On a human level, I have a huge amount of persona sympathy for Rachel Reeves.
But if you applied for a job - perhaps with a slightly juiced-up CV - which you got, but then found you weren't up to doing that job, should I have any personal sympathy if you have a meltdown?
I’m pretty sure she caused a few people meltdowns when adding VAT to private school fees and gave absolutely zero fks and no personal sympathy.
It's difficult to feel too much sympathy when you look back at how arrogant she was before the election:
Wow. All the seeds are there indeed. The arrogance, the refusal to debate, the absence of ideas, and - most of all - a kind of panic when she thinks her mediocrity and unsuitability for the job has been exposed
And it has now been exposed and she’s in tears
My diminished sympathy has vanished
Her predecessor was Anneliese Dodds so a low bar one might argue. Whatever you may think of Alastair Darling or Gordon Brown, they weren't afraid to come out swinging for their policies.
Labour just doesn't seem to have an "Iron Chancellor" type - it's one thing doing the prawn cocktail circuit before the election but quite another to sit in No.11 and take the hard decisions
Starmer and Reeves should have held fast on WFP and this, but they were frit and are now paying the price
Listening to labour mps, it seems they want to move to the left and would welcome Starmer and Reeves leaving office
The debate yesterday was a revelation with the left in full vocal opposition to the PIP proposals, and after today's astonishing PMQs they must be on manoeuvres and scent blood
And yea out of the desert there came a man and his name was Jezza.
Cant be too long until he's back in the fold.
His fans will be so disappointed, they've wanted him to form his own party for so long and he hasn't yet done it even after leaving Labour.
Hes 'in discussions' apparently and says a new party will be up and running by next years locals. Too slow. He needs to start it, get the likes of Sultana, Whittome etc on board, then hand over once its established cos hes too old now. If he cant see right now is optimum hes even more of a daft old goat than i thought
He could hire Bobby Vylan as party spokesman - going to be looking for a new career now anyway and the basic level political sloganeering and capturing the Glastonbury vote is aligned.
I think Bobby Vylan has had a major increase in streams since the weekend. For an edgy musician you just can't buy that sort of publicity, just ask Bill Grundy.
There is no money in stream revenue for regular artists these days. Festivals and big US Arena tours are where the money to make a proper living are.
What you need to do is be edgy but not be dropped by your record label / management. RATM managed to stay on Sony for instance. Winning all the way to the bank.
I think Bob Vylan will be laughing all the way to the bank. There's no such thing as bad publicity for such an act.
I have never been a fan of Rachel Reeves since the coalition days and this incident in particular.
Two Labour politicians have apologised to Vince Cable for attacking the business secretary for not voting for the introduction of the national minimum wage while he was away caring for his terminally ill wife in hospital.
Rachel Reeves and Chris Bryant, frontbench spokespeople for Labour on work and pensions, accused the business secretary last night in the House of Commons of missing the vote on the National Minimum Wage bill in 1998.
Tory MP Jackie Doyle-Price expressed outrage at the Labour MPs' "cheap and nasty" attack on Cable.
Reeves told MPs: "He was nowhere to be seen in the debates. He was nowhere to be seen on the voting record. On Second Reading and Third Reading, he failed to vote."
Cable initially dismissed her accusation that he and many other Lib Dems failed to vote for the National Minimum Wage, telling MPs: "She speaks with all the self-confidence of somebody who was not here at the time.”
Bryant joined in with Reeves with the heckle: "You were [there], you didn't vote!"
Cable finally explained with reluctance reluctantly that he had largely been away because he was caring for his late wife Olympia, who was terminally ill with breast cancer.
"I did not particularly wish to raise this, but I am being asked personally to explain why I did not vote. It had a lot to do with the fact that my late wife was terminally ill at the time and I was in the Royal Marsden hospital. That is why my voting record at the time was poor on that and other issues."
"As it happens, my party supported the national minimum wage; nobody opposed it. I became the party’s spokesman shortly after the vote and I made it absolutely clear throughout that Parliament that we supported the principle of the national minimum wage."
I've seen the way she speaks in parliament. This is not out of character. She's still basically a student politician my-lot-good-your-lot-bad.
Too many Labour people are like this.
And other parties too, to be fair. But yes. It's a product of believing themselves to be the goodies.
One of the ways that the political right has decayed in recent decades.
The old (patrician, somewhat snobbish) right line was "we think the left is well-meaning but mistaken, whereas they haven't got beyond 'the right are evil'". And yes, it is snobbish and more than a bit grating. But it was a reasonable emoillient for society. Whereas now, the worst people on the right are just as willing to shout EVIL across the barricades as the worst sort of lefty. And increasingly, the worst sort of right are the ones running the right.
Before the PB Tories think that today was a triumph for their side, it wasn't. As John Crace notes: "The thing with Kemi is that her manner is so off-putting. That weird sense of superiority when she has so little to be superior about. The arrogance and the condescension. The perpetual sneer. The feeling she is permanently doing the rest of us a favour. All of which makes it hard to like her. Your sympathies are naturally drawn to whoever her opponent happens to be."
As I said, I think Reeves is done. But the beneficiary will not be Badenoch or the Tories. The drift of the Labour last time voters to Reform will speed up - the Tories failed them, Labour failed them, vote for something else.
John Crace = the Guardian's Lord Haw Haw.
After the last couple of days the Conservatives are back. And you know it.
What’s also abundantly clear, the LibDems have absolutely blown their opportunity. They offer nothing in the House of Commons - no presence, no interesting or workable solutions. Just a parish council grouping.
On a human level, I have a huge amount of persona sympathy for Rachel Reeves.
But if you applied for a job - perhaps with a slightly juiced-up CV - which you got, but then found you weren't up to doing that job, should I have any personal sympathy if you have a meltdown?
I’m pretty sure she caused a few people meltdowns when adding VAT to private school fees and gave absolutely zero fks and no personal sympathy.
It's difficult to feel too much sympathy when you look back at how arrogant she was before the election:
Wow. All the seeds are there indeed. The arrogance, the refusal to debate, the absence of ideas, and - most of all - a kind of panic when she thinks her mediocrity and unsuitability for the job has been exposed
And it has now been exposed and she’s in tears
My diminished sympathy has vanished
That’s very unfair of you. Don’t you remember her sympathy for Sunak and Hunt when they were trying to deal with crazy inflation caused by Covid and Ukraine. When she would defend them on tv and say, “be fair Alistair Campbell, (for it was he) these guys are doing a very hard job under very difficult circumstances not of their design or making.”
I also remember her sympathy after the election where she thanked Sunak and Hunt for stabilising things and helping bring inflation down so her inheritance was not as terrible as it could have been rather than fucking the economy by talking it down and making up stories about £20b black holes for purely political purposes.
So please, be fair to Rachel and have some sympathy.
There were a ton of unfunded spending commitments. That's a fact. Whether it benefits from being termed "£22b black hole" and to what extent incoming Labour genuinely didn't know about it, I don't know.
On the messaging and politics they were going for their version of the Cons "clearing up Labour's mess" - which ran successfully for the best part of a decade. But it doesn't seem to have worked for even a fortnight.
currently Labour are racking up a £22bn black hole about every 6 weeks. And its getting worse
Sure they are, Alan. And the Tories eat babies. Etc.
We borrowed £17.7 billion in May maybe I should make that £22bn in 5 weeks
We've been borrowing forever. Lab borrowing, Con borrowing, it's all the same. To make out this government is especially reckless is partisan nonsense.
If you want Labour politicians to feather-bed the comfortable by impoverishing first some pensioners and then most of the disabled then I'd suspect you should not hold a prominent position in a Labour Govt.
So that's huge question marks over Starmer and Reeves. They picked a fight they could not win. EVen if they 'won'.
A head should roll. It would likely be Reeves but it absolutely should be Morgan McSweeney. He is clearly hopelessly out of his depth and you can tell that because he should have threatened to resign before allowing it to get near this far. That's being generous because I suspect this whole sh*t show originated with him.
Before the PB Tories think that today was a triumph for their side, it wasn't. As John Crace notes: "The thing with Kemi is that her manner is so off-putting. That weird sense of superiority when she has so little to be superior about. The arrogance and the condescension. The perpetual sneer. The feeling she is permanently doing the rest of us a favour. All of which makes it hard to like her. Your sympathies are naturally drawn to whoever her opponent happens to be."
As I said, I think Reeves is done. But the beneficiary will not be Badenoch or the Tories. The drift of the Labour last time voters to Reform will speed up - the Tories failed them, Labour failed them, vote for something else.
The days of Starmer/Reeves are numbered now. The only question now is when the regime change happens.
Commeth the hour, commeth the Angela, and Labour's fortunes revive....
On a human level, I have a huge amount of persona sympathy for Rachel Reeves.
But if you applied for a job - perhaps with a slightly juiced-up CV - which you got, but then found you weren't up to doing that job, should I have any personal sympathy if you have a meltdown?
I’m pretty sure she caused a few people meltdowns when adding VAT to private school fees and gave absolutely zero fks and no personal sympathy.
It's difficult to feel too much sympathy when you look back at how arrogant she was before the election:
Wow. All the seeds are there indeed. The arrogance, the refusal to debate, the absence of ideas, and - most of all - a kind of panic when she thinks her mediocrity and unsuitability for the job has been exposed
And it has now been exposed and she’s in tears
My diminished sympathy has vanished
Her predecessor was Anneliese Dodds so a low bar one might argue. Whatever you may think of Alastair Darling or Gordon Brown, they weren't afraid to come out swinging for their policies.
Labour just doesn't seem to have an "Iron Chancellor" type - it's one thing doing the prawn cocktail circuit before the election but quite another to sit in No.11 and take the hard decisions
Starmer and Reeves should have held fast on WFP and this, but they were frit and are now paying the price
Listening to labour mps, it seems they want to move to the left and would welcome Starmer and Reeves leaving office
The debate yesterday was a revelation with the left in full vocal opposition to the PIP proposals, and after today's astonishing PMQs they must be on manoeuvres and scent blood
And yea out of the desert there came a man and his name was Jezza.
Cant be too long until he's back in the fold.
His fans will be so disappointed, they've wanted him to form his own party for so long and he hasn't yet done it even after leaving Labour.
Hes 'in discussions' apparently and says a new party will be up and running by next years locals. Too slow. He needs to start it, get the likes of Sultana, Whittome etc on board, then hand over once its established cos hes too old now. If he cant see right now is optimum hes even more of a daft old goat than i thought
He could hire Bobby Vylan as party spokesman - going to be looking for a new career now anyway and the basic level political sloganeering and capturing the Glastonbury vote is aligned.
I think Bobby Vylan has had a major increase in streams since the weekend. For an edgy musician you just can't buy that sort of publicity, just ask Bill Grundy.
There is no money in stream revenue for regular artists these days. Festivals and big US Arena tours are where the money to make a proper living are.
What you need to do is be edgy but not be dropped by your record label / management. RATM managed to stay on Sony for instance. Winning all the way to the bank.
I think Bob Vylan will be laughing all the way to the bank. There's no such thing as bad publicity for such an act.
At least they can think of the future streaming revenue whilst they are recovering from nightmares about Mossad setting up a fatal “accident” for them.
1) The misogyny in British politics is appalling. They have attacked Reeves from day 1 as a woman - how dare she be appointed Chancellor! I have little doubt that politics at that level can be an emotional roller-coaster and some people are emotional beings.
I cried in a senior leadership meeting because the situation was that fraught. I can imagine me crying in a situation like that, or when Theresa May quit. As a bloke I get sympathy, but women get none. "too emotional" - how many times does that get added as a label to a colleague just because they are a woman?
That being said
2) Reeves is absolutely done. If she has something upsetting going on in her personal life then my sympathies - don't get her sat in the spotlight blubbing. A failing of the management team letting her sit there. If that's just cover then its my sexist patronising guff.
Problem is that she is Chancellor of the Exchequer and needs to be robust enough to face down critics and the markets and opposition idiots. Crying doesn't work. And she can't recover - even if she goes on in the role she will always be the chancellor reduced to tears as her boss fails to defend her position.
Are y'all betting on the next minister out market?
I have never been a fan of Rachel Reeves since the coalition days and this incident in particular.
Two Labour politicians have apologised to Vince Cable for attacking the business secretary for not voting for the introduction of the national minimum wage while he was away caring for his terminally ill wife in hospital.
Rachel Reeves and Chris Bryant, frontbench spokespeople for Labour on work and pensions, accused the business secretary last night in the House of Commons of missing the vote on the National Minimum Wage bill in 1998.
Tory MP Jackie Doyle-Price expressed outrage at the Labour MPs' "cheap and nasty" attack on Cable.
Reeves told MPs: "He was nowhere to be seen in the debates. He was nowhere to be seen on the voting record. On Second Reading and Third Reading, he failed to vote."
Cable initially dismissed her accusation that he and many other Lib Dems failed to vote for the National Minimum Wage, telling MPs: "She speaks with all the self-confidence of somebody who was not here at the time.”
Bryant joined in with Reeves with the heckle: "You were [there], you didn't vote!"
Cable finally explained with reluctance reluctantly that he had largely been away because he was caring for his late wife Olympia, who was terminally ill with breast cancer.
"I did not particularly wish to raise this, but I am being asked personally to explain why I did not vote. It had a lot to do with the fact that my late wife was terminally ill at the time and I was in the Royal Marsden hospital. That is why my voting record at the time was poor on that and other issues."
"As it happens, my party supported the national minimum wage; nobody opposed it. I became the party’s spokesman shortly after the vote and I made it absolutely clear throughout that Parliament that we supported the principle of the national minimum wage."
I've seen the way she speaks in parliament. This is not out of character. She's still basically a student politician my-lot-good-your-lot-bad.
Too many Labour people are like this.
And other parties too, to be fair. But yes. It's a product of believing themselves to be the goodies.
One of the ways that the political right has decayed in recent decades.
The old (patrician, somewhat snobbish) right line was "we think the left is well-meaning but mistaken, whereas they haven't got beyond 'the right are evil'". And yes, it is snobbish and more than a bit grating. But it was a reasonable emoillient for society. Whereas now, the worst people on the right are just as willing to shout EVIL across the barricades as the worst sort of lefty. And increasingly, the worst sort of right are the ones running the right.
You so often steal a point I intended to make that I half suspect I have a split personality for posting, only I don't believe I could be as concise.
On a human level, I have a huge amount of persona sympathy for Rachel Reeves.
But if you applied for a job - perhaps with a slightly juiced-up CV - which you got, but then found you weren't up to doing that job, should I have any personal sympathy if you have a meltdown?
I’m pretty sure she caused a few people meltdowns when adding VAT to private school fees and gave absolutely zero fks and no personal sympathy.
It's difficult to feel too much sympathy when you look back at how arrogant she was before the election:
Wow. All the seeds are there indeed. The arrogance, the refusal to debate, the absence of ideas, and - most of all - a kind of panic when she thinks her mediocrity and unsuitability for the job has been exposed
And it has now been exposed and she’s in tears
My diminished sympathy has vanished
Her predecessor was Anneliese Dodds so a low bar one might argue. Whatever you may think of Alastair Darling or Gordon Brown, they weren't afraid to come out swinging for their policies.
Labour just doesn't seem to have an "Iron Chancellor" type - it's one thing doing the prawn cocktail circuit before the election but quite another to sit in No.11 and take the hard decisions
Starmer and Reeves should have held fast on WFP and this, but they were frit and are now paying the price
Listening to labour mps, it seems they want to move to the left and would welcome Starmer and Reeves leaving office
The debate yesterday was a revelation with the left in full vocal opposition to the PIP proposals, and after today's astonishing PMQs they must be on manoeuvres and scent blood
And yea out of the desert there came a man and his name was Jezza.
Cant be too long until he's back in the fold.
His fans will be so disappointed, they've wanted him to form his own party for so long and he hasn't yet done it even after leaving Labour.
Hes 'in discussions' apparently and says a new party will be up and running by next years locals. Too slow. He needs to start it, get the likes of Sultana, Whittome etc on board, then hand over once its established cos hes too old now. If he cant see right now is optimum hes even more of a daft old goat than i thought
He could hire Bobby Vylan as party spokesman - going to be looking for a new career now anyway and the basic level political sloganeering and capturing the Glastonbury vote is aligned.
I think Bobby Vylan has had a major increase in streams since the weekend. For an edgy musician you just can't buy that sort of publicity, just ask Bill Grundy.
There is no money in stream revenue for regular artists these days. Festivals and big US Arena tours are where the money to make a proper living are.
What you need to do is be edgy but not be dropped by your record label / management. RATM managed to stay on Sony for instance. Winning all the way to the bank.
I think Bob Vylan will be laughing all the way to the bank. There's no such thing as bad publicity for such an act.
You can still go too far to maximise your money, and up just milking a smaller group of extreme weirdos (any number of media and youtube personalities and commentators have gone that route), but given a lot of people hadn't even heard of him until this incident I'd assume he is a long way from crossing the line from benefit to harm.
Before the PB Tories think that today was a triumph for their side, it wasn't. As John Crace notes: "The thing with Kemi is that her manner is so off-putting. That weird sense of superiority when she has so little to be superior about. The arrogance and the condescension. The perpetual sneer. The feeling she is permanently doing the rest of us a favour. All of which makes it hard to like her. Your sympathies are naturally drawn to whoever her opponent happens to be."
As I said, I think Reeves is done. But the beneficiary will not be Badenoch or the Tories. The drift of the Labour last time voters to Reform will speed up - the Tories failed them, Labour failed them, vote for something else.
John Crace = the Guardian's Lord Haw Haw.
After the last couple of days the Conservatives are back. And you know it.
What’s also abundantly clear, the LibDems have absolutely blown their opportunity. They offer nothing in the House of Commons - no presence, no interesting or workable solutions. Just a parish council grouping.
In what way are the Tories back?
I will keep patiently making the same point - your lot utterly blew it. We’re seeing Labour’s reputation crumble and chaos ensue. You think people will see this and think “let’s put back on the party who made chaos what it is”? The party who so utterly fucked the economy and services that everything is broken?
The winners here are Reform. Go look at the polls.
9 Labour MPs voted against proscribing PA and some (not sure how many yet) of them joined the rally outside parliament. Surely Labour has to expel them? Its not a welfare rebellion, its open support for what will be a terrorist organisation under uk law in 54 hours time
If you want Labour politicians to feather-bed the comfortable by impoverishing first some pensioners and then most of the disabled then I'd suspect you should not hold a prominent position in a Labour Govt.
So that's huge question marks over Starmer and Reeves. They picked a fight they could not win. EVen if they 'won'.
A head should roll. It would likely be Reeves but it absolutely should be Morgan McSweeney. He is clearly hopelessly out of his depth and you can tell that because he should have threatened to resign before allowing it to get near this far. That's being generous because I suspect this whole sh*t show originated with him.
If the adviser becomes the story, that ought to be that.
If MMcS wants to be the story, he can stand for election himself.
9 Labour MPs voted against proscribing PA and some (not sure how many yet) of them joined the rally outside parliament. Surely Labour has to expel them? Its not a welfare rebellion, its open support for what will be a terrorist organisation under uk law in 54 hours time
This is what happens when such a big majority is won in razor thin margins. MPs have no reason to listen to the whips because the party can offer them no protection from being booted out next time around.
9 Labour MPs voted against proscribing PA and some (not sure how many yet) of them joined the rally outside parliament. Surely Labour has to expel them? Its not a welfare rebellion, its open support for what will be a terrorist organisation under uk law in 54 hours time
Probably fine so long as they do not openly support them from now on (assuming this was not some kind of 'principle' reason against proscription).
Before the PB Tories think that today was a triumph for their side, it wasn't. As John Crace notes: "The thing with Kemi is that her manner is so off-putting. That weird sense of superiority when she has so little to be superior about. The arrogance and the condescension. The perpetual sneer. The feeling she is permanently doing the rest of us a favour. All of which makes it hard to like her. Your sympathies are naturally drawn to whoever her opponent happens to be."
As I said, I think Reeves is done. But the beneficiary will not be Badenoch or the Tories. The drift of the Labour last time voters to Reform will speed up - the Tories failed them, Labour failed them, vote for something else.
John Crace = the Guardian's Lord Haw Haw.
After the last couple of days the Conservatives are back. And you know it.
What’s also abundantly clear, the LibDems have absolutely blown their opportunity. They offer nothing in the House of Commons - no presence, no interesting or workable solutions. Just a parish council grouping.
In what way are the Tories back?
I will keep patiently making the same point - your lot utterly blew it. We’re seeing Labour’s reputation crumble and chaos ensue. You think people will see this and think “let’s put back on the party who made chaos what it is”? The party who so utterly fucked the economy and services that everything is broken?
The winners here are Reform. Go look at the polls.
In a way the quick Labour drop in support may have been too quick for the Tories - they haven't had a chance to rebuild the public's appetite to listen to them, meaning any fall for Labour had to go to someone other than the Tories, and the LDs are already maxed out.
So in a weird way you might want the people who beat you to have a honeymoon period.
9 Labour MPs voted against proscribing PA and some (not sure how many yet) of them joined the rally outside parliament. Surely Labour has to expel them? Its not a welfare rebellion, its open support for what will be a terrorist organisation under uk law in 54 hours time
Probably fine so long as they do not openly support them from now on (assuming this was not some kind of 'principle' reason against proscription).
Well Sultana shouted out 'we are all Palestine Action' in the debate (albeit shes already dewhipped but still a party member) I get the impression the hard-core left are goading SKS into trying to expel them
On a human level, I have a huge amount of persona sympathy for Rachel Reeves.
But if you applied for a job - perhaps with a slightly juiced-up CV - which you got, but then found you weren't up to doing that job, should I have any personal sympathy if you have a meltdown?
I’m pretty sure she caused a few people meltdowns when adding VAT to private school fees and gave absolutely zero fks and no personal sympathy.
It's difficult to feel too much sympathy when you look back at how arrogant she was before the election:
Wow. All the seeds are there indeed. The arrogance, the refusal to debate, the absence of ideas, and - most of all - a kind of panic when she thinks her mediocrity and unsuitability for the job has been exposed
And it has now been exposed and she’s in tears
My diminished sympathy has vanished
That’s very unfair of you. Don’t you remember her sympathy for Sunak and Hunt when they were trying to deal with crazy inflation caused by Covid and Ukraine. When she would defend them on tv and say, “be fair Alistair Campbell, (for it was he) these guys are doing a very hard job under very difficult circumstances not of their design or making.”
I also remember her sympathy after the election where she thanked Sunak and Hunt for stabilising things and helping bring inflation down so her inheritance was not as terrible as it could have been rather than fucking the economy by talking it down and making up stories about £20b black holes for purely political purposes.
So please, be fair to Rachel and have some sympathy.
There were a ton of unfunded spending commitments. That's a fact. Whether it benefits from being termed "£22b black hole" and to what extent incoming Labour genuinely didn't know about it, I don't know.
On the messaging and politics they were going for their version of the Cons "clearing up Labour's mess" - which ran successfully for the best part of a decade. But it doesn't seem to have worked for even a fortnight.
currently Labour are racking up a £22bn black hole about every 6 weeks. And its getting worse
Sure they are, Alan. And the Tories eat babies. Etc.
We borrowed £17.7 billion in May maybe I should make that £22bn in 5 weeks
We've been borrowing forever. Lab borrowing, Con borrowing, it's all the same. To make out this government is especially reckless is partisan nonsense.
Not at all
The stated aim of this government is to "fix the foundations". They havent.
Revenues are missing their targets because Reeves has crapped on the economy. The spending side of the equation is not being controlled.
OBR says Reeves will need another £20bn of tax rises just to stand still so the doom loop keeps rolling.
Before the PB Tories think that today was a triumph for their side, it wasn't. As John Crace notes: "The thing with Kemi is that her manner is so off-putting. That weird sense of superiority when she has so little to be superior about. The arrogance and the condescension. The perpetual sneer. The feeling she is permanently doing the rest of us a favour. All of which makes it hard to like her. Your sympathies are naturally drawn to whoever her opponent happens to be."
As I said, I think Reeves is done. But the beneficiary will not be Badenoch or the Tories. The drift of the Labour last time voters to Reform will speed up - the Tories failed them, Labour failed them, vote for something else.
John Crace = the Guardian's Lord Haw Haw.
After the last couple of days the Conservatives are back. And you know it.
What’s also abundantly clear, the LibDems have absolutely blown their opportunity. They offer nothing in the House of Commons - no presence, no interesting or workable solutions. Just a parish council grouping.
In what way are the Tories back?
I will keep patiently making the same point - your lot utterly blew it. We’re seeing Labour’s reputation crumble and chaos ensue. You think people will see this and think “let’s put back on the party who made chaos what it is”? The party who so utterly fucked the economy and services that everything is broken?
The winners here are Reform. Go look at the polls.
For a long time, one of the bits of gaffer tape holding the Conservatives together was "we don't like each other, but we hate Socialists more". We're still seeing that. One manifestation is the semi-stifled cheering of Reform; they might kill the Conservatives, but as long as they hurt Labour, that's fine. Another is the poor showing of Labour in Wales. It's true, but if their replacement at the top of the tree are Plaid, that's not really an improvement... is it?
If you want Labour politicians to feather-bed the comfortable by impoverishing first some pensioners and then most of the disabled then I'd suspect you should not hold a prominent position in a Labour Govt.
So that's huge question marks over Starmer and Reeves. They picked a fight they could not win. EVen if they 'won'.
A head should roll. It would likely be Reeves but it absolutely should be Morgan McSweeney. He is clearly hopelessly out of his depth and you can tell that because he should have threatened to resign before allowing it to get near this far. That's being generous because I suspect this whole sh*t show originated with him.
If the adviser becomes the story, that ought to be that.
If MMcS wants to be the story, he can stand for election himself.
It is not the advisor's fault - he is trying to polish a turd.
Labour can only salvage anything by Starmer going. Reeves going won't do it. McSweeney going certainly won't do it - one may as well change the scatter cushions in Number 10.
On a human level, I have a huge amount of persona sympathy for Rachel Reeves.
But if you applied for a job - perhaps with a slightly juiced-up CV - which you got, but then found you weren't up to doing that job, should I have any personal sympathy if you have a meltdown?
I’m pretty sure she caused a few people meltdowns when adding VAT to private school fees and gave absolutely zero fks and no personal sympathy.
It's difficult to feel too much sympathy when you look back at how arrogant she was before the election:
Wow. All the seeds are there indeed. The arrogance, the refusal to debate, the absence of ideas, and - most of all - a kind of panic when she thinks her mediocrity and unsuitability for the job has been exposed
And it has now been exposed and she’s in tears
My diminished sympathy has vanished
The show must go on The show must go on, yeah Inside my heart is breaking My make up may be flaking But my smile still stays on
On a human level, I have a huge amount of persona sympathy for Rachel Reeves.
But if you applied for a job - perhaps with a slightly juiced-up CV - which you got, but then found you weren't up to doing that job, should I have any personal sympathy if you have a meltdown?
I’m pretty sure she caused a few people meltdowns when adding VAT to private school fees and gave absolutely zero fks and no personal sympathy.
It's difficult to feel too much sympathy when you look back at how arrogant she was before the election:
Wow. All the seeds are there indeed. The arrogance, the refusal to debate, the absence of ideas, and - most of all - a kind of panic when she thinks her mediocrity and unsuitability for the job has been exposed
And it has now been exposed and she’s in tears
My diminished sympathy has vanished
Her predecessor was Anneliese Dodds so a low bar one might argue. Whatever you may think of Alastair Darling or Gordon Brown, they weren't afraid to come out swinging for their policies.
Labour just doesn't seem to have an "Iron Chancellor" type - it's one thing doing the prawn cocktail circuit before the election but quite another to sit in No.11 and take the hard decisions
Starmer and Reeves should have held fast on WFP and this, but they were frit and are now paying the price
Listening to labour mps, it seems they want to move to the left and would welcome Starmer and Reeves leaving office
The debate yesterday was a revelation with the left in full vocal opposition to the PIP proposals, and after today's astonishing PMQs they must be on manoeuvres and scent blood
And yea out of the desert there came a man and his name was Jezza.
Cant be too long until he's back in the fold.
His fans will be so disappointed, they've wanted him to form his own party for so long and he hasn't yet done it even after leaving Labour.
Hes 'in discussions' apparently and says a new party will be up and running by next years locals. Too slow. He needs to start it, get the likes of Sultana, Whittome etc on board, then hand over once its established cos hes too old now. If he cant see right now is optimum hes even more of a daft old goat than i thought
He could hire Bobby Vylan as party spokesman - going to be looking for a new career now anyway and the basic level political sloganeering and capturing the Glastonbury vote is aligned.
I think Bobby Vylan has had a major increase in streams since the weekend. For an edgy musician you just can't buy that sort of publicity, just ask Bill Grundy.
That's part of the problem with 'edgyness' of course, it's so easy to then fake or phone in to please or outrage the people you want.
It's akin to the pathetic displays boxers engage in with stare offs and stage managed 'rows' before fights to drive up interest, which is like watching WWE monologues without the charisma or honesty.
On a human level, I have a huge amount of persona sympathy for Rachel Reeves.
But if you applied for a job - perhaps with a slightly juiced-up CV - which you got, but then found you weren't up to doing that job, should I have any personal sympathy if you have a meltdown?
I’m pretty sure she caused a few people meltdowns when adding VAT to private school fees and gave absolutely zero fks and no personal sympathy.
It's difficult to feel too much sympathy when you look back at how arrogant she was before the election:
Wow. All the seeds are there indeed. The arrogance, the refusal to debate, the absence of ideas, and - most of all - a kind of panic when she thinks her mediocrity and unsuitability for the job has been exposed
And it has now been exposed and she’s in tears
My diminished sympathy has vanished
Her predecessor was Anneliese Dodds so a low bar one might argue. Whatever you may think of Alastair Darling or Gordon Brown, they weren't afraid to come out swinging for their policies.
Labour just doesn't seem to have an "Iron Chancellor" type - it's one thing doing the prawn cocktail circuit before the election but quite another to sit in No.11 and take the hard decisions
Starmer and Reeves should have held fast on WFP and this, but they were frit and are now paying the price
Listening to labour mps, it seems they want to move to the left and would welcome Starmer and Reeves leaving office
The debate yesterday was a revelation with the left in full vocal opposition to the PIP proposals, and after today's astonishing PMQs they must be on manoeuvres and scent blood
And yea out of the desert there came a man and his name was Jezza.
Cant be too long until he's back in the fold.
His fans will be so disappointed, they've wanted him to form his own party for so long and he hasn't yet done it even after leaving Labour.
Hes 'in discussions' apparently and says a new party will be up and running by next years locals. Too slow. He needs to start it, get the likes of Sultana, Whittome etc on board, then hand over once its established cos hes too old now. If he cant see right now is optimum hes even more of a daft old goat than i thought
He could hire Bobby Vylan as party spokesman - going to be looking for a new career now anyway and the basic level political sloganeering and capturing the Glastonbury vote is aligned.
I think Bobby Vylan has had a major increase in streams since the weekend. For an edgy musician you just can't buy that sort of publicity, just ask Bill Grundy.
There is no money in stream revenue for regular artists these days. Festivals and big US Arena tours are where the money to make a proper living are.
What you need to do is be edgy but not be dropped by your record label / management. RATM managed to stay on Sony for instance. Winning all the way to the bank.
I think Bob Vylan will be laughing all the way to the bank. There's no such thing as bad publicity for such an act.
You can still go too far to maximise your money, and up just milking a smaller group of extreme weirdos (any number of media and youtube personalities and commentators have gone that route), but given a lot of people hadn't even heard of him until this incident I'd assume he is a long way from crossing the line from benefit to harm.
Trying to DIY music is really really hard these days. No money in physical sales, no money in streams all the ticketing is owned by one company as are most of the venues. If you aren't doing the massive festivals / arenas you need to be constantly giging. See a Halestorm, Shinedown or Black Stone Cherry who are 1000x bigger than Ranty McRanty face and I have heard them all say only way to make a decent living, outside festivals, 200 gigs a year. Going on an antisemitic rant aimed at one of the biggest promoters / organisers in the business seems very unwise.
If you notice Kneecap stick to fuck the Tories, the British were bad in Ireland, but never go after individuals in the industry.
9 Labour MPs voted against proscribing PA and some (not sure how many yet) of them joined the rally outside parliament. Surely Labour has to expel them? Its not a welfare rebellion, its open support for what will be a terrorist organisation under uk law in 54 hours time
Probably fine so long as they do not openly support them from now on (assuming this was not some kind of 'principle' reason against proscription).
Well Sultana shouted out 'we are all Palestine Action' in the debate (albeit shes already dewhipped but still a party member) I get the impression the hard-core left are goading SKS into trying to expel them
Crankies are all cowards. That’s their problem. They want to be thrown out - made martyrs to the cause. No convictions other than self interest.
On a human level, I have a huge amount of persona sympathy for Rachel Reeves.
But if you applied for a job - perhaps with a slightly juiced-up CV - which you got, but then found you weren't up to doing that job, should I have any personal sympathy if you have a meltdown?
I’m pretty sure she caused a few people meltdowns when adding VAT to private school fees and gave absolutely zero fks and no personal sympathy.
It's difficult to feel too much sympathy when you look back at how arrogant she was before the election:
Wow. All the seeds are there indeed. The arrogance, the refusal to debate, the absence of ideas, and - most of all - a kind of panic when she thinks her mediocrity and unsuitability for the job has been exposed
And it has now been exposed and she’s in tears
My diminished sympathy has vanished
That’s very unfair of you. Don’t you remember her sympathy for Sunak and Hunt when they were trying to deal with crazy inflation caused by Covid and Ukraine. When she would defend them on tv and say, “be fair Alistair Campbell, (for it was he) these guys are doing a very hard job under very difficult circumstances not of their design or making.”
I also remember her sympathy after the election where she thanked Sunak and Hunt for stabilising things and helping bring inflation down so her inheritance was not as terrible as it could have been rather than fucking the economy by talking it down and making up stories about £20b black holes for purely political purposes.
So please, be fair to Rachel and have some sympathy.
There were a ton of unfunded spending commitments. That's a fact. Whether it benefits from being termed "£22b black hole" and to what extent incoming Labour genuinely didn't know about it, I don't know.
On the messaging and politics they were going for their version of the Cons "clearing up Labour's mess" - which ran successfully for the best part of a decade. But it doesn't seem to have worked for even a fortnight.
currently Labour are racking up a £22bn black hole about every 6 weeks. And its getting worse
Sure they are, Alan. And the Tories eat babies. Etc.
We borrowed £17.7 billion in May maybe I should make that £22bn in 5 weeks
We've been borrowing forever. Lab borrowing, Con borrowing, it's all the same. To make out this government is especially reckless is partisan nonsense.
Not at all
The stated aim of this government is to "fix the foundations". They havent.
Revenues are missing their targets because Reeves has crapped on the economy. The spending side of the equation is not being controlled.
OBR says Reeves will need another £20bn of tax rises just to stand still so the doom loop keeps rolling.
Everything you posted there about Labour is absolutely true. Your problem is that every word of it was also true about the Tories…
Before the PB Tories think that today was a triumph for their side, it wasn't. As John Crace notes: "The thing with Kemi is that her manner is so off-putting. That weird sense of superiority when she has so little to be superior about. The arrogance and the condescension. The perpetual sneer. The feeling she is permanently doing the rest of us a favour. All of which makes it hard to like her. Your sympathies are naturally drawn to whoever her opponent happens to be."
As I said, I think Reeves is done. But the beneficiary will not be Badenoch or the Tories. The drift of the Labour last time voters to Reform will speed up - the Tories failed them, Labour failed them, vote for something else.
John Crace = the Guardian's Lord Haw Haw.
After the last couple of days the Conservatives are back. And you know it.
What’s also abundantly clear, the LibDems have absolutely blown their opportunity. They offer nothing in the House of Commons - no presence, no interesting or workable solutions. Just a parish council grouping.
In what way are the Tories back?
I will keep patiently making the same point - your lot utterly blew it. We’re seeing Labour’s reputation crumble and chaos ensue. You think people will see this and think “let’s put back on the party who made chaos what it is”? The party who so utterly fucked the economy and services that everything is broken?
The winners here are Reform. Go look at the polls.
For a long time, one of the bits of gaffer tape holding the Conservatives together was "we don't like each other, but we hate Socialists more". We're still seeing that. One manifestation is the semi-stifled cheering of Reform; they might kill the Conservatives, but as long as they hurt Labour, that's fine. Another is the poor showing of Labour in Wales. It's true, but if their replacement at the top of the tree are Plaid, that's not really an improvement... is it?
On a human level, I have a huge amount of persona sympathy for Rachel Reeves.
But if you applied for a job - perhaps with a slightly juiced-up CV - which you got, but then found you weren't up to doing that job, should I have any personal sympathy if you have a meltdown?
I’m pretty sure she caused a few people meltdowns when adding VAT to private school fees and gave absolutely zero fks and no personal sympathy.
It's difficult to feel too much sympathy when you look back at how arrogant she was before the election:
Wow. All the seeds are there indeed. The arrogance, the refusal to debate, the absence of ideas, and - most of all - a kind of panic when she thinks her mediocrity and unsuitability for the job has been exposed
And it has now been exposed and she’s in tears
My diminished sympathy has vanished
Her predecessor was Anneliese Dodds so a low bar one might argue. Whatever you may think of Alastair Darling or Gordon Brown, they weren't afraid to come out swinging for their policies.
Labour just doesn't seem to have an "Iron Chancellor" type - it's one thing doing the prawn cocktail circuit before the election but quite another to sit in No.11 and take the hard decisions
Starmer and Reeves should have held fast on WFP and this, but they were frit and are now paying the price
Listening to labour mps, it seems they want to move to the left and would welcome Starmer and Reeves leaving office
The debate yesterday was a revelation with the left in full vocal opposition to the PIP proposals, and after today's astonishing PMQs they must be on manoeuvres and scent blood
And yea out of the desert there came a man and his name was Jezza.
Cant be too long until he's back in the fold.
His fans will be so disappointed, they've wanted him to form his own party for so long and he hasn't yet done it even after leaving Labour.
Hes 'in discussions' apparently and says a new party will be up and running by next years locals. Too slow. He needs to start it, get the likes of Sultana, Whittome etc on board, then hand over once its established cos hes too old now. If he cant see right now is optimum hes even more of a daft old goat than i thought
He could hire Bobby Vylan as party spokesman - going to be looking for a new career now anyway and the basic level political sloganeering and capturing the Glastonbury vote is aligned.
I think Bobby Vylan has had a major increase in streams since the weekend. For an edgy musician you just can't buy that sort of publicity, just ask Bill Grundy.
There is no money in stream revenue for regular artists these days. Festivals and big US Arena tours are where the money to make a proper living are.
What you need to do is walk the line between being edgy but not be dropped by your record label / management. RATM managed to stay on Sony for instance. Winning all the way to the bank.
RATM had a real, actual cause. See the long record of US policing, for example.
Norwegian TV seems obsessed with their team having a British manager. Let’s hope it brings them some good fortune…
Would they fancy a British Prime Minister do we think? Nearly new, priced for a quick sale, no refunds?
Kåre Tölmakersson?
So far his precocious talent for rendering national resources to foreign powers has been sadly constrained by the UK not having any. It's high time we saw him going to work on a sovereign wealth fund worth over a trillion.
On Wednesday, Downing Street insisted Rachel Reeves, the chancellor, was "not going anywhere" after her tearful appearance in the House of Commons during prime minister's questions sparked speculation about her political future.
The Ipsos poll also found that two-thirds of British adults are not confident Labour has the right plans to change the way the benefits system works in the UK, including nearly half of 2024 Labour voters.
Keiran Pedley, director of UK Politics at Ipsos, said: "Labour rows over welfare reform haven't just harmed the public's view on whether they can make the right changes in that policy area, they are raising wider questions about their ability to govern too.
"The public is starting to doubt Labour's ability to govern competently and seriously at the same levels they did with Boris Johnson and Rishi Sunak's governments. Labour will hope that this government doesn't end up going the same way."
Which is the makings of a problem, as anyone who thinks there are alternatives who could both get the seats to form a government and in addition govern competently and seriously is making a substantial error of judgment. The only conceivable options thus far are, obviously, the Tories and Reform. Neither qualify.
You do seem to be very Labour but to be honest anything can happen going forward
It is far from a given Labour will form the next government especially after this week
Not 'very Labour' at all. But my lifelong adherence to One Nation Toryism in the tradition of Burke's small 'c' conservatism doesn't have a party to stand up for it, so Labour is the best of a bad job for the moment.
While what I want is a trad Tory revival, what there is is what I am going to get.
As all politics is relative, the search is on for a potential government less awful that the current one, which has disappointed its long term friends probably even more than those like me who lent it their vote.
Current score: LDs don't count as they can't win more than 100 seats unless there is a paradigm shift. Tories have not yet established that they are serious. Reform could gain power if they have a pact but no-one at all, including their voters think they have a serious plan for serious times.
Next government: Probably Labour led. Outside chance: Tory/Reform government if and only if they form an electoral pact.
9 Labour MPs voted against proscribing PA and some (not sure how many yet) of them joined the rally outside parliament. Surely Labour has to expel them? Its not a welfare rebellion, its open support for what will be a terrorist organisation under uk law in 54 hours time
This is what happens when such a big majority is won in razor thin margins. MPs have no reason to listen to the whips because the party can offer them no protection from being booted out next time around.
Yvette Cooper was certainly correct to proscribe PA.
1) The misogyny in British politics is appalling. They have attacked Reeves from day 1 as a woman - how dare she be appointed Chancellor! I have little doubt that politics at that level can be an emotional roller-coaster and some people are emotional beings.
I cried in a senior leadership meeting because the situation was that fraught. I can imagine me crying in a situation like that, or when Theresa May quit. As a bloke I get sympathy, but women get none. "too emotional" - how many times does that get added as a label to a colleague just because they are a woman?
That being said
2) Reeves is absolutely done. If she has something upsetting going on in her personal life then my sympathies - don't get her sat in the spotlight blubbing. A failing of the management team letting her sit there. If that's just cover then its my sexist patronising guff.
Problem is that she is Chancellor of the Exchequer and needs to be robust enough to face down critics and the markets and opposition idiots. Crying doesn't work. And she can't recover - even if she goes on in the role she will always be the chancellor reduced to tears as her boss fails to defend her position.
Sorry mysogyny is a feeble excuse, I would have said Reeves is crap if it was a man, a woman, black, white or even martian.
Fed up with this bollocks "you only criticise because its "woman/man/black/white/trans". Most criticise politicians because of what they say and do not because of gender, creed or colour. Now if someone has made prior mysognist chitterings by all mean point them out and speculate maybe
I am trying to remember the name of a content creator who has millions of followers who is a musician, on YouTube and twitch. On the back of followers and viewership, decided to DIY a UK tour and recently broke down costs. Basically sold loads of tickets, lost money overall.
On Wednesday, Downing Street insisted Rachel Reeves, the chancellor, was "not going anywhere" after her tearful appearance in the House of Commons during prime minister's questions sparked speculation about her political future.
The Ipsos poll also found that two-thirds of British adults are not confident Labour has the right plans to change the way the benefits system works in the UK, including nearly half of 2024 Labour voters.
Keiran Pedley, director of UK Politics at Ipsos, said: "Labour rows over welfare reform haven't just harmed the public's view on whether they can make the right changes in that policy area, they are raising wider questions about their ability to govern too.
"The public is starting to doubt Labour's ability to govern competently and seriously at the same levels they did with Boris Johnson and Rishi Sunak's governments. Labour will hope that this government doesn't end up going the same way."
Which is the makings of a problem, as anyone who thinks there are alternatives who could both get the seats to form a government and in addition govern competently and seriously is making a substantial error of judgment. The only conceivable options thus far are, obviously, the Tories and Reform. Neither qualify.
You do seem to be very Labour but to be honest anything can happen going forward
It is far from a given Labour will form the next government especially after this week
Not 'very Labour' at all. But my lifelong adherence to One Nation Toryism in the tradition of Burke's small 'c' conservatism doesn't have a party to stand up for it, so Labour is the best of a bad job for the moment.
While what I want is a trad Tory revival, what there is is what I am going to get.
As all politics is relative, the search is on for a potential government less awful that the current one, which has disappointed its long term friends probably even more than those like me who lent it their vote.
Current score: LDs don't count as they can't win more than 100 seats unless there is a paradigm shift. Tories have not yet established that they are serious. Reform could gain power if they have a pact but no-one at all, including their voters think they have a serious plan for serious times.
Next government: Probably Labour led. Outside chance: Tory/Reform government if and only if they form an electoral pact.
Classic Tory centrist - demand loyalty from the right wing loonies when there's a centrist leader, bugger off to another party when there isn't.
On a human level, I have a huge amount of persona sympathy for Rachel Reeves.
But if you applied for a job - perhaps with a slightly juiced-up CV - which you got, but then found you weren't up to doing that job, should I have any personal sympathy if you have a meltdown?
I’m pretty sure she caused a few people meltdowns when adding VAT to private school fees and gave absolutely zero fks and no personal sympathy.
It's difficult to feel too much sympathy when you look back at how arrogant she was before the election:
Wow. All the seeds are there indeed. The arrogance, the refusal to debate, the absence of ideas, and - most of all - a kind of panic when she thinks her mediocrity and unsuitability for the job has been exposed
And it has now been exposed and she’s in tears
My diminished sympathy has vanished
Her predecessor was Anneliese Dodds so a low bar one might argue. Whatever you may think of Alastair Darling or Gordon Brown, they weren't afraid to come out swinging for their policies.
Labour just doesn't seem to have an "Iron Chancellor" type - it's one thing doing the prawn cocktail circuit before the election but quite another to sit in No.11 and take the hard decisions
Starmer and Reeves should have held fast on WFP and this, but they were frit and are now paying the price
Listening to labour mps, it seems they want to move to the left and would welcome Starmer and Reeves leaving office
The debate yesterday was a revelation with the left in full vocal opposition to the PIP proposals, and after today's astonishing PMQs they must be on manoeuvres and scent blood
And yea out of the desert there came a man and his name was Jezza.
Cant be too long until he's back in the fold.
His fans will be so disappointed, they've wanted him to form his own party for so long and he hasn't yet done it even after leaving Labour.
Hes 'in discussions' apparently and says a new party will be up and running by next years locals. Too slow. He needs to start it, get the likes of Sultana, Whittome etc on board, then hand over once its established cos hes too old now. If he cant see right now is optimum hes even more of a daft old goat than i thought
He could hire Bobby Vylan as party spokesman - going to be looking for a new career now anyway and the basic level political sloganeering and capturing the Glastonbury vote is aligned.
I think Bobby Vylan has had a major increase in streams since the weekend. For an edgy musician you just can't buy that sort of publicity, just ask Bill Grundy.
There is no money in stream revenue for regular artists these days. Festivals and big US Arena tours are where the money to make a proper living are.
What you need to do is walk the line between being edgy but not be dropped by your record label / management. RATM managed to stay on Sony for instance. Winning all the way to the bank.
RATM had a real, actual cause. See the long record of US policing, for example.
They also have real talent... and written iconic songs. I have seen early footage of them doing high schools and backyard parties and they still sound awesome.
On Wednesday, Downing Street insisted Rachel Reeves, the chancellor, was "not going anywhere" after her tearful appearance in the House of Commons during prime minister's questions sparked speculation about her political future.
The Ipsos poll also found that two-thirds of British adults are not confident Labour has the right plans to change the way the benefits system works in the UK, including nearly half of 2024 Labour voters.
Keiran Pedley, director of UK Politics at Ipsos, said: "Labour rows over welfare reform haven't just harmed the public's view on whether they can make the right changes in that policy area, they are raising wider questions about their ability to govern too.
"The public is starting to doubt Labour's ability to govern competently and seriously at the same levels they did with Boris Johnson and Rishi Sunak's governments. Labour will hope that this government doesn't end up going the same way."
Which is the makings of a problem, as anyone who thinks there are alternatives who could both get the seats to form a government and in addition govern competently and seriously is making a substantial error of judgment. The only conceivable options thus far are, obviously, the Tories and Reform. Neither qualify.
You do seem to be very Labour but to be honest anything can happen going forward
It is far from a given Labour will form the next government especially after this week
Outside chance: Tory/Reform government if and only if they form an electoral pact.
I think that only happens if Reform slip back to somewhere near level pegging. Any further and Tories say no thank you, stay as we are and any pact will be highly limited in scope as Reform hold the cards. Pact by necessity if they are cancelling each other out or if Labour are, say, 6 or 7 points clear in first
Norway votes on September 8th and the existing Labour led Government looks currently like being re-elected which didn't seem likely 18 months ago.
In the 2021 election, Labour won 48 seats, the Conservatives 36, the Centre Party 28.the Fremskridtsparti (Progress Party) 21 and the Socialist Left 13. The "Red" bloc of parties which includes Labour, Socialist Left, the Centre Party, the Red Party and the Greens won 100 seats in the Storting with the "Blue" bloc of the Conservatives, Progress, Liberals and Christian People's Party on 68.
Current polling has the Red bloc winning 89 seats and the Blue bloc 80 with the decline in the Centre Party balanced by a rise in the Progress Party. Labour are set to win 53 seats with the Progress party more than doubling their tally to 43 and the Conservatives dropping to 25. The Red Party are set to win 13 seats, the Socialist Left 12 and the Centre 10 and the Greens one which takes the Red Bloc to 89.
On a human level, I have a huge amount of persona sympathy for Rachel Reeves.
But if you applied for a job - perhaps with a slightly juiced-up CV - which you got, but then found you weren't up to doing that job, should I have any personal sympathy if you have a meltdown?
I’m pretty sure she caused a few people meltdowns when adding VAT to private school fees and gave absolutely zero fks and no personal sympathy.
It's difficult to feel too much sympathy when you look back at how arrogant she was before the election:
Wow. All the seeds are there indeed. The arrogance, the refusal to debate, the absence of ideas, and - most of all - a kind of panic when she thinks her mediocrity and unsuitability for the job has been exposed
And it has now been exposed and she’s in tears
My diminished sympathy has vanished
That’s very unfair of you. Don’t you remember her sympathy for Sunak and Hunt when they were trying to deal with crazy inflation caused by Covid and Ukraine. When she would defend them on tv and say, “be fair Alistair Campbell, (for it was he) these guys are doing a very hard job under very difficult circumstances not of their design or making.”
I also remember her sympathy after the election where she thanked Sunak and Hunt for stabilising things and helping bring inflation down so her inheritance was not as terrible as it could have been rather than fucking the economy by talking it down and making up stories about £20b black holes for purely political purposes.
So please, be fair to Rachel and have some sympathy.
There were a ton of unfunded spending commitments. That's a fact. Whether it benefits from being termed "£22b black hole" and to what extent incoming Labour genuinely didn't know about it, I don't know.
On the messaging and politics they were going for their version of the Cons "clearing up Labour's mess" - which ran successfully for the best part of a decade. But it doesn't seem to have worked for even a fortnight.
currently Labour are racking up a £22bn black hole about every 6 weeks. And its getting worse
Sure they are, Alan. And the Tories eat babies. Etc.
We borrowed £17.7 billion in May maybe I should make that £22bn in 5 weeks
We've been borrowing forever. Lab borrowing, Con borrowing, it's all the same. To make out this government is especially reckless is partisan nonsense.
Not at all
The stated aim of this government is to "fix the foundations". They havent.
Revenues are missing their targets because Reeves has crapped on the economy. The spending side of the equation is not being controlled.
OBR says Reeves will need another £20bn of tax rises just to stand still so the doom loop keeps rolling.
Everything you posted there about Labour is absolutely true. Your problem is that every word of it was also true about the Tories…
I didnt vote for the Tories and find it tedious that you lack the ability to move outside a binary world. However as things stand Labour are in power and the buck stops with them.
1) The misogyny in British politics is appalling. They have attacked Reeves from day 1 as a woman - how dare she be appointed Chancellor! I have little doubt that politics at that level can be an emotional roller-coaster and some people are emotional beings.
I cried in a senior leadership meeting because the situation was that fraught. I can imagine me crying in a situation like that, or when Theresa May quit. As a bloke I get sympathy, but women get none. "too emotional" - how many times does that get added as a label to a colleague just because they are a woman?
That being said
2) Reeves is absolutely done. If she has something upsetting going on in her personal life then my sympathies - don't get her sat in the spotlight blubbing. A failing of the management team letting her sit there. If that's just cover then its my sexist patronising guff.
Problem is that she is Chancellor of the Exchequer and needs to be robust enough to face down critics and the markets and opposition idiots. Crying doesn't work. And she can't recover - even if she goes on in the role she will always be the chancellor reduced to tears as her boss fails to defend her position.
I’m surprised you get sympathy ‘as a bloke’, in my experience it would be the woman who’d get get sympathy for crying. I’d expect a male CofE to get far more stick for crying at PMQs than Reeves got today; most people seem to be quite compassionate towards her.
On a human level, I have a huge amount of persona sympathy for Rachel Reeves.
But if you applied for a job - perhaps with a slightly juiced-up CV - which you got, but then found you weren't up to doing that job, should I have any personal sympathy if you have a meltdown?
I’m pretty sure she caused a few people meltdowns when adding VAT to private school fees and gave absolutely zero fks and no personal sympathy.
It's difficult to feel too much sympathy when you look back at how arrogant she was before the election:
Wow. All the seeds are there indeed. The arrogance, the refusal to debate, the absence of ideas, and - most of all - a kind of panic when she thinks her mediocrity and unsuitability for the job has been exposed
And it has now been exposed and she’s in tears
My diminished sympathy has vanished
Her predecessor was Anneliese Dodds so a low bar one might argue. Whatever you may think of Alastair Darling or Gordon Brown, they weren't afraid to come out swinging for their policies.
Labour just doesn't seem to have an "Iron Chancellor" type - it's one thing doing the prawn cocktail circuit before the election but quite another to sit in No.11 and take the hard decisions
Starmer and Reeves should have held fast on WFP and this, but they were frit and are now paying the price
Listening to labour mps, it seems they want to move to the left and would welcome Starmer and Reeves leaving office
The debate yesterday was a revelation with the left in full vocal opposition to the PIP proposals, and after today's astonishing PMQs they must be on manoeuvres and scent blood
And yea out of the desert there came a man and his name was Jezza.
Cant be too long until he's back in the fold.
His fans will be so disappointed, they've wanted him to form his own party for so long and he hasn't yet done it even after leaving Labour.
Hes 'in discussions' apparently and says a new party will be up and running by next years locals. Too slow. He needs to start it, get the likes of Sultana, Whittome etc on board, then hand over once its established cos hes too old now. If he cant see right now is optimum hes even more of a daft old goat than i thought
He could hire Bobby Vylan as party spokesman - going to be looking for a new career now anyway and the basic level political sloganeering and capturing the Glastonbury vote is aligned.
I think Bobby Vylan has had a major increase in streams since the weekend. For an edgy musician you just can't buy that sort of publicity, just ask Bill Grundy.
On Wednesday, Downing Street insisted Rachel Reeves, the chancellor, was "not going anywhere" after her tearful appearance in the House of Commons during prime minister's questions sparked speculation about her political future.
The Ipsos poll also found that two-thirds of British adults are not confident Labour has the right plans to change the way the benefits system works in the UK, including nearly half of 2024 Labour voters.
Keiran Pedley, director of UK Politics at Ipsos, said: "Labour rows over welfare reform haven't just harmed the public's view on whether they can make the right changes in that policy area, they are raising wider questions about their ability to govern too.
"The public is starting to doubt Labour's ability to govern competently and seriously at the same levels they did with Boris Johnson and Rishi Sunak's governments. Labour will hope that this government doesn't end up going the same way."
Which is the makings of a problem, as anyone who thinks there are alternatives who could both get the seats to form a government and in addition govern competently and seriously is making a substantial error of judgment. The only conceivable options thus far are, obviously, the Tories and Reform. Neither qualify.
You do seem to be very Labour but to be honest anything can happen going forward
It is far from a given Labour will form the next government especially after this week
We have evidence labour also cant govern either competently or seriously over the last year so also a waste of time voting for them
9 Labour MPs voted against proscribing PA and some (not sure how many yet) of them joined the rally outside parliament. Surely Labour has to expel them? Its not a welfare rebellion, its open support for what will be a terrorist organisation under uk law in 54 hours time
This is what happens when such a big majority is won in razor thin margins. MPs have no reason to listen to the whips because the party can offer them no protection from being booted out next time around.
Yvette Cooper was certainly correct to proscribe PA.
Yup, one of the few good decisions the government has made. She should probably get the chancellor's job when they dump Reeves. Rare competence in the cabinet.
1) The misogyny in British politics is appalling. They have attacked Reeves from day 1 as a woman - how dare she be appointed Chancellor! I have little doubt that politics at that level can be an emotional roller-coaster and some people are emotional beings.
I cried in a senior leadership meeting because the situation was that fraught. I can imagine me crying in a situation like that, or when Theresa May quit. As a bloke I get sympathy, but women get none. "too emotional" - how many times does that get added as a label to a colleague just because they are a woman?
That being said
2) Reeves is absolutely done. If she has something upsetting going on in her personal life then my sympathies - don't get her sat in the spotlight blubbing. A failing of the management team letting her sit there. If that's just cover then its my sexist patronising guff.
Problem is that she is Chancellor of the Exchequer and needs to be robust enough to face down critics and the markets and opposition idiots. Crying doesn't work. And she can't recover - even if she goes on in the role she will always be the chancellor reduced to tears as her boss fails to defend her position.
Sorry mysogyny is a feeble excuse, I would have said Reeves is crap if it was a man, a woman, black, white or even martian.
Fed up with this bollocks "you only criticise because its "woman/man/black/white/trans". Most criticise politicians because of what they say and do not because of gender, creed or colour. Now if someone has made prior mysognist chitterings by all mean point them out and speculate maybe
Indeed. I suppose all the mean things said about Truss were misogyny? And every criticism of Sunak was the natural racism of the Left?
9 Labour MPs voted against proscribing PA and some (not sure how many yet) of them joined the rally outside parliament. Surely Labour has to expel them? Its not a welfare rebellion, its open support for what will be a terrorist organisation under uk law in 54 hours time
This is what happens when such a big majority is won in razor thin margins. MPs have no reason to listen to the whips because the party can offer them no protection from being booted out next time around.
Yvette Cooper was certainly correct to proscribe PA.
Yup, one of the few good decisions the government has made. She should probably get the chancellor's job when they dump Reeves. Rare competence in the cabinet.
On Wednesday, Downing Street insisted Rachel Reeves, the chancellor, was "not going anywhere" after her tearful appearance in the House of Commons during prime minister's questions sparked speculation about her political future.
The Ipsos poll also found that two-thirds of British adults are not confident Labour has the right plans to change the way the benefits system works in the UK, including nearly half of 2024 Labour voters.
Keiran Pedley, director of UK Politics at Ipsos, said: "Labour rows over welfare reform haven't just harmed the public's view on whether they can make the right changes in that policy area, they are raising wider questions about their ability to govern too.
"The public is starting to doubt Labour's ability to govern competently and seriously at the same levels they did with Boris Johnson and Rishi Sunak's governments. Labour will hope that this government doesn't end up going the same way."
Which is the makings of a problem, as anyone who thinks there are alternatives who could both get the seats to form a government and in addition govern competently and seriously is making a substantial error of judgment. The only conceivable options thus far are, obviously, the Tories and Reform. Neither qualify.
You do seem to be very Labour but to be honest anything can happen going forward
It is far from a given Labour will form the next government especially after this week
Not 'very Labour' at all. But my lifelong adherence to One Nation Toryism in the tradition of Burke's small 'c' conservatism doesn't have a party to stand up for it, so Labour is the best of a bad job for the moment.
While what I want is a trad Tory revival, what there is is what I am going to get.
As all politics is relative, the search is on for a potential government less awful that the current one, which has disappointed its long term friends probably even more than those like me who lent it their vote.
Current score: LDs don't count as they can't win more than 100 seats unless there is a paradigm shift. Tories have not yet established that they are serious. Reform could gain power if they have a pact but no-one at all, including their voters think they have a serious plan for serious times.
Next government: Probably Labour led. Outside chance: Tory/Reform government if and only if they form an electoral pact.
Classic Tory centrist - demand loyalty from the right wing loonies when there's a centrist leader, bugger off to another party when there isn't.
Thanks. But you are in the wrong register. Important loyalties don't change. Middlesex, Arsenal, Saracens, Cambridge (boat race) unchanging from earliest days. In politics you have to think about trivia like what is best (or at the moment least worst) for the country.
On Wednesday, Downing Street insisted Rachel Reeves, the chancellor, was "not going anywhere" after her tearful appearance in the House of Commons during prime minister's questions sparked speculation about her political future.
The Ipsos poll also found that two-thirds of British adults are not confident Labour has the right plans to change the way the benefits system works in the UK, including nearly half of 2024 Labour voters.
Keiran Pedley, director of UK Politics at Ipsos, said: "Labour rows over welfare reform haven't just harmed the public's view on whether they can make the right changes in that policy area, they are raising wider questions about their ability to govern too.
"The public is starting to doubt Labour's ability to govern competently and seriously at the same levels they did with Boris Johnson and Rishi Sunak's governments. Labour will hope that this government doesn't end up going the same way."
Which is the makings of a problem, as anyone who thinks there are alternatives who could both get the seats to form a government and in addition govern competently and seriously is making a substantial error of judgment. The only conceivable options thus far are, obviously, the Tories and Reform. Neither qualify.
You do seem to be very Labour but to be honest anything can happen going forward
It is far from a given Labour will form the next government especially after this week
Not 'very Labour' at all. But my lifelong adherence to One Nation Toryism in the tradition of Burke's small 'c' conservatism doesn't have a party to stand up for it, so Labour is the best of a bad job for the moment.
While what I want is a trad Tory revival, what there is is what I am going to get.
As all politics is relative, the search is on for a potential government less awful that the current one, which has disappointed its long term friends probably even more than those like me who lent it their vote.
Current score: LDs don't count as they can't win more than 100 seats unless there is a paradigm shift. Tories have not yet established that they are serious. Reform could gain power if they have a pact but no-one at all, including their voters think they have a serious plan for serious times.
Next government: Probably Labour led. Outside chance: Tory/Reform government if and only if they form an electoral pact.
Classic Tory centrist - demand loyalty from the right wing loonies when there's a centrist leader, bugger off to another party when there isn't.
Thanks. But you are in the wrong register. Important loyalties don't change. Middlesex, Arsenal, Saracens, Cambridge (boat race) unchanging from earliest days. In politics you have to think about trivia like what is best (or at the moment least worst) for the country.
Well done on Cambridge. The others are all incorrect of course
On Wednesday, Downing Street insisted Rachel Reeves, the chancellor, was "not going anywhere" after her tearful appearance in the House of Commons during prime minister's questions sparked speculation about her political future.
The Ipsos poll also found that two-thirds of British adults are not confident Labour has the right plans to change the way the benefits system works in the UK, including nearly half of 2024 Labour voters.
Keiran Pedley, director of UK Politics at Ipsos, said: "Labour rows over welfare reform haven't just harmed the public's view on whether they can make the right changes in that policy area, they are raising wider questions about their ability to govern too.
"The public is starting to doubt Labour's ability to govern competently and seriously at the same levels they did with Boris Johnson and Rishi Sunak's governments. Labour will hope that this government doesn't end up going the same way."
Which is the makings of a problem, as anyone who thinks there are alternatives who could both get the seats to form a government and in addition govern competently and seriously is making a substantial error of judgment. The only conceivable options thus far are, obviously, the Tories and Reform. Neither qualify.
You do seem to be very Labour but to be honest anything can happen going forward
It is far from a given Labour will form the next government especially after this week
We have evidence labour also cant govern either competently or seriously over the last year so also a waste of time voting for them
All politics being relative the question is not whether Labour are good - no-one thinks they are - but which party is least worst for the country. I don't think the competition as between Tory, Reform and Labour is all that severe. Labour are least worst, Tory have it all to do, Reform aren't in the competence stakes race.
9 Labour MPs voted against proscribing PA and some (not sure how many yet) of them joined the rally outside parliament. Surely Labour has to expel them? Its not a welfare rebellion, its open support for what will be a terrorist organisation under uk law in 54 hours time
This is what happens when such a big majority is won in razor thin margins. MPs have no reason to listen to the whips because the party can offer them no protection from being booted out next time around.
Yvette Cooper was certainly correct to proscribe PA.
Yup, one of the few good decisions the government has made. She should probably get the chancellor's job when they dump Reeves. Rare competence in the cabinet.
How's she doing on smashing the gangs?
Wasn't that the PM's promise? Not sticking up for Cooper, I just don't think she ever made that claim.
On a human level, I have a huge amount of persona sympathy for Rachel Reeves.
But if you applied for a job - perhaps with a slightly juiced-up CV - which you got, but then found you weren't up to doing that job, should I have any personal sympathy if you have a meltdown?
I’m pretty sure she caused a few people meltdowns when adding VAT to private school fees and gave absolutely zero fks and no personal sympathy.
It's difficult to feel too much sympathy when you look back at how arrogant she was before the election:
Wow. All the seeds are there indeed. The arrogance, the refusal to debate, the absence of ideas, and - most of all - a kind of panic when she thinks her mediocrity and unsuitability for the job has been exposed
And it has now been exposed and she’s in tears
My diminished sympathy has vanished
Her predecessor was Anneliese Dodds so a low bar one might argue. Whatever you may think of Alastair Darling or Gordon Brown, they weren't afraid to come out swinging for their policies.
Labour just doesn't seem to have an "Iron Chancellor" type - it's one thing doing the prawn cocktail circuit before the election but quite another to sit in No.11 and take the hard decisions
Starmer and Reeves should have held fast on WFP and this, but they were frit and are now paying the price
Listening to labour mps, it seems they want to move to the left and would welcome Starmer and Reeves leaving office
The debate yesterday was a revelation with the left in full vocal opposition to the PIP proposals, and after today's astonishing PMQs they must be on manoeuvres and scent blood
And yea out of the desert there came a man and his name was Jezza.
Cant be too long until he's back in the fold.
His fans will be so disappointed, they've wanted him to form his own party for so long and he hasn't yet done it even after leaving Labour.
Hes 'in discussions' apparently and says a new party will be up and running by next years locals. Too slow. He needs to start it, get the likes of Sultana, Whittome etc on board, then hand over once its established cos hes too old now. If he cant see right now is optimum hes even more of a daft old goat than i thought
He could hire Bobby Vylan as party spokesman - going to be looking for a new career now anyway and the basic level political sloganeering and capturing the Glastonbury vote is aligned.
I think Bobby Vylan has had a major increase in streams since the weekend. For an edgy musician you just can't buy that sort of publicity, just ask Bill Grundy.
There is no money in stream revenue for regular artists these days. Festivals and big US Arena tours are where the money to make a proper living are.
What you need to do is be edgy but not be dropped by your record label / management. RATM managed to stay on Sony for instance. Winning all the way to the bank.
I think Bob Vylan will be laughing all the way to the bank. There's no such thing as bad publicity for such an act.
You can still go too far to maximise your money, and up just milking a smaller group of extreme weirdos (any number of media and youtube personalities and commentators have gone that route), but given a lot of people hadn't even heard of him until this incident I'd assume he is a long way from crossing the line from benefit to harm.
Trying to DIY music is really really hard these days. No money in physical sales, no money in streams all the ticketing is owned by one company as are most of the venues. If you aren't doing the massive festivals / arenas you need to be constantly giging. See a Halestorm, Shinedown or Black Stone Cherry who are 1000x bigger than Ranty McRanty face and I have heard them all say only way to make a decent living, outside festivals, 200 gigs a year. Going on an antisemitic rant aimed at one of the biggest promoters / organisers in the business seems very unwise.
If you notice Kneecap stick to fuck the Tories, the British were bad in Ireland, but never go after individuals in the industry.
Rather tangential - but if anyone enjoys indie/small label music then I can recommend :
They do a podcast with some chat and interviews with their artists. Run by 'Pictish Trail' from Eigg. Even if you don't like his music - I enjoy the efforts of the label (personally though I do in fact like his music - very pleasantly eccentric).
Sympathy wanes at the "racing already hit by affordability checks on bettors" line, but I don't agree that sports betting should pay the same tax rate as money laundering, they should be widening the gap if anything.
Everything over 20k pension income (excluding state pension) is taxed at a 100% so no one ever gets more than 20k + state pension....not going to hit many private sector people for a start as it requires a 500k pension pot when you retire and few are going to have that.
I suspect there may be squeals about this from certain areas but lets face it those people that have accrued enough to go past 20k a year probably also own their property already. I reckon this would bring in a fair amount every year
1) The misogyny in British politics is appalling. They have attacked Reeves from day 1 as a woman - how dare she be appointed Chancellor! I have little doubt that politics at that level can be an emotional roller-coaster and some people are emotional beings.
I cried in a senior leadership meeting because the situation was that fraught. I can imagine me crying in a situation like that, or when Theresa May quit. As a bloke I get sympathy, but women get none. "too emotional" - how many times does that get added as a label to a colleague just because they are a woman?
That being said
2) Reeves is absolutely done. If she has something upsetting going on in her personal life then my sympathies - don't get her sat in the spotlight blubbing. A failing of the management team letting her sit there. If that's just cover then its my sexist patronising guff.
Problem is that she is Chancellor of the Exchequer and needs to be robust enough to face down critics and the markets and opposition idiots. Crying doesn't work. And she can't recover - even if she goes on in the role she will always be the chancellor reduced to tears as her boss fails to defend her position.
Sorry mysogyny is a feeble excuse, I would have said Reeves is crap if it was a man, a woman, black, white or even martian.
Fed up with this bollocks "you only criticise because its "woman/man/black/white/trans". Most criticise politicians because of what they say and do not because of gender, creed or colour. Now if someone has made prior mysognist chitterings by all mean point them out and speculate maybe
Indeed. I suppose all the mean things said about Truss were misogyny? And every criticism of Sunak was the natural racism of the Left?
Of course they weren't sadly some assume any criticism is about the person not what they are saying and doing. Not to say its not sometimes true but also a lot of the time it is not.
Everything over 20k pension income (excluding state pension) is taxed at a 100% so no one ever gets more than 20k + state pension....not going to hit many private sector people for a start as it requires a 500k pension pot when you retire and few are going to have that.
I suspect there may be squeals about this from certain areas but lets face it those people that have accrued enough to go past 20k a year probably also own their property already. I reckon this would bring in a fair amount every year
I suspect the Tories are fundamentally still in a deep hole, but I do have to say they have had a bit more spring in their step of late.
Whisper it, but Badenoch is starting to get a little better at PMQs. She had a huge open goal today, so it really would have been diabolically bad if she’d missed it. But she is starting to get less stilted and scripted. I think most of us still struggle to see her mounting a serious challenge for power, but there are perhaps a few signs that could - only could - start leading to some very tentative green shoots.
On Wednesday, Downing Street insisted Rachel Reeves, the chancellor, was "not going anywhere" after her tearful appearance in the House of Commons during prime minister's questions sparked speculation about her political future.
The Ipsos poll also found that two-thirds of British adults are not confident Labour has the right plans to change the way the benefits system works in the UK, including nearly half of 2024 Labour voters.
Keiran Pedley, director of UK Politics at Ipsos, said: "Labour rows over welfare reform haven't just harmed the public's view on whether they can make the right changes in that policy area, they are raising wider questions about their ability to govern too.
"The public is starting to doubt Labour's ability to govern competently and seriously at the same levels they did with Boris Johnson and Rishi Sunak's governments. Labour will hope that this government doesn't end up going the same way."
Which is the makings of a problem, as anyone who thinks there are alternatives who could both get the seats to form a government and in addition govern competently and seriously is making a substantial error of judgment. The only conceivable options thus far are, obviously, the Tories and Reform. Neither qualify.
You do seem to be very Labour but to be honest anything can happen going forward
It is far from a given Labour will form the next government especially after this week
We have evidence labour also cant govern either competently or seriously over the last year so also a waste of time voting for them
All politics being relative the question is not whether Labour are good - no-one thinks they are - but which party is least worst for the country. I don't think the competition as between Tory, Reform and Labour is all that severe. Labour are least worst, Tory have it all to do, Reform aren't in the competence stakes race.
Sorry don't agree labour so far have taken a tough situation and made it worse....if the country was a man up to his neck in quick sand they have put their foot on his head and pushing downwards.
Everything over 20k pension income (excluding state pension) is taxed at a 100% so no one ever gets more than 20k + state pension....not going to hit many private sector people for a start as it requires a 500k pension pot when you retire and few are going to have that.
I suspect there may be squeals about this from certain areas but lets face it those people that have accrued enough to go past 20k a year probably also own their property already. I reckon this would bring in a fair amount every year
Will do wonders for VAT receipts.
Would do wonders for tax receipts though, don't forget spend a 100k the government gets only 20k in vat, confiscate 100k excess pension - 20k they get 80k
Everything over 20k pension income (excluding state pension) is taxed at a 100% so no one ever gets more than 20k + state pension....not going to hit many private sector people for a start as it requires a 500k pension pot when you retire and few are going to have that.
I suspect there may be squeals about this from certain areas but lets face it those people that have accrued enough to go past 20k a year probably also own their property already. I reckon this would bring in a fair amount every year
It would bring nothing in, once you get anywhere near a pot generating 20k a year you invest it elsewhere into income generating products that are not 'pensions'
On Wednesday, Downing Street insisted Rachel Reeves, the chancellor, was "not going anywhere" after her tearful appearance in the House of Commons during prime minister's questions sparked speculation about her political future.
The Ipsos poll also found that two-thirds of British adults are not confident Labour has the right plans to change the way the benefits system works in the UK, including nearly half of 2024 Labour voters.
Keiran Pedley, director of UK Politics at Ipsos, said: "Labour rows over welfare reform haven't just harmed the public's view on whether they can make the right changes in that policy area, they are raising wider questions about their ability to govern too.
"The public is starting to doubt Labour's ability to govern competently and seriously at the same levels they did with Boris Johnson and Rishi Sunak's governments. Labour will hope that this government doesn't end up going the same way."
Which is the makings of a problem, as anyone who thinks there are alternatives who could both get the seats to form a government and in addition govern competently and seriously is making a substantial error of judgment. The only conceivable options thus far are, obviously, the Tories and Reform. Neither qualify.
You do seem to be very Labour but to be honest anything can happen going forward
It is far from a given Labour will form the next government especially after this week
Outside chance: Tory/Reform government if and only if they form an electoral pact.
I think that only happens if Reform slip back to somewhere near level pegging. Any further and Tories say no thank you, stay as we are and any pact will be highly limited in scope as Reform hold the cards. Pact by necessity if they are cancelling each other out or if Labour are, say, 6 or 7 points clear in first
IANAE but it seems obvious that there is a substantial area on the chart WRT polling where Tories and Reform basically prevent each other winning, and at the same time prevent their combined seats getting to near 325 or more. Perhaps cleverer PBers than me can elucidate with numbers
In that eventuality, however improbable it may seem, 2029 would see a Labour led government, there being no other options.
It is also obvious that a GE which in essence pitched Lab v ReConPact in 530 seats and LD v ReConPact in 100 seats would be a genuine contest, at this moment completely unpredictable, and also gold plated box office with free popcorn.
So its possibly Aesop's scorpions and prisoner dilemma time coming up. Politics won't be dull.
Everything over 20k pension income (excluding state pension) is taxed at a 100% so no one ever gets more than 20k + state pension....not going to hit many private sector people for a start as it requires a 500k pension pot when you retire and few are going to have that.
I suspect there may be squeals about this from certain areas but lets face it those people that have accrued enough to go past 20k a year probably also own their property already. I reckon this would bring in a fair amount every year
It would bring nothing in, once you get anywhere near a pot generating 20k a year you invest it elsewhere into income generating products that are not 'pensions'
I suspect if you looked at the split of +20k pensions a year you would find well over 50% of them are in the public sector. I have worked all my life and mostly been above median wage for most of that and I can assure you I am getting no where near 20k a year when I retire
Everything over 20k pension income (excluding state pension) is taxed at a 100% so no one ever gets more than 20k + state pension....not going to hit many private sector people for a start as it requires a 500k pension pot when you retire and few are going to have that.
I suspect there may be squeals about this from certain areas but lets face it those people that have accrued enough to go past 20k a year probably also own their property already. I reckon this would bring in a fair amount every year
It would bring nothing in, once you get anywhere near a pot generating 20k a year you invest it elsewhere into income generating products that are not 'pensions'
Perhaps the state should seize all your assets when you reach the state retirement age. Then there’s no chance of earning any unauthorised income.
On a human level, I have a huge amount of persona sympathy for Rachel Reeves.
But if you applied for a job - perhaps with a slightly juiced-up CV - which you got, but then found you weren't up to doing that job, should I have any personal sympathy if you have a meltdown?
I’m pretty sure she caused a few people meltdowns when adding VAT to private school fees and gave absolutely zero fks and no personal sympathy.
It's difficult to feel too much sympathy when you look back at how arrogant she was before the election:
Wow. All the seeds are there indeed. The arrogance, the refusal to debate, the absence of ideas, and - most of all - a kind of panic when she thinks her mediocrity and unsuitability for the job has been exposed
And it has now been exposed and she’s in tears
My diminished sympathy has vanished
That’s very unfair of you. Don’t you remember her sympathy for Sunak and Hunt when they were trying to deal with crazy inflation caused by Covid and Ukraine. When she would defend them on tv and say, “be fair Alistair Campbell, (for it was he) these guys are doing a very hard job under very difficult circumstances not of their design or making.”
I also remember her sympathy after the election where she thanked Sunak and Hunt for stabilising things and helping bring inflation down so her inheritance was not as terrible as it could have been rather than fucking the economy by talking it down and making up stories about £20b black holes for purely political purposes.
So please, be fair to Rachel and have some sympathy.
There were a ton of unfunded spending commitments. That's a fact. Whether it benefits from being termed "£22b black hole" and to what extent incoming Labour genuinely didn't know about it, I don't know.
On the messaging and politics they were going for their version of the Cons "clearing up Labour's mess" - which ran successfully for the best part of a decade. But it doesn't seem to have worked for even a fortnight.
currently Labour are racking up a £22bn black hole about every 6 weeks. And its getting worse
Sure they are, Alan. And the Tories eat babies. Etc.
We borrowed £17.7 billion in May maybe I should make that £22bn in 5 weeks
We've been borrowing forever. Lab borrowing, Con borrowing, it's all the same. To make out this government is especially reckless is partisan nonsense.
Not at all
The stated aim of this government is to "fix the foundations". They havent.
Revenues are missing their targets because Reeves has crapped on the economy. The spending side of the equation is not being controlled.
OBR says Reeves will need another £20bn of tax rises just to stand still so the doom loop keeps rolling.
Everything you posted there about Labour is absolutely true. Your problem is that every word of it was also true about the Tories…
I didnt vote for the Tories and find it tedious that you lack the ability to move outside a binary world. However as things stand Labour are in power and the buck stops with them.
I didn’t say you voted for the Tories. I live outside the LabCon binary world- I’m a LibDem. But electoral it’s been one and then the other.
Simple truth - whilst Labour are in power, the mess we are in predates them winning the election 12 months ago. So the idea that we just blame them and therefore the LabCon cycle flips again is just daft - people are sick of it. Hence the rise of the Farage
On Wednesday, Downing Street insisted Rachel Reeves, the chancellor, was "not going anywhere" after her tearful appearance in the House of Commons during prime minister's questions sparked speculation about her political future.
The Ipsos poll also found that two-thirds of British adults are not confident Labour has the right plans to change the way the benefits system works in the UK, including nearly half of 2024 Labour voters.
Keiran Pedley, director of UK Politics at Ipsos, said: "Labour rows over welfare reform haven't just harmed the public's view on whether they can make the right changes in that policy area, they are raising wider questions about their ability to govern too.
"The public is starting to doubt Labour's ability to govern competently and seriously at the same levels they did with Boris Johnson and Rishi Sunak's governments. Labour will hope that this government doesn't end up going the same way."
I hope Ed Davey and his team are putting together some serious and practical plans. After all, next time it’s either them or Reform.
They're not. They're not serious at all. One of the many good parts about Kemi's excellent PMQs was that she called out all the other parties for not supporting welfare reform.
To think, when Starmer did his bleating 'I'm a lovable lefty really' u-turn on his Enoch tribute speech, I really thought things couldn't get any better for Kemi this week - but little did I know.
She had the most golden opportunity any LOTO will ever have to be honest, but boy did she stick it in the net.
But the Tories don't support welfare reform either. Performative cruelty to disabled people is not welfare reform.
Labour's original bill was cruel to genuinely disabled people, because it simply top-sliced £5bn off everyone in a completely arbitrary way. The Tories are in favour of reforming the system so that the genuinely disabled are protected, and those with very low level mental conditions that would actually be helped by work (not to mention those just ripping the piss) are encouraged into work. Unless you believe that one in four people is genuinely disabled, that is what any sensible person or party should support.
They were in power up until 2024, what stopped them.
On a human level, I have a huge amount of persona sympathy for Rachel Reeves.
But if you applied for a job - perhaps with a slightly juiced-up CV - which you got, but then found you weren't up to doing that job, should I have any personal sympathy if you have a meltdown?
I’m pretty sure she caused a few people meltdowns when adding VAT to private school fees and gave absolutely zero fks and no personal sympathy.
It's difficult to feel too much sympathy when you look back at how arrogant she was before the election:
Wow. All the seeds are there indeed. The arrogance, the refusal to debate, the absence of ideas, and - most of all - a kind of panic when she thinks her mediocrity and unsuitability for the job has been exposed
And it has now been exposed and she’s in tears
My diminished sympathy has vanished
That’s very unfair of you. Don’t you remember her sympathy for Sunak and Hunt when they were trying to deal with crazy inflation caused by Covid and Ukraine. When she would defend them on tv and say, “be fair Alistair Campbell, (for it was he) these guys are doing a very hard job under very difficult circumstances not of their design or making.”
I also remember her sympathy after the election where she thanked Sunak and Hunt for stabilising things and helping bring inflation down so her inheritance was not as terrible as it could have been rather than fucking the economy by talking it down and making up stories about £20b black holes for purely political purposes.
So please, be fair to Rachel and have some sympathy.
There were a ton of unfunded spending commitments. That's a fact. Whether it benefits from being termed "£22b black hole" and to what extent incoming Labour genuinely didn't know about it, I don't know.
On the messaging and politics they were going for their version of the Cons "clearing up Labour's mess" - which ran successfully for the best part of a decade. But it doesn't seem to have worked for even a fortnight.
currently Labour are racking up a £22bn black hole about every 6 weeks. And its getting worse
Sure they are, Alan. And the Tories eat babies. Etc.
We borrowed £17.7 billion in May maybe I should make that £22bn in 5 weeks
We've been borrowing forever. Lab borrowing, Con borrowing, it's all the same. To make out this government is especially reckless is partisan nonsense.
Not at all
The stated aim of this government is to "fix the foundations". They havent.
Revenues are missing their targets because Reeves has crapped on the economy. The spending side of the equation is not being controlled.
OBR says Reeves will need another £20bn of tax rises just to stand still so the doom loop keeps rolling.
Everything you posted there about Labour is absolutely true. Your problem is that every word of it was also true about the Tories…
I didnt vote for the Tories and find it tedious that you lack the ability to move outside a binary world. However as things stand Labour are in power and the buck stops with them.
I didn’t say you voted for the Tories. I live outside the LabCon binary world- I’m a LibDem. But electoral it’s been one and then the other.
Simple truth - whilst Labour are in power, the mess we are in predates them winning the election 12 months ago. So the idea that we just blame them and therefore the LabCon cycle flips again is just daft - people are sick of it. Hence the rise of the Farage
lib dems though are just undecideds in labour or tory clothing as it suits them
I suspect the Tories are fundamentally still in a deep hole, but I do have to say they have had a bit more spring in their step of late.
Whisper it, but Badenoch is starting to get a little better at PMQs. She had a huge open goal today, so it really would have been diabolically bad if she’d missed it. But she is starting to get less stilted and scripted. I think most of us still struggle to see her mounting a serious challenge for power, but there are perhaps a few signs that could - only could - start leading to some very tentative green shoots.
I listened to Kemi today and thought "Wow - you're rubbish at this". So many open goals, so many missed opportunities. She could have been entirely - on a human level - sympathetic to Reeves and left it to the lobby to 'show Keir up' for not noticing. She could have done the near opposite and made a point of Keir 'not noticing' what was going on under his watch.
But we just got some bland nonsense. It's only been a few hours and I can't even remember what she said. I would really like a strong with-conviction Tory party back in the fray. But this just isn't it.
On Wednesday, Downing Street insisted Rachel Reeves, the chancellor, was "not going anywhere" after her tearful appearance in the House of Commons during prime minister's questions sparked speculation about her political future.
The Ipsos poll also found that two-thirds of British adults are not confident Labour has the right plans to change the way the benefits system works in the UK, including nearly half of 2024 Labour voters.
Keiran Pedley, director of UK Politics at Ipsos, said: "Labour rows over welfare reform haven't just harmed the public's view on whether they can make the right changes in that policy area, they are raising wider questions about their ability to govern too.
"The public is starting to doubt Labour's ability to govern competently and seriously at the same levels they did with Boris Johnson and Rishi Sunak's governments. Labour will hope that this government doesn't end up going the same way."
I hope Ed Davey and his team are putting together some serious and practical plans. After all, next time it’s either them or Reform.
They're not. They're not serious at all. One of the many good parts about Kemi's excellent PMQs was that she called out all the other parties for not supporting welfare reform.
To think, when Starmer did his bleating 'I'm a lovable lefty really' u-turn on his Enoch tribute speech, I really thought things couldn't get any better for Kemi this week - but little did I know.
She had the most golden opportunity any LOTO will ever have to be honest, but boy did she stick it in the net.
But the Tories don't support welfare reform either. Performative cruelty to disabled people is not welfare reform.
Labour's original bill was cruel to genuinely disabled people, because it simply top-sliced £5bn off everyone in a completely arbitrary way. The Tories are in favour of reforming the system so that the genuinely disabled are protected, and those with very low level mental conditions that would actually be helped by work (not to mention those just ripping the piss) are encouraged into work. Unless you believe that one in four people is genuinely disabled, that is what any sensible person or party should support.
They were in power up until 2024, what stopped them.
On Wednesday, Downing Street insisted Rachel Reeves, the chancellor, was "not going anywhere" after her tearful appearance in the House of Commons during prime minister's questions sparked speculation about her political future.
The Ipsos poll also found that two-thirds of British adults are not confident Labour has the right plans to change the way the benefits system works in the UK, including nearly half of 2024 Labour voters.
Keiran Pedley, director of UK Politics at Ipsos, said: "Labour rows over welfare reform haven't just harmed the public's view on whether they can make the right changes in that policy area, they are raising wider questions about their ability to govern too.
"The public is starting to doubt Labour's ability to govern competently and seriously at the same levels they did with Boris Johnson and Rishi Sunak's governments. Labour will hope that this government doesn't end up going the same way."
Which is the makings of a problem, as anyone who thinks there are alternatives who could both get the seats to form a government and in addition govern competently and seriously is making a substantial error of judgment. The only conceivable options thus far are, obviously, the Tories and Reform. Neither qualify.
You do seem to be very Labour but to be honest anything can happen going forward
It is far from a given Labour will form the next government especially after this week
Outside chance: Tory/Reform government if and only if they form an electoral pact.
I think that only happens if Reform slip back to somewhere near level pegging. Any further and Tories say no thank you, stay as we are and any pact will be highly limited in scope as Reform hold the cards. Pact by necessity if they are cancelling each other out or if Labour are, say, 6 or 7 points clear in first
IANAE but it seems obvious that there is a substantial area on the chart WRT polling where Tories and Reform basically prevent each other winning, and at the same time prevent their combined seats getting to near 325 or more. Perhaps cleverer PBers than me can elucidate with numbers
In that eventuality, however improbable it may seem, 2029 would see a Labour led government, there being no other options.
It is also obvious that a GE which in essence pitched Lab v ReConPact in 530 seats and LD v ReConPact in 100 seats would be a genuine contest, at this moment completely unpredictable, and also gold plated box office with free popcorn.
So its possibly Aesop's scorpions and prisoner dilemma time coming up. Politics won't be dull.
I think by the time we reach the election Reform will be comfortably ahead of both the Tories and Labour in the low 30s, enough to get a majority alone. Labour are in huge trouble, having to deal with hard left MPs that won't get in line to vote for their agenda and about to be eviscerated by the markets for lumping their policy failures onto the national credit card. Last time Rishi was able to stabilise the situation by undoing most of what Truss had announced, who's going to save Labour? They will be forced to implement swingeing cuts that they will need to rely on the kindness of opposition MPs to get through. It's going to be a bruising 4 years and I think Labour will be out of power for a generation after this election.
I suspect the Tories are fundamentally still in a deep hole, but I do have to say they have had a bit more spring in their step of late.
Whisper it, but Badenoch is starting to get a little better at PMQs. She had a huge open goal today, so it really would have been diabolically bad if she’d missed it. But she is starting to get less stilted and scripted. I think most of us still struggle to see her mounting a serious challenge for power, but there are perhaps a few signs that could - only could - start leading to some very tentative green shoots.
I listened to Kemi today and thought "Wow - you're rubbish at this". So many open goals, so many missed opportunities. She could have been entirely - on a human level - sympathetic to Reeves and left it to the lobby to 'show Keir up' for not noticing. She could have done the near opposite and made a point of Keir 'not noticing' what was going on under his watch.
But we just got some bland nonsense. It's only been a few hours and I can't even remember what she said. I would really like a strong with-conviction Tory party back in the fray. But this just isn't it.
PMQs isn’t the time for conviction. It’s the time for getting your soundbites in and boosting backbench morale. She did exactly what she needed to today, and she did it pretty well I thought. And I think she’s been utterly rubbish in about 80% of her appearances (of the other 20%, I’d say some have been ‘ok’ and the rest have been poor).
a) all our government debt is in our own currency, so a big foreign currency loan wouldn't help us b) unlike Greece or Ireland, we print our own currency - if we want more, we can get it easily enough. c) the IMF's resources are already strained, and it just doesn't have the resources to bail us out - we are much too large an economy for their available resources to make a difference d) it's morally wrong anyway - the IMF's funds are supposed to help developing countries in temporary capital market difficulties, not developed ones with vast capital markets but lazy and incompetent governments e) it wouldn't do us any good anyway - what we need is sensible economic policies, and we know roughly what they are, and can formulate and implement them ourselves. That they are directly opposed to what the government's instincts are isn't, and cannot be, the IMF's problem, and they would be very reluctant to become the fall guys for Reeves's and Starmer's economic illiteracy.
The point of bringing in the IMF is to be able to blame an outside actor for forcing the inevitable but highly unpopular corrective action.
If you have a government with insufficient stones to do that for themselves, then it is a benefit to the country, on balance.
That only works if the government can argue that bringing in the IMF was essential because they need a huge foreign currency loan, which as I have argued they can't.
It just about worked in the much more deferential world of the 1970s, when floating exchange rates were new and the difference between them and the fixed rate regime of Bretton Woods wasn't really understood.
It won't work at all in the world of the 2020s, where we trust the political and business elite much less and there's no credible reason for us to take on such a loan - unless maybe we commit the ultimate idiocy of joining the EU and the Euro, but fortunately we've just about avoided that.
I'm afraid there's no shortcut or quick fix from Washington or anywhere else - we need a government that commits to implementing economic policies that work in the medium to long term, backed by a plurality of the electorate that supports them. The IMF won't get us there - even if their program works (and lots of theirs haven't), it wouldn't be legitimate and would soon be unwound.
And one of the lessons of this fiasco is that the whole damn country is still at the "cut spending, raise taxes, but do them in a way that doesn't hurt me" stage. We all (sort of) know what needs to be done, but I don't think the political rhetoric to persuade us to thank a government that does it exists. So we blame the politicians for not providing leadership that we are willing to deign to follow.
If you disagree, if you think there is a form of words that works, then excellent. The role of national saviour is yours.
Yes, this is a bad episode but I do find all the "we need a vision and a narrative and a sense of where we're going bla bla" to be meaningless mantra speak. We don't need that at all. We need good policies to make the country a little bit better than it would be without them. And we need to align expectations with what is reasonably achievable.
Completely disagree
WFA cut = “picking on pensioners”
“We are all in it together, share the pain” + WFA cut + tax rise = vision and narrative
Everything over 20k pension income (excluding state pension) is taxed at a 100% so no one ever gets more than 20k + state pension....not going to hit many private sector people for a start as it requires a 500k pension pot when you retire and few are going to have that.
I suspect there may be squeals about this from certain areas but lets face it those people that have accrued enough to go past 20k a year probably also own their property already. I reckon this would bring in a fair amount every year
Another thinly-disguised assault on "public sector pensions" it seems. If you think there are thousands of ex-public sector workers sitting on pension pots as high as £20k per annum, well, fine.
Public sector pensioners pay tax just like everyone else and many will be paying higher rate tax on their workplace pensions once they reach State pension age.
The emerging meme of "bash the boomers" seems to forget how older people are supporting key industries such as hospitality (go to any Tobe Carvery on a Tuesday lunchtime and 95% of the customers will be elderly) including the cruise industry (thousands being spent by the retired on cruises) and my favourite, the horse racing industry with betting shops and racecourses replete with pensioners gambling away their (presumably) ill-gotten gains.
On Wednesday, Downing Street insisted Rachel Reeves, the chancellor, was "not going anywhere" after her tearful appearance in the House of Commons during prime minister's questions sparked speculation about her political future.
The Ipsos poll also found that two-thirds of British adults are not confident Labour has the right plans to change the way the benefits system works in the UK, including nearly half of 2024 Labour voters.
Keiran Pedley, director of UK Politics at Ipsos, said: "Labour rows over welfare reform haven't just harmed the public's view on whether they can make the right changes in that policy area, they are raising wider questions about their ability to govern too.
"The public is starting to doubt Labour's ability to govern competently and seriously at the same levels they did with Boris Johnson and Rishi Sunak's governments. Labour will hope that this government doesn't end up going the same way."
Which is the makings of a problem, as anyone who thinks there are alternatives who could both get the seats to form a government and in addition govern competently and seriously is making a substantial error of judgment. The only conceivable options thus far are, obviously, the Tories and Reform. Neither qualify.
You do seem to be very Labour but to be honest anything can happen going forward
It is far from a given Labour will form the next government especially after this week
Outside chance: Tory/Reform government if and only if they form an electoral pact.
I think that only happens if Reform slip back to somewhere near level pegging. Any further and Tories say no thank you, stay as we are and any pact will be highly limited in scope as Reform hold the cards. Pact by necessity if they are cancelling each other out or if Labour are, say, 6 or 7 points clear in first
IANAE but it seems obvious that there is a substantial area on the chart WRT polling where Tories and Reform basically prevent each other winning, and at the same time prevent their combined seats getting to near 325 or more. Perhaps cleverer PBers than me can elucidate with numbers
In that eventuality, however improbable it may seem, 2029 would see a Labour led government, there being no other options.
It is also obvious that a GE which in essence pitched Lab v ReConPact in 530 seats and LD v ReConPact in 100 seats would be a genuine contest, at this moment completely unpredictable, and also gold plated box office with free popcorn.
So its possibly Aesop's scorpions and prisoner dilemma time coming up. Politics won't be dull.
If we use Baxter (which is not much use tbh in the new reality) then giving LD and Green approx what they got in 2024 and giving Lab, Con, Ref 24 each its almost a perfect 3 way split in seats give or take. A 2% swing either way twixt Con and Ref shifts it to 2:1 seats roughly between them increasing dramatically in difference every 1% swing thereafter. A 29 Lab, 20 Ref and Con result gives Ref and Con similar seats and Lab a small majority but looking at the spread a very crude pact of standing aside in the red wall and blue wall and maybe a London pact east and west broadly would lead to a probable Con/Ref govt
On Wednesday, Downing Street insisted Rachel Reeves, the chancellor, was "not going anywhere" after her tearful appearance in the House of Commons during prime minister's questions sparked speculation about her political future.
The Ipsos poll also found that two-thirds of British adults are not confident Labour has the right plans to change the way the benefits system works in the UK, including nearly half of 2024 Labour voters.
Keiran Pedley, director of UK Politics at Ipsos, said: "Labour rows over welfare reform haven't just harmed the public's view on whether they can make the right changes in that policy area, they are raising wider questions about their ability to govern too.
"The public is starting to doubt Labour's ability to govern competently and seriously at the same levels they did with Boris Johnson and Rishi Sunak's governments. Labour will hope that this government doesn't end up going the same way."
Which is the makings of a problem, as anyone who thinks there are alternatives who could both get the seats to form a government and in addition govern competently and seriously is making a substantial error of judgment. The only conceivable options thus far are, obviously, the Tories and Reform. Neither qualify.
You do seem to be very Labour but to be honest anything can happen going forward
It is far from a given Labour will form the next government especially after this week
We have evidence labour also cant govern either competently or seriously over the last year so also a waste of time voting for them
All politics being relative the question is not whether Labour are good - no-one thinks they are - but which party is least worst for the country. I don't think the competition as between Tory, Reform and Labour is all that severe. Labour are least worst, Tory have it all to do, Reform aren't in the competence stakes race.
Sorry don't agree labour so far have taken a tough situation and made it worse....if the country was a man up to his neck in quick sand they have put their foot on his head and pushing downwards.
Thanks, but you forgot to mention which of the three was your least worst, and like Monty Hall in the paradox you have left two boxes to choose from, Tory or Reform. (I think there's a goat behind them both).
I don't disagree that Labour have made it worse. The contest is not for excelling excellence; the contest is for least worst.
Apple TV are making a film/limited series of "Neuromancer". I have no idea if it's a good idea or bad idea. If they f**k it up as badly as they did "Foundation", I will be very sad
Everything over 20k pension income (excluding state pension) is taxed at a 100% so no one ever gets more than 20k + state pension....not going to hit many private sector people for a start as it requires a 500k pension pot when you retire and few are going to have that.
I suspect there may be squeals about this from certain areas but lets face it those people that have accrued enough to go past 20k a year probably also own their property already. I reckon this would bring in a fair amount every year
It would bring nothing in, once you get anywhere near a pot generating 20k a year you invest it elsewhere into income generating products that are not 'pensions'
Though it would catch all those who have already crystallised their pension into an annuity, or, if I understand the rules correctly, a pension drawdown pot.
But of course, like most of Pagan's ideas, it is utterly bonkers.
Everything over 20k pension income (excluding state pension) is taxed at a 100% so no one ever gets more than 20k + state pension....not going to hit many private sector people for a start as it requires a 500k pension pot when you retire and few are going to have that.
I suspect there may be squeals about this from certain areas but lets face it those people that have accrued enough to go past 20k a year probably also own their property already. I reckon this would bring in a fair amount every year
Another thinly-disguised assault on "public sector pensions" it seems. If you think there are thousands of ex-public sector workers sitting on pension pots as high as £20k per annum, well, fine.
Public sector pensioners pay tax just like everyone else and many will be paying higher rate tax on their workplace pensions once they reach State pension age.
The emerging meme of "bash the boomers" seems to forget how older people are supporting key industries such as hospitality (go to any Tobe Carvery on a Tuesday lunchtime and 95% of the customers will be elderly) including the cruise industry (thousands being spent by the retired on cruises) and my favourite, the horse racing industry with betting shops and racecourses replete with pensioners gambling away their (presumably) ill-gotten gains.
I know plenty of public sector workers who have retired who have explained to me how their 15k+ pension isnt gold plated because they only get 40/80's of their salary whereas they have paid a lot less into it than I have mine so yes I have no doubt you might not think it gold plated after all its only 15k but probably 3 times what someone in the private sector earning the same is going to get from theirs
I suspect the Tories are fundamentally still in a deep hole, but I do have to say they have had a bit more spring in their step of late.
Whisper it, but Badenoch is starting to get a little better at PMQs. She had a huge open goal today, so it really would have been diabolically bad if she’d missed it. But she is starting to get less stilted and scripted. I think most of us still struggle to see her mounting a serious challenge for power, but there are perhaps a few signs that could - only could - start leading to some very tentative green shoots.
I listened to Kemi today and thought "Wow - you're rubbish at this". So many open goals, so many missed opportunities. She could have been entirely - on a human level - sympathetic to Reeves and left it to the lobby to 'show Keir up' for not noticing. She could have done the near opposite and made a point of Keir 'not noticing' what was going on under his watch.
But we just got some bland nonsense. It's only been a few hours and I can't even remember what she said. I would really like a strong with-conviction Tory party back in the fray. But this just isn't it.
PMQs isn’t the time for conviction. It’s the time for getting your soundbites in and boosting backbench morale. She did exactly what she needed to today, and she did it pretty well I thought. And I think she’s been utterly rubbish in about 80% of her appearances (of the other 20%, I’d say some have been ‘ok’ and the rest have been poor).
I wasn't expecting conviction from her at PMQ's - just not being rubbish. Even 'faintly memorable' would do. The broader Tory party comment was in relation to your own broader party comments.
Everything over 20k pension income (excluding state pension) is taxed at a 100% so no one ever gets more than 20k + state pension....not going to hit many private sector people for a start as it requires a 500k pension pot when you retire and few are going to have that.
I suspect there may be squeals about this from certain areas but lets face it those people that have accrued enough to go past 20k a year probably also own their property already. I reckon this would bring in a fair amount every year
It would bring nothing in, once you get anywhere near a pot generating 20k a year you invest it elsewhere into income generating products that are not 'pensions'
I suspect if you looked at the split of +20k pensions a year you would find well over 50% of them are in the public sector. I have worked all my life and mostly been above median wage for most of that and I can assure you I am getting no where near 20k a year when I retire
Yes it'll be DB schemes, it's not a well kept secret, decent pension is one of the selling points for public sector recruitment. Only people that should be complaining are the more recently recruited public sector workers who won't get what they were sold. Anyone else could have made the choice to be public sector or made bigger contributions.
On Wednesday, Downing Street insisted Rachel Reeves, the chancellor, was "not going anywhere" after her tearful appearance in the House of Commons during prime minister's questions sparked speculation about her political future.
The Ipsos poll also found that two-thirds of British adults are not confident Labour has the right plans to change the way the benefits system works in the UK, including nearly half of 2024 Labour voters.
Keiran Pedley, director of UK Politics at Ipsos, said: "Labour rows over welfare reform haven't just harmed the public's view on whether they can make the right changes in that policy area, they are raising wider questions about their ability to govern too.
"The public is starting to doubt Labour's ability to govern competently and seriously at the same levels they did with Boris Johnson and Rishi Sunak's governments. Labour will hope that this government doesn't end up going the same way."
Which is the makings of a problem, as anyone who thinks there are alternatives who could both get the seats to form a government and in addition govern competently and seriously is making a substantial error of judgment. The only conceivable options thus far are, obviously, the Tories and Reform. Neither qualify.
You do seem to be very Labour but to be honest anything can happen going forward
It is far from a given Labour will form the next government especially after this week
We have evidence labour also cant govern either competently or seriously over the last year so also a waste of time voting for them
All politics being relative the question is not whether Labour are good - no-one thinks they are - but which party is least worst for the country. I don't think the competition as between Tory, Reform and Labour is all that severe. Labour are least worst, Tory have it all to do, Reform aren't in the competence stakes race.
Sorry don't agree labour so far have taken a tough situation and made it worse....if the country was a man up to his neck in quick sand they have put their foot on his head and pushing downwards.
Thanks, but you forgot to mention which of the three was your least worst, and like Monty Hall in the paradox you have left two boxes to choose from, Tory or Reform. (I think there's a goat behind them both).
I don't disagree that Labour have made it worse. The contest is not for excelling excellence; the contest is for least worst.
I think all our political parties are equally bad except the lib dems, I thought I had made that clear. The lib dems are the party I would put on the lowest pedestal but the rest are equally bad at having any answers or competence
On a human level, I have a huge amount of persona sympathy for Rachel Reeves.
But if you applied for a job - perhaps with a slightly juiced-up CV - which you got, but then found you weren't up to doing that job, should I have any personal sympathy if you have a meltdown?
I’m pretty sure she caused a few people meltdowns when adding VAT to private school fees and gave absolutely zero fks and no personal sympathy.
It's difficult to feel too much sympathy when you look back at how arrogant she was before the election:
Wow. All the seeds are there indeed. The arrogance, the refusal to debate, the absence of ideas, and - most of all - a kind of panic when she thinks her mediocrity and unsuitability for the job has been exposed
And it has now been exposed and she’s in tears
My diminished sympathy has vanished
That’s very unfair of you. Don’t you remember her sympathy for Sunak and Hunt when they were trying to deal with crazy inflation caused by Covid and Ukraine. When she would defend them on tv and say, “be fair Alistair Campbell, (for it was he) these guys are doing a very hard job under very difficult circumstances not of their design or making.”
I also remember her sympathy after the election where she thanked Sunak and Hunt for stabilising things and helping bring inflation down so her inheritance was not as terrible as it could have been rather than fucking the economy by talking it down and making up stories about £20b black holes for purely political purposes.
So please, be fair to Rachel and have some sympathy.
There were a ton of unfunded spending commitments. That's a fact. Whether it benefits from being termed "£22b black hole" and to what extent incoming Labour genuinely didn't know about it, I don't know.
On the messaging and politics they were going for their version of the Cons "clearing up Labour's mess" - which ran successfully for the best part of a decade. But it doesn't seem to have worked for even a fortnight.
currently Labour are racking up a £22bn black hole about every 6 weeks. And its getting worse
Sure they are, Alan. And the Tories eat babies. Etc.
We borrowed £17.7 billion in May maybe I should make that £22bn in 5 weeks
We've been borrowing forever. Lab borrowing, Con borrowing, it's all the same. To make out this government is especially reckless is partisan nonsense.
Not at all
The stated aim of this government is to "fix the foundations". They havent.
Revenues are missing their targets because Reeves has crapped on the economy. The spending side of the equation is not being controlled.
OBR says Reeves will need another £20bn of tax rises just to stand still so the doom loop keeps rolling.
Everything you posted there about Labour is absolutely true. Your problem is that every word of it was also true about the Tories…
I didnt vote for the Tories and find it tedious that you lack the ability to move outside a binary world. However as things stand Labour are in power and the buck stops with them.
I didn’t say you voted for the Tories. I live outside the LabCon binary world- I’m a LibDem. But electoral it’s been one and then the other.
Simple truth - whilst Labour are in power, the mess we are in predates them winning the election 12 months ago. So the idea that we just blame them and therefore the LabCon cycle flips again is just daft - people are sick of it. Hence the rise of the Farage
lib dems though are just undecideds in labour or tory clothing as it suits them
@Pagan2 this is nonsense. I have been a liberal all my life. I am neither a Tory nor a Socialist and would vote for neither. Being a liberal is a distinct philosophy.
Apple TV are making a film/limited series of "Neuromancer". I have no idea if it's a good idea or bad idea. If they f**k it up as badly as they did "Foundation", I will be very sad
I suspect the Tories are fundamentally still in a deep hole, but I do have to say they have had a bit more spring in their step of late.
Whisper it, but Badenoch is starting to get a little better at PMQs. She had a huge open goal today, so it really would have been diabolically bad if she’d missed it. But she is starting to get less stilted and scripted. I think most of us still struggle to see her mounting a serious challenge for power, but there are perhaps a few signs that could - only could - start leading to some very tentative green shoots.
I listened to Kemi today and thought "Wow - you're rubbish at this". So many open goals, so many missed opportunities. She could have been entirely - on a human level - sympathetic to Reeves and left it to the lobby to 'show Keir up' for not noticing. She could have done the near opposite and made a point of Keir 'not noticing' what was going on under his watch.
But we just got some bland nonsense. It's only been a few hours and I can't even remember what she said. I would really like a strong with-conviction Tory party back in the fray. But this just isn't it.
PMQs isn’t the time for conviction. It’s the time for getting your soundbites in and boosting backbench morale. She did exactly what she needed to today, and she did it pretty well I thought. And I think she’s been utterly rubbish in about 80% of her appearances (of the other 20%, I’d say some have been ‘ok’ and the rest have been poor).
I wasn't expecting conviction from her at PMQ's - just not being rubbish. Even 'faintly memorable' would do. The broader Tory party comment was in relation to your own broader party comments.
We disagree on that then. she is usually rubbish, but I didn’t think today was one of those, and I do think in recent performances she has been a bit better than her usual.
Everything over 20k pension income (excluding state pension) is taxed at a 100% so no one ever gets more than 20k + state pension....not going to hit many private sector people for a start as it requires a 500k pension pot when you retire and few are going to have that.
I suspect there may be squeals about this from certain areas but lets face it those people that have accrued enough to go past 20k a year probably also own their property already. I reckon this would bring in a fair amount every year
It would bring nothing in, once you get anywhere near a pot generating 20k a year you invest it elsewhere into income generating products that are not 'pensions'
I suspect if you looked at the split of +20k pensions a year you would find well over 50% of them are in the public sector. I have worked all my life and mostly been above median wage for most of that and I can assure you I am getting no where near 20k a year when I retire
Yes it'll be DB schemes, it's not a well kept secret, decent pension is one of the selling points for public sector recruitment. Only people that should be complaining are the more recently recruited public sector workers who won't get what they were sold. Anyone else could have made the choice to be public sector or made bigger contributions.
Some of us like to work at something meaningful rather than having to put up with the idiocies of the public sector....I have had the misfortune now of being pulled into working on four different projects for four different departments, health, transport, home and education.....Every time my view of the ability of civil servants has become more contemptuous....vapid tosspots with little intelligence that spend more time on internal office politics than actually getting the job done
I suspect the Tories are fundamentally still in a deep hole, but I do have to say they have had a bit more spring in their step of late.
Whisper it, but Badenoch is starting to get a little better at PMQs. She had a huge open goal today, so it really would have been diabolically bad if she’d missed it. But she is starting to get less stilted and scripted. I think most of us still struggle to see her mounting a serious challenge for power, but there are perhaps a few signs that could - only could - start leading to some very tentative green shoots.
I listened to Kemi today and thought "Wow - you're rubbish at this". So many open goals, so many missed opportunities. She could have been entirely - on a human level - sympathetic to Reeves and left it to the lobby to 'show Keir up' for not noticing. She could have done the near opposite and made a point of Keir 'not noticing' what was going on under his watch.
But we just got some bland nonsense. It's only been a few hours and I can't even remember what she said. I would really like a strong with-conviction Tory party back in the fray. But this just isn't it.
PMQs isn’t the time for conviction. It’s the time for getting your soundbites in and boosting backbench morale. She did exactly what she needed to today, and she did it pretty well I thought. And I think she’s been utterly rubbish in about 80% of her appearances (of the other 20%, I’d say some have been ‘ok’ and the rest have been poor).
I wasn't expecting conviction from her at PMQ's - just not being rubbish. Even 'faintly memorable' would do. The broader Tory party comment was in relation to your own broader party comments.
I mean its all personal opinion. I thought she did well today, the line about the Labour whips being able to get the MPs to cheer on command but not actually vote for government policy was a doozy
On Wednesday, Downing Street insisted Rachel Reeves, the chancellor, was "not going anywhere" after her tearful appearance in the House of Commons during prime minister's questions sparked speculation about her political future.
The Ipsos poll also found that two-thirds of British adults are not confident Labour has the right plans to change the way the benefits system works in the UK, including nearly half of 2024 Labour voters.
Keiran Pedley, director of UK Politics at Ipsos, said: "Labour rows over welfare reform haven't just harmed the public's view on whether they can make the right changes in that policy area, they are raising wider questions about their ability to govern too.
"The public is starting to doubt Labour's ability to govern competently and seriously at the same levels they did with Boris Johnson and Rishi Sunak's governments. Labour will hope that this government doesn't end up going the same way."
Which is the makings of a problem, as anyone who thinks there are alternatives who could both get the seats to form a government and in addition govern competently and seriously is making a substantial error of judgment. The only conceivable options thus far are, obviously, the Tories and Reform. Neither qualify.
You do seem to be very Labour but to be honest anything can happen going forward
It is far from a given Labour will form the next government especially after this week
Outside chance: Tory/Reform government if and only if they form an electoral pact.
I think that only happens if Reform slip back to somewhere near level pegging. Any further and Tories say no thank you, stay as we are and any pact will be highly limited in scope as Reform hold the cards. Pact by necessity if they are cancelling each other out or if Labour are, say, 6 or 7 points clear in first
IANAE but it seems obvious that there is a substantial area on the chart WRT polling where Tories and Reform basically prevent each other winning, and at the same time prevent their combined seats getting to near 325 or more. Perhaps cleverer PBers than me can elucidate with numbers
In that eventuality, however improbable it may seem, 2029 would see a Labour led government, there being no other options.
It is also obvious that a GE which in essence pitched Lab v ReConPact in 530 seats and LD v ReConPact in 100 seats would be a genuine contest, at this moment completely unpredictable, and also gold plated box office with free popcorn.
So its possibly Aesop's scorpions and prisoner dilemma time coming up. Politics won't be dull.
I think by the time we reach the election Reform will be comfortably ahead of both the Tories and Labour in the low 30s, enough to get a majority alone. Labour are in huge trouble, having to deal with hard left MPs that won't get in line to vote for their agenda and about to be eviscerated by the markets for lumping their policy failures onto the national credit card. Last time Rishi was able to stabilise the situation by undoing most of what Truss had announced, who's going to save Labour? They will be forced to implement swingeing cuts that they will need to rely on the kindness of opposition MPs to get through. It's going to be a bruising 4 years and I think Labour will be out of power for a generation after this election.
Thanks. My own intuition (=guess) is that by the next election (assume no Ref/Con pact) Reform will have levelled off, Tories will recover and Labour - who currently are actually doing OK by the new prevailing standards - will be in the lead, with Con/Ref split in such a way that they demolish each other.
Baxter for example: Lab 28 Ref and Con 22 each LD 14.
On a human level, I have a huge amount of persona sympathy for Rachel Reeves.
But if you applied for a job - perhaps with a slightly juiced-up CV - which you got, but then found you weren't up to doing that job, should I have any personal sympathy if you have a meltdown?
I’m pretty sure she caused a few people meltdowns when adding VAT to private school fees and gave absolutely zero fks and no personal sympathy.
It's difficult to feel too much sympathy when you look back at how arrogant she was before the election:
Wow. All the seeds are there indeed. The arrogance, the refusal to debate, the absence of ideas, and - most of all - a kind of panic when she thinks her mediocrity and unsuitability for the job has been exposed
And it has now been exposed and she’s in tears
My diminished sympathy has vanished
That’s very unfair of you. Don’t you remember her sympathy for Sunak and Hunt when they were trying to deal with crazy inflation caused by Covid and Ukraine. When she would defend them on tv and say, “be fair Alistair Campbell, (for it was he) these guys are doing a very hard job under very difficult circumstances not of their design or making.”
I also remember her sympathy after the election where she thanked Sunak and Hunt for stabilising things and helping bring inflation down so her inheritance was not as terrible as it could have been rather than fucking the economy by talking it down and making up stories about £20b black holes for purely political purposes.
So please, be fair to Rachel and have some sympathy.
There were a ton of unfunded spending commitments. That's a fact. Whether it benefits from being termed "£22b black hole" and to what extent incoming Labour genuinely didn't know about it, I don't know.
On the messaging and politics they were going for their version of the Cons "clearing up Labour's mess" - which ran successfully for the best part of a decade. But it doesn't seem to have worked for even a fortnight.
currently Labour are racking up a £22bn black hole about every 6 weeks. And its getting worse
Sure they are, Alan. And the Tories eat babies. Etc.
We borrowed £17.7 billion in May maybe I should make that £22bn in 5 weeks
We've been borrowing forever. Lab borrowing, Con borrowing, it's all the same. To make out this government is especially reckless is partisan nonsense.
Not at all
The stated aim of this government is to "fix the foundations". They havent.
Revenues are missing their targets because Reeves has crapped on the economy. The spending side of the equation is not being controlled.
OBR says Reeves will need another £20bn of tax rises just to stand still so the doom loop keeps rolling.
Everything you posted there about Labour is absolutely true. Your problem is that every word of it was also true about the Tories…
I didnt vote for the Tories and find it tedious that you lack the ability to move outside a binary world. However as things stand Labour are in power and the buck stops with them.
I didn’t say you voted for the Tories. I live outside the LabCon binary world- I’m a LibDem. But electoral it’s been one and then the other.
Simple truth - whilst Labour are in power, the mess we are in predates them winning the election 12 months ago. So the idea that we just blame them and therefore the LabCon cycle flips again is just daft - people are sick of it. Hence the rise of the Farage
lib dems though are just undecideds in labour or tory clothing as it suits them
@Pagan2 this is nonsense. I have been a liberal all my life. I am neither a Tory nor a Socialist and would vote for neither. Being a liberal is a distinct philosophy.
You belong to a party thats whole point is to go into coalition with which ever party will let a couple of you have ministerial cars.....as was proven in 2010....sorry you appear to lack any legs to stand on
On a human level, I have a huge amount of persona sympathy for Rachel Reeves.
But if you applied for a job - perhaps with a slightly juiced-up CV - which you got, but then found you weren't up to doing that job, should I have any personal sympathy if you have a meltdown?
I’m pretty sure she caused a few people meltdowns when adding VAT to private school fees and gave absolutely zero fks and no personal sympathy.
It's difficult to feel too much sympathy when you look back at how arrogant she was before the election:
Wow. All the seeds are there indeed. The arrogance, the refusal to debate, the absence of ideas, and - most of all - a kind of panic when she thinks her mediocrity and unsuitability for the job has been exposed
And it has now been exposed and she’s in tears
My diminished sympathy has vanished
That’s very unfair of you. Don’t you remember her sympathy for Sunak and Hunt when they were trying to deal with crazy inflation caused by Covid and Ukraine. When she would defend them on tv and say, “be fair Alistair Campbell, (for it was he) these guys are doing a very hard job under very difficult circumstances not of their design or making.”
I also remember her sympathy after the election where she thanked Sunak and Hunt for stabilising things and helping bring inflation down so her inheritance was not as terrible as it could have been rather than fucking the economy by talking it down and making up stories about £20b black holes for purely political purposes.
So please, be fair to Rachel and have some sympathy.
There were a ton of unfunded spending commitments. That's a fact. Whether it benefits from being termed "£22b black hole" and to what extent incoming Labour genuinely didn't know about it, I don't know.
On the messaging and politics they were going for their version of the Cons "clearing up Labour's mess" - which ran successfully for the best part of a decade. But it doesn't seem to have worked for even a fortnight.
currently Labour are racking up a £22bn black hole about every 6 weeks. And its getting worse
Sure they are, Alan. And the Tories eat babies. Etc.
We borrowed £17.7 billion in May maybe I should make that £22bn in 5 weeks
We've been borrowing forever. Lab borrowing, Con borrowing, it's all the same. To make out this government is especially reckless is partisan nonsense.
Not at all
The stated aim of this government is to "fix the foundations". They havent.
Revenues are missing their targets because Reeves has crapped on the economy. The spending side of the equation is not being controlled.
OBR says Reeves will need another £20bn of tax rises just to stand still so the doom loop keeps rolling.
Everything you posted there about Labour is absolutely true. Your problem is that every word of it was also true about the Tories…
I didnt vote for the Tories and find it tedious that you lack the ability to move outside a binary world. However as things stand Labour are in power and the buck stops with them.
I didn’t say you voted for the Tories. I live outside the LabCon binary world- I’m a LibDem. But electoral it’s been one and then the other.
Simple truth - whilst Labour are in power, the mess we are in predates them winning the election 12 months ago. So the idea that we just blame them and therefore the LabCon cycle flips again is just daft - people are sick of it. Hence the rise of the Farage
lib dems though are just undecideds in labour or tory clothing as it suits them
@Pagan2 this is nonsense. I have been a liberal all my life. I am neither a Tory nor a Socialist and would vote for neither. Being a liberal is a distinct philosophy.
You belong to a party thats whole point is to go into coalition with which ever party will let a couple of you have ministerial cars.....as was proven in 2010....sorry you appear to lack any legs to stand on
@kjh by the way that is not attack on you personally I am sure you have principles.....just saying the lib dems as a party have less principles than one of TSE's ginger step moms
On Wednesday, Downing Street insisted Rachel Reeves, the chancellor, was "not going anywhere" after her tearful appearance in the House of Commons during prime minister's questions sparked speculation about her political future.
The Ipsos poll also found that two-thirds of British adults are not confident Labour has the right plans to change the way the benefits system works in the UK, including nearly half of 2024 Labour voters.
Keiran Pedley, director of UK Politics at Ipsos, said: "Labour rows over welfare reform haven't just harmed the public's view on whether they can make the right changes in that policy area, they are raising wider questions about their ability to govern too.
"The public is starting to doubt Labour's ability to govern competently and seriously at the same levels they did with Boris Johnson and Rishi Sunak's governments. Labour will hope that this government doesn't end up going the same way."
Which is the makings of a problem, as anyone who thinks there are alternatives who could both get the seats to form a government and in addition govern competently and seriously is making a substantial error of judgment. The only conceivable options thus far are, obviously, the Tories and Reform. Neither qualify.
You do seem to be very Labour but to be honest anything can happen going forward
It is far from a given Labour will form the next government especially after this week
Not 'very Labour' at all. But my lifelong adherence to One Nation Toryism in the tradition of Burke's small 'c' conservatism doesn't have a party to stand up for it, so Labour is the best of a bad job for the moment.
While what I want is a trad Tory revival, what there is is what I am going to get.
As all politics is relative, the search is on for a potential government less awful that the current one, which has disappointed its long term friends probably even more than those like me who lent it their vote.
Current score: LDs don't count as they can't win more than 100 seats unless there is a paradigm shift. Tories have not yet established that they are serious. Reform could gain power if they have a pact but no-one at all, including their voters think they have a serious plan for serious times.
Next government: Probably Labour led. Outside chance: Tory/Reform government if and only if they form an electoral pact.
Classic Tory centrist - demand loyalty from the right wing loonies when there's a centrist leader, bugger off to another party when there isn't.
Thanks. But you are in the wrong register. Important loyalties don't change. Middlesex, Arsenal, Saracens, Cambridge (boat race) unchanging from earliest days. In politics you have to think about trivia like what is best (or at the moment least worst) for the country.
On a human level, I have a huge amount of persona sympathy for Rachel Reeves.
But if you applied for a job - perhaps with a slightly juiced-up CV - which you got, but then found you weren't up to doing that job, should I have any personal sympathy if you have a meltdown?
I’m pretty sure she caused a few people meltdowns when adding VAT to private school fees and gave absolutely zero fks and no personal sympathy.
It's difficult to feel too much sympathy when you look back at how arrogant she was before the election:
Wow. All the seeds are there indeed. The arrogance, the refusal to debate, the absence of ideas, and - most of all - a kind of panic when she thinks her mediocrity and unsuitability for the job has been exposed
And it has now been exposed and she’s in tears
My diminished sympathy has vanished
That’s very unfair of you. Don’t you remember her sympathy for Sunak and Hunt when they were trying to deal with crazy inflation caused by Covid and Ukraine. When she would defend them on tv and say, “be fair Alistair Campbell, (for it was he) these guys are doing a very hard job under very difficult circumstances not of their design or making.”
I also remember her sympathy after the election where she thanked Sunak and Hunt for stabilising things and helping bring inflation down so her inheritance was not as terrible as it could have been rather than fucking the economy by talking it down and making up stories about £20b black holes for purely political purposes.
So please, be fair to Rachel and have some sympathy.
There were a ton of unfunded spending commitments. That's a fact. Whether it benefits from being termed "£22b black hole" and to what extent incoming Labour genuinely didn't know about it, I don't know.
On the messaging and politics they were going for their version of the Cons "clearing up Labour's mess" - which ran successfully for the best part of a decade. But it doesn't seem to have worked for even a fortnight.
currently Labour are racking up a £22bn black hole about every 6 weeks. And its getting worse
Sure they are, Alan. And the Tories eat babies. Etc.
We borrowed £17.7 billion in May maybe I should make that £22bn in 5 weeks
We've been borrowing forever. Lab borrowing, Con borrowing, it's all the same. To make out this government is especially reckless is partisan nonsense.
Not at all
The stated aim of this government is to "fix the foundations". They havent.
Revenues are missing their targets because Reeves has crapped on the economy. The spending side of the equation is not being controlled.
OBR says Reeves will need another £20bn of tax rises just to stand still so the doom loop keeps rolling.
Everything you posted there about Labour is absolutely true. Your problem is that every word of it was also true about the Tories…
I didnt vote for the Tories and find it tedious that you lack the ability to move outside a binary world. However as things stand Labour are in power and the buck stops with them.
I didn’t say you voted for the Tories. I live outside the LabCon binary world- I’m a LibDem. But electoral it’s been one and then the other.
Simple truth - whilst Labour are in power, the mess we are in predates them winning the election 12 months ago. So the idea that we just blame them and therefore the LabCon cycle flips again is just daft - people are sick of it. Hence the rise of the Farage
lib dems though are just undecideds in labour or tory clothing as it suits them
@Pagan2 this is nonsense. I have been a liberal all my life. I am neither a Tory nor a Socialist and would vote for neither. Being a liberal is a distinct philosophy.
You belong to a party thats whole point is to go into coalition with which ever party will let a couple of you have ministerial cars.....as was proven in 2010....sorry you appear to lack any legs to stand on
This is utter nonsense. I have been a liberal for over 50 years. Do you really think what you just said can therefore be true? Or that maybe there are some real principles behind it.
If what you said were true for any of us we would have joined Labour or the Conservatives. If what you said was true why have we made it so more difficult for ourselves. This is just a bizarre view because you have a hang up about the LDs.
Obviously there's nothing else he could say in response, but it still feels basically pointless to say anything at all given the entire reason for the investigation. Demonstrably the organisation wouldn't co-operate if it felt it could get away with it.
The High Court has ordered a "robust and independent" new investigation into how MI5 gave false evidence to multiple courts, after rejecting two official inquiries provided by the Security Service as seriously "deficient".
The two reviews took place after the BBC revealed MI5 had lied to three courts in a case concerning a neo-Nazi state agent who abused women...
On a human level, I have a huge amount of persona sympathy for Rachel Reeves.
But if you applied for a job - perhaps with a slightly juiced-up CV - which you got, but then found you weren't up to doing that job, should I have any personal sympathy if you have a meltdown?
I’m pretty sure she caused a few people meltdowns when adding VAT to private school fees and gave absolutely zero fks and no personal sympathy.
It's difficult to feel too much sympathy when you look back at how arrogant she was before the election:
Wow. All the seeds are there indeed. The arrogance, the refusal to debate, the absence of ideas, and - most of all - a kind of panic when she thinks her mediocrity and unsuitability for the job has been exposed
And it has now been exposed and she’s in tears
My diminished sympathy has vanished
That’s very unfair of you. Don’t you remember her sympathy for Sunak and Hunt when they were trying to deal with crazy inflation caused by Covid and Ukraine. When she would defend them on tv and say, “be fair Alistair Campbell, (for it was he) these guys are doing a very hard job under very difficult circumstances not of their design or making.”
I also remember her sympathy after the election where she thanked Sunak and Hunt for stabilising things and helping bring inflation down so her inheritance was not as terrible as it could have been rather than fucking the economy by talking it down and making up stories about £20b black holes for purely political purposes.
So please, be fair to Rachel and have some sympathy.
There were a ton of unfunded spending commitments. That's a fact. Whether it benefits from being termed "£22b black hole" and to what extent incoming Labour genuinely didn't know about it, I don't know.
On the messaging and politics they were going for their version of the Cons "clearing up Labour's mess" - which ran successfully for the best part of a decade. But it doesn't seem to have worked for even a fortnight.
currently Labour are racking up a £22bn black hole about every 6 weeks. And its getting worse
Sure they are, Alan. And the Tories eat babies. Etc.
We borrowed £17.7 billion in May maybe I should make that £22bn in 5 weeks
We've been borrowing forever. Lab borrowing, Con borrowing, it's all the same. To make out this government is especially reckless is partisan nonsense.
Not at all
The stated aim of this government is to "fix the foundations". They havent.
Revenues are missing their targets because Reeves has crapped on the economy. The spending side of the equation is not being controlled.
OBR says Reeves will need another £20bn of tax rises just to stand still so the doom loop keeps rolling.
Everything you posted there about Labour is absolutely true. Your problem is that every word of it was also true about the Tories…
I didnt vote for the Tories and find it tedious that you lack the ability to move outside a binary world. However as things stand Labour are in power and the buck stops with them.
I didn’t say you voted for the Tories. I live outside the LabCon binary world- I’m a LibDem. But electoral it’s been one and then the other.
Simple truth - whilst Labour are in power, the mess we are in predates them winning the election 12 months ago. So the idea that we just blame them and therefore the LabCon cycle flips again is just daft - people are sick of it. Hence the rise of the Farage
lib dems though are just undecideds in labour or tory clothing as it suits them
@Pagan2 this is nonsense. I have been a liberal all my life. I am neither a Tory nor a Socialist and would vote for neither. Being a liberal is a distinct philosophy.
You belong to a party thats whole point is to go into coalition with which ever party will let a couple of you have ministerial cars.....as was proven in 2010....sorry you appear to lack any legs to stand on
This is utter nonsense. I have been a liberal for over 50 years. Do you really think what you just said can therefore be true? Or that maybe there are some real principles behind it.
If what you said were true for any of us we would have joined Labour or the Conservatives. If what you said was true why have we made it so more difficult for ourselves. This is just a bizarre view because you have a hang up about the LDs.
It makes no sense.
As I said I am not impugning yourself. I have no doubt you have principles. However I doubt your party does, nor for that matter do I imagine any of the others do. The lib dems will happily sell themselves to the highest bidder as I am sure will labour or tories if it comes to it
On Wednesday, Downing Street insisted Rachel Reeves, the chancellor, was "not going anywhere" after her tearful appearance in the House of Commons during prime minister's questions sparked speculation about her political future.
The Ipsos poll also found that two-thirds of British adults are not confident Labour has the right plans to change the way the benefits system works in the UK, including nearly half of 2024 Labour voters.
Keiran Pedley, director of UK Politics at Ipsos, said: "Labour rows over welfare reform haven't just harmed the public's view on whether they can make the right changes in that policy area, they are raising wider questions about their ability to govern too.
"The public is starting to doubt Labour's ability to govern competently and seriously at the same levels they did with Boris Johnson and Rishi Sunak's governments. Labour will hope that this government doesn't end up going the same way."
Which is the makings of a problem, as anyone who thinks there are alternatives who could both get the seats to form a government and in addition govern competently and seriously is making a substantial error of judgment. The only conceivable options thus far are, obviously, the Tories and Reform. Neither qualify.
You do seem to be very Labour but to be honest anything can happen going forward
It is far from a given Labour will form the next government especially after this week
Outside chance: Tory/Reform government if and only if they form an electoral pact.
I think that only happens if Reform slip back to somewhere near level pegging. Any further and Tories say no thank you, stay as we are and any pact will be highly limited in scope as Reform hold the cards. Pact by necessity if they are cancelling each other out or if Labour are, say, 6 or 7 points clear in first
IANAE but it seems obvious that there is a substantial area on the chart WRT polling where Tories and Reform basically prevent each other winning, and at the same time prevent their combined seats getting to near 325 or more. Perhaps cleverer PBers than me can elucidate with numbers
In that eventuality, however improbable it may seem, 2029 would see a Labour led government, there being no other options.
It is also obvious that a GE which in essence pitched Lab v ReConPact in 530 seats and LD v ReConPact in 100 seats would be a genuine contest, at this moment completely unpredictable, and also gold plated box office with free popcorn.
So its possibly Aesop's scorpions and prisoner dilemma time coming up. Politics won't be dull.
I think by the time we reach the election Reform will be comfortably ahead of both the Tories and Labour in the low 30s, enough to get a majority alone. Labour are in huge trouble, having to deal with hard left MPs that won't get in line to vote for their agenda and about to be eviscerated by the markets for lumping their policy failures onto the national credit card. Last time Rishi was able to stabilise the situation by undoing most of what Truss had announced, who's going to save Labour? They will be forced to implement swingeing cuts that they will need to rely on the kindness of opposition MPs to get through. It's going to be a bruising 4 years and I think Labour will be out of power for a generation after this election.
Thanks. My own intuition (=guess) is that by the next election (assume no Ref/Con pact) Reform will have levelled off, Tories will recover and Labour - who currently are actually doing OK by the new prevailing standards - will be in the lead, with Con/Ref split in such a way that they demolish each other.
Baxter for example: Lab 28 Ref and Con 22 each LD 14.
This gives us a Lab/LD coalition.
Might well end up like that although unless the LDs come up with a USP i cant see them increasing their vote from 2024 with 3 other 'players' in the race for first. I see them drifting (without a USP) back towards 10 or under and squeezed hard. Theyll do better (i think) if the Tories or Reform are trailing the other two more
9 Labour MPs voted against proscribing PA and some (not sure how many yet) of them joined the rally outside parliament. Surely Labour has to expel them? Its not a welfare rebellion, its open support for what will be a terrorist organisation under uk law in 54 hours time
This is what happens when such a big majority is won in razor thin margins. MPs have no reason to listen to the whips because the party can offer them no protection from being booted out next time around.
Yvette Cooper was certainly correct to proscribe PA.
Yup, one of the few good decisions the government has made. She should probably get the chancellor's job when they dump Reeves. Rare competence in the cabinet.
Really? HIPs…
She’s one of those mediocre people that float around in semi senior positions but never achieve anything meaningful
9 Labour MPs voted against proscribing PA and some (not sure how many yet) of them joined the rally outside parliament. Surely Labour has to expel them? Its not a welfare rebellion, its open support for what will be a terrorist organisation under uk law in 54 hours time
This is what happens when such a big majority is won in razor thin margins. MPs have no reason to listen to the whips because the party can offer them no protection from being booted out next time around.
Yvette Cooper was certainly correct to proscribe PA.
Yup, one of the few good decisions the government has made. She should probably get the chancellor's job when they dump Reeves. Rare competence in the cabinet.
She’s one of those mediocre people that float around in semi senior positions but never achieve anything meaningful
9 Labour MPs voted against proscribing PA and some (not sure how many yet) of them joined the rally outside parliament. Surely Labour has to expel them? Its not a welfare rebellion, its open support for what will be a terrorist organisation under uk law in 54 hours time
This is what happens when such a big majority is won in razor thin margins. MPs have no reason to listen to the whips because the party can offer them no protection from being booted out next time around.
Yvette Cooper was certainly correct to proscribe PA.
Yup, one of the few good decisions the government has made. She should probably get the chancellor's job when they dump Reeves. Rare competence in the cabinet.
Really? HIPs…
She’s one of those mediocre people that float around in semi senior positions but never achieve anything meaningful
I asked before what has she done that seems vaguely competent....the only thing she pioneered was hips and that was the equivalent of inventing a chocolate teapot
Comments
The old (patrician, somewhat snobbish) right line was "we think the left is well-meaning but mistaken, whereas they haven't got beyond 'the right are evil'". And yes, it is snobbish and more than a bit grating. But it was a reasonable emoillient for society. Whereas now, the worst people on the right are just as willing to shout EVIL across the barricades as the worst sort of lefty. And increasingly, the worst sort of right are the ones running the right.
After the last couple of days the Conservatives are back. And you know it.
What’s also abundantly clear, the LibDems have absolutely blown their opportunity. They offer nothing in the House of Commons - no presence, no interesting or workable solutions. Just a parish council grouping.
So that's huge question marks over Starmer and Reeves. They picked a fight they could not win. EVen if they 'won'.
A head should roll. It would likely be Reeves but it absolutely should be Morgan McSweeney. He is clearly hopelessly out of his depth and you can tell that because he should have threatened to resign before allowing it to get near this far. That's being generous because I suspect this whole sh*t show originated with him.
I will keep patiently making the same point - your lot utterly blew it. We’re seeing Labour’s reputation crumble and chaos ensue. You think people will see this and think “let’s put back on the party who made chaos what it is”? The party who so utterly fucked the economy and services that everything is broken?
The winners here are Reform. Go look at the polls.
Surely Labour has to expel them? Its not a welfare rebellion, its open support for what will be a terrorist organisation under uk law in 54 hours time
If MMcS wants to be the story, he can stand for election himself.
So in a weird way you might want the people who beat you to have a honeymoon period.
I get the impression the hard-core left are goading SKS into trying to expel them
The stated aim of this government is to "fix the foundations". They havent.
Revenues are missing their targets because Reeves has crapped on the economy. The spending side of the equation is not being controlled.
OBR says Reeves will need another £20bn of tax rises just to stand still so the doom loop keeps rolling.
Labour can only salvage anything by Starmer going. Reeves going won't do it. McSweeney going certainly won't do it - one may as well change the scatter cushions in Number 10.
https://www.racingpost.com/news/britain/racing-tax/bha-issues-urgent-call-to-arms-to-axe-the-racing-tax-over-fears-of-66-million-hit-to-the-sports-finances-a6uSs8G6xgHo/
The show must go on, yeah
Inside my heart is breaking
My make up may be flaking
But my smile still stays on
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t99KH0TR-J4&t=2s
If you notice Kneecap stick to fuck the Tories, the British were bad in Ireland, but never go after individuals in the industry.
While what I want is a trad Tory revival, what there is is what I am going to get.
As all politics is relative, the search is on for a potential government less awful that the current one, which has disappointed its long term friends probably even more than those like me who lent it their vote.
Current score:
LDs don't count as they can't win more than 100 seats unless there is a paradigm shift.
Tories have not yet established that they are serious.
Reform could gain power if they have a pact but no-one at all, including their voters think they have a serious plan for serious times.
Next government: Probably Labour led.
Outside chance: Tory/Reform government if and only if they form an electoral pact.
Fed up with this bollocks "you only criticise because its "woman/man/black/white/trans". Most criticise politicians because of what they say and do not because of gender, creed or colour. Now if someone has made prior mysognist chitterings by all mean point them out and speculate maybe
In the 2021 election, Labour won 48 seats, the Conservatives 36, the Centre Party 28.the Fremskridtsparti (Progress Party) 21 and the Socialist Left 13. The "Red" bloc of parties which includes Labour, Socialist Left, the Centre Party, the Red Party and the Greens won 100 seats in the Storting with the "Blue" bloc of the Conservatives, Progress, Liberals and Christian People's Party on 68.
Current polling has the Red bloc winning 89 seats and the Blue bloc 80 with the decline in the Centre Party balanced by a rise in the Progress Party. Labour are set to win 53 seats with the Progress party more than doubling their tally to 43 and the Conservatives dropping to 25. The Red Party are set to win 13 seats, the Socialist Left 12 and the Centre 10 and the Greens one which takes the Red Bloc to 89.
Plenty of time for that to change.
https://www.lostmap.com/
They do a podcast with some chat and interviews with their artists. Run by 'Pictish Trail' from Eigg. Even if you don't like his music - I enjoy the efforts of the label (personally though I do in fact like his music - very pleasantly eccentric).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zRSb3QTOTSs
laundering, they should be widening the gap if anything.
Everything over 20k pension income (excluding state pension) is taxed at a 100% so no one ever gets more than 20k + state pension....not going to hit many private sector people for a start as it requires a 500k pension pot when you retire and few are going to have that.
I suspect there may be squeals about this from certain areas but lets face it those people that have accrued enough to go past 20k a year probably also own their property already. I reckon this would bring in a fair amount every year
Whisper it, but Badenoch is starting to get a little better at PMQs. She had a huge open goal today, so it really would have been diabolically bad if she’d missed it. But she is starting to get less stilted and scripted. I think most of us still struggle to see her mounting a serious challenge for power, but there are perhaps a few signs that could - only could - start leading to some very tentative green shoots.
In that eventuality, however improbable it may seem, 2029 would see a Labour led government, there being no other options.
It is also obvious that a GE which in essence pitched Lab v ReConPact in 530 seats and LD v ReConPact in 100 seats would be a genuine contest, at this moment completely unpredictable, and also gold plated box office with free popcorn.
So its possibly Aesop's scorpions and prisoner dilemma time coming up. Politics won't be dull.
Simple truth - whilst Labour are in power, the mess we are in predates them winning the election 12 months ago. So the idea that we just blame them and therefore the LabCon cycle flips again is just daft - people are sick of it. Hence the rise of the Farage
But we just got some bland nonsense. It's only been a few hours and I can't even remember what she said. I would really like a strong with-conviction Tory party back in the fray. But this just isn't it.
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/ulez-cameras-destoyed-court-london-b2781335.html
Dear Yvette, is this also terrorism? Asking for a friend.
WFA cut = “picking on pensioners”
“We are all in it together, share the pain” + WFA cut + tax rise = vision and narrative
Public sector pensioners pay tax just like everyone else and many will be paying higher rate tax on their workplace pensions once they reach State pension age.
The emerging meme of "bash the boomers" seems to forget how older people are supporting key industries such as hospitality (go to any Tobe Carvery on a Tuesday lunchtime and 95% of the customers will be elderly) including the cruise industry (thousands being spent by the retired on cruises) and my favourite, the horse racing industry with betting shops and racecourses replete with pensioners gambling away their (presumably) ill-gotten gains.
A 29 Lab, 20 Ref and Con result gives Ref and Con similar seats and Lab a small majority but looking at the spread a very crude pact of standing aside in the red wall and blue wall and maybe a London pact east and west broadly would lead to a probable Con/Ref govt
I don't disagree that Labour have made it worse. The contest is not for excelling excellence; the contest is for least worst.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HJBnlZKgeUg
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RCLRaB1IL38
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gs6wSl-2ILo
- serious violence against a person;
- serious damage to property;
- endangering a person's life (other than that of the person committing the action);
- creating a serious risk to the health or safety of the public or a section of the public; and
- action designed to seriously interfere with or seriously to disrupt an electronic system.
The use or threat must also be for the purpose of advancing a political, religious, racial or ideological cause.🤔
But of course, like most of Pagan's ideas, it is utterly bonkers.
Only people that should be complaining are the more recently recruited public sector workers who won't get what they were sold.
Anyone else could have made the choice to be public sector or made bigger contributions.
https://tv.apple.com/gb/show/calls/umc.cmc.7hp8sparfsxo0l4f712f3mf2r
New series of "Foundation" starts soon. My weekly hate ritual shall begin again... ;-)
Baxter for example:
Lab 28
Ref and Con 22 each
LD 14.
This gives us a Lab/LD coalition.
If what you said were true for any of us we would have joined Labour or the Conservatives. If what you said was true why have we made it so more difficult for ourselves. This is just a bizarre view because you have a hang up about the LDs.
It makes no sense.
The High Court has ordered a "robust and independent" new investigation into how MI5 gave false evidence to multiple courts, after rejecting two official inquiries provided by the Security Service as seriously "deficient".
The two reviews took place after the BBC revealed MI5 had lied to three courts in a case concerning a neo-Nazi state agent who abused women...
MI5 head Sir Ken McCallum said the Security Service would co-operate fully with the new investigation
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c8d6e4d8v8mo
She’s one of those mediocre people that float around in semi senior positions but never achieve anything meaningful