Politicians usually never recover from these figures – politicalbetting.com
Politicians usually never recover from these figures – politicalbetting.com
…and Reeves is in a similar boat.The Chancellor now has the worst satisfaction scores we’ve recorded for a Chancellor of the Exchequer.Prev. lows include Kwasi Kwarteng (Oct 22: 12% satisfied, 65% dissatisfied). pic.twitter.com/E3NeYODmem
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https://www.edrith.co.uk/p/reeves-in-zugzwang?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android&r=fa1ld&triedRedirect=true
Thanks for the header, and good morning everyone.
An interesting Scott Galloway interview with historian Heather Richardson.
Suggestions are that ultra-rich people in the USA have lost their sense (in their heads) of wealth being in large part luck and opportunity, and that therefore a need to "give back" has been lost; "this is MINE".
And some interesting comparisons with the 1950s, and how loss of universal military service (and diversification of roles in the military eg contractors) has helped undermine a sense of local community.
(I think they rather fetishise the 1950s which imo hardwired in a lot of societal and philosophical problems, though imo they are right in saying that turbo-individualism is part of the current issue.)
The Fight to Save American Democracy — with Heather Cox Richardson | Prof G Conversations"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qVV1rZUw-jI
Tim ex of PB is still on board I think, but he cuts a sad figure on twitter nowadays, tilting exclusively at Len McClusky, Zarah, Jezza etc. Can’t remember the last time he had a go at a Tory.
I seem to share TSE's news instincts.
At least 98 Palestinians have died in custody since October 2023, Israeli data shows
Exclusive: Real toll likely substantially higher as hundreds of detainees from Gaza are missing, says NGO Physicians for Human Rights - Israel
Israeli data shows at least 98 Palestinians have died in custody since October 2023, and the real toll is likely substantially higher because hundreds of people detained in Gaza are missing, an Israel-based human rights group has said.
Physicians for Human Rights – Israel (PHRI) tracked deaths from causes including physical violence, medical neglect and malnutrition for a new report, using freedom of information requests, forensic reports and interviews with lawyers, activists, relatives and witnesses.
Israeli authorities only provided comprehensive data for the first eight months of the war. Over this period official figures show an unprecedented casualty rate among Palestinian detainees, on average one death every four days.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/nov/17/at-least-98-palestinians-have-died-in-custody-since-october-2023-israeli-data-shows
"My milkshake brings all the boys to the yard
And they're like it's better than yours
Damn right, it's better than yours
I could teach you, but I'd have to charge"
My favourite was when they tried to spin this, just imagine how bad things would be if the IDF weren't the most moral army in the world.
Three Israeli hostages mistakenly killed by soldiers in Gaza on Friday had used leftover food to write signs pleading for help, Israel says.
The men had been staying at the building next to where they were shot "for some period of time", according to the Israel Defense Forces (IDF).
The head of the IDF told troops that they are "absolutely not" permitted to shoot those surrendering.
"The IDF doesn't shoot a person who raises their hands," said Herzi Halevi.
But you guess correctly.
Applies equally to Starmer, Sunak, Truss and Johnson in their own way. None made any of the difficult decisions in that long-term interests of the country, yet all ended up deeply unpopular in the space of between a few weeks and a few years.
The “Exit Tax” rumours were on the news in the sandpit last week, people are making decisions that affect government revenue off the back of something with might not even happen. That the idea was even floated is causing emigration planning, loads of us Brits in expatville have had contact from people in the UK in the last couple of weeks.
Still, it'll be interesting to see if Reeves exceeds expectations or, perhaps more likely, the precise manner of the failure. Paucity of ambition? Stupid taxation? Excessive spending pledges? Promising to give the Caribbean £18tn because Guardianistas think it's righteous?
Good morning, everybody.
We all know that it has to go at some point, and its not as if pensioners vote Labour.
IMO that means a) He knows it's all coming out with GOP support and there is nothing he can do, b) He is not in the records as an offender and thinks the others will help triangulate, or c) He thinks he has successfully excluded his problems by censorship.
Scaramucci said that it is also Trump being politically far better at setting agendas rather than being on the run responding to them. His mob has moved and he wants to be standing in front of it again.
US President Donald Trump has urged lawmakers in his own party to vote to release files relating to the late convicted paedophile financier Jeffrey Epstein.
Trump wrote on Sunday night that Republicans in the House of Representatives should do so "because we have nothing to hide".
The reversal of his recent position follows a slow drip feed of documents concerning the disgraced financier by House Democrats, some of which reference Trump, who has always denied any link to Epstein's sex abuse and trafficking.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cvgv653v1vjo
2p on income tax gives this Government money to spend. Pick a few projects, get spades in the ground and people will appreciate it and provided their area improves a bit vote for the party in power...
Knowing that the sham investigation into Clinton and other Democrats will mean that they can’t be released.
This sudden change of heart from Trump should fool no one .
President Trump says NYC Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani “would like to come to Washington and meet, and we’ll work something out. We want to see everything work out well for New York.”
https://x.com/JuliaManch/status/1990208018235977945
The milkshakes are on me.
His ability to respond rapidly to events, other than rhetorically, is chaotic at best.
A congressional vote at least buys him time, as a vote to release the files will also have to go through the Senate, with its many means of delay, before actually achieving anything.
As noted earlier, if he really wanted to release the files, he could order it done by tomorrow.
He’ll also know that the release of the files will be a bomb under the whole American political Establishment, with hundreds of politicans and political donors implicated from all sides. It’ll be the biggest news story of the year, and will run for weeks to the exclusion of pretty much anything else.
For those who want to save their life will lose it...
Wisdom is wisdom.
Must be a vote winner.
As long as they leave educated public sector workers in London alone, I guess?
This kind of thing could be the reboot under a new leader.
On tax, there's a lot to be said for big changes. Tear it all up, abolish NI, change the number of bands etc and it's not only potentially fairer, it's harder to work sell it as an out and out break of manifesto promise. Cynically, abolish income tax and NI and inheritance tax and introduce a new annual gained wealth tax
ETA: By way back, I mean way back to popularity. I don't think it's impossible that Starmer could be PM after the next election, if he hangs on until then - unless Con get their act together, there's a big anti-reform vote to squeeze. But maybe any coalition partners would demand the end of Starmer as LDs did re Brown in 2015.
Trump doesn't want to release the files: PB in uproar
Trump does want to release the files: PB in uproar
Trump ‘did not perform sex act on Bill Clinton’, insists Epstein’s brother
Paedophile financier’s sibling referenced photos of Republican president ‘blowing Bubba’, newly released emails show
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2025/11/16/trump-did-not-perform-sex-act-bill-clinton-epstein-brother/?recomm_id=146ddaa4-5556-42f1-9139-fd1ade838961
In normal circumstances Starmer likely would not have become PM. But the voters felt they had to punish the Tories for the 49 days of Truss, and now they really resent that Starmer was the available means to exact that punishment.
It's an example of how contingent the future is. Had Truss not become PM, the likelihood is that Sunak would have just about scraped re-election, Labour would now have a new leader of the opposition, and Farage may have decided contesting the 2024GE wasn't worth the effort.
When Labour replace Starmer there is another opportunity for a single event to upend everything. It could accelerate Labour's decline towards sixth party status, or it might be the start of a recovery. I couldn't say ahead of time, but I would think the first 49 days would probably narrow the range of future possibilities quite considerably.
Labour have one chance to turn this around by replacing Starmer.
Jealousy is a green eyed monster.
Also, Colder Gambling Week. Wrap up warm!
The current executive is the weakest I can remember.
And try and get this through your thick skull, but whatever 'fortune' you paid in past decades was already pissed away by your governments then. It was not get set aside to fund today.
Indeed the taxes you paid then were not enough to cover expenditure then, let alone today, which is why we are burdened with so much interest now.
If Trump wanted to release the files, he'd have ordered them released already.
https://x.com/buffys/status/1989532227135254920
And so the recriminations. I'm on record saying McSweeney will the first up against the wall, gone by the 2nd week of December as the budget fallout gets brutal.
After that? Starmer is toast. The kind of toast where you're desperately scraping it with your knife to try and save it, but knowing in your heart that you will still be able to taste the burn.
There won't be a general election before 2029, so we have to put up with this shit. So let's hope someone with some nous and some vision comes forward or we truly will be sunk.
There is a model that the government could adopt - the miracle of Manchester. This has been a 30 year turnaround so its not all on Burnham, but as the metro mayor he knows what works and how to get significant changes done effectively. Shift Gwynne aside and get him into parliament. Whilst there is still time...
Do what you think needs to be done to balance the budget, or you don't deserve to be in office.
I don't believe anyone here is flying the flag for Hamas who are a lawless death cult. I don't believe the opposition (or lack of it) to Hamas is measurable in terms set out by western opinion pollsters, and the data collection even more sketchy, but who knows?
I would like to believe that a democratically elected government in a civilised country would operate to a more rigorous set of rules regarding the safety of civilians than Hamas does, and using United Nations guidance, even in the face of a lawless death cult.
I blame the Treasury. Liz Truss was right as much as she was bonkers - she turned her guns on the Treasury. She just didn't go far enough.
This budget will simply be the proof of it. Starmer has to go.
A new PM will then have one chance - just one - to turn things around.
And yes, I know burnt toast is potentially carcinogenic - I limit myself to toast once a fortnight or so.
If you get it wrong, you can end up forcing the evacuation of a major financial services office, and a resultant bollocking from a senior fire officer. Don't ask me how I know.
Take your blinkers off!
They are indeed terrible figures for the Prime Minister and Chancellor though I suspect in the current climate any PM and Chancellor would be struggling to achieve anything approaching positive numbers.
The anti-politician sentiment is running very strong currently though while that makes people feel "better", it's not much use as ultimately the country needs to be governed in some form and, as I've said elsewhere, the problems afflicting us are not the direct fault of any single Government but a culmination of demographic, socio-economic, technological and cultural change unprecdented in recent times.
People don't react well to changes they don't understand, feel they had no say in and perceive leaves them worse off, more at risk and less comfortable in the society and community they once found familiar.
It's not the job of political leadership to reverse these changes (many aren't in the fiat of any Government to change easily) but to navigate society through the changes with a degree of empathy and understanding and that's what has been lacking in recent times. It's no use telling people "it's for their own good" if people don't see it that way and whether the sentiment is Luddite or anti-immigrant, there will be pushback against those changes which don't work or seem to work.
As I regularly stayed at this Novotel they amusingly allocated a minder to keep an eye on me at breakfast for weeks after.
Democrats in the US had almost nothing to say on Epstein for years, until they sensed a split within the Republicans.
https://observer.co.uk/news/national/article/boardroom-dramas-backstabbing-and-the-bbcs-darkest-hour
..“It was a small, big problem,” one senior executive says. Small because it was not the Iraq war or Jimmy Savile; big because it involved Donald Trump and because an important principle was at stake. Even if no one outside the BBC had complained about the edit – and they had not – the BBC knew at the turn of 2025 that it had made a mistake, and it should have been willing to admit it, unprompted.
But in the room at the EGSC, although some people were troubled by what they had learned, no one suggested going public. And almost everyone who was anyone was there – among them Tim Davie, Samir Shah, Deborah Turness, her deputy Jonathan Munro, Robbie Gibb and Michael Prescott. Recollections vary about how long they spent talking about Panorama, but nobody thinks it was more than five minutes: “It didn’t strike any of us at that time as a significant issue. And that’s maybe where the whole thing began to unravel. Nobody left the room thinking, ‘Oh my god, we’ve got a real problem with Panorama.’ It just wasn’t like that.”
So the edit was treated as a moment for internal “learnings”, not for public acknowledgment...
I'm not sure that the Labour brand is beyond repair. We all need a political party so if it's not Labour it has to be another one. The question is therefore what would make it look 'new' and 'improved'? Forget new logos. That won't work and it's been done.
So first find out what people like about your brand looking for USPs. I'd say -compassion- honesty- equality- more promotion of women- history -they started the NHS-anti racism- etc .
Then what people don't like. Current leadership seem uncaring. Decision making opaque.Incompetence at the top.....
Then the solutions become more obvious
You probably have a point that the Dems were protecting their own by their inaction, but that doesn't absolve Trump of anything.
Politicians are opportunists par excellence. If they see a weakness in their opponent, they go full throttle. Look at how everyone jumped on what was basically a triviality from Angela Rayner and forced her from office and it was the same in the Conservative years when MInisters would be dismissed or forced to resign or what were sometimes (not always) minor infractions.
You don't go into politics to get a sense of proportion and perspective - you go into politics to lose it.
I think there's an evens chance that there will be something left in the budget that the backbenches won't stomach, and that Reeves will have to backtrack on. Backbench Labour MPs have forced the executive to back down before, they have a taste for it now, and the new deputy leader is a standard bearer they can rally around - as she's not in the Cabinet and is elected deputy leader she can oppose the government with impunity. Starmer can hardly remove the Labour whip from the deputy leader.
(For what it's worth, I'm with Dumbo on this one; sorry Knucklehead.)