Dominic Cummings is right – politicalbetting.com
Dominic Cummings is right – politicalbetting.com
I agree with Dominic Cummings that Sir Keir Starmer is rubbish at politics but Dominic Cummings needs to get his eyes tested if he thinks he can see evidence that Labour removes its leaders unlike the Tories.
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Good morning, everyone.
F1: I've probably blathered already about why I'm keeping an eye on Russell for 2026. Here's an explanation at slightly greater length of the main contenders for the title next year and why I think Russell's got a great shot:
https://medium.com/@rkilner/why-russell-could-win-in-2026-13e9463696fa
He has the potential to be worse than Truss.
(At the moment, whoever runs the British government is going to have a "Shawshank Redemption, only with more shit and no redemption" experience. Someone really good at politics will happily leave Starmer and Reeves to deal with that, so they can take over with clean hands a year before the next election.)
Will this be a ‘Geoffrey Howe’ moment.
https://www.newstatesman.com/politics/uk-politics/2025/10/rayner-to-give-resignation-speech-next-week
Exciting results from blood test for 50 cancer
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c205g21n1zzo
A blood test for more than 50 types of cancer could help speed up diagnosis, according to a new study.
Results of a trial in North America show that the test was able to identify a wide range of cancers, of which three-quarters don't have any form of screening programme.
More than half the cancers were detected at an early stage, where they are easier to treat and potentially curable.
The Galleri test, made by American pharmaceutical firm Grail, can detect fragments of cancerous DNA that have broken off a tumour and are circulating in the blood...
Quite a large trial, so there a good chance this works.
Howe went because he had been constructively dismissed by la Thatch, and they couldn't stand each other.
Rayner went because she hadn't met the high ethical standards we rightly demand of our leaders, and with the equivalent of a Lord Sugar "with regret" firing.
Plus Howe was a lawyer and good with words and that made a devastating combination.
He delivered his speech in sorrow not anger, I cannot see Rayner achieving that.
https://x.com/nataliefleetmp/status/1978864163603489081?s=61&t=LYVEHh2mqFy1oUJAdCfe-Q
As someone fairly ambivalent about Starmer and Reeves, I'm interested to see whether the antipathy toward them is personal or just the usual antipathy toward Labour Prime Ministers from those on the conservative side of the fence. I suspect, were Starmer to leave and another Labour PM to be in office, the antipathy would readily transfer to the new individual.
Ho hum...in any case, short of an outright Cabinet mutiny, the only two reasonable and legal ways Starmer leaves office are either a) voluntarily or b) democratically in an election. The latter isn't on the horizon and the former will only happen once a rubicon of sorts is crossed and he simply doesn't want to do the job any longer. He's been in the job 15 months not 15 years so I suspect for all the crap, he may went on to go on a little while yet.
We know the Budget is going to be horrible - it's the reckoning at the end of the party or the meal - the bill is on the table and we have to pay up. Reeves is going to raise taxes and cut spending - we know that as well. How imaginative she will be remains to be seen but it's going to be unpleasant - we all know that.
Carol Thatcher: The Tories stabbed my mother in the back, it stayed with her
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CYBv_2osd6w
I think he will retire before the GE, but not before 2028.
By then Rayner may well be rehabilitated, and either Powell or Philipson well established as Deputy.
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2025/oct/18/chocolate-biscuit-club-penguin-mcvities-cocoa-prices
Chocolate replaced by chocolate flavour.
They know time may not be on their side in terms of other developments including the revival of the Conservatives.
Labour MPs first wish (and given Tory looming extinction and Reform's rise the needs of sane members of the public) is to keep their seats in maximal numbers in 2028/9. Human nature says this can't change. So any change has to be one which increases and maximises the chance of that.
There is no point in consulting public opinion. Not a single viable, untainted candidate is widely known and deeply tested. Only a mixture of insider knowledge (the sort of wisdom that gave us Truss), intuition and guesswork on the part of MPs can fix a candidate in their interests.
The bookies lists of runners and riders give it away. The 5th in Hills betting is someone no-one at all has heard of - Darren Jones - at 14/1.
Above him are: Burnham - not an MP, Streeting - about to lose his seat; Mahmood - no-one has heard of her;
Cooper - recently removed as not tough enough for Home Secretary.
Who would you guess the majority of Labour MPs think is most able to save most seats in 2029 is the key, and in a sense only question.
If the answer is no-one then Starmer may be the man. If there is such a person, who is it?
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2025/jul/24/kemi-badenoch-argentinian-president-javier-milei-template-conservatives-tory-government?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Other
She almost makes Starmer look good at this politics thing.
As an aside, the best breakfasts are usually cooked by people not necessarily of British origin - the Portuguese and Turks do the Full English really well. Indeed, one of the best "cafe da manha ingles" I've ever had was in Lisbon.
I think I can imagine how you would define "economic literacy" and that's not going to help some of the most vulnerable in our society. Trying to run an ageing society of some 70 million people on the model that existed last century isn't going to work. We need to accept more taxation and for less until we can get borrowing down substantially. The debt interest payments are the killer but that's where we are.
Apart from the fact that Wolves only played one match away at Villa in the Eighties, Jenrick was 8 years old in 1990.
His rose tinted glasses also seem to have missed pretty much all the football hooliganism of the Eighties, not least the 96 police injured when Leeds came to Villa Park.
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt14142060/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_1_tt_7_nm_0_in_0_q_rental%20family
We have a classic example down the road - on one side, a place run by an ancient Italian. Magnificent English Breakfast.
On the other is a surviving example of the old style - run by an equally ancient British couple. Inedible.
It's perfectly reasonable to ask what the State should be doing but also to ask why private providers can't or won't step up. It's my experience private companies don't enjoy running operations at a loss or at the kind of margins to which the public sector can operate.
I mean, you don't have to fix the roads, you don't have to educate children and you don't have to look after the vulnerable and elderly if you don't believe that's what the State should be doing but you need to be honest with people and tell them they'll be on their own if you get elected.
None of our cities were run by sectarian cabals in the 80s (not in England, anyway). He could have focused on that.
To be fair, he didn't say he went to watch Wolves away at Villa. He could have gone to see his most-hated team lose. Football fans do that sort of thing.
Our £10,000 business continuity loan was fully paid back recently. Although we paid ours back millions of scammers haven't.
Starmer should be called to account and sacked for his checks and balances dereliction of duty over the Government of the day's furlough and non repaid loans fiasco.
To the people it's aimed at, this statement points to deeper truths- the boys aren't allowed to get together like this any more, and this is a loss to them.
(That it happened for a reason, that modern stadiums are better and football without the fighting is preferred by most people, isn't totally relevant here.)
Politicians of all colours do it all the time. Things that aren't truthful, but are truthy.
But a Conservative politician becoming the friend of the soccer lout is yet another thing likely to make dead Conservatives from the 80s spin in their graves.
The pads are a different blue to the the trousers, the shirts look like bad patterned warm up tops footballers use. Can’t we at least get this right and look the part? This country.
It's still pretty troublesome in much of Europe. I took a Greek colleague to a Leicester match last year who is a huge PAOK fan and goes to a lot of their away games. He couldn't get over how lax the security was at the ground, being used to airport like security checks, and quite major violence on the streets outside.
He has promised me a PAOK game next time I am in Thessalonika.
Blair & his WMD bullshit, Farage & his Brexit bullshit, Trump & his MAGA bullshit, Truss and her cutting taxes will fix everything bullshit, the Israeli propaganda machine & their 40 beheaded babies bullshit, twitter & its Democrat politicians murdered by a Democrat bullshit and now seduced by a paunchy bullshitter with bugger’s grips and a chainsaw. These are only highlights of decades of naïveté.
I enjoy a good breakfast but I couldn't have a full English every day so it's a treat when I can (particularly with the Racing Post by my side - all the company a gentleman needs).
Is it a calculated Brexit Bus lie, designed to get a pedantic response?
Or is it a "Jeffrey Archer went to Oxford" lie, which no doubt felt true to the world's greatest storyteller, even though it wasn't really.
Not that either sort is good.
https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2018/sep/16/riaz-khan-memoirs-of-an-asian-football-casual-interview-hooliganism-leicester-curve?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Other
I suspect his memory is more accurate than Jenricks.
It’s that part of the left (nearly a fifth of the voters), that supports the Greens/Your Party. They see Israel/Gaza as the defining issue of our times, and can’t understand why that country is not subject to comprehensive economic, and even military, sanctions.
Domestically, they want a government that imposes punitive taxes on “the rich” (anyone earning £50 k +,) drives landlords out of business, rejoins the EU, and overturns the Supreme Court’s ruling on sex/gender discrimination.
They do, bizarrely but sincerely, see Starmer as a disguised right winger.
We see that here. Problem - Starmer is struggling. Cummings' solution - change leader. Problem - almost impossible to do for Labour due to their rules on leadership ballots.
Incidentally, I see another of his flaws was on full display this week - his strange fantasies about his own past.
Oh, and the hairstyles....
My leukemia still returned a ‘positive’ test on PCR even after remission. Fragments of DNA floating around that are non functional but still get replicated.
I thought it a grievous error to close down the options to raise income tax and VAT before the poll but I understand why they did though I think Labour would have won regardless given the incompetent inertia which passed for Government especially under Sunak.
Had Reeves gone in with a quick budget (she was constrained by the OBR, another error) and announced tax rises, there'd have been the usual howls of anguish but in the end the question back to the Conservatives and Reform would have been "how would you reduce borrowing and cut taxes?" and they'd be forced to come clean as big public spending cutters.
We'd be further down the road than we are now and the lost time has only accumulated the debt (and the interest repayments) as well as irritating those who wanted a new Government to do "something".
https://x.com/TRobinsonNewEra/status/1979240504299511912
That both of them managed to leap onto the knife that SKS happened to be holding at the time, like an accidental James Bond in a spy caper played for laughs, is too painful to process.
My attitude to Islam is much more nuanced than that. I dislike Islamist politics, and loathe Islamist terrorists like Hamas and ISIS. I think Islamic traditions are often misogynistic and patriarchal. On the other hand a lot of Muslim cultural values very positive, particularly the family and kinship networks, emphasis on charity and personal piety etc. I have many observant Muslim friends and colleagues and in many ways we have a similar world view.
I am a liberal and am perfectly happy for people to live their lives and dress as they choose, and see that perfectly compatible with being English. What I don't approve of is people enforcing their values on the rest of society, but this is as true of MAGA as much as any Islamist. Indeed such enforcement of values is not limited to Religion, as we will shortly see when the Poppy Police swing into action.
I was just questioning your previous argument
Milei is cutting government spending to vaguely match the tax take. Rather than printing money. He is (partly) liberalising the economy. Note that he is against nearly all the Trump economic crap - tarried etc.
This is the classic IMF approach of yore.
This is because, in Argentina, they are living in the end results of the Trumpist garbage - Peronism. Which is fascism lite, combined with state intervention in everything and heavy public spending without regard to the deficit.
The current result is why the IMF was always hated on the Left - the medicine comes at the price of harsh economic results for a fair bit of time.
Which is why, traditionally, the IMF would arrange loans to tide a new government over - through the bad patch - to the other side.
The ideal screening test is easy to administer, easy to interpret, and produces few false negatives. It flags up patients needing more complex diagnostics. It is the first of several diagnostic filters, not a definitive one.
The language, chants, and antics were - at times - less than well-mannered.
Anyway, now that the Prime Minister with his usual deft political touch has turned this into a major issue, perhaps they can simply play at a neutral stadium that is more easily policed.
And going back to Jenrick's 1980s nostalgia, West Ham had to play a European Cup-winners Cup match behind closed doors. Bloody UEFA.
In many ways, a classic example of the issue.
This doesn't feel like a dilemma that would interest Cummings.
But I disagree with the ban. There should be a plan to keep rival fans apart, as is commonly done. It might be that moving to a different stadium would facilitate this.
TSE is right though and Cummings is wrong, he is unlikely to be replaced anytime soon. Rayner has been forced to resign after a scandal, Nandy is not up to the job of being PM and was even beaten by Long Bailey last time and Ed Miliband led Labour to defeat in 2015. Labour leadership rules also do not allow a no confidence vote in the party leader by party MPs unlike Conservative rules. A leader has to be nominated by MPs, be an MP themselves and beat the incumbent in a membership vote.
If Burnham returned as an MP polls show Labour members would vote for him over Starmer and a recent MiC poll showed a Burnham led Labour would narrowly beat Reform. However unless Burnham returns to Parliament then Starmer is likely safe