The Reform revolution looks somewhat anemic this morning. If you can’t turn out a big protest vote at times like this, the general election is going to be challenging.
I think they're just totally boxed in and socially incapable of squaring the circle.
The Tories are like the poor - they will always be with us. The Conservative Party will not die until it is buried at the crossroads with a stake through its heart.
The Reform revolution looks somewhat anemic this morning. If you can’t turn out a big protest vote at times like this, the general election is going to be challenging.
I would wait and see after we have had more results before making any claims one way or another.
To eek’s comment upthread re Reform running councils (quote formatting has has gone away for me)
That will go one of two ways. Remember that for populists it is always someone else’s fault. If they can’t do much of any note because it’s legally required, they’ll make loud noises about the fact that they need to change the law to allow them to do so.
It doesn’t necessarily work as a strategy - and I said upthread it’s still an opportunity for the other parties to put them under some genuine scrutiny now - but that surely has to be the way they’ll play it. And it might work.
To eek’s comment upthread re Reform running councils (quote formatting has has gone away for me)
That will go one of two ways. Remember that for populists it is always someone else’s fault. If they can’t do much of any note because it’s legally required, they’ll make loud noises about the fact that they need to change the law to allow them to do so.
It doesn’t necessarily work as a strategy - and I said upthread it’s still an opportunity for the other parties to put them under some genuine scrutiny now - but that surely has to be the way they’ll play it. And it might work.
I don’t envy Labour but the clear message from his support at the last GE and before was that people are done with austerity. To double down on it whilst doing stuff that really upsets middle England, like the war on nature, has been politics at its poorest.
How can austerity end without raising taxes which are already at a high level?
Growth. Essentially, it can't. We can't afford the level of welfare we're currently paying for - we've basically got UBI for anyone who can pass a PIP and keeping anyone over 65 in clover.
Which party is going to be brave enough to end the triple lock ? My answer none .
It's not just the state pension, public sector pensions need a 30-40% haircut too. In too many areas we're living well beyond our means and our welfare state is far, far beyond a safety net. Cut a million people from state employment to take us back to 2017, taper the state pension for higher rate tax payers, merge NI and income tax so that non-working income is taxed at the same rate as working income, cut to £2k the cash ISA allowance, push through a 30-40% haircut for defined benefit pensions (even for people currently receiving them), introduce much, much tougher criteria to receive disability benefits and exclude all but 5% of the most serious mental health cases by default. The rest can go back to work or live on £450 per month or whatever UC is for unemployed people. Also get rid of UC, move back to the old system if JSA and ESA, UC is an experiment that hasn't worked, it's just encouraged people to game the system worse than ever.
I think if Labour started that programme today by the end of the parliament we could be in a position to actually pay front line service staff more and attract better quality candidates for teachers, police, nurses etc...
What we have now is an underfunded and hugely over funded state at the same time it's literally the worst of both worlds.
You aren't going far enough. That list looks like reforms but in practice is just cuts. You say "go back to work" but the jobs aren't there, and the few who find a job quickly experience why in work benefits are so well used - work doesn't pay the bills.
Unless you reimagine the welfare state in its entirety and make some surgical cuts to the cost of living, what you proposed creates a massive recession as circulating cash collapses which buggers local economies and makes the crumbling ruins of our towns collapse even faster.
There's around 750k vacancies in the country. The idea that there's not enough jobs out there for people to do is absurd. It's just that the layabout on PIP pretending to be sad doesn't want to do the jobs that are available at their skill level. You seem comfortable with allowing people to just opt out of working and living with their hands in our pockets off welfare, I'm not. The nation needs a solid decade of tough love the same as Argentina is getting now. We've lived beyond our means for far too many years, the state is bloated with people who sit at home pretending to work collecting £40-50k salaries and huge pensions and the state pension is paid to people like my parents who literally don't need it, I think they have a six figure household income, they both get whatever the state pension is which makes absolutely no sense to me. There's better uses for that ~£20k than giving it to people who earn as much as that.
Have no wish to spoil your rant but PIP like UC is for mainly for working people. A lot of PIP is spent on Motability cars to allow people to get to the workplace.
Sorry for the interruption. Please continue.
I think this is a widespread misconception about benefits. A very large proportion is on people who are in work, and the UK has a unusual rate of in-work poverty.
This is where lower immigration could help. Keep squeezing the labour market and force firms to invest and/or increase wages for those at the bottom, reducing our benefits bill and boosting productivity.
People talking about the minimum wage being too high have got it completely wrong, imo. We don't really have an issue with millions of people not working - it's just that they are working in crap jobs and not earning much doing it.
The Reform revolution looks somewhat anemic this morning. If you can’t turn out a big protest vote at times like this, the general election is going to be challenging.
That’s a claim that won’t have aged well, by the day’s end.
It feels like they've tilted England on it's side and all the fascists have rolled down towards the East coast
Reform voters are not fascists.
A few of them might be, but to label them all so is just offensive nonsense.
The 80s music discussion prompted me to consider that they're actually more like the right of the 80s Conservative Party. (Which also contained the odd fascist.)
It feels like they've tilted England on it's side and all the fascists have rolled down towards the East coast
Reform voters are not fascists.
A few of them might be, but to label them all so is just offensive nonsense.
The 80s music discussion prompted me to consider that they're actually more like the right of the 80s Conservative Party. (Which also contained the odd fascist.)
I think they're just totally boxed in and socially incapable of squaring the circle.
The Tories are absolutely vital to be the policy brain of the new Refcon Government (with Reform the heart). Much as it pains me to say it, they should continue the Kemi path of laying out detailed policies (providing she ever gets there) and being the party of detail and workings. It is serious - I want Reform in Government but most of them will have never even been MPs.
The Reform revolution looks somewhat anemic this morning. If you can’t turn out a big protest vote at times like this, the general election is going to be challenging.
That’s a claim that won’t have aged well, by the day’s end.
Is it? Obviously they’ll turn over a lot of Tory council seats. But confronted with a real opponent they obviously struggle. The LibDems would have won by more than 6.
The Reform revolution looks somewhat anemic this morning. If you can’t turn out a big protest vote at times like this, the general election is going to be challenging.
I'm sure you're right. If they're the new opposition they've got a lot of work to do. They might be a new NF as in France but a very lite version.and fortunately there are enough anti fascists to see them off when required.
I don’t envy Labour but the clear message from his support at the last GE and before was that people are done with austerity. To double down on it whilst doing stuff that really upsets middle England, like the war on nature, has been politics at its poorest.
How can austerity end without raising taxes which are already at a high level?
Growth. Essentially, it can't. We can't afford the level of welfare we're currently paying for - we've basically got UBI for anyone who can pass a PIP and keeping anyone over 65 in clover.
Which party is going to be brave enough to end the triple lock ? My answer none .
It's not just the state pension, public sector pensions need a 30-40% haircut too. In too many areas we're living well beyond our means and our welfare state is far, far beyond a safety net. Cut a million people from state employment to take us back to 2017, taper the state pension for higher rate tax payers, merge NI and income tax so that non-working income is taxed at the same rate as working income, cut to £2k the cash ISA allowance, push through a 30-40% haircut for defined benefit pensions (even for people currently receiving them), introduce much, much tougher criteria to receive disability benefits and exclude all but 5% of the most serious mental health cases by default. The rest can go back to work or live on £450 per month or whatever UC is for unemployed people. Also get rid of UC, move back to the old system if JSA and ESA, UC is an experiment that hasn't worked, it's just encouraged people to game the system worse than ever.
I think if Labour started that programme today by the end of the parliament we could be in a position to actually pay front line service staff more and attract better quality candidates for teachers, police, nurses etc...
What we have now is an underfunded and hugely over funded state at the same time it's literally the worst of both worlds.
You aren't going far enough. That list looks like reforms but in practice is just cuts. You say "go back to work" but the jobs aren't there, and the few who find a job quickly experience why in work benefits are so well used - work doesn't pay the bills.
Unless you reimagine the welfare state in its entirety and make some surgical cuts to the cost of living, what you proposed creates a massive recession as circulating cash collapses which buggers local economies and makes the crumbling ruins of our towns collapse even faster.
There's around 750k vacancies in the country. The idea that there's not enough jobs out there for people to do is absurd. It's just that the layabout on PIP pretending to be sad doesn't want to do the jobs that are available at their skill level. You seem comfortable with allowing people to just opt out of working and living with their hands in our pockets off welfare, I'm not. The nation needs a solid decade of tough love the same as Argentina is getting now. We've lived beyond our means for far too many years, the state is bloated with people who sit at home pretending to work collecting £40-50k salaries and huge pensions and the state pension is paid to people like my parents who literally don't need it, I think they have a six figure household income, they both get whatever the state pension is which makes absolutely no sense to me. There's better uses for that ~£20k than giving it to people who earn as much as that.
Have no wish to spoil your rant but PIP like UC is for mainly for working people. A lot of PIP is spent on Motability cars to allow people to get to the workplace.
Sorry for the interruption. Please continue.
I think this is a widespread misconception about benefits. A very large proportion is on people who are in work, and the UK has a unusual rate of in-work poverty.
This is where lower immigration could help. Keep squeezing the labour market and force firms to invest and/or increase wages for those at the bottom, reducing our benefits bill and boosting productivity.
People talking about the minimum wage being too high have got it completely wrong, imo. We don't really have an issue with millions of people not working - it's just that they are working in crap jobs and not earning much doing it.
How does it reduce our benefits bill - because anyone sane is going to take a recent immigrant who wants to earn money over someone who has been unemployed and doesn't really want to work.
The Reform revolution looks somewhat anemic this morning. If you can’t turn out a big protest vote at times like this, the general election is going to be challenging.
That’s a claim that won’t have aged well, by the day’s end.
Is it? Obviously they’ll turn over a lot of Tory council seats. But confronted with a real opponent they obviously struggle. The LibDems would have won by more than 6.
Please show your workings. That didn’t really work out against “real” opponents in Northumberland.
I don’t envy Labour but the clear message from his support at the last GE and before was that people are done with austerity. To double down on it whilst doing stuff that really upsets middle England, like the war on nature, has been politics at its poorest.
How can austerity end without raising taxes which are already at a high level?
Growth. Essentially, it can't. We can't afford the level of welfare we're currently paying for - we've basically got UBI for anyone who can pass a PIP and keeping anyone over 65 in clover.
Which party is going to be brave enough to end the triple lock ? My answer none .
It's not just the state pension, public sector pensions need a 30-40% haircut too. In too many areas we're living well beyond our means and our welfare state is far, far beyond a safety net. Cut a million people from state employment to take us back to 2017, taper the state pension for higher rate tax payers, merge NI and income tax so that non-working income is taxed at the same rate as working income, cut to £2k the cash ISA allowance, push through a 30-40% haircut for defined benefit pensions (even for people currently receiving them), introduce much, much tougher criteria to receive disability benefits and exclude all but 5% of the most serious mental health cases by default. The rest can go back to work or live on £450 per month or whatever UC is for unemployed people. Also get rid of UC, move back to the old system if JSA and ESA, UC is an experiment that hasn't worked, it's just encouraged people to game the system worse than ever.
I think if Labour started that programme today by the end of the parliament we could be in a position to actually pay front line service staff more and attract better quality candidates for teachers, police, nurses etc...
What we have now is an underfunded and hugely over funded state at the same time it's literally the worst of both worlds.
You aren't going far enough. That list looks like reforms but in practice is just cuts. You say "go back to work" but the jobs aren't there, and the few who find a job quickly experience why in work benefits are so well used - work doesn't pay the bills.
Unless you reimagine the welfare state in its entirety and make some surgical cuts to the cost of living, what you proposed creates a massive recession as circulating cash collapses which buggers local economies and makes the crumbling ruins of our towns collapse even faster.
There's around 750k vacancies in the country. The idea that there's not enough jobs out there for people to do is absurd. .
You've just made another million unemployed. Or were you just making that bit up ?
Your own figures, even taking them at face value, are ridiculous.
I don’t envy Labour but the clear message from his support at the last GE and before was that people are done with austerity. To double down on it whilst doing stuff that really upsets middle England, like the war on nature, has been politics at its poorest.
How can austerity end without raising taxes which are already at a high level?
Growth. Essentially, it can't. We can't afford the level of welfare we're currently paying for - we've basically got UBI for anyone who can pass a PIP and keeping anyone over 65 in clover.
Which party is going to be brave enough to end the triple lock ? My answer none .
It's not just the state pension, public sector pensions need a 30-40% haircut too. In too many areas we're living well beyond our means and our welfare state is far, far beyond a safety net. Cut a million people from state employment to take us back to 2017, taper the state pension for higher rate tax payers, merge NI and income tax so that non-working income is taxed at the same rate as working income, cut to £2k the cash ISA allowance, push through a 30-40% haircut for defined benefit pensions (even for people currently receiving them), introduce much, much tougher criteria to receive disability benefits and exclude all but 5% of the most serious mental health cases by default. The rest can go back to work or live on £450 per month or whatever UC is for unemployed people. Also get rid of UC, move back to the old system if JSA and ESA, UC is an experiment that hasn't worked, it's just encouraged people to game the system worse than ever.
I think if Labour started that programme today by the end of the parliament we could be in a position to actually pay front line service staff more and attract better quality candidates for teachers, police, nurses etc...
What we have now is an underfunded and hugely over funded state at the same time it's literally the worst of both worlds.
You aren't going far enough. That list looks like reforms but in practice is just cuts. You say "go back to work" but the jobs aren't there, and the few who find a job quickly experience why in work benefits are so well used - work doesn't pay the bills.
Unless you reimagine the welfare state in its entirety and make some surgical cuts to the cost of living, what you proposed creates a massive recession as circulating cash collapses which buggers local economies and makes the crumbling ruins of our towns collapse even faster.
There's around 750k vacancies in the country. The idea that there's not enough jobs out there for people to do is absurd. It's just that the layabout on PIP pretending to be sad doesn't want to do the jobs that are available at their skill level. You seem comfortable with allowing people to just opt out of working and living with their hands in our pockets off welfare, I'm not. The nation needs a solid decade of tough love the same as Argentina is getting now. We've lived beyond our means for far too many years, the state is bloated with people who sit at home pretending to work collecting £40-50k salaries and huge pensions and the state pension is paid to people like my parents who literally don't need it, I think they have a six figure household income, they both get whatever the state pension is which makes absolutely no sense to me. There's better uses for that ~£20k than giving it to people who earn as much as that.
Have no wish to spoil your rant but PIP like UC is for mainly for working people. A lot of PIP is spent on Motability cars to allow people to get to the workplace.
Sorry for the interruption. Please continue.
I think this is a widespread misconception about benefits. A very large proportion is on people who are in work, and the UK has a unusual rate of in-work poverty.
This is where lower immigration could help. Keep squeezing the labour market and force firms to invest and/or increase wages for those at the bottom, reducing our benefits bill and boosting productivity.
People talking about the minimum wage being too high have got it completely wrong, imo. We don't really have an issue with millions of people not working - it's just that they are working in crap jobs and not earning much doing it.
How does it reduce our benefits bill - because anyone sane is going to take a recent immigrant who wants to earn money over someone who has been unemployed and doesn't really want to work.
Because we spend so much money on topping up the incomes of people who are already in work. If you boost wages at the bottom, those benefits get tapered away.
Seems to be the tories and Labour haven’t quite grasped the mood out there - seemingly continuing in the same way they have for decades and changing nothing.
Starmer needs to stop the “smash the gangs” rubbish as quite clearly it’s making no difference. Reeves needs to go. And we need to start having an honest conversation about the NHS and whether there is a “better way”.
Badenoch - well, she’s quite useless. She won’t be around for much longer I think.
Apart from that, really fascinating time in politics
IMHO we should restrict what is available on the NHS. Emergency care, obviously, and basic services. But a lot of things we just can't afford, yes, like latest treatments for X, Y, Z. If we have to borrow money to support our standard if living we aren't a wealthy country.
I think the brutal but necessary action is to freeze hospital spending in nominal terms until it represents the same proportion of health spending as it did 20 years ago. Tighten up QALYs and revert the emphasis to public health and primary care.
Public health was taken out of the NHS and dumped on councils who are hardly rolling in cash.
Primary care is increasingly being bought up by private equity groups. The old GP partner model is being replaced by salaried GPs, often part-time.
Dan Neidle has published the rather flakey judicial review case against VAT on school fees. The argument is that it's none christian religious people and foreigners should be exempt..
The Reform revolution looks somewhat anemic this morning. If you can’t turn out a big protest vote at times like this, the general election is going to be challenging.
That’s a claim that won’t have aged well, by the day’s end.
Is it? Obviously they’ll turn over a lot of Tory council seats. But confronted with a real opponent they obviously struggle. The LibDems would have won by more than 6.
Err, there’s talk that Labour will fail to hold a single seat in Durham! A swing of 17.4%, in one of Labour’s safest seats, is big.
Seems to be the tories and Labour haven’t quite grasped the mood out there - seemingly continuing in the same way they have for decades and changing nothing.
Starmer needs to stop the “smash the gangs” rubbish as quite clearly it’s making no difference. Reeves needs to go. And we need to start having an honest conversation about the NHS and whether there is a “better way”.
Badenoch - well, she’s quite useless. She won’t be around for much longer I think.
Apart from that, really fascinating time in politics
Here's the problem - Labour will rightly start quoting statistics at people showing how many extra GP appointments they have created. Whilst I have no doubt that statistically that is true, people's lived experience is far worse.
What Labour seem to have blissfully forgotten in office is that statistics are not reality - they disguise reality. So many people can't see a GP and the queue for a scan to get onto a waiting list is in itself lengthy. So when they are they told that actually we're added another half a million GP appointments actually, they get rightly insulted.
My local doctors has gone to online triage, and when I tried to book an appointment last month, I was asked a series of vague multi choice questions about my symptoms, (which were flu like/covid-ish I guess).When I answered that I felt drowsy sometimes , it said I had to phone the doctors or 100, so I just logged off and had a lemsip.
Did this count as one of the millions of new GP appointments I wonder? Shows I wasn’t that ill I suppose
Clearly Reform will be pleased to have won Runcorn on a big swing.
However Labour will at least have a few crumbs of comfort in that they kept the margin close and note that the combined Labour and LD vote or Labour and Green vote in Runcorn was bigger than the Reform vote.
So Labour will certainly push tactical voting for them hard in seats where Reform are their main challengers at the next GE to try and keep Farage out of No 10
It feels like they've tilted England on it's side and all the fascists have rolled down towards the East coast
Reform voters are not fascists.
Perhaps not as a block, but there are certainly fascist sympathisers who do vote for them...
Plenty of nonces who vote lib dems too, but silly to slur them all...
The by-election in Redbridge last night came about because the former Labour councillor and Streeting aide parked his car where he could see a thirteen year old girl was about to walk by, wound down the window, and started having a wank.
The Reform revolution looks somewhat anemic this morning. If you can’t turn out a big protest vote at times like this, the general election is going to be challenging.
That’s a claim that won’t have aged well, by the day’s end.
Is it? Obviously they’ll turn over a lot of Tory council seats. But confronted with a real opponent they obviously struggle. The LibDems would have won by more than 6.
Err, there’s talk that Labour will fail to hold a single seat in Durham! A swing of 17.4%, in one of Labour’s safest seats, is big.
And yet the obvious conclusion overnight is that Reform are beatable. I’m old enough to remember when Milliband won a lot of council seats in 2011.
What is believed to have been intended to be a Soviet Venera probe failed to break orbit having been launched a week or so after Venera 8 in 1972. And has been stuck in orbit ever since. Expected to make an uncontrolled reentry next week, could impact anywhere between 51 north and 51 south...
Seems to be the tories and Labour haven’t quite grasped the mood out there - seemingly continuing in the same way they have for decades and changing nothing.
Starmer needs to stop the “smash the gangs” rubbish as quite clearly it’s making no difference. Reeves needs to go. And we need to start having an honest conversation about the NHS and whether there is a “better way”.
Badenoch - well, she’s quite useless. She won’t be around for much longer I think.
Apart from that, really fascinating time in politics
Here's the problem - Labour will rightly start quoting statistics at people showing how many extra GP appointments they have created. Whilst I have no doubt that statistically that is true, people's lived experience is far worse.
What Labour seem to have blissfully forgotten in office is that statistics are not reality - they disguise reality. So many people can't see a GP and the queue for a scan to get onto a waiting list is in itself lengthy. So when they are they told that actually we're added another half a million GP appointments actually, they get rightly insulted.
My local doctors has gone to online triage, and when I tried to book an appointment last month, I was asked a series of vague multi choice questions about my symptoms, (which were flu like/covid-ish I guess. When I answered that I felt drowsy sometimes , it said I had to phone the doctors or 100, so I just logged off and had a lemsip.
Did this count as one of the millions of new GP appointments I wonder? Shows I wasn’t that ill I suppose
What we have seen in the part with the NHS (of course other organisation do so too), faced with hard and fast targets, they find ways of meeting them which aren't necessarily with the service users best interest at heart.
85 rejected ballots and an unknown number of disputed... was this an election decided on the interpretation of meaning and positioning of "cock and balls"?
I don’t envy Labour but the clear message from his support at the last GE and before was that people are done with austerity. To double down on it whilst doing stuff that really upsets middle England, like the war on nature, has been politics at its poorest.
How can austerity end without raising taxes which are already at a high level?
Growth. Essentially, it can't. We can't afford the level of welfare we're currently paying for - we've basically got UBI for anyone who can pass a PIP and keeping anyone over 65 in clover.
Which party is going to be brave enough to end the triple lock ? My answer none .
It's not just the state pension, public sector pensions need a 30-40% haircut too. In too many areas we're living well beyond our means and our welfare state is far, far beyond a safety net. Cut a million people from state employment to take us back to 2017, taper the state pension for higher rate tax payers, merge NI and income tax so that non-working income is taxed at the same rate as working income, cut to £2k the cash ISA allowance, push through a 30-40% haircut for defined benefit pensions (even for people currently receiving them), introduce much, much tougher criteria to receive disability benefits and exclude all but 5% of the most serious mental health cases by default. The rest can go back to work or live on £450 per month or whatever UC is for unemployed people. Also get rid of UC, move back to the old system if JSA and ESA, UC is an experiment that hasn't worked, it's just encouraged people to game the system worse than ever.
I think if Labour started that programme today by the end of the parliament we could be in a position to actually pay front line service staff more and attract better quality candidates for teachers, police, nurses etc...
What we have now is an underfunded and hugely over funded state at the same time it's literally the worst of both worlds.
You aren't going far enough. That list looks like reforms but in practice is just cuts. You say "go back to work" but the jobs aren't there, and the few who find a job quickly experience why in work benefits are so well used - work doesn't pay the bills.
Unless you reimagine the welfare state in its entirety and make some surgical cuts to the cost of living, what you proposed creates a massive recession as circulating cash collapses which buggers local economies and makes the crumbling ruins of our towns collapse even faster.
There's around 750k vacancies in the country. The idea that there's not enough jobs out there for people to do is absurd. It's just that the layabout on PIP pretending to be sad doesn't want to do the jobs that are available at their skill level. You seem comfortable with allowing people to just opt out of working and living with their hands in our pockets off welfare, I'm not. The nation needs a solid decade of tough love the same as Argentina is getting now. We've lived beyond our means for far too many years, the state is bloated with people who sit at home pretending to work collecting £40-50k salaries and huge pensions and the state pension is paid to people like my parents who literally don't need it, I think they have a six figure household income, they both get whatever the state pension is which makes absolutely no sense to me. There's better uses for that ~£20k than giving it to people who earn as much as that.
Have no wish to spoil your rant but PIP like UC is for mainly for working people. A lot of PIP is spent on Motability cars to allow people to get to the workplace.
Sorry for the interruption. Please continue.
I think this is a widespread misconception about benefits. A very large proportion is on people who are in work, and the UK has a unusual rate of in-work poverty.
This is where lower immigration could help. Keep squeezing the labour market and force firms to invest and/or increase wages for those at the bottom, reducing our benefits bill and boosting productivity.
People talking about the minimum wage being too high have got it completely wrong, imo. We don't really have an issue with millions of people not working - it's just that they are working in crap jobs and not earning much doing it.
How does it reduce our benefits bill - because anyone sane is going to take a recent immigrant who wants to earn money over someone who has been unemployed and doesn't really want to work.
Because we spend so much money on topping up the incomes of people who are already in work. If you boost wages at the bottom, those benefits get tapered away.
It might be that benefits need to be reviewed by the government as although they are seen as supporting individuals in need, which most of us can agree is a good thing, they can also be framed as subsidising bad landlords and bad employers. How can NiceCo compete with EvilCo and IncompetentCo when the latter two are subsidised by the state?
So, it's going to be an interesting day. Like @TSE I only woke up an hour ago and slept through the drama.
Reform are going to have higher stakes to play with; these election results will have a non-neutral impact and increase both potential costs and potential benefits for RfUK. They are on a longer, higher tightrope, and the practice safety net has been removed for the performance.
A couple of furthers comments on my conversation with a local candidate whilst I was voting. He is PB age - recently retired, is with the AIs, and reported that he had walked 700 miles during the run up to this election.
They have (both AI and Reform) pursued pavement politics, LD style, and the AIs rest on things such as having brought in money to the area (which is fair - £50m+ via Towns Fund etc and a two new / refurbed sports centres, and an overhaul of a couple of town centre squares, county youth centre, observatory, upgraded indoor market). And they pursue a bar-chart rhetoric focused on "it's Us vs X", when it's actually Y, plus a blizzard of Focus-alike leaflets. Rubbish collections are improved.
But the extra one-of sticky-plaster money is far less than cuts due to Osborne / Cameron, and at national level the need for Council Tax Reform has simply been ignored - the South will squeal if it is made significantly less regressive even by eg property revaluation, or removal of the 3x limit to the multiplier, so the relative increase in property values over 3 decades and the benefit thereof is used in the calculation.
85 rejected ballots and an unknown number of disputed... was this an election decided on the interpretation of meaning and positioning of "cock and balls"?
All such graphics interpreted as a vote for RefUK?
Both myself and @RochdalePioneers were saying yesterday that the enthusiasm gap was going to defeat Labour in the byelection. I am quite pleased it was so close to be honest. It suggests to me that there is still a ceiling on the Reform vote.
We will get a better picture from the local elections today. Again, I fear that low turnouts will exaggerate the effect of the Reform vote, just as it used to for UKIP in the EU elections. With a 30% turnout every voter who can be arsed to turn out is worth 3.
The Tories are in serious trouble, there is no doubt about that. What I am not seeing is the Cameron/Osborne type figure who can lead them back. It is the complete lack of talent that is killing them and feeding Reform. Changing the leader for the sake of it yet again is only an answer if there is a much better alternative in the wings. Cleverly? Genuinely not sure.
It feels like they've tilted England on it's side and all the fascists have rolled down towards the East coast
Reform voters are not fascists.
Perhaps not as a block, but there are certainly fascist sympathisers who do vote for them...
Plenty of nonces who vote lib dems too, but silly to slur them all...
The by-election in Redbridge last night came about because the former Labour councillor and Streeting aide parked his car where he could see a thirteen year old girl was about to walk by, wound down the window, and started having a wank.
Just saying.
Are you saying that they should have covered it up like other parties have?
It feels like they've tilted England on it's side and all the fascists have rolled down towards the East coast
Reform voters are not fascists.
Perhaps not as a block, but there are certainly fascist sympathisers who do vote for them...
Plenty of nonces who vote lib dems too, but silly to slur them all...
The by-election in Redbridge last night came about because the former Labour councillor and Streeting aide parked his car where he could see a thirteen year old girl was about to walk by, wound down the window, and started having a wank.
Just saying.
Are you saying that they should have covered it up like other parties have?
He definitely should have been covering it up. No question.
So my parents’ canvassing impressions were much closer to the money than the polls, but Reform still squeaked it in the end.
Think this one might return to Labour at the next GE, but that depends on the government getting their act together. Cue “long time in politics” clichés etc etc.
So, it's going to be an interesting day. Like @TSE I only woke up an hour ago and slept through the drama.
Reform are going to have higher stakes to play with; these election results will have a non-neutral impact and increase both potential costs and potential benefits for RfUK. They are on a longer, higher tightrope, and the practice safety net has been removed for the performance.
A couple of furthers comments on my conversation with a local candidate whilst I was voting. He is PB age - recently retired, is with the AIs, and reported that he had walked 700 miles during the run up to this election.
They have (both AI and Reform) pursued pavement politics, LD style, and the AIs rest on things such as having brought in money to the area (which is fair - £50m+ via Towns Fund etc and a two new / refurbed sports centres, and an overhaul of a couple of town centre squares, county youth centre, observatory, upgraded indoor market). And they pursue a bar-chart rhetoric focused on "it's Us vs X", when it's actually Y, plus a blizzard of Focus-alike leaflets. Rubbish collections are improved.
But the extra one-of sticky-plaster money is far less than cuts due to Osborne / Cameron, and at national level the need for Council Tax Reform has simply been ignored - the South will squeal if it is made significantly less regressive even by eg property revaluation, or removal of the 3x limit to the multiplier, so the relative increase in property values over 3 decades and the benefit thereof is used in the calculation.
Worth reminding people that the VOA (who calculate the value of properties subject to business rates and council tac) are now part of HMRC rather than being an arms length removed.
As my daughter pointed out on the all hands call yesterday it means it’s very hard to pretend to be independent
I don’t envy Labour but the clear message from his support at the last GE and before was that people are done with austerity. To double down on it whilst doing stuff that really upsets middle England, like the war on nature, has been politics at its poorest.
How can austerity end without raising taxes which are already at a high level?
Growth. Essentially, it can't. We can't afford the level of welfare we're currently paying for - we've basically got UBI for anyone who can pass a PIP and keeping anyone over 65 in clover.
Which party is going to be brave enough to end the triple lock ? My answer none .
It's not just the state pension, public sector pensions need a 30-40% haircut too. In too many areas we're living well beyond our means and our welfare state is far, far beyond a safety net. Cut a million people from state employment to take us back to 2017, taper the state pension for higher rate tax payers, merge NI and income tax so that non-working income is taxed at the same rate as working income, cut to £2k the cash ISA allowance, push through a 30-40% haircut for defined benefit pensions (even for people currently receiving them), introduce much, much tougher criteria to receive disability benefits and exclude all but 5% of the most serious mental health cases by default. The rest can go back to work or live on £450 per month or whatever UC is for unemployed people. Also get rid of UC, move back to the old system if JSA and ESA, UC is an experiment that hasn't worked, it's just encouraged people to game the system worse than ever.
I think if Labour started that programme today by the end of the parliament we could be in a position to actually pay front line service staff more and attract better quality candidates for teachers, police, nurses etc...
What we have now is an underfunded and hugely over funded state at the same time it's literally the worst of both worlds.
You aren't going far enough. That list looks like reforms but in practice is just cuts. You say "go back to work" but the jobs aren't there, and the few who find a job quickly experience why in work benefits are so well used - work doesn't pay the bills.
Unless you reimagine the welfare state in its entirety and make some surgical cuts to the cost of living, what you proposed creates a massive recession as circulating cash collapses which buggers local economies and makes the crumbling ruins of our towns collapse even faster.
The jobs are there - it's just very difficult for anyone who's been out of work a long time to get one because they are seen as "suspect".
There is actually a secondary problem here - at £12.21 an hour staff need to be productive quickly. And an awful lot of unemployed people simply won't be reliable enough for someone to risk the cost of employing them..
This, in spades. I'm giving someone with a pretty dubious employment record a chance at the moment - they're currently coming up to the end of a two week trial with us. They are clearly worth something - I'd definitely pay say £8 an hour, but I'm currently humming and harring if they are really worth £12.21 (plus all the other costs - Employers NI, holidays, pensions etc). They probably aren't right now, so I'm having to decide if I want to take a bet on them coming good in the medium term.
Worth noting that if Labour impose workers rights from day one, I'll never take a punt on anyone like this ever again - it's only worth taking the risk on someone like him because I can cut my losses at any point in the next year if he turns out to be a dud.
Also worth noting that he'll be the employee that tips me from a slight win on the employers NI changes into a substantial loss.
Taxing employment is stupid. Tax business profits, not turnover, and you might even get growth.
The Reform revolution looks somewhat anemic this morning. If you can’t turn out a big protest vote at times like this, the general election is going to be challenging.
That’s a claim that won’t have aged well, by the day’s end.
Is it? Obviously they’ll turn over a lot of Tory council seats. But confronted with a real opponent they obviously struggle. The LibDems would have won by more than 6.
Err, there’s talk that Labour will fail to hold a single seat in Durham! A swing of 17.4%, in one of Labour’s safest seats, is big.
We're going to find out pretty soon, Sean, but I expected Reform to win more handsomely than they did, and I sense that it may presage a slightly underwhelming performance all round.
Seems to be the tories and Labour haven’t quite grasped the mood out there - seemingly continuing in the same way they have for decades and changing nothing.
Starmer needs to stop the “smash the gangs” rubbish as quite clearly it’s making no difference. Reeves needs to go. And we need to start having an honest conversation about the NHS and whether there is a “better way”.
Badenoch - well, she’s quite useless. She won’t be around for much longer I think.
Apart from that, really fascinating time in politics
Here's the problem - Labour will rightly start quoting statistics at people showing how many extra GP appointments they have created. Whilst I have no doubt that statistically that is true, people's lived experience is far worse.
What Labour seem to have blissfully forgotten in office is that statistics are not reality - they disguise reality. So many people can't see a GP and the queue for a scan to get onto a waiting list is in itself lengthy. So when they are they told that actually we're added another half a million GP appointments actually, they get rightly insulted.
My local doctors has gone to online triage, and when I tried to book an appointment last month, I was asked a series of vague multi choice questions about my symptoms, (which were flu like/covid-ish I guess. When I answered that I felt drowsy sometimes , it said I had to phone the doctors or 100, so I just logged off and had a lemsip.
Did this count as one of the millions of new GP appointments I wonder? Shows I wasn’t that ill I suppose
What we have seen in the part with the NHS (of course other organisation do so too), faced with hard and fast targets, they find ways of meeting them which aren't necessarily with the service users best interest at heart.
When an impossible target is set and it’s obvious that it’s a target for political reasons it will be gamed.
The Tories are absolutely vital to be the policy brain of the new Refcon Government (with Reform the heart). Much as it pains me to say it, they should continue the Kemi path of laying out detailed policies (providing she ever gets there) and being the party of detail and workings. It is serious - I want Reform in Government but most of them will have never even been MPs.
It's never going to work like that in any hypothetical Fukkertor coalition. Farage hates the tories almost as much as me and, if he needs tory MPs for votes, he will make sure they are subjugated and humiliated.
If, by some miracle, KB is still leader of the tories by the next GE, she isn't going to be the 'policy brain'. She'll be in charge of putting out the biscuits for Farage's interview with Tim Pool. Above all, Farage knows his voters and their reptilian hierarchy of needs. They don't want tories anywhere near government, they are part of the problem and Farage understands this.
The Tories are in serious trouble, there is no doubt about that. What I am not seeing is the Cameron/Osborne type figure who can lead them back. It is the complete lack of talent that is killing them
BoZo purged the talent because they knew Brexit was a disaster
Until (unless) the Conservative and Unionist party confront that truth, they are doomed
The Reform revolution looks somewhat anemic this morning. If you can’t turn out a big protest vote at times like this, the general election is going to be challenging.
So, it's going to be an interesting day. Like @TSE I only woke up an hour ago and slept through the drama.
Reform are going to have higher stakes to play with; these election results will have a non-neutral impact and increase both potential costs and potential benefits for RfUK. They are on a longer, higher tightrope, and the practice safety net has been removed for the performance.
A couple of furthers comments on my conversation with a local candidate whilst I was voting. He is PB age - recently retired, is with the AIs, and reported that he had walked 700 miles during the run up to this election.
They have (both AI and Reform) pursued pavement politics, LD style, and the AIs rest on things such as having brought in money to the area (which is fair - £50m+ via Towns Fund etc and a two new / refurbed sports centres, and an overhaul of a couple of town centre squares, county youth centre, observatory, upgraded indoor market). And they pursue a bar-chart rhetoric focused on "it's Us vs X", when it's actually Y, plus a blizzard of Focus-alike leaflets. Rubbish collections are improved.
But the extra one-of sticky-plaster money is far less than cuts due to Osborne / Cameron, and at national level the need for Council Tax Reform has simply been ignored - the South will squeal if it is made significantly less regressive even by eg property revaluation, or removal of the 3x limit to the multiplier, so the relative increase in property values over 3 decades and the benefit thereof is used in the calculation.
Worth reminding people that the VOA (who calculate the value of properties subject to business rates and council tac) are now part of HMRC rather than being an arms length removed.
As my daughter pointed out on the all hands call yesterday it means it’s very hard to pretend to be independent
Taxing immovable wealth doesn't need to be taxing.
The Tories are absolutely vital to be the policy brain of the new Refcon Government (with Reform the heart). Much as it pains me to say it, they should continue the Kemi path of laying out detailed policies (providing she ever gets there) and being the party of detail and workings. It is serious - I want Reform in Government but most of them will have never even been MPs.
It's never going to work like that in any hypothetical Fukkertor coalition. Farage hates the tories almost as much as me and, if he needs tory MPs for votes, he will make sure they are subjugated and humiliated.
If, by some miracle, KB is still leader of the tories by the next GE, she isn't going to be the 'policy brain'. She'll be in charge of putting out the biscuits for Farage's interview with Tim Pool. Above all, Farage knows his voters and their reptilian hierarchy of needs. They don't want tories anywhere near government, they are part of the problem and Farage understands this.
If he's prepared to take the flak of having Liz Truss advising him, that suggests to me that a) he doesn't have a personal hate mission against all Tories and b) he's at least semi serious about Governing.
So, it's going to be an interesting day. Like @TSE I only woke up an hour ago and slept through the drama.
Reform are going to have higher stakes to play with; these election results will have a non-neutral impact and increase both potential costs and potential benefits for RfUK. They are on a longer, higher tightrope, and the practice safety net has been removed for the performance.
A couple of furthers comments on my conversation with a local candidate whilst I was voting. He is PB age - recently retired, is with the AIs, and reported that he had walked 700 miles during the run up to this election.
They have (both AI and Reform) pursued pavement politics, LD style, and the AIs rest on things such as having brought in money to the area (which is fair - £50m+ via Towns Fund etc and a two new / refurbed sports centres, and an overhaul of a couple of town centre squares, county youth centre, observatory, upgraded indoor market). And they pursue a bar-chart rhetoric focused on "it's Us vs X", when it's actually Y, plus a blizzard of Focus-alike leaflets. Rubbish collections are improved.
But the extra one-of sticky-plaster money is far less than cuts due to Osborne / Cameron, and at national level the need for Council Tax Reform has simply been ignored - the South will squeal if it is made significantly less regressive even by eg property revaluation, or removal of the 3x limit to the multiplier, so the relative increase in property values over 3 decades and the benefit thereof is used in the calculation.
Worth reminding people that the VOA (who calculate the value of properties subject to business rates and council tac) are now part of HMRC rather than being an arms length removed.
As my daughter pointed out on the all hands call yesterday it means it’s very hard to pretend to be independent
And HMRC has been a law unto itself ever since it took over the Inland Revenue in one of Gordon Brown's less publicised master strokes.
I don’t envy Labour but the clear message from his support at the last GE and before was that people are done with austerity. To double down on it whilst doing stuff that really upsets middle England, like the war on nature, has been politics at its poorest.
How can austerity end without raising taxes which are already at a high level?
Growth. Essentially, it can't. We can't afford the level of welfare we're currently paying for - we've basically got UBI for anyone who can pass a PIP and keeping anyone over 65 in clover.
Which party is going to be brave enough to end the triple lock ? My answer none .
It's not just the state pension, public sector pensions need a 30-40% haircut too. In too many areas we're living well beyond our means and our welfare state is far, far beyond a safety net. Cut a million people from state employment to take us back to 2017, taper the state pension for higher rate tax payers, merge NI and income tax so that non-working income is taxed at the same rate as working income, cut to £2k the cash ISA allowance, push through a 30-40% haircut for defined benefit pensions (even for people currently receiving them), introduce much, much tougher criteria to receive disability benefits and exclude all but 5% of the most serious mental health cases by default. The rest can go back to work or live on £450 per month or whatever UC is for unemployed people. Also get rid of UC, move back to the old system if JSA and ESA, UC is an experiment that hasn't worked, it's just encouraged people to game the system worse than ever.
I think if Labour started that programme today by the end of the parliament we could be in a position to actually pay front line service staff more and attract better quality candidates for teachers, police, nurses etc...
What we have now is an underfunded and hugely over funded state at the same time it's literally the worst of both worlds.
You aren't going far enough. That list looks like reforms but in practice is just cuts. You say "go back to work" but the jobs aren't there, and the few who find a job quickly experience why in work benefits are so well used - work doesn't pay the bills.
Unless you reimagine the welfare state in its entirety and make some surgical cuts to the cost of living, what you proposed creates a massive recession as circulating cash collapses which buggers local economies and makes the crumbling ruins of our towns collapse even faster.
The jobs are there - it's just very difficult for anyone who's been out of work a long time to get one because they are seen as "suspect".
There is actually a secondary problem here - at £12.21 an hour staff need to be productive quickly. And an awful lot of unemployed people simply won't be reliable enough for someone to risk the cost of employing them..
Once they are getting heehaw benefits for being lazy toerags they will quickly learn to be more reliable.
So, it's going to be an interesting day. Like @TSE I only woke up an hour ago and slept through the drama.
Reform are going to have higher stakes to play with; these election results will have a non-neutral impact and increase both potential costs and potential benefits for RfUK. They are on a longer, higher tightrope, and the practice safety net has been removed for the performance.
A couple of furthers comments on my conversation with a local candidate whilst I was voting. He is PB age - recently retired, is with the AIs, and reported that he had walked 700 miles during the run up to this election.
They have (both AI and Reform) pursued pavement politics, LD style, and the AIs rest on things such as having brought in money to the area (which is fair - £50m+ via Towns Fund etc and a two new / refurbed sports centres, and an overhaul of a couple of town centre squares, county youth centre, observatory, upgraded indoor market). And they pursue a bar-chart rhetoric focused on "it's Us vs X", when it's actually Y, plus a blizzard of Focus-alike leaflets. Rubbish collections are improved.
But the extra one-of sticky-plaster money is far less than cuts due to Osborne / Cameron, and at national level the need for Council Tax Reform has simply been ignored - the South will squeal if it is made significantly less regressive even by eg property revaluation, or removal of the 3x limit to the multiplier, so the relative increase in property values over 3 decades and the benefit thereof is used in the calculation.
Worth reminding people that the VOA (who calculate the value of properties subject to business rates and council tac) are now part of HMRC rather than being an arms length removed.
As my daughter pointed out on the all hands call yesterday it means it’s very hard to pretend to be independent
I have two bits of council tax casework on hand at the moment.
In the first, residents who had been renting out a chalet in their garden as a holiday let, registered as a business to pay (nil) business rates rather than council tax, have now decided to stop, and the council has hit them not only with council tax, but double council tax as a ‘second home’, on what they are trying to argue is now just a large garden shed.
In the second, someone who has just moved into a property has had their banding increased on the grounds that the previous owner had added a conservatory (home improvements only becoming liable for a rebanding when the property is sold).
The second case, I have some sympathy with, as a conservatory isn’t the same as an extension to make an extra bedroom or room.
In the first case, the owners have removed the toilets from their chalet in order to try and argue it is no longer habitable. I’m not sure that is going to wash.
I don’t envy Labour but the clear message from his support at the last GE and before was that people are done with austerity. To double down on it whilst doing stuff that really upsets middle England, like the war on nature, has been politics at its poorest.
How can austerity end without raising taxes which are already at a high level?
Growth. Essentially, it can't. We can't afford the level of welfare we're currently paying for - we've basically got UBI for anyone who can pass a PIP and keeping anyone over 65 in clover.
Which party is going to be brave enough to end the triple lock ? My answer none .
It's not just the state pension, public sector pensions need a 30-40% haircut too. In too many areas we're living well beyond our means and our welfare state is far, far beyond a safety net. Cut a million people from state employment to take us back to 2017, taper the state pension for higher rate tax payers, merge NI and income tax so that non-working income is taxed at the same rate as working income, cut to £2k the cash ISA allowance, push through a 30-40% haircut for defined benefit pensions (even for people currently receiving them), introduce much, much tougher criteria to receive disability benefits and exclude all but 5% of the most serious mental health cases by default. The rest can go back to work or live on £450 per month or whatever UC is for unemployed people. Also get rid of UC, move back to the old system if JSA and ESA, UC is an experiment that hasn't worked, it's just encouraged people to game the system worse than ever.
I think if Labour started that programme today by the end of the parliament we could be in a position to actually pay front line service staff more and attract better quality candidates for teachers, police, nurses etc...
What we have now is an underfunded and hugely over funded state at the same time it's literally the worst of both worlds.
You aren't going far enough. That list looks like reforms but in practice is just cuts. You say "go back to work" but the jobs aren't there, and the few who find a job quickly experience why in work benefits are so well used - work doesn't pay the bills.
Unless you reimagine the welfare state in its entirety and make some surgical cuts to the cost of living, what you proposed creates a massive recession as circulating cash collapses which buggers local economies and makes the crumbling ruins of our towns collapse even faster.
The jobs are there - it's just very difficult for anyone who's been out of work a long time to get one because they are seen as "suspect".
There is actually a secondary problem here - at £12.21 an hour staff need to be productive quickly. And an awful lot of unemployed people simply won't be reliable enough for someone to risk the cost of employing them..
Once they are getting heehaw benefits for being lazy toerags they will quickly learn to be more reliable.
So, it's going to be an interesting day. Like @TSE I only woke up an hour ago and slept through the drama.
Reform are going to have higher stakes to play with; these election results will have a non-neutral impact and increase both potential costs and potential benefits for RfUK. They are on a longer, higher tightrope, and the practice safety net has been removed for the performance.
A couple of furthers comments on my conversation with a local candidate whilst I was voting. He is PB age - recently retired, is with the AIs, and reported that he had walked 700 miles during the run up to this election.
They have (both AI and Reform) pursued pavement politics, LD style, and the AIs rest on things such as having brought in money to the area (which is fair - £50m+ via Towns Fund etc and a two new / refurbed sports centres, and an overhaul of a couple of town centre squares, county youth centre, observatory, upgraded indoor market). And they pursue a bar-chart rhetoric focused on "it's Us vs X", when it's actually Y, plus a blizzard of Focus-alike leaflets. Rubbish collections are improved.
But the extra one-of sticky-plaster money is far less than cuts due to Osborne / Cameron, and at national level the need for Council Tax Reform has simply been ignored - the South will squeal if it is made significantly less regressive even by eg property revaluation, or removal of the 3x limit to the multiplier, so the relative increase in property values over 3 decades and the benefit thereof is used in the calculation.
Worth reminding people that the VOA (who calculate the value of properties subject to business rates and council tac) are now part of HMRC rather than being an arms length removed.
As my daughter pointed out on the all hands call yesterday it means it’s very hard to pretend to be independent
I have two bits of council tax casework on hand at the moment.
In the first, residents who had been renting out a chalet in their garden as a holiday let, registered as a business to pay (nil) business rates rather than council tax, have now decided to stop, and the council has hit them not only with council tax, but double council tax as a ‘second home’, on what they are trying to argue is now just a large garden shed.
In the second, someone who has just moved into a property has had their banding increased on the grounds that the previous owner had added a conservatory (home improvements only becoming liable for a rebanding when the property is sold).
The second case, I have some sympathy with, as a conservatory isn’t the same as an extension to make an extra bedroom or room.
In the first case, the owners have removed the toilets from their chalet in order to try and argue it is no longer habitable. I’m not sure that is going to wash.
In neither case does it wash - a conservatory is still additional living space just done on the cheap
I don’t envy Labour but the clear message from his support at the last GE and before was that people are done with austerity. To double down on it whilst doing stuff that really upsets middle England, like the war on nature, has been politics at its poorest.
How can austerity end without raising taxes which are already at a high level?
Growth. Essentially, it can't. We can't afford the level of welfare we're currently paying for - we've basically got UBI for anyone who can pass a PIP and keeping anyone over 65 in clover.
Which party is going to be brave enough to end the triple lock ? My answer none .
It's not just the state pension, public sector pensions need a 30-40% haircut too. In too many areas we're living well beyond our means and our welfare state is far, far beyond a safety net. Cut a million people from state employment to take us back to 2017, taper the state pension for higher rate tax payers, merge NI and income tax so that non-working income is taxed at the same rate as working income, cut to £2k the cash ISA allowance, push through a 30-40% haircut for defined benefit pensions (even for people currently receiving them), introduce much, much tougher criteria to receive disability benefits and exclude all but 5% of the most serious mental health cases by default. The rest can go back to work or live on £450 per month or whatever UC is for unemployed people. Also get rid of UC, move back to the old system if JSA and ESA, UC is an experiment that hasn't worked, it's just encouraged people to game the system worse than ever.
I think if Labour started that programme today by the end of the parliament we could be in a position to actually pay front line service staff more and attract better quality candidates for teachers, police, nurses etc...
What we have now is an underfunded and hugely over funded state at the same time it's literally the worst of both worlds.
You aren't going far enough. That list looks like reforms but in practice is just cuts. You say "go back to work" but the jobs aren't there, and the few who find a job quickly experience why in work benefits are so well used - work doesn't pay the bills.
Unless you reimagine the welfare state in its entirety and make some surgical cuts to the cost of living, what you proposed creates a massive recession as circulating cash collapses which buggers local economies and makes the crumbling ruins of our towns collapse even faster.
There's around 750k vacancies in the country. The idea that there's not enough jobs out there for people to do is absurd. It's just that the layabout on PIP pretending to be sad doesn't want to do the jobs that are available at their skill level. You seem comfortable with allowing people to just opt out of working and living with their hands in our pockets off welfare, I'm not. The nation needs a solid decade of tough love the same as Argentina is getting now. We've lived beyond our means for far too many years, the state is bloated with people who sit at home pretending to work collecting £40-50k salaries and huge pensions and the state pension is paid to people like my parents who literally don't need it, I think they have a six figure household income, they both get whatever the state pension is which makes absolutely no sense to me. There's better uses for that ~£20k than giving it to people who earn as much as that.
Have no wish to spoil your rant but PIP like UC is for mainly for working people. A lot of PIP is spent on Motability cars to allow people to get to the workplace.
Sorry for the interruption. Please continue.
I think this is a widespread misconception about benefits. A very large proportion is on people who are in work, and the UK has a unusual rate of in-work poverty.
This is where lower immigration could help. Keep squeezing the labour market and force firms to invest and/or increase wages for those at the bottom, reducing our benefits bill and boosting productivity.
People talking about the minimum wage being too high have got it completely wrong, imo. We don't really have an issue with millions of people not working - it's just that they are working in crap jobs and not earning much doing it.
How does it reduce our benefits bill - because anyone sane is going to take a recent immigrant who wants to earn money over someone who has been unemployed and doesn't really want to work.
Plenty if not majority will not want jobs at those rates , would mean giving up free house, free council tax and benefits , much better off living free on the mugs.
Nick Fletcher's unexpectedly strong performance probably helped Labour sneak over the line in Donny.
The Reform candidate was not a good one (30 year old male model). Fletcher is from the Reform-lite wing of the Tories and had the name recognition of being the former MP.
I also think the large amount of housebuilding is having an effect on the demographics.
Ros Jones should have retired years ago, of course. You'd have thought Labour would want someone a bit more dynamic.
So, it's going to be an interesting day. Like @TSE I only woke up an hour ago and slept through the drama.
Reform are going to have higher stakes to play with; these election results will have a non-neutral impact and increase both potential costs and potential benefits for RfUK. They are on a longer, higher tightrope, and the practice safety net has been removed for the performance.
A couple of furthers comments on my conversation with a local candidate whilst I was voting. He is PB age - recently retired, is with the AIs, and reported that he had walked 700 miles during the run up to this election.
They have (both AI and Reform) pursued pavement politics, LD style, and the AIs rest on things such as having brought in money to the area (which is fair - £50m+ via Towns Fund etc and a two new / refurbed sports centres, and an overhaul of a couple of town centre squares, county youth centre, observatory, upgraded indoor market). And they pursue a bar-chart rhetoric focused on "it's Us vs X", when it's actually Y, plus a blizzard of Focus-alike leaflets. Rubbish collections are improved.
But the extra one-of sticky-plaster money is far less than cuts due to Osborne / Cameron, and at national level the need for Council Tax Reform has simply been ignored - the South will squeal if it is made significantly less regressive even by eg property revaluation, or removal of the 3x limit to the multiplier, so the relative increase in property values over 3 decades and the benefit thereof is used in the calculation.
Worth reminding people that the VOA (who calculate the value of properties subject to business rates and council tac) are now part of HMRC rather than being an arms length removed.
As my daughter pointed out on the all hands call yesterday it means it’s very hard to pretend to be independent
And HMRC has been a law unto itself ever since it took over the Inland Revenue in one of Gordon Brown's less publicised master strokes.
You’ve got that the wrong way round Customs and Excise always were a law unto themselves.
inland revenue decided they would adopt the same attitude on merger which is where the problems come from.
I don’t envy Labour but the clear message from his support at the last GE and before was that people are done with austerity. To double down on it whilst doing stuff that really upsets middle England, like the war on nature, has been politics at its poorest.
How can austerity end without raising taxes which are already at a high level?
Growth. Essentially, it can't. We can't afford the level of welfare we're currently paying for - we've basically got UBI for anyone who can pass a PIP and keeping anyone over 65 in clover.
Which party is going to be brave enough to end the triple lock ? My answer none .
It's not just the state pension, public sector pensions need a 30-40% haircut too. In too many areas we're living well beyond our means and our welfare state is far, far beyond a safety net. Cut a million people from state employment to take us back to 2017, taper the state pension for higher rate tax payers, merge NI and income tax so that non-working income is taxed at the same rate as working income, cut to £2k the cash ISA allowance, push through a 30-40% haircut for defined benefit pensions (even for people currently receiving them), introduce much, much tougher criteria to receive disability benefits and exclude all but 5% of the most serious mental health cases by default. The rest can go back to work or live on £450 per month or whatever UC is for unemployed people. Also get rid of UC, move back to the old system if JSA and ESA, UC is an experiment that hasn't worked, it's just encouraged people to game the system worse than ever.
I think if Labour started that programme today by the end of the parliament we could be in a position to actually pay front line service staff more and attract better quality candidates for teachers, police, nurses etc...
What we have now is an underfunded and hugely over funded state at the same time it's literally the worst of both worlds.
There's no way a haircut to built up public sector pension entitlements would survive a court challenge. Some final salary public sector pensions were too generous, but those days are gone now (although the less generous career average DB pensions are still a draw). Still live recipients of those generous pensions, of course, but I don't think there's much to be done about that.
Cutting future pensions to be earned could work but only with substantial pay increases in many areas. I've looked at civil service roles a few times, but the pay is laughable in tech/science roles, coupled with the insistence of starting new entrants on the bottom of the scale. There's a post I looked at recently that had a range of. £55-£70k. £70k or even £65k would have had me apply, but the guidance was very clear it would be bottom of scale for me coming from outside and the path to pay progression was highly opaque. It was written in some ways as a more senior role, with more line management duties than I have at present, but would have been a pay cut for me. A the same time, I saw a 'lead python developer's post at the same place with the same pay range, which really is ridiculous. If they won't compete, they're not going to get good people and will end up spending more than funding a post properly - either lots of turnover as people gain experience and the leave or someone really mediocre who sits there doing not a great deal.
Isn't today National Lubricate Nigel Farage's Rectum day? If it's not, the BBC have got the day wrong.
I thought he sounded a little disappointed. The story isn't that he won Runcorn which was probably expected but that he only won by six votes. I want to know what it tells us about his house pollster findoutnow
I think they're just totally boxed in and socially incapable of squaring the circle.
Why? The big swing in Runcorn was Labour to Reform and in the Mayoral elections and council election results in so far that has also been the trend.
The Conservative vote is down on 2021 yes but that was the height of the Boris bounce, on 2024 and the last GE it is largely static
I'm quite content for you to sell this as a good day for the Tories if it clips Jenrick's wings.
It is not a good day for the Tories given the number of seats lost since 2021 but if the Tories still scrape most councillors ahead of Reform by this evening then Kemi will be relieved. If not Jenrick will be breathing down her neck
Both myself and @RochdalePioneers were saying yesterday that the enthusiasm gap was going to defeat Labour in the byelection. I am quite pleased it was so close to be honest. It suggests to me that there is still a ceiling on the Reform vote.
We will get a better picture from the local elections today. Again, I fear that low turnouts will exaggerate the effect of the Reform vote, just as it used to for UKIP in the EU elections. With a 30% turnout every voter who can be arsed to turn out is worth 3.
The Tories are in serious trouble, there is no doubt about that. What I am not seeing is the Cameron/Osborne type figure who can lead them back. It is the complete lack of talent that is killing them and feeding Reform. Changing the leader for the sake of it yet again is only an answer if there is a much better alternative in the wings. Cleverly? Genuinely not sure.
Good morning my friend. For the Tories there have two problems: 1) A lack of a Camerosborne figure to run for leader 2) The membership wouldn't elect such a person if they existed
I think they're just totally boxed in and socially incapable of squaring the circle.
Why? The big swing in Runcorn was Labour to Reform and in the Mayoral elections and council election results in so far that has also been the trend.
The Conservative vote is down on 2021 yes but that was the height of the Boris bounce, on 2024 and the last GE it is largely static
I'm quite content for you to sell this as a good day for the Tories if it clips Jenrick's wings.
It is not a good day for the Tories given the number of seats lost since 2021 but if the Tories still scrape most councillors ahead of Reform by this evening then Kemi will be relieved. If not Jenrick will be breathing down her neck
It feels like they've tilted England on it's side and all the fascists have rolled down towards the East coast
Reform voters are not fascists.
Perhaps not as a block, but there are certainly fascist sympathisers who do vote for them...
Plenty of nonces who vote lib dems too, but silly to slur them all...
Nonces, saddos and other loons are evenly spread across the political spectrum. Fascists... less so, and that is a problem that the RefUKers will need to address, as the Tories did before them.
So, it's going to be an interesting day. Like @TSE I only woke up an hour ago and slept through the drama.
Reform are going to have higher stakes to play with; these election results will have a non-neutral impact and increase both potential costs and potential benefits for RfUK. They are on a longer, higher tightrope, and the practice safety net has been removed for the performance.
A couple of furthers comments on my conversation with a local candidate whilst I was voting. He is PB age - recently retired, is with the AIs, and reported that he had walked 700 miles during the run up to this election.
They have (both AI and Reform) pursued pavement politics, LD style, and the AIs rest on things such as having brought in money to the area (which is fair - £50m+ via Towns Fund etc and a two new / refurbed sports centres, and an overhaul of a couple of town centre squares, county youth centre, observatory, upgraded indoor market). And they pursue a bar-chart rhetoric focused on "it's Us vs X", when it's actually Y, plus a blizzard of Focus-alike leaflets. Rubbish collections are improved.
But the extra one-of sticky-plaster money is far less than cuts due to Osborne / Cameron, and at national level the need for Council Tax Reform has simply been ignored - the South will squeal if it is made significantly less regressive even by eg property revaluation, or removal of the 3x limit to the multiplier, so the relative increase in property values over 3 decades and the benefit thereof is used in the calculation.
Worth reminding people that the VOA (who calculate the value of properties subject to business rates and council tac) are now part of HMRC rather than being an arms length removed.
As my daughter pointed out on the all hands call yesterday it means it’s very hard to pretend to be independent
I have two bits of council tax casework on hand at the moment.
In the first, residents who had been renting out a chalet in their garden as a holiday let, registered as a business to pay (nil) business rates rather than council tax, have now decided to stop, and the council has hit them not only with council tax, but double council tax as a ‘second home’, on what they are trying to argue is now just a large garden shed.
In the second, someone who has just moved into a property has had their banding increased on the grounds that the previous owner had added a conservatory (home improvements only becoming liable for a rebanding when the property is sold).
The second case, I have some sympathy with, as a conservatory isn’t the same as an extension to make an extra bedroom or room.
In the first case, the owners have removed the toilets from their chalet in order to try and argue it is no longer habitable. I’m not sure that is going to wash.
It depends on whether they left the sinks in when they took the toilets.
An astonishing achievement for Reform to take a safe Labour seat on Merseyside, less than 12 months after a Labour landslide. Not much sign of Tory Hyacinth's voting Labour to protect their house prices. That the Greens seem not to have played ball tactically for Labour either, in such an obviously 2 horse race, bodes well for Nigel. I smiled to receive and email from Conservative Central Office last night headed "Kemi and Nigel say thank you". It meant Huddleston rather than Farrage but it felt a slightly Freudian slip. Congratulations to all Canvassers of all parties for playing their part in the democratic process.
Northumberland result is fascinating because had council elections been held last year there alongside the GE, Labour would probably have had most seats if not overall control ! The fact the baseline was Boris' high point in 2021 makes Labour's performance look better than it otherwise would have been. Amazing they won all 4 parliamentary seats then only 8/69 councillors a year later.
So, it's going to be an interesting day. Like @TSE I only woke up an hour ago and slept through the drama.
Reform are going to have higher stakes to play with; these election results will have a non-neutral impact and increase both potential costs and potential benefits for RfUK. They are on a longer, higher tightrope, and the practice safety net has been removed for the performance.
A couple of furthers comments on my conversation with a local candidate whilst I was voting. He is PB age - recently retired, is with the AIs, and reported that he had walked 700 miles during the run up to this election.
They have (both AI and Reform) pursued pavement politics, LD style, and the AIs rest on things such as having brought in money to the area (which is fair - £50m+ via Towns Fund etc and a two new / refurbed sports centres, and an overhaul of a couple of town centre squares, county youth centre, observatory, upgraded indoor market). And they pursue a bar-chart rhetoric focused on "it's Us vs X", when it's actually Y, plus a blizzard of Focus-alike leaflets. Rubbish collections are improved.
But the extra one-of sticky-plaster money is far less than cuts due to Osborne / Cameron, and at national level the need for Council Tax Reform has simply been ignored - the South will squeal if it is made significantly less regressive even by eg property revaluation, or removal of the 3x limit to the multiplier, so the relative increase in property values over 3 decades and the benefit thereof is used in the calculation.
Worth reminding people that the VOA (who calculate the value of properties subject to business rates and council tac) are now part of HMRC rather than being an arms length removed.
As my daughter pointed out on the all hands call yesterday it means it’s very hard to pretend to be independent
And HMRC has been a law unto itself ever since it took over the Inland Revenue in one of Gordon Brown's less publicised master strokes.
Brexit benefit according to Dan Neidle.
The EU institutions have always disliked this unanimity requirement and, perhaps as a consequence, the CJEU showed little or no deference to Member States. The result was a mess of muddled and inconsistent jurisprudence.1 One of the benefits of Brexit is that a significant and unpredictable constraint on tax policy has been removed.
One aspect of Brexit we can all get behind. More tax incoming.
So, it's going to be an interesting day. Like @TSE I only woke up an hour ago and slept through the drama.
Reform are going to have higher stakes to play with; these election results will have a non-neutral impact and increase both potential costs and potential benefits for RfUK. They are on a longer, higher tightrope, and the practice safety net has been removed for the performance.
A couple of furthers comments on my conversation with a local candidate whilst I was voting. He is PB age - recently retired, is with the AIs, and reported that he had walked 700 miles during the run up to this election.
They have (both AI and Reform) pursued pavement politics, LD style, and the AIs rest on things such as having brought in money to the area (which is fair - £50m+ via Towns Fund etc and a two new / refurbed sports centres, and an overhaul of a couple of town centre squares, county youth centre, observatory, upgraded indoor market). And they pursue a bar-chart rhetoric focused on "it's Us vs X", when it's actually Y, plus a blizzard of Focus-alike leaflets. Rubbish collections are improved.
But the extra one-of sticky-plaster money is far less than cuts due to Osborne / Cameron, and at national level the need for Council Tax Reform has simply been ignored - the South will squeal if it is made significantly less regressive even by eg property revaluation, or removal of the 3x limit to the multiplier, so the relative increase in property values over 3 decades and the benefit thereof is used in the calculation.
Worth reminding people that the VOA (who calculate the value of properties subject to business rates and council tac) are now part of HMRC rather than being an arms length removed.
As my daughter pointed out on the all hands call yesterday it means it’s very hard to pretend to be independent
I have two bits of council tax casework on hand at the moment.
In the first, residents who had been renting out a chalet in their garden as a holiday let, registered as a business to pay (nil) business rates rather than council tax, have now decided to stop, and the council has hit them not only with council tax, but double council tax as a ‘second home’, on what they are trying to argue is now just a large garden shed.
In the second, someone who has just moved into a property has had their banding increased on the grounds that the previous owner had added a conservatory (home improvements only becoming liable for a rebanding when the property is sold).
The second case, I have some sympathy with, as a conservatory isn’t the same as an extension to make an extra bedroom or room.
In the first case, the owners have removed the toilets from their chalet in order to try and argue it is no longer habitable. I’m not sure that is going to wash.
IMO it's absolutely outrageous that people can have a second home, rent it out for half the year and then qualify for CT exemption because it's a 'small business'. Friends of ours do this with their Cornwall 'cottage' thus depriving the local population of a starter home and any CT revenue. Totally wrong - the rules need to change.
Both myself and @RochdalePioneers were saying yesterday that the enthusiasm gap was going to defeat Labour in the byelection. I am quite pleased it was so close to be honest. It suggests to me that there is still a ceiling on the Reform vote.
We will get a better picture from the local elections today. Again, I fear that low turnouts will exaggerate the effect of the Reform vote, just as it used to for UKIP in the EU elections. With a 30% turnout every voter who can be arsed to turn out is worth 3.
The Tories are in serious trouble, there is no doubt about that. What I am not seeing is the Cameron/Osborne type figure who can lead them back. It is the complete lack of talent that is killing them and feeding Reform. Changing the leader for the sake of it yet again is only an answer if there is a much better alternative in the wings. Cleverly? Genuinely not sure.
Good morning my friend. For the Tories there have two problems: 1) A lack of a Camerosborne figure to run for leader 2) The membership wouldn't elect such a person if they existed
Do the electorate want a Cameron Osborne type figure at the moment? If they do probably the closest to it would be Mel Stride who is at least dull but competent but I can't see a Cameron Osborne figure winning back any Tory voters lost to Reform so at most they would hope to squeeze a few more from Labour and the LDs. However I can't really see that happening either given Labour are already down largely to their core and LD voters too anti Brexit for the Tories in their current guise so all Stride could do was tread water really and hope to hold the 2024 Tory vote.
If Stride did get it it would have to be by Tory MPs coronation rather like Howard in 2003, Jenrick would probably beat him if it went to the membership if Kemi was removed
So are we going to see the Reformgasm? Doesn't feel like it. And as has been mentioned upthread what on earth will all those new councillors do if elected to Bonkshire county council. Send the precisely zero illegal immigrants back, to Binkshire?
So are we going to see the Reformgasm? Doesn't feel like it. And as has been mentioned upthread what on earth will all those new councillors do if elected to Bonkshire county council. Send the precisely zero illegal immigrants back, to Binkshire?
Seems to be the tories and Labour haven’t quite grasped the mood out there - seemingly continuing in the same way they have for decades and changing nothing.
Starmer needs to stop the “smash the gangs” rubbish as quite clearly it’s making no difference. Reeves needs to go. And we need to start having an honest conversation about the NHS and whether there is a “better way”.
Badenoch - well, she’s quite useless. She won’t be around for much longer I think.
Apart from that, really fascinating time in politics
IMHO we should restrict what is available on the NHS. Emergency care, obviously, and basic services. But a lot of things we just can't afford, yes, like latest treatments for X, Y, Z. If we have to borrow money to support our standard if living we aren't a wealthy country.
But I’ve seen little evidence (actually, apart from Reform) wanting to be honest about what the NHS can and can’t do. Even Farage has said it can be done differently, and all Labour ran with was “reform will charge to use the NHS”. Like somehow we don’t already spaff billions from our taxes on it somehow
So are we going to see the Reformgasm? Doesn't feel like it. And as has been mentioned upthread what on earth will all those new councillors do if elected to Bonkshire county council. Send the precisely zero illegal immigrants back, to Binkshire?
We’ll probably see it in Durham. I sort of want them to win so we can see what they do. It also helps that I am unaffected in my Newcastle ivory castle
So are we going to see the Reformgasm? Doesn't feel like it. And as has been mentioned upthread what on earth will all those new councillors do if elected to Bonkshire county council. Send the precisely zero illegal immigrants back, to Binkshire?
Stick them on a bus and drop them off in North London
Good morning all. I’ve arrived back and am catching up, and I see that as usual the early results frame the media narrative for the rest of the day. Always a little galling for the Lib Dems as I expect our best results will come later, in the Tory defences.
For all the broken Britain talk, one thing we remain good at, most of the time, is welcoming arrivals into our main airport. Coming into Heathrow T2 from Chicago was like returning to civilisation. After a fractious O’Hare with massive queues for security, gruff staff yelling at customers and tatty grey decor everywhere, I arrive into a sparkling sunny London (ok that bits not typical), through a tastefully decorated arrivals hall, less than a minute wait through the e-gates and lots of helpful signage telling travellers exactly how to get to their onward destination. There’s a sense of quiet order, and pervasive politeness.
Northumberland result is fascinating because had council elections been held last year there alongside the GE, Labour would probably have had most seats if not overall control ! The fact the baseline was Boris' high point in 2021 makes Labour's performance look better than it otherwise would have been. Amazing they won all 4 parliamentary seats then only 8/69 councillors a year later.
It’s not an exact comparison because Cramlington and Killingworth (my seat) also includes parts of Newcastle and North Tyneside
Very bad for Labour and cataclysmic for the Tories in results so far. More attention will be paid to Labour, rightly because the Tories were already discounted, while there were still some residual expectations for Labour. And all this means a great result for Reform. By default, I think, but it doesn't matter: a win's a win.
So, it's going to be an interesting day. Like @TSE I only woke up an hour ago and slept through the drama.
Reform are going to have higher stakes to play with; these election results will have a non-neutral impact and increase both potential costs and potential benefits for RfUK. They are on a longer, higher tightrope, and the practice safety net has been removed for the performance.
A couple of furthers comments on my conversation with a local candidate whilst I was voting. He is PB age - recently retired, is with the AIs, and reported that he had walked 700 miles during the run up to this election.
They have (both AI and Reform) pursued pavement politics, LD style, and the AIs rest on things such as having brought in money to the area (which is fair - £50m+ via Towns Fund etc and a two new / refurbed sports centres, and an overhaul of a couple of town centre squares, county youth centre, observatory, upgraded indoor market). And they pursue a bar-chart rhetoric focused on "it's Us vs X", when it's actually Y, plus a blizzard of Focus-alike leaflets. Rubbish collections are improved.
But the extra one-of sticky-plaster money is far less than cuts due to Osborne / Cameron, and at national level the need for Council Tax Reform has simply been ignored - the South will squeal if it is made significantly less regressive even by eg property revaluation, or removal of the 3x limit to the multiplier, so the relative increase in property values over 3 decades and the benefit thereof is used in the calculation.
Worth reminding people that the VOA (who calculate the value of properties subject to business rates and council tac) are now part of HMRC rather than being an arms length removed.
As my daughter pointed out on the all hands call yesterday it means it’s very hard to pretend to be independent
I have two bits of council tax casework on hand at the moment.
In the first, residents who had been renting out a chalet in their garden as a holiday let, registered as a business to pay (nil) business rates rather than council tax, have now decided to stop, and the council has hit them not only with council tax, but double council tax as a ‘second home’, on what they are trying to argue is now just a large garden shed.
In the second, someone who has just moved into a property has had their banding increased on the grounds that the previous owner had added a conservatory (home improvements only becoming liable for a rebanding when the property is sold).
The second case, I have some sympathy with, as a conservatory isn’t the same as an extension to make an extra bedroom or room.
In the first case, the owners have removed the toilets from their chalet in order to try and argue it is no longer habitable. I’m not sure that is going to wash.
IMO it's absolutely outrageous that people can have a second home, rent it out for half the year and then qualify for CT exemption because it's a 'small business'. Friends of ours do this with their Cornwall 'cottage' thus depriving the local population of a starter home and any CT revenue. Totally wrong - the rules need to change.
I live in a very well to do part of the country and it is quite shocking that the Tesco Express in my nearest town now has the round the clock security and the check out is protected by floor to ceiling caging. I don't know if that is just a nationwide roll out by Tesco or that they genuinely think that things are so out of hand that they are in danger of getting stuck up like a cornershop in Baltimore aka The Wire.
It has yet to happen in Cannock despite the Tesco express in question being next to a very rough council estate.
I have a local Coop and Tesco across the road from each other (spine road into town through housing areas) - pre-bypass it was the A38.
The Coop significantly reduced their stock range last year they say due partly to shoplifting. Whilst Tesco don't have a cage like a USA penitentiary, they do have a door opened from the inside when it is dark and have a look at you before you get in - at the moment that is from perhaps 9pm to 10pm.
Causes? I think neglect of the public realm and of society. Cameron & co cut Policing expenditure by 20%, just as they did for Defence expenditure. Cuts to Council expenditure have been much more - you can see that just in Google Streetview by looking at the same piece of pavement in 2022 and 2008, and see how it has deteriorated.
As a Government, they lived off the capital from the past, and passed their costs on to the future, and did little or nothing themselves.
Here we had all our community policemen vanish in around 2015, and our local police stations (for a town of 30k, and another of 45k). And much real world police experience was lost with the 20% cuts.
The decision to tolerate petty crimes, and not act on them, have also been problematic. That is shop lifting, but also ASBO. I think County Lines are also perhaps a factor in towns and small cities.
The termination of many programmes such as Sure Start is also important - that was very good.
From a philosophical point of view I'd point to the loss of aspiration to a better society after the 2010 election, such as in the outright removal of any targeted commitment to improve road safety. We need the Kinnock-ish soundbite more firmly in Sir Keir's head: this Labour Government is a moral crusade, or it is nothing.
Both myself and @RochdalePioneers were saying yesterday that the enthusiasm gap was going to defeat Labour in the byelection. I am quite pleased it was so close to be honest. It suggests to me that there is still a ceiling on the Reform vote.
We will get a better picture from the local elections today. Again, I fear that low turnouts will exaggerate the effect of the Reform vote, just as it used to for UKIP in the EU elections. With a 30% turnout every voter who can be arsed to turn out is worth 3.
The Tories are in serious trouble, there is no doubt about that. What I am not seeing is the Cameron/Osborne type figure who can lead them back. It is the complete lack of talent that is killing them and feeding Reform. Changing the leader for the sake of it yet again is only an answer if there is a much better alternative in the wings. Cleverly? Genuinely not sure.
Good morning my friend. For the Tories there have two problems: 1) A lack of a Camerosborne figure to run for leader 2) The membership wouldn't elect such a person if they existed
Do the electorate want a Cameron Osborne type figure at the moment? If they do probably the closest to it would be Mel Stride who is at least dull but competent but I can't see a Cameron Osborne figure winning back any Tory voters lost to Reform so at most they would hope to squeeze a few more from Labour and the LDs. However I can't really see that happening either given Labour are already down largely to their core and LD voters too anti Brexit for the Tories in their current guise so all Stride could do was tread water really and hope to hold the 2024 Tory vote
That’s probably all any Tory leader can do, or hope for, right now anyway
Both myself and @RochdalePioneers were saying yesterday that the enthusiasm gap was going to defeat Labour in the byelection. I am quite pleased it was so close to be honest. It suggests to me that there is still a ceiling on the Reform vote.
We will get a better picture from the local elections today. Again, I fear that low turnouts will exaggerate the effect of the Reform vote, just as it used to for UKIP in the EU elections. With a 30% turnout every voter who can be arsed to turn out is worth 3.
The Tories are in serious trouble, there is no doubt about that. What I am not seeing is the Cameron/Osborne type figure who can lead them back. It is the complete lack of talent that is killing them and feeding Reform. Changing the leader for the sake of it yet again is only an answer if there is a much better alternative in the wings. Cleverly? Genuinely not sure.
Good morning my friend. For the Tories there have two problems: 1) A lack of a Camerosborne figure to run for leader 2) The membership wouldn't elect such a person if they existed
Do the electorate want a Cameron Osborne type figure at the moment? If they do probably the closest to it would be Mel Stride who is at least dull but competent but I can't see a Cameron Osborne figure winning back any Tory voters lost to Reform so at most they would hope to squeeze a few more from Labour and the LDs. However I can't really see that happening either given Labour are already down largely to their core and LD voters too anti Brexit for the Tories in their current guise so all Stride could do was tread water really and hope to hold the 2024 Tory vote
That's a fair point. In truth a Camerosborne would almost certainly be electable in the short term. Remember that the coalition did think the unthinkable on some topics to at least try to make some changes.
What people really need is wholesale strategic change. They haven't been given it by the big two. Reform are doing crayon drawings of it - what is needed is my lot to summon the ghost of William Beveridge...
Both myself and @RochdalePioneers were saying yesterday that the enthusiasm gap was going to defeat Labour in the byelection. I am quite pleased it was so close to be honest. It suggests to me that there is still a ceiling on the Reform vote.
We will get a better picture from the local elections today. Again, I fear that low turnouts will exaggerate the effect of the Reform vote, just as it used to for UKIP in the EU elections. With a 30% turnout every voter who can be arsed to turn out is worth 3.
The Tories are in serious trouble, there is no doubt about that. What I am not seeing is the Cameron/Osborne type figure who can lead them back. It is the complete lack of talent that is killing them and feeding Reform. Changing the leader for the sake of it yet again is only an answer if there is a much better alternative in the wings. Cleverly? Genuinely not sure.
I'm not sure if Cleverly would take it.
Might his reasoning not be unlike say Michelle Obama's - do I want a bucket of shit tipped on my head every day for the next 5 or 10 years?
Comments
It seems the Lib Dem’s are more comfortable tactically voting .
They have too much to lose in jobs and pension funds (see the Trump effect) and don't have 1950s nostalgia.
This is where lower immigration could help. Keep squeezing the labour market and force firms to invest and/or increase wages for those at the bottom, reducing our benefits bill and boosting productivity.
People talking about the minimum wage being too high have got it completely wrong, imo. We don't really have an issue with millions of people not working - it's just that they are working in crap jobs and not earning much doing it.
The 80s music discussion prompted me to consider that they're actually more like the right of the 80s Conservative Party. (Which also contained the odd fascist.)
Wealthier people look at the past and understand they are far better off now than they were then...
They seem to think that more progressive voters will just put up with their attempts to become a Reform tribute act .
I saw the Neez bees
Don’t be stupid, be a smarty, come and vote for, the Reform Party.
Or were you just making that bit up ?
Your own figures, even taking them at face value, are ridiculous.
Primary care is increasingly being bought up by private equity groups. The old GP partner model is being replaced by salaried GPs, often part-time.
Dan Neidle has published the rather flakey judicial review case against VAT on school fees. The argument is that it's none christian religious people and foreigners should be exempt..
https://taxpolicy.org.uk/2025/05/02/the-private-school-vat-challenge-weak-arguments-but-radical-consequences/?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email
Sir John Curtice: Reform challenging traditional party dominance
Reform - won 39% of the vote in the results declared so far, enough to put it well ahead of all if its rivals.
Tory - vote was down by 25 points since the last time these seats were fought in May 2021,
Labour - Their vote is on average down on a poor performance in 2021 by as much as nine points.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cqj4k2l20xlo
Did this count as one of the millions of new GP appointments I wonder? Shows I wasn’t that ill I suppose
How many would have voted Reform do you think? 0?
However Labour will at least have a few crumbs of comfort in that they kept the margin close and note that the combined Labour and LD vote or Labour and Green vote in Runcorn was bigger than the Reform vote.
So Labour will certainly push tactical voting for them hard in seats where Reform are their main challengers at the next GE to try and keep Farage out of No 10
Just saying.
https://www.theguardian.com/science/2025/may/02/soviet-era-spacecraft-kosmos-482-uncontrolled-return-earth-next-week
What is believed to have been intended to be a Soviet Venera probe failed to break orbit having been launched a week or so after Venera 8 in 1972. And has been stuck in orbit ever since. Expected to make an uncontrolled reentry next week, could impact anywhere between 51 north and 51 south...
The Conservative vote is down on 2021 yes but that was the height of the Boris bounce, on 2024 and the last GE it is largely static
So, it's going to be an interesting day. Like @TSE I only woke up an hour ago and slept through the drama.
Reform are going to have higher stakes to play with; these election results will have a non-neutral impact and increase both potential costs and potential benefits for RfUK. They are on a longer, higher tightrope, and the practice safety net has been removed for the performance.
A couple of furthers comments on my conversation with a local candidate whilst I was voting. He is PB age - recently retired, is with the AIs, and reported that he had walked 700 miles during the run up to this election.
They have (both AI and Reform) pursued pavement politics, LD style, and the AIs rest on things such as having brought in money to the area (which is fair - £50m+ via Towns Fund etc and a two new / refurbed sports centres, and an overhaul of a couple of town centre squares, county youth centre, observatory, upgraded indoor market). And they pursue a bar-chart rhetoric focused on "it's Us vs X", when it's actually Y, plus a blizzard of Focus-alike leaflets. Rubbish collections are improved.
But the extra one-of sticky-plaster money is far less than cuts due to Osborne / Cameron, and at national level the need for Council Tax Reform has simply been ignored - the South will squeal if it is made significantly less regressive even by eg property revaluation, or removal of the 3x limit to the multiplier, so the relative increase in property values over 3 decades and the benefit thereof is used in the calculation.
We will get a better picture from the local elections today. Again, I fear that low turnouts will exaggerate the effect of the Reform vote, just as it used to for UKIP in the EU elections. With a 30% turnout every voter who can be arsed to turn out is worth 3.
The Tories are in serious trouble, there is no doubt about that. What I am not seeing is the Cameron/Osborne type figure who can lead them back. It is the complete lack of talent that is killing them and feeding Reform. Changing the leader for the sake of it yet again is only an answer if there is a much better alternative in the wings. Cleverly? Genuinely not sure.
So my parents’ canvassing impressions were much closer to the money than the polls, but Reform still squeaked it in the end.
Think this one might return to Labour at the next GE, but that depends on the government getting their act together. Cue “long time in politics” clichés etc etc.
As my daughter pointed out on the all hands call yesterday it means it’s very hard to pretend to be independent
Worth noting that if Labour impose workers rights from day one, I'll never take a punt on anyone like this ever again - it's only worth taking the risk on someone like him because I can cut my losses at any point in the next year if he turns out to be a dud.
Also worth noting that he'll be the employee that tips me from a slight win on the employers NI changes into a substantial loss.
Taxing employment is stupid. Tax business profits, not turnover, and you might even get growth.
Not betting on it though!
If, by some miracle, KB is still leader of the tories by the next GE, she isn't going to be the 'policy brain'. She'll be in charge of putting out the biscuits for Farage's interview with Tim Pool. Above all, Farage knows his voters and their reptilian hierarchy of needs. They don't want tories anywhere near government, they are part of the problem and Farage understands this.
Until (unless) the Conservative and Unionist party confront that truth, they are doomed
In the first, residents who had been renting out a chalet in their garden as a holiday let, registered as a business to pay (nil) business rates rather than council tax, have now decided to stop, and the council has hit them not only with council tax, but double council tax as a ‘second home’, on what they are trying to argue is now just a large garden shed.
In the second, someone who has just moved into a property has had their banding increased on the grounds that the previous owner had added a conservatory (home improvements only becoming liable for a rebanding when the property is sold).
The second case, I have some sympathy with, as a conservatory isn’t the same as an extension to make an extra bedroom or room.
In the first case, the owners have removed the toilets from their chalet in order to try and argue it is no longer habitable. I’m not sure that is going to wash.
Or if only England is being tilted, like wot he said?
I also think the large amount of housebuilding is having an effect on the demographics.
Ros Jones should have retired years ago, of course. You'd have thought Labour would want someone a bit more dynamic.
inland revenue decided they would adopt the same attitude on merger which is where the problems come from.
Mummy mystery solved: ‘air-dried’ priest was embalmed via rectum
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/may/02/mummy-mystery-solved-air-dried-priest-was-embalmed-via-rectum
Cutting future pensions to be earned could work but only with substantial pay increases in many areas. I've looked at civil service roles a few times, but the pay is laughable in tech/science roles, coupled with the insistence of starting new entrants on the bottom of the scale. There's a post I looked at recently that had a range of. £55-£70k. £70k or even £65k would have had me apply, but the guidance was very clear it would be bottom of scale for me coming from outside and the path to pay progression was highly opaque. It was written in some ways as a more senior role, with more line management duties than I have at present, but would have been a pay cut for me. A the same time, I saw a 'lead python developer's post at the same place with the same pay range, which really is ridiculous. If they won't compete, they're not going to get good people and will end up spending more than funding a post properly - either lots of turnover as people gain experience and the leave or someone really mediocre who sits there doing not a great deal.
1) A lack of a Camerosborne figure to run for leader
2) The membership wouldn't elect such a person if they existed
The fact the baseline was Boris' high point in 2021 makes Labour's performance look better than it otherwise would have been.
Amazing they won all 4 parliamentary seats then only 8/69 councillors a year later.
One aspect of Brexit we can all get behind. More tax incoming.
If Stride did get it it would have to be by Tory MPs coronation rather like Howard in 2003, Jenrick would probably beat him if it went to the membership if Kemi was removed
28 years ago today - "A new dawn has broken, has it not?"
Anyway, can't believe the closeness of the result in Runcorn! Good thing I went to bed at 4am, got a couple of hours extra sleep
For all the broken Britain talk, one thing we remain good at, most of the time, is welcoming arrivals into our main airport. Coming into Heathrow T2 from Chicago was like returning to civilisation. After a fractious O’Hare with massive queues for security, gruff staff yelling at customers and tatty grey decor everywhere, I arrive into a sparkling sunny London (ok that bits not typical), through a tastefully decorated arrivals hall, less than a minute wait through the e-gates and lots of helpful signage telling travellers exactly how to get to their onward destination. There’s a sense of quiet order, and pervasive politeness.
Well done LHR.
The Coop significantly reduced their stock range last year they say due partly to shoplifting. Whilst Tesco don't have a cage like a USA penitentiary, they do have a door opened from the inside when it is dark and have a look at you before you get in - at the moment that is from perhaps 9pm to 10pm.
Causes? I think neglect of the public realm and of society. Cameron & co cut Policing expenditure by 20%, just as they did for Defence expenditure. Cuts to Council expenditure have been much more - you can see that just in Google Streetview by looking at the same piece of pavement in 2022 and 2008, and see how it has deteriorated.
As a Government, they lived off the capital from the past, and passed their costs on to the future, and did little or nothing themselves.
Here we had all our community policemen vanish in around 2015, and our local police stations (for a town of 30k, and another of 45k). And much real world police experience was lost with the 20% cuts.
The decision to tolerate petty crimes, and not act on them, have also been problematic. That is shop lifting, but also ASBO. I think County Lines are also perhaps a factor in towns and small cities.
The termination of many programmes such as Sure Start is also important - that was very good.
From a philosophical point of view I'd point to the loss of aspiration to a better society after the 2010 election, such as in the outright removal of any targeted commitment to improve road safety. We need the Kinnock-ish soundbite more firmly in Sir Keir's head: this Labour Government is a moral crusade, or it is nothing.
What people really need is wholesale strategic change. They haven't been given it by the big two. Reform are doing crayon drawings of it - what is needed is my lot to summon the ghost of William Beveridge...
Might his reasoning not be unlike say Michelle Obama's - do I want a bucket of shit tipped on my head every day for the next 5 or 10 years?