The public do not expect Starmer to be Lab leader at the next election – politicalbetting.com
The public do not expect Starmer to be Lab leader at the next election – politicalbetting.com
While Keir Starmer yesterday insisted he will definitely lead Labour into the next election, most Britons see this as unlikelyLikely: 32%Unlikely: 53%yougov.co.uk/topics/polit…
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In defence of PCCs they replaced police authorities.
Which were ineffective, remote and unresponsive to public priorities. And in some cases the police/police unions threatened difficult members to force them to resign from the authorities.
The PCCs are not perfect, but there is a need for civilian political oversight of police activities and some appointed committee somewhere in a smoke-filled room just doesn’t cut it
If Starmer is to break this current political zeitgeist then he needs to change plan and do so significantly. @Leon suggests he call an EU referendum - that would do it! Or something similarly bold. I'd even welcome him coming out and calling out the racist women-beating child-molesting scum at the heart of the protect our women / raise the colours movement.
He won't do anything. Because he's frit.
As we saw with Corbyn, the way the Labour Party is set up makes it pretty much impossible to depose a leader who doesn’t want to move on.
Starmer seems happy enough in the job, he does whatever the lawyers and courts tell him to do, and doesn’t care much for public opinion. Perhaps it will take a major financial crisis to wake him up?
https://www.leicester.news/leicestershire-police-and-crime-commissioner-rupert-matthews-defects-from-tories-to-reform-uk/
His landslide victory in the leadership contest in a party that gets 8-10% of the vote is the political news of the week.
Gay, Vegan and Jewish it's enough to have the PB blimps clutching their smelling salts...
As I noted yesterday, Labour behave as if scared of their own shadow.
They might also have grasped the nettle of putting Thames Water into special administration.
Or told the BoE to cool it with quantitative tightening.
Or tackled seriously our sclerotic planning rules.
Or selectively used compulsory purchase powers to finance house building in areas of high demand.
Or introduced regional electricity pricing.
Etc
Any or all of those could accurately be described as starting to tackle the mess bequeathed to them.
Instead, some bullshit about using their first year of government to "lay the foundations".
“These are totally unacceptable tweets... I think it was proportionate to arrest him"
Zack Polanski, Green Party Leader, on the arrest of comedy writer Graham Linehan at Heathrow airport on Monday.
#Newsnight
https://x.com/bbcnewsnight/status/1963021805196562467?s=46&t=CW4pL-mMpTqsJXCdjW0Z6Q
Starmer should be afraid, very afraid...
And in many ways, I'm fine with gradualism. The last decade has seen a couple of attempts at radical step change (Brexit and Truss) and they have caused a lot of the problems we are currently in.
But yes, the current politics is dire, and that's perfectly consistent with SKS being the least bad option. We don't have a Presidential system, it's fine for Starmer to be the Kenneth Horne straight man, but he needs Hugh Paddick and Kenneth Williams to orbit him. At the moment, he's Syd Little and they're Eddie Large, and they don't even have a decent scriptwriter.
(As for Europe, how does the next Labour leadership election not boil down to being Kern On Europe and firing Morgan McSweeney into the Sun?)
Polanski is shittalking on the arrest though - it's absurd. Worse, it gives succour to Musk and "Robinson" and all the other people attacking free speech.
i have heard some very delicious stuff about him from some Lib Dems, in short, he only joined the Greens because the Lib Dems wouldn't let him stand at the Richmond Park by election/guarantee him a decent seat.
Also, he also heckled Corbyn because Corbyn was helping to facilitate Brexit.
https://www.buzzfeed.com/jimwaterson/let-our-friend-stay-corbyn-insists
Careful now.
It may be an articulate response but it is far from intelligent.
Still, I guess it’s Glinner so nicking him is okay because he’s a bit of a berk.
It'll interesting to see how the latest former LibDem to be leader of another UK party does, it's a low bar
Inner city wise they will gain, rural shires Greens aren’t going to want to be voting for the Gaza/Culture wars mob.
"The UK is a fiscal saint, not a sinner
... Instead, there are three genuine explanations for Britain being singled out for punishment in markets. First, the rise in 30-year UK gilt yields reflects a collapse in demand from defined benefit pension funds as they hit maturity and no longer require such debt in large quantities. Second is the peculiar twice-yearly pass-fail nature of Britain’s fiscal rules, which create destructive industries in forecasting black holes in the public finances and imagining scare stories about who tax rises will hit next. The third is that the binary fiscal rules relate to highly uncertain fiscal forecasts five years hence, set by the independent Office for Budget Responsibility, not the current reality.
...
What should the UK government do? In the short term, some decisions are easy. It should direct its Debt Management Office to issue much less long-term debt. UK gilts already have an average maturity of about 14 years, twice the level of other advanced economies on average. There are few risks in dramatically scaling back long-term debt issuance and avoiding paying current high market borrowing costs. The BoE, likewise, will decide this month on its balance sheet run-off and how much of the long-term debt, amassed under quantitative easing, it wants to sell. That’s a monetary policy decision for them, but it is difficult to think of good arguments why very high long-term borrowing costs help manage a short-term inflation problem.
The government should also move quickly to implement a version of the IMF’s recommendation and limit fiscal forecasts to one a year. The UK is unusual in having two; each one comes with huge amounts of damaging speculation and such a change would not water down Reeves’ “ironclad” rules.
It is likely that the OBR’s forecasts will still show that tax rises are needed in the Budget in order to hit the fiscal rules by 2030. If so, their implementation should be delayed. There is no need for additional fiscal consolidation immediately."
https://on.ft.com/3HNCGVf
Given Trumpania’s record on wrongfully arresting people on their own territory, I’m sure we can be confident that those summarily executed were in fact narco terrorists.
Graham Linehan is another example of social media/monomania radicalising people.
It's cost him a lot of money and his marriage.
Whilst Blimp is a stickler for things being done properly, especially military issues, he is clearly, especially for his era, a liberal, open minded and kind honourable man. His attitude to women and to his German “adversary”, his internationalism and his dislike of war don’t put him in the category people think he was when they think they are being sharp using him as a criticism.
Maybe watch the film and know about the ciphers you use rather than just lazily throw them out there.
Or, both end up shouting "traitor" at each other as they try and outdo each other with their Gaza obsession.
Like I have said, I do not support the arrest, just as I do not support the arrests of elderly folk holding up posters supporting Palestine Action. We need a better grip on delineating what incitement to violence actually is.
There’s suggestions that the Tweets in question were actually sent while he was in the US, in which case the question is what does the conduct of an Irishman in the US have anything to do with the British police in the first place, and can Americans visiting London expect the same treatment?
https://x.com/andrew_lilico/status/1962872272915431425
https://www.theguardian.com/law/2012/jul/29/paul-chambers-twitter-joke-airport
Musing on the issue...
If you're trans then trans rights affect your entire life
If you're female then trans rights may impinge on your rights
But if you're male? Why has Linehan become so obsessed with this?
And as already posted, the Police just seem to have wasted their time because it's an "easy win".
The film is late WW2 - very much we're all in it together sort of message was needed at the time. But the notion of Col Blimp was created by Low the cartoonist in 1934 fide the OED. For instance Graun 1935 "The authors are by no means Colonel Blimps: they even..dare to utter sacrilegious things about the holy ritual of cricket."
My ★★★★★ review of The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp on Letterboxd https://boxd.it/7SOk2D
My reference is to the cartoon character invented by Low in 1934, who is quite different to the film character.
"Blimp was a satire on the political opinions of the British establishment of the 1930s and 1940s. The characters was intended to criticise attitudes such as isolationism, impatience with the British public's concerns and a lack of enthusiasm for democracy. These were attitudes which Low, a New Zealander, considered as being common in British politics."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colonel_Blimp
Gamelin: Aucune.
Hence a well-meaning political nonentity as PM, and chancers leading most of the opposition parties.
I may have mentioned our trade deficit from time to time in passing. This really isn't helping. Its time we had a government more focused on the day job.
Linehan was arrested for inciting violence as a hate crime. If we are to have such laws on the books then we should enforce them.
I don't think the law is fit in it's current form and should be revised. Incitement to violence should only be considered criminal if there is a realistic expectation of violence as a result.
One to watch.
6 minute excellent explainer from Ed Conway.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YKQiIDuHpTk
It just won't do. Our forthcoming budget needs to focus on growth (as Reeves herself recognised before the election). That means finding ways to boost investment through more generous allowances, encouraging training, not hammering Entrepreneurial Relief or Capital Gains or share based ISAs, looking at why London is struggling to compete in the IPO market, etc etc. I fear we are going to see the reverse as our Chancellor scrabbles around for a few billion more taxes to make her nonsensical targets and kick the can down the road for a few more months.
How far away are we from The Running Man, or The hunger Games?
Setting fire to homes is a higher degree than a "punch in the balls" and inciting arson when there are arsonists on the street is a higher degree.
I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything homophobic or individually anti-Semitic on here.
There is @Casino_Royale and the vegan venison, I’ll give you that…
He says the government is “driving straight into a brick wall”. He thinks the present gilts “crisis” is maybe the markets reacting to Starmer’s “phase 2” speech which didn’t acknowledge the fiscal emergency at all
He says, as tax rises won’t work, borrowing can’t be done, and the government refuses to cut, we “may become Turkey or Argentina for a bit”
🫣
One can only imagine the furore if the EU tried to interfere in this way. Farage is a fxcking traitor who is effectively asking the US to economically harm the UK .
If we reach a 2027/8 with a reasonable chance that Reform heads the next government, but with perhaps 60%+ of voters being opposed to the idea, then there is a decent chance of 'Stop Farage' thinking coalescing around an alternative.
Few alternatives are available, and if by then the Tories are seen as an adjunct to Reform not an alternative, then 'Labour led' is the only one.
Who are the leaders who could lead Labour in that setting? Perhaps Streeting, but he is going to lose his seat next time. Not Rayner, not Burnham.
Jones? Bell?
Instead we are all now like Gordon Brown’s much lauded (by himself) ending of the economic cycle, which of course was true until it wasn’t and finished with a nasty recession.
uber Thatcherite Milei has
slashed spending and cut tax
and is seen as a role model by
Kemi. France, when under Francois Hollande and his Socialist government, may be a better model for where we head under Starmer Labour
Especially with gobby yobs on the left and right saying it can all be done by hitting various undesirables.
The act of being in the room is a “violent abusive act”. It’s a violation of the women’s privacy so abusive, and he’s using violent in its secondary meaning of “strong or powerful”
When people say "cut spending" it always means "on other people". As service delivery is already at crisis point we can't actually cut spending at the front line - it will cost more in emergency spending to manage the crises created.
We need to change what we spend the money on.
There is no low spending option on offer. If there was, it would involve cutting or freezing NHS spending - no plan is credible without doing that given the enormous size and growth of the health budget. It would require high earners to tolerate that, and they overwhelmingly vote Labour.
Sorry.
https://x.com/simonmontefiore/status/1963119820653621688?s=48