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Starmer’s biggest challenge could be meeting expectations – politicalbetting.com
Starmer’s biggest challenge could be meeting expectations – politicalbetting.com
This YouGov polling sets out very clearly what voters think will change if Starmer does indeed become PM in the next 18 months.
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On a technical note, I'd wonder about the overlap between several of those categories: overall standard of living, the cost of living, income inequality and the economy might all refer to the same thing.
Because they also show the highest numbers of "don't know" AND "no impact" along with high "worse"numbers on par with Lab scores on cost of living issues (multiple as DJL notes).
Which makes me think that there is possibility - hardly inevitable, but possible - that Starmer and his party could (maybe) improve in these areas. Based either on something good that Labour says/does, or something bad that Conservative say/do (likely more likely) or some combination.
On other hand, Cons could gain and Labs lose ground on these and/or other areas. However, my sense is that advantage is with the Opposition, mainly because it IS the Opposition.
Ministers accused of rigging Parliament by replacing five Eurosceptic MPs from a committee with Remain voters
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2023/07/17/number-10-acting-like-north-korea-rishi-sunak-brexit-deal/ (£££)
A Conservative government divided over Europe. Has this ever happened before?
Some quick wins for Starmer could be fixing nhs pensions mess (perhaps even offering a higher lifetime allowance for those who return), offering one-time vouchers to go private to reduce nhs waiting list (abroad if necessary), renegotiate with France to have small boat asylum processed in France...
Good thing Mali isn't best pals with Russia right no– oh, shoot
https://www.theregister.com/2023/07/18/us_military_mali_email_typos/
US military = .mil
Mali = .ml
Oops.
It should actually be easy to send them back based on the formatting, but that requires the .ml guy to spend money. I suspect he wants the .mil guys to pay the bill, or at least to buy a load of .ml domains, and is embarrassing them into doing so.
Obviously this is external mail coming in to the military, so isn’t likely to be anything particularly secret. They have their own internal systems for that sort of communication.
Yes, a "beach master" elephant seal will control a stretch of beach with 50 or so females, defending it against male rivals.
But, male rivals do sneak in and father about 10% of pups.
The beach master controls an area, rather than a harem, and females can and do choose which bit of beach, and therefore male for mating.
Females sexually mature earlier and live longer so have multiple breeding seasons, while being "beachmaster" is such a physical strain that a male only does one year, being exhausted and is defeated and replaced the following year.
So while this seems at first look a system for "alpha males" in practice it is rather more even than it seems. This year's alpha male is next years spent force.
The private system is heavily used for straight forward stuff already, indeed makes up half or more of the work of most private hospitals at present. The problem is that they won't touch people with multiple co-morbidities, as have very little on site medical staff out of hours. So fine if you need a hip replacement but otherwise well, less so if diabetic, and on clopidogrel after a stroke. Then you get rejected, and the DGH gets the complex post op care. This is a much larger share now than previously of surgical waiting lists. The low hanging fruit is mostly gone.
I think there is some possible solution to the small boats problem by opening safe routes. The way to do this is to allow asylum applications at British embassies overseas. The asylum seeker therefore needs to keep their documents and records to substantiate a claim, is waiting overseas in the meantime, so has an incentive to not string out the process, indeed to resolve it quickly, and part of the assessment would include establishing why Britain is an appropriate site of asylum.
We're not going to get change for the better from an incoming Government that's committed to going out of its way to change as little as possible.
It's dubious whether Tony Blair had 'better communication skills.' If you listen to any of his speeches they are vacuous. He never said anything of real substance. His grasp of English grammar was poor, with terrible syntax. His performances in Parliament were often weak. He had a second class mind. Starmer is much brighter than Blair.
Perhaps Mike means that he was more telegenic.
And I've no idea what this comment means: 'The last LAB leader to win a majority was better prepared politically.' This is meaningless.
Will Starmer be any good? It's certainly going to take a long time. The country is in a considerably worse condition than when Blair took over.
Very politically damaging either way
In reality the NHS etc. will improve under people who actually believe in it.
We had all this 'nothing much will change' before 1979. Incredible to think but it's true.
Normally but in this case is it actually what is it opposing?
Let's be frank. If Keir Starmer turned out to be a Sheffield Wednesday fan and invested £1bn in your club, you'd still be critical.
It comes across as somewhat myopic. Just as Sunak is not all bad, neither is Starmer. I hope in time, mainly for your own sake, that you will come to acknowledge the good in him.
There's plenty of room for optimism, unless you are a diehard Conservative.
However, and it's a big however, it's going to take a long time to turn things around. That they will is extremely likely.
The biggest place for pessimism comes not from the centre or the right, but for those of us who have more left leanings. Here, I fear, Starmer may prove to be disappointing.
Think on these things.
Have a good day all.
xx
(1) Starmer is in thrall to the very rich and to the wealthy grey vote, whose deep pockets he must pick if he's to make real progress in solving the nation's omnicrisis (notably in dealing with the health and social care needs of our ever-increasing burden of decrepit and elderly people, and constructing heroic numbers of new homes) - hence the near-total lack of ambition
(2) Starmer is lying about everything in order to lull these groups into a false sense of security, peddling a Conservative manifesto which he intends to dump in favour of a social democratic redistributive platform as soon as the dumb saps have been conned into voting him into office
Neither scenario is particularly encouraging; Occam's razor suggests that the first is more likely to prove correct.
Saturday rain:
Sunday wind:
But I suppose it's all in the long and rather sad tradition of political 'discourse' ...
(3) Once the election is called, Labour publish a manifesto that is as radical as it can be given the finances. It surprises everyone in its ambition, especially given how little was leaked beforehand. It tests the new-found loyalty of the grey vote, but swiftly passes a vague societal basic fairness test, and so is hard for people to publicly oppose. By this point Labour have been established in the public mindset as the party to be trusted economically, as well as the party offering a change, so the grey vote reluctantly (mostly) still go for it.
One can but hope pigeon!
Rising interest rates will be a problem for a lot of firms, and growth likely to be flat this year.
Sometimes policies need the groundwork put in place long before an election; a constant stream of narrative backed up by soundbites. Plucking something out of thin air at election time makes it appear as though you do not believe in it, and that it is ill-considered.
https://twitter.com/DarthPutinKGB/status/1680869355913895936
An illustration of the mad worldview of Tory Brexiteers.
The fact is that this is the fag end of a government, with the support of maybe a third of the electorate - and about the same number think Brexit is going well.
The democratic case for hardline Brexiteers to impose their will in the rest of us is thin to non existent.
Unless he proves completely incompetent, he's more likely to surprise on the upside.
https://twitter.com/paulwaugh/status/1680954500100640768
.@GillianKeegan: “Most of our private schools are nothing like Eton or Harrow, they’re far smaller and they charge a lot less. Many cost the same as a family holiday abroad”
I know averages can be deceptive but how many families who use private schools *don't* have a hol abroad?
I don't take foreign holidays myself very often (I haven't left the country since Covid hit) so I don't know how much they cost these days. However, prep school fees often hover around the £5-6,000 mark which doesn't sound ridiculously out of line for a family holiday in a tourist hotspot in say Spain.
Keegan is an idiot but she isn't making a stupid point here. Far too much discourse about private schools is skewed towards the top end, not considering the cheaper end.
That has rather different problems of its own that need addressing but they never get talked about.
Mr. B, I went to a private secondary school. During my time there I think I had one foreign holiday.
That creates the space for non-mentaliat true Tories (ones who haven't voted for PC) to take control from the crooks and spivs and remaining mince and steer their party back towards actual Conservatism.
There does have to be some sense of purpose though, even if more vaguely stated in terms of "a fair deal for young families" or some such.
Spending £5000 of that on either a holiday or school fees seems ambitious. I'm sure there are people who sacrifice foreign holidays for school fees, but you have to be pretty comfortable to do either.
Wheels come of said plan when you become indistinguishable from the fcking Tories,
£5-6k is about right for Spain, Greece or Portugal for a decent hotel and all-inclusive for a family of four (2 weeks in summer hols). Turkey is cheaper.
Re. Cost for this vs private fees (or indeed other outgoings - doing up house, better car, etc) for a big chunk of the population the summer holiday is a huge priority over any of these. The annual fortnight of carefree comfort and good weather with the family is more valuable to most than the marginal gains of a prep school or granite tops in the kitchen.
Until you get to one where they say "hang on, we're going to be pretty busy and need to prioritise" and then it's "AHA HE'S A TORY".
If BJO was a progressive, he would back the incoming Labour government and the progress it will undoubtedly make. Progress. Not revolution. Not reactionist demands from a self-styled people's collective.
People expect Labour to be barely better that this omnishambles of a government.
It's a bad situation, sure, but Wilson and Blair sold optimism in fair times (certainly by 1964, 1997) and Attlee sold a radical reshaping of society in the bad times (albeit at a lot of short term cost). Starmer by cutting his offer back so much risks selling neither. Never mind Wilson, he needs to find a little of his inner Attlee, because society needs reshaping now, not just the TLC to public services that sufficed in 97.
Starmer is on the very cusp of overdoing the hands tied schtick and reducing the Labour offer to near nothing.
He really needs to have a strong media discipline to maintain the line that he is coming in to fix a decade of mismanagement, and like a head-shaking plumber be clear that this is a costly and difficult mess that will take some time to fix.
I’m quite glad he’s not promising the moon on a stick.
Across the entire county only 194 people were bothered to vote for a candidate...
Sir Keith was kind of funny though, I guess - and Cruella was amusing for a five minutes.
It’s true that the Corbynites are almost as allergic to compromise as they are to winning elections (a comorbidity of the extremes). And democracy means compromise and slow progress.
I don't think I was that unusual either, especially in my private primary school.
Add me to the list of PBers who had one foreign holiday in seven years while attending a private secondary school. It’s a decision made by many, many parents in that boat.
I'm still working on my shortlist. Wyndham Clark will be on it. Probably Koepka.
I’m reminded of that episode of Colditz where a pow (Michael Bryant?) pretends to be insane so he could be repatriated to the UK. Lo and behold by the time he was repatriated..
Again, we come back to people are obsessed with the high end.
Also, I said 'prep school' which tend to have lower fees. Not so many staff to pay, you see.
One take on all this is that the UK faces a hangover after decades of doing various sorts of dumb stuff, hangovers aren't meant to be fun, but Starmer is the man to lead us through the hangover with some competence and decency.
Basically the good dad teenagers need after a bender. Then, once the headache has gone away, we can write a letter to all those people we were so rude to whilst pissed out of our minds.
My parents invested in us kids. At least two of the investments worked out well...
The Australian state of Victoria has pulled out of hosting the 2026 Commonwealth Games due to projected cost overruns, placing the future of the quadrennial event in doubt.
The Premier of Victoria, Dan Andrews, said the cost of the Games, which would have been held in four regional hubs, could blow out to more than A$7 billion (about £3.7 billion) from a budgeted A$2.6 billion (£1.4 billion) if they went ahead.
“Frankly A$6-A$7 billion for a 12-day sporting event, we’re not doing that,” Andrews said. “I will not take money out of hospitals and schools to fund an event that is three times the cost as estimated and budgeted for last year.”
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/australian-commonwealth-games-victoria-pulls-out-of-hosting-2026-event-z9jljhq57
Prep school fees are £3-4k per term aren't they ? That's ignoring the top end of the market.
I don't like the bloke, I admit, but I see what he is up to and in a way admire it. I said from the start that Starmer is the Tories' worst nightmare.
1. Labour is soft on immigration/wants open borders/Brexit etc.
2. Labour is fiscally incontinent; as PB Tories remind us frequently, very good at spending other people's money.
So, all Starmer (and Reeves) is doing is a zero-risk strategy to neutralise these attack lines. It's not attractive to those of us on the left, but it seems to be working. Once in power, I expect Starmer to surprise on the upside. Unlike Truss.
It's an unnecessary place to have put himself into, assuming he does actually care about child poverty. He's not good at rhetoric, which is a politician's necessary tool. See also "making Brexit work".
Grocery price inflation has fallen at the fastest rate since its peak in March but remains high, new figures show.
Inflation fell to 14.9 per cent in the four weeks to July 9, down from 16.5 per cent over the previous month, according to data from the market researcher Kantar.
It is the fourth month in a row that grocery inflation has fallen after hitting a high of 17.5 per cent in March.
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/food-price-inflation-falls-at-fastest-rate-since-march-zzv9pczx5
Again, we come back to people talk about 'private schools' as though they were a homogenous lump. They're not. They're very, very different even within small areas.
The real problem which any useful organisation would grapple with - but the DfE do not - is how badly run most of them are. There is a school within easy driving distance of me where one of the senior staff is under constant investigation by the police for threatening violence to staff and parents. Nothing can ever quite be proved but the pattern is itself disturbing.
There's another where every year parents complain their deposits have been wrongly withheld.
Another where a female boarding house has only male staff on duty three days a week.
A friend of mine described it as a 'Wild West.' And it is.
That does, indeed, itself beg the question whether for half these schools the fess are worth it anyway. Disturbingly, the answer often remains 'yes' still due to the difference in class sizes, however bad the school or however low the salary paid to teachers (which doesn't often attract the best).
Again, this is much stronger ground to attack Keegan on than her claim here which is not in itself unreasonable.
And then, we come back to the need to fix things (properly, not a la Gove, Gibb, Cummings and Freedman) in the state sector.
A Crown Jewels guide in which a racist term appeared more than 40 times has been removed by the Royal Collection Trust from its website.
The catalogue, published in 2008, was removed from the charity’s website last week after repetition of the outdated expression was brought to its attention.
The book Ancient and Modern Gems and Jewels, which had remained on the RCT’s website since its publication, contains dozens of mentions of the derogatory term.
It was mainly used in the guide to describe people of African origin who appear on the catalogued jewels.
One brooch was described as: “Head of a negro in three-quarter profile to the right, with drop-pearl earring. This type of a negro’s head is found on several 16th-century cameos.”
Another description of an item depicting a Caucasian person said: “Although it uses the dark layers of the stone for the profile, the features are not negroid.”
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/crown-jewels-guide-used-racist-term-more-than-40-times-tsslh6cdn
But it was worth it.
More than one million patients a month are having to wait four weeks to see their GP, with rural areas the worst affected.
NHS data reveals there were 1.3 million appointments in May which had been booked at least four weeks earlier — up from 912,000 in May 2022.
It means one in 20 people now endure waits of at least 28 days after contacting their GP surgery to get an appointment, putting them at risk of delayed or missed diagnosis.
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/uk-gp-wait-times-nhs-doctors-appointment-2023-525xlm3q5
ETA: My eldest sone first went abroad aged ~18 months. The younger two haven't yet, mainly due to Covid and then the arrival of number three - plane/ferry not super fun with a baby. They'll probably all go overseas next year as we have some friends in the Netherlands overdue a visit.
However my dad was a a great lover of travel - he hitchhiked all round Europe in the sixties and never stopped enjoying it. Despite not being well off, we managed trips all over Europe, to the western US, Peru and even a month in Chile (we stayed with the family of a colleague of his who had been exiled under Pinochet and become a social worker in Doncaster).
Plenty of roughing it; sleeping tents and cars for much of it. But I saw a lot of the world.
So sorry to break the 4 Yorkshireman tropage. There again, both my parents are from St. Helens...