 and 1914)
    4) And that they were planning for WII as part of their planned reparations demands....
    5) The Kaiser Wilhelm instate will probably have a bunch more scientists....

    So in about 1940 or so, the highly militaristic German Empire would get some good news about bigger and better bangs. Just in time for the next war.....
    Germany winning quickly could also have been a very very good thing = no Hitler, no Nazis, no WW2, probably no Russian Revolution, no communism, no USSR, no Mao, no PRChina, no Cold War

    It might have been an unimaginably nicer world and better century, albeit with a stronger Germany dominant in mainland Europe. A price worth paying?
    Absolutely not. The Germans were an incredibly militaristic nation. The Nazis were a product of their time and their country.

    If the German Empire had won WWI swiftly then it wouldn't have taken long before there was another war, this time with them starting from an even stronger starting point.
    Rather like the Napoleonic period. Would the 19th century had been more or less peaceful if Britain and Austria had fought a bloody four years of trench warfare, to emerge victorious at extreme cost and insistent on imposing a punitive peace on France that it couldn't recover from peacefully?
  • kle4kle4 Posts: 91,392
    Leon said:

    The Putney Debates began on this day in 1647


    “I think that the poorest he that is in England hath a life to live as the greatest he ... the poorest man in England is not at all bound in a strict sense to that Government that he hath not had a voice to put himself under.”

    Thomas Rainsborough (1610-1648)

    Brexit was seeded in the 17th century

    https://twitter.com/englishradical/status/1453634900536532992?s=21

    Good debates, but I think that's a stretch.

    I think many here are more on Ireton's side of that debate:

    No man hath a right to an interest or share in the disposing of the affairs of the kingdom... that hath not a permanent fixed interest in this kingdom
This discussion has been closed.