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.
Parliament is sovereign, it can pass primary legislation to mandate a haircut for db pensions. It will of course make them wildly unpopular with people who lose out but it is absolutely possible.
I've also said many times that pension contributions should be cut and salaries increased in the public sector. People want the money today, not at some nebulous point in the future. A friend of mine was contacted to apply for senior on prem cybersecurity admin but the salary is well below market rate and they make it up in the pension, the overall package isn't dissimilar to what he might get elsewhere but he can't afford the pay cut so politely declined.
But aside from that, we just have too many people doing too little in that £40-60k band in the public sector. Lots of salary collectors creating micro bureaucracies around them to justify their roles. We should sweep the lot of them away and bank the saving, reduce the deficit and bank the subsequent drop in the interest bill as gilt prices increase and yields fall.
Public sector pensions are a scandal. It is interesting that those on the left bang on about "fairness" except when it comes to the imbalance between public sector and private sector pensions. The recently retired head of HMRC will be getting a pension that is paying him £107k a year for being idle.
I also read recently that the average council in England pays out one pound in every four they receive to prop up the gold-plated pension fund. Then they bleat on about "lack of resources". There would be "more resources" if they stopped thinking that there senior "public servants" should be able to retire on larger incomes than many people earn in full time jobs.
The former heard of HMRC is hardly typical of public sector pensions. Most people on public sector pensions are getting modest incomes, more modest than the people here who complain about them, I hazard.
As for the head of HMRC, that is clearly a very senior role. How are you going to attract someone to that job if you don't pay them something comparable to what they can earn/put into a pension in a private position?
My executive managment theory - it is indeed a very senior role, but is it a particularly challenging one that can only be done well by the top 1% of senior managers? The hardest part of those roles is the self PR to get them in the first place - and those types often make extremely short termist decisions to the detriment of the organisations to help with their self PR.
I suspect if you swapped the head of HMRC for a random manager a couple of salary levels lower down HMRC would be, on average, no worse off.
But is that any less true in the private sector?
From my experience I would say probably not. It's hard to evaluate which was the more inefficient, but I should say that on the whole you found more timewaters in the public sector, but more corruption on the private side. More nepotism and croneyism in the private sector too.
Really hard to say which was worse.
Btw I think the point about elevating lower ranked managers is borne out by WW1 where the successes from 1917 onwards can be attributed in part at least to the emergence of younger junior officers with hands on experience and a can do attitude quietly displacing the discredited Generals and their grandiose plans.
Shouldn't overgeneralise though. (Sorry, no pun intended.)
What on earth do the people who are voting Reform think they are going to get.
What do you think they would have got had they voted Tory?
I know I keep on banging this drum, but there has to be a recognition of reality before forward strategy can be shaped. And the Tories have left the country utterly broken. Not that the answer is Labour either - which is why Reform are smashing it in the north and the LDs are smashing it in the south.
The Cons presided over 2x black swan events. Brexit and Covid. Now, I'm not saying they handled it brilliantly but I doubt any other government would have emerged from Covid any differently and arguably (lock them down longer and harder Starmer) a lot worse.
They imo completely mismanaged Covid and at the time I made some of my thoughts known although it's only in hindsight that it has become obvious how bad the consequences have been.
To say the Cons presided over Brexit seems to underplay their role in causing Brexit.
Another Tory source contacts me with this upbeat assessment: "Don’t forget to pay attention to the West Country and South West. Yes Reform exist here, but it’s the Lib Dems we’re getting a f*****g pounding from".
Tory source warms to their Lib Dem theme: "The Lib Dems are like Japanese knot weed. Once they're in it takes a flamethrower and a crucifix to get rid of them".
From the Twitter feed of Dan Hodges.
I'm not sure what I'd advise the Tories to do, however, they already lost a load of seats to the Lib Dems last time. What seats they do have are more at risk from Reform than the Lib Dems.
The Tories are buggered either way.
Come up with a strategy that wins back seats like Witney and Esher & Walton and also wins back the Stoke seats.
Two basic problems: 1) What are the Conservatives for? What do you stand for? Whats the big picture? 2) Proven to be utterly crap in office. Not just ineffectual, but catastrophically poor at governing
This can be fixed. But it means dropping "tactics" like going after Labour over woke issues and going back to "rebuild Britain through Business". And you'll only get away with that by accepting how catastrophic a job was done in government and changing direction.
Reform are out there saying Britain is Broken. At a fundamental level. And have some new ideas to go after. Tories seem to be claiming it isn't broken actually because you did a brilliant job actually but all the stuff that is broken actually is Labour's fault because actually that Keir Starmer was in charge from opposition.
What should the Tories be for?
Sound money, low inflation, no QE nonsense, a balanced budget, an improved trading situation; equality of opportunity, reward for effort and hard work (implying lower taxes), care with the public purse ensuring tax payers money is spent carefully and wisely; support and care for those that need it but with a priority, where appropriate, of encouraging people to provide for themselves and for their families; a strong defence; immigration that benefits UK plc by bringing in people with talents, investment and entrepreneurial drive; the rule of law and respect for institutions, home ownership, self sufficiency and self reliance; and a strong sense of the national interest over sectorial interests.
The problem is that if you mark the government from 2019 to 2024 out of 10 on that list you struggle to get a pass mark. And I really don't know if this matches Kemi's aspirations or not. I will not be voting Tory with any enthusiasm until I have had assurances about a lot of this.
I disagree with many of the policies, but go back to the two landslide Tory administrations of the 80s. A clear brand image and policy platform, aspiration at the heart both of the politics and the economy, a significant program of economic and social reform, and the part Labour never wanted to credit - significant investment into skills and training and regeneration.
In summary, what the Tories need to rediscover is capitalism. They binned it off firstly in favour of bankism and then oligarchism. Money needs to circulate. Jobs need to pay more than bills, so that people have cash to spend on stuff which creates jobs which drives growth and so on.
Too much cash has been taken away by a small number of individuals and companies, with the Tories promoting their needs. Which is why "fuck business" was so damaging - it wasn't just a whoops moment, it was active policy.
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.
Parliament is sovereign, it can pass primary legislation to mandate a haircut for db pensions. It will of course make them wildly unpopular with people who lose out but it is absolutely possible.
I've also said many times that pension contributions should be cut and salaries increased in the public sector. People want the money today, not at some nebulous point in the future. A friend of mine was contacted to apply for senior on prem cybersecurity admin but the salary is well below market rate and they make it up in the pension, the overall package isn't dissimilar to what he might get elsewhere but he can't afford the pay cut so politely declined.
But aside from that, we just have too many people doing too little in that £40-60k band in the public sector. Lots of salary collectors creating micro bureaucracies around them to justify their roles. We should sweep the lot of them away and bank the saving, reduce the deficit and bank the subsequent drop in the interest bill as gilt prices increase and yields fall.
Public sector pensions are a scandal. It is interesting that those on the left bang on about "fairness" except when it comes to the imbalance between public sector and private sector pensions. The recently retired head of HMRC will be getting a pension that is paying him £107k a year for being idle.
I also read recently that the average council in England pays out one pound in every four they receive to prop up the gold-plated pension fund. Then they bleat on about "lack of resources". There would be "more resources" if they stopped thinking that there senior "public servants" should be able to retire on larger incomes than many people earn in full time jobs.
The former heard of HMRC is hardly typical of public sector pensions. Most people on public sector pensions are getting modest incomes, more modest than the people here who complain about them, I hazard.
As for the head of HMRC, that is clearly a very senior role. How are you going to attract someone to that job if you don't pay them something comparable to what they can earn/put into a pension in a private position?
My executive managment theory - it is indeed a very senior role, but is it a particularly challenging one that can only be done well by the top 1% of senior managers? The hardest part of those roles is the self PR to get them in the first place - and those types often make extremely short termist decisions to the detriment of the organisations to help with their self PR.
I suspect if you swapped the head of HMRC for a random manager a couple of salary levels lower down HMRC would be, on average, no worse off.
But is that any less true in the private sector?
I think it is the same for most stable big organisations. I suppose from a political perspective the difference is the taxpayer is overpaying rather than a shareholder and getting better value for the taxpayer is a fair part of politics.
We’re the ones overpaying when it happens in the private sector too.
As shareholders. I'm all for shareholder reform to give more scrutiny over executive pay - it has gone bonkers. But that is a separate issue to public sector pay. Happy to pay specialist doctors or key IT roles more there in exchange for less to generic senior managers who imo, tend to be pretty fungible.
We're the ones overpaying as customers. The money for overinflated private sector salaries is passed on in higher prices or worse services.
My ward has gone Reform, Labour have won here every time since 1973. Fwiw I voted Labour, both candidates seemed credible though. No effort from the Tories.
My Ash Ind councillor was saying at 9:30 last night that there were a couple he was confident about them holding. He was doing the rounds asking about turnouts.
AIs have lost both their Leader and Deputy Leader.
We'll see.
I should add that both of those are still District Councillors.
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.
Parliament is sovereign, it can pass primary legislation to mandate a haircut for db pensions. It will of course make them wildly unpopular with people who lose out but it is absolutely possible.
I've also said many times that pension contributions should be cut and salaries increased in the public sector. People want the money today, not at some nebulous point in the future. A friend of mine was contacted to apply for senior on prem cybersecurity admin but the salary is well below market rate and they make it up in the pension, the overall package isn't dissimilar to what he might get elsewhere but he can't afford the pay cut so politely declined.
But aside from that, we just have too many people doing too little in that £40-60k band in the public sector. Lots of salary collectors creating micro bureaucracies around them to justify their roles. We should sweep the lot of them away and bank the saving, reduce the deficit and bank the subsequent drop in the interest bill as gilt prices increase and yields fall.
Public sector pensions are a scandal. It is interesting that those on the left bang on about "fairness" except when it comes to the imbalance between public sector and private sector pensions. The recently retired head of HMRC will be getting a pension that is paying him £107k a year for being idle.
I also read recently that the average council in England pays out one pound in every four they receive to prop up the gold-plated pension fund. Then they bleat on about "lack of resources". There would be "more resources" if they stopped thinking that there senior "public servants" should be able to retire on larger incomes than many people earn in full time jobs.
The former heard of HMRC is hardly typical of public sector pensions. Most people on public sector pensions are getting modest incomes, more modest than the people here who complain about them, I hazard.
As for the head of HMRC, that is clearly a very senior role. How are you going to attract someone to that job if you don't pay them something comparable to what they can earn/put into a pension in a private position?
My executive managment theory - it is indeed a very senior role, but is it a particularly challenging one that can only be done well by the top 1% of senior managers? The hardest part of those roles is the self PR to get them in the first place - and those types often make extremely short termist decisions to the detriment of the organisations to help with their self PR.
I suspect if you swapped the head of HMRC for a random manager a couple of salary levels lower down HMRC would be, on average, no worse off.
But is that any less true in the private sector?
I think it is the same for most stable big organisations. I suppose from a political perspective the difference is the taxpayer is overpaying rather than a shareholder and getting better value for the taxpayer is a fair part of politics.
We’re the ones overpaying when it happens in the private sector too.
As shareholders. I'm all for shareholder reform to give more scrutiny over executive pay - it has gone bonkers. But that is a separate issue to public sector pay. Happy to pay specialist doctors or key IT roles more there in exchange for less to generic senior managers who imo, tend to be pretty fungible.
We're the ones overpaying as customers. The money for overinflated private sector salaries is passed on in higher prices or worse services.
The mix of costs between shareholders and customers will vary by company and industry. I suspect it is largely shareholders though but not sure it can be proven satisfactorily either way.
A big reduction in executive pay rates can't really come from customers except in extremes like Tesla, but could from shareholders if they were given back more control.
Another Tory source contacts me with this upbeat assessment: "Don’t forget to pay attention to the West Country and South West. Yes Reform exist here, but it’s the Lib Dems we’re getting a f*****g pounding from".
Tory source warms to their Lib Dem theme: "The Lib Dems are like Japanese knot weed. Once they're in it takes a flamethrower and a crucifix to get rid of them".
From the Twitter feed of Dan Hodges.
I'm not sure what I'd advise the Tories to do, however, they already lost a load of seats to the Lib Dems last time. What seats they do have are more at risk from Reform than the Lib Dems.
The Tories are buggered either way.
Come up with a strategy that wins back seats like Witney and Esher & Walton and also wins back the Stoke seats.
Two basic problems: 1) What are the Conservatives for? What do you stand for? Whats the big picture? 2) Proven to be utterly crap in office. Not just ineffectual, but catastrophically poor at governing
This can be fixed. But it means dropping "tactics" like going after Labour over woke issues and going back to "rebuild Britain through Business". And you'll only get away with that by accepting how catastrophic a job was done in government and changing direction.
Reform are out there saying Britain is Broken. At a fundamental level. And have some new ideas to go after. Tories seem to be claiming it isn't broken actually because you did a brilliant job actually but all the stuff that is broken actually is Labour's fault because actually that Keir Starmer was in charge from opposition.
What should the Tories be for?
Sound money, low inflation, no QE nonsense, a balanced budget, an improved trading situation; equality of opportunity, reward for effort and hard work (implying lower taxes), care with the public purse ensuring tax payers money is spent carefully and wisely; support and care for those that need it but with a priority, where appropriate, of encouraging people to provide for themselves and for their families; a strong defence; immigration that benefits UK plc by bringing in people with talents, investment and entrepreneurial drive; the rule of law and respect for institutions, home ownership, self sufficiency and self reliance; and a strong sense of the national interest over sectorial interests.
The problem is that if you mark the government from 2019 to 2024 out of 10 on that list you struggle to get a pass mark. And I really don't know if this matches Kemi's aspirations or not. I will not be voting Tory with any enthusiasm until I have had assurances about a lot of this.
I disagree with many of the policies, but go back to the two landslide Tory administrations of the 80s. A clear brand image and policy platform, aspiration at the heart both of the politics and the economy, a significant program of economic and social reform, and the part Labour never wanted to credit - significant investment into skills and training and regeneration.
In summary, what the Tories need to rediscover is capitalism. They binned it off firstly in favour of bankism and then oligarchism. Money needs to circulate. Jobs need to pay more than bills, so that people have cash to spend on stuff which creates jobs which drives growth and so on.
Too much cash has been taken away by a small number of individuals and companies, with the Tories promoting their needs. Which is why "fuck business" was so damaging - it wasn't just a whoops moment, it was active policy.
But a lot of what the Tories did under Thatcher in the 1980s could only be done once. You can't sell off millions of council houses on the cheap more than once. You can't privatise the profitable bits of the public sector more than once. You can't steal Scotland's oil revenues more than once.
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.
Parliament is sovereign, it can pass primary legislation to mandate a haircut for db pensions. It will of course make them wildly unpopular with people who lose out but it is absolutely possible.
I've also said many times that pension contributions should be cut and salaries increased in the public sector. People want the money today, not at some nebulous point in the future. A friend of mine was contacted to apply for senior on prem cybersecurity admin but the salary is well below market rate and they make it up in the pension, the overall package isn't dissimilar to what he might get elsewhere but he can't afford the pay cut so politely declined.
But aside from that, we just have too many people doing too little in that £40-60k band in the public sector. Lots of salary collectors creating micro bureaucracies around them to justify their roles. We should sweep the lot of them away and bank the saving, reduce the deficit and bank the subsequent drop in the interest bill as gilt prices increase and yields fall.
Public sector pensions are a scandal. It is interesting that those on the left bang on about "fairness" except when it comes to the imbalance between public sector and private sector pensions. The recently retired head of HMRC will be getting a pension that is paying him £107k a year for being idle.
I also read recently that the average council in England pays out one pound in every four they receive to prop up the gold-plated pension fund. Then they bleat on about "lack of resources". There would be "more resources" if they stopped thinking that there senior "public servants" should be able to retire on larger incomes than many people earn in full time jobs.
The former heard of HMRC is hardly typical of public sector pensions. Most people on public sector pensions are getting modest incomes, more modest than the people here who complain about them, I hazard.
As for the head of HMRC, that is clearly a very senior role. How are you going to attract someone to that job if you don't pay them something comparable to what they can earn/put into a pension in a private position?
My executive managment theory - it is indeed a very senior role, but is it a particularly challenging one that can only be done well by the top 1% of senior managers? The hardest part of those roles is the self PR to get them in the first place - and those types often make extremely short termist decisions to the detriment of the organisations to help with their self PR.
I suspect if you swapped the head of HMRC for a random manager a couple of salary levels lower down HMRC would be, on average, no worse off.
But is that any less true in the private sector?
From my experience I would say probably not. It's hard to evaluate which was the more inefficient, but I should say that on the whole you found more timewaters in the public sector, but more corruption on the private side. More nepotism and croneyism in the private sector too.
Really hard to say which was worse.
Btw I think the point about elevating lower ranked managers is borne out by WW1 where the successes from 1917 onwards can be attributed in part at least to the emergence of younger junior officers with hands on experience and a can do attitude quietly displacing the discredited Generals and their grandiose plans.
Shouldn't overgeneralise though. (Sorry, no pun intended.)
Good pun.
I'm all for elevating lower ranked managers and think many top executive jobs are overpaid. In my experience, the latter is at least as much a problem in the private sector. Private sector efficiency is a myth! Consider, for example, what happened when water was privatised.
What on earth do the people who are voting Reform think they are going to get.
What do you think they would have got had they voted Tory?
I know I keep on banging this drum, but there has to be a recognition of reality before forward strategy can be shaped. And the Tories have left the country utterly broken. Not that the answer is Labour either - which is why Reform are smashing it in the north and the LDs are smashing it in the south.
The Cons presided over 2x black swan events. Brexit and Covid. Now, I'm not saying they handled it brilliantly but I doubt any other government would have emerged from Covid any differently and arguably (lock them down longer and harder Starmer) a lot worse.
They imo completely mismanaged Covid and at the time I made some of my thoughts known although it's only in hindsight that it has become obvious how bad the consequences have been.
To say the Cons presided over Brexit seems to underplay their role in causing Brexit.
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.
Parliament is sovereign, it can pass primary legislation to mandate a haircut for db pensions. It will of course make them wildly unpopular with people who lose out but it is absolutely possible.
I've also said many times that pension contributions should be cut and salaries increased in the public sector. People want the money today, not at some nebulous point in the future. A friend of mine was contacted to apply for senior on prem cybersecurity admin but the salary is well below market rate and they make it up in the pension, the overall package isn't dissimilar to what he might get elsewhere but he can't afford the pay cut so politely declined.
But aside from that, we just have too many people doing too little in that £40-60k band in the public sector. Lots of salary collectors creating micro bureaucracies around them to justify their roles. We should sweep the lot of them away and bank the saving, reduce the deficit and bank the subsequent drop in the interest bill as gilt prices increase and yields fall.
Public sector pensions are a scandal. It is interesting that those on the left bang on about "fairness" except when it comes to the imbalance between public sector and private sector pensions. The recently retired head of HMRC will be getting a pension that is paying him £107k a year for being idle.
I also read recently that the average council in England pays out one pound in every four they receive to prop up the gold-plated pension fund. Then they bleat on about "lack of resources". There would be "more resources" if they stopped thinking that there senior "public servants" should be able to retire on larger incomes than many people earn in full time jobs.
The former heard of HMRC is hardly typical of public sector pensions. Most people on public sector pensions are getting modest incomes, more modest than the people here who complain about them, I hazard.
As for the head of HMRC, that is clearly a very senior role. How are you going to attract someone to that job if you don't pay them something comparable to what they can earn/put into a pension in a private position?
My executive managment theory - it is indeed a very senior role, but is it a particularly challenging one that can only be done well by the top 1% of senior managers? The hardest part of those roles is the self PR to get them in the first place - and those types often make extremely short termist decisions to the detriment of the organisations to help with their self PR.
I suspect if you swapped the head of HMRC for a random manager a couple of salary levels lower down HMRC would be, on average, no worse off.
But is that any less true in the private sector?
I think it is the same for most stable big organisations. I suppose from a political perspective the difference is the taxpayer is overpaying rather than a shareholder and getting better value for the taxpayer is a fair part of politics.
We’re the ones overpaying when it happens in the private sector too.
As shareholders. I'm all for shareholder reform to give more scrutiny over executive pay - it has gone bonkers. But that is a separate issue to public sector pay. Happy to pay specialist doctors or key IT roles more there in exchange for less to generic senior managers who imo, tend to be pretty fungible.
We're the ones overpaying as customers. The money for overinflated private sector salaries is passed on in higher prices or worse services.
Or more probably comes largely from shareholders profits, given the most things are priced at the level the market will bear.
Another Tory source contacts me with this upbeat assessment: "Don’t forget to pay attention to the West Country and South West. Yes Reform exist here, but it’s the Lib Dems we’re getting a f*****g pounding from".
Tory source warms to their Lib Dem theme: "The Lib Dems are like Japanese knot weed. Once they're in it takes a flamethrower and a crucifix to get rid of them".
From the Twitter feed of Dan Hodges.
I'm not sure what I'd advise the Tories to do, however, they already lost a load of seats to the Lib Dems last time. What seats they do have are more at risk from Reform than the Lib Dems.
I do have some advice for the Cons. The way back for them mirrors how Lab did it post GE19. The core of the Lab strategy was to win the Red Wall back. This was essential to get them back in the game. Everything else was a 'nice to have'. For the Cons it's the Blue Wall. All those seats they lost in affluent parts of the south, mainly to the LDs. They must regain most of those to be competitive again.
So forget about chasing Ref voters. Attack Ref rather than ape it. Develop a serious, non-xenophobic, right-of-centre platform and pitch to those voters pushed away to the LDs (and to Lab) by the chaos, incompetence, corruption and self-indulgence of the Johnson/Truss years. It might not work, maybe nothing will now, but it's their best chance. And they need another leader (not Jenrick).
Boris get rid of all the potential leaders capable of delivering that.....
That's one of their biggest problems, yes. The 2019 win they achieved by going with Boris Johnson might have come at the expense of the long term future of the party. It's enough to make decent Conservatives the length and breadth of these islands weep.
Tories and Labour have both lost around two thirds of seats they previously held so far.
I don't think I recall local election results quite so bad for both major parties before.
I'm pretty sure there hasn't been one.
2019 might be the closest, when the Tories lost over 1300 seats and 44 councils, and yet Labour still went backwards (from a lowish base). But even then, that was still only a loss of a little over a quarter of the Tory defences, with Labour's fall only marginal (though they did lose six councils).
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.
Parliament is sovereign, it can pass primary legislation to mandate a haircut for db pensions. It will of course make them wildly unpopular with people who lose out but it is absolutely possible.
I've also said many times that pension contributions should be cut and salaries increased in the public sector. People want the money today, not at some nebulous point in the future. A friend of mine was contacted to apply for senior on prem cybersecurity admin but the salary is well below market rate and they make it up in the pension, the overall package isn't dissimilar to what he might get elsewhere but he can't afford the pay cut so politely declined.
But aside from that, we just have too many people doing too little in that £40-60k band in the public sector. Lots of salary collectors creating micro bureaucracies around them to justify their roles. We should sweep the lot of them away and bank the saving, reduce the deficit and bank the subsequent drop in the interest bill as gilt prices increase and yields fall.
Public sector pensions are a scandal. It is interesting that those on the left bang on about "fairness" except when it comes to the imbalance between public sector and private sector pensions. The recently retired head of HMRC will be getting a pension that is paying him £107k a year for being idle.
I also read recently that the average council in England pays out one pound in every four they receive to prop up the gold-plated pension fund. Then they bleat on about "lack of resources". There would be "more resources" if they stopped thinking that there senior "public servants" should be able to retire on larger incomes than many people earn in full time jobs.
The former heard of HMRC is hardly typical of public sector pensions. Most people on public sector pensions are getting modest incomes, more modest than the people here who complain about them, I hazard.
As for the head of HMRC, that is clearly a very senior role. How are you going to attract someone to that job if you don't pay them something comparable to what they can earn/put into a pension in a private position?
My executive managment theory - it is indeed a very senior role, but is it a particularly challenging one that can only be done well by the top 1% of senior managers? The hardest part of those roles is the self PR to get them in the first place - and those types often make extremely short termist decisions to the detriment of the organisations to help with their self PR.
I suspect if you swapped the head of HMRC for a random manager a couple of salary levels lower down HMRC would be, on average, no worse off.
But is that any less true in the private sector?
I think it is the same for most stable big organisations. I suppose from a political perspective the difference is the taxpayer is overpaying rather than a shareholder and getting better value for the taxpayer is a fair part of politics.
We’re the ones overpaying when it happens in the private sector too.
As shareholders. I'm all for shareholder reform to give more scrutiny over executive pay - it has gone bonkers. But that is a separate issue to public sector pay. Happy to pay specialist doctors or key IT roles more there in exchange for less to generic senior managers who imo, tend to be pretty fungible.
We're the ones overpaying as customers. The money for overinflated private sector salaries is passed on in higher prices or worse services.
Or more probably comes largely from shareholders profits, given the most things are priced at the level the market will bear.
I don't think the free hand of the market works as efficiently as you think it does.
This is hard to interpret. I think it's terrible for Labour in relation to winning the election, but worse for the Tories in terms of "existence".
Must be increasing chance of a Lib-Lab coalition in 2029. I can see Reform winning or coming second in almost all E&W constituencies except London, which is fast becoming a Conservative refuge.
In the South the Tories and LDs will still be the top 2 in Surrey, Bucks, Berkshire Gloucestershire, much of non urban Hampshire, Oxfordshire, Cambridgeshire and Herts too.
In constituencies in inner Manchester, Liverpool and some other urban areas as well as inner London you might find Labour and the Greens as the top 2
Another Tory source contacts me with this upbeat assessment: "Don’t forget to pay attention to the West Country and South West. Yes Reform exist here, but it’s the Lib Dems we’re getting a f*****g pounding from".
Tory source warms to their Lib Dem theme: "The Lib Dems are like Japanese knot weed. Once they're in it takes a flamethrower and a crucifix to get rid of them".
From the Twitter feed of Dan Hodges.
I'm not sure what I'd advise the Tories to do, however, they already lost a load of seats to the Lib Dems last time. What seats they do have are more at risk from Reform than the Lib Dems.
The Tories are buggered either way.
Come up with a strategy that wins back seats like Witney and Esher & Walton and also wins back the Stoke seats.
Two basic problems: 1) What are the Conservatives for? What do you stand for? Whats the big picture? 2) Proven to be utterly crap in office. Not just ineffectual, but catastrophically poor at governing
This can be fixed. But it means dropping "tactics" like going after Labour over woke issues and going back to "rebuild Britain through Business". And you'll only get away with that by accepting how catastrophic a job was done in government and changing direction.
Reform are out there saying Britain is Broken. At a fundamental level. And have some new ideas to go after. Tories seem to be claiming it isn't broken actually because you did a brilliant job actually but all the stuff that is broken actually is Labour's fault because actually that Keir Starmer was in charge from opposition.
What should the Tories be for?
Sound money, low inflation, no QE nonsense, a balanced budget, an improved trading situation; equality of opportunity, reward for effort and hard work (implying lower taxes), care with the public purse ensuring tax payers money is spent carefully and wisely; support and care for those that need it but with a priority, where appropriate, of encouraging people to provide for themselves and for their families; a strong defence; immigration that benefits UK plc by bringing in people with talents, investment and entrepreneurial drive; the rule of law and respect for institutions, home ownership, self sufficiency and self reliance; and a strong sense of the national interest over sectorial interests.
The problem is that if you mark the government from 2019 to 2024 out of 10 on that list you struggle to get a pass mark. And I really don't know if this matches Kemi's aspirations or not. I will not be voting Tory with any enthusiasm until I have had assurances about a lot of this.
I disagree with many of the policies, but go back to the two landslide Tory administrations of the 80s. A clear brand image and policy platform, aspiration at the heart both of the politics and the economy, a significant program of economic and social reform, and the part Labour never wanted to credit - significant investment into skills and training and regeneration.
In summary, what the Tories need to rediscover is capitalism. They binned it off firstly in favour of bankism and then oligarchism. Money needs to circulate. Jobs need to pay more than bills, so that people have cash to spend on stuff which creates jobs which drives growth and so on.
Too much cash has been taken away by a small number of individuals and companies, with the Tories promoting their needs. Which is why "fuck business" was so damaging - it wasn't just a whoops moment, it was active policy.
But a lot of what the Tories did under Thatcher in the 1980s could only be done once. You can't sell off millions of council houses on the cheap more than once. You can't privatise the profitable bits of the public sector more than once. You can't steal Scotland's oil revenues more than once.
Overseas students counter a third of our balance of payments deficit. Our major competitor in that market, and the dominant global player, is scaring away the best global students, with the biggest budget.
What is the UK response? Cut back on overseas students. What is the Tory party response? We need to be even more aggressive on cutting back overseas students.
To add to the insanity, it was only back in 2019 when the Conservatives were wanting these overseas students to improve our balance of payments deficits.
There are things we can do to pay our way in the world, we have many advantages, it is a great place to live, but keep making rubbish decisions and not sticking with the good ones.
East Leake and Ruddington - right at the S of Notts, has gone one Tory, one RefUK.
All candidates 2nd through 7th within a couple of hundred votes.
I think RefUK are within spitting distance of majority control.
Can't see any more Labour pickups. Down to a single councillor in the whole of Nottinghamshire maybe. Edit: They've got the wards to the NE of the city to go yet, maybe they'll get a couple there.
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.
No what's wrong is we arent building houses.
You wouldn't post that if you lived in at some parts of Essex. Maldon is an example; hundreds of homes have been built to the South and West of the town. And a village nearby is protesting about 600 new homes being built. In our small town around 100 extra houses have recently been added, increasing the population by around 10%.
We had similar debates in Stockton-on-Tees when I lived there. The whole borough had been endless housebuilding for a decade. Multiple projects with hundreds of homes per site as well as smaller infill builds. And even bigger ones in the planning stage which are now going up.
The comedy factor? With the 2014 planning regs change the council was deemed to be "not building enough houses", allowing developers to do what they liked regardless of what councillors or even the MP thought.
The issue? The wrong type of houses being built. I lived on a development that ran to nearly 1,000 houses. Part of the site used to have a run down council estate on it, which was bulldozed. A small number of LHA houses added to the project did not adequately replace the hundreds of smaller affordable houses removed.
We're building houses that people can't afford.
That's what happens when you build houses in dumps where nobody with any choice wants to live instead of in the prosperous successful areas of the country which are in desperate need of new housing.
We need 8 million or so houses to match France, but very few of those should be built in the north.
It's so staggeringly obvious where the demand is when you look at the price/incomes ratio: from memory, 4x in the north, 10x in the SE and 14x in London.
But as we're governed by a bunch of economically illiterate, social media-obsessed cowards, focused on the next opinion poll not the next generation, I don't expect that to change anytime soon.
Should London look like this? City centre Brisbane with a concentrated centre. Some up to 80 floors. Would provide accomodation in the limited space - but would be the reversal of the trends of recent years.
That's what Manchester looks like. And Leeds is following.
That's what happened in Basingstoke (to a lesser degree). They devolve into places where pimp-oppressed immigrant prostitutes jump off the higher floors to end the pain (yes, that was an actual incident). High-rise accommodation are just crime machines with a fire risk. Don't build anything over four floors.
That's a stereotype. It depends very heavily on where, how and who.
Hmmm. The proportion and numbers of successful high-rises is low. Grenfell was a warning we've ignored. They are a bad solution and better are available.
What we need is more low rise. 5-8 floors. Somewhere that can feel like a family home rather than a box in the sky.
That stuff is being built everywhere in London you can't get permission for towers.
Seems sensible to me.
Go look at Stratford for the result.
There is a place for towers. I love the skyscrapers being built in Manchester. I love city centre density, and the buzz it creates at ground level. But they only work in certain locations for certain demographics (largely: young people), and there is a risk of ghettoisation. Medium to high density streets of family homes have a big role to play going forward - both in providing the housing stock we need and in creating pleasant and liveable and walkable cities.
A sort of reverse Retirement properties.
You can only stay here until you are 35. As an aside, 35 is used by the DWP as a cut off date for young people on benefits who are expected to house share. After that you can get your own one bed (if you can find one for the money you get)
Another Tory source contacts me with this upbeat assessment: "Don’t forget to pay attention to the West Country and South West. Yes Reform exist here, but it’s the Lib Dems we’re getting a f*****g pounding from".
Tory source warms to their Lib Dem theme: "The Lib Dems are like Japanese knot weed. Once they're in it takes a flamethrower and a crucifix to get rid of them".
From the Twitter feed of Dan Hodges.
I'm not sure what I'd advise the Tories to do, however, they already lost a load of seats to the Lib Dems last time. What seats they do have are more at risk from Reform than the Lib Dems.
I do have some advice for the Cons. The way back for them mirrors how Lab did it post GE19. The core of the Lab strategy was to win the Red Wall back. This was essential to get them back in the game. Everything else was a 'nice to have'. For the Cons it's the Blue Wall. All those seats they lost in affluent parts of the south, mainly to the LDs. They must regain most of those to be competitive again.
So forget about chasing Ref voters. Attack Ref rather than ape it. Develop a serious, non-xenophobic, right-of-centre platform and pitch to those voters pushed away to the LDs (and to Lab) by the chaos, incompetence, corruption and self-indulgence of the Johnson/Truss years. It might not work, maybe nothing will now, but it's their best chance. And they need another leader (not Jenrick).
Boris get rid of all the potential leaders capable of delivering that.....
That's one of their biggest problems, yes. The 2019 win they achieved by going with Boris Johnson might have come at the expense of the long term future of the party. It's enough to make decent Conservatives the length and breadth of these islands weep.
Hang on, there are probably just about enough decent Conservatives left to cover the length or breadth of these islands, but surely not both at the same time?
East Leake and Ruddington - right at the S of Notts, has gone one Tory, one RefUK.
All candidates 2nd through 7th within a couple of hundred votes.
I think RefUK are within spitting distance of majority control.
Can't see any more Labour pickups. Down to a single councillor in the whole of Nottinghamshire maybe. Edit: They've got the wards to the NE of the city to go yet, maybe they'll get a couple there.
At this point the resilience of the Independents in Broxtowe is crucial.
There are still 7 or 8 to announce - roughly half ex-Lab indies, and half indy indies.
Most Ref voters want left-wing economic policies, of the sort Callaghan was in favour of in the late 70s.
Those that normally used to vote Conservative who have gone Reform want uber Thatcherism on steroids and have gone to Farage as they think the Tories are still too Cameroon and wet
Which would be based on a fundamental misunderstanding of the politics of Farage, Thatcher *and* Cameron.
Quite impressive levels of multiple point-missing.
Probably the same cohort that loved Boris - again because the Boris they built up in their mind was actually nothing like the real one...
Reform over 200 seats/gains. Tories over 160 losses Labour 51 losses. Lib Dems 25 gains
Only about a third the way through and early results in places that favour Reform
Still pretty grim for the Tories and Labour though
Based on the Reform leaflet I received, people are voting for Farage's lot to a) stop small boats b) scrap net zero c) spend money on potholes.
Only c will be deliverable by a County Council obviously.
I did wonder to myself the other day that if councils stopped spaffing money trying to change road layouts to build cycle lanes that few use, potholes actually might be fixable....
Reform over 200 seats/gains. Tories over 160 losses Labour 51 losses. Lib Dems 25 gains
Only about a third the way through and early results in places that favour Reform
Still pretty grim for the Tories and Labour though
Based on the Reform leaflet I received, people are voting for Farage's lot to a) stop small boats b) scrap net zero c) spend money on potholes.
Only c will be deliverable by a County Council obviously.
In Lincolnshire there has been a lot of mileage being made by Reform on stopping the huge Solar farms that are being built. How much of a spanner could a Reform county council put in the works of those developers?
Another Tory source contacts me with this upbeat assessment: "Don’t forget to pay attention to the West Country and South West. Yes Reform exist here, but it’s the Lib Dems we’re getting a f*****g pounding from".
Tory source warms to their Lib Dem theme: "The Lib Dems are like Japanese knot weed. Once they're in it takes a flamethrower and a crucifix to get rid of them".
From the Twitter feed of Dan Hodges.
I'm not sure what I'd advise the Tories to do, however, they already lost a load of seats to the Lib Dems last time. What seats they do have are more at risk from Reform than the Lib Dems.
I do have some advice for the Cons. The way back for them mirrors how Lab did it post GE19. The core of the Lab strategy was to win the Red Wall back. This was essential to get them back in the game. Everything else was a 'nice to have'. For the Cons it's the Blue Wall. All those seats they lost in affluent parts of the south, mainly to the LDs. They must regain most of those to be competitive again.
So forget about chasing Ref voters. Attack Ref rather than ape it. Develop a serious, non-xenophobic, right-of-centre platform and pitch to those voters pushed away to the LDs (and to Lab) by the chaos, incompetence, corruption and self-indulgence of the Johnson/Truss years. It might not work, maybe nothing will now, but it's their best chance. And they need another leader (not Jenrick).
They only way they would do that is to seek to reverse Brexit but all that would do is leak their still mostly Leave vote further to Reform while not winning over many bluewall voters who will stick with the LDs who have always been anti Brexit anyway
I don't think that's the way to appeal (again) to the sort of floating voters I'm talking about. Many are Remainers, yes, but re-joining the EU (ie another divisive referendum) isn't high on their radar right now.
Another Tory source contacts me with this upbeat assessment: "Don’t forget to pay attention to the West Country and South West. Yes Reform exist here, but it’s the Lib Dems we’re getting a f*****g pounding from".
Tory source warms to their Lib Dem theme: "The Lib Dems are like Japanese knot weed. Once they're in it takes a flamethrower and a crucifix to get rid of them".
From the Twitter feed of Dan Hodges.
I'm not sure what I'd advise the Tories to do, however, they already lost a load of seats to the Lib Dems last time. What seats they do have are more at risk from Reform than the Lib Dems.
The Tories are buggered either way.
Come up with a strategy that wins back seats like Witney and Esher & Walton and also wins back the Stoke seats.
Two basic problems: 1) What are the Conservatives for? What do you stand for? Whats the big picture? 2) Proven to be utterly crap in office. Not just ineffectual, but catastrophically poor at governing
This can be fixed. But it means dropping "tactics" like going after Labour over woke issues and going back to "rebuild Britain through Business". And you'll only get away with that by accepting how catastrophic a job was done in government and changing direction.
Reform are out there saying Britain is Broken. At a fundamental level. And have some new ideas to go after. Tories seem to be claiming it isn't broken actually because you did a brilliant job actually but all the stuff that is broken actually is Labour's fault because actually that Keir Starmer was in charge from opposition.
What should the Tories be for?
Sound money, low inflation, no QE nonsense, a balanced budget, an improved trading situation; equality of opportunity, reward for effort and hard work (implying lower taxes), care with the public purse ensuring tax payers money is spent carefully and wisely; support and care for those that need it but with a priority, where appropriate, of encouraging people to provide for themselves and for their families; a strong defence; immigration that benefits UK plc by bringing in people with talents, investment and entrepreneurial drive; the rule of law and respect for institutions, home ownership, self sufficiency and self reliance; and a strong sense of the national interest over sectorial interests.
The problem is that if you mark the government from 2019 to 2024 out of 10 on that list you struggle to get a pass mark. And I really don't know if this matches Kemi's aspirations or not. I will not be voting Tory with any enthusiasm until I have had assurances about a lot of this.
Chances are that the LibDems will be able to tick more of those boxes than the Tories come the election
Can we all - as a forum - step back and applaud the incredible achievement of His Royal Greatness, Lord Nigel Farage, VC, KCMG, PBUH
Yet again he’s taken a party from nowhere and transformed British politics. He’s just won a Labour seat which has been Labour for 30,000 years. He is smashing Labour and Cons in the locals. He has won a mayoralty, and will run several councils
We know he’s charismatic and cunning, this once again shows that’s he’s also a political genius at organisation and campaigning. He is in a different higher league - like it or not - to anyone at the top of the other parties
Time to put to bed the low-IQ PB drivel that Farage is just some “lucky lightweight”, once and for all
Reform over 200 seats/gains. Tories over 160 losses Labour 51 losses. Lib Dems 25 gains
Only about a third the way through and early results in places that favour Reform
Still pretty grim for the Tories and Labour though
Based on the Reform leaflet I received, people are voting for Farage's lot to a) stop small boats b) scrap net zero c) spend money on potholes.
Only c will be deliverable by a County Council obviously.
I did wonder to myself the other day that if councils stopped spaffing money trying to change road layouts to build cycle lanes that few use, potholes actually might be fixable....
If it's anything like Scotland, those cycle lanes are typically funded by central government, not councils. And if you're worried about potholes, the road wear from an SUV is about 400,000 times that of a cyclist.
Another Tory source contacts me with this upbeat assessment: "Don’t forget to pay attention to the West Country and South West. Yes Reform exist here, but it’s the Lib Dems we’re getting a f*****g pounding from".
Tory source warms to their Lib Dem theme: "The Lib Dems are like Japanese knot weed. Once they're in it takes a flamethrower and a crucifix to get rid of them".
From the Twitter feed of Dan Hodges.
I'm not sure what I'd advise the Tories to do, however, they already lost a load of seats to the Lib Dems last time. What seats they do have are more at risk from Reform than the Lib Dems.
The Tories are buggered either way.
Come up with a strategy that wins back seats like Witney and Esher & Walton and also wins back the Stoke seats.
Two basic problems: 1) What are the Conservatives for? What do you stand for? Whats the big picture? 2) Proven to be utterly crap in office. Not just ineffectual, but catastrophically poor at governing
This can be fixed. But it means dropping "tactics" like going after Labour over woke issues and going back to "rebuild Britain through Business". And you'll only get away with that by accepting how catastrophic a job was done in government and changing direction.
Reform are out there saying Britain is Broken. At a fundamental level. And have some new ideas to go after. Tories seem to be claiming it isn't broken actually because you did a brilliant job actually but all the stuff that is broken actually is Labour's fault because actually that Keir Starmer was in charge from opposition.
What should the Tories be for?
Sound money, low inflation, no QE nonsense, a balanced budget, an improved trading situation; equality of opportunity, reward for effort and hard work (implying lower taxes), care with the public purse ensuring tax payers money is spent carefully and wisely; support and care for those that need it but with a priority, where appropriate, of encouraging people to provide for themselves and for their families; a strong defence; immigration that benefits UK plc by bringing in people with talents, investment and entrepreneurial drive; the rule of law and respect for institutions, home ownership, self sufficiency and self reliance; and a strong sense of the national interest over sectorial interests.
The problem is that if you mark the government from 2019 to 2024 out of 10 on that list you struggle to get a pass mark. And I really don't know if this matches Kemi's aspirations or not. I will not be voting Tory with any enthusiasm until I have had assurances about a lot of this.
Chances are that the LibDems will be able to tick more of those boxes than the Tories come the election
That's quite possible. As a party they have lost their way and they are not showing much sign of finding it again.
I didn't think I would ever say this, but I think reform are going to win the next election.
It's a long time until the next election, so I'm cautious to make predictions, but Reform UK are getting the sort of results that a party that is going to win the next election could be expected to make.
Reform over 200 seats/gains. Tories over 160 losses Labour 51 losses. Lib Dems 25 gains
Only about a third the way through and early results in places that favour Reform
Still pretty grim for the Tories and Labour though
Based on the Reform leaflet I received, people are voting for Farage's lot to a) stop small boats b) scrap net zero c) spend money on potholes.
Only c will be deliverable by a County Council obviously.
Priti Patel bitterly whining about Andrea Jenkyns talking about Stop the Boats on her winning mayoral campaign. "She can't do that"
Hear the voters. They don't expect a metro mayor or a councillor to stop the boats. But they want to have representatives who listen to their concerns and their issues and actually seem to get it.
Patel was Home Secretary. And opened the border wide open...
Another Tory source contacts me with this upbeat assessment: "Don’t forget to pay attention to the West Country and South West. Yes Reform exist here, but it’s the Lib Dems we’re getting a f*****g pounding from".
Tory source warms to their Lib Dem theme: "The Lib Dems are like Japanese knot weed. Once they're in it takes a flamethrower and a crucifix to get rid of them".
From the Twitter feed of Dan Hodges.
I'm not sure what I'd advise the Tories to do, however, they already lost a load of seats to the Lib Dems last time. What seats they do have are more at risk from Reform than the Lib Dems.
I do have some advice for the Cons. The way back for them mirrors how Lab did it post GE19. The core of the Lab strategy was to win the Red Wall back. This was essential to get them back in the game. Everything else was a 'nice to have'. For the Cons it's the Blue Wall. All those seats they lost in affluent parts of the south, mainly to the LDs. They must regain most of those to be competitive again.
So forget about chasing Ref voters. Attack Ref rather than ape it. Develop a serious, non-xenophobic, right-of-centre platform and pitch to those voters pushed away to the LDs (and to Lab) by the chaos, incompetence, corruption and self-indulgence of the Johnson/Truss years. It might not work, maybe nothing will now, but it's their best chance. And they need another leader (not Jenrick).
They only way they would do that is to seek to reverse Brexit but all that would do is leak their still mostly Leave vote further to Reform while not winning over many bluewall voters who will stick with the LDs who have always been anti Brexit anyway
I have told you before that the Tories won't get a hearing until they are prepared to admit that their party's and eventually the country's flirtation with Brexit has been a colossal mistake. That reality checkpoint may still be a decade away by the looks of things.
Labour had to abandon socialism, not once, but twice, to get elected. That was far more fundamental to them than your party returning to common sense on Europe.
Another Tory source contacts me with this upbeat assessment: "Don’t forget to pay attention to the West Country and South West. Yes Reform exist here, but it’s the Lib Dems we’re getting a f*****g pounding from".
Tory source warms to their Lib Dem theme: "The Lib Dems are like Japanese knot weed. Once they're in it takes a flamethrower and a crucifix to get rid of them".
From the Twitter feed of Dan Hodges.
I'm not sure what I'd advise the Tories to do, however, they already lost a load of seats to the Lib Dems last time. What seats they do have are more at risk from Reform than the Lib Dems.
The Tories are buggered either way.
Come up with a strategy that wins back seats like Witney and Esher & Walton and also wins back the Stoke seats.
Two basic problems: 1) What are the Conservatives for? What do you stand for? Whats the big picture? 2) Proven to be utterly crap in office. Not just ineffectual, but catastrophically poor at governing
This can be fixed. But it means dropping "tactics" like going after Labour over woke issues and going back to "rebuild Britain through Business". And you'll only get away with that by accepting how catastrophic a job was done in government and changing direction.
Reform are out there saying Britain is Broken. At a fundamental level. And have some new ideas to go after. Tories seem to be claiming it isn't broken actually because you did a brilliant job actually but all the stuff that is broken actually is Labour's fault because actually that Keir Starmer was in charge from opposition.
What should the Tories be for?
Sound money, low inflation, no QE nonsense, a balanced budget, an improved trading situation; equality of opportunity, reward for effort and hard work (implying lower taxes), care with the public purse ensuring tax payers money is spent carefully and wisely; support and care for those that need it but with a priority, where appropriate, of encouraging people to provide for themselves and for their families; a strong defence; immigration that benefits UK plc by bringing in people with talents, investment and entrepreneurial drive; the rule of law and respect for institutions, home ownership, self sufficiency and self reliance; and a strong sense of the national interest over sectorial interests.
The problem is that if you mark the government from 2019 to 2024 out of 10 on that list you struggle to get a pass mark. And I really don't know if this matches Kemi's aspirations or not. I will not be voting Tory with any enthusiasm until I have had assurances about a lot of this.
Agree with all of that list, David. Unfortunately that's not what the Tory party currently offers or has offered for a very long time, probably since Mrs Thatcher and I was only alive for 3 years of that so have no first hand experience.
What frustrated me most about the previous government is that they used to spend so much time bitching about things and no time using the majority to force the agenda through, face down the civil service, lords, the supreme court etc... it was always an exercise of taking the path of least resistance because they weren't willing to do the hard work.
To the new government's credit they do seem to understand that parliament is sovereign and primary legislation overrides all. I'm pretty sure under the Tories that awful two tier sentencing guideline would have wormed it's way through with ministers saying "there's nothing we can do" etc... while sitting on a 60 seat majority.
They just need to do more of it and be much more radical. For a start they need to push up the barrier for immigration to £60k in London and the SE and £50k outside of London and halt all asylum seekers and start automatically reporting them. The country is full and we need to look after our own before anyone else, our public services are crumbling and we're borrowing £150bn per year to keep the lights on, we can no longer afford to spend £10bn per year on an asylum programme, it needs to be cut and we need to exit whatever treaties necessary to commence deportations to designated safe countries.
Reform over 200 seats/gains. Tories over 160 losses Labour 51 losses. Lib Dems 25 gains
Only about a third the way through and early results in places that favour Reform
Still pretty grim for the Tories and Labour though
Based on the Reform leaflet I received, people are voting for Farage's lot to a) stop small boats b) scrap net zero c) spend money on potholes.
Only c will be deliverable by a County Council obviously.
In Lincolnshire there has been a lot of mileage being made by Reform on stopping the huge Solar farms that are being built. How much of a spanner could a Reform county council put in the works of those developers?
Labour should hold referenda in all council areas and ask them if they want Net Zero-related investment or not. There's a lot of cash going into Teesside and the Humber that would be very welcome in Dundee, Aberdeen and Leith instead.
The Cons have failed because they wanted to outflank Reform, which is an impossibility.
Nope, if they had wanted to outflank Reform they would have elected Jenrick as their leader not Badenoch. Almost all the old Cameron and Rishi Tory and CCHQ establishment backed Kemi over Bobby J
Is that why they are doing so well.
Also, there is no old Cameron CCHQ establishment. They've all gone. Rishi was a Brexiter so qed.
Reform are doing very, very well now. We were talking about them picking up a couple of councils. It’s now looking like it will be much higher than that.
What on earth do the people who are voting Reform think they are going to get.
What do you think they would have got had they voted Tory?
I know I keep on banging this drum, but there has to be a recognition of reality before forward strategy can be shaped. And the Tories have left the country utterly broken. Not that the answer is Labour either - which is why Reform are smashing it in the north and the LDs are smashing it in the south.
The Cons presided over 2x black swan events. Brexit and Covid. Now, I'm not saying they handled it brilliantly but I doubt any other government would have emerged from Covid any differently and arguably (lock them down longer and harder Starmer) a lot worse.
They imo completely mismanaged Covid and at the time I made some of my thoughts known although it's only in hindsight that it has become obvious how bad the consequences have been.
To say the Cons presided over Brexit seems to underplay their role in causing Brexit.
Another Tory source contacts me with this upbeat assessment: "Don’t forget to pay attention to the West Country and South West. Yes Reform exist here, but it’s the Lib Dems we’re getting a f*****g pounding from".
Tory source warms to their Lib Dem theme: "The Lib Dems are like Japanese knot weed. Once they're in it takes a flamethrower and a crucifix to get rid of them".
From the Twitter feed of Dan Hodges.
I'm not sure what I'd advise the Tories to do, however, they already lost a load of seats to the Lib Dems last time. What seats they do have are more at risk from Reform than the Lib Dems.
I do have some advice for the Cons. The way back for them mirrors how Lab did it post GE19. The core of the Lab strategy was to win the Red Wall back. This was essential to get them back in the game. Everything else was a 'nice to have'. For the Cons it's the Blue Wall. All those seats they lost in affluent parts of the south, mainly to the LDs. They must regain most of those to be competitive again.
So forget about chasing Ref voters. Attack Ref rather than ape it. Develop a serious, non-xenophobic, right-of-centre platform and pitch to those voters pushed away to the LDs (and to Lab) by the chaos, incompetence, corruption and self-indulgence of the Johnson/Truss years. It might not work, maybe nothing will now, but it's their best chance. And they need another leader (not Jenrick).
Boris get rid of all the potential leaders capable of delivering that.....
That's one of their biggest problems, yes. The 2019 win they achieved by going with Boris Johnson might have come at the expense of the long term future of the party. It's enough to make decent Conservatives the length and breadth of these islands weep.
Hang on, there are probably just about enough decent Conservatives left to cover the length or breadth of these islands, but surely not both at the same time?
Ok, good point. But however few there are, they'll be weeping. That's what I'm trying to get across.
Another Tory source contacts me with this upbeat assessment: "Don’t forget to pay attention to the West Country and South West. Yes Reform exist here, but it’s the Lib Dems we’re getting a f*****g pounding from".
Tory source warms to their Lib Dem theme: "The Lib Dems are like Japanese knot weed. Once they're in it takes a flamethrower and a crucifix to get rid of them".
From the Twitter feed of Dan Hodges.
I'm not sure what I'd advise the Tories to do, however, they already lost a load of seats to the Lib Dems last time. What seats they do have are more at risk from Reform than the Lib Dems.
The Tories are buggered either way.
Come up with a strategy that wins back seats like Witney and Esher & Walton and also wins back the Stoke seats.
Two basic problems: 1) What are the Conservatives for? What do you stand for? Whats the big picture? 2) Proven to be utterly crap in office. Not just ineffectual, but catastrophically poor at governing
This can be fixed. But it means dropping "tactics" like going after Labour over woke issues and going back to "rebuild Britain through Business". And you'll only get away with that by accepting how catastrophic a job was done in government and changing direction.
Reform are out there saying Britain is Broken. At a fundamental level. And have some new ideas to go after. Tories seem to be claiming it isn't broken actually because you did a brilliant job actually but all the stuff that is broken actually is Labour's fault because actually that Keir Starmer was in charge from opposition.
What should the Tories be for?
Sound money, low inflation, no QE nonsense, a balanced budget, an improved trading situation; equality of opportunity, reward for effort and hard work (implying lower taxes), care with the public purse ensuring tax payers money is spent carefully and wisely; support and care for those that need it but with a priority, where appropriate, of encouraging people to provide for themselves and for their families; a strong defence; immigration that benefits UK plc by bringing in people with talents, investment and entrepreneurial drive; the rule of law and respect for institutions, home ownership, self sufficiency and self reliance; and a strong sense of the national interest over sectorial interests.
The problem is that if you mark the government from 2019 to 2024 out of 10 on that list you struggle to get a pass mark. And I really don't know if this matches Kemi's aspirations or not. I will not be voting Tory with any enthusiasm until I have had assurances about a lot of this.
I disagree with many of the policies, but go back to the two landslide Tory administrations of the 80s. A clear brand image and policy platform, aspiration at the heart both of the politics and the economy, a significant program of economic and social reform, and the part Labour never wanted to credit - significant investment into skills and training and regeneration.
In summary, what the Tories need to rediscover is capitalism. They binned it off firstly in favour of bankism and then oligarchism. Money needs to circulate. Jobs need to pay more than bills, so that people have cash to spend on stuff which creates jobs which drives growth and so on.
Too much cash has been taken away by a small number of individuals and companies, with the Tories promoting their needs. Which is why "fuck business" was so damaging - it wasn't just a whoops moment, it was active policy.
But a lot of what the Tories did under Thatcher in the 1980s could only be done once. You can't sell off millions of council houses on the cheap more than once. You can't privatise the profitable bits of the public sector more than once. You can't steal Scotland's oil revenues more than once.
And the legacy of all three poisons our politics still
Most Ref voters want left-wing economic policies, of the sort Callaghan was in favour of in the late 70s.
Is that really what the nation has come to? We're gearing up to elect as our revolutionary new leader a revamped version of Sunny Jim?
Sunny Jim had a cabinet of Denis Healey, Roy Mason, (for a time) Roy Jenkins, Tony Crossland, Michael Foot, Tony Benn, Shirley Williams, David Owen and Peter Shore amongst others. Starmer can only look at a range of talent like that and weep. Getting back to the standard of Callaghan's administration is beyond aspirational.
RefUK have taken one of the Calverton seats - that's on the border between the Ref and Con sections of the new line, and the posh green / mining parts.
Reform are doing very, very well now. We were talking about them picking up a couple of councils. It’s now looking like it will be much higher than that.
I think people are voting RefUK for almost exactly the same reasons people voted for Trump in the US.
What on earth do the people who are voting Reform think they are going to get.
What do you think they would have got had they voted Tory?
I know I keep on banging this drum, but there has to be a recognition of reality before forward strategy can be shaped. And the Tories have left the country utterly broken. Not that the answer is Labour either - which is why Reform are smashing it in the north and the LDs are smashing it in the south.
The Cons presided over 2x black swan events. Brexit and Covid. Now, I'm not saying they handled it brilliantly but I doubt any other government would have emerged from Covid any differently and arguably (lock them down longer and harder Starmer) a lot worse.
They imo completely mismanaged Covid and at the time I made some of my thoughts known although it's only in hindsight that it has become obvious how bad the consequences have been.
To say the Cons presided over Brexit seems to underplay their role in causing Brexit.
The British electorate caused Brexit.
The ones who didn’t engage properly with moment to make big decision, so didn’t cast a vote, in particular.
Reform over 200 seats/gains. Tories over 160 losses Labour 51 losses. Lib Dems 25 gains
Only about a third the way through and early results in places that favour Reform
Still pretty grim for the Tories and Labour though
Based on the Reform leaflet I received, people are voting for Farage's lot to a) stop small boats b) scrap net zero c) spend money on potholes.
Only c will be deliverable by a County Council obviously.
Priti Patel bitterly whining about Andrea Jenkyns talking about Stop the Boats on her winning mayoral campaign. "She can't do that"
Hear the voters. They don't expect a metro mayor or a councillor to stop the boats. But they want to have representatives who listen to their concerns and their issues and actually seem to get it.
Patel was Home Secretary. And opened the border wide open...
Yup, 2m immigrants under her time in charge. People will never forgive it. Insane rules that allowed one care worker to bring 4 or 5 dependents with them who we then had to house, feed, educate and keep healthy all for a minimum wage worker who's net contribution would be in the negative 10s of thousands. Absolutely mental decision making from the Tories and they deserve this and many more drubbings until they learn and apologise for this and pledge to revoke existing visas and not renew any of them or allow dependents to gain citizenship or have family reunions etc... for workers under the income threshold.
We have 3m citizens sitting on some kind of out of work benefit, we don't need migrant labour. We need to get the lazy shirkers to do the jobs or face benefit sanctions. The Blair government and the coalition were absolutely bang on when they did this. Theresa May's "compassionate conservativism" opened the door for the terminally lazy to live a life of luxury at the taxpayer's expense, it's time to close it again.
Another Tory source contacts me with this upbeat assessment: "Don’t forget to pay attention to the West Country and South West. Yes Reform exist here, but it’s the Lib Dems we’re getting a f*****g pounding from".
Tory source warms to their Lib Dem theme: "The Lib Dems are like Japanese knot weed. Once they're in it takes a flamethrower and a crucifix to get rid of them".
From the Twitter feed of Dan Hodges.
I'm not sure what I'd advise the Tories to do, however, they already lost a load of seats to the Lib Dems last time. What seats they do have are more at risk from Reform than the Lib Dems.
I do have some advice for the Cons. The way back for them mirrors how Lab did it post GE19. The core of the Lab strategy was to win the Red Wall back. This was essential to get them back in the game. Everything else was a 'nice to have'. For the Cons it's the Blue Wall. All those seats they lost in affluent parts of the south, mainly to the LDs. They must regain most of those to be competitive again.
So forget about chasing Ref voters. Attack Ref rather than ape it. Develop a serious, non-xenophobic, right-of-centre platform and pitch to those voters pushed away to the LDs (and to Lab) by the chaos, incompetence, corruption and self-indulgence of the Johnson/Truss years. It might not work, maybe nothing will now, but it's their best chance. And they need another leader (not Jenrick).
They only way they would do that is to seek to reverse Brexit but all that would do is leak their still mostly Leave vote further to Reform while not winning over many bluewall voters who will stick with the LDs who have always been anti Brexit anyway
I have told you before that the Tories won't get a hearing until they are prepared to admit that their party's and eventually the country's flirtation with Brexit has been a colossal mistake. That reality checkpoint may still be a decade away by the looks of things.
Labour had to abandon socialism, not once, but twice, to get elected. That was far more fundamental to them than your party returning to common sense on Europe.
Ignoring the fact 52% of UK voters voted for Brexit in 2016 and the Conservatives won a majority to get Brexit done in 2019 and a clear majority of current Tory voters also voted for Brexit.
By contrast Labour haven't won a clear majority for socialism since 1945 or at a push 1966 and even then had Blair completely abandoned lip service to socialism they would have lost their core vote to another leftwing party
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.
Parliament is sovereign, it can pass primary legislation to mandate a haircut for db pensions. It will of course make them wildly unpopular with people who lose out but it is absolutely possible.
I've also said many times that pension contributions should be cut and salaries increased in the public sector. People want the money today, not at some nebulous point in the future. A friend of mine was contacted to apply for senior on prem cybersecurity admin but the salary is well below market rate and they make it up in the pension, the overall package isn't dissimilar to what he might get elsewhere but he can't afford the pay cut so politely declined.
But aside from that, we just have too many people doing too little in that £40-60k band in the public sector. Lots of salary collectors creating micro bureaucracies around them to justify their roles. We should sweep the lot of them away and bank the saving, reduce the deficit and bank the subsequent drop in the interest bill as gilt prices increase and yields fall.
Public sector pensions are a scandal. It is interesting that those on the left bang on about "fairness" except when it comes to the imbalance between public sector and private sector pensions. The recently retired head of HMRC will be getting a pension that is paying him £107k a year for being idle.
I also read recently that the average council in England pays out one pound in every four they receive to prop up the gold-plated pension fund. Then they bleat on about "lack of resources". There would be "more resources" if they stopped thinking that there senior "public servants" should be able to retire on larger incomes than many people earn in full time jobs.
The former heard of HMRC is hardly typical of public sector pensions. Most people on public sector pensions are getting modest incomes, more modest than the people here who complain about them, I hazard.
As for the head of HMRC, that is clearly a very senior role. How are you going to attract someone to that job if you don't pay them something comparable to what they can earn/put into a pension in a private position?
My executive managment theory - it is indeed a very senior role, but is it a particularly challenging one that can only be done well by the top 1% of senior managers? The hardest part of those roles is the self PR to get them in the first place - and those types often make extremely short termist decisions to the detriment of the organisations to help with their self PR.
I suspect if you swapped the head of HMRC for a random manager a couple of salary levels lower down HMRC would be, on average, no worse off.
But is that any less true in the private sector?
I think it is the same for most stable big organisations. I suppose from a political perspective the difference is the taxpayer is overpaying rather than a shareholder and getting better value for the taxpayer is a fair part of politics.
We’re the ones overpaying when it happens in the private sector too.
As shareholders. I'm all for shareholder reform to give more scrutiny over executive pay - it has gone bonkers. But that is a separate issue to public sector pay. Happy to pay specialist doctors or key IT roles more there in exchange for less to generic senior managers who imo, tend to be pretty fungible.
We're the ones overpaying as customers. The money for overinflated private sector salaries is passed on in higher prices or worse services.
Or more probably comes largely from shareholders profits, given the most things are priced at the level the market will bear.
I don't think the free hand of the market works as efficiently as you think it does.
Indeed. If all companies within a sector are paying broadly the same (which is, ironically, also their excuse for doing so), then there's little competitive incentive to trim costs - when the costs to be trimmed are also benefits of the ones who would be trimming, and when they sit on each others' remuneration committees.
RefUK have taken one of the Calverton seats - that's on the border between the Ref and Con sections of the new line, and the posh green / mining parts.
I think that means RefUK majority.
Labour's lucky Nottingham City council isn't up. My hunch is they'd be trollied by Greens and all manner of independents.
Another Tory source contacts me with this upbeat assessment: "Don’t forget to pay attention to the West Country and South West. Yes Reform exist here, but it’s the Lib Dems we’re getting a f*****g pounding from".
Tory source warms to their Lib Dem theme: "The Lib Dems are like Japanese knot weed. Once they're in it takes a flamethrower and a crucifix to get rid of them".
From the Twitter feed of Dan Hodges.
I'm not sure what I'd advise the Tories to do, however, they already lost a load of seats to the Lib Dems last time. What seats they do have are more at risk from Reform than the Lib Dems.
The Tories are buggered either way.
Come up with a strategy that wins back seats like Witney and Esher & Walton and also wins back the Stoke seats.
Two basic problems: 1) What are the Conservatives for? What do you stand for? Whats the big picture? 2) Proven to be utterly crap in office. Not just ineffectual, but catastrophically poor at governing
This can be fixed. But it means dropping "tactics" like going after Labour over woke issues and going back to "rebuild Britain through Business". And you'll only get away with that by accepting how catastrophic a job was done in government and changing direction.
Reform are out there saying Britain is Broken. At a fundamental level. And have some new ideas to go after. Tories seem to be claiming it isn't broken actually because you did a brilliant job actually but all the stuff that is broken actually is Labour's fault because actually that Keir Starmer was in charge from opposition.
What should the Tories be for?
Sound money, low inflation, no QE nonsense, a balanced budget, an improved trading situation; equality of opportunity, reward for effort and hard work (implying lower taxes), care with the public purse ensuring tax payers money is spent carefully and wisely; support and care for those that need it but with a priority, where appropriate, of encouraging people to provide for themselves and for their families; a strong defence; immigration that benefits UK plc by bringing in people with talents, investment and entrepreneurial drive; the rule of law and respect for institutions, home ownership, self sufficiency and self reliance; and a strong sense of the national interest over sectorial interests.
The problem is that if you mark the government from 2019 to 2024 out of 10 on that list you struggle to get a pass mark. And I really don't know if this matches Kemi's aspirations or not. I will not be voting Tory with any enthusiasm until I have had assurances about a lot of this.
I disagree with many of the policies, but go back to the two landslide Tory administrations of the 80s. A clear brand image and policy platform, aspiration at the heart both of the politics and the economy, a significant program of economic and social reform, and the part Labour never wanted to credit - significant investment into skills and training and regeneration.
In summary, what the Tories need to rediscover is capitalism. They binned it off firstly in favour of bankism and then oligarchism. Money needs to circulate. Jobs need to pay more than bills, so that people have cash to spend on stuff which creates jobs which drives growth and so on.
Too much cash has been taken away by a small number of individuals and companies, with the Tories promoting their needs. Which is why "fuck business" was so damaging - it wasn't just a whoops moment, it was active policy.
But a lot of what the Tories did under Thatcher in the 1980s could only be done once. You can't sell off millions of council houses on the cheap more than once. You can't privatise the profitable bits of the public sector more than once. You can't steal Scotland's oil revenues more than once.
And the legacy of all three poisons our politics still
Would you deny that Labour inherited a golden legacy in 1997?
RefUK have taken one of the Calverton seats - that's on the border between the Ref and Con sections of the new line, and the posh green / mining parts.
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.
Parliament is sovereign, it can pass primary legislation to mandate a haircut for db pensions. It will of course make them wildly unpopular with people who lose out but it is absolutely possible.
I've also said many times that pension contributions should be cut and salaries increased in the public sector. People want the money today, not at some nebulous point in the future. A friend of mine was contacted to apply for senior on prem cybersecurity admin but the salary is well below market rate and they make it up in the pension, the overall package isn't dissimilar to what he might get elsewhere but he can't afford the pay cut so politely declined.
But aside from that, we just have too many people doing too little in that £40-60k band in the public sector. Lots of salary collectors creating micro bureaucracies around them to justify their roles. We should sweep the lot of them away and bank the saving, reduce the deficit and bank the subsequent drop in the interest bill as gilt prices increase and yields fall.
Public sector pensions are a scandal. It is interesting that those on the left bang on about "fairness" except when it comes to the imbalance between public sector and private sector pensions. The recently retired head of HMRC will be getting a pension that is paying him £107k a year for being idle.
I also read recently that the average council in England pays out one pound in every four they receive to prop up the gold-plated pension fund. Then they bleat on about "lack of resources". There would be "more resources" if they stopped thinking that there senior "public servants" should be able to retire on larger incomes than many people earn in full time jobs.
The former heard of HMRC is hardly typical of public sector pensions. Most people on public sector pensions are getting modest incomes, more modest than the people here who complain about them, I hazard.
As for the head of HMRC, that is clearly a very senior role. How are you going to attract someone to that job if you don't pay them something comparable to what they can earn/put into a pension in a private position?
My executive managment theory - it is indeed a very senior role, but is it a particularly challenging one that can only be done well by the top 1% of senior managers? The hardest part of those roles is the self PR to get them in the first place - and those types often make extremely short termist decisions to the detriment of the organisations to help with their self PR.
I suspect if you swapped the head of HMRC for a random manager a couple of salary levels lower down HMRC would be, on average, no worse off.
But is that any less true in the private sector?
I think it is the same for most stable big organisations. I suppose from a political perspective the difference is the taxpayer is overpaying rather than a shareholder and getting better value for the taxpayer is a fair part of politics.
We’re the ones overpaying when it happens in the private sector too.
As shareholders. I'm all for shareholder reform to give more scrutiny over executive pay - it has gone bonkers. But that is a separate issue to public sector pay. Happy to pay specialist doctors or key IT roles more there in exchange for less to generic senior managers who imo, tend to be pretty fungible.
We're the ones overpaying as customers. The money for overinflated private sector salaries is passed on in higher prices or worse services.
Or more probably comes largely from shareholders profits, given the most things are priced at the level the market will bear.
I don't think the free hand of the market works as efficiently as you think it does.
I think it works less efficiently that you seem to think.
You are appear to be arguing that prices are set by the costs, with the competition forcing prices down to just above those costs. Thus your argument is that if you removed a chunk of those cost by curbing executive pay, prices would therefore drop.
I'm arguing that a lot of the time goods are really priced based "what the market will bear" and that companies will usually charge what they can get away with. Subtract from the price their actual costs to make the stuff, what's left is the profits, which then get divided between executive excess and returns to shareholders. If you curbed executive pay, the shareholders would just vote themselves bigger dividends.
(I've solved this problem for my small business in two ways - one by being the sole shareholder and sole executive, which tends to keep our interests aligned, and two by generally failing to make much of a distributable profit anyway - virtually everything gets reinvested in business growth)
I didn't think I would ever say this, but I think reform are going to win the next election.
It's a long time until the next election, so I'm cautious to make predictions, but Reform UK are getting the sort of results that a party that is going to win the next election could be expected to make.
No. Two different types of elections. Electing into Downing Street, control economy, health, education, is a completely different question asked of voters.
Completely different kind of campaigns too, voters will want answers from Reform in General Election campaign, from questions they are not bothered to ask here.
Comments
Really hard to say which was worse.
Btw I think the point about elevating lower ranked managers is borne out by WW1 where the successes from 1917 onwards can be attributed in part at least to the emergence of younger junior officers with hands on experience and a can do attitude quietly displacing the discredited Generals and their grandiose plans.
Shouldn't overgeneralise though. (Sorry, no pun intended.)
In summary, what the Tories need to rediscover is capitalism. They binned it off firstly in favour of bankism and then oligarchism. Money needs to circulate. Jobs need to pay more than bills, so that people have cash to spend on stuff which creates jobs which drives growth and so on.
Too much cash has been taken away by a small number of individuals and companies, with the Tories promoting their needs. Which is why "fuck business" was so damaging - it wasn't just a whoops moment, it was active policy.
Shame to see Karen Darby lose. She’s been really good.
A big reduction in executive pay rates can't really come from customers except in extremes like Tesla, but could from shareholders if they were given back more control.
Reform sneak 2nd place ! Be pleased with a Rushcliffe pickup.
You can't sell off millions of council houses on the cheap more than once.
You can't privatise the profitable bits of the public sector more than once.
You can't steal Scotland's oil revenues more than once.
I'm all for elevating lower ranked managers and think many top executive jobs are overpaid. In my experience, the latter is at least as much a problem in the private sector. Private sector efficiency is a myth! Consider, for example, what happened when water was privatised.
Though tbf there was an element of that.
Tories over 160 losses
Labour 51 losses.
Lib Dems 25 gains
Only about a third the way through and early results in places that favour Reform
Still pretty grim for the Tories and Labour though
34 Reform
5 Lib Dem
4 Tory
3 Labour
24 left to declare
All candidates 2nd through 7th within a couple of hundred votes.
I think RefUK are within spitting distance of majority control.
2019 might be the closest, when the Tories lost over 1300 seats and 44 councils, and yet Labour still went backwards (from a lowish base). But even then, that was still only a loss of a little over a quarter of the Tory defences, with Labour's fall only marginal (though they did lose six councils).
In constituencies in inner Manchester, Liverpool and some other urban areas as well as inner London you might find Labour and the Greens as the top 2
Our major competitor in that market, and the dominant global player, is scaring away the best global students, with the biggest budget.
What is the UK response? Cut back on overseas students.
What is the Tory party response? We need to be even more aggressive on cutting back overseas students.
To add to the insanity, it was only back in 2019 when the Conservatives were wanting these overseas students to improve our balance of payments deficits.
There are things we can do to pay our way in the world, we have many advantages, it is a great place to live, but keep making rubbish decisions and not sticking with the good ones.
Edit: They've got the wards to the NE of the city to go yet, maybe they'll get a couple there.
You can only stay here until you are 35. As an aside, 35 is used by the DWP as a cut off date for young people on benefits who are expected to house share. After that you can get your own one bed (if you can find one for the money you get)
Only c will be deliverable by a County Council obviously.
https://electionresults.nottinghamshire.gov.uk/2025
Currently
Reform 25
Tories 13
Independents 3
Labour 1
24 seats still to be declared
Interesting geographical distribution of wins.
There are still 7 or 8 to announce - roughly half ex-Lab indies, and half indy indies.
Quite impressive levels of multiple point-missing.
Probably the same cohort that loved Boris - again because the Boris they built up in their mind was actually nothing like the real one...
I do think they will succeed in stopping the boats, as promised, here in Winchcombe, about a hundred miles from the sea.
Results in Gloucestershire so far confirming the Yellow Peril advances seen at the GE.
Yet again he’s taken a party from nowhere and transformed British politics. He’s just won a Labour seat which has been Labour for 30,000 years. He is smashing Labour and Cons in the locals. He has won a mayoralty, and will run several councils
We know he’s charismatic and cunning, this once again shows that’s he’s also a political genius at organisation and campaigning. He is in a different higher league - like it or not - to anyone at the top of the other parties
Time to put to bed the low-IQ PB drivel that Farage is just some “lucky lightweight”, once and for all
Firstly, it is a hell of a lot less than they think it is - a rounding error in the transport budget. Secondly, it's national money, hypothecated.
Hear the voters. They don't expect a metro mayor or a councillor to stop the boats. But they want to have representatives who listen to their concerns and their issues and actually seem to get it.
Patel was Home Secretary. And opened the border wide open...
And RefUK only need 9 from 21 to reach the 34 majority.
Labour had to abandon socialism, not once, but twice, to get elected. That was far more fundamental to them than your party returning to common sense on Europe.
What frustrated me most about the previous government is that they used to spend so much time bitching about things and no time using the majority to force the agenda through, face down the civil service, lords, the supreme court etc... it was always an exercise of taking the path of least resistance because they weren't willing to do the hard work.
To the new government's credit they do seem to understand that parliament is sovereign and primary legislation overrides all. I'm pretty sure under the Tories that awful two tier sentencing guideline would have wormed it's way through with ministers saying "there's nothing we can do" etc... while sitting on a 60 seat majority.
They just need to do more of it and be much more radical. For a start they need to push up the barrier for immigration to £60k in London and the SE and £50k outside of London and halt all asylum seekers and start automatically reporting them. The country is full and we need to look after our own before anyone else, our public services are crumbling and we're borrowing £150bn per year to keep the lights on, we can no longer afford to spend £10bn per year on an asylum programme, it needs to be cut and we need to exit whatever treaties necessary to commence deportations to designated safe countries.
Also, there is no old Cameron CCHQ establishment. They've all gone. Rishi was a Brexiter so qed.
RefUK 7
LD 1
What exactly do they want to reform and how is being elected to Bridgford (North) ward a step in that direction.
We're not quite Rebel Without a Cause here.
RefUK have taken one of the Calverton seats - that's on the border between the Ref and Con sections of the new line, and the posh green / mining parts.
I think that means RefUK majority.
We have 3m citizens sitting on some kind of out of work benefit, we don't need migrant labour. We need to get the lazy shirkers to do the jobs or face benefit sanctions. The Blair government and the coalition were absolutely bang on when they did this. Theresa May's "compassionate conservativism" opened the door for the terminally lazy to live a life of luxury at the taxpayer's expense, it's time to close it again.
There were a couple of reports recently about that kind of thing which turned out to be spurious, e'g.,:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cjwv5dg2n1po
Shouldn't think many people were gullible enough to be fooled though.
By contrast Labour haven't won a clear majority for socialism since 1945 or at a push 1966 and even then had Blair completely abandoned lip service to socialism they would have lost their core vote to another leftwing party
You can loathe it or deride it, but it was detailed, costed and clear
You are appear to be arguing that prices are set by the costs, with the competition forcing prices down to just above those costs. Thus your argument is that if you removed a chunk of those cost by curbing executive pay, prices would therefore drop.
I'm arguing that a lot of the time goods are really priced based "what the market will bear" and that companies will usually charge what they can get away with. Subtract from the price their actual costs to make the stuff, what's left is the profits, which then get divided between executive excess and returns to shareholders. If you curbed executive pay, the shareholders would just vote themselves bigger dividends.
(I've solved this problem for my small business in two ways - one by being the sole shareholder and sole executive, which tends to keep our interests aligned, and two by generally failing to make much of a distributable profit anyway - virtually everything gets reinvested in business growth)
Completely different kind of campaigns too, voters will want answers from Reform in General Election campaign, from questions they are not bothered to ask here.