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Robert Jenrick’s secret weapon: being a lawyer as the country loves lawyers – politicalbetting.com
Robert Jenrick’s secret weapon: being a lawyer as the country loves lawyers – politicalbetting.com
I don’t think it is any coincidence that from 1945 onwards the three best leaders of the opposition were lawyers, whilst the fourth, The Lord Cameron of Chipping Norton is now practically a lawyer following the news that he is in talks with law firm DLA Piper to go work for them.
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Good morning, everybody.
Oh dear, oh dear.
Go and work for them.
Jenrick could have been an estate agent.
Or a career SPAD.
That's how an incompetent mediocrity with no charisma like Starmer can beat a once in a lifetime political genius like Blair.
https://x.com/mattlieb/status/1938815785067258229?s=61&t=LYVEHh2mqFy1oUJAdCfe-Q
Mohammed, Jesus, Buddha and Conficius ofcourse also all trained as lawyers, as we all know. Legal practice is connected to spiritual enlightenment.
Blair won more because he was a breath of fresh air, as well as the Tories being fairly useless.
Effectively it's the gap between the perception of both parties that determines the outcome.
FPTP leverages this - you don't have to have a particularly large gap to get a very disproportionate result.
Somewhere, once.
Next attempt redirects to www1 so presumably this time hits correct certificate.
I'm a fan of Sikh teachings.
This is actually true
Pro-Palestinian activists reportedly destroy military equipment intended for Ukraine
https://kyivindependent.com/pro-palestinian-activists-destroy-ukrainian-aid-worth-1-million-confusing-it-with-israeli-06-2025/
But makes a lot more sense in the light of this.
https://x.com/HarcourtYthan/status/1938511739059888527
..Palestine action runs on donations, its largest donor and supporter, the man that pays their legal fees and organises actions, is a man called James "fergie" Chambers, wealthy son of the American Cox family.
Chambers is a big fan of Putin's invasion.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fergie_Chambers
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c3w4xl8gyyqo
https://x.com/dpjhodges/status/1938873634850001395?s=46&t=CW4pL-mMpTqsJXCdjW0Z6Q
Often the method was funding - a Russian agent would join the organisation as a fund raiser. And do so well that he would end up as the chief finance guy - and build a power base controlling the organisation.
This is why, around 1990, large numbers of such orgs collapsed.
The KGB objective was to promote opposition, and where they could, turn such organisations to violence. So in the event of war, sabotage and anti-war protests….
But none of this can make up for the inevitability that at least some of our number are just shits. Jenrick being a case in point.
Time and again, insiders speak of initiatives and changes that vanish into the maw of committees, never to be seen again.
Time and again, insiders speak of not having regular provision of equipment, trading and staff - of frontline staff doing managerial work. Because there are too few real managers.
If the hundreds of quangos (above) are abolished, the problem will be the tendency for the processes and functions they represent being aggregated into other parts of the NHS.
A recurring joke in Yes Minister is that such “cuts” end up with higher headcounts in the end.
Hence you get lawyers in management who prevent non-lawyers being promoted - because “specialists might get bogged down in the details”
Many years ago, when I worked in an oil company, I used to attend lots of meeting and conferences. I was curious about the workings of the company.
At one meeting, someone gave a proud presentation of how he had cut costs on a new oil field. I noticed that he had substituted regular steel for the well heads, rather than a special steel (pretty much stainless).
I put my hand up, and being stupid, asked.
Yup - he hadn’t checked. The reason for the original special spec was that the field had lots of water in the oil, and the oil came out under great pressure and very hot. Regular steel gets eaten by that at a crazy rate. Mm per hour can happen.
If that had gone ahead, multiple blowouts. Probably deaths.
My career survived (my manger protected me quite well, in those days). What was interesting was the reaction of all those around the clown - “he couldn’t be expected to know technical stuff - that’s not his job”.
Everyone in that meeting (apart from me) was a lawyer or accountant.
It may be over for Starmer (though I am not sure) but it certainly is not all over for Labour.
Tankies love to tank.
Neither the Conservatives (due to their myriad failures from 2010-24 which were either self-indulgence (the EU) or inertia (social care reform) or Reform, whose biggest asset and problem is Farage, offer anything remotely coherent in terms of a policy response on immigration, the economy, social care or a host of other issues.
Governing ain't easy and it was never going to be easy whoever won last July. The party was over, the bill was on the table and we had to pay up. I do think closing off options to raise income tax and VAT was a mistake by Starmer and Reeves but the shadow of 1992 is long.
If you want Labour to succeed, your best friends are time and patience. The next election will, as they often are, be a war of statistics vs perceptions. Labour will wheel out all manner of statistics about how things have improved on their watch and the Opposition will wheel out their statistics and perceptions to try to prove they haven't.
MY biggest concern is the 40% or so who will probably not vote again - democracy is in trouble if the best we can manage is 60% turnout - I'm not after 90% but we should we looking at 75% turnout. Reform could win as loveless a landslide as Labour on an even lower share of the vote - it wouldn't be called "loveless" of course by the Express or the Mail but we know that's what it would be.
The problem of disengagement with politics and the political process is one of the biggest we face and it won't be solved by changes to electoral system (though they may help) but a thorough ground-up re-engagement with people and understanding what it is they want and expect from all levels of Government.
So, for example Starmer has had to give way on PIP and all that. SFAICS not one of his critics have taken the trouble to explain with clarity how the government should keep within their fiscal rules - which are expansive enough already - while expanding the welfare budget as the critics want. They don't care, and because they are back benchers don't need to care. They don't even get asked by the journalists how to square the fiscal circle. Some of them even pretend to believe in MMT.
Anywhere else in the real world the critics would have been required to fully account for their case, or resign, or be sacked, or shut up.
I do agree though that a 60%, or even less, turnout is a concern. I wonder if someone could investigate whether non-voters last time see themselves as more or less likely to vote next.
Lawyer gets paid well for the opinion.
When HMRC rules against the schemes and fines everyone taking part, there is no recourse against the lawyer.
There are stories of lawyers who have a 100% miss rate on such…
I think the difference is that arguments in court can be quite structured and has quite strict rules, which further enforces which arguments are made and how they are made. Politics, by contrast, has fewer rules and they're possibly a lot more contentious. I would assume your opposite number in court can't get up to address the judge and accuse you of covering up Jimmy Saville's abuse, for instance.
The truth is there are fewer Labour supporters under Starmer than there have been for years. This was so even at the time of the last election. The right splitting between Tory, Reform and Stay at Home and a quirk of our Electoral system just gave Labour spinners the opportunity to pretend Sir Keir was really popular.
Think I’ve said this before, but it’s like a team winning the Premier League on 57 points by winning every home game 1-0, losing every away game 5-0 while every other match in the season was a draw. They’d win the league by 18 points, and that could be spun as some kind of impressive feat if you ignored the fact they’d lost half their matches, had a negative goal difference and won the league with the lowest points total of any champions in history.
I've said similar things very often (about reviews and hospital funding being linked to performance). These (on the face of it) are serious and positive changes and Labour should be commended.
I do agree there's a huge volatility out there which there wasn't 30-40 years ago and that in itself has triggered the re-alignment we've seen in recent times. Other countries have had elections which have shattered the status quo but a new equilibrium has established over time and the same will happen here I suspect.
Even if Labour had won nearer 40% last year and won an even bigger landslide, I doubt it would have made any difference. Someone argued the other day landslides make for weak governments - not sure that's true - but the opportunity to do the unpopular and difficult things unencumbered by Parliamentary issues, often produces unpopularity - Conservative Governments were historically hugely unpopular mid term but some were able to recover because people realised what they did was, if not right, then necessary.
https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/keir-starmer-and-the-evil-of-banality/
I had hoped somebody would have done some research on 2024 non-voters to find out a) why they didn't vote and b) how they would have voted if forced. I suspect there were both Labour and Conservative supporters who abstained last year. The Conservatives might turn out next time but with a third of the 2024 Tory vote having gone to Reform, they'll need to to keep the Conservative vote share above 20%.
Politics is about deciding how much to take off people and give to others. That's a completely different world.
A linear one.
Most of the world around us (including us) is non-linear.
Which is why Reality disrespects The Law so often.
Starmer standing in front of a lecturn at Wales Labour conference in Llandudno telling us all in Wales how wonderful labour in Wales are then attacking Farage, Plaid and the conservatives
Enough Starmer, we have suffered a Welsh government for decades and Wales will speak next May and send Wales Labour packing
Two things can be true at once. One is that Starmer is not a Great PM. The reason that Starmer Fans never popped up to explain his poor polling is that there aren't (m)any.
The other is that the options proffered by other parties are obviously, visibly even worse. See the head-to-head polling on preferred PM; SKS wins each one fairly comfortably, despite everything. But "none of the above/someone else" generally does even better.
"Vote Starmer. He'll have to do, because the others are even worse." Not an inspiring slogan, but it's won once and may well win again. All those who would like something else have to do is find something inspiring and credible to put up against him as an alternative. It's that simple, but it also seems to be that impossible.
Surely, the actual Palestinians don’t want it taken away without payment?
C4’s Dispatches about Farage by Fraser Nelson had a Survation poll where Farage topped the list as preferred PM
No one scored highly. But Farage scored highest
It was only after my father was very ill for a number of years and using a number of different NHS and private hospitals that I started to get a much better feel what was staff working hard but a tricky case / actually took a long time, and when the staff were slacking it off / being obstructive.
It is a bit like the uni satisfaction scores. Kids on the whole aren't experiencing a wide range of different universities, so have no actual idea what is good teaching, good facilities, etc.
I don’t really care. The most annoying thing is that I got up at 5am for this fecking flight and now I won’t fly until 3pm
AAAAAAARGH
Despite all our many many problems the Brits remain notably polite and quietly kind. Perhaps more than any other nation bar the Japanese - but their politeness is pathological and tinged with suicidality
When I was younger and Mrs U was starting out working out in the US, I was regularly going out there and was I forever volunteering to be bumped and taking the freebies. I am sure there was plenty of complaints about the scruffy student yobbo in business class.
Chemist turned lawyer Thatcher is only fourth on general election seats gained despite her three
wins. The last lawyer to lead the Conservatives, Howard, lost in 2005. Jenrick was a historian but did a law conversion course before becoming a solicitor and Reform leader Farage was a stockbroker
Reform and Farage do have the biggest single slice of the electoral pie right now. But they are the second choice of very few. See the polling by YouGov;
Labour may be in a lacklustre second place in the voting intention polls, and suffering from low approval ratings, but when the public are offered the choice of Keir Starmer or Nigel Farage as prime minister, the incumbent holds a commanding lead over the challenger by 44% to 29%.
https://yougov.co.uk/politics/articles/52251-who-would-be-the-best-prime-minister-may-2025
Without a decent wedge of "I don't like X, but I want to stop Y" votes, Reform are currently on "not enough". FPTP has always been a mixture of positive and negative votes, and having five parties turns that effect up to 11.
Luckily I am on 0.5mg Xanax and 200mg Slow Release Tramadol so I smiled benignly at the caprices of life, with only a tiny hint of disappointment in their performance. They were so gratified by my stoical understanding they then went into compensation overdrive
Sean Thomas, 28 August 2024. Ouch.
Other DPPs hit the headlines for the wrong reasons, Starmer avoided that so was probably better then average.
* or ability to charge rip-off fees in the commercial sector
Moreover the Tories are inevitably going to replace Badenoch. If they have the sense to install Jenrick - energetic, clever, ruthless, tiny, good at social media - he could also prosper against the lifeless pathetic Sir Keir Traitor
(The same is true if you take the money away. It's one of the reasons for All This Mess.)
https://www.shropshirelive.com/news/2025/05/22/shrewsbury-mp-urges-prime-minister-to-back-direct-rail-link-to-london/
The producer cut to Heidi Alexander and she didn't look all that pleased. Well, the DfT have written another letter to the ORR:
https://www.orr.gov.uk/sites/default/files/2025-06/2025-06-20-Richard-Goodman-letter-to-ORR_Redacted.pdf
How much wriggle-room the ORR has in determining what is reasonably abstractive, I don't know. But, did no one in the Labour Party have any understanding about the Railways Act, 1993 before they came to power? It's basic stuff. If you don't like the law, change it.
They tried to find a staff member on the flight to remove so I could get on. No dice
I might have a dozen Helford natives on the half shell and a bottle of Bâtard-Montrachet Grand Cru Domaine Leflaive 2014 here in T2, while I’m waiting, and charge it to the airline as “necessary sustenance”
If you choose cleverly or stride or whatever you are accepting terminal decline and irrelevance
They do two things kind of OK and then the third time the paper jams and the ink cartridge explodes and weird plastic flaps fall off and then the motor starts smouldering, potentially burning the house down, and all you wanted to do was print a 2 page pdf