My god. I was all bubbly and jovial. And then I got a cab to Maidan square and now I am standing in front of THIS and there are women either side of me weeping. Every flag is a fallen Ukrainian soldier
This is just one part of it. The flags go on and on. Quite close to blubbing myself.
We cannot let them lose!
Slava ukraini
What a journey, from someone who started out as Putin's little cheerleader.
Yes, quite a journey. I’ve actually come to Ukraine - twice. I’ve been to Lviv and chernivtsi, Kyiv and Odessa. I’ve heard bombs fall on the castle of Kamanets podolski’y. I saw a chunk of missile fall on my own street in Odessa. I watched and heard the ack ack over the Potemkin steps as Putin’s drones came in - two nights ago
I’ve seen Ukrainians in crutches, I’ve met Ukrainian draft dodgers, I’ve talked to Ukrainians who have lost ALL their schoolfriends, and now I’m standing in front of the memorial to 200,000 dead Ukrainians in maidan square listening to the widows crying and in all that time you’ve been pootling around fucking Norway with your stupid little dog
That's very sad. I liked him a lot. Clearly, he was struggling with deep-rooted demons that got the better of him.
Poor guy.
Demons? I'd guess that he started to get heatstroke, hiking in such heat, went to shelter in the cave, but either ran out of or had no water, and got worse rather than better.
The local police were working on the assumption he'd got lost and had a fall, which seems possibly correct. ..The body - which has yet to be formally identified - was found at a small cliff on a rocky hill north-east of the village of Pedi, near Agia Marina beach...
It's a small island, but just big enough for it to be hard to find someone if you don't know exactly where to look.
A really sad story.
Yes, that's possible.
I just find his behaviour odd. Going out without water or a phone. In the peak heat of the day. With an umbrella. And then going missing.
I could be wrong and it could be a tragic accident, of course.
The umbrella makes perfect sense in hot weather. You can spot an Australian because they are covered up head to toe, and aren't embarrassed by a massive hat. Short sleeves a big no-no when bushwalking.
I've never seen anyone out walking in Greece, or anywhere else hot, with an umbrella.
That'd be considered eccentricially English.
Surprisingly common out here, especially among Filipinas and Japanese ladies.
Mad dogs and Englishmen go out in the midday sun! @R.Kipling.
N Coward
That’s two incorrect memories for me this morning. Is something slipping somewhere?
Actually further to my earlier post I've decided I'm standing next time. I'll save 500 quid up. I'm sick of having to pick from turd mountain. I want to be a turd. Anyone in my stitch can vote for me in 29!
Some unsourced reports on Twitter that ministers have talked him out of resigning, but only if he is free to take to more of a back seat in the campaign, with the ministers at the front.
That's very sad. I liked him a lot. Clearly, he was struggling with deep-rooted demons that got the better of him.
Poor guy.
Demons? I'd guess that he started to get heatstroke, hiking in such heat, went to shelter in the cave, but either ran out of or had no water, and got worse rather than better.
The local police were working on the assumption he'd got lost and had a fall, which seems possibly correct. ..The body - which has yet to be formally identified - was found at a small cliff on a rocky hill north-east of the village of Pedi, near Agia Marina beach...
It's a small island, but just big enough for it to be hard to find someone if you don't know exactly where to look.
A really sad story.
Yes, that's possible.
I just find his behaviour odd. Going out without water or a phone. In the peak heat of the day. With an umbrella. And then going missing.
I could be wrong and it could be a tragic accident, of course.
The umbrella makes perfect sense in hot weather. You can spot an Australian because they are covered up head to toe, and aren't embarrassed by a massive hat. Short sleeves a big no-no when bushwalking.
I've never seen anyone out walking in Greece, or anywhere else hot, with an umbrella.
That'd be considered eccentricially English.
Surprisingly common out here, especially among Filipinas and Japanese ladies.
Mad dogs and Englishmen go out in the midday sun! @R.Kipling.
N Coward
That’s two incorrect memories for me this morning. Is something slipping somewhere?
I had to think twice. It could easily come from the Just So stories
The Tories will put benefit reforms at the heart of their election campaign on Sunday as Rishi Sunak seeks to turn things around following a difficult week
There are votes to be had from Reform for performative cruelty.
Who now expects them to be in government on July 5th?
Hence the random policies and promises will get more ludicrous and uncosted. All paid for by imaginary efficiency savings once more I expect.
There's always been scope for Welfare reform, but the obvious retort is "why didn't you do something about it in the last Parliament?".
How much more can they squeeze out of the tax avoidance genie . One thing I’m surprised about is that the latest briefings suggest they’re not going to touch IHT .
This was surely the final Hail Mary . Maybe it might still happen . Or maybe Sunak saving his kids hundreds of millions of pounds wasn’t a good look .
And how much more can Labour squeeze out of the tax avoidance genie? Enough for tens of thousand more NHS appointments? Leave it out...
Those appointments aren’t coming out of the tax avoidance cash machine . I’m sure however that it will do some heavy lifting in other areas.
You think "ending non-dom status" is not part of the tax avoidance regime? And you think it is going to be tax positive? Really? You aren't normlly that naive.
The first obvious sign we have a Labour government will be the flight of capital out of the UK. No doubt lefties will cheer on the departure.
Until they don't have the money to fund hospital beds.
I’m dubious of these tax avoidance savings but all parties think about is getting elected so as long as they can look like they’ve got somewhere to get the money from pre-election they’ll worry about the reality after 4th July . As for flight of capital I don’t see it .
On flight of capital.... If Labour has a big majority, you are going to have a mass of new backbench MPs all looking to get noticed. Some of them might have been councillors, but there will be a cohort who have effectively only known student politics. This "Eat the Rich!" cohort are going to be making noise about how the those with wealth need to pay "their fair share". Which is way more than those who have the wealth will want to pay - they are not going to see eye to eye on what is "fair".
And so within a year - and probably much sooner - there will have been a significant departure for those shores who have a better understanding of what is "fair". That money will not be paying stamp duty on new properties here, will not be paying VAT on their latest Bentley or Ferrari or super yacht.
And there will be a black hole that those muppets who thought they would give Labour a try will end up having to fund.
It depends what you mean by wealth taxes as only some wealth can be taken out of the country, other wealth can't.
If you mean taxing stocks and shares etc, then absolutely that's a bloody stupid idea and that will result in capital flight.
If you mean taxing land ownership and saying those who own a portion of this countries land need to pay a portion of this countries running costs (whether they be British or live abroad), then that's entirely possible and can't result in capital flight.
Oh yes it can. Land is a stock of capital because it has value. That value arises from its scarcity, we are not making any more of it, and the uses to which it can be put which can generate a return but it is also a reflection of demand.
At the moment much of our land, from Scottish estates to London flats is held by foreigners to whom we have sold it to finance our trade deficit. If we make it less attractive they may well sell up, collapsing the value of that land. The land is still here but it will be worth a lot less and those who finance their businesses through securities over it will be in breach of their banking covenants.
Royal funeral theory: contra the claim that the Tories would refuse a request for an early election because a funeral during the campaign would boost them, the response would be: if you refuse, the fact of your refusal will leak during the campaign. That really would have the potential to reduce them to nul seats.
The Statty Fyoonz Double Bill theory does fit all of the available facts and handsomely explains the little dickhead's otherwise mystifying self-selected immolation on July 4.
It really doesn't.
The simple theory that fits all the available facts and handsomely explains Sunak's behaviour is that he's shit at his job, given up all hope of winning, and went into the campaign demob happy.
But if he'd given up, why not simply give up, resign as party leader and PM, and give his successor a couple of months to prepare an election campaign? Why go through the torment of an election campaign if you've given up?
A lot of Sunak's more erratic actions are understandable only on the basis that he still thinks he can win, if only he can find the game-changing policy, or killer line that skewers Labour.
Parties aside, I think the Tories handled Covid OK. They protected millions of private sector jobs (whilst the public sector was still rightly getting its salaries and pensions - plus overtime). The process for getting the vaccines in place was one which undoubtedly delivered.
The only difference I can recall from Labour was that Starmer would have locked us down for another Christmas.
I think the Government have handled Ukraine very well.
Not that anyone remembers, but the Government handled the resulting rise in energy prices as well as it could afford to do, with large-scale energy bill subsidies.
This government came to power on the basis of investing in areas that had for generations voted Labour, in the expectation that they would finally get to see some cash. Sadly. Covid and Ukraine took all that money and more. The one saving grace is that if Corbyn had won in 2019, he would have already spent all the cash needed to get us through these two crises. God alone knows how we would have managed. In all likelihood, we would have had no money for furlough and be struggling with millions more unemployed.
One area where this Government does not blow its own trumpet is in jobs creation. They have an especially good case on youth unemployment - this is at low levels that prevous Labour governments could only dream about. When Labour says "What have you done for our young?", the answer is "Ensured they have jobs."
Each of these testing situations was a once-in-a-generation challenge. The government handled them as well as could have been expected. More importantly, I don't see a cigarette paper between how the Government responded - and how Labour says it would have handled things. Those desperate for change - you've effectively had a Labour government for the past five years. Prepare to be very disappointed.
I can't remember seeing more beggars and homeless on the streets since the early days of Thatcher.
Some unsourced reports on Twitter that ministers have talked him put of resigning, but only if he takes a back seat in the campaign with the ministers at the front.
Maybe he really has had enough.
I don’t think that works . Hiding away will get media attention and I think that would be worse for the Tories .
Sunak should go after Farage and accuse him of being a Putin supporter and also tell him where to go with racism . I have zero time for Sunak but Farage really is absolutely loathsome .
Without wanting to excuse him for being a twat Thursday, the dog whistle 'he's not like us' horse shit is his way to begin exiting the mess and going onto the front foot (or at least trying to)
But you said yesterday that you’re planning to vote Reform. They’re only not one big dog whistle when they’re a foghorn instead.
I did indeed. I'll have to reconsider that. Party of Women looking good for a vote as last woman standing.
Farage has managed to get Shabhana Mahmood defending the PM
Edit - I mean I loathe the damn lot of them but I really don't do not voting. If I'd had 500 quid spare I'd honestly have stood myself (not bothering to campaign)
Personally, I don't think Rishi Sunak is motivated by a love of Britain. I don't think anyone who was could bear to be in a position to start to reverse its decline, and then fail (as a matter of deliberate policy) to do anything about it, before trashing what seedlings of hope there were with an unnecessary election.
That has nothing to do with Sunak's ethnic or religious background. I am pretty sure he identifies with the USA more than he does with India.
Some unsourced reports on Twitter that ministers have talked him put of resigning, but only if he is free take to more of a back seat in the campaign, with the ministers at the front.
Maybe he really has had enough.
In a presidential campaign, hiding the president seems, suboptimal...
Some unsourced reports on Twitter that ministers have talked him put of resigning, but only if he is free take more of a back seat in the campaign, with the ministers at the front.
Maybe he really has had enough.
He can't take a back seat. Media play follow the leader. He will need to construct a nasty illness or something that makes of impossible to be on the road for a bit
Some unsourced reports on Twitter that ministers have talked him put of resigning, but only if he is free take to more of a back seat in the campaign, with the ministers at the front.
Maybe he really has had enough.
In a presidential campaign, hiding the president seems, suboptimal...
Some unsourced reports on Twitter that ministers have talked him out of resigning, but only if he is free to take to more of a back seat in the campaign, with the ministers at the front.
Maybe he really has had enough.
Absolute State of some of his ministers, though? Sgt. Lewis might say "Is this wise, Sir?"
My god. I was all bubbly and jovial. And then I got a cab to Maidan square and now I am standing in front of THIS and there are women either side of me weeping. Every flag is a fallen Ukrainian soldier
This is just one part of it. The flags go on and on. Quite close to blubbing myself.
We cannot let them lose!
Slava ukraini
Okay, your task is to find someone collecting money in the square, and give them your ten quid.
I already gave ten quid for two wrist bands!
But I can go and do it again and take a photo. I’ve used my photo ration for the day so you’ll have to wait for another day to see it
Parties aside, I think the Tories handled Covid OK. They protected millions of private sector jobs (whilst the public sector was still rightly getting its salaries and pensions - plus overtime). The process for getting the vaccines in place was one which undoubtedly delivered.
The only difference I can recall from Labour was that Starmer would have locked us down for another Christmas.
I think the Government have handled Ukraine very well.
Not that anyone remembers, but the Government handled the resulting rise in energy prices as well as it could afford to do, with large-scale energy bill subsidies.
This government came to power on the basis of investing in areas that had for generations voted Labour, in the expectation that they would finally get to see some cash. Sadly. Covid and Ukraine took all that money and more. The one saving grace is that if Corbyn had won in 2019, he would have already spent all the cash needed to get us through these two crises. God alone knows how we would have managed. In all likelihood, we would have had no money for furlough and be struggling with millions more unemployed.
One area where this Government does not blow its own trumpet is in jobs creation. They have an especially good case on youth unemployment - this is at low levels that prevous Labour governments could only dream about. When Labour says "What have you done for our young?", the answer is "Ensured they have jobs."
Each of these testing situations was a once-in-a-generation challenge. The government handled them as well as could have been expected. More importantly, I don't see a cigarette paper between how the Government responded - and how Labour says it would have handled things. Those desperate for change - you've effectively had a Labour government for the past five years. Prepare to be very disappointed.
It's unfortunate we won't get to see the results of the Covid inquiry until much later, but I think there will be a couple of stern words said about preparedness and the speed of response. It was very, very clear by February that the government needed to do something but Boris delayed for ideological reasons. He downplayed the severity, setting the wrong tone. These failures cost lives and I expect the report will say as much. This cultural blinkeredness continued, of course, through to the Downing Street parties. Further, I also think "eat out to help out" will attract some criticism for pushing up cases and for damaging the health messaging.
The preparedness thing will be a blame spread across many more people, of course.
The purpose here is to detail the potential mistakes, because your assessment of "ok" is probably correct, but you only gave positive examples. It we're going to add narrative to that judgement, we need to talk about the bad as well as the good.
The other obvious error (and fwiw one I feel Labour would probably not have made) was the sharp reverse from "no Christmas lockdown" to "lockdown" with about five days notice (that was 2020, right?). I think people would have been less pissed off if they hadn't been led into making holiday season plans that they then had to throw away. And I think that was primarily caused by Boris not wanting to impose restrictions and deliver bad news.
But mostly I think the government did fairly well over covid -- some good stuff, some bad stuff, some "blindsided by events", and a lot of "about the same actions and outcomes as peer countries in the region".
The 2020 Christmas lockdown was focused on London and the south-east.
It took another two weeks for it to roll fully northwards.
As late as Tuesday 5th January 2021 I was still happily swimming at my gym.
The Tories need to eviscerate Farage. It's late, but not too late. He does not represent the future of right wing politics. Come on Sunak, what have you got left to lose, do the right thing.
After the Braverman/Patel/Rwanda/Brexit fiascos you'd need extremely good eyesight to tell the difference between the Tories and the Faragists
My god. I was all bubbly and jovial. And then I got a cab to Maidan square and now I am standing in front of THIS and there are women either side of me weeping. Every flag is a fallen Ukrainian soldier
This is just one part of it. The flags go on and on. Quite close to blubbing myself.
We cannot let them lose!
Slava ukraini
What a journey, from someone who started out as Putin's little cheerleader.
Yes, quite a journey. I’ve actually come to Ukraine - twice. I’ve been to Lviv and chernivtsi, Kyiv and Odessa. I’ve heard bombs fall on the castle of Kamanets podolski’y. I saw a chunk of missile fall on my own street in Odessa. I watched and heard the ack ack over the Potemkin steps as Putin’s drones came in - two nights ago
I’ve seen Ukrainians in crutches, I’ve met Ukrainian draft dodgers, I’ve talked to Ukrainians who have lost ALL their schoolfriends, and now I’m standing in front of the memorial to 200,000 dead Ukrainians in maidan square listening to the widows crying and in all that time you’ve been pootling around fucking Norway with your stupid little dog
Nevertheless it's a serious political point. It's too easy to get suckered into supporting a dictator for the supposed good they are doing or for some of their values, blind to their true nature and the often brutal consequences for their opponents abroad and at home. The same happened during the 1930s when, prior to war, Hitler had plenty of little cheerleaders in the UK, and even some bigger ones.
The lesson for you is to exercise a bit more thought and foresight before throwing in your lot with those of extreme politics. Most of us don't need to see actual bombs dropping to spot politics and people who are malign.
Sunak should go after Farage and accuse him of being a Putin supporter and also tell him where to go with racism . I have zero time for Sunak but Farage really is absolutely loathsome .
Without wanting to excuse him for being a twat Thursday, the dog whistle 'he's not like us' horse shit is his way to begin exiting the mess and going onto the front foot (or at least trying to)
But you said yesterday that you’re planning to vote Reform. They’re only not one big dog whistle when they’re a foghorn instead.
I did indeed. I'll have to reconsider that. Party of Women looking good for a vote as last woman standing.
Farage has managed to get Shabhana Mahmood defending the PM
Edit - I mean I loathe the damn lot of them but I really don't do not voting. If I'd had 500 quid spare I'd honestly have stood myself (not bothering to campaign)
Personally, I don't think Rishi Sunak is motivated by a love of Britain. I don't think anyone who was could bear to be in a position to start to reverse its decline, and then fail (as a matter of deliberate policy) to do anything about it, before trashing what seedlings of hope there were with an unnecessary election.
That has nothing to do with Sunak's ethnic or religious background. I am pretty sure he identifies with the USA more than he does with India.
Yes but it's not his 'motivation' that Farage is dog whistling. It's how brown he is, how 'not like us' Its absolutely grim grim grim. Fuck him.
Sunak should go after Farage and accuse him of being a Putin supporter and also tell him where to go with racism . I have zero time for Sunak but Farage really is absolutely loathsome .
Without wanting to excuse him for being a twat Thursday, the dog whistle 'he's not like us' horse shit is his way to begin exiting the mess and going onto the front foot (or at least trying to)
But you said yesterday that you’re planning to vote Reform. They’re only not one big dog whistle when they’re a foghorn instead.
I did indeed. I'll have to reconsider that. Party of Women looking good for a vote as last woman standing.
Farage has managed to get Shabhana Mahmood defending the PM
Edit - I mean I loathe the damn lot of them but I really don't do not voting. If I'd had 500 quid spare I'd honestly have stood myself (not bothering to campaign)
Fair dos. I wonder if there are a few who might be reconsidering today. Farage, stripped of Brexit as a cause, has been taking risks with stronger more obviously racialised language in recent days. And if Lee Anderson is their second main voice that doesn’t help. They’ve also made the tactical error of diverging from their focus on Islam, which scares a lot of receptive voters, to start dogwhistling ethnic minorities more broadly.
Islamophobia is easier to do because a. people are actually frightened of Islam, and b. being “anti-Islamist” provides the same kind of plausible deniability as being “anti-Zionist”.
Some unsourced reports on Twitter that ministers have talked him put of resigning, but only if he is free take more of a back seat in the campaign, with the ministers at the front.
Maybe he really has had enough.
He can't take a back seat. Media play follow the leader. He will need to construct a nasty illness or something that makes of impossible to be on the road for a bit
Parties aside, I think the Tories handled Covid OK. They protected millions of private sector jobs (whilst the public sector was still rightly getting its salaries and pensions - plus overtime). The process for getting the vaccines in place was one which undoubtedly delivered.
The only difference I can recall from Labour was that Starmer would have locked us down for another Christmas.
I think the Government have handled Ukraine very well.
Not that anyone remembers, but the Government handled the resulting rise in energy prices as well as it could afford to do, with large-scale energy bill subsidies.
This government came to power on the basis of investing in areas that had for generations voted Labour, in the expectation that they would finally get to see some cash. Sadly. Covid and Ukraine took all that money and more. The one saving grace is that if Corbyn had won in 2019, he would have already spent all the cash needed to get us through these two crises. God alone knows how we would have managed. In all likelihood, we would have had no money for furlough and be struggling with millions more unemployed.
One area where this Government does not blow its own trumpet is in jobs creation. They have an especially good case on youth unemployment - this is at low levels that prevous Labour governments could only dream about. When Labour says "What have you done for our young?", the answer is "Ensured they have jobs."
Each of these testing situations was a once-in-a-generation challenge. The government handled them as well as could have been expected. More importantly, I don't see a cigarette paper between how the Government responded - and how Labour says it would have handled things. Those desperate for change - you've effectively had a Labour government for the past five years. Prepare to be very disappointed.
It's unfortunate we won't get to see the results of the Covid inquiry until much later, but I think there will be a couple of stern words said about preparedness and the speed of response. It was very, very clear by February that the government needed to do something but Boris delayed for ideological reasons. He downplayed the severity, setting the wrong tone. These failures cost lives and I expect the report will say as much. This cultural blinkeredness continued, of course, through to the Downing Street parties. Further, I also think "eat out to help out" will attract some criticism for pushing up cases and for damaging the health messaging.
The preparedness thing will be a blame spread across many more people, of course.
The purpose here is to detail the potential mistakes, because your assessment of "ok" is probably correct, but you only gave positive examples. It we're going to add narrative to that judgement, we need to talk about the bad as well as the good.
The other obvious error (and fwiw one I feel Labour would probably not have made) was the sharp reverse from "no Christmas lockdown" to "lockdown" with about five days notice (that was 2020, right?). I think people would have been less pissed off if they hadn't been led into making holiday season plans that they then had to throw away. And I think that was primarily caused by Boris not wanting to impose restrictions and deliver bad news.
But mostly I think the government did fairly well over covid -- some good stuff, some bad stuff, some "blindsided by events", and a lot of "about the same actions and outcomes as peer countries in the region".
No. There was an obsession with criminal measures rather than providing support for those who were isolating.
Some unsourced reports on Twitter that ministers have talked him put of resigning, but only if he is free take to more of a back seat in the campaign, with the ministers at the front.
Maybe he really has had enough.
In a presidential campaign, hiding the president seems, suboptimal...
Some unsourced reports on Twitter that ministers have talked him out of resigning, but only if he is free to take to more of a back seat in the campaign, with the ministers at the front.
Maybe he really has had enough.
Absolute State of some of his ministers, though? Sgt. Lewis might say "Is this wise, Sir?"
Sunak should go after Farage and accuse him of being a Putin supporter and also tell him where to go with racism . I have zero time for Sunak but Farage really is absolutely loathsome .
Without wanting to excuse him for being a twat Thursday, the dog whistle 'he's not like us' horse shit is his way to begin exiting the mess and going onto the front foot (or at least trying to)
But you said yesterday that you’re planning to vote Reform. They’re only not one big dog whistle when they’re a foghorn instead.
I did indeed. I'll have to reconsider that. Party of Women looking good for a vote as last woman standing.
Farage has managed to get Shabhana Mahmood defending the PM
Edit - I mean I loathe the damn lot of them but I really don't do not voting. If I'd had 500 quid spare I'd honestly have stood myself (not bothering to campaign)
Fair dos. I wonder if there are a few who might be reconsidering today. Farage, stripped of Brexit as a cause, has been taking risks with stronger more obviously racialised language in recent days. And if Lee Anderson is their second main voice that doesn’t help. They’ve also made the tactical error of diverging from their focus on Islam, which scares a lot of receptive voters, to start dogwhistling ethnic minorities more broadly.
Islamophobia is easier to do because a. people are actually frightened of Islam, and b. being “anti-Islamist” provides the same kind of plausible deniability as being “anti-Zionist”.
I was also struck by a picture of Farage and his 'lads' on the trail. Like some shit out of peaky blinders
Sunak should go after Farage and accuse him of being a Putin supporter and also tell him where to go with racism . I have zero time for Sunak but Farage really is absolutely loathsome .
Without wanting to excuse him for being a twat Thursday, the dog whistle 'he's not like us' horse shit is his way to begin exiting the mess and going onto the front foot (or at least trying to)
But you said yesterday that you’re planning to vote Reform. They’re only not one big dog whistle when they’re a foghorn instead.
I did indeed. I'll have to reconsider that. Party of Women looking good for a vote as last woman standing.
Farage has managed to get Shabhana Mahmood defending the PM
Edit - I mean I loathe the damn lot of them but I really don't do not voting. If I'd had 500 quid spare I'd honestly have stood myself (not bothering to campaign)
Fair dos. I wonder if there are a few who might be reconsidering today. Farage, stripped of Brexit as a cause, has been taking risks with stronger more obviously racialised language in recent days. And if Lee Anderson is their second main voice that doesn’t help. They’ve also made the tactical error of diverging from their focus on Islam, which scares a lot of receptive voters, to start dogwhistling ethnic minorities more broadly.
Islamophobia is easier to do because a. people are actually frightened of Islam, and b. being “anti-Islamist” provides the same kind of plausible deniability as being “anti-Zionist”.
I was also struck by a picture of Farage and his 'lads' on the trail. Like some shit out of peaky blinders
This is Casino's vision for the future of the Tory party
Parties aside, I think the Tories handled Covid OK. They protected millions of private sector jobs (whilst the public sector was still rightly getting its salaries and pensions - plus overtime). The process for getting the vaccines in place was one which undoubtedly delivered.
The only difference I can recall from Labour was that Starmer would have locked us down for another Christmas.
I think the Government have handled Ukraine very well.
Not that anyone remembers, but the Government handled the resulting rise in energy prices as well as it could afford to do, with large-scale energy bill subsidies.
This government came to power on the basis of investing in areas that had for generations voted Labour, in the expectation that they would finally get to see some cash. Sadly. Covid and Ukraine took all that money and more. The one saving grace is that if Corbyn had won in 2019, he would have already spent all the cash needed to get us through these two crises. God alone knows how we would have managed. In all likelihood, we would have had no money for furlough and be struggling with millions more unemployed.
One area where this Government does not blow its own trumpet is in jobs creation. They have an especially good case on youth unemployment - this is at low levels that prevous Labour governments could only dream about. When Labour says "What have you done for our young?", the answer is "Ensured they have jobs."
Each of these testing situations was a once-in-a-generation challenge. The government handled them as well as could have been expected. More importantly, I don't see a cigarette paper between how the Government responded - and how Labour says it would have handled things. Those desperate for change - you've effectively had a Labour government for the past five years. Prepare to be very disappointed.
Good post plus we have seen the very very preliminary hints of a recovery (growth, inflation, likely interest rates now) but why then the dog whistles and performative policies on immigration, back to the 50s national service, etc.
This just pisses off the erstwhile Cons voters such as moi who can't abide a nasty party. We could just about have tolerated a Brexit-leaning one (not that anyone knows what that means), but not the performative stuff designed for aged colonels. Of course stopping the boats is important but "Rwanda" is unnecessarily shrill and likely to provoke discord. That's fine if you are sitting on an 80-seat majority and can say "bring it" but not if you are forecast to be on the wrong end of a 300 incoming Lab majority.
I’d be interested in a question along the lines of ‘who will be leader of the Conservative and Unionist Party on 31 December 2024*?’
(*or a closer date that would allow sufficient time for the Hunger Games for Despicable [FORBIDDEN WORD REDACTED]s Tory leadership election to run its course and avoid a caretaker leader - maybe 31 October?)
You could also broaden it out to the other parties but the main point of interest to me in focusing on the Tories would be in flushing out either those who genuinely believe the Sunak-led Tories can win the GE or those who genuinely believe there’s a realistic and likely prospect of Farage-led Reform mounting a predatory merger with the Tories.
Sunak should go after Farage and accuse him of being a Putin supporter and also tell him where to go with racism . I have zero time for Sunak but Farage really is absolutely loathsome .
Without wanting to excuse him for being a twat Thursday, the dog whistle 'he's not like us' horse shit is his way to begin exiting the mess and going onto the front foot (or at least trying to)
But you said yesterday that you’re planning to vote Reform. They’re only not one big dog whistle when they’re a foghorn instead.
I did indeed. I'll have to reconsider that. Party of Women looking good for a vote as last woman standing.
Farage has managed to get Shabhana Mahmood defending the PM
Edit - I mean I loathe the damn lot of them but I really don't do not voting. If I'd had 500 quid spare I'd honestly have stood myself (not bothering to campaign)
Personally, I don't think Rishi Sunak is motivated by a love of Britain. I don't think anyone who was could bear to be in a position to start to reverse its decline, and then fail (as a matter of deliberate policy) to do anything about it, before trashing what seedlings of hope there were with an unnecessary election.
That has nothing to do with Sunak's ethnic or religious background. I am pretty sure he identifies with the USA more than he does with India.
Yes but it's not his 'motivation' that Farage is dog whistling. It's how brown he is, how 'not like us' Its absolutely grim grim grim. Fuck him.
I don't think I've heard the quote in question, but I don't think there's much of a hardcore racist vote to dog-whistle to these days. Certainly not enough to make the difference in any seats.
Nigel has been fairly nice about Rishi Sunak in the past. I would suggest he feels genuine anger at the D-Day thing and let vituperation get the better of him. That's not something I share - I don't give a toss whether Rishi hangs around kissing the President's ring. But I can understand someone like NF being furious.
Some unsourced reports on Twitter that ministers have talked him put of resigning, but only if he is free take to more of a back seat in the campaign, with the ministers at the front.
Maybe he really has had enough.
In a presidential campaign, hiding the president seems, suboptimal...
The Americans are about to have a good go at it.
By hiding Trump in jail?
They’re going to hide Biden in his basement again, and do their best to hide Trump in jail.
Farooq: How many Reform > Con seats? eek: time of first Tory win (based on the time the words - and XYZ (the Tory candidate) is the winner) Stuartinromford: First seat to declare a Conservative win. IanB2: in how many seats will Labour come third (or lower) SandyRentool: Narrowest winning vote margin in any constituency. Ghedebrav: Number of party leaders standing who win a seat TimS: Largest seat majority to be overturned LostPassword: Number of Conservative lost deposits
I need to go to the supermarket and head over to Fraserburgh for a Wimpy milkshake. If anyone has a question to add to the list please include @Farooq so I'm less likely to miss it. Or if someone wants to periodically gather any new questions together into a list, that would be great too.
@Farooq Number of political parties represented in the new Parliament.
Sunak should go after Farage and accuse him of being a Putin supporter and also tell him where to go with racism . I have zero time for Sunak but Farage really is absolutely loathsome .
Without wanting to excuse him for being a twat Thursday, the dog whistle 'he's not like us' horse shit is his way to begin exiting the mess and going onto the front foot (or at least trying to)
But you said yesterday that you’re planning to vote Reform. They’re only not one big dog whistle when they’re a foghorn instead.
I did indeed. I'll have to reconsider that. Party of Women looking good for a vote as last woman standing.
Farage has managed to get Shabhana Mahmood defending the PM
And so she should . The Tories should stop avoiding laying into Farage . I should say judging by some of the comments in the DT there’s a section of the public who won’t vote for Sunak because of his skin colour .
I agree with that.
I'd say on the other side that that group is one of those the Conservatives are attempting to target to ward off Reform, much of the other wing of their coalition having turned its back and walked away.
The BBC Daily Farage blowing the dog whistle really, really loud this morning
You constantly attack Sunak but following this week he is over and far more worrying us Farage and the rise of the right across Europe
Richi is still the PM for now, so he gets the stick for his cockups.
It is worrying that many of the same people who propelled him to the job would be happy with Nigel Fucking Farage instead, but that's a future problem.
I am not at all sure Farage will win in Clacton and it is the one place tactical voting for the conservative would send a clear message to him and Reform
Is there any evidence that Farage & Reform have learnt anything about getting the vote out, local campaigning etc.
Up to now, they have always been crap at this to an extreme degree.
Carswell won the seat for UKIP because he was a popular MP and campaigned effectively. Perhaps most importantly, he had a fairly competent local organisation. IIRC a number of organisational types defected with him.
Even so, he only got a bit over half of the previous (his) Conservative vote.
My god. I was all bubbly and jovial. And then I got a cab to Maidan square and now I am standing in front of THIS and there are women either side of me weeping. Every flag is a fallen Ukrainian soldier
This is just one part of it. The flags go on and on. Quite close to blubbing myself.
We cannot let them lose!
Slava ukraini
What a journey, from someone who started out as Putin's little cheerleader.
Yes, quite a journey. I’ve actually come to Ukraine - twice. I’ve been to Lviv and chernivtsi, Kyiv and Odessa. I’ve heard bombs fall on the castle of Kamanets podolski’y. I saw a chunk of missile fall on my own street in Odessa. I watched and heard the ack ack over the Potemkin steps as Putin’s drones came in - two nights ago
I’ve seen Ukrainians in crutches, I’ve met Ukrainian draft dodgers, I’ve talked to Ukrainians who have lost ALL their schoolfriends, and now I’m standing in front of the memorial to 200,000 dead Ukrainians in maidan square listening to the widows crying and in all that time you’ve been pootling around fucking Norway with your stupid little dog
Quite rightly very few of us are able or willing to go to war zones. We don’t want to get in the way of a serious business. So you’re in Ukraine. Good for you. Maybe if you’d stop taking about it in the first person (“I’ve seen…”, “I’ve met…”) like some Poundshop Roy Batty people on here would stop suspecting the only thing you give a fuck about is the bragging rights rather than the suffering of the people you meet.
But their suspicions are correct. Let’s remember what you are. You’re glossy magazine travel writer. Who happens to be in the less dangerous bits of a war zone. You’re not Ernest Hemingway. You’re not John Steinbeck. You’re not even Bruce Chatwin. You’re a late middle aged man desperate to impress a bunch of strangers on an obscure message board through the medium of war porn. That’s all you are. Less than nothing.
Parties aside, I think the Tories handled Covid OK. They protected millions of private sector jobs (whilst the public sector was still rightly getting its salaries and pensions - plus overtime). The process for getting the vaccines in place was one which undoubtedly delivered.
The only difference I can recall from Labour was that Starmer would have locked us down for another Christmas.
I think the Government have handled Ukraine very well.
Not that anyone remembers, but the Government handled the resulting rise in energy prices as well as it could afford to do, with large-scale energy bill subsidies.
This government came to power on the basis of investing in areas that had for generations voted Labour, in the expectation that they would finally get to see some cash. Sadly. Covid and Ukraine took all that money and more. The one saving grace is that if Corbyn had won in 2019, he would have already spent all the cash needed to get us through these two crises. God alone knows how we would have managed. In all likelihood, we would have had no money for furlough and be struggling with millions more unemployed.
One area where this Government does not blow its own trumpet is in jobs creation. They have an especially good case on youth unemployment - this is at low levels that prevous Labour governments could only dream about. When Labour says "What have you done for our young?", the answer is "Ensured they have jobs."
Each of these testing situations was a once-in-a-generation challenge. The government handled them as well as could have been expected. More importantly, I don't see a cigarette paper between how the Government responded - and how Labour says it would have handled things. Those desperate for change - you've effectively had a Labour government for the past five years. Prepare to be very disappointed.
I can't remember seeing more beggars and homeless on the streets since the early days of Thatcher.
Sunak should go after Farage and accuse him of being a Putin supporter and also tell him where to go with racism . I have zero time for Sunak but Farage really is absolutely loathsome .
Without wanting to excuse him for being a twat Thursday, the dog whistle 'he's not like us' horse shit is his way to begin exiting the mess and going onto the front foot (or at least trying to)
But you said yesterday that you’re planning to vote Reform. They’re only not one big dog whistle when they’re a foghorn instead.
I did indeed. I'll have to reconsider that. Party of Women looking good for a vote as last woman standing.
Farage has managed to get Shabhana Mahmood defending the PM
Edit - I mean I loathe the damn lot of them but I really don't do not voting. If I'd had 500 quid spare I'd honestly have stood myself (not bothering to campaign)
Personally, I don't think Rishi Sunak is motivated by a love of Britain. I don't think anyone who was could bear to be in a position to start to reverse its decline, and then fail (as a matter of deliberate policy) to do anything about it, before trashing what seedlings of hope there were with an unnecessary election.
That has nothing to do with Sunak's ethnic or religious background. I am pretty sure he identifies with the USA more than he does with India.
Yes but it's not his 'motivation' that Farage is dog whistling. It's how brown he is, how 'not like us' Its absolutely grim grim grim. Fuck him.
I don't think I've heard the quote in question, but I don't think there's much of a hardcore racist vote to dog-whistle to these days. Certainly not enough to make the difference in any seats.
Nigel has been fairly nice about Rishi Sunak in the past. I would suggest he feels genuine anger at the D-Day thing and let vituperation get the better of him. That's not something I share - I don't give a toss whether Rishi hangs around kissing the President's ring. But I can understand someone like NF being furious.
Farage was there to get photos. He's only furious he's not in the Lords or the British Embassy in the States.
Parties aside, I think the Tories handled Covid OK. They protected millions of private sector jobs (whilst the public sector was still rightly getting its salaries and pensions - plus overtime). The process for getting the vaccines in place was one which undoubtedly delivered.
The only difference I can recall from Labour was that Starmer would have locked us down for another Christmas.
I think the Government have handled Ukraine very well.
Not that anyone remembers, but the Government handled the resulting rise in energy prices as well as it could afford to do, with large-scale energy bill subsidies.
This government came to power on the basis of investing in areas that had for generations voted Labour, in the expectation that they would finally get to see some cash. Sadly. Covid and Ukraine took all that money and more. The one saving grace is that if Corbyn had won in 2019, he would have already spent all the cash needed to get us through these two crises. God alone knows how we would have managed. In all likelihood, we would have had no money for furlough and be struggling with millions more unemployed.
One area where this Government does not blow its own trumpet is in jobs creation. They have an especially good case on youth unemployment - this is at low levels that prevous Labour governments could only dream about. When Labour says "What have you done for our young?", the answer is "Ensured they have jobs."
Each of these testing situations was a once-in-a-generation challenge. The government handled them as well as could have been expected. More importantly, I don't see a cigarette paper between how the Government responded - and how Labour says it would have handled things. Those desperate for change - you've effectively had a Labour government for the past five years. Prepare to be very disappointed.
I can't remember seeing more beggars and homeless on the streets since the early days of Thatcher.
Gotta be careful there, Roger, because the majority of beggars I see are evidently from Eastern Europe which narrative, were it to take hold, doesn't help anyone.
Parties aside, I think the Tories handled Covid OK. They protected millions of private sector jobs (whilst the public sector was still rightly getting its salaries and pensions - plus overtime). The process for getting the vaccines in place was one which undoubtedly delivered.
The only difference I can recall from Labour was that Starmer would have locked us down for another Christmas.
I think the Government have handled Ukraine very well.
Not that anyone remembers, but the Government handled the resulting rise in energy prices as well as it could afford to do, with large-scale energy bill subsidies.
This government came to power on the basis of investing in areas that had for generations voted Labour, in the expectation that they would finally get to see some cash. Sadly. Covid and Ukraine took all that money and more. The one saving grace is that if Corbyn had won in 2019, he would have already spent all the cash needed to get us through these two crises. God alone knows how we would have managed. In all likelihood, we would have had no money for furlough and be struggling with millions more unemployed.
One area where this Government does not blow its own trumpet is in jobs creation. They have an especially good case on youth unemployment - this is at low levels that prevous Labour governments could only dream about. When Labour says "What have you done for our young?", the answer is "Ensured they have jobs."
Each of these testing situations was a once-in-a-generation challenge. The government handled them as well as could have been expected. More importantly, I don't see a cigarette paper between how the Government responded - and how Labour says it would have handled things. Those desperate for change - you've effectively had a Labour government for the past five years. Prepare to be very disappointed.
It's unfortunate we won't get to see the results of the Covid inquiry until much later, but I think there will be a couple of stern words said about preparedness and the speed of response. It was very, very clear by February that the government needed to do something but Boris delayed for ideological reasons. He downplayed the severity, setting the wrong tone. These failures cost lives and I expect the report will say as much. This cultural blinkeredness continued, of course, through to the Downing Street parties. Further, I also think "eat out to help out" will attract some criticism for pushing up cases and for damaging the health messaging.
The preparedness thing will be a blame spread across many more people, of course.
The purpose here is to detail the potential mistakes, because your assessment of "ok" is probably correct, but you only gave positive examples. It we're going to add narrative to that judgement, we need to talk about the bad as well as the good.
The other obvious error (and fwiw one I feel Labour would probably not have made) was the sharp reverse from "no Christmas lockdown" to "lockdown" with about five days notice (that was 2020, right?). I think people would have been less pissed off if they hadn't been led into making holiday season plans that they then had to throw away. And I think that was primarily caused by Boris not wanting to impose restrictions and deliver bad news.
But mostly I think the government did fairly well over covid -- some good stuff, some bad stuff, some "blindsided by events", and a lot of "about the same actions and outcomes as peer countries in the region".
No. There was an obsession with criminal measures rather than providing support for those who were isolating.
I had forgotten about that - happy to put the more ludicrous and petty enforcement especially in the "some bad stuff" bucket. But I think "legal restrictions" in the broader sense is in the "same actions as peer countries" bucket.
My god. I was all bubbly and jovial. And then I got a cab to Maidan square and now I am standing in front of THIS and there are women either side of me weeping. Every flag is a fallen Ukrainian soldier
This is just one part of it. The flags go on and on. Quite close to blubbing myself.
We cannot let them lose!
Slava ukraini
What a journey, from someone who started out as Putin's little cheerleader.
Yes, quite a journey. I’ve actually come to Ukraine - twice. I’ve been to Lviv and chernivtsi, Kyiv and Odessa. I’ve heard bombs fall on the castle of Kamanets podolski’y. I saw a chunk of missile fall on my own street in Odessa. I watched and heard the ack ack over the Potemkin steps as Putin’s drones came in - two nights ago
I’ve seen Ukrainians in crutches, I’ve met Ukrainian draft dodgers, I’ve talked to Ukrainians who have lost ALL their schoolfriends, and now I’m standing in front of the memorial to 200,000 dead Ukrainians in maidan square listening to the widows crying and in all that time you’ve been pootling around fucking Norway with your stupid little dog
Nevertheless it's a serious political point. It's too easy to get suckered into supporting a dictator for the supposed good they are doing or for some of their values, blind to their true nature and the often brutal consequences for their opponents abroad and at home. The same happened during the 1930s when, prior to war, Hitler had plenty of little cheerleaders in the UK, and even some bigger ones.
The lesson for you is to exercise a bit more thought and foresight before throwing in your lot with those of extreme politics. Most of us don't need to see actual bombs dropping to spot politics and people who are malign.
My god. I was all bubbly and jovial. And then I got a cab to Maidan square and now I am standing in front of THIS and there are women either side of me weeping. Every flag is a fallen Ukrainian soldier
This is just one part of it. The flags go on and on. Quite close to blubbing myself.
We cannot let them lose!
Slava ukraini
What a journey, from someone who started out as Putin's little cheerleader.
Yes, quite a journey. I’ve actually come to Ukraine - twice. I’ve been to Lviv and chernivtsi, Kyiv and Odessa. I’ve heard bombs fall on the castle of Kamanets podolski’y. I saw a chunk of missile fall on my own street in Odessa. I watched and heard the ack ack over the Potemkin steps as Putin’s drones came in - two nights ago
I’ve seen Ukrainians in crutches, I’ve met Ukrainian draft dodgers, I’ve talked to Ukrainians who have lost ALL their schoolfriends, and now I’m standing in front of the memorial to 200,000 dead Ukrainians in maidan square listening to the widows crying and in all that time you’ve been pootling around fucking Norway with your stupid little dog
Nevertheless it's a serious political point. It's too easy to get suckered into supporting a dictator for the supposed good they are doing or for some of their values, blind to their true nature and the often brutal consequences for their opponents abroad and at home. The same happened during the 1930s when, prior to war, Hitler had plenty of little cheerleaders in the UK, and even some bigger ones.
The lesson for you is to exercise a bit more thought and foresight before throwing in your lot with those of extreme politics. Most of us don't need to see actual bombs dropping to spot politics and people who are malign.
Alternatively you’re a sad, castrated suburban fool from ventnor and some people actually have the bollocks to go and see this war for themselves. Let the viewer decide
The Tories will put benefit reforms at the heart of their election campaign on Sunday as Rishi Sunak seeks to turn things around following a difficult week
There are votes to be had from Reform for performative cruelty.
Who now expects them to be in government on July 5th?
Hence the random policies and promises will get more ludicrous and uncosted. All paid for by imaginary efficiency savings once more I expect.
There's always been scope for Welfare reform, but the obvious retort is "why didn't you do something about it in the last Parliament?".
How much more can they squeeze out of the tax avoidance genie . One thing I’m surprised about is that the latest briefings suggest they’re not going to touch IHT .
This was surely the final Hail Mary . Maybe it might still happen . Or maybe Sunak saving his kids hundreds of millions of pounds wasn’t a good look .
And how much more can Labour squeeze out of the tax avoidance genie? Enough for tens of thousand more NHS appointments? Leave it out...
Those appointments aren’t coming out of the tax avoidance cash machine . I’m sure however that it will do some heavy lifting in other areas.
You think "ending non-dom status" is not part of the tax avoidance regime? And you think it is going to be tax positive? Really? You aren't normlly that naive.
The first obvious sign we have a Labour government will be the flight of capital out of the UK. No doubt lefties will cheer on the departure.
Until they don't have the money to fund hospital beds.
I’m dubious of these tax avoidance savings but all parties think about is getting elected so as long as they can look like they’ve got somewhere to get the money from pre-election they’ll worry about the reality after 4th July . As for flight of capital I don’t see it .
On flight of capital.... If Labour has a big majority, you are going to have a mass of new backbench MPs all looking to get noticed. Some of them might have been councillors, but there will be a cohort who have effectively only known student politics. This "Eat the Rich!" cohort are going to be making noise about how the those with wealth need to pay "their fair share". Which is way more than those who have the wealth will want to pay - they are not going to see eye to eye on what is "fair".
And so within a year - and probably much sooner - there will have been a significant departure for those shores who have a better understanding of what is "fair". That money will not be paying stamp duty on new properties here, will not be paying VAT on their latest Bentley or Ferrari or super yacht.
And there will be a black hole that those muppets who thought they would give Labour a try will end up having to fund.
What you say is, as always, very credible. Two issues, though:
1. Stop calling your opponents muppets. Given the state of public services, public finances and government moral failure there are very good reasons to think Labour are, at the very least, the least worst option at present. 2. You are presenting half the story. We are in this state at least partly because the moral limits on eg executive pay, levels of inequality, treatment of the most vulnerable have been broken by a Tory government that is simply looking after it's own. A degree of 'eat the rich' to put it in your crude terms, is probably needed. I trust Starmer to moderate those tendencies to a sensible level. I may be wrong, but I hope not.
What most people of most political persuasions want is public services that care for those in need in our society that (a) work and (b) are sustainable, by which I mean that they are fully funded by our tax base.
People who think that they can ignore the sustainability aspect are indeed muppets and that includes not just those of the left but also the likes of Truss/Kwarteng on the right. Neither can give more than a short term fix at long term cost.
If we want public services that meet (a) we need to grow our tax base. As a generality achieving that by increasing taxes on our existing production disincentivises investment, economic activity and future tax flows.
What we should be discussing as a nation is what are the parameters of this, can we increase taxes to meet current needs without damaging future growth? The current government has significantly increased taxes already to fund its spending and the result of that and far too little investment has been low growth. But discussing such issues would be grown up politics and our media, politicians and electorate seem to have very little interest or enthusiasm for that.
100% agree. But that isn't the people Mark called muppets. Anyone who wants to give Labour a try are sensible, in my view.
And what do you do as a political leader, having watched Labour be rejected by the electorate in its many different guises over the past few years, if you know that what you've written above is true but you also know you can't really talk about it?
I'm as sceptical as the next person of the 'growth will solve everything' line from Reeves, but if it signals a 'we'll tax sensibly to fund investment' then I'm about as happy as I'm likely to get with the current choices available to us.
The people have decided, we are going to give Labour a go and that is fair enough. I genuinely wish Reeves and Starmer every success. This is our country and it is in all our interests that they succeed.
But I suspect that most of the moaning after the first few months of euphoria will come from the left of the Labour party and people who seem to have convinced themselves that this government is not spending enough because they are nasty Tories rather than because the spending reflects (sort of) our current resources.
The leftists will be comparing what Starmer and Reeves are spending money on compared with what Corbyn and McDonnell said they'd spend money on.
Likely big uproars include:
An increase in pension ages An increase in student fees NHS pay demands leading to strikes Morrisons going bankrupt with demands to nationalise it
The Tories need to eviscerate Farage. It's late, but not too late. He does not represent the future of right wing politics. Come on Sunak, what have you got left to lose, do the right thing.
After the Braverman/Patel/Rwanda/Brexit fiascos you'd need extremely good eyesight to tell the difference between the Tories and the Faragists
Not really - correct me if I'm wrong, but Farage is a huge Trump fan, with all that implies.
I don't recall either Johnson or Sunak saying "we only lost the by-elections because they were rigged".
@Farooq - lowest winning percentage & seat is always a good one. Lots of low 30s potential this election.
Actually a related one, though equally requiring a notional starting point due to boundary changes, is seats taken from third place
A handful of potential ones in Scotland (three or four way marginals where SNP current incumbent) and some blue wally bits of the South (Lab leapfrogging LD to take seat of Tories)
The Tories will put benefit reforms at the heart of their election campaign on Sunday as Rishi Sunak seeks to turn things around following a difficult week
There are votes to be had from Reform for performative cruelty.
Who now expects them to be in government on July 5th?
Hence the random policies and promises will get more ludicrous and uncosted. All paid for by imaginary efficiency savings once more I expect.
There's always been scope for Welfare reform, but the obvious retort is "why didn't you do something about it in the last Parliament?".
How much more can they squeeze out of the tax avoidance genie . One thing I’m surprised about is that the latest briefings suggest they’re not going to touch IHT .
This was surely the final Hail Mary . Maybe it might still happen . Or maybe Sunak saving his kids hundreds of millions of pounds wasn’t a good look .
And how much more can Labour squeeze out of the tax avoidance genie? Enough for tens of thousand more NHS appointments? Leave it out...
Those appointments aren’t coming out of the tax avoidance cash machine . I’m sure however that it will do some heavy lifting in other areas.
You think "ending non-dom status" is not part of the tax avoidance regime? And you think it is going to be tax positive? Really? You aren't normlly that naive.
The first obvious sign we have a Labour government will be the flight of capital out of the UK. No doubt lefties will cheer on the departure.
Until they don't have the money to fund hospital beds.
I’m dubious of these tax avoidance savings but all parties think about is getting elected so as long as they can look like they’ve got somewhere to get the money from pre-election they’ll worry about the reality after 4th July . As for flight of capital I don’t see it .
On flight of capital.... If Labour has a big majority, you are going to have a mass of new backbench MPs all looking to get noticed. Some of them might have been councillors, but there will be a cohort who have effectively only known student politics. This "Eat the Rich!" cohort are going to be making noise about how the those with wealth need to pay "their fair share". Which is way more than those who have the wealth will want to pay - they are not going to see eye to eye on what is "fair".
And so within a year - and probably much sooner - there will have been a significant departure for those shores who have a better understanding of what is "fair". That money will not be paying stamp duty on new properties here, will not be paying VAT on their latest Bentley or Ferrari or super yacht.
And there will be a black hole that those muppets who thought they would give Labour a try will end up having to fund.
What you say is, as always, very credible. Two issues, though:
1. Stop calling your opponents muppets. Given the state of public services, public finances and government moral failure there are very good reasons to think Labour are, at the very least, the least worst option at present. 2. You are presenting half the story. We are in this state at least partly because the moral limits on eg executive pay, levels of inequality, treatment of the most vulnerable have been broken by a Tory government that is simply looking after it's own. A degree of 'eat the rich' to put it in your crude terms, is probably needed. I trust Starmer to moderate those tendencies to a sensible level. I may be wrong, but I hope not.
What most people of most political persuasions want is public services that care for those in need in our society that (a) work and (b) are sustainable, by which I mean that they are fully funded by our tax base.
People who think that they can ignore the sustainability aspect are indeed muppets and that includes not just those of the left but also the likes of Truss/Kwarteng on the right. Neither can give more than a short term fix at long term cost.
If we want public services that meet (a) we need to grow our tax base. As a generality achieving that by increasing taxes on our existing production disincentivises investment, economic activity and future tax flows.
What we should be discussing as a nation is what are the parameters of this, can we increase taxes to meet current needs without damaging future growth? The current government has significantly increased taxes already to fund its spending and the result of that and far too little investment has been low growth. But discussing such issues would be grown up politics and our media, politicians and electorate seem to have very little interest or enthusiasm for that.
100% agree. But that isn't the people Mark called muppets. Anyone who wants to give Labour a try are sensible, in my view.
And what do you do as a political leader, having watched Labour be rejected by the electorate in its many different guises over the past few years, if you know that what you've written above is true but you also know you can't really talk about it?
I'm as sceptical as the next person of the 'growth will solve everything' line from Reeves, but if it signals a 'we'll tax sensibly to fund investment' then I'm about as happy as I'm likely to get with the current choices available to us.
The people have decided, we are going to give Labour a go and that is fair enough. I genuinely wish Reeves and Starmer every success. This is our country and it is in all our interests that they succeed.
But I suspect that most of the moaning after the first few months of euphoria will come from the left of the Labour party and people who seem to have convinced themselves that this government is not spending enough because they are nasty Tories rather than because the spending reflects (sort of) our current resources.
The leftists will be comparing what Starmer and Reeves are spending money on compared with what Corbyn and McDonnell said they'd spend money on.
Likely big uproars include:
An increase in pension ages An increase in student fees NHS pay demands leading to strikes Morrisons going bankrupt with demands to nationalise it
Could equally be Asda although I suspect that will have a longer(ish) timescale as the killer for Asda will be the shift to electric cars killing off Euro Garages..
Very funny but last night I went to a (very, very rare for me) military shindig. Some serving and plenty of retired soldiers age range I would say (incl those serving) 25-70.
I was on a very agreeable table and a friend leaned over to me, waved at the assembled masses and said: you see all these people, these people are Reform voters.
He is a local councillor and said that there had been a lot of eastern European immigration into the area and as a result "locals" couldn't find a school or GP or whatnot for love nor money.
It surprised him (as did the enthusiasm for Brexit seven years ago) but there you are.
Parties aside, I think the Tories handled Covid OK. They protected millions of private sector jobs (whilst the public sector was still rightly getting its salaries and pensions - plus overtime). The process for getting the vaccines in place was one which undoubtedly delivered.
The only difference I can recall from Labour was that Starmer would have locked us down for another Christmas.
I think the Government have handled Ukraine very well.
Not that anyone remembers, but the Government handled the resulting rise in energy prices as well as it could afford to do, with large-scale energy bill subsidies.
This government came to power on the basis of investing in areas that had for generations voted Labour, in the expectation that they would finally get to see some cash. Sadly. Covid and Ukraine took all that money and more. The one saving grace is that if Corbyn had won in 2019, he would have already spent all the cash needed to get us through these two crises. God alone knows how we would have managed. In all likelihood, we would have had no money for furlough and be struggling with millions more unemployed.
One area where this Government does not blow its own trumpet is in jobs creation. They have an especially good case on youth unemployment - this is at low levels that prevous Labour governments could only dream about. When Labour says "What have you done for our young?", the answer is "Ensured they have jobs."
Each of these testing situations was a once-in-a-generation challenge. The government handled them as well as could have been expected. More importantly, I don't see a cigarette paper between how the Government responded - and how Labour says it would have handled things. Those desperate for change - you've effectively had a Labour government for the past five years. Prepare to be very disappointed.
I can't remember seeing more beggars and homeless on the streets since the early days of Thatcher.
Gotta be careful there, Roger, because the majority of beggars I see are evidently from Eastern Europe which narrative, were it to take hold, doesn't help anyone.
Sunak should go after Farage and accuse him of being a Putin supporter and also tell him where to go with racism . I have zero time for Sunak but Farage really is absolutely loathsome .
Without wanting to excuse him for being a twat Thursday, the dog whistle 'he's not like us' horse shit is his way to begin exiting the mess and going onto the front foot (or at least trying to)
But you said yesterday that you’re planning to vote Reform. They’re only not one big dog whistle when they’re a foghorn instead.
I did indeed. I'll have to reconsider that. Party of Women looking good for a vote as last woman standing.
Farage has managed to get Shabhana Mahmood defending the PM
Edit - I mean I loathe the damn lot of them but I really don't do not voting. If I'd had 500 quid spare I'd honestly have stood myself (not bothering to campaign)
Personally, I don't think Rishi Sunak is motivated by a love of Britain. I don't think anyone who was could bear to be in a position to start to reverse its decline, and then fail (as a matter of deliberate policy) to do anything about it, before trashing what seedlings of hope there were with an unnecessary election.
That has nothing to do with Sunak's ethnic or religious background. I am pretty sure he identifies with the USA more than he does with India.
Yes but it's not his 'motivation' that Farage is dog whistling. It's how brown he is, how 'not like us' Its absolutely grim grim grim. Fuck him.
I don't think I've heard the quote in question, but I don't think there's much of a hardcore racist vote to dog-whistle to these days. Certainly not enough to make the difference in any seats.
Nigel has been fairly nice about Rishi Sunak in the past. I would suggest he feels genuine anger at the D-Day thing and let vituperation get the better of him. That's not something I share - I don't give a toss whether Rishi hangs around kissing the President's ring. But I can understand someone like NF being furious.
Farage was there to get photos. He's only furious he's not in the Lords or the British Embassy in the States.
As far as I'm concerned NF is the only show in town at the moment. I would have preferred Tory MPs to have the stones to ditch Rishi Sunak when they had the chance, but they didn't.
Btw I have your photo. I gave the 500 wotsits to a volunteer by the flags. Natalia. She lost her nephew in the war last year - shot in cold blood by Russians
If you want to see the photo now you’ll have to get special dispensation from the mods - I don’t want to get banned for over-photo-ing
Parties aside, I think the Tories handled Covid OK. They protected millions of private sector jobs (whilst the public sector was still rightly getting its salaries and pensions - plus overtime). The process for getting the vaccines in place was one which undoubtedly delivered.
The only difference I can recall from Labour was that Starmer would have locked us down for another Christmas.
I think the Government have handled Ukraine very well.
Not that anyone remembers, but the Government handled the resulting rise in energy prices as well as it could afford to do, with large-scale energy bill subsidies.
This government came to power on the basis of investing in areas that had for generations voted Labour, in the expectation that they would finally get to see some cash. Sadly. Covid and Ukraine took all that money and more. The one saving grace is that if Corbyn had won in 2019, he would have already spent all the cash needed to get us through these two crises. God alone knows how we would have managed. In all likelihood, we would have had no money for furlough and be struggling with millions more unemployed.
One area where this Government does not blow its own trumpet is in jobs creation. They have an especially good case on youth unemployment - this is at low levels that prevous Labour governments could only dream about. When Labour says "What have you done for our young?", the answer is "Ensured they have jobs."
Each of these testing situations was a once-in-a-generation challenge. The government handled them as well as could have been expected. More importantly, I don't see a cigarette paper between how the Government responded - and how Labour says it would have handled things. Those desperate for change - you've effectively had a Labour government for the past five years. Prepare to be very disappointed.
I can't remember seeing more beggars and homeless on the streets since the early days of Thatcher.
Things that bad in the south of France?
The most street sleeping and begging I can remember was in the early 1990s. Largely disappeared then but has made a comeback. Still nothing like the 80s/90s though.
Parties aside, I think the Tories handled Covid OK. They protected millions of private sector jobs (whilst the public sector was still rightly getting its salaries and pensions - plus overtime). The process for getting the vaccines in place was one which undoubtedly delivered.
The only difference I can recall from Labour was that Starmer would have locked us down for another Christmas.
I think the Government have handled Ukraine very well.
Not that anyone remembers, but the Government handled the resulting rise in energy prices as well as it could afford to do, with large-scale energy bill subsidies.
This government came to power on the basis of investing in areas that had for generations voted Labour, in the expectation that they would finally get to see some cash. Sadly. Covid and Ukraine took all that money and more. The one saving grace is that if Corbyn had won in 2019, he would have already spent all the cash needed to get us through these two crises. God alone knows how we would have managed. In all likelihood, we would have had no money for furlough and be struggling with millions more unemployed.
One area where this Government does not blow its own trumpet is in jobs creation. They have an especially good case on youth unemployment - this is at low levels that prevous Labour governments could only dream about. When Labour says "What have you done for our young?", the answer is "Ensured they have jobs."
Each of these testing situations was a once-in-a-generation challenge. The government handled them as well as could have been expected. More importantly, I don't see a cigarette paper between how the Government responded - and how Labour says it would have handled things. Those desperate for change - you've effectively had a Labour government for the past five years. Prepare to be very disappointed.
It's unfortunate we won't get to see the results of the Covid inquiry until much later, but I think there will be a couple of stern words said about preparedness and the speed of response. It was very, very clear by February that the government needed to do something but Boris delayed for ideological reasons. He downplayed the severity, setting the wrong tone. These failures cost lives and I expect the report will say as much. This cultural blinkeredness continued, of course, through to the Downing Street parties. Further, I also think "eat out to help out" will attract some criticism for pushing up cases and for damaging the health messaging.
The preparedness thing will be a blame spread across many more people, of course.
The purpose here is to detail the potential mistakes, because your assessment of "ok" is probably correct, but you only gave positive examples. It we're going to add narrative to that judgement, we need to talk about the bad as well as the good.
I give them something of a pass on that, not because it was handled well, but because it's unclear anyone else would have done massively better on that. A 'perfect' response might significantly have altered the course of the UK pandemic, but given the infectivity of the virus, a bit better management wouldn't have done so.
The real failures IMO were the huge amounts of money blown on failing to transition quickly from expensive and slow PCR 'track and trace' policy to lateral flow tests; on were clearly corrupt contracts for PPE; and on fraudulent loans and the failure to recover significant amounts.
We'd still be financially stretched, but we might be anywhere between 50 and 100 £bn better off.
“Clearly corrupt”? Citation needed. A massive slur on thousands of hard working civil servants who did their best to implement an imperfect solution at speed, and a very naive view on how much influence politicians can have over that much procurement.
Those who want to hammer the Tories on "clearly corrupt" PPE contracts seem to have been zapped with a Men In Black memory eraser - of when Labour were saying the Government should have entered into a bunch of PPE contracts that, er, did not stand up to a moment's scrutiny.
You can guarantee failure to provide PPE would have been an ongoing theme in this election, if the Government had left the NHS without masks and gowns.
Sunak should go after Farage and accuse him of being a Putin supporter and also tell him where to go with racism . I have zero time for Sunak but Farage really is absolutely loathsome .
Without wanting to excuse him for being a twat Thursday, the dog whistle 'he's not like us' horse shit is his way to begin exiting the mess and going onto the front foot (or at least trying to)
But you said yesterday that you’re planning to vote Reform. They’re only not one big dog whistle when they’re a foghorn instead.
I did indeed. I'll have to reconsider that. Party of Women looking good for a vote as last woman standing.
Farage has managed to get Shabhana Mahmood defending the PM
Edit - I mean I loathe the damn lot of them but I really don't do not voting. If I'd had 500 quid spare I'd honestly have stood myself (not bothering to campaign)
Personally, I don't think Rishi Sunak is motivated by a love of Britain. I don't think anyone who was could bear to be in a position to start to reverse its decline, and then fail (as a matter of deliberate policy) to do anything about it, before trashing what seedlings of hope there were with an unnecessary election.
That has nothing to do with Sunak's ethnic or religious background. I am pretty sure he identifies with the USA more than he does with India.
Yes but it's not his 'motivation' that Farage is dog whistling. It's how brown he is, how 'not like us' Its absolutely grim grim grim. Fuck him.
I don't think I've heard the quote in question, but I don't think there's much of a hardcore racist vote to dog-whistle to these days. Certainly not enough to make the difference in any seats.
Nigel has been fairly nice about Rishi Sunak in the past. I would suggest he feels genuine anger at the D-Day thing and let vituperation get the better of him. That's not something I share - I don't give a toss whether Rishi hangs around kissing the President's ring. But I can understand someone like NF being furious.
Farage was there to get photos. He's only furious he's not in the Lords or the British Embassy in the States.
As far as I'm concerned NF is the only show in town at the moment. I would have preferred Tory MPs to have the stones to ditch Rishi Sunak when they had the chance, but they didn't.
The Tories will put benefit reforms at the heart of their election campaign on Sunday as Rishi Sunak seeks to turn things around following a difficult week
There are votes to be had from Reform for performative cruelty.
Who now expects them to be in government on July 5th?
Hence the random policies and promises will get more ludicrous and uncosted. All paid for by imaginary efficiency savings once more I expect.
There's always been scope for Welfare reform, but the obvious retort is "why didn't you do something about it in the last Parliament?".
How much more can they squeeze out of the tax avoidance genie . One thing I’m surprised about is that the latest briefings suggest they’re not going to touch IHT .
This was surely the final Hail Mary . Maybe it might still happen . Or maybe Sunak saving his kids hundreds of millions of pounds wasn’t a good look .
And how much more can Labour squeeze out of the tax avoidance genie? Enough for tens of thousand more NHS appointments? Leave it out...
Those appointments aren’t coming out of the tax avoidance cash machine . I’m sure however that it will do some heavy lifting in other areas.
You think "ending non-dom status" is not part of the tax avoidance regime? And you think it is going to be tax positive? Really? You aren't normlly that naive.
The first obvious sign we have a Labour government will be the flight of capital out of the UK. No doubt lefties will cheer on the departure.
Until they don't have the money to fund hospital beds.
I’m dubious of these tax avoidance savings but all parties think about is getting elected so as long as they can look like they’ve got somewhere to get the money from pre-election they’ll worry about the reality after 4th July . As for flight of capital I don’t see it .
On flight of capital.... If Labour has a big majority, you are going to have a mass of new backbench MPs all looking to get noticed. Some of them might have been councillors, but there will be a cohort who have effectively only known student politics. This "Eat the Rich!" cohort are going to be making noise about how the those with wealth need to pay "their fair share". Which is way more than those who have the wealth will want to pay - they are not going to see eye to eye on what is "fair".
And so within a year - and probably much sooner - there will have been a significant departure for those shores who have a better understanding of what is "fair". That money will not be paying stamp duty on new properties here, will not be paying VAT on their latest Bentley or Ferrari or super yacht.
And there will be a black hole that those muppets who thought they would give Labour a try will end up having to fund.
What you say is, as always, very credible. Two issues, though:
1. Stop calling your opponents muppets. Given the state of public services, public finances and government moral failure there are very good reasons to think Labour are, at the very least, the least worst option at present. 2. You are presenting half the story. We are in this state at least partly because the moral limits on eg executive pay, levels of inequality, treatment of the most vulnerable have been broken by a Tory government that is simply looking after it's own. A degree of 'eat the rich' to put it in your crude terms, is probably needed. I trust Starmer to moderate those tendencies to a sensible level. I may be wrong, but I hope not.
What most people of most political persuasions want is public services that care for those in need in our society that (a) work and (b) are sustainable, by which I mean that they are fully funded by our tax base.
People who think that they can ignore the sustainability aspect are indeed muppets and that includes not just those of the left but also the likes of Truss/Kwarteng on the right. Neither can give more than a short term fix at long term cost.
If we want public services that meet (a) we need to grow our tax base. As a generality achieving that by increasing taxes on our existing production disincentivises investment, economic activity and future tax flows.
What we should be discussing as a nation is what are the parameters of this, can we increase taxes to meet current needs without damaging future growth? The current government has significantly increased taxes already to fund its spending and the result of that and far too little investment has been low growth. But discussing such issues would be grown up politics and our media, politicians and electorate seem to have very little interest or enthusiasm for that.
100% agree. But that isn't the people Mark called muppets. Anyone who wants to give Labour a try are sensible, in my view.
And what do you do as a political leader, having watched Labour be rejected by the electorate in its many different guises over the past few years, if you know that what you've written above is true but you also know you can't really talk about it?
I'm as sceptical as the next person of the 'growth will solve everything' line from Reeves, but if it signals a 'we'll tax sensibly to fund investment' then I'm about as happy as I'm likely to get with the current choices available to us.
The people have decided, we are going to give Labour a go and that is fair enough. I genuinely wish Reeves and Starmer every success. This is our country and it is in all our interests that they succeed.
But I suspect that most of the moaning after the first few months of euphoria will come from the left of the Labour party and people who seem to have convinced themselves that this government is not spending enough because they are nasty Tories rather than because the spending reflects (sort of) our current resources.
The leftists will be comparing what Starmer and Reeves are spending money on compared with what Corbyn and McDonnell said they'd spend money on.
Likely big uproars include:
An increase in pension ages An increase in student fees NHS pay demands leading to strikes Morrisons going bankrupt with demands to nationalise it
Could equally be Asda although I suspect that will have a longer(ish) timescale as the killer for Asda will be the shift to electric cars killing off Euro Garages..
ASDA now being majority owned by TDR Capital sounds like bad news.
Farooq: How many Reform > Con seats? eek: time of first Tory win (based on the time the words - and XYZ (the Tory candidate) is the winner) Stuartinromford: First seat to declare a Conservative win. IanB2: in how many seats will Labour come third (or lower) SandyRentool: Narrowest winning vote margin in any constituency. Ghedebrav: Number of party leaders standing who win a seat TimS: Largest seat majority to be overturned LostPassword: Number of Conservative lost deposits
I need to go to the supermarket and head over to Fraserburgh for a Wimpy milkshake. If anyone has a question to add to the list please include @Farooq so I'm less likely to miss it. Or if someone wants to periodically gather any new questions together into a list, that would be great too.
@Farooq Number of political parties represented in the new Parliament.
Parties aside, I think the Tories handled Covid OK. They protected millions of private sector jobs (whilst the public sector was still rightly getting its salaries and pensions - plus overtime). The process for getting the vaccines in place was one which undoubtedly delivered.
The only difference I can recall from Labour was that Starmer would have locked us down for another Christmas.
I think the Government have handled Ukraine very well.
Not that anyone remembers, but the Government handled the resulting rise in energy prices as well as it could afford to do, with large-scale energy bill subsidies.
This government came to power on the basis of investing in areas that had for generations voted Labour, in the expectation that they would finally get to see some cash. Sadly. Covid and Ukraine took all that money and more. The one saving grace is that if Corbyn had won in 2019, he would have already spent all the cash needed to get us through these two crises. God alone knows how we would have managed. In all likelihood, we would have had no money for furlough and be struggling with millions more unemployed.
One area where this Government does not blow its own trumpet is in jobs creation. They have an especially good case on youth unemployment - this is at low levels that prevous Labour governments could only dream about. When Labour says "What have you done for our young?", the answer is "Ensured they have jobs."
Each of these testing situations was a once-in-a-generation challenge. The government handled them as well as could have been expected. More importantly, I don't see a cigarette paper between how the Government responded - and how Labour says it would have handled things. Those desperate for change - you've effectively had a Labour government for the past five years. Prepare to be very disappointed.
I can't remember seeing more beggars and homeless on the streets since the early days of Thatcher.
Gotta be careful there, Roger, because the majority of beggars I see are evidently from Eastern Europe which narrative, were it to take hold, doesn't help anyone.
Under Blair, when parts of Eastern Europe joined the EU travel zones, I recall some countries (Germany) kept restrictions for a while.
The moment it became possible, in certain countries (Romania and others), police forces were rounding up their idea of “undesirables” and putting them on long distance coaches - often London.
Surprise, surprise, the victims of this were big chunks of the Roma community. Among others.
Which is why, to this day, many beggars in London are from that community.
I was fairly staggered that there was no push back on what amounted to racist ethnic cleansing.
The Tories will put benefit reforms at the heart of their election campaign on Sunday as Rishi Sunak seeks to turn things around following a difficult week
There are votes to be had from Reform for performative cruelty.
Who now expects them to be in government on July 5th?
Hence the random policies and promises will get more ludicrous and uncosted. All paid for by imaginary efficiency savings once more I expect.
There's always been scope for Welfare reform, but the obvious retort is "why didn't you do something about it in the last Parliament?".
How much more can they squeeze out of the tax avoidance genie . One thing I’m surprised about is that the latest briefings suggest they’re not going to touch IHT .
This was surely the final Hail Mary . Maybe it might still happen . Or maybe Sunak saving his kids hundreds of millions of pounds wasn’t a good look .
And how much more can Labour squeeze out of the tax avoidance genie? Enough for tens of thousand more NHS appointments? Leave it out...
Those appointments aren’t coming out of the tax avoidance cash machine . I’m sure however that it will do some heavy lifting in other areas.
You think "ending non-dom status" is not part of the tax avoidance regime? And you think it is going to be tax positive? Really? You aren't normlly that naive.
The first obvious sign we have a Labour government will be the flight of capital out of the UK. No doubt lefties will cheer on the departure.
Until they don't have the money to fund hospital beds.
I’m dubious of these tax avoidance savings but all parties think about is getting elected so as long as they can look like they’ve got somewhere to get the money from pre-election they’ll worry about the reality after 4th July . As for flight of capital I don’t see it .
On flight of capital.... If Labour has a big majority, you are going to have a mass of new backbench MPs all looking to get noticed. Some of them might have been councillors, but there will be a cohort who have effectively only known student politics. This "Eat the Rich!" cohort are going to be making noise about how the those with wealth need to pay "their fair share". Which is way more than those who have the wealth will want to pay - they are not going to see eye to eye on what is "fair".
And so within a year - and probably much sooner - there will have been a significant departure for those shores who have a better understanding of what is "fair". That money will not be paying stamp duty on new properties here, will not be paying VAT on their latest Bentley or Ferrari or super yacht.
And there will be a black hole that those muppets who thought they would give Labour a try will end up having to fund.
What you say is, as always, very credible. Two issues, though:
1. Stop calling your opponents muppets. Given the state of public services, public finances and government moral failure there are very good reasons to think Labour are, at the very least, the least worst option at present. 2. You are presenting half the story. We are in this state at least partly because the moral limits on eg executive pay, levels of inequality, treatment of the most vulnerable have been broken by a Tory government that is simply looking after it's own. A degree of 'eat the rich' to put it in your crude terms, is probably needed. I trust Starmer to moderate those tendencies to a sensible level. I may be wrong, but I hope not.
What most people of most political persuasions want is public services that care for those in need in our society that (a) work and (b) are sustainable, by which I mean that they are fully funded by our tax base.
People who think that they can ignore the sustainability aspect are indeed muppets and that includes not just those of the left but also the likes of Truss/Kwarteng on the right. Neither can give more than a short term fix at long term cost.
If we want public services that meet (a) we need to grow our tax base. As a generality achieving that by increasing taxes on our existing production disincentivises investment, economic activity and future tax flows.
What we should be discussing as a nation is what are the parameters of this, can we increase taxes to meet current needs without damaging future growth? The current government has significantly increased taxes already to fund its spending and the result of that and far too little investment has been low growth. But discussing such issues would be grown up politics and our media, politicians and electorate seem to have very little interest or enthusiasm for that.
100% agree. But that isn't the people Mark called muppets. Anyone who wants to give Labour a try are sensible, in my view.
And what do you do as a political leader, having watched Labour be rejected by the electorate in its many different guises over the past few years, if you know that what you've written above is true but you also know you can't really talk about it?
I'm as sceptical as the next person of the 'growth will solve everything' line from Reeves, but if it signals a 'we'll tax sensibly to fund investment' then I'm about as happy as I'm likely to get with the current choices available to us.
The people have decided, we are going to give Labour a go and that is fair enough. I genuinely wish Reeves and Starmer every success. This is our country and it is in all our interests that they succeed.
But I suspect that most of the moaning after the first few months of euphoria will come from the left of the Labour party and people who seem to have convinced themselves that this government is not spending enough because they are nasty Tories rather than because the spending reflects (sort of) our current resources.
The leftists will be comparing what Starmer and Reeves are spending money on compared with what Corbyn and McDonnell said they'd spend money on.
Likely big uproars include:
An increase in pension ages An increase in student fees NHS pay demands leading to strikes Morrisons going bankrupt with demands to nationalise it
Could equally be Asda although I suspect that will have a longer(ish) timescale as the killer for Asda will be the shift to electric cars killing off Euro Garages..
ASDA now being majority owned by TDR Capital sounds like bad news.
I joked elsewhere that brother who sold is going to be the only one with real money long term..
Farooq: How many Reform > Con seats? eek: time of first Tory win (based on the time the words - and XYZ (the Tory candidate) is the winner) Stuartinromford: First seat to declare a Conservative win. IanB2: in how many seats will Labour come third (or lower) SandyRentool: Narrowest winning vote margin in any constituency. Ghedebrav: Number of party leaders standing who win a seat TimS: Largest seat majority to be overturned LostPassword: Number of Conservative lost deposits
I need to go to the supermarket and head over to Fraserburgh for a Wimpy milkshake. If anyone has a question to add to the list please include @Farooq so I'm less likely to miss it. Or if someone wants to periodically gather any new questions together into a list, that would be great too.
@Farooq Number of political parties represented in the new Parliament.
Counting Sinn Fein or not?
Replace “represented” with “elected to”. Good point.
Farooq: How many Reform > Con seats? eek: time of first Tory win (based on the time the words - and XYZ (the Tory candidate) is the winner) Stuartinromford: First seat to declare a Conservative win. IanB2: in how many seats will Labour come third (or lower) SandyRentool: Narrowest winning vote margin in any constituency. Ghedebrav: Number of party leaders standing who win a seat TimS: Largest seat majority to be overturned LostPassword: Number of Conservative lost deposits
I need to go to the supermarket and head over to Fraserburgh for a Wimpy milkshake. If anyone has a question to add to the list please include @Farooq so I'm less likely to miss it. Or if someone wants to periodically gather any new questions together into a list, that would be great too.
@Farooq Number of political parties represented in the new Parliament.
There are plenty of clearly British beggars in my area.
We've had this discussion before.
This is my experience too - overwhelming British (and white fwiw, if that matters to people which it will do depending on what point they’re trying to make), as are the sad people shambling round Piccadilly Gardens spiced out of their gourds.
Labour announce crackdown on off road motorbikes. Didn't realise the fines were only £100.
That's interesting. And quite difficult to do truly effectively. Many police forces run an operation called Operation Endurance addressing it (or half addressing it) in different ways. In Notts they hand out bits of paper with advice to illegal trail-bikers. Cardiff and Cleveland are two forces which are better.
It plays very much into the barriers on paths I am sometimes on about, in that the justification for anti-wheelchair barriers is always "but the motorbikes" - as if that justifies discrimination. I coined a concept of "Schrodinger's ASBO Motorcyclist", which most of the time only exists in the mind of the barrier-defender.
What happens is that something is whacked in because it *looks* like an answer to an alleged problem, created in part by 3 decades of police advice at planning stage on cellular disconnected developments after experience of chasing youths in places like Blackbird Leys and the Meadows in Nottingham. Councillors like it because it is a very public, cheap sticky plaster to please noisy voters.
Then it becomes part of the mental furniture, and a difficult assumption to dig out. Often a problem that did not exist is now believed to exist but is prevented by the cosmetic intervention.
It's a complex area to argue, that I might submit a header about one weekend.
Linked issues are too-easy creation of PSPOs with no real evidence needed and the resulting abuse of harmless people (eg disabled cyclists / elderly) by Council Officers, policing (as Lab are picking up on) including wider use of Tactical Contact, and better regulation needed of some supply chains - lithium batteries being one of them, e-motorcycles such as Surrons being another, and delivery riders being a third.
For my issues I need a clear distinction in the public between pedal-cycles and the electric mopeds / motorcycles idiots like IDS and Lord Hogan-Howe are wandering around branding as 'e-bikes' ridden by 'killer cyclists'.
I don't think they will be able to nail the Conservatives with this beyond another strand of crass incompetence, but it will help Lab retain votes from people like me, and disabled / mobility aid users, and maybe also from wavering Tory/Reform if they can make a good argument that they can address ASB.
Sunak should go after Farage and accuse him of being a Putin supporter and also tell him where to go with racism . I have zero time for Sunak but Farage really is absolutely loathsome .
Without wanting to excuse him for being a twat Thursday, the dog whistle 'he's not like us' horse shit is his way to begin exiting the mess and going onto the front foot (or at least trying to)
But you said yesterday that you’re planning to vote Reform. They’re only not one big dog whistle when they’re a foghorn instead.
I did indeed. I'll have to reconsider that. Party of Women looking good for a vote as last woman standing.
Farage has managed to get Shabhana Mahmood defending the PM
Edit - I mean I loathe the damn lot of them but I really don't do not voting. If I'd had 500 quid spare I'd honestly have stood myself (not bothering to campaign)
Personally, I don't think Rishi Sunak is motivated by a love of Britain. I don't think anyone who was could bear to be in a position to start to reverse its decline, and then fail (as a matter of deliberate policy) to do anything about it, before trashing what seedlings of hope there were with an unnecessary election.
That has nothing to do with Sunak's ethnic or religious background. I am pretty sure he identifies with the USA more than he does with India.
Yes but it's not his 'motivation' that Farage is dog whistling. It's how brown he is, how 'not like us' Its absolutely grim grim grim. Fuck him.
I don't think I've heard the quote in question, but I don't think there's much of a hardcore racist vote to dog-whistle to these days. Certainly not enough to make the difference in any seats.
Nigel has been fairly nice about Rishi Sunak in the past. I would suggest he feels genuine anger at the D-Day thing and let vituperation get the better of him. That's not something I share - I don't give a toss whether Rishi hangs around kissing the President's ring. But I can understand someone like NF being furious.
Farage was there to get photos. He's only furious he's not in the Lords or the British Embassy in the States.
As far as I'm concerned NF is the only show in town at the moment. I would have preferred Tory MPs to have the stones to ditch Rishi Sunak when they had the chance, but they didn't.
And that show is the Black and White Minstrels
The NF Black and White Minstrel show, circa 1978.
All that's missing are some of the songs from , shall we say, "the other side", which the young Nigel apparently enjoyed shocking older people with in his school days.
My god. I was all bubbly and jovial. And then I got a cab to Maidan square and now I am standing in front of THIS and there are women either side of me weeping. Every flag is a fallen Ukrainian soldier
This is just one part of it. The flags go on and on. Quite close to blubbing myself.
We cannot let them lose!
Slava ukraini
What a journey, from someone who started out as Putin's little cheerleader.
Yes, quite a journey. I’ve actually come to Ukraine - twice. I’ve been to Lviv and chernivtsi, Kyiv and Odessa. I’ve heard bombs fall on the castle of Kamanets podolski’y. I saw a chunk of missile fall on my own street in Odessa. I watched and heard the ack ack over the Potemkin steps as Putin’s drones came in - two nights ago
I’ve seen Ukrainians in crutches, I’ve met Ukrainian draft dodgers, I’ve talked to Ukrainians who have lost ALL their schoolfriends, and now I’m standing in front of the memorial to 200,000 dead Ukrainians in maidan square listening to the widows crying and in all that time you’ve been pootling around fucking Norway with your stupid little dog
Quite rightly very few of us are able or willing to go to war zones. We don’t want to get in the way of a serious business. So you’re in Ukraine. Good for you. Maybe if you’d stop taking about it in the first person (“I’ve seen…”, “I’ve met…”) like some Poundshop Roy Batty people on here would stop suspecting the only thing you give a fuck about is the bragging rights rather than the suffering of the people you meet.
But their suspicions are correct. Let’s remember what you are. You’re glossy magazine travel writer. Who happens to be in the less dangerous bits of a war zone. You’re not Ernest Hemingway. You’re not John Steinbeck. You’re not even Bruce Chatwin. You’re a late middle aged man desperate to impress a bunch of strangers on an obscure message board through the medium of war porn. That’s all you are. Less than nothing.
Well, I also get paid for it, so there is that. Its my actual job
Parties aside, I think the Tories handled Covid OK. They protected millions of private sector jobs (whilst the public sector was still rightly getting its salaries and pensions - plus overtime). The process for getting the vaccines in place was one which undoubtedly delivered.
The only difference I can recall from Labour was that Starmer would have locked us down for another Christmas.
I think the Government have handled Ukraine very well.
Not that anyone remembers, but the Government handled the resulting rise in energy prices as well as it could afford to do, with large-scale energy bill subsidies.
This government came to power on the basis of investing in areas that had for generations voted Labour, in the expectation that they would finally get to see some cash. Sadly. Covid and Ukraine took all that money and more. The one saving grace is that if Corbyn had won in 2019, he would have already spent all the cash needed to get us through these two crises. God alone knows how we would have managed. In all likelihood, we would have had no money for furlough and be struggling with millions more unemployed.
One area where this Government does not blow its own trumpet is in jobs creation. They have an especially good case on youth unemployment - this is at low levels that prevous Labour governments could only dream about. When Labour says "What have you done for our young?", the answer is "Ensured they have jobs."
Each of these testing situations was a once-in-a-generation challenge. The government handled them as well as could have been expected. More importantly, I don't see a cigarette paper between how the Government responded - and how Labour says it would have handled things. Those desperate for change - you've effectively had a Labour government for the past five years. Prepare to be very disappointed.
I can't remember seeing more beggars and homeless on the streets since the early days of Thatcher.
Things that bad in the south of France?
The most street sleeping and begging I can remember was in the early 1990s. Largely disappeared then but has made a comeback. Still nothing like the 80s/90s though.
I remember being really struck by this as a young child when we visited London, which would have been late 80s - while Doncaster was very much on its arse, it didn’t have the same rough sleeping issue.
Manchester these days is sadly similar to London in those times and has appreciably, visibly, seen an increase in homelessness, rough sleeping and begging.
Parties aside, I think the Tories handled Covid OK. They protected millions of private sector jobs (whilst the public sector was still rightly getting its salaries and pensions - plus overtime). The process for getting the vaccines in place was one which undoubtedly delivered.
The only difference I can recall from Labour was that Starmer would have locked us down for another Christmas.
I think the Government have handled Ukraine very well.
Not that anyone remembers, but the Government handled the resulting rise in energy prices as well as it could afford to do, with large-scale energy bill subsidies.
This government came to power on the basis of investing in areas that had for generations voted Labour, in the expectation that they would finally get to see some cash. Sadly. Covid and Ukraine took all that money and more. The one saving grace is that if Corbyn had won in 2019, he would have already spent all the cash needed to get us through these two crises. God alone knows how we would have managed. In all likelihood, we would have had no money for furlough and be struggling with millions more unemployed.
One area where this Government does not blow its own trumpet is in jobs creation. They have an especially good case on youth unemployment - this is at low levels that prevous Labour governments could only dream about. When Labour says "What have you done for our young?", the answer is "Ensured they have jobs."
Each of these testing situations was a once-in-a-generation challenge. The government handled them as well as could have been expected. More importantly, I don't see a cigarette paper between how the Government responded - and how Labour says it would have handled things. Those desperate for change - you've effectively had a Labour government for the past five years. Prepare to be very disappointed.
I can't remember seeing more beggars and homeless on the streets since the early days of Thatcher.
Things that bad in the south of France?
Some are having to *rent* their yachts - their pride and joys having been seized.
The Tories will put benefit reforms at the heart of their election campaign on Sunday as Rishi Sunak seeks to turn things around following a difficult week
There are votes to be had from Reform for performative cruelty.
Who now expects them to be in government on July 5th?
Hence the random policies and promises will get more ludicrous and uncosted. All paid for by imaginary efficiency savings once more I expect.
There's always been scope for Welfare reform, but the obvious retort is "why didn't you do something about it in the last Parliament?".
How much more can they squeeze out of the tax avoidance genie . One thing I’m surprised about is that the latest briefings suggest they’re not going to touch IHT .
This was surely the final Hail Mary . Maybe it might still happen . Or maybe Sunak saving his kids hundreds of millions of pounds wasn’t a good look .
And how much more can Labour squeeze out of the tax avoidance genie? Enough for tens of thousand more NHS appointments? Leave it out...
Those appointments aren’t coming out of the tax avoidance cash machine . I’m sure however that it will do some heavy lifting in other areas.
You think "ending non-dom status" is not part of the tax avoidance regime? And you think it is going to be tax positive? Really? You aren't normlly that naive.
The first obvious sign we have a Labour government will be the flight of capital out of the UK. No doubt lefties will cheer on the departure.
Until they don't have the money to fund hospital beds.
I’m dubious of these tax avoidance savings but all parties think about is getting elected so as long as they can look like they’ve got somewhere to get the money from pre-election they’ll worry about the reality after 4th July . As for flight of capital I don’t see it .
On flight of capital.... If Labour has a big majority, you are going to have a mass of new backbench MPs all looking to get noticed. Some of them might have been councillors, but there will be a cohort who have effectively only known student politics. This "Eat the Rich!" cohort are going to be making noise about how the those with wealth need to pay "their fair share". Which is way more than those who have the wealth will want to pay - they are not going to see eye to eye on what is "fair".
And so within a year - and probably much sooner - there will have been a significant departure for those shores who have a better understanding of what is "fair". That money will not be paying stamp duty on new properties here, will not be paying VAT on their latest Bentley or Ferrari or super yacht.
And there will be a black hole that those muppets who thought they would give Labour a try will end up having to fund.
It depends what you mean by wealth taxes as only some wealth can be taken out of the country, other wealth can't.
If you mean taxing stocks and shares etc, then absolutely that's a bloody stupid idea and that will result in capital flight.
If you mean taxing land ownership and saying those who own a portion of this countries land need to pay a portion of this countries running costs (whether they be British or live abroad), then that's entirely possible and can't result in capital flight.
Oh yes it can. Land is a stock of capital because it has value. That value arises from its scarcity, we are not making any more of it, and the uses to which it can be put which can generate a return but it is also a reflection of demand.
At the moment much of our land, from Scottish estates to London flats is held by foreigners to whom we have sold it to finance our trade deficit. If we make it less attractive they may well sell up, collapsing the value of that land. The land is still here but it will be worth a lot less and those who finance their businesses through securities over it will be in breach of their banking covenants.
There really isn't anything like a free lunch.
Government has to tax *something*. There's no such thing as a free Government.
Labour announce crackdown on off road motorbikes. Didn't realise the fines were only £100.
That's interesting. And quite difficult to do.
It plays very much into the barriers on paths I am sometimes on about, in that the justification for anti-wheelchair barriers is always "but the motorbikes" - as if that justifies discrimination. I coined a concept of "Schrodinger's ASBO Motorcyclist", which most of the time only exists in the mind of the barrier-defender.
What happens is that something is whacked in because it *looks* like an answer to an alleged problem, created in part by 3 decades of police advice at planning stage on cellular disconnected developments after experience of chasing youths in places like Blackbird Leys and the Meadows in Nottingham. Councillors like it because it is a very public, cheap sticky plaster to please noisy voters.
Then it becomes part of the mental furniture, and a difficult assumption to dig out. Often a problem that did not exist is now believed to exist but is prevented by the cosmetic intervention.
It's a complex area to argue, that I might submit a header about one weekend.
Linked issues are too-easy creation of PSPOs with no real evidence needed and the resulting abuse of harmless people (eg disabled cyclists / elderly) by Council Officers, policing (as Lab are picking up on) including wider use of Tactical Contact, and better regulation needed of some supply chains - lithium batteries being one of them, e-motorcycles such as Suttons being another.
I don't think they will be able to nail the Conservatives with this beyond another strand of crass incompetence, but it will help Lab retain votes from people like me, and disabled / mobility aid users, and maybe also from wavering Tory/Reform if they can make a good argument that they can address ASB.
I got mugged by a sustrans lady on a cycle track the other day who said they are making a big push to improve recumbent and wheelchair access to their network.
The Tories need to eviscerate Farage. It's late, but not too late. He does not represent the future of right wing politics. Come on Sunak, what have you got left to lose, do the right thing.
That's the wrong question.
Mass immigration needs to end or the same thing will happen to both Labour and the Tories as what's happened on the continent.
There isn't a choice where some barbarous singers and gotcha moments wake people up and make it, and him, go away.
We will have go address the underlying issue.
From my perspective there is a very different political philosophy underpinning traditional pragmatic conservatism than new right wing populism.
If conservatives don't stand up and fight, they will go the way of the conservatives across Europe and the US. No one benefits from that.
OK, but that doesn't make the issue of immigration go away.
You do realise people want it addressed, right?
Of course, but the way to address it is not gimmicks, sloganeering and dog whistles. It will be hard work at lots of levels.
I saw the interview with Farage this morning. Any Tory leader of the last forty years would have taken him apart.
My late Tory father-in-law would be spinning in his grave at the Tory accommodation of the populist right. He was very much into respect, fair play and what matters is what works. That sort of Tory.
For the life of me I can't see why Sunak doesn't start going on the offensive against Farage. He might find that most right wingers prefer conservatism to populism. But you have to be confident.
There are some Tories who could but his own record of populism particularly with Braverman and Rwanda would just leave him open to ridicule
Some unsourced reports on Twitter that ministers have talked him put of resigning, but only if he is free take to more of a back seat in the campaign, with the ministers at the front.
Maybe he really has had enough.
In a presidential campaign, hiding the president seems, suboptimal...
The Americans are about to have a good go at it.
By hiding Trump in jail?
They’re going to hide Biden in his basement again, and do their best to hide Trump in jail.
Farooq: How many Reform > Con seats? eek: time of first Tory win (based on the time the words - and XYZ (the Tory candidate) is the winner) Stuartinromford: First seat to declare a Conservative win. IanB2: in how many seats will Labour come third (or lower) SandyRentool: Narrowest winning vote margin in any constituency. Ghedebrav: Number of party leaders standing who win a seat TimS: Largest seat majority to be overturned LostPassword: Number of Conservative lost deposits
I need to go to the supermarket and head over to Fraserburgh for a Wimpy milkshake. If anyone has a question to add to the list please include @Farooq so I'm less likely to miss it. Or if someone wants to periodically gather any new questions together into a list, that would be great too.
@Farooq Number of political parties represented in the new Parliament.
Counting Sinn Fein or not?
14 if 'Independants' count as 1 and including SF
Not counting independents or the Speaker.
Speaking of independents, I saw my first election posters up. Both for Corbyn!
I don't object to the stubble. The nonsense he's spouting is the issue.
Johnson, Truss then Sunak. What a rogues gallery the Tories have imposed on us. And some on here think we should vote Conservative?
Yeah, I really don't get that. I understand the misgivings about Starmer and Labour and I don't think he's going to set the world on fire, but I do think he'll at least be competent and sensible. Given the absolute clown show that the Tories have become, why would you give them five more years? That would just make the fecking morons feel vindicated to carry on with the clown show, and how's that going to work out for the country?
It reminds me of a story that Nigel doesnt like to talk about much....about how his grandfather was in Belsen but spent much of his post-war life in a wheelchair.
Btw I have your photo. I gave the 500 wotsits to a volunteer by the flags. Natalia. She lost her nephew in the war last year - shot in cold blood by Russians
If you want to see the photo now you’ll have to get special dispensation from the mods - I don’t want to get banned for over-photo-ing
Royal funeral theory: contra the claim that the Tories would refuse a request for an early election because a funeral during the campaign would boost them, the response would be: if you refuse, the fact of your refusal will leak during the campaign. That really would have the potential to reduce them to nul seats.
The Statty Fyoonz Double Bill theory does fit all of the available facts and handsomely explains the little dickhead's otherwise mystifying self-selected immolation on July 4.
It's far more like to be cock-up rather than conspiracy.
Cock up not conspiracy and incompetence not malice are things which sound clever to say but which give carte blanche to conspirators and the malicious. The deliberate theft of billions from the country over PPE for example; ho ho, those bumbling incompetent Tories.
You know you're Tweedledee, and not Tweedledum, right?
Labour announce crackdown on off road motorbikes. Didn't realise the fines were only £100.
That's interesting. And quite difficult to do truly effectively. Many police forces run an operation called Operation Endurance addressing it (or half addressing it) in different ways. In Notts they hand out bits of paper with advice to illegal trail-bikers. Cardiff and Cleveland are two forces which are better.
It plays very much into the barriers on paths I am sometimes on about, in that the justification for anti-wheelchair barriers is always "but the motorbikes" - as if that justifies discrimination. I coined a concept of "Schrodinger's ASBO Motorcyclist", which most of the time only exists in the mind of the barrier-defender.
What happens is that something is whacked in because it *looks* like an answer to an alleged problem, created in part by 3 decades of police advice at planning stage on cellular disconnected developments after experience of chasing youths in places like Blackbird Leys and the Meadows in Nottingham. Councillors like it because it is a very public, cheap sticky plaster to please noisy voters.
Then it becomes part of the mental furniture, and a difficult assumption to dig out. Often a problem that did not exist is now believed to exist but is prevented by the cosmetic intervention.
It's a complex area to argue, that I might submit a header about one weekend.
Linked issues are too-easy creation of PSPOs with no real evidence needed and the resulting abuse of harmless people (eg disabled cyclists / elderly) by Council Officers, policing (as Lab are picking up on) including wider use of Tactical Contact, and better regulation needed of some supply chains - lithium batteries being one of them, e-motorcycles such as Surrons being another, and delivery riders being a third.
For my issues I need a clear distinction in the public between pedal-cycles and the electric mopeds / motorcycles idiots like IDS and Lord Hogan-Howe are wandering around branding as 'e-bikes' ridden by 'killer cyclists'.
I don't think they will be able to nail the Conservatives with this beyond another strand of crass incompetence, but it will help Lab retain votes from people like me, and disabled / mobility aid users, and maybe also from wavering Tory/Reform if they can make a good argument that they can address ASB.
This is a great example of an issue where being politicised helps nobody. It’s somewhere that needs sensible joined up governing, not cheap point-scoring and playing into people’s prejudices.
Some unsourced reports on Twitter that ministers have talked him put of resigning, but only if he is free take to more of a back seat in the campaign, with the ministers at the front.
Maybe he really has had enough.
In a presidential campaign, hiding the president seems, suboptimal...
The Americans are about to have a good go at it.
By hiding Trump in jail?
They’re going to hide Biden in his basement again, and do their best to hide Trump in jail.
200m choices, and you go with these two again?
I know you're doing the Biden basement stuff as a comedy thing but they are extremely not hiding him in his basement. You can see his schedule, it's absolutely mental. https://rollcall.com/factbase/biden/topic/calendar/
Parties aside, I think the Tories handled Covid OK. They protected millions of private sector jobs (whilst the public sector was still rightly getting its salaries and pensions - plus overtime). The process for getting the vaccines in place was one which undoubtedly delivered.
The only difference I can recall from Labour was that Starmer would have locked us down for another Christmas.
I think the Government have handled Ukraine very well.
Not that anyone remembers, but the Government handled the resulting rise in energy prices as well as it could afford to do, with large-scale energy bill subsidies.
This government came to power on the basis of investing in areas that had for generations voted Labour, in the expectation that they would finally get to see some cash. Sadly. Covid and Ukraine took all that money and more. The one saving grace is that if Corbyn had won in 2019, he would have already spent all the cash needed to get us through these two crises. God alone knows how we would have managed. In all likelihood, we would have had no money for furlough and be struggling with millions more unemployed.
One area where this Government does not blow its own trumpet is in jobs creation. They have an especially good case on youth unemployment - this is at low levels that prevous Labour governments could only dream about. When Labour says "What have you done for our young?", the answer is "Ensured they have jobs."
Each of these testing situations was a once-in-a-generation challenge. The government handled them as well as could have been expected. More importantly, I don't see a cigarette paper between how the Government responded - and how Labour says it would have handled things. Those desperate for change - you've effectively had a Labour government for the past five years. Prepare to be very disappointed.
I can't remember seeing more beggars and homeless on the streets since the early days of Thatcher.
Things that bad in the south of France?
The most street sleeping and begging I can remember was in the early 1990s. Largely disappeared then but has made a comeback. Still nothing like the 80s/90s though.
I remember being really struck by this as a young child when we visited London, which would have been late 80s - while Doncaster was very much on its arse, it didn’t have the same rough sleeping issue.
Manchester these days is sadly similar to London in those times and has appreciably, visibly, seen an increase in homelessness, rough sleeping and begging.
While homelessness is a huge problem and a stain on how we deal with mental health issues we should also be aware that the number isn't always as bad as it appears. When I lived in slough a couple of years ago the shop doorways often had people in their sleeping bags on the high street begging....only thing is I had to walk through the high street early morning (6 am or so) many of the sleeping bags at that time had no occupants. Indeed I knew at least one of the occupants because I knew his girlfriend for years and attended parties at their flat on occasion, why did he do it? He reckoned he made about 200 to 300 a day begging.
Those genuinely in need of help should be helped but there is certainly a percentage that aren't genuinely homeless.
So either campaigning will continue as before next week, or Sunak will be somewhat less visible, meaning that some of the unsourced reports abd rumours of this weekend will have been right.
Which ministers are popular enough to take up some of the slack?
Some unsourced reports on Twitter that ministers have talked him put of resigning, but only if he takes a back seat in the campaign with the ministers at the front.
Maybe he really has had enough.
I don’t think that works . Hiding away will get media attention and I think that would be worse for the Tories.
I think he'd be wise to stop actively courting attention, though.
No more whizz-bang announcements, no stunts, end the presidential approach... and, most of all, try to get ITV to pull the D-day interview due to be broadcast on Wednesday.
But he should still talk to the press pack at campaign events in battleground constituencies, ideally prioritising local and regional media where possible. The whole cabinet should attend the manifesto launch. Probable leadership contenders should be encouraged to do the morning broadcast round, rather than Sunak loyalists.
Comments
I’ve seen Ukrainians in crutches, I’ve met Ukrainian draft dodgers, I’ve talked to Ukrainians who have lost ALL their schoolfriends, and now I’m standing in front of the memorial to 200,000 dead Ukrainians in maidan square listening to the widows crying and in all that time you’ve been pootling around fucking Norway with your stupid little dog
Didn't realise the fines were only £100.
https://www.kirklees.gov.uk/beta/voting-and-elections/pdf/statement-of-persons-nominated-ossett-and-denby-dale-constituency.pdf
Anyone in my stitch can vote for me in 29!
Maybe he really has had enough.
At the moment much of our land, from Scottish estates to London flats is held by foreigners to whom we have sold it to finance our trade deficit. If we make it less attractive they may well sell up, collapsing the value of that land. The land is still here but it will be worth a lot less and those who finance their businesses through securities over it will be in breach of their banking covenants.
There really isn't anything like a free lunch.
A lot of Sunak's more erratic actions are understandable only on the basis that he still thinks he can win, if only he can find the game-changing policy, or killer line that skewers Labour.
That has nothing to do with Sunak's ethnic or religious background. I am pretty sure he identifies with the USA more than he does with India.
Sgt. Lewis might say "Is this wise, Sir?"
But I can go and do it again and take a photo. I’ve used my photo ration for the day so you’ll have to wait for another day to see it
It took another two weeks for it to roll fully northwards.
As late as Tuesday 5th January 2021 I was still happily swimming at my gym.
The lesson for you is to exercise a bit more thought and foresight before throwing in your lot with those of extreme politics. Most of us don't need to see actual bombs dropping to spot politics and people who are malign.
Its absolutely grim grim grim. Fuck him.
And, yet. Despite all the cray cray, the polls stay the same.
Islamophobia is easier to do because a. people are actually frightened of Islam, and b. being “anti-Islamist” provides the same kind of plausible deniability as being “anti-Zionist”.
EXC: Tory candidates say they will 'go rogue' with 'maverick' campaigns - if they don't like Sunak's manifesto
https://x.com/AVMikhailova/status/1799736139341009239
This just pisses off the erstwhile Cons voters such as moi who can't abide a nasty party. We could just about have tolerated a Brexit-leaning one (not that anyone knows what that means), but not the performative stuff designed for aged colonels. Of course stopping the boats is important but "Rwanda" is unnecessarily shrill and likely to provoke discord. That's fine if you are sitting on an 80-seat majority and can say "bring it" but not if you are forecast to be on the wrong end of a 300 incoming Lab majority.
Farage: “One more gaffe and Tories risk losing all seats”
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2024/06/09/politics-election-campaign-latest-news/
I’d be interested in a question along the lines of ‘who will be leader of the Conservative and Unionist Party on 31 December 2024*?’
(*or a closer date that would allow sufficient time for the Hunger Games for Despicable [FORBIDDEN WORD REDACTED]s Tory leadership election to run its course and avoid a caretaker leader - maybe 31 October?)
You could also broaden it out to the other parties but the main point of interest to me in focusing on the Tories would be in flushing out either those who genuinely believe the Sunak-led Tories can win the GE or those who genuinely believe there’s a realistic and likely prospect of Farage-led Reform mounting a predatory merger with the Tories.
My answers FWIW:
Tories: Badenoch
Labour: Starmer
Lib Dems: Davey
SNP: Forbes
Plaid: ap Iorwerth
Greens (E&W): Denyer/Ramsay
Greens (S): Harvie/Slater
Reform: Tice
Nigel has been fairly nice about Rishi Sunak in the past. I would suggest he feels genuine anger at the D-Day thing and let vituperation get the better of him. That's not something I share - I don't give a toss whether Rishi hangs around kissing the President's ring. But I can understand someone like NF being furious.
200m choices, and you go with these two again?
This is really sad. The Mail shouldn’t be exploiting a poor mad man who lives in a hedge to further its own agenda
https://x.com/RosieisaHolt/status/1799741606121402390
I'd say on the other side that that group is one of those the Conservatives are attempting to target to ward off Reform, much of the other wing of their coalition having turned its back and walked away.
Up to now, they have always been crap at this to an extreme degree.
Carswell won the seat for UKIP because he was a popular MP and campaigned effectively. Perhaps most importantly, he had a fairly competent local organisation. IIRC a number of organisational types defected with him.
Even so, he only got a bit over half of the previous (his) Conservative vote.
But their suspicions are correct. Let’s remember what you are. You’re glossy magazine travel writer. Who happens to be in the less dangerous bits of a war zone. You’re not Ernest Hemingway. You’re not John Steinbeck. You’re not even Bruce Chatwin. You’re a late middle aged man desperate to impress a bunch of strangers on an obscure message board through the medium of war porn. That’s all you are. Less than nothing.
Likely big uproars include:
An increase in pension ages
An increase in student fees
NHS pay demands leading to strikes
Morrisons going bankrupt with demands to nationalise it
I don't recall either Johnson or Sunak saying "we only lost the by-elections because they were rigged".
A handful of potential ones in Scotland (three or four way marginals where SNP current incumbent) and some blue wally bits of the South (Lab leapfrogging LD to take seat of Tories)
I was on a very agreeable table and a friend leaned over to me, waved at the assembled masses and said: you see all these people, these people are Reform voters.
He is a local councillor and said that there had been a lot of eastern European immigration into the area and as a result "locals" couldn't find a school or GP or whatnot for love nor money.
It surprised him (as did the enthusiasm for Brexit seven years ago) but there you are.
Btw I have your photo. I gave the 500 wotsits to a volunteer by the flags. Natalia. She lost her nephew in the war last year - shot in cold blood by Russians
If you want to see the photo now you’ll have to get special dispensation from the mods - I don’t want to get banned for over-photo-ing
We've had this discussion before.
You can guarantee failure to provide PPE would have been an ongoing theme in this election, if the Government had left the NHS without masks and gowns.
Johnson, Truss then Sunak. What a rogues gallery the Tories have imposed on us. And some on here think we should vote Conservative?
The moment it became possible, in certain countries (Romania and others), police forces were rounding up their idea of “undesirables” and putting them on long distance coaches - often London.
Surprise, surprise, the victims of this were big chunks of the Roma community. Among others.
Which is why, to this day, many beggars in London are from that community.
I was fairly staggered that there was no push back on what amounted to racist ethnic cleansing.
Message from residents is clear, they are fearful of the increase cost Labour will onflict on them and their families.
Great to be with @Gavin_Haran in the constituency talking to residents. Is the Labour candidate still in France?"
https://x.com/DanJamesNelson/status/1799477411827831027
Remarkable tweet. The Labour candidate was in France... because he was one of the ex-paras doing the jump for the Royal British Legion.
It plays very much into the barriers on paths I am sometimes on about, in that the justification for anti-wheelchair barriers is always "but the motorbikes" - as if that justifies discrimination. I coined a concept of "Schrodinger's ASBO Motorcyclist", which most of the time only exists in the mind of the barrier-defender.
What happens is that something is whacked in because it *looks* like an answer to an alleged problem, created in part by 3 decades of police advice at planning stage on cellular disconnected developments after experience of chasing youths in places like Blackbird Leys and the Meadows in Nottingham. Councillors like it because it is a very public, cheap sticky plaster to please noisy voters.
Then it becomes part of the mental furniture, and a difficult assumption to dig out. Often a problem that did not exist is now believed to exist but is prevented by the cosmetic intervention.
It's a complex area to argue, that I might submit a header about one weekend.
Linked issues are too-easy creation of PSPOs with no real evidence needed and the resulting abuse of harmless people (eg disabled cyclists / elderly) by Council Officers, policing (as Lab are picking up on) including wider use of Tactical Contact, and better regulation needed of some supply chains - lithium batteries being one of them, e-motorcycles such as Surrons being another, and delivery riders being a third.
For my issues I need a clear distinction in the public between pedal-cycles and the electric mopeds / motorcycles idiots like IDS and Lord Hogan-Howe are wandering around branding as 'e-bikes' ridden by 'killer cyclists'.
I don't think they will be able to nail the Conservatives with this beyond another strand of crass incompetence, but it will help Lab retain votes from people like me, and disabled / mobility aid users, and maybe also from wavering Tory/Reform if they can make a good argument that they can address ASB.
All that's missing are some of the songs from , shall we say, "the other side", which the young Nigel apparently enjoyed shocking older people with in his school days.
Manchester these days is sadly similar to London in those times and has appreciably, visibly, seen an increase in homelessness, rough sleeping and begging.
Nothing to do with me though.
Speaking of independents, I saw my first election posters up. Both for Corbyn!
I understand the misgivings about Starmer and Labour and I don't think he's going to set the world on fire, but I do think he'll at least be competent and sensible.
Given the absolute clown show that the Tories have become, why would you give them five more years? That would just make the fecking morons feel vindicated to carry on with the clown show, and how's that going to work out for the country?
Seems he fell out of the machine-gun tower..
I’d be constantly feeling one-down to them tbh.
https://rollcall.com/factbase/biden/topic/calendar/
Those genuinely in need of help should be helped but there is certainly a percentage that aren't genuinely homeless.
Which ministers are popular enough to take up some of the slack?
Calls an election, doesn't go well and immediately gets the hump.
Does he know he could have resigned at any time?
No more whizz-bang announcements, no stunts, end the presidential approach... and, most of all, try to get ITV to pull the D-day interview due to be broadcast on Wednesday.
But he should still talk to the press pack at campaign events in battleground constituencies, ideally prioritising local and regional media where possible. The whole cabinet should attend the manifesto launch. Probable leadership contenders should be encouraged to do the morning broadcast round, rather than Sunak loyalists.