Are they of the "anyone can do a legal challenge to delay a process for a bit, even if the case is pretty shlonky" type (embarassing, but business as usual and not a problem in the medium term) or "this sinks the policy" type?
Seem similar to the ones Sir Keir was behind stopping us sending convicted and future murderers back where they came from in the last parliament
Sir Keir’s ‘Lots in, none out’ scheme working a treat!
Skilfully negotiated Chagos style
He’s supposed to be a lawyer of some repute, does he not understand why all previous efforts at deporting people failed?
Or did he think that his Labour deportations are good deportations, as opposed to the evil Tory deportations, and so the “human rights” NGOs and legal industry would stand down and give him a free pass?
This is calamitous for Starmer. Also for Cooper. She was apparently “really proud” of her “infinity migrants in, zero out” deal with France. So much so she was looking to do the same with Germany, pay them £3bn to take no migrants
Now it’s all fallen apart. Given that this government is emotionally incapable of leaving or reforming the ECHR this means they will never solve the problem
Sir Keir’s ‘Lots in, none out’ scheme working a treat!
Skilfully negotiated Chagos style
He’s supposed to be a lawyer of some repute, does he not understand why all previous efforts at deporting people failed?
Or did he think that his Labour deportations are good deportations, as opposed to the evil Tory deportations, and so the “human rights” NGOs and legal industry would stand down and give him a free pass?
This is calamitous for Starmer. Also for Cooper. She was apparently “really proud” of her “infinity migrants in, zero out” deal with France. So much so she was looking to do the same with Germany, pay them £3bn to take no migrants
Now it’s all fallen apart. Given that this government is emotionally incapable of leaving or reforming the ECHR this means they will never solve the problem
Sir Keir’s ‘Lots in, none out’ scheme working a treat!
Skilfully negotiated Chagos style
He’s supposed to be a lawyer of some repute, does he not understand why all previous efforts at deporting people failed?
Or did he think that his Labour deportations are good deportations, as opposed to the evil Tory deportations, and so the “human rights” NGOs and legal industry would stand down and give him a free pass?
This is calamitous for Starmer. Also for Cooper. She was apparently “really proud” of her “infinity migrants in, zero out” deal with France. So much so she was looking to do the same with Germany, pay them £3bn to take no migrants
Now it’s all fallen apart. Given that this government is emotionally incapable of leaving or reforming the ECHR this means they will never solve the problem
Sir Keir’s ‘Lots in, none out’ scheme working a treat!
Skilfully negotiated Chagos style
He’s supposed to be a lawyer of some repute, does he not understand why all previous efforts at deporting people failed?
Or did he think that his Labour deportations are good deportations, as opposed to the evil Tory deportations, and so the “human rights” NGOs and legal industry would stand down and give him a free pass?
This is calamitous for Starmer. Also for Cooper. She was apparently “really proud” of her “infinity migrants in, zero out” deal with France. So much so she was looking to do the same with Germany, pay them £3bn to take no migrants
Now it’s all fallen apart. Given that this government is emotionally incapable of leaving or reforming the ECHR this means they will never solve the problem
It's not really calamitous. It's left them in the situation where they deport no migrants, which is in their view the correct number of migrants to deport. It's worked out rather well for them.
Newsnight yesterday featured a discussion about Elon Musk, and all 3 guests on the programme had almost exactly the same opinions.
And two reasons why: Attacking democratic government from afar is bad Doing so when you need said democratic governments to licence your technology is crazy
And Musk is deeply unpopular in the UK. You'd need quite a large panel before you had a good chance of coming across a fan.
(a flaw with most BBC setups is they give the impression of 50:50 public opinion on issues like climate change, even though that is not representative).
Ukraine’s new “Long-range drone” hitting O&G facilities 1,500km into Russia, is basically a remote-controlled light aircraft, stuffed with fuel and explosives instead of a couple of humans.
It flies low and slow, for several hours at a time, yet the enemy still appears to be incapable of shooting it down.
I argued last evening those who think two party politics is dead have got it wrong.
The parties may end up with different names but ultimately it will resolve down to a binary choice - the big change is the nature of the faultline. For decades, it was economic - one side favoured lower taxes, less spending and regulation, the other saw the State as the provider, supported taxation and spending.
That line is no longer valid or has the priority it once did - the divide is now socio-cultural. If you are socially conservative, there's a party for you (possibly two) whereas if you have a more liberal mindset, there are three or four parties for you.
This has had two impacts - first, social conservatives and liberals who mixed together happily under the same economic programme in the Labour and Conservative parties have now flocked to Reform gutting both parties and leaving them shadows of the coalitions they once were.
The other question is whether there are enough social conservatives under FPTP to give Reform a majority on perhaps 30% of the vote - probably but if the liberally minded vote tactically, probably not.
It is the change in the faultline which has damaged Labour and the Conservatives - the politics of economics no longer matter, the politics of society and culture do.
This may be true, but can only stay true until the new party on one side of the new faultline has a go at running the country. At that point the old issues rear their heads whether people like it or not. And these old issues are in fact about how to run a national economy really well, and running it taking full account of debt, deficit, tax, spend, employment, global trade, the health of manufacturing and financial services, ag and fish.
Maybe an election can be won on the issue of a tiny % of migrants being boat people, but a country can't be run on it. The old verities return, and it won't take long.
Reform do not wish to talk about it. This is ominous.
Even better is what "no migration" does to the economy.
We have waves of migration when we have significant gaps in the labour force. We have one today. We don't want to work on farms or in factories. We've had 40 years of the right wing saying teachers are idiots and so attainment levels drop especially in the WWC. So we aren't well trained, especially in the things we need like medicine and engineering. And we have a declining birth rate and an ageing population.
So lets say Farage wins and we do move to no migration. What happens? Well there's a load of jobs we can't fill. "Send the scroungers to do it" will only last for a short time until people realise they are up for forced relocation to work on a farm. And we all get sicker as the NHS falls apart. Even better, we have less people working paying less taxes and circulating less money. So a big recession. Sound - what does Farage do then? Who does his movement scapegoat - the gays?
We absolutely need to invest in education skills and training. Invest in making proper jobs sexy again - construction, engineering, food. That will take vision and time and money. And we're prepared to invest none of that. But we want the brown people to go away because they are raping and murdering our women, taking our homes, stealing both the jobs and claiming benefits. So sayeth Musk and Yaxley-Robinson.
"We've had 40 years of the right wing saying teachers are idiots" - any substantiation for that rather odd claim? I think people on the right have suggested that teachers tend to be on the left, and worry about them infecting children with woke, but I don't think they have been characterised as idiots.
We have a broader culture that values the arts far more than STEM. It should never be acceptable to say "I'm no good at maths' and laugh about it. When Paxman was presenting University Challenge he would sneer at students not knowing some obscure musical composition or writer, or basically anything from the arts and then stumble over pronouncing a basic science term.
The answer to farming is NOT more low paid manual work, its increasing productivity by better ways of working, whether that is growing salad 365 days a year indoors with green electricity, or using robots to harvest crops.
On education? Endless attacks by The Sun, Daily Mail and various Tories. When tabloid-reading parents are fed an endless attack on the education system is it any wonder they don't care if their kids achieve in school?
On farming the robot pickers are vastly expensive and most farmers are low on cash. As for electricity that needs to be cheap, and thanks to the right's war on "Net Zero" we have the highest energy prices anywhere in Europe.
BIB - But not attacks saying teachers are idiots.
industry has had to be transformed - the old nationalised industries have been replaced. Farming has seen a huge amount of innovation - I am of the country and know it well. Most farmers don't own a combine - they rent them. Yes farming has financial challenges - that partly the market driving it, and partly the consumer not valuing quality food enough. And I am afraid that sometimes farms are not longer economic- partly because so much has become automated or improved with tech that the land doesn't need as much in man hours. Its common now for farming couples to have one of more jobs outside of the farm too. And farms tend to get bigger.
And come off it - its not the rights war on net zero that's causing high energy prices - its our own decisions to close down energy supplies locally and import from elsewhere. Thats one of the more bonkers things you've ever said.
Why is our leccy so expensive? Because 98% of the time we price based on gas. And not a stored price, the spot price. Why not stored? Because *the Tories* allowed the storage capacity to be removed.
Which energy supplies locally do you refer to? Coal? Declined for years, killed off by Heseltine, with a switch to imported coal for the remaining life of the coal power stations. Gas? Burnt off post privatisation - the "dash for gas" in the newly marketised sector. Nuclear? We're now reliant on a choice of foreign governments.
What have the Tories done on energy? Launched net zero, attacked oil and gas. Then attacked wind. Now they pretend they always backed oil and gas despite years of doing the opposite. I'm not saying the idiot Miliband is good, but how we got here is entirely on the Tories.
Virtually all the wind farms were built under the conservatives
I argued last evening those who think two party politics is dead have got it wrong.
The parties may end up with different names but ultimately it will resolve down to a binary choice - the big change is the nature of the faultline. For decades, it was economic - one side favoured lower taxes, less spending and regulation, the other saw the State as the provider, supported taxation and spending.
That line is no longer valid or has the priority it once did - the divide is now socio-cultural. If you are socially conservative, there's a party for you (possibly two) whereas if you have a more liberal mindset, there are three or four parties for you.
This has had two impacts - first, social conservatives and liberals who mixed together happily under the same economic programme in the Labour and Conservative parties have now flocked to Reform gutting both parties and leaving them shadows of the coalitions they once were.
The other question is whether there are enough social conservatives under FPTP to give Reform a majority on perhaps 30% of the vote - probably but if the liberally minded vote tactically, probably not.
It is the change in the faultline which has damaged Labour and the Conservatives - the politics of economics no longer matter, the politics of society and culture do.
This may be true, but can only stay true until the new party on one side of the new faultline has a go at running the country. At that point the old issues rear their heads whether people like it or not. And these old issues are in fact about how to run a national economy really well, and running it taking full account of debt, deficit, tax, spend, employment, global trade, the health of manufacturing and financial services, ag and fish.
Maybe an election can be won on the issue of a tiny % of migrants being boat people, but a country can't be run on it. The old verities return, and it won't take long.
Reform do not wish to talk about it. This is ominous.
Even better is what "no migration" does to the economy.
We have waves of migration when we have significant gaps in the labour force. We have one today. We don't want to work on farms or in factories. We've had 40 years of the right wing saying teachers are idiots and so attainment levels drop especially in the WWC. So we aren't well trained, especially in the things we need like medicine and engineering. And we have a declining birth rate and an ageing population.
So lets say Farage wins and we do move to no migration. What happens? Well there's a load of jobs we can't fill. "Send the scroungers to do it" will only last for a short time until people realise they are up for forced relocation to work on a farm. And we all get sicker as the NHS falls apart. Even better, we have less people working paying less taxes and circulating less money. So a big recession. Sound - what does Farage do then? Who does his movement scapegoat - the gays?
We absolutely need to invest in education skills and training. Invest in making proper jobs sexy again - construction, engineering, food. That will take vision and time and money. And we're prepared to invest none of that. But we want the brown people to go away because they are raping and murdering our women, taking our homes, stealing both the jobs and claiming benefits. So sayeth Musk and Yaxley-Robinson.
"We've had 40 years of the right wing saying teachers are idiots" - any substantiation for that rather odd claim? I think people on the right have suggested that teachers tend to be on the left, and worry about them infecting children with woke, but I don't think they have been characterised as idiots.
We have a broader culture that values the arts far more than STEM. It should never be acceptable to say "I'm no good at maths' and laugh about it. When Paxman was presenting University Challenge he would sneer at students not knowing some obscure musical composition or writer, or basically anything from the arts and then stumble over pronouncing a basic science term.
The answer to farming is NOT more low paid manual work, its increasing productivity by better ways of working, whether that is growing salad 365 days a year indoors with green electricity, or using robots to harvest crops.
On education? Endless attacks by The Sun, Daily Mail and various Tories. When tabloid-reading parents are fed an endless attack on the education system is it any wonder they don't care if their kids achieve in school?
On farming the robot pickers are vastly expensive and most farmers are low on cash. As for electricity that needs to be cheap, and thanks to the right's war on "Net Zero" we have the highest energy prices anywhere in Europe.
BIB - But not attacks saying teachers are idiots.
industry has had to be transformed - the old nationalised industries have been replaced. Farming has seen a huge amount of innovation - I am of the country and know it well. Most farmers don't own a combine - they rent them. Yes farming has financial challenges - that partly the market driving it, and partly the consumer not valuing quality food enough. And I am afraid that sometimes farms are not longer economic- partly because so much has become automated or improved with tech that the land doesn't need as much in man hours. Its common now for farming couples to have one of more jobs outside of the farm too. And farms tend to get bigger.
And come off it - its not the rights war on net zero that's causing high energy prices - its our own decisions to close down energy supplies locally and import from elsewhere. Thats one of the more bonkers things you've ever said.
Why is our leccy so expensive? Because 98% of the time we price based on gas. And not a stored price, the spot price. Why not stored? Because *the Tories* allowed the storage capacity to be removed.
Which energy supplies locally do you refer to? Coal? Declined for years, killed off by Heseltine, with a switch to imported coal for the remaining life of the coal power stations. Gas? Burnt off post privatisation - the "dash for gas" in the newly marketised sector. Nuclear? We're now reliant on a choice of foreign governments.
What have the Tories done on energy? Launched net zero, attacked oil and gas. Then attacked wind. Now they pretend they always backed oil and gas despite years of doing the opposite. I'm not saying the idiot Miliband is good, but how we got here is entirely on the Tories.
The North sea still has useful gas that we are choosing NOT to use.
On nuclear I think it was catastrophic to turn away from by the Tories and frankly Labour have been no better. Quite how world leaders in nuclear in the 50's became the basket case we are now, reliant on other countries to build our plants at exorbitant cost is a national tragedy.
You also ignore the net zero pricing in the costs of our energy.
Are they of the "anyone can do a legal challenge to delay a process for a bit, even if the case is pretty shlonky" type (embarassing, but business as usual and not a problem in the medium term) or "this sinks the policy" type?
Seem similar to the ones Sir Keir was behind stopping us sending convicted and future murderers back where they came from in the last parliament
John Rentoul @JohnRentoul · 1h The whole point of a pilot scheme is to test and overcome the obstacles
Are they of the "anyone can do a legal challenge to delay a process for a bit, even if the case is pretty shlonky" type (embarassing, but business as usual and not a problem in the medium term) or "this sinks the policy" type?
Seem similar to the ones Sir Keir was behind stopping us sending convicted and future murderers back where they came from in the last parliament
John Rentoul @JohnRentoul · 1h The whole point of a pilot scheme is to test and overcome the obstacles
Are they of the "anyone can do a legal challenge to delay a process for a bit, even if the case is pretty shlonky" type (embarassing, but business as usual and not a problem in the medium term) or "this sinks the policy" type?
Seem similar to the ones Sir Keir was behind stopping us sending convicted and future murderers back where they came from in the last parliament
John Rentoul @JohnRentoul · 1h The whole point of a pilot scheme is to test and overcome the obstacles
Well, yes. But it must be noted that Rentoul was a massive fan of this scheme and so would be more willing to give it the benefit of any doubt than most
Sir Keir’s ‘Lots in, none out’ scheme working a treat!
Skilfully negotiated Chagos style
He’s supposed to be a lawyer of some repute, does he not understand why all previous efforts at deporting people failed?
Or did he think that his Labour deportations are good deportations, as opposed to the evil Tory deportations, and so the “human rights” NGOs and legal industry would stand down and give him a free pass?
This is calamitous for Starmer. Also for Cooper. She was apparently “really proud” of her “infinity migrants in, zero out” deal with France. So much so she was looking to do the same with Germany, pay them £3bn to take no migrants
Now it’s all fallen apart. Given that this government is emotionally incapable of leaving or reforming the ECHR this means they will never solve the problem
It’s not difficult, they just need to pass legislation that allows them to deport those who iligally entered the country or committed a serious crime, and with appeals only allowed from outside the country at the expense of the appellant.
This is how almost every other country in the world works.
Guess what, if I get picked up for anything more serious than dropping litter where I live, I’ll be on the next plane home and it’ll be on me to argue my case to be allowed back! That my wife also lives here, and is currently fostering a cute little kitten, are not valid reasons.
I argued last evening those who think two party politics is dead have got it wrong.
The parties may end up with different names but ultimately it will resolve down to a binary choice - the big change is the nature of the faultline. For decades, it was economic - one side favoured lower taxes, less spending and regulation, the other saw the State as the provider, supported taxation and spending.
That line is no longer valid or has the priority it once did - the divide is now socio-cultural. If you are socially conservative, there's a party for you (possibly two) whereas if you have a more liberal mindset, there are three or four parties for you.
This has had two impacts - first, social conservatives and liberals who mixed together happily under the same economic programme in the Labour and Conservative parties have now flocked to Reform gutting both parties and leaving them shadows of the coalitions they once were.
The other question is whether there are enough social conservatives under FPTP to give Reform a majority on perhaps 30% of the vote - probably but if the liberally minded vote tactically, probably not.
It is the change in the faultline which has damaged Labour and the Conservatives - the politics of economics no longer matter, the politics of society and culture do.
This may be true, but can only stay true until the new party on one side of the new faultline has a go at running the country. At that point the old issues rear their heads whether people like it or not. And these old issues are in fact about how to run a national economy really well, and running it taking full account of debt, deficit, tax, spend, employment, global trade, the health of manufacturing and financial services, ag and fish.
Maybe an election can be won on the issue of a tiny % of migrants being boat people, but a country can't be run on it. The old verities return, and it won't take long.
Reform do not wish to talk about it. This is ominous.
Even better is what "no migration" does to the economy.
We have waves of migration when we have significant gaps in the labour force. We have one today. We don't want to work on farms or in factories. We've had 40 years of the right wing saying teachers are idiots and so attainment levels drop especially in the WWC. So we aren't well trained, especially in the things we need like medicine and engineering. And we have a declining birth rate and an ageing population.
So lets say Farage wins and we do move to no migration. What happens? Well there's a load of jobs we can't fill. "Send the scroungers to do it" will only last for a short time until people realise they are up for forced relocation to work on a farm. And we all get sicker as the NHS falls apart. Even better, we have less people working paying less taxes and circulating less money. So a big recession. Sound - what does Farage do then? Who does his movement scapegoat - the gays?
We absolutely need to invest in education skills and training. Invest in making proper jobs sexy again - construction, engineering, food. That will take vision and time and money. And we're prepared to invest none of that. But we want the brown people to go away because they are raping and murdering our women, taking our homes, stealing both the jobs and claiming benefits. So sayeth Musk and Yaxley-Robinson.
"We've had 40 years of the right wing saying teachers are idiots" - any substantiation for that rather odd claim? I think people on the right have suggested that teachers tend to be on the left, and worry about them infecting children with woke, but I don't think they have been characterised as idiots.
We have a broader culture that values the arts far more than STEM. It should never be acceptable to say "I'm no good at maths' and laugh about it. When Paxman was presenting University Challenge he would sneer at students not knowing some obscure musical composition or writer, or basically anything from the arts and then stumble over pronouncing a basic science term.
The answer to farming is NOT more low paid manual work, its increasing productivity by better ways of working, whether that is growing salad 365 days a year indoors with green electricity, or using robots to harvest crops.
On education? Endless attacks by The Sun, Daily Mail and various Tories. When tabloid-reading parents are fed an endless attack on the education system is it any wonder they don't care if their kids achieve in school?
On farming the robot pickers are vastly expensive and most farmers are low on cash. As for electricity that needs to be cheap, and thanks to the right's war on "Net Zero" we have the highest energy prices anywhere in Europe.
BIB - But not attacks saying teachers are idiots.
industry has had to be transformed - the old nationalised industries have been replaced. Farming has seen a huge amount of innovation - I am of the country and know it well. Most farmers don't own a combine - they rent them. Yes farming has financial challenges - that partly the market driving it, and partly the consumer not valuing quality food enough. And I am afraid that sometimes farms are not longer economic- partly because so much has become automated or improved with tech that the land doesn't need as much in man hours. Its common now for farming couples to have one of more jobs outside of the farm too. And farms tend to get bigger.
And come off it - its not the rights war on net zero that's causing high energy prices - its our own decisions to close down energy supplies locally and import from elsewhere. Thats one of the more bonkers things you've ever said.
Why is our leccy so expensive? Because 98% of the time we price based on gas. And not a stored price, the spot price. Why not stored? Because *the Tories* allowed the storage capacity to be removed.
Which energy supplies locally do you refer to? Coal? Declined for years, killed off by Heseltine, with a switch to imported coal for the remaining life of the coal power stations. Gas? Burnt off post privatisation - the "dash for gas" in the newly marketised sector. Nuclear? We're now reliant on a choice of foreign governments.
What have the Tories done on energy? Launched net zero, attacked oil and gas. Then attacked wind. Now they pretend they always backed oil and gas despite years of doing the opposite. I'm not saying the idiot Miliband is good, but how we got here is entirely on the Tories.
The North sea still has useful gas that we are choosing NOT to use.
On nuclear I think it was catastrophic to turn away from by the Tories and frankly Labour have been no better. Quite how world leaders in nuclear in the 50's became the basket case we are now, reliant on other countries to build our plants at exorbitant cost is a national tragedy.
You also ignore the net zero pricing in the costs of our energy.
Thats in everyone's energy though, not just ours. The price differential is the gas price.
The incessant vitriol toward Starmer on here is insane.
I agree.
Admittedly I had very low low expectations for Labour, which might explain it, but it does seem over the top. Unlike Blair's Labour they seemed to have very little ambition or plan prior to and on coming into Government. What were people expecting?
This does all seem over the top stuff. People pretty much got what they voted for.
The incessant vitriol toward Starmer on here is insane.
Representative of public opinion
Is it really tough?
The vast vast vast majority of the people i know rarely talk about politics, when they do it's with horror about Reform.
I'm not remotely suggesting my circle of friends is remotely representative, just like those you know be either.
He is very unpopular in all polling, so yes it is representative imo. Political nerds like us will just be more expressive than the less engaged, but the disapproval is very real
The incessant vitriol toward Starmer on here is insane.
It’s consonant with his polling - possibly the worst in history - and the British public mood. I’ve never known a prime minister attract such hatred and scorn - not even Boris. Truss was too brief
The polling shows that even Labour Party voters abhor him - as confirmed by PB lefty @nico67 - “I don’t know anyone that approves of him”
You probably don’t get a sense of this from your eyrie in Manhattan
Ukraine’s new “Long-range drone” hitting O&G facilities 1,500km into Russia, is basically a remote-controlled light aircraft, stuffed with fuel and explosives instead of a couple of humans.
It flies low and slow, for several hours at a time, yet the enemy still appears to be incapable of shooting it down.
I argued last evening those who think two party politics is dead have got it wrong.
The parties may end up with different names but ultimately it will resolve down to a binary choice - the big change is the nature of the faultline. For decades, it was economic - one side favoured lower taxes, less spending and regulation, the other saw the State as the provider, supported taxation and spending.
That line is no longer valid or has the priority it once did - the divide is now socio-cultural. If you are socially conservative, there's a party for you (possibly two) whereas if you have a more liberal mindset, there are three or four parties for you.
This has had two impacts - first, social conservatives and liberals who mixed together happily under the same economic programme in the Labour and Conservative parties have now flocked to Reform gutting both parties and leaving them shadows of the coalitions they once were.
The other question is whether there are enough social conservatives under FPTP to give Reform a majority on perhaps 30% of the vote - probably but if the liberally minded vote tactically, probably not.
It is the change in the faultline which has damaged Labour and the Conservatives - the politics of economics no longer matter, the politics of society and culture do.
This may be true, but can only stay true until the new party on one side of the new faultline has a go at running the country. At that point the old issues rear their heads whether people like it or not. And these old issues are in fact about how to run a national economy really well, and running it taking full account of debt, deficit, tax, spend, employment, global trade, the health of manufacturing and financial services, ag and fish.
Maybe an election can be won on the issue of a tiny % of migrants being boat people, but a country can't be run on it. The old verities return, and it won't take long.
Reform do not wish to talk about it. This is ominous.
Even better is what "no migration" does to the economy.
We have waves of migration when we have significant gaps in the labour force. We have one today. We don't want to work on farms or in factories. We've had 40 years of the right wing saying teachers are idiots and so attainment levels drop especially in the WWC. So we aren't well trained, especially in the things we need like medicine and engineering. And we have a declining birth rate and an ageing population.
So lets say Farage wins and we do move to no migration. What happens? Well there's a load of jobs we can't fill. "Send the scroungers to do it" will only last for a short time until people realise they are up for forced relocation to work on a farm. And we all get sicker as the NHS falls apart. Even better, we have less people working paying less taxes and circulating less money. So a big recession. Sound - what does Farage do then? Who does his movement scapegoat - the gays?
We absolutely need to invest in education skills and training. Invest in making proper jobs sexy again - construction, engineering, food. That will take vision and time and money. And we're prepared to invest none of that. But we want the brown people to go away because they are raping and murdering our women, taking our homes, stealing both the jobs and claiming benefits. So sayeth Musk and Yaxley-Robinson.
"We've had 40 years of the right wing saying teachers are idiots" - any substantiation for that rather odd claim? I think people on the right have suggested that teachers tend to be on the left, and worry about them infecting children with woke, but I don't think they have been characterised as idiots.
We have a broader culture that values the arts far more than STEM. It should never be acceptable to say "I'm no good at maths' and laugh about it. When Paxman was presenting University Challenge he would sneer at students not knowing some obscure musical composition or writer, or basically anything from the arts and then stumble over pronouncing a basic science term.
The answer to farming is NOT more low paid manual work, its increasing productivity by better ways of working, whether that is growing salad 365 days a year indoors with green electricity, or using robots to harvest crops.
On education? Endless attacks by The Sun, Daily Mail and various Tories. When tabloid-reading parents are fed an endless attack on the education system is it any wonder they don't care if their kids achieve in school?
On farming the robot pickers are vastly expensive and most farmers are low on cash. As for electricity that needs to be cheap, and thanks to the right's war on "Net Zero" we have the highest energy prices anywhere in Europe.
BIB - But not attacks saying teachers are idiots.
industry has had to be transformed - the old nationalised industries have been replaced. Farming has seen a huge amount of innovation - I am of the country and know it well. Most farmers don't own a combine - they rent them. Yes farming has financial challenges - that partly the market driving it, and partly the consumer not valuing quality food enough. And I am afraid that sometimes farms are not longer economic- partly because so much has become automated or improved with tech that the land doesn't need as much in man hours. Its common now for farming couples to have one of more jobs outside of the farm too. And farms tend to get bigger.
And come off it - its not the rights war on net zero that's causing high energy prices - its our own decisions to close down energy supplies locally and import from elsewhere. Thats one of the more bonkers things you've ever said.
Why is our leccy so expensive? Because 98% of the time we price based on gas. And not a stored price, the spot price. Why not stored? Because *the Tories* allowed the storage capacity to be removed.
Which energy supplies locally do you refer to? Coal? Declined for years, killed off by Heseltine, with a switch to imported coal for the remaining life of the coal power stations. Gas? Burnt off post privatisation - the "dash for gas" in the newly marketised sector. Nuclear? We're now reliant on a choice of foreign governments.
What have the Tories done on energy? Launched net zero, attacked oil and gas. Then attacked wind. Now they pretend they always backed oil and gas despite years of doing the opposite. I'm not saying the idiot Miliband is good, but how we got here is entirely on the Tories.
Virtually all the wind farms were built under the conservatives
The critical innovation was a planning regime for offshore wind that meant, if you got the documents for various issues (environmental impact, historic wrecks, radar interference etc etc) right, approval was (and is) rapid.
There were complaints from the Enquiry Industrial Complex that demanding Judicial Reviews of decisions almost always failed.
Are they of the "anyone can do a legal challenge to delay a process for a bit, even if the case is pretty shlonky" type (embarassing, but business as usual and not a problem in the medium term) or "this sinks the policy" type?
Seem similar to the ones Sir Keir was behind stopping us sending convicted and future murderers back where they came from in the last parliament
John Rentoul @JohnRentoul · 1h The whole point of a pilot scheme is to test and overcome the obstacles
I argued last evening those who think two party politics is dead have got it wrong.
The parties may end up with different names but ultimately it will resolve down to a binary choice - the big change is the nature of the faultline. For decades, it was economic - one side favoured lower taxes, less spending and regulation, the other saw the State as the provider, supported taxation and spending.
That line is no longer valid or has the priority it once did - the divide is now socio-cultural. If you are socially conservative, there's a party for you (possibly two) whereas if you have a more liberal mindset, there are three or four parties for you.
This has had two impacts - first, social conservatives and liberals who mixed together happily under the same economic programme in the Labour and Conservative parties have now flocked to Reform gutting both parties and leaving them shadows of the coalitions they once were.
The other question is whether there are enough social conservatives under FPTP to give Reform a majority on perhaps 30% of the vote - probably but if the liberally minded vote tactically, probably not.
It is the change in the faultline which has damaged Labour and the Conservatives - the politics of economics no longer matter, the politics of society and culture do.
This may be true, but can only stay true until the new party on one side of the new faultline has a go at running the country. At that point the old issues rear their heads whether people like it or not. And these old issues are in fact about how to run a national economy really well, and running it taking full account of debt, deficit, tax, spend, employment, global trade, the health of manufacturing and financial services, ag and fish.
Maybe an election can be won on the issue of a tiny % of migrants being boat people, but a country can't be run on it. The old verities return, and it won't take long.
Reform do not wish to talk about it. This is ominous.
Even better is what "no migration" does to the economy.
We have waves of migration when we have significant gaps in the labour force. We have one today. We don't want to work on farms or in factories. We've had 40 years of the right wing saying teachers are idiots and so attainment levels drop especially in the WWC. So we aren't well trained, especially in the things we need like medicine and engineering. And we have a declining birth rate and an ageing population.
So lets say Farage wins and we do move to no migration. What happens? Well there's a load of jobs we can't fill. "Send the scroungers to do it" will only last for a short time until people realise they are up for forced relocation to work on a farm. And we all get sicker as the NHS falls apart. Even better, we have less people working paying less taxes and circulating less money. So a big recession. Sound - what does Farage do then? Who does his movement scapegoat - the gays?
We absolutely need to invest in education skills and training. Invest in making proper jobs sexy again - construction, engineering, food. That will take vision and time and money. And we're prepared to invest none of that. But we want the brown people to go away because they are raping and murdering our women, taking our homes, stealing both the jobs and claiming benefits. So sayeth Musk and Yaxley-Robinson.
"We've had 40 years of the right wing saying teachers are idiots" - any substantiation for that rather odd claim? I think people on the right have suggested that teachers tend to be on the left, and worry about them infecting children with woke, but I don't think they have been characterised as idiots.
We have a broader culture that values the arts far more than STEM. It should never be acceptable to say "I'm no good at maths' and laugh about it. When Paxman was presenting University Challenge he would sneer at students not knowing some obscure musical composition or writer, or basically anything from the arts and then stumble over pronouncing a basic science term.
The answer to farming is NOT more low paid manual work, its increasing productivity by better ways of working, whether that is growing salad 365 days a year indoors with green electricity, or using robots to harvest crops.
On education? Endless attacks by The Sun, Daily Mail and various Tories. When tabloid-reading parents are fed an endless attack on the education system is it any wonder they don't care if their kids achieve in school?
On farming the robot pickers are vastly expensive and most farmers are low on cash. As for electricity that needs to be cheap, and thanks to the right's war on "Net Zero" we have the highest energy prices anywhere in Europe.
BIB - But not attacks saying teachers are idiots.
industry has had to be transformed - the old nationalised industries have been replaced. Farming has seen a huge amount of innovation - I am of the country and know it well. Most farmers don't own a combine - they rent them. Yes farming has financial challenges - that partly the market driving it, and partly the consumer not valuing quality food enough. And I am afraid that sometimes farms are not longer economic- partly because so much has become automated or improved with tech that the land doesn't need as much in man hours. Its common now for farming couples to have one of more jobs outside of the farm too. And farms tend to get bigger.
And come off it - its not the rights war on net zero that's causing high energy prices - its our own decisions to close down energy supplies locally and import from elsewhere. Thats one of the more bonkers things you've ever said.
Why is our leccy so expensive? Because 98% of the time we price based on gas. And not a stored price, the spot price. Why not stored? Because *the Tories* allowed the storage capacity to be removed.
Which energy supplies locally do you refer to? Coal? Declined for years, killed off by Heseltine, with a switch to imported coal for the remaining life of the coal power stations. Gas? Burnt off post privatisation - the "dash for gas" in the newly marketised sector. Nuclear? We're now reliant on a choice of foreign governments.
What have the Tories done on energy? Launched net zero, attacked oil and gas. Then attacked wind. Now they pretend they always backed oil and gas despite years of doing the opposite. I'm not saying the idiot Miliband is good, but how we got here is entirely on the Tories.
Virtually all the wind farms were built under the conservatives
The critical innovation was a planning regime for offshore wind that meant, if you got the documents for various issues (environmental impact, historic wrecks, radar interference etc etc) right, approval was (and is) rapid.
There were complaints from the Enquiry Industrial Complex that demanding Judicial Reviews of decisions almost always failed.
Just shows what can be done when you reform a planning regime.
Here’s Sir Keir in 2020 telling us how he carries the can for his staff’s mistakes, never turns on them and lets them take the plaudits for the team’s victories
The incessant vitriol toward Starmer on here is insane.
Representative of public opinion
Is it really tough?
The vast vast vast majority of the people i know rarely talk about politics, when they do it's with horror about Reform.
I'm not remotely suggesting my circle of friends is remotely representative, just like those you know be either.
I get memes daily from the less politically engaged of my friends and family.
Not seen since they took the piss of Truss.
Starmer is a laughing stock.
There was a good hour of Starmer-mockery at work yesterday. He actually gets mocked more - in a middle class public sector organisation - than any of his Tory predecessors ever did. Even (slightly) more than Liz Truss. That's not to say of course that anyone was openly suggesting any of the other parties were better, and it was interspersed with a sort-of 'oh God this means we're going to have to deal with a Reform government' fatalism. But still - I'm amazed at how much contempt there is for him even among people who would normally be his tribe.
Oh, and hello @ManchesterKurt - I cycled past you at the weekend going past The Bridge but I'd gone past before realising it was you.
The incessant vitriol toward Starmer on here is insane.
It’s consonant with his polling - possibly the worst in history - and the British public mood. I’ve never known a prime minister attract such hatred and scorn - not even Boris. Truss was too brief
The polling shows that even Labour Party voters abhor him - as confirmed by PB lefty @nico67 - “I don’t know anyone that approves of him”
You probably don’t get a sense of this from your eyrie in Manhattan
I think he's still right, though. And it's not as though he's denying the polling.
The incessant vitriol toward Starmer on here is insane.
Representative of public opinion
Is it really tough?
The vast vast vast majority of the people i know rarely talk about politics, when they do it's with horror about Reform.
I'm not remotely suggesting my circle of friends is remotely representative, just like those you know be either.
I get memes daily from the less politically engaged of my friends and family.
Not seen since they took the piss of Truss.
Starmer is a laughing stock.
There was a good hour of Starmer-mockery at work yesterday. He actually gets mocked more - in a middle class public sector organisation - than any of his Tory predecessors ever did. Even Truss had a 'well it'll all be over soon' air about it. That's not to say of course that anyone was openly suggesting any of the other parties were better, and it was interspersed with a sort-of 'oh God this means we're going to have to deal with a Reform government' fatalism. But still - I'm amazed at how much contempt there is for him even among people who would normally be his tribe.
Oh, and hello @ManchesterKurt - I cycled past you at the weekend going past The Bridge but I'd gone past before realising it was you.
Yep. He's the equal and opposite of Rishi: Labour's own Sunak. Governing too left wing for his opponents, too right-wing sounding for his own party.
The incessant vitriol toward Starmer on here is insane.
Do you think that maybe because he was vitriolic about the Tories, set himself up as the paragon of virtue and clean public life whilst suggesting that he was the grown-up in such a pompous and self regarding way that people see him as a huge empty hypocritical ming vase, but a worthless fake ming vase at that?
If he hadn’t been so superior and overly appraising of his own ability then maybe people wouldn’t be enjoying his difficulties quite as much but he set his standards and has utterly failed to reach them.
Here’s Sir Keir in 2020 telling us how he carries the can for his staff’s mistakes, never turns on them and lets them take the plaudits for the team’s victories
"...it would be a good start if this weekend’s events were enough to shock the left into a sense of exigency. The lack of urgency on all manner of organising questions has been excruciating, and if there doesn’t issue from this a new debate, a new coalition, a new strategy, and a new set of tactics — then we deserve what we get."
I argued last evening those who think two party politics is dead have got it wrong.
The parties may end up with different names but ultimately it will resolve down to a binary choice - the big change is the nature of the faultline. For decades, it was economic - one side favoured lower taxes, less spending and regulation, the other saw the State as the provider, supported taxation and spending.
That line is no longer valid or has the priority it once did - the divide is now socio-cultural. If you are socially conservative, there's a party for you (possibly two) whereas if you have a more liberal mindset, there are three or four parties for you.
This has had two impacts - first, social conservatives and liberals who mixed together happily under the same economic programme in the Labour and Conservative parties have now flocked to Reform gutting both parties and leaving them shadows of the coalitions they once were.
The other question is whether there are enough social conservatives under FPTP to give Reform a majority on perhaps 30% of the vote - probably but if the liberally minded vote tactically, probably not.
It is the change in the faultline which has damaged Labour and the Conservatives - the politics of economics no longer matter, the politics of society and culture do.
This may be true, but can only stay true until the new party on one side of the new faultline has a go at running the country. At that point the old issues rear their heads whether people like it or not. And these old issues are in fact about how to run a national economy really well, and running it taking full account of debt, deficit, tax, spend, employment, global trade, the health of manufacturing and financial services, ag and fish.
Maybe an election can be won on the issue of a tiny % of migrants being boat people, but a country can't be run on it. The old verities return, and it won't take long.
Reform do not wish to talk about it. This is ominous.
Even better is what "no migration" does to the economy.
We have waves of migration when we have significant gaps in the labour force. We have one today. We don't want to work on farms or in factories. We've had 40 years of the right wing saying teachers are idiots and so attainment levels drop especially in the WWC. So we aren't well trained, especially in the things we need like medicine and engineering. And we have a declining birth rate and an ageing population.
So lets say Farage wins and we do move to no migration. What happens? Well there's a load of jobs we can't fill. "Send the scroungers to do it" will only last for a short time until people realise they are up for forced relocation to work on a farm. And we all get sicker as the NHS falls apart. Even better, we have less people working paying less taxes and circulating less money. So a big recession. Sound - what does Farage do then? Who does his movement scapegoat - the gays?
We absolutely need to invest in education skills and training. Invest in making proper jobs sexy again - construction, engineering, food. That will take vision and time and money. And we're prepared to invest none of that. But we want the brown people to go away because they are raping and murdering our women, taking our homes, stealing both the jobs and claiming benefits. So sayeth Musk and Yaxley-Robinson.
"We've had 40 years of the right wing saying teachers are idiots" - any substantiation for that rather odd claim? I think people on the right have suggested that teachers tend to be on the left, and worry about them infecting children with woke, but I don't think they have been characterised as idiots.
We have a broader culture that values the arts far more than STEM. It should never be acceptable to say "I'm no good at maths' and laugh about it. When Paxman was presenting University Challenge he would sneer at students not knowing some obscure musical composition or writer, or basically anything from the arts and then stumble over pronouncing a basic science term.
The answer to farming is NOT more low paid manual work, its increasing productivity by better ways of working, whether that is growing salad 365 days a year indoors with green electricity, or using robots to harvest crops.
On education? Endless attacks by The Sun, Daily Mail and various Tories. When tabloid-reading parents are fed an endless attack on the education system is it any wonder they don't care if their kids achieve in school?
On farming the robot pickers are vastly expensive and most farmers are low on cash. As for electricity that needs to be cheap, and thanks to the right's war on "Net Zero" we have the highest energy prices anywhere in Europe.
BIB - But not attacks saying teachers are idiots.
industry has had to be transformed - the old nationalised industries have been replaced. Farming has seen a huge amount of innovation - I am of the country and know it well. Most farmers don't own a combine - they rent them. Yes farming has financial challenges - that partly the market driving it, and partly the consumer not valuing quality food enough. And I am afraid that sometimes farms are not longer economic- partly because so much has become automated or improved with tech that the land doesn't need as much in man hours. Its common now for farming couples to have one of more jobs outside of the farm too. And farms tend to get bigger.
And come off it - its not the rights war on net zero that's causing high energy prices - its our own decisions to close down energy supplies locally and import from elsewhere. Thats one of the more bonkers things you've ever said.
Why is our leccy so expensive? Because 98% of the time we price based on gas. And not a stored price, the spot price. Why not stored? Because *the Tories* allowed the storage capacity to be removed.
Which energy supplies locally do you refer to? Coal? Declined for years, killed off by Heseltine, with a switch to imported coal for the remaining life of the coal power stations. Gas? Burnt off post privatisation - the "dash for gas" in the newly marketised sector. Nuclear? We're now reliant on a choice of foreign governments.
What have the Tories done on energy? Launched net zero, attacked oil and gas. Then attacked wind. Now they pretend they always backed oil and gas despite years of doing the opposite. I'm not saying the idiot Miliband is good, but how we got here is entirely on the Tories.
The North sea still has useful gas that we are choosing NOT to use.
On nuclear I think it was catastrophic to turn away from by the Tories and frankly Labour have been no better. Quite how world leaders in nuclear in the 50's became the basket case we are now, reliant on other countries to build our plants at exorbitant cost is a national tragedy.
You also ignore the net zero pricing in the costs of our energy.
Thats in everyone's energy though, not just ours. The price differential is the gas price.
You pay nothing for the tide.
Just the lagoons to catch them. And they are cheaper, safer and far more longer lasting than any nuclear plant.
The incessant vitriol toward Starmer on here is insane.
It’s consonant with his polling - possibly the worst in history - and the British public mood. I’ve never known a prime minister attract such hatred and scorn - not even Boris. Truss was too brief
The polling shows that even Labour Party voters abhor him - as confirmed by PB lefty @nico67 - “I don’t know anyone that approves of him”
You probably don’t get a sense of this from your eyrie in Manhattan
Actually I do get all of that. Starmer’s astonishing insipidness is maddening, and his main ally, Reeves, has been hopeless.
However, even accounting for that, the criticism is off the charts.
A fair-minded observer would allow that he is trying to govern what seems to have become ungovernable country. A fair-minded observer would also note that no other current party leader is likely to do any better; more likely even worse.
The incessant vitriol toward Starmer on here is insane.
Representative of public opinion
Is it really tough?
The vast vast vast majority of the people i know rarely talk about politics, when they do it's with horror about Reform.
I'm not remotely suggesting my circle of friends is remotely representative, just like those you know be either.
I get memes daily from the less politically engaged of my friends and family.
Not seen since they took the piss of Truss.
Starmer is a laughing stock.
There was a good hour of Starmer-mockery at work yesterday. He actually gets mocked more - in a middle class public sector organisation - than any of his Tory predecessors ever did. Even Truss had a 'well it'll all be over soon' air about it. That's not to say of course that anyone was openly suggesting any of the other parties were better, and it was interspersed with a sort-of 'oh God this means we're going to have to deal with a Reform government' fatalism. But still - I'm amazed at how much contempt there is for him even among people who would normally be his tribe.
Oh, and hello @ManchesterKurt - I cycled past you at the weekend going past The Bridge but I'd gone past before realising it was you.
That’s my experience. Even apolitical people laugh at him. He’s a clown at best and an object of contempt for many
Now I admit my personal loathing of him IS slightly unhinged. It’s of a ferocity I’ve never felt before. But, unfortunately, he is the kind of guy that evokes unhinged loathing
He doesn’t seem to have any redeeming features whatsoever. Not a sense of humour to disarm you, not an air of competence to placate you, not a smart brain to impress you. Nothing. Just dull homourless venal hypocritical narcissistic incompetence tinged with outright treachery
I see pensioners are going to get inflation beating increases again this year. 4.8%.
The long-term unaffordability of the triple lock will eventually sink it. I say Labour should double down on their unpopularity and scrap it. Link increases to inflation only.
The incessant vitriol toward Starmer on here is insane.
Its bad but to some extent he has brought it on himself. The Ming vase strategy worked superbly, but mainly because the Tories imploded in magnificent style. I think people assumed that Labour actually had plans for office, as they must have been confident of power for a couple of years. And yet they seem as lacking in ideas as Brown was when he finally reached the top of the greasy pole.
And they are showing themselves to be spineless too. Whatever people think of Thatcher, she at least stuck to her guns. This government gives way at the first whiff of a faintly negative opinion letter in the Grauniad, or worse the Telegraph.
At heart Starmerism doesn't exist. He is an empty vessel. He seemed to think that not being the Tories was enough.
And they have been in just over a year and have lost how many to scandals?
Are they of the "anyone can do a legal challenge to delay a process for a bit, even if the case is pretty shlonky" type (embarassing, but business as usual and not a problem in the medium term) or "this sinks the policy" type?
Seem similar to the ones Sir Keir was behind stopping us sending convicted and future murderers back where they came from in the last parliament
John Rentoul @JohnRentoul · 1h The whole point of a pilot scheme is to test and overcome the obstacles
Ukraine’s new “Long-range drone” hitting O&G facilities 1,500km into Russia, is basically a remote-controlled light aircraft, stuffed with fuel and explosives instead of a couple of humans.
It flies low and slow, for several hours at a time, yet the enemy still appears to be incapable of shooting it down.
I argued last evening those who think two party politics is dead have got it wrong.
The parties may end up with different names but ultimately it will resolve down to a binary choice - the big change is the nature of the faultline. For decades, it was economic - one side favoured lower taxes, less spending and regulation, the other saw the State as the provider, supported taxation and spending.
That line is no longer valid or has the priority it once did - the divide is now socio-cultural. If you are socially conservative, there's a party for you (possibly two) whereas if you have a more liberal mindset, there are three or four parties for you.
This has had two impacts - first, social conservatives and liberals who mixed together happily under the same economic programme in the Labour and Conservative parties have now flocked to Reform gutting both parties and leaving them shadows of the coalitions they once were.
The other question is whether there are enough social conservatives under FPTP to give Reform a majority on perhaps 30% of the vote - probably but if the liberally minded vote tactically, probably not.
It is the change in the faultline which has damaged Labour and the Conservatives - the politics of economics no longer matter, the politics of society and culture do.
This may be true, but can only stay true until the new party on one side of the new faultline has a go at running the country. At that point the old issues rear their heads whether people like it or not. And these old issues are in fact about how to run a national economy really well, and running it taking full account of debt, deficit, tax, spend, employment, global trade, the health of manufacturing and financial services, ag and fish.
Maybe an election can be won on the issue of a tiny % of migrants being boat people, but a country can't be run on it. The old verities return, and it won't take long.
Reform do not wish to talk about it. This is ominous.
Even better is what "no migration" does to the economy.
We have waves of migration when we have significant gaps in the labour force. We have one today. We don't want to work on farms or in factories. We've had 40 years of the right wing saying teachers are idiots and so attainment levels drop especially in the WWC. So we aren't well trained, especially in the things we need like medicine and engineering. And we have a declining birth rate and an ageing population.
So lets say Farage wins and we do move to no migration. What happens? Well there's a load of jobs we can't fill. "Send the scroungers to do it" will only last for a short time until people realise they are up for forced relocation to work on a farm. And we all get sicker as the NHS falls apart. Even better, we have less people working paying less taxes and circulating less money. So a big recession. Sound - what does Farage do then? Who does his movement scapegoat - the gays?
We absolutely need to invest in education skills and training. Invest in making proper jobs sexy again - construction, engineering, food. That will take vision and time and money. And we're prepared to invest none of that. But we want the brown people to go away because they are raping and murdering our women, taking our homes, stealing both the jobs and claiming benefits. So sayeth Musk and Yaxley-Robinson.
"We've had 40 years of the right wing saying teachers are idiots" - any substantiation for that rather odd claim? I think people on the right have suggested that teachers tend to be on the left, and worry about them infecting children with woke, but I don't think they have been characterised as idiots.
We have a broader culture that values the arts far more than STEM. It should never be acceptable to say "I'm no good at maths' and laugh about it. When Paxman was presenting University Challenge he would sneer at students not knowing some obscure musical composition or writer, or basically anything from the arts and then stumble over pronouncing a basic science term.
The answer to farming is NOT more low paid manual work, its increasing productivity by better ways of working, whether that is growing salad 365 days a year indoors with green electricity, or using robots to harvest crops.
On education? Endless attacks by The Sun, Daily Mail and various Tories. When tabloid-reading parents are fed an endless attack on the education system is it any wonder they don't care if their kids achieve in school?
On farming the robot pickers are vastly expensive and most farmers are low on cash. As for electricity that needs to be cheap, and thanks to the right's war on "Net Zero" we have the highest energy prices anywhere in Europe.
BIB - But not attacks saying teachers are idiots.
industry has had to be transformed - the old nationalised industries have been replaced. Farming has seen a huge amount of innovation - I am of the country and know it well. Most farmers don't own a combine - they rent them. Yes farming has financial challenges - that partly the market driving it, and partly the consumer not valuing quality food enough. And I am afraid that sometimes farms are not longer economic- partly because so much has become automated or improved with tech that the land doesn't need as much in man hours. Its common now for farming couples to have one of more jobs outside of the farm too. And farms tend to get bigger.
And come off it - its not the rights war on net zero that's causing high energy prices - its our own decisions to close down energy supplies locally and import from elsewhere. Thats one of the more bonkers things you've ever said.
Why is our leccy so expensive? Because 98% of the time we price based on gas. And not a stored price, the spot price. Why not stored? Because *the Tories* allowed the storage capacity to be removed.
Which energy supplies locally do you refer to? Coal? Declined for years, killed off by Heseltine, with a switch to imported coal for the remaining life of the coal power stations. Gas? Burnt off post privatisation - the "dash for gas" in the newly marketised sector. Nuclear? We're now reliant on a choice of foreign governments.
What have the Tories done on energy? Launched net zero, attacked oil and gas. Then attacked wind. Now they pretend they always backed oil and gas despite years of doing the opposite. I'm not saying the idiot Miliband is good, but how we got here is entirely on the Tories.
Virtually all the wind farms were built under the conservatives
Which they then started attacking. No more wind farms etc. Hard to invest when government is blowing hot and cold
The incessant vitriol toward Starmer on here is insane.
It’s consonant with his polling - possibly the worst in history - and the British public mood. I’ve never known a prime minister attract such hatred and scorn - not even Boris. Truss was too brief
The polling shows that even Labour Party voters abhor him - as confirmed by PB lefty @nico67 - “I don’t know anyone that approves of him”
You probably don’t get a sense of this from your eyrie in Manhattan
Actually I do get all of that. Starmer’s astonishing insipidness is maddening, and his main ally, Reeves, has been hopeless.
However, even accounting for that, the criticism is off the charts.
A fair-minded observer would allow that he is trying to govern what seems to have become ungovernable country. A fair-minded observer would also note that no other current party leader is likely to do any better; more likely even worse.
He's also managed to get lower tarrffs out of Trump than any other Western leader, as far as known.
I argued last evening those who think two party politics is dead have got it wrong.
The parties may end up with different names but ultimately it will resolve down to a binary choice - the big change is the nature of the faultline. For decades, it was economic - one side favoured lower taxes, less spending and regulation, the other saw the State as the provider, supported taxation and spending.
That line is no longer valid or has the priority it once did - the divide is now socio-cultural. If you are socially conservative, there's a party for you (possibly two) whereas if you have a more liberal mindset, there are three or four parties for you.
This has had two impacts - first, social conservatives and liberals who mixed together happily under the same economic programme in the Labour and Conservative parties have now flocked to Reform gutting both parties and leaving them shadows of the coalitions they once were.
The other question is whether there are enough social conservatives under FPTP to give Reform a majority on perhaps 30% of the vote - probably but if the liberally minded vote tactically, probably not.
It is the change in the faultline which has damaged Labour and the Conservatives - the politics of economics no longer matter, the politics of society and culture do.
This may be true, but can only stay true until the new party on one side of the new faultline has a go at running the country. At that point the old issues rear their heads whether people like it or not. And these old issues are in fact about how to run a national economy really well, and running it taking full account of debt, deficit, tax, spend, employment, global trade, the health of manufacturing and financial services, ag and fish.
Maybe an election can be won on the issue of a tiny % of migrants being boat people, but a country can't be run on it. The old verities return, and it won't take long.
Reform do not wish to talk about it. This is ominous.
Even better is what "no migration" does to the economy.
We have waves of migration when we have significant gaps in the labour force. We have one today. We don't want to work on farms or in factories. We've had 40 years of the right wing saying teachers are idiots and so attainment levels drop especially in the WWC. So we aren't well trained, especially in the things we need like medicine and engineering. And we have a declining birth rate and an ageing population.
So lets say Farage wins and we do move to no migration. What happens? Well there's a load of jobs we can't fill. "Send the scroungers to do it" will only last for a short time until people realise they are up for forced relocation to work on a farm. And we all get sicker as the NHS falls apart. Even better, we have less people working paying less taxes and circulating less money. So a big recession. Sound - what does Farage do then? Who does his movement scapegoat - the gays?
We absolutely need to invest in education skills and training. Invest in making proper jobs sexy again - construction, engineering, food. That will take vision and time and money. And we're prepared to invest none of that. But we want the brown people to go away because they are raping and murdering our women, taking our homes, stealing both the jobs and claiming benefits. So sayeth Musk and Yaxley-Robinson.
"We've had 40 years of the right wing saying teachers are idiots" - any substantiation for that rather odd claim? I think people on the right have suggested that teachers tend to be on the left, and worry about them infecting children with woke, but I don't think they have been characterised as idiots.
We have a broader culture that values the arts far more than STEM. It should never be acceptable to say "I'm no good at maths' and laugh about it. When Paxman was presenting University Challenge he would sneer at students not knowing some obscure musical composition or writer, or basically anything from the arts and then stumble over pronouncing a basic science term.
The answer to farming is NOT more low paid manual work, its increasing productivity by better ways of working, whether that is growing salad 365 days a year indoors with green electricity, or using robots to harvest crops.
On education? Endless attacks by The Sun, Daily Mail and various Tories. When tabloid-reading parents are fed an endless attack on the education system is it any wonder they don't care if their kids achieve in school?
On farming the robot pickers are vastly expensive and most farmers are low on cash. As for electricity that needs to be cheap, and thanks to the right's war on "Net Zero" we have the highest energy prices anywhere in Europe.
BIB - But not attacks saying teachers are idiots.
industry has had to be transformed - the old nationalised industries have been replaced. Farming has seen a huge amount of innovation - I am of the country and know it well. Most farmers don't own a combine - they rent them. Yes farming has financial challenges - that partly the market driving it, and partly the consumer not valuing quality food enough. And I am afraid that sometimes farms are not longer economic- partly because so much has become automated or improved with tech that the land doesn't need as much in man hours. Its common now for farming couples to have one of more jobs outside of the farm too. And farms tend to get bigger.
And come off it - its not the rights war on net zero that's causing high energy prices - its our own decisions to close down energy supplies locally and import from elsewhere. Thats one of the more bonkers things you've ever said.
Why is our leccy so expensive? Because 98% of the time we price based on gas. And not a stored price, the spot price. Why not stored? Because *the Tories* allowed the storage capacity to be removed.
Which energy supplies locally do you refer to? Coal? Declined for years, killed off by Heseltine, with a switch to imported coal for the remaining life of the coal power stations. Gas? Burnt off post privatisation - the "dash for gas" in the newly marketised sector. Nuclear? We're now reliant on a choice of foreign governments.
What have the Tories done on energy? Launched net zero, attacked oil and gas. Then attacked wind. Now they pretend they always backed oil and gas despite years of doing the opposite. I'm not saying the idiot Miliband is good, but how we got here is entirely on the Tories.
The North sea still has useful gas that we are choosing NOT to use.
On nuclear I think it was catastrophic to turn away from by the Tories and frankly Labour have been no better. Quite how world leaders in nuclear in the 50's became the basket case we are now, reliant on other countries to build our plants at exorbitant cost is a national tragedy.
The incessant vitriol toward Starmer on here is insane.
Do you think that maybe because he was vitriolic about the Tories, set himself up as the paragon of virtue and clean public life whilst suggesting that he was the grown-up in such a pompous and self regarding way that people see him as a huge empty hypocritical ming vase, but a worthless fake ming vase at that?
If he hadn’t been so superior and overly appraising of his own ability then maybe people wouldn’t be enjoying his difficulties quite as much but he set his standards and has utterly failed to reach them.
Starmer wasn’t nearly vitriolic enough about the fraudulent, disastrous, failed Tory regime.
Starmer doesn’t do vitriol, or any kind of interesting rhetoric, that’s part of his issue.
The incessant vitriol toward Starmer on here is insane.
Representative of public opinion
Is it really tough?
The vast vast vast majority of the people i know rarely talk about politics, when they do it's with horror about Reform.
I'm not remotely suggesting my circle of friends is remotely representative, just like those you know be either.
I get memes daily from the less politically engaged of my friends and family.
Not seen since they took the piss of Truss.
Starmer is a laughing stock.
There was a good hour of Starmer-mockery at work yesterday. He actually gets mocked more - in a middle class public sector organisation - than any of his Tory predecessors ever did. Even Truss had a 'well it'll all be over soon' air about it. That's not to say of course that anyone was openly suggesting any of the other parties were better, and it was interspersed with a sort-of 'oh God this means we're going to have to deal with a Reform government' fatalism. But still - I'm amazed at how much contempt there is for him even among people who would normally be his tribe.
Oh, and hello @ManchesterKurt - I cycled past you at the weekend going past The Bridge but I'd gone past before realising it was you.
That’s my experience. Even apolitical people laugh at him. He’s a clown at best and an object of contempt for many
Now I admit my personal loathing of him IS slightly unhinged. It’s of a ferocity I’ve never felt before. But, unfortunately, he is the kind of guy that evokes unhinged loathing
He doesn’t seem to have any redeeming features whatsoever. Not a sense of humour to disarm you, not an air of competence to placate you, not a smart brain to impress you. Nothing. Just dull homourless venal hypocritical narcissistic incompetence tinged with outright treachery
You appear to be going through some sort of breakdown.
Meanwhile, no British government is popular midterm and they always become a focus for either ridicule or dislike. Nevertheless there's no logic for getting worked up beyond mild to moderate disappointment.
The incessant vitriol toward Starmer on here is insane.
Representative of public opinion
Is it really tough?
The vast vast vast majority of the people i know rarely talk about politics, when they do it's with horror about Reform.
I'm not remotely suggesting my circle of friends is remotely representative, just like those you know be either.
I get memes daily from the less politically engaged of my friends and family.
Not seen since they took the piss of Truss.
Starmer is a laughing stock.
There was a good hour of Starmer-mockery at work yesterday. He actually gets mocked more - in a middle class public sector organisation - than any of his Tory predecessors ever did. Even Truss had a 'well it'll all be over soon' air about it. That's not to say of course that anyone was openly suggesting any of the other parties were better, and it was interspersed with a sort-of 'oh God this means we're going to have to deal with a Reform government' fatalism. But still - I'm amazed at how much contempt there is for him even among people who would normally be his tribe.
Oh, and hello @ManchesterKurt - I cycled past you at the weekend going past The Bridge but I'd gone past before realising it was you.
That’s my experience. Even apolitical people laugh at him. He’s a clown at best and an object of contempt for many
Now I admit my personal loathing of him IS slightly unhinged. It’s of a ferocity I’ve never felt before. But, unfortunately, he is the kind of guy that evokes unhinged loathing
He doesn’t seem to have any redeeming features whatsoever. Not a sense of humour to disarm you, not an air of competence to placate you, not a smart brain to impress you. Nothing. Just dull homourless venal hypocritical narcissistic incompetence tinged with outright treachery
That was the point.
I don't think anyone's saying he shouldn't be unpopular, or the subject of mockery.
The incessant vitriol toward Starmer on here is insane.
Do you think that maybe because he was vitriolic about the Tories, set himself up as the paragon of virtue and clean public life whilst suggesting that he was the grown-up in such a pompous and self regarding way that people see him as a huge empty hypocritical ming vase, but a worthless fake ming vase at that?
If he hadn’t been so superior and overly appraising of his own ability then maybe people wouldn’t be enjoying his difficulties quite as much but he set his standards and has utterly failed to reach them.
Starmer wasn’t nearly vitriolic enough about the fraudulent, disastrous, failed Tory regime.
Starmer doesn’t do vitriol, or any kind of interesting rhetoric, that’s part of his issue.
Other than that, top comment.
He doesn't do corruption, either, so I can understand Johnson being everything he defined himself against.
Here’s Sir Keir in 2020 telling us how he carries the can for his staff’s mistakes, never turns on them and lets them take the plaudits for the team’s victories
How would he know what his staff do or do not do? Nothing ever crosses the guys desk
I would imagine that @DavidL would confirm this but if for example you were a top lawyer and someone told you that your star witness had some bad skeletons, the witness has told the press that some bad things will be coming out about them and you are preparing to go to court the next afternoon and staking a big part of the case on them being upstanding, you would demand to see everything your team has seen themselves and read it personally before you stake any credibility on them?
You wouldn’t go into court thinking, “don’t worry, will let the guys brief me on it later when the damage is done”.
It’s even worse than this scenario as this is the PM sticking his neck out for the person in the most important ambassadorial role we have. It’s not him prosecuting a people smuggler on the testimony of a drug dealer for example.
He would have known about Mandy’s interview the day before PMQs, it’s not as if it all happened on a Friday after 5pm when he refuses to work, he had all Tuesday evening and Wednesday morning to apply his “forensic legal skills” to the detail and make sure that when asked by Kemi if he supported Mandy that he had a suitable answer that didn’t make him look like an idiot.
The incessant vitriol toward Starmer on here is insane.
Representative of public opinion
Is it really tough?
The vast vast vast majority of the people i know rarely talk about politics, when they do it's with horror about Reform.
I'm not remotely suggesting my circle of friends is remotely representative, just like those you know be either.
I get memes daily from the less politically engaged of my friends and family.
Not seen since they took the piss of Truss.
Starmer is a laughing stock.
There was a good hour of Starmer-mockery at work yesterday. He actually gets mocked more - in a middle class public sector organisation - than any of his Tory predecessors ever did. Even Truss had a 'well it'll all be over soon' air about it. That's not to say of course that anyone was openly suggesting any of the other parties were better, and it was interspersed with a sort-of 'oh God this means we're going to have to deal with a Reform government' fatalism. But still - I'm amazed at how much contempt there is for him even among people who would normally be his tribe.
Oh, and hello @ManchesterKurt - I cycled past you at the weekend going past The Bridge but I'd gone past before realising it was you.
That’s my experience. Even apolitical people laugh at him. He’s a clown at best and an object of contempt for many
Now I admit my personal loathing of him IS slightly unhinged. It’s of a ferocity I’ve never felt before. But, unfortunately, he is the kind of guy that evokes unhinged loathing
He doesn’t seem to have any redeeming features whatsoever. Not a sense of humour to disarm you, not an air of competence to placate you, not a smart brain to impress you. Nothing. Just dull homourless venal hypocritical narcissistic incompetence tinged with outright treachery
You appear to be going through some sort of breakdown.
Meanwhile, no British government is popular midterm and they always become a focus for either ridicule or dislike. Nevertheless there's no logic for getting worked up beyond mild to moderate disappointment.
Most governments arent desperately unpopular during their honeymoon though
I see pensioners are going to get inflation beating increases again this year. 4.8%.
The long-term unaffordability of the triple lock will eventually sink it. I say Labour should double down on their unpopularity and scrap it. Link increases to inflation only.
It is pretty nuts given both the economic facts, and the point that most pensioners didn't, and won't vote for them.
The incessant vitriol toward Starmer on here is insane.
It’s consonant with his polling - possibly the worst in history - and the British public mood. I’ve never known a prime minister attract such hatred and scorn - not even Boris. Truss was too brief
The polling shows that even Labour Party voters abhor him - as confirmed by PB lefty @nico67 - “I don’t know anyone that approves of him”
You probably don’t get a sense of this from your eyrie in Manhattan
Actually I do get all of that. Starmer’s astonishing insipidness is maddening, and his main ally, Reeves, has been hopeless.
However, even accounting for that, the criticism is off the charts.
A fair-minded observer would allow that he is trying to govern what seems to have become ungovernable country. A fair-minded observer would also note that no other current party leader is likely to do any better; more likely even worse.
He's also managed to get lower tarrffs out of Trump than any other Western leader, as far as known.
Not mentioned much recently.
Trump actually likes Starmer according to journalists who talk with administration aides.
I doubt whoever replaces him will be also liked.
Then we'll be facing even more trouble than we already face.
The incessant vitriol toward Starmer on here is insane.
It’s consonant with his polling - possibly the worst in history - and the British public mood. I’ve never known a prime minister attract such hatred and scorn - not even Boris. Truss was too brief
The polling shows that even Labour Party voters abhor him - as confirmed by PB lefty @nico67 - “I don’t know anyone that approves of him”
You probably don’t get a sense of this from your eyrie in Manhattan
Actually I do get all of that. Starmer’s astonishing insipidness is maddening, and his main ally, Reeves, has been hopeless.
However, even accounting for that, the criticism is off the charts.
A fair-minded observer would allow that he is trying to govern what seems to have become ungovernable country. A fair-minded observer would also note that no other current party leader is likely to do any better; more likely even worse.
There is no longer fair-minded observation in politics. Ever since their expenses hit the national consciousness, it has been contempt all the way.
The incessant vitriol toward Starmer on here is insane.
Representative of public opinion
Is it really tough?
The vast vast vast majority of the people i know rarely talk about politics, when they do it's with horror about Reform.
I'm not remotely suggesting my circle of friends is remotely representative, just like those you know be either.
I get memes daily from the less politically engaged of my friends and family.
Not seen since they took the piss of Truss.
Starmer is a laughing stock.
There was a good hour of Starmer-mockery at work yesterday. He actually gets mocked more - in a middle class public sector organisation - than any of his Tory predecessors ever did. Even (slightly) more than Liz Truss. That's not to say of course that anyone was openly suggesting any of the other parties were better, and it was interspersed with a sort-of 'oh God this means we're going to have to deal with a Reform government' fatalism. But still - I'm amazed at how much contempt there is for him even among people who would normally be his tribe.
Oh, and hello @ManchesterKurt - I cycled past you at the weekend going past The Bridge but I'd gone past before realising it was you.
The scary thing about this post, which is enlightening, is the “oh we’ll have to deal with a Reform government” fatalism from mid-level public service apparatchiks.
If such attitudes remain prevalent, the UK is basically finished. Neither bond market traders, nor various Celtic nationalists, will show any mercy.
Centrist dads need to stop bedwetting and start mobilizing.
The incessant vitriol toward Starmer on here is insane.
Representative of public opinion
Is it really tough?
The vast vast vast majority of the people i know rarely talk about politics, when they do it's with horror about Reform.
I'm not remotely suggesting my circle of friends is remotely representative, just like those you know be either.
I get memes daily from the less politically engaged of my friends and family.
Not seen since they took the piss of Truss.
Starmer is a laughing stock.
There was a good hour of Starmer-mockery at work yesterday. He actually gets mocked more - in a middle class public sector organisation - than any of his Tory predecessors ever did. Even Truss had a 'well it'll all be over soon' air about it. That's not to say of course that anyone was openly suggesting any of the other parties were better, and it was interspersed with a sort-of 'oh God this means we're going to have to deal with a Reform government' fatalism. But still - I'm amazed at how much contempt there is for him even among people who would normally be his tribe.
Oh, and hello @ManchesterKurt - I cycled past you at the weekend going past The Bridge but I'd gone past before realising it was you.
That’s my experience. Even apolitical people laugh at him. He’s a clown at best and an object of contempt for many
Now I admit my personal loathing of him IS slightly unhinged. It’s of a ferocity I’ve never felt before. But, unfortunately, he is the kind of guy that evokes unhinged loathing
He doesn’t seem to have any redeeming features whatsoever. Not a sense of humour to disarm you, not an air of competence to placate you, not a smart brain to impress you. Nothing. Just dull homourless venal hypocritical narcissistic incompetence tinged with outright treachery
You appear to be going through some sort of breakdown.
Meanwhile, no British government is popular midterm and they always become a focus for either ridicule or dislike. Nevertheless there's no logic for getting worked up beyond mild to moderate disappointment.
Most governments arent desperately unpopular during their honeymoon though
I heard an interesting theory about this at the weekend. Can't recall where it came from. The idea was that after the Trussterfuck, Starmer and Labour became in effect already in power, in as much as they had huge, almost unchanging leads. To the public they have been there for over three years, rather than just over one. Not sure if its right, but it is striking how bad their official honeymoon has been.
Vance: "While our side of the aisle certainly has its crazies, it is a statistical fact that most of the lunatics in American politics today are proud members of the far-Left." https://x.com/BulwarkOnline/status/1967652690114343274
The incessant vitriol toward Starmer on here is insane.
Representative of public opinion
Is it really tough?
The vast vast vast majority of the people i know rarely talk about politics, when they do it's with horror about Reform.
I'm not remotely suggesting my circle of friends is remotely representative, just like those you know be either.
I get memes daily from the less politically engaged of my friends and family.
Not seen since they took the piss of Truss.
Starmer is a laughing stock.
There was a good hour of Starmer-mockery at work yesterday. He actually gets mocked more - in a middle class public sector organisation - than any of his Tory predecessors ever did. Even Truss had a 'well it'll all be over soon' air about it. That's not to say of course that anyone was openly suggesting any of the other parties were better, and it was interspersed with a sort-of 'oh God this means we're going to have to deal with a Reform government' fatalism. But still - I'm amazed at how much contempt there is for him even among people who would normally be his tribe.
Oh, and hello @ManchesterKurt - I cycled past you at the weekend going past The Bridge but I'd gone past before realising it was you.
That’s my experience. Even apolitical people laugh at him. He’s a clown at best and an object of contempt for many
Now I admit my personal loathing of him IS slightly unhinged. It’s of a ferocity I’ve never felt before. But, unfortunately, he is the kind of guy that evokes unhinged loathing
He doesn’t seem to have any redeeming features whatsoever. Not a sense of humour to disarm you, not an air of competence to placate you, not a smart brain to impress you. Nothing. Just dull homourless venal hypocritical narcissistic incompetence tinged with outright treachery
You appear to be going through some sort of breakdown.
Meanwhile, no British government is popular midterm and they always become a focus for either ridicule or dislike. Nevertheless there's no logic for getting worked up beyond mild to moderate disappointment.
Most governments arent desperately unpopular during their honeymoon though
Especially not when they’ve actually done very little.
They spent almost all of their political capital on tinkering around, managing to seriously upset several well-organised groups of people while not actually increasing revenues by much.
An incoming government with a huge majority should really have bitten the bullet and gone for a “temporary” increase in income tax.
They’ve not even really looked at non-financial stuff, with no progress on planning reform nor on illegal immigration.
The incessant vitriol toward Starmer on here is insane.
Representative of public opinion
Is it really tough?
The vast vast vast majority of the people i know rarely talk about politics, when they do it's with horror about Reform.
I'm not remotely suggesting my circle of friends is remotely representative, just like those you know be either.
I get memes daily from the less politically engaged of my friends and family.
Not seen since they took the piss of Truss.
Starmer is a laughing stock.
There was a good hour of Starmer-mockery at work yesterday. He actually gets mocked more - in a middle class public sector organisation - than any of his Tory predecessors ever did. Even Truss had a 'well it'll all be over soon' air about it. That's not to say of course that anyone was openly suggesting any of the other parties were better, and it was interspersed with a sort-of 'oh God this means we're going to have to deal with a Reform government' fatalism. But still - I'm amazed at how much contempt there is for him even among people who would normally be his tribe.
Oh, and hello @ManchesterKurt - I cycled past you at the weekend going past The Bridge but I'd gone past before realising it was you.
That’s my experience. Even apolitical people laugh at him. He’s a clown at best and an object of contempt for many
Now I admit my personal loathing of him IS slightly unhinged. It’s of a ferocity I’ve never felt before. But, unfortunately, he is the kind of guy that evokes unhinged loathing
He doesn’t seem to have any redeeming features whatsoever. Not a sense of humour to disarm you, not an air of competence to placate you, not a smart brain to impress you. Nothing. Just dull homourless venal hypocritical narcissistic incompetence tinged with outright treachery
You appear to be going through some sort of breakdown.
Meanwhile, no British government is popular midterm and they always become a focus for either ridicule or dislike. Nevertheless there's no logic for getting worked up beyond mild to moderate disappointment.
Most governments arent desperately unpopular during their honeymoon though
Rachel Reeves can take much of the credit for killing the honeymoon.
Vance: "While our side of the aisle certainly has its crazies, it is a statistical fact that most of the lunatics in American politics today are proud members of the far-Left." https://x.com/BulwarkOnline/status/1967652690114343274
The incessant vitriol toward Starmer on here is insane.
Representative of public opinion
Is it really tough?
The vast vast vast majority of the people i know rarely talk about politics, when they do it's with horror about Reform.
I'm not remotely suggesting my circle of friends is remotely representative, just like those you know be either.
I get memes daily from the less politically engaged of my friends and family.
Not seen since they took the piss of Truss.
Starmer is a laughing stock.
There was a good hour of Starmer-mockery at work yesterday. He actually gets mocked more - in a middle class public sector organisation - than any of his Tory predecessors ever did. Even Truss had a 'well it'll all be over soon' air about it. That's not to say of course that anyone was openly suggesting any of the other parties were better, and it was interspersed with a sort-of 'oh God this means we're going to have to deal with a Reform government' fatalism. But still - I'm amazed at how much contempt there is for him even among people who would normally be his tribe.
Oh, and hello @ManchesterKurt - I cycled past you at the weekend going past The Bridge but I'd gone past before realising it was you.
That’s my experience. Even apolitical people laugh at him. He’s a clown at best and an object of contempt for many
Now I admit my personal loathing of him IS slightly unhinged. It’s of a ferocity I’ve never felt before. But, unfortunately, he is the kind of guy that evokes unhinged loathing
He doesn’t seem to have any redeeming features whatsoever. Not a sense of humour to disarm you, not an air of competence to placate you, not a smart brain to impress you. Nothing. Just dull homourless venal hypocritical narcissistic incompetence tinged with outright treachery
That was the point.
I don't think anyone's saying he shouldn't be unpopular, or the subject of mockery.
Chances of any government being popular right now are pretty thin.
Starmer has some obvious massive flaws as a politician. He's not quick-witted enough for our news culture, and is still pretty inexperienced. And it shows.
But the incessant vitriol is insane. And a fair chunk of it is the ongoing tantrum on the moderate right that they are pretty much impotent and irrelevant, in a way that wasn't even the case during the Blair years. And that irrelevance is also, somehow, Starmer's fault.
Ukraine’s new “Long-range drone” hitting O&G facilities 1,500km into Russia, is basically a remote-controlled light aircraft, stuffed with fuel and explosives instead of a couple of humans.
It flies low and slow, for several hours at a time, yet the enemy still appears to be incapable of shooting it down.
The incessant vitriol toward Starmer on here is insane.
Representative of public opinion
Is it really tough?
The vast vast vast majority of the people i know rarely talk about politics, when they do it's with horror about Reform.
I'm not remotely suggesting my circle of friends is remotely representative, just like those you know be either.
I get memes daily from the less politically engaged of my friends and family.
Not seen since they took the piss of Truss.
Starmer is a laughing stock.
There was a good hour of Starmer-mockery at work yesterday. He actually gets mocked more - in a middle class public sector organisation - than any of his Tory predecessors ever did. Even Truss had a 'well it'll all be over soon' air about it. That's not to say of course that anyone was openly suggesting any of the other parties were better, and it was interspersed with a sort-of 'oh God this means we're going to have to deal with a Reform government' fatalism. But still - I'm amazed at how much contempt there is for him even among people who would normally be his tribe.
Oh, and hello @ManchesterKurt - I cycled past you at the weekend going past The Bridge but I'd gone past before realising it was you.
That’s my experience. Even apolitical people laugh at him. He’s a clown at best and an object of contempt for many
Now I admit my personal loathing of him IS slightly unhinged. It’s of a ferocity I’ve never felt before. But, unfortunately, he is the kind of guy that evokes unhinged loathing
He doesn’t seem to have any redeeming features whatsoever. Not a sense of humour to disarm you, not an air of competence to placate you, not a smart brain to impress you. Nothing. Just dull homourless venal hypocritical narcissistic incompetence tinged with outright treachery
You appear to be going through some sort of breakdown.
Meanwhile, no British government is popular midterm and they always become a focus for either ridicule or dislike. Nevertheless there's no logic for getting worked up beyond mild to moderate disappointment.
Most governments arent desperately unpopular during their honeymoon though
I heard an interesting theory about this at the weekend. Can't recall where it came from. The idea was that after the Trussterfuck, Starmer and Labour became in effect already in power, in as much as they had huge, almost unchanging leads. To the public they have been there for over three years, rather than just over one. Not sure if its right, but it is striking how bad their official honeymoon has been.
I don’t really buy this.
I just think they fucked the original budget, and first 90 days, leaving them no natural supporters or firewall against a now rabid online right.
Governing in 2025 barely resembles 2010, let alone 1997.
The incessant vitriol toward Starmer on here is insane.
Representative of public opinion
Is it really tough?
The vast vast vast majority of the people i know rarely talk about politics, when they do it's with horror about Reform.
I'm not remotely suggesting my circle of friends is remotely representative, just like those you know be either.
I get memes daily from the less politically engaged of my friends and family.
Not seen since they took the piss of Truss.
Starmer is a laughing stock.
There was a good hour of Starmer-mockery at work yesterday. He actually gets mocked more - in a middle class public sector organisation - than any of his Tory predecessors ever did. Even Truss had a 'well it'll all be over soon' air about it. That's not to say of course that anyone was openly suggesting any of the other parties were better, and it was interspersed with a sort-of 'oh God this means we're going to have to deal with a Reform government' fatalism. But still - I'm amazed at how much contempt there is for him even among people who would normally be his tribe.
Oh, and hello @ManchesterKurt - I cycled past you at the weekend going past The Bridge but I'd gone past before realising it was you.
That’s my experience. Even apolitical people laugh at him. He’s a clown at best and an object of contempt for many
Now I admit my personal loathing of him IS slightly unhinged. It’s of a ferocity I’ve never felt before. But, unfortunately, he is the kind of guy that evokes unhinged loathing
He doesn’t seem to have any redeeming features whatsoever. Not a sense of humour to disarm you, not an air of competence to placate you, not a smart brain to impress you. Nothing. Just dull homourless venal hypocritical narcissistic incompetence tinged with outright treachery
That was the point.
I don't think anyone's saying he shouldn't be unpopular, or the subject of mockery.
Chances of any government being popular right now are pretty thin.
Starmer has some obvious massive flaws as a politician. He's not quick-witted enough for our news culture, and is still pretty inexperienced. And it shows.
But the incessant vitriol is insane. And a fair chunk of it is the ongoing tantrum on the moderate right that they are pretty much impotent and irrelevant, in a way that wasn't even the case during the Blair years. And that irrelevance is also, somehow, Starmer's fault.
The key point. The Tories are bleeding out their arse because there's no arse left. Badenoch and her team are trying to cosplay Reform and attack all of Labour's failings, but get torn apart with the immediate memories of the exact same failings under the Tories.
How they climb out of the hole I don't know, but for God's sake stop digging. Every time Badenoch launches some hard nosed policy they dig themselves deeper. You can't outflank Farage on the right, and when Bobby J says "Labour should close this asylum hotel" he is pilloried with "so why did you open it" etc etc etc
I know there are moderate Tories - good people with honest views. How do you wrestle control of the party back from these lunatics? Because supposedly its Jenrick next, and he's even crazier.
The incessant vitriol toward Starmer on here is insane.
Representative of public opinion
Is it really tough?
The vast vast vast majority of the people i know rarely talk about politics, when they do it's with horror about Reform.
I'm not remotely suggesting my circle of friends is remotely representative, just like those you know be either.
I get memes daily from the less politically engaged of my friends and family.
Not seen since they took the piss of Truss.
Starmer is a laughing stock.
There was a good hour of Starmer-mockery at work yesterday. He actually gets mocked more - in a middle class public sector organisation - than any of his Tory predecessors ever did. Even (slightly) more than Liz Truss. That's not to say of course that anyone was openly suggesting any of the other parties were better, and it was interspersed with a sort-of 'oh God this means we're going to have to deal with a Reform government' fatalism. But still - I'm amazed at how much contempt there is for him even among people who would normally be his tribe.
Oh, and hello @ManchesterKurt - I cycled past you at the weekend going past The Bridge but I'd gone past before realising it was you.
The scary thing about this post, which is enlightening, is the “oh we’ll have to deal with a Reform government” fatalism from mid-level public service apparatchiks.
If such attitudes remain prevalent, the UK is basically finished. Neither bond market traders, nor various Celtic nationalists, will show any mercy.
Centrist dads need to stop bedwetting and start mobilizing.
The ultimate centrist Dad is the PM.
He has managed to negotiate a deal where, it seems, we return no migrants to France.
Centrist Dadism is finished. It has been since Cameron resigned. And has never recovered. Hence the Brexit AlwaysRemainer Syndrome
Another indicator of British decline. Not a subject worthy of an “emergency debate”. Just circus stuff.
How many hours of emergency debate have we had about Russian violating Polish territory?
I despair at this and I am one of life’s optimists.
Poland closing ofthe railway lines from Belarus, in retaliation for airspace violations last week, appears to be getting Beijing’s attention, thousands of containers already getting backed up.
Land transport from China to Europe is a €25bn/year business, and 90% of it runs through Belarus and Poland!
Another indicator of British decline. Not a subject worthy of an “emergency debate”. Just circus stuff.
Nope - this is opposition oppositioning. Making things uncomfortable for Starmer. Classic politics. Just as much as Partygate, which you could equally have derided as not worthy of emergency debates.
The incessant vitriol toward Starmer on here is insane.
Representative of public opinion
Is it really tough?
The vast vast vast majority of the people i know rarely talk about politics, when they do it's with horror about Reform.
I'm not remotely suggesting my circle of friends is remotely representative, just like those you know be either.
I get memes daily from the less politically engaged of my friends and family.
Not seen since they took the piss of Truss.
Starmer is a laughing stock.
There was a good hour of Starmer-mockery at work yesterday. He actually gets mocked more - in a middle class public sector organisation - than any of his Tory predecessors ever did. Even Truss had a 'well it'll all be over soon' air about it. That's not to say of course that anyone was openly suggesting any of the other parties were better, and it was interspersed with a sort-of 'oh God this means we're going to have to deal with a Reform government' fatalism. But still - I'm amazed at how much contempt there is for him even among people who would normally be his tribe.
Oh, and hello @ManchesterKurt - I cycled past you at the weekend going past The Bridge but I'd gone past before realising it was you.
That’s my experience. Even apolitical people laugh at him. He’s a clown at best and an object of contempt for many
Now I admit my personal loathing of him IS slightly unhinged. It’s of a ferocity I’ve never felt before. But, unfortunately, he is the kind of guy that evokes unhinged loathing
He doesn’t seem to have any redeeming features whatsoever. Not a sense of humour to disarm you, not an air of competence to placate you, not a smart brain to impress you. Nothing. Just dull homourless venal hypocritical narcissistic incompetence tinged with outright treachery
You appear to be going through some sort of breakdown.
Meanwhile, no British government is popular midterm and they always become a focus for either ridicule or dislike. Nevertheless there's no logic for getting worked up beyond mild to moderate disappointment.
Most governments arent desperately unpopular during their honeymoon though
I heard an interesting theory about this at the weekend. Can't recall where it came from. The idea was that after the Trussterfuck, Starmer and Labour became in effect already in power, in as much as they had huge, almost unchanging leads. To the public they have been there for over three years, rather than just over one. Not sure if its right, but it is striking how bad their official honeymoon has been.
I don’t really buy this.
I just think they fucked the original budget, and first 90 days, leaving them no natural supporters or firewall against a now rabid online right.
Governing in 2025 barely resembles 2010, let alone 1997.
I think they would be best to look at 1979 for how a more radical government might make changes to the nation's trajectory.
The incessant vitriol toward Starmer on here is insane.
Representative of public opinion
Is it really tough?
The vast vast vast majority of the people i know rarely talk about politics, when they do it's with horror about Reform.
I'm not remotely suggesting my circle of friends is remotely representative, just like those you know be either.
I get memes daily from the less politically engaged of my friends and family.
Not seen since they took the piss of Truss.
Starmer is a laughing stock.
There was a good hour of Starmer-mockery at work yesterday. He actually gets mocked more - in a middle class public sector organisation - than any of his Tory predecessors ever did. Even (slightly) more than Liz Truss. That's not to say of course that anyone was openly suggesting any of the other parties were better, and it was interspersed with a sort-of 'oh God this means we're going to have to deal with a Reform government' fatalism. But still - I'm amazed at how much contempt there is for him even among people who would normally be his tribe.
Oh, and hello @ManchesterKurt - I cycled past you at the weekend going past The Bridge but I'd gone past before realising it was you.
The scary thing about this post, which is enlightening, is the “oh we’ll have to deal with a Reform government” fatalism from mid-level public service apparatchiks.
If such attitudes remain prevalent, the UK is basically finished. Neither bond market traders, nor various Celtic nationalists, will show any mercy.
Centrist dads need to stop bedwetting and start mobilizing.
The ultimate centrist Dad is the PM.
He has managed to negotiate a deal where, it seems, we return no migrants to France.
Centrist Dadism is finished. It has been since Cameron resigned. And has never recovered. Hence the Brexit AlwaysRemainer Syndrome
There are, though, more centrist Dads in the population, than crypto-fascists. The British electorate remains instinctively moderate. Centrist Dads (and Mums) lack a political figurehead equal to the task of leading them.
Another indicator of British decline. Not a subject worthy of an “emergency debate”. Just circus stuff.
Nope - this is opposition oppositioning. Making things uncomfortable for Starmer. Classic politics. Just as much as Partygate, which you could equally have derided as not worthy of emergency debates.
Sir David Davies is taking Mandelson apart and receiving support from across the house including Plaid, Labour and Lib Dem mps
The government response is going to be extremely difficult
Another indicator of British decline. Not a subject worthy of an “emergency debate”. Just circus stuff.
Nope - this is opposition oppositioning. Making things uncomfortable for Starmer. Classic politics. Just as much as Partygate, which you could equally have derided as not worthy of emergency debates.
Sir David Davies is taking Mandelson apart and receiving support from across the house including Plaid, Labour and Lib Dem mps
The government response is going to be extremely difficult
The incessant vitriol toward Starmer on here is insane.
Representative of public opinion
Is it really tough?
The vast vast vast majority of the people i know rarely talk about politics, when they do it's with horror about Reform.
I'm not remotely suggesting my circle of friends is remotely representative, just like those you know be either.
I get memes daily from the less politically engaged of my friends and family.
Not seen since they took the piss of Truss.
Starmer is a laughing stock.
There was a good hour of Starmer-mockery at work yesterday. He actually gets mocked more - in a middle class public sector organisation - than any of his Tory predecessors ever did. Even Truss had a 'well it'll all be over soon' air about it. That's not to say of course that anyone was openly suggesting any of the other parties were better, and it was interspersed with a sort-of 'oh God this means we're going to have to deal with a Reform government' fatalism. But still - I'm amazed at how much contempt there is for him even among people who would normally be his tribe.
Oh, and hello @ManchesterKurt - I cycled past you at the weekend going past The Bridge but I'd gone past before realising it was you.
That’s my experience. Even apolitical people laugh at him. He’s a clown at best and an object of contempt for many
Now I admit my personal loathing of him IS slightly unhinged. It’s of a ferocity I’ve never felt before. But, unfortunately, he is the kind of guy that evokes unhinged loathing
He doesn’t seem to have any redeeming features whatsoever. Not a sense of humour to disarm you, not an air of competence to placate you, not a smart brain to impress you. Nothing. Just dull homourless venal hypocritical narcissistic incompetence tinged with outright treachery
That was the point.
I don't think anyone's saying he shouldn't be unpopular, or the subject of mockery.
Chances of any government being popular right now are pretty thin.
Starmer has some obvious massive flaws as a politician. He's not quick-witted enough for our news culture, and is still pretty inexperienced. And it shows.
But the incessant vitriol is insane. And a fair chunk of it is the ongoing tantrum on the moderate right that they are pretty much impotent and irrelevant, in a way that wasn't even the case during the Blair years. And that irrelevance is also, somehow, Starmer's fault.
The key point. The Tories are bleeding out their arse because there's no arse left. Badenoch and her team are trying to cosplay Reform and attack all of Labour's failings, but get torn apart with the immediate memories of the exact same failings under the Tories.
How they climb out of the hole I don't know, but for God's sake stop digging. Every time Badenoch launches some hard nosed policy they dig themselves deeper. You can't outflank Farage on the right, and when Bobby J says "Labour should close this asylum hotel" he is pilloried with "so why did you open it" etc etc etc
I know there are moderate Tories - good people with honest views. How do you wrestle control of the party back from these lunatics? Because supposedly its Jenrick next, and he's even crazier.
Difficult, because getting involved in wrestling is a pretty lunatic thing to do. It's why a highly motivated minority can impose its will on a less motivated majority. But yeah- there comes a point where wrestling is the only option left. But Conservative wets aren't called wets for nothing.
Pension growth - due to using 2.5% twice; CPI 5 times, RPI once and wages 6 times : 89.2%
It'd be worse if Sunak hadn't switched the formula during Covid.
I’m not convinced that if Labour said, they’re retiring triple lock once it delivers 100% growth since implementation, that it would affect their polling one iota.
Pensioners aren’t voting for Labour anyway. The other parties would have to explain how they afford to keep it.
I argued last evening those who think two party politics is dead have got it wrong.
The parties may end up with different names but ultimately it will resolve down to a binary choice - the big change is the nature of the faultline. For decades, it was economic - one side favoured lower taxes, less spending and regulation, the other saw the State as the provider, supported taxation and spending.
That line is no longer valid or has the priority it once did - the divide is now socio-cultural. If you are socially conservative, there's a party for you (possibly two) whereas if you have a more liberal mindset, there are three or four parties for you.
This has had two impacts - first, social conservatives and liberals who mixed together happily under the same economic programme in the Labour and Conservative parties have now flocked to Reform gutting both parties and leaving them shadows of the coalitions they once were.
The other question is whether there are enough social conservatives under FPTP to give Reform a majority on perhaps 30% of the vote - probably but if the liberally minded vote tactically, probably not.
It is the change in the faultline which has damaged Labour and the Conservatives - the politics of economics no longer matter, the politics of society and culture do.
This may be true, but can only stay true until the new party on one side of the new faultline has a go at running the country. At that point the old issues rear their heads whether people like it or not. And these old issues are in fact about how to run a national economy really well, and running it taking full account of debt, deficit, tax, spend, employment, global trade, the health of manufacturing and financial services, ag and fish.
Maybe an election can be won on the issue of a tiny % of migrants being boat people, but a country can't be run on it. The old verities return, and it won't take long.
Reform do not wish to talk about it. This is ominous.
Even better is what "no migration" does to the economy.
We have waves of migration when we have significant gaps in the labour force. We have one today. We don't want to work on farms or in factories. We've had 40 years of the right wing saying teachers are idiots and so attainment levels drop especially in the WWC. So we aren't well trained, especially in the things we need like medicine and engineering. And we have a declining birth rate and an ageing population.
So lets say Farage wins and we do move to no migration. What happens? Well there's a load of jobs we can't fill. "Send the scroungers to do it" will only last for a short time until people realise they are up for forced relocation to work on a farm. And we all get sicker as the NHS falls apart. Even better, we have less people working paying less taxes and circulating less money. So a big recession. Sound - what does Farage do then? Who does his movement scapegoat - the gays?
We absolutely need to invest in education skills and training. Invest in making proper jobs sexy again - construction, engineering, food. That will take vision and time and money. And we're prepared to invest none of that. But we want the brown people to go away because they are raping and murdering our women, taking our homes, stealing both the jobs and claiming benefits. So sayeth Musk and Yaxley-Robinson.
"We've had 40 years of the right wing saying teachers are idiots" - any substantiation for that rather odd claim? I think people on the right have suggested that teachers tend to be on the left, and worry about them infecting children with woke, but I don't think they have been characterised as idiots.
We have a broader culture that values the arts far more than STEM. It should never be acceptable to say "I'm no good at maths' and laugh about it. When Paxman was presenting University Challenge he would sneer at students not knowing some obscure musical composition or writer, or basically anything from the arts and then stumble over pronouncing a basic science term.
The answer to farming is NOT more low paid manual work, its increasing productivity by better ways of working, whether that is growing salad 365 days a year indoors with green electricity, or using robots to harvest crops.
On education? Endless attacks by The Sun, Daily Mail and various Tories. When tabloid-reading parents are fed an endless attack on the education system is it any wonder they don't care if their kids achieve in school?
On farming the robot pickers are vastly expensive and most farmers are low on cash. As for electricity that needs to be cheap, and thanks to the right's war on "Net Zero" we have the highest energy prices anywhere in Europe.
BIB - But not attacks saying teachers are idiots.
industry has had to be transformed - the old nationalised industries have been replaced. Farming has seen a huge amount of innovation - I am of the country and know it well. Most farmers don't own a combine - they rent them. Yes farming has financial challenges - that partly the market driving it, and partly the consumer not valuing quality food enough. And I am afraid that sometimes farms are not longer economic- partly because so much has become automated or improved with tech that the land doesn't need as much in man hours. Its common now for farming couples to have one of more jobs outside of the farm too. And farms tend to get bigger.
And come off it - its not the rights war on net zero that's causing high energy prices - its our own decisions to close down energy supplies locally and import from elsewhere. Thats one of the more bonkers things you've ever said.
Why is our leccy so expensive? Because 98% of the time we price based on gas. And not a stored price, the spot price. Why not stored? Because *the Tories* allowed the storage capacity to be removed.
Which energy supplies locally do you refer to? Coal? Declined for years, killed off by Heseltine, with a switch to imported coal for the remaining life of the coal power stations. Gas? Burnt off post privatisation - the "dash for gas" in the newly marketised sector. Nuclear? We're now reliant on a choice of foreign governments.
What have the Tories done on energy? Launched net zero, attacked oil and gas. Then attacked wind. Now they pretend they always backed oil and gas despite years of doing the opposite. I'm not saying the idiot Miliband is good, but how we got here is entirely on the Tories.
Virtually all the wind farms were built under the conservatives
The critical innovation was a planning regime for offshore wind that meant, if you got the documents for various issues (environmental impact, historic wrecks, radar interference etc etc) right, approval was (and is) rapid.
There were complaints from the Enquiry Industrial Complex that demanding Judicial Reviews of decisions almost always failed.
But the Tories (and, till 2014, LDs as well) were the ones who happened to be there anyway. And so too were the SNP, Welsh Labour, the NI coalition (if that is the right word), etc. Plenty of wind farms there too.
The incessant vitriol toward Starmer on here is insane.
It’s consonant with his polling - possibly the worst in history - and the British public mood. I’ve never known a prime minister attract such hatred and scorn - not even Boris. Truss was too brief
The polling shows that even Labour Party voters abhor him - as confirmed by PB lefty @nico67 - “I don’t know anyone that approves of him”
You probably don’t get a sense of this from your eyrie in Manhattan
Actually I do get all of that. Starmer’s astonishing insipidness is maddening, and his main ally, Reeves, has been hopeless.
However, even accounting for that, the criticism is off the charts.
A fair-minded observer would allow that he is trying to govern what seems to have become ungovernable country. A fair-minded observer would also note that no other current party leader is likely to do any better; more likely even worse.
"Ungovernable country" is a Reform/Unite the Kingdom theme.
Pension growth - due to using 2.5% twice; CPI 5 times, RPI once and wages 6 times : 89.2%
It'd be worse if Sunak hadn't switched the formula during Covid.
Will the Tories announce they would end it? Kemi seems to be attempting to place her party as the only ones grown up enough to deal with the fiscal mess. But so many of her voters are OAPs.
The incessant vitriol toward Starmer on here is insane.
Representative of public opinion
Is it really tough?
The vast vast vast majority of the people i know rarely talk about politics, when they do it's with horror about Reform.
I'm not remotely suggesting my circle of friends is remotely representative, just like those you know be either.
I get memes daily from the less politically engaged of my friends and family.
Not seen since they took the piss of Truss.
Starmer is a laughing stock.
There was a good hour of Starmer-mockery at work yesterday. He actually gets mocked more - in a middle class public sector organisation - than any of his Tory predecessors ever did. Even (slightly) more than Liz Truss. That's not to say of course that anyone was openly suggesting any of the other parties were better, and it was interspersed with a sort-of 'oh God this means we're going to have to deal with a Reform government' fatalism. But still - I'm amazed at how much contempt there is for him even among people who would normally be his tribe.
Oh, and hello @ManchesterKurt - I cycled past you at the weekend going past The Bridge but I'd gone past before realising it was you.
The scary thing about this post, which is enlightening, is the “oh we’ll have to deal with a Reform government” fatalism from mid-level public service apparatchiks.
If such attitudes remain prevalent, the UK is basically finished. Neither bond market traders, nor various Celtic nationalists, will show any mercy.
Centrist dads need to stop bedwetting and start mobilizing.
To be clear, none of those mid-level public sector functionaries betrayed any intention of supporting Reform (though statistically, I expect there are more than zero in the building). It's just a general expectation and acceptance that they're going to form the next government, because this one is awful.
The incessant vitriol toward Starmer on here is insane.
Representative of public opinion
Is it really tough?
The vast vast vast majority of the people i know rarely talk about politics, when they do it's with horror about Reform.
I'm not remotely suggesting my circle of friends is remotely representative, just like those you know be either.
I get memes daily from the less politically engaged of my friends and family.
Not seen since they took the piss of Truss.
Starmer is a laughing stock.
There was a good hour of Starmer-mockery at work yesterday. He actually gets mocked more - in a middle class public sector organisation - than any of his Tory predecessors ever did. Even (slightly) more than Liz Truss. That's not to say of course that anyone was openly suggesting any of the other parties were better, and it was interspersed with a sort-of 'oh God this means we're going to have to deal with a Reform government' fatalism. But still - I'm amazed at how much contempt there is for him even among people who would normally be his tribe.
Oh, and hello @ManchesterKurt - I cycled past you at the weekend going past The Bridge but I'd gone past before realising it was you.
The scary thing about this post, which is enlightening, is the “oh we’ll have to deal with a Reform government” fatalism from mid-level public service apparatchiks.
If such attitudes remain prevalent, the UK is basically finished. Neither bond market traders, nor various Celtic nationalists, will show any mercy.
Centrist dads need to stop bedwetting and start mobilizing.
The ultimate centrist Dad is the PM.
He has managed to negotiate a deal where, it seems, we return no migrants to France.
Centrist Dadism is finished. It has been since Cameron resigned. And has never recovered. Hence the Brexit AlwaysRemainer Syndrome
There are, though, more centrist Dads in the population, than crypto-fascists. The British electorate remains instinctively moderate. Centrist Dads (and Mums) lack a political figurehead equal to the task of leading them.
I don't know. Maybe they've all left, or lost interest?
Comments
Now it’s all fallen apart. Given that this government is emotionally incapable of leaving or reforming the ECHR this means they will never solve the problem
(a flaw with most BBC setups is they give the impression of 50:50 public opinion on issues like climate change, even though that is not representative).
Both sides have been improvising by rigging up crude detection systems to locate SAM radars and improvising ways to attack them.
On nuclear I think it was catastrophic to turn away from by the Tories and frankly Labour have been no better. Quite how world leaders in nuclear in the 50's became the basket case we are now, reliant on other countries to build our plants at exorbitant cost is a national tragedy.
You also ignore the net zero pricing in the costs of our energy.
John Rentoul
@JohnRentoul
·
1h
The whole point of a pilot scheme is to test and overcome the obstacles
https://x.com/JohnRentoul/status/1967883622721159617
https://thehill.com/homenews/ap/ap-international/ap-british-politicians-condemn-elon-musks-comments-at-anti-migrant-rally-2/
This is how almost every other country in the world works.
Guess what, if I get picked up for anything more serious than dropping litter where I live, I’ll be on the next plane home and it’ll be on me to argue my case to be allowed back! That my wife also lives here, and is currently fostering a cute little kitten, are not valid reasons.
The vast vast vast majority of the people i know rarely talk about politics, when they do it's with horror about Reform.
I'm not remotely suggesting my circle of friends is remotely representative, just like those you know be either.
It’s gone beyond reasonable criticism of an admitted duffer, and into the realms of smearing-shit-on-walls.
Not seen since they took the piss of Truss.
Starmer is a laughing stock.
Admittedly I had very low low expectations for Labour, which might explain it, but it does seem over the top. Unlike Blair's Labour they seemed to have very little ambition or plan prior to and on coming into Government. What were people expecting?
This does all seem over the top stuff. People pretty much got what they voted for.
The polling shows that even Labour Party voters abhor him - as confirmed by PB lefty @nico67 - “I don’t know anyone that approves of him”
You probably don’t get a sense of this from your eyrie in Manhattan
Ukraine has been remarkably successful, recently, in droning radars all along the front, and beyond (notably in Crimea).
It's not how NATO would do it, but it has become fairly systematic,
Our militaries should be taking note, as it is another way in which drones change the terms on which warfare is conducted.
The backbench manoeuvres are all from unreconciled Corbynistas.
There were complaints from the Enquiry Industrial Complex that demanding Judicial Reviews of decisions almost always failed.
Though that seems to be lost on those declaring it as already fallen apart.
It might yet; it might not.
https://x.com/timmyvoe/status/1967888533190029596?s=46&t=CW4pL-mMpTqsJXCdjW0Z6Q
That's not to say of course that anyone was openly suggesting any of the other parties were better, and it was interspersed with a sort-of 'oh God this means we're going to have to deal with a Reform government' fatalism.
But still - I'm amazed at how much contempt there is for him even among people who would normally be his tribe.
Oh, and hello @ManchesterKurt - I cycled past you at the weekend going past The Bridge but I'd gone past before realising it was you.
He’s also a fraud
And it's not as though he's denying the polling.
If he hadn’t been so superior and overly appraising of his own ability then maybe people wouldn’t be enjoying his difficulties quite as much but he set his standards and has utterly failed to reach them.
https://www.patreon.com/posts/138879347
concludes:
"...it would be a good start if this weekend’s events were enough to shock the left into a sense of exigency. The lack of urgency on all manner of organising questions has been excruciating, and if there doesn’t issue from this a new debate, a new coalition, a new strategy, and a new set of tactics — then we deserve what we get."
Just the lagoons to catch them. And they are cheaper, safer and far more longer lasting than any nuclear plant.
Starmer’s astonishing insipidness is maddening, and his main ally, Reeves, has been hopeless.
However, even accounting for that, the criticism is off the charts.
A fair-minded observer would allow that he is trying to govern what seems to have become ungovernable country. A fair-minded observer would also note that no other current party leader is likely to do any better; more likely even worse.
Now I admit my personal loathing of him IS slightly unhinged. It’s of a ferocity I’ve never felt before. But, unfortunately, he is the kind of guy that evokes unhinged loathing
He doesn’t seem to have any redeeming features whatsoever. Not a sense of humour to disarm you, not an air of competence to placate you, not a smart brain to impress you. Nothing. Just dull homourless venal hypocritical narcissistic incompetence tinged with outright treachery
Andy Burnham who is very much involved in the dissent is not a Corbynite
Lucy Powell is likely to win deputy leader in a blow for Starmer
And it was Truss who really caused the present conservative problems, but it is amazing Starmer seems to be on the same path with labour.
The long-term unaffordability of the triple lock will eventually sink it. I say Labour should double down on their unpopularity and scrap it. Link increases to inflation only.
Or at least Captain Mainwaring?
And they are showing themselves to be spineless too. Whatever people think of Thatcher, she at least stuck to her guns. This government gives way at the first whiff of a faintly negative opinion letter in the Grauniad, or worse the Telegraph.
At heart Starmerism doesn't exist. He is an empty vessel. He seemed to think that not being the Tories was enough.
And they have been in just over a year and have lost how many to scandals?
Watching a billion-dollar S400 air defence system get destroyed when a hexcopter drone drops a 10kg bomb on its radar is fun!
Those new Flamingos are also learning how to spread their wings.
For a good old laugh go read the comments after Liz Truss had her first PMQs as an example.
Another good one is in the winter of 2021/22 when people saying why is that loser Starmer focussing on that non story partygate.
Not mentioned much recently.
https://www.gov.uk/government/news/taskforce-to-tackle-regulatory-barriers-holding-back-nuclear
Agreements include plan to build 12 reactors in Hartlepool with Centrica, creating 2,500 jobs, and fast-tracking UK and US safety checks
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2025/sep/15/uk-and-us-line-up-string-of-deals-to-build-modular-nuclear-reactors-in-britain
Though no doubt there will be resistance.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2025/sep/12/nuclear-regulatory-taskforce-consultation-new-power-stations-uk
Let hope it doesn't get stalled or watered down, as seems to have happened with the housebuilding/planning reforms.
Starmer doesn’t do vitriol, or any kind of interesting rhetoric, that’s part of his issue.
Other than that, top comment.
Meanwhile, no British government is popular midterm and they always become a focus for either ridicule or dislike. Nevertheless there's no logic for getting worked up beyond mild to moderate disappointment.
I don't think anyone's saying he shouldn't be unpopular, or the subject of mockery.
What drives him most is order.
I’ve no idea what “he’s a fraud” means.
You are Starmer derangement patient zero.
https://x.com/bohuslavskakate/status/1967908480964239673
You wouldn’t go into court thinking, “don’t worry, will let the guys brief me on it later when the damage is done”.
It’s even worse than this scenario as this is the PM sticking his neck out for the person in the most important ambassadorial role we have. It’s not him prosecuting a people smuggler on the testimony of a drug dealer for example.
He would have known about Mandy’s interview the day before PMQs, it’s not as if it all happened on a Friday after 5pm when he refuses to work, he had all Tuesday evening and Wednesday morning to apply his “forensic legal skills” to the detail and make sure that when asked by Kemi if he supported Mandy that he had a suitable answer that didn’t make him look like an idiot.
I've been at least as deranged about Starmer, for as long as anyone else
I doubt whoever replaces him will be also liked.
Then we'll be facing even more trouble than we already face.
If such attitudes remain prevalent, the UK is basically finished. Neither bond market traders, nor various Celtic nationalists, will show any mercy.
Centrist dads need to stop bedwetting and start mobilizing.
3 hours of it
Vance: "While our side of the aisle certainly has its crazies, it is a statistical fact that most of the lunatics in American politics today are proud members of the far-Left."
https://x.com/BulwarkOnline/status/1967652690114343274
They spent almost all of their political capital on tinkering around, managing to seriously upset several well-organised groups of people while not actually increasing revenues by much.
An incoming government with a huge majority should really have bitten the bullet and gone for a “temporary” increase in income tax.
They’ve not even really looked at non-financial stuff, with no progress on planning reform nor on illegal immigration.
But Starmer appointed her.
Starmer has some obvious massive flaws as a politician. He's not quick-witted enough for our news culture, and is still pretty inexperienced. And it shows.
But the incessant vitriol is insane. And a fair chunk of it is the ongoing tantrum on the moderate right that they are pretty much impotent and irrelevant, in a way that wasn't even the case during the Blair years. And that irrelevance is also, somehow, Starmer's fault.
Not a subject worthy of an “emergency debate”.
Just circus stuff.
I despair at this and I am one of life’s optimists.
The drones and other improvised stuff was as (as I said) a response to that lack of capability.
I just think they fucked the original budget, and first 90 days, leaving them no natural supporters or firewall against a now rabid online right.
Governing in 2025 barely resembles 2010, let alone 1997.
How they climb out of the hole I don't know, but for God's sake stop digging. Every time Badenoch launches some hard nosed policy they dig themselves deeper. You can't outflank Farage on the right, and when Bobby J says "Labour should close this asylum hotel" he is pilloried with "so why did you open it" etc etc etc
I know there are moderate Tories - good people with honest views. How do you wrestle control of the party back from these lunatics? Because supposedly its Jenrick next, and he's even crazier.
He has managed to negotiate a deal where, it seems, we return no migrants to France.
Centrist Dadism is finished. It has been since Cameron resigned. And has never recovered. Hence the Brexit AlwaysRemainer Syndrome
Land transport from China to Europe is a €25bn/year business, and 90% of it runs through Belarus and Poland!
https://x.com/theresaafallon/status/1967883494979142118
We all need to stop buying so much Chinese crap.
2.5% cumulative growth since implementation : 48.4%
CPI Growth : 60.2%
Wage growth: 65.0%
Pension growth - due to using 2.5% twice; CPI 5 times, RPI once and wages 6 times : 89.2%
It'd be worse if Sunak hadn't switched the formula during Covid.
The government response is going to be extremely difficult
Pensioners aren’t voting for Labour anyway. The other parties would have to explain how they afford to keep it.
Anecdotally, this is what most of my friends think about Labour, and what I think drives the poor polling figures: