In some ways this is a very impressive achievement by Labour – politicalbetting.com
In some ways this is a very impressive achievement by Labour – politicalbetting.com
The government's net approval rating has fallen to -56, matching the final rating of the Conservative government before the 2024 electionApprove: 13% (no change from 9-11 August)Disapprove: 69% (+1)Net: -56 (-1)yougov.co.uk/topics/polit…
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There aren't any measures where Labour are doing anything appreciably better than the previous government, therefore they are now just as unpopular. I also think people really, really don't like Starmer. Very few defenders left (mostly on here).
The latest is that putting migrants up in hotels is a "Labour Policy". Which is now "in tatters".
Of course, the government has also been busting gut to make itself as unpopular as possible, without actually achieving much in return.
Pain, but no gain.
Queue people defending it by pretending its only the other half of NI they said they wouldn't increase.
There have been no serious reforms implemented at all. No ideas.
the trial continues...
Also they went hard on the narrative of the country is broken because of 14 years of Tory failure / £20bn blackhole. The Coalition did that in 2010 and it gave them a fair bit of breathing room. It doesn't seemed to have worked for Labour.
And as you say, Starmer appears to really rub people up the wrong way. Which again, I find a little surprising. He isn't my cup of tea, I find him massively uninspiring and overpromoted, but it doesn't drive me to want to smash my telly up like Gordon Brown. I also presumed a decent chunk of people who go for the spin of well he is boring and reliable unlike Boris.
Labour have managed to alienate everyone . I’m surprised they’re even polling above the Tories in most polls.
Starmer is at Truss levels. Presumably if he were forced to quit due to implosion of the economy then the 6/82 of 24/10/22 would loom
The kicking they get at Holyrood and Cardiiff Bay might just be epic
However Starmer has the advantage that his main opponent is likely to be Farage and there are plenty of LD and Green voters who would vote Labour in Labour marginals to keep Reform from power even if they are not great fans of this Labour government. Of course if the Tories still were the main opposition and had a charismatic and centrist leader they would be heading for a likely Tory landslide.
Indeed Starmer likely also wants a Tory poll recovery, which would probably come mainly at Reform's expense, whether under Kemi or a new Tory leader like Stride, Cleverly or Jenrick
The Chancellor’s obscene tax grab will turn millions of ordinary homeowners into dispossessed tenants'
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2025/08/20/reeves-not-stopped-every-inch-britain-property-state/
Now it was a very stupid idea especially when attached to a minimum wage increase that was beyond what many companies could afford but given how much Reeves’s tried to avoid breaking the promise she had little choice.
Davey though ties Starmer 20% each
https://yougov.co.uk/politics/articles/52729-who-would-be-the-best-prime-minister-august-2025
The problem is now they doubly boxed themselves in, still trying to claim no we CAN'T break any promises, and we HAVEN'T broken any to date and we won't in the future. So now they are going to find other taxes to rise that will have worse effects.
At least Osborne, just came out and said sorry hard times, VAT is going up.
The Reform vote won't last - not least because if they ever have a get together they'll thin their own numbers down.
Today’s YouGov daily question.
Which government do you hold most responsible for the current issues around asylum seekers being housed in hotels?
Conducted 21 August 2025
YouGov surveyed 5292 GB adults
BY:
The previous Conservative government
28%
The current Labour government
19%
Both equally
40%
Neither
3%
Don't know
11%
Reform however will have trouble getting lots of Tory tactical votes in seats where the Tories were second last time and those still backing the Tories will therefore still see voting Tory in those areas as the best way to beat Labour or the LDs
As I said below, its actually double bad, because they are sticking with his lie and boxing themselves in, so will raise taxes that have far worse effects.
They had a window of the first budget to say things are worse than we thought (a lie, but a more passable one) and so I am afraid you will have to trust us as we have to make these changes to taxation as they are the least worst option. Judge us in 5 years time on these decisions.
This is what Cameron / Osborne did.
The wording was that they would "not increase taxes on working people, which is why we will not increase National Insurance, the basic, higher, or additional rates of Income Tax, or VAT"
Employers NI is a tax on working people.
If they wanted to say Employees NI they could have said that, they did not, they said National Insurance which includes both types.
If Labour hold enough marginal seats to stay in power though, even with no majority, it will be tactical votes for them that will likely be key
Similar in many ways to Boris and his Brexiteers. By the time the penny dropped they'd both alienated the most principled members of their respective parties.
The only glint of light for Starmer is that his two opponents are worse. Whether that'ill save him is too early to say. Perhaps a sweetener like an offer to 'Rejoin' might do it.?
With a very tight clothes peg it would just about do it for me.
But that Labour have even lost the support of the middle class public sector support is quite remarkable.
Or are you disingenuously isolating one part of the package while discarding the rest of it?
Totally unrealistic storyline, nobody would ever be like that.
For neither party is it true, but in both cases there are elements of truth.
I know it's more difficult for Labour, but the Tories managed it four times.
The only problem is who do Labour have waiting in the wings. Its the same problem the Tories have.
By Rob Lownie"
https://unherd.com/newsroom/reform-uk-launches-operation-stop-jenrick
And we are witnessing another example this week because I haven’t a clue what the purpose of the current housing story is beyond scaring people into not doing nothing in case they end up in an impossible situation come November’s budget
Blair:
Bank of England independence
Devolution
Northern Ireland peace process
House of Lords reform
Human Rights Act
Minimum wage legislation
Increased funding for schools, introduction of literacy and numeracy hours in primary schools.
New Deal for the unemployed
Student finance reform
Referendum on London government
Introduction of Anti-Social Behaviour Orders (ASBOs)
Extra NHS funding and a pledge to reduce waiting lists; introduced the principle of targets and performance management.
Sir Keir Starmer
Tax rise on NI
Creation of Great British Energy
Strategic Defence Review
Cut winter fuel allowance then largely reversed the cut
Proposed then reversed welfare reform
Where are the changes?
https://www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/news/greater-manchester-news/scandalous-andy-burnham-speaks-out-32321798?int_source=nba
Diogo Jota Foundation has no connection to family or Liverpool FC
Exclusive: Website soliciting donations claims it has raised almost £50,000 but club know nothing about it
A foundation set up in memory of Diogo Jota is facing questions after it emerged it had no connection to his family or Liverpool.
The Diogo Jota Foundation has been soliciting donations via a website, diogojotafoundation.org – created three days after the striker’s tragic death – which says it has raised $64,250 (£47,715).
The donation page, which takes users through to an off-site platform, appears to only allow donations in the form of cryptocurrency. The website adds that it “accepts USDT, ETH and other crypto through NOWPayments securely”.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/football/2025/08/21/diogo-jota-foundation-no-connection-to-family-or-liverpool/
The only solution is remove stamp duty and merge it into a new council tax scheme - implemented in a way that makes revaluations simple - no need to scare people there just talk about simplification and abolishing stamp duty so it’s easier to move
If we want racism and associated unhappiness, in the UK, to go back to the pleasantly low levels of the Noughties - WHICH WE ALL DO - then we need to
1. Bring net migration down to under 100,000. It will hurt, but we now have no choice if we want a stable, prosperous country
2. End asylum as we know it. Stop the boats
3. Start huge deportations, and make sure the Boriswave doesn't get Leave to Remain, so they go home
That's it. If we do that we will return to the relative harmony of Yore. Why? Because British people are not racist. They are some of the most tolerant and accepting people on the planet, it is what we do - Live and Let Live. Don't bother me I won't bother you. We've been like this, in the UK, since Elizabeth the First refused to "make a window into men's souls"
To bring back the tolerant Britain we all knew and loved, we need to be really tough on migration and integration. They are doing exactly this in Denmark, and it is working. We can do it too
Request for PB Beta Testers
Some of you might have noticed that I've not been posting on PB as often as I used to in the past. There's a reason for that. I've been working on a new project in my spare time called Halbut. It's a play on Hal, But not evil. I've been using many of these voice dictation apps that are out there, and the question I had or I asked myself was: "Was it possible to do something that was significantly more AI-enhanced?" This is what Halbut does.There are three modes:
Transcription:
You hold down an a hotkey (I like Caps Lock) and it listens and then it transcribes. It's very quick, very effective (of course it uses a fast inference provider on the back-end). In addition, you can set it to clean up the text in terms not just of adding punctuation (which is automatic), but also things like bullet points, paragraphs, removing duplication etc.
Command Mode:
You press another hotkey (say Shift-Caps lock), and you give it a command like "Write a paragraph about the dangers of phosphates" for example, and it fills that in. Or "Give me three reasons why you should be suspicious of x y z". In other words, if the ability to insert a sensible, well-written stuff into your emails or letters (and I hope not PB posts).
Question Model:
Another hotekey (Ctrl-Caps Lock in my case) and you just ask it a quick question like "You know, what's the best library to do this?" or "Who's the president of Ethiopia?" or whatever, and it just speaks it back to you. The idea is that by enabling you to ask quick questions without taking your hands off the keyboard, it makes you more productive.
Anyway, I'll be launching this firstly for Windows, and then hopefully Mac and Linux. I'm looking for Windows beta testers for now. It is completely free (for now). It'll probably be free for transcription (with limits), and $5/month for all the features.
Send me an email if you want to beta test, and you will probably get access next week. (Once I get the hang of packaging up Windows applications for distribution.)
Not in public opinion
According to Yougov Starmer is only second to Reeves as unpopular
Nigel Farage (net -29)
Ed Davey (net -3)
Jeremy Corbyn (net -35)
Keir Starmer (net -44)
Kemi Badenoch (net -31)
Angela Rayner (net -32)
Rachel Reeves (net -47)
David Lammy (net -30)
Mel Stride (net -13)
It seems the issue really was Trudeau.
Trump helped of course.
And if I like it I might be able to give you free publicity in the worldwide sex toy flint knapping industry
If anyone in the Cabinet was performing notably well I would have thought they would be firmly established as the heir apparent by now. But it's possible that they are all worse than Starmer.
Rabble rouser?! I post on PB, that's it. Are you calling PBers a rabble? And how do I rouse you?
There has never been a Family Farms Tax. As opposed to Tories lying about the reduction of the IHT tax relief on [edit] estates [the probate kind] of owners of agricultural land.
If Farage wins the next GE Jenrick will be irrelevant, if Farage loses the next GE then Jenrick would be ideally placed to take over as Tory leader to reunite the right
Good news - arrived in Glasgow and it’s actually sunny not raining.
Bad news - Lufthansa lost our bag.
Now waiting in airport hotel for the next LH flight which will have our bag on it!
No wife for scale, she’s in one of those moods that only copious amounts of Prosecco can fix.
One hopes no one on PB is planning to illegally migrate to another country...
https://order-order.com/2025/08/21/peter-kyles-staff-use-vpn-he-claimed-put-children-at-risk/
Why is Peter Kyle putting NordVPN on his expenses? His excuse was he needed a VPN to keep him secure for work.
I however not believing too much of the media headlines for the moment in regards to these leaks of what the treasury is considering, as I said down thread I feel this is all anchoring. Also, messing with property taxes will be a multi-year complex process, so far the government have a habit of backing away from anything complex as they haven't thought very hard about actually governing. Its all reactive.