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.
I wonder if the Boriswave will kill off the Tories forever
I preferred how it was - Tory areas untouchable, Labour area’s untouchable, Libs running gay old campaigns in the middle. All this frightens me. Greens and Ref are wrong for politics, not living in the real world. I watched a green PPB during the campaign that didn’t mention environmental issues and solutions once.
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
None of which negates one iota of the truth in my earlier post.
Come back when your party has finally reached the end of the change curve.
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.
Calverton is in threesome country.
I think RefUK in Notts will end up with at least 36-37 seats - majority of 5 or so at that level.
Based on 26 they have now, plus 7 from 8 in Mansfield, 2 from 4 in Arnold, Newstead (formerly mining), and one more from the Broxtowe end. Anything else is a bonus.
(Update: Sherwood is a bonus. Call it 40+ probably - firm control.)
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.
If you spend money on speed bumps and 20mph speed limits you won't get potholes.
My street has all three. The potholes are actually caused by the speedbumps, they appear next to the speedbumps in the touchdown zones where people come crashing down off them.
The council spent a fortune putting it all it, it's had zero decernable effect on the speed people drive down the street, but now it's a mess of potholes every spring, which the council make a really bodgy job of patching.
People wanting to remove people's public sector pensions - could we not just tax them? A fatcat tax would be a lot less controversial, though it would be more complex.
We could tax pensions more. It would seem iniquitous to tax higher pensions of people who worked in the public sector and not higher pensions of people who worked in the private sector.
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.
Calverton is in threesome country.
I think you are right. looking at that Map on the County Council website it looks to me that most of the seats still to declare are on the Reform side of 'the line'.
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)
What I’ve said bears minimal relation to your summary of what you think I’m saying.
I’m saying there are inefficiencies in the private sector and those inefficiencies are sometimes passed on to consumers in higher prices or worse services.
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.
You already can face sanctions and loss of benefits if on UC or JSA and not making enough job applications.
It is people on disabillity benefit who are expanding most and Labour have announced plans to help such claimants into work and a new eligibility requirement for PIP
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
None of which negates one iota of the truth in my earlier post.
Come back when your party has finally reached the end of the change curve.
Of course it does, if the Tories went full rejoin EU now or even full rejoin customs union and EEA and free movement again they would lose over half their remaining voters to Reform ie most of the Leave voting ones and still not gain Remainers from the LDs.
Those still voting Labour who want to rejoin would also still not touch the Tories with a bargepole but go Green or LD if they moved from the reds
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
None of which negates one iota of the truth in my earlier post.
Come back when your party has finally reached the end of the change curve.
You aren’t the type of voter that right wing parties would be interested in.
It's complicated, but if I had to identify one single thing behind the Reform surge it would be asylum seekers in hotels. There's enough outrage about this to add quite a few percent to the Reform vote everywhere as, rightly or wrongly (probably the latter), people think they could solve it.
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.
Why have the main parties behaved so stupidly over recent years? I don't understand it.
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?
When I was doing my journalism degree in 1997 I wrote a number of stories on my course. One that stuck with me was the terrible nature of so many of the city schools - literally falling down. One with a steel endoskeleton which had been installed in classrooms because the roof was falling down.
And remember the NHS? Similarly crumbling hospitals, endless waits for treatment.
Governments delivering a golden legacy don't get demolished by landslides.
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.
I wonder if the Boriswave will kill off the Tories forever
Oh well, what a pity, never mind
It was ironically Rishi who tightened visa wage requirements and ended the ability of dependents to be brought over which cut the Boriswave
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)
What I’ve said bears minimal relation to your summary of what you think I’m saying.
I’m saying there are inefficiencies in the private sector and those inefficiencies are sometimes passed on to consumers in higher prices or worse services.
And I'm saying it's much more likely that if we reduced or abolished those inefficiencies that the resultant saving would accrue to shareholders than consumers. Because in practice competition isn't all that efficient.
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
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?
When I was doing my journalism degree in 1997 I wrote a number of stories on my course. One that stuck with me was the terrible nature of so many of the city schools - literally falling down. One with a steel endoskeleton which had been installed in classrooms because the roof was falling down.
And remember the NHS? Similarly crumbling hospitals, endless waits for treatment.
Governments delivering a golden legacy don't get demolished by landslides.
I preferred how it was - Tory areas untouchable, Labour area’s untouchable, Libs running gay old campaigns in the middle. All this frightens me. Greens and Ref are wrong for politics, not living in the real world. I watched a green PPB during the campaign that didn’t mention environmental issues and solutions once.
People are desperate, Moonie. The old politics hasn't worked for them and the new one offers no hope or impractical solutions.
You can't blame them for voting for the None Of The Above Party, in whichever guise it may appear.
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?
When I was doing my journalism degree in 1997 I wrote a number of stories on my course. One that stuck with me was the terrible nature of so many of the city schools - literally falling down. One with a steel endoskeleton which had been installed in classrooms because the roof was falling down.
And remember the NHS? Similarly crumbling hospitals, endless waits for treatment.
Governments delivering a golden legacy don't get demolished by landslides.
Isn't an endoskeleton just a skeleton?
Technically, an exoskeleton is also just a skeleton.
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
What on earth do the people who are voting Reform think they are going to get.
Reform?
OK, but then you could ask 50 REF voters what kind of reform they want and get 50 different answers?
Brexit was the same. Those asked will blithely evade the question. As Leon just did.
And it is not just voters who have very different visions but candidates as well. Prepare for much infighting, backstabbing and policy changes if they reach government. Unsurprisingly that is very bad for government.
On Runcorn, disappointed though Labour will be, they will take some solace in the knowledge that there would have to be a very unusual number of by-elections over the next four years to put a serious dent in their 165 majority.
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.
Why have the main parties behaved so stupidly over recent years? I don't understand it.
Short termism and the desperate desire to stay in power.
It's complicated, but if I had to identify one single thing behind the Reform surge it would be asylum seekers in hotels. There's enough outrage about this to add quite a few percent to the Reform vote everywhere as, rightly or wrongly (probably the latter), people think they could solve it.
This ties in with the boats. Now, this election notwithstanding, where I think those who don't like foreigners are making their position known, the UK has consistently shown that it is happy to have immigrants, and plenty of them. What they don't like is being out of control, or freeloaders.
The boats represent a tangible example of the government not being able to control its own borders, and hence why successive governments are so keen to stop them, despite the tiny numbers arriving in this way.
Likewise, "asylum hotels" are seen as freeloading and jumping the queue. And every freeborn Englishman detests queue jumpers.
I preferred how it was - Tory areas untouchable, Labour area’s untouchable, Libs running gay old campaigns in the middle. All this frightens me. Greens and Ref are wrong for politics, not living in the real world. I watched a green PPB during the campaign that didn’t mention environmental issues and solutions once.
People are desperate, Moonie. The old politics hasn't worked for them and the new one offers no hope or impractical solutions.
You can't blame them for voting for the None Of The Above Party, in whichever guise it may appear.
Yes I can.
Voting simply on basis of NOTA not caring what you get is proper stupid and irresponsible. No different than voting in Trump, voters should have been smarter and more responsible.
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?
When I was doing my journalism degree in 1997 I wrote a number of stories on my course. One that stuck with me was the terrible nature of so many of the city schools - literally falling down. One with a steel endoskeleton which had been installed in classrooms because the roof was falling down.
And remember the NHS? Similarly crumbling hospitals, endless waits for treatment.
Governments delivering a golden legacy don't get demolished by landslides.
In 1997, the finances were sound, but the estate was in a mess. Money needed to be spent, but money was easily available.
In 2010, the finances were in a mess, but the estate was pretty sound. Cuts needed to be made, but temporary cuts were possible.
The genius of 2019-24 was to leave both finances and the estate in a mess.
On Runcorn, disappointed though Labour will be, they will take some solace in the knowledge that there would have to be a very unusual number of by-elections over the next four years to put a serious dent in their 165 majority.
If Labour do eventually replace a poorly performing Starmer then, depending on who it is, there may be a number of defections and/or exits to industry/third sector.
I remember seeing reportage on a previous Lancashire CC election. People in rural places bitterly upset by the scrapping of bus subsidies by the Tory council but saying they would vote Tory because everything was Labour's fault as the opposition.
This time? I assume the fukers want to stop the boats and start the buses?
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.
Why have the main parties behaved so stupidly over recent years? I don't understand it.
Party membership elections. Social media. Demographics making solutions painful, costly and not deliverable within an electoral cycle.
On Runcorn, disappointed though Labour will be, they will take some solace in the knowledge that there would have to be a very unusual number of by-elections over the next four years to put a serious dent in their 165 majority.
17.4% swing from Labour to Reform. OK so they hold on a few more years. And then all get swept away...
Signs in Gloucestershire that the LDs are piling up votes wastefully, winning big in some places but being edged out in others. The big news however is.....
'Papa John's shuts 13 restaurants temporarily - including two in Gloucestershire'.
Signs in Gloucestershire that the LDs are piling up votes wastefully, winning big in some places but being edged out in others. The big news however is.....
'Papa John's shuts 13 restaurants temporarily - including two in Gloucestershire'.
Civilisation is surely at an end.
Nice places decided to count later. We're going to win an awful lot of seats and some big councils, but everyone will focus on the fukers.
The government had appealed against a high court ruling that the previous Tory home secretary, Suella Braverman, did not have the power to redefine “serious disruption” as “more than minor” in the law concerning when police could impose limits on protests.
It was a change in law that seriously limited the kinds of actions protesters could take, and which campaigners said had given police almost unlimited discretionary power over which protests to allow and which to halt...
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?
When I was doing my journalism degree in 1997 I wrote a number of stories on my course. One that stuck with me was the terrible nature of so many of the city schools - literally falling down. One with a steel endoskeleton which had been installed in classrooms because the roof was falling down.
And remember the NHS? Similarly crumbling hospitals, endless waits for treatment.
Governments delivering a golden legacy don't get demolished by landslides.
Isn't an endoskeleton just a skeleton?
Um...? Yes, but the existence of "exoskeleton" demanded the existence of "endoskeleton".
It's complicated, but if I had to identify one single thing behind the Reform surge it would be asylum seekers in hotels. There's enough outrage about this to add quite a few percent to the Reform vote everywhere as, rightly or wrongly (probably the latter), people think they could solve it.
This ties in with the boats. Now, this election notwithstanding, where I think those who don't like foreigners are making their position known, the UK has consistently shown that it is happy to have immigrants, and plenty of them. What they don't like is being out of control, or freeloaders.
The boats represent a tangible example of the government not being able to control its own borders, and hence why successive governments are so keen to stop them, despite the tiny numbers arriving in this way.
Likewise, "asylum hotels" are seen as freeloading and jumping the queue. And every freeborn Englishman detests queue jumpers.
It's not "tiny numbers". It's tens of thousands a year, just by boat, and climbing daily. May reach 100,000
Remember when that was the Tory target for LEGAL migration. "Tens of thousands". Now that many simply rock up on our beaches, and are escorted to the Dorchester, where we have to pay for them to live high on the hog, for years. And a fair few of them turn out to be actively hostile to us, rapists, thieves, murderers, Islamists
AND the sums involved are big - £4bn this year? - £5bn next? And also rising weekly
And the government is clueless as to how they might stop it, and scrapped the only idea anyone had for stopping it - however shonky - Rwanda
People may joke about this (and taking a chainsaw to councils already stretched budgets is mad) but I don't think most understand how much wfh has damaged public sector productivity.
When I went to Birmingham City Council, even one of the receptionists worked from home - how?!
It's complicated, but if I had to identify one single thing behind the Reform surge it would be asylum seekers in hotels. There's enough outrage about this to add quite a few percent to the Reform vote everywhere as, rightly or wrongly (probably the latter), people think they could solve it.
This ties in with the boats. Now, this election notwithstanding, where I think those who don't like foreigners are making their position known, the UK has consistently shown that it is happy to have immigrants, and plenty of them. What they don't like is being out of control, or freeloaders.
The boats represent a tangible example of the government not being able to control its own borders, and hence why successive governments are so keen to stop them, despite the tiny numbers arriving in this way.
Likewise, "asylum hotels" are seen as freeloading and jumping the queue. And every freeborn Englishman detests queue jumpers.
It's not "tiny numbers". It's tens of thousands a year, just by boat, and climbing daily. May reach 100,000
Remember when that was the Tory target for LEGAL migration. "Tens of thousands". Now that many simply rock up on our beaches, and are escorted to the Dorchester, where we have to pay for them to live high on the hog, for years. And a fair few of them turn out to be actively hostile to us, rapists, thieves, murderers, Islamists
AND the sums involved are big - £4bn this year? - £5bn next? And also rising weekly
And the government is clueless as to how they might stop it, and scrapped the only idea anyone had for stopping it - however shonky - Rwanda
It is unsurprising that this is *quite unpopular*
Tiny numbers, as you yourself have noted vs overall immigration numbers.
And the point about the sums involved (again, although tiny) support my point about Brits not liking freeloaders.
It's complicated, but if I had to identify one single thing behind the Reform surge it would be asylum seekers in hotels. There's enough outrage about this to add quite a few percent to the Reform vote everywhere as, rightly or wrongly (probably the latter), people think they could solve it.
This ties in with the boats. Now, this election notwithstanding, where I think those who don't like foreigners are making their position known, the UK has consistently shown that it is happy to have immigrants, and plenty of them. What they don't like is being out of control, or freeloaders.
The boats represent a tangible example of the government not being able to control its own borders, and hence why successive governments are so keen to stop them, despite the tiny numbers arriving in this way.
Likewise, "asylum hotels" are seen as freeloading and jumping the queue. And every freeborn Englishman detests queue jumpers.
The people in hotels would love to have jobs. That’s what they’re hoping for, to get asylum and to be allowed to get a job. The rules don’t let them have jobs. The system forces them not to do anything and the Tories then produced these very long proceeding times.
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
You mean he's an English Alex Salmond?
Yes, Salmond is the only persona in recent British politics with the skill, rizz, smarts and guile of Farage. I might once have put Boris in that category, too, but his dismal personal performance as PM rules him out
Most Ref voters want left-wing economic policies, of the sort Callaghan was in favour of in the late 70s.
That's probably the dictionary definition of 'far right' these days...
In the USA, that's some way beyond far left !
Okay then, proper serious question. All the other G7 countries can supply us with this oh so important ”virgin steel” we can only supply ourselves by Nationalising. How do the other G7 countries manage it without nationalisation?
It's complicated, but if I had to identify one single thing behind the Reform surge it would be asylum seekers in hotels. There's enough outrage about this to add quite a few percent to the Reform vote everywhere as, rightly or wrongly (probably the latter), people think they could solve it.
Also the constant judgements allowing criminals to stay in the country for trivial reasons.
Signs in Gloucestershire that the LDs are piling up votes wastefully, winning big in some places but being edged out in others. The big news however is.....
'Papa John's shuts 13 restaurants temporarily - including two in Gloucestershire'.
Civilisation is surely at an end.
Was never a fan of Papa Johns TBH...
Only 5 Tory wards so far, versus 19 Lib Dem, 7 Green, 1 Labour and 9 RefUK
A lot of (deserved) focus on how terrible the Tories have done, but can we also just focus on the fact that Labour have plummeted from what was already a pretty disastrous result in 2021. These are never great elections for them, but 30 odd seats at this stage of proceedings is pretty embarrassing.
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.
On this trajectory, at some point a more than minimal number of Tory MPs will defect together to Reform, as the time will come when they give up any thought of holding their seat otherwise. If this happens it could easily become a compounding and rolling process. That would be a key moment in the transition towards Reform being a slightly credible opposition; I can't see them being in government for a while yet though.
It's complicated, but if I had to identify one single thing behind the Reform surge it would be asylum seekers in hotels. There's enough outrage about this to add quite a few percent to the Reform vote everywhere as, rightly or wrongly (probably the latter), people think they could solve it.
This ties in with the boats. Now, this election notwithstanding, where I think those who don't like foreigners are making their position known, the UK has consistently shown that it is happy to have immigrants, and plenty of them. What they don't like is being out of control, or freeloaders.
The boats represent a tangible example of the government not being able to control its own borders, and hence why successive governments are so keen to stop them, despite the tiny numbers arriving in this way.
Likewise, "asylum hotels" are seen as freeloading and jumping the queue. And every freeborn Englishman detests queue jumpers.
The people in hotels would love to have jobs. That’s what they’re hoping for, to get asylum and to be allowed to get a job. The rules don’t let them have jobs. The system forces them not to do anything and the Tories then produced these very long proceeding times.
Do you not see how allowing asylum seekers to work would be abused? It would also undermine the visa system and is against the interests of local workers.
Does anyone have a handle on how competent Reform UK Councillors will be?
Our Local Government has been starved and pithed, so how much professional officialdom is there there to protect them from themselves?
Will it be more analogous to Trump I, or Trump 2 ?
I suspect they will be largely reliant on the experience of former Tory and Indie/Rezzie councillors who defected, often out of self-preservation.
A small number of individuals will need to do a lot of the heavy lifting, at least initially.
An ex-Tory acquaintance of mine who threw his lot in with Kent Reform is a bit of a wiz at canvassing/GOTV strategy - they are so reliant on him because he actually has the knowledge and the experience in areas where naivite and general cluelessness are prevalent.
People may joke about this (and taking a chainsaw to councils already stretched budgets is mad) but I don't think most understand how much wfh has damaged public sector productivity.
When I went to Birmingham City Council, even one of the receptionists worked from home - how?!
Presumably she was a telephonist. Easy to do from home
Does anyone have a handle on how competent Reform UK Councillors will be?
Our Local Government has been starved and pithed, so how much professional officialdom is there there to protect them from themselves?
Will it be more analogous to Trump I, or Trump 2 ?
I suspect they will be largely reliant on the experience of former Tory and Indie/Rezzie councillors who defected, often out of self-preservation.
A small number of individuals will need to do a lot of the heavy lifting, at least initially.
An ex-Tory acquaintance of mine who threw his lot in with Kent Reform is a bit of a wiz at canvassing/GOTV strategy - they are so reliant on him because he actually has the knowledge and the experience in areas where naivite and general cluelessness are prevalent.
I'd guess that the heavy lifters would end up as the obvious choices for the 2029 Westminster candidacies.
Signs in Gloucestershire that the LDs are piling up votes wastefully, winning big in some places but being edged out in others. The big news however is.....
'Papa John's shuts 13 restaurants temporarily - including two in Gloucestershire'.
Civilisation is surely at an end.
Nice places decided to count later. We're going to win an awful lot of seats and some big councils, but everyone will focus on the fukers.
To be fair, *I'm* focused on the fuckers as well.
Hampshire have only 2 by-elections but so far only one has declared - LDs retained the seat with 49%, Refuk second on 28%
Comments
Oh well, what a pity, never mind
20 left to declare
Another for the Fukkers.
Come back when your party has finally reached the end of the change curve.
Based on 26 they have now, plus 7 from 8 in Mansfield, 2 from 4 in Arnold, Newstead (formerly mining), and one more from the Broxtowe end. Anything else is a bonus.
(Update: Sherwood is a bonus. Call it 40+ probably - firm control.)
The council spent a fortune putting it all it, it's had zero decernable effect on the speed people drive down the street, but now it's a mess of potholes every spring, which the council make a really bodgy job of patching.
I’m saying there are inefficiencies in the private sector and those inefficiencies are sometimes passed on to consumers in higher prices or worse services.
It is people on disabillity benefit who are expanding most and Labour have announced plans to help such claimants into work and a new eligibility requirement for PIP
Those still voting Labour who want to rejoin would also still not touch the Tories with a bargepole but go Green or LD if they moved from the reds
And remember the NHS? Similarly crumbling hospitals, endless waits for treatment.
Governments delivering a golden legacy don't get demolished by landslides.
Those asked will blithely evade the question. As Leon just did.
Ref 36%
Con 19%
Lab 19%
Ind 11%
Grn 8%
You can't blame them for voting for the None Of The Above Party, in whichever guise it may appear.
Newstead has gone Tory, which was the other way to my suggestion above; Newstead Abbey has defeated Newstead Colliery Village.
RefUK - 27
Con - 17
Lab - 1
Ash Ind - 1
Broxtowe Ind (2 groups) - 1 & 1
18 to declare.
The boats represent a tangible example of the government not being able to control its own borders, and hence why successive governments are so keen to stop them, despite the tiny numbers arriving in this way.
Likewise, "asylum hotels" are seen as freeloading and jumping the queue. And every freeborn Englishman detests queue jumpers.
Voting simply on basis of NOTA not caring what you get is proper stupid and irresponsible. No different than voting in Trump, voters should have been smarter and more responsible.
In 2010, the finances were in a mess, but the estate was pretty sound. Cuts needed to be made, but temporary cuts were possible.
The genius of 2019-24 was to leave both finances and the estate in a mess.
This time? I assume the fukers want to stop the boats and start the buses?
Social media.
Demographics making solutions painful, costly and not deliverable within an electoral cycle.
'Papa John's shuts 13 restaurants temporarily - including two in Gloucestershire'.
Civilisation is surely at an end.
To be fair, *I'm* focused on the fuckers as well.
https://www.theguardian.com/law/2025/may/02/campaigners-claim-victory-as-judges-quash-braverman-move-against-protests
Civil rights campaigners have hailed a “huge victory for democracy” after the court of appeal upheld the quashing of a key anti-protest regulation they said was introduced unlawfully.
The government had appealed against a high court ruling that the previous Tory home secretary, Suella Braverman, did not have the power to redefine “serious disruption” as “more than minor” in the law concerning when police could impose limits on protests.
It was a change in law that seriously limited the kinds of actions protesters could take, and which campaigners said had given police almost unlimited discretionary power over which protests to allow and which to halt...
Remember when that was the Tory target for LEGAL migration. "Tens of thousands". Now that many simply rock up on our beaches, and are escorted to the Dorchester, where we have to pay for them to live high on the hog, for years. And a fair few of them turn out to be actively hostile to us, rapists, thieves, murderers, Islamists
AND the sums involved are big - £4bn this year? - £5bn next? And also rising weekly
And the government is clueless as to how they might stop it, and scrapped the only idea anyone had for stopping it - however shonky - Rwanda
It is unsurprising that this is *quite unpopular*
Our Local Government has been starved and pithed, so how much professional officialdom is there there to protect them from themselves?
Will it be more analogous to Trump I, or Trump 2 ?
- Tory/LD (for second/third place) and
- Labour/Green (for fifth/sixth(!))
People may joke about this (and taking a chainsaw to councils already stretched budgets is mad) but I don't think most understand how much wfh has damaged public sector productivity.
When I went to Birmingham City Council, even one of the receptionists worked from home - how?!
And the point about the sums involved (again, although tiny) support my point about Brits not liking freeloaders.
Reform 335, Conservatives 121, LDs 112, Independent 38, Labour 29, Greens 27
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/c39jedewxp8t
Only 5 Tory wards so far, versus 19 Lib Dem, 7 Green, 1 Labour and 9 RefUK
German parents arrested after discovery at home in Oviedo, Spain" (£)
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2025/05/01/children-rescued-from-four-year-covid-lockdown-horror-house/
Remember they are starting, essentially, from zero
It's like winning a 200m sprint where everyone else is already running but you have to crouch, wait, on your marks, Go
A small number of individuals will need to do a lot of the heavy lifting, at least initially.
An ex-Tory acquaintance of mine who threw his lot in with Kent Reform is a bit of a wiz at canvassing/GOTV strategy - they are so reliant on him because he actually has the knowledge and the experience in areas where naivite and general cluelessness are prevalent.
@Kent_cc
Dover North. Elected: PORTER Bridget Anne. Reform UK
https://democracy.kent.gov.uk/mgElectionAreaResults.aspx?XXR=0&ID=718&RPID=262881372 #kccelection"
https://x.com/Kent_cc/status/1918293751048421579
Con win. The margin is 5%. Polls had them with a 7-10% lead in that mayorality. They are underperforming their polls, even from a low base.
Details from BBC
- Conservative, Paul Bristow 60,243 28.4%
- Reform UK, Ryan Coogan 49,647 23.4%
- Labour, Anna Smith 42,671 20.1%
- Liberal Democrat, Lorna Dupré 41,611 19.6%
- Green, Bob Ensch, 18,255 8.6%
Source: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/election/2025/england/mayors/E47000008