On the substantive, parties can win seats without doing very much if a) they are popular and b) none of their opponents are doing very much to stop them. I don't know the situation regarding the local organisations of, for example, Labour in Amber Valley or the Conservatives in Hornchurch & Upminster but, and I can speak for the former, they aren't moribund and when the election comes, it will be interesting to see Reform have any "ground game" or whether it is a social media chimera.
Reform certainly have plenty of angry people to shrill for them on X or wherever but that's not the same as working in communties and the record of the Reform County Councils elected in May is likely to undermine some of their more grandiose claims around Council Tax cuts.
We know there's a tension between the Thatcherite aspirations of Farage and Tice for large scale spending cuts and tax cuts for the rich and the ex-Labour Reform voter base which wants money spent on local services in WWC areas (and not on migrants in hotels). I imagine Farage will try to keep both on side and end up losing both as the contradictions of his "policy" are laid bare.
Ask me on a cold January morning more than three years before the event (if you must), my view is Labour will be the largest party though possibly short of a majority and the intriguing question(s) are whether Labour plus LD will be a majority or whether Reform plus Conservative will be a majority (possibly neither will be the case).
The other side of this question is whether the next election will be Labour vs Not Labour or Reform vs Not Reform or both and sometimes both in the same constituencies.
I always enjoy Mr S's posts on politics; thoughtful and thought-provoking. Also helps that I generally agree with his politics! I suspect that the next election won't be until 2029; the government might not be doing 'well' but it doesn't seem to be showing any signs of collapse, and as Wilson remarked, a week is a long time in politics. It does look though, AToW, as though one of the most notable features of our system will be apparent; 650 individual contests with different parties vying for first and second place, sometimes in adjacent constituencies. For example, in Witham, where I live, I suspect it'll be Con v Reform, with Labour snapping at both of their heels. Where that will leave me, assuming I'm still around, I don't know.
Many thanks for the kind word OKC - much appreciated. I've long suspected we are of similar mind.
Here in East Ham, it could well be Labour vs Newham Indpendents vs Greens - so much will depend on the Borough elections in May.
“According to a poll by Wisp, the dating app that prioritises getting singletons meeting face-to-face, Reform UK voters have officially been crowned the number one political ‘ick’ among British singles.
“Almost three-quarters (72%) of respondents said they’d be “put off” if they found out a match on a dating app was a Reform supporter.
“In a survey of 1,000 Wisp users aged 25-40, political affiliation (39%) ranked higher than smoking (22%), poor hygiene (17%), bad manners (12%), or even living with parents (10%) when it came to dating red flags.”
Nothing to stop Reform voters dating Reform voters
Isn't the point, rather, that there is an excess of young males amongst Reform voters? And a distinct deficit of females? Your thinking would be relevant to Young Conservatives c. 1950s, sure, but Reform in 2026?
Fukkers will have to adapt to reproduce asexually like aphids (with whom they share intellectual capacity) or sharks (with whom they share a system of ethics).
Sociopaths lecturing people on ethics? Got to admire the chutzpah I suppose.
Come across some social media discussion as to why the BBC is giving so little prominence to what is happening in Iran. John Simpson explained that it's all rather difficult as international media are banned from the country. A bit like Gaza.....
Of course that hasn't stopped the BBC reporting on Gaza.
Checking, the BBC news website was giving 50% more coverage to Iran this last month than to Gaza. Edit: using the search function.
Nothing that I can see on the front page with regard to the current disruption there. Whereas at the top there is a tab for Israel-Gaza war next to Home/In depth.
People like you and Bondegezou are obsessed. You probably think when someone gets accused of something in a front page spread and then a correction is printed on page 23 that's reasonable.
What a nasty reply to a perfectly neutral and, in fact, reassuring response using the actual data.
It does, but the difficult thing about the next GE is that someone has to win. PC and SNP are impossible, Greens or LDs nearly so, which leaves Reform, Labour and Tories, all of which have strong cases against.
NOC perhaps most likely, which would make the chaos of 2017-19 look like a model of stable government.
If the Tories and Reform have the seats to form a coalition, I doubt it would be that difficult for them to agree on most policies
“According to a poll by Wisp, the dating app that prioritises getting singletons meeting face-to-face, Reform UK voters have officially been crowned the number one political ‘ick’ among British singles.
“Almost three-quarters (72%) of respondents said they’d be “put off” if they found out a match on a dating app was a Reform supporter.
“In a survey of 1,000 Wisp users aged 25-40, political affiliation (39%) ranked higher than smoking (22%), poor hygiene (17%), bad manners (12%), or even living with parents (10%) when it came to dating red flags.”
Thank goodness Reform voters are unlikely to be boorish, smelly smokers living with their mums, or else they’d be onto plums dating wise.
“According to a poll by Wisp, the dating app that prioritises getting singletons meeting face-to-face, Reform UK voters have officially been crowned the number one political ‘ick’ among British singles.
“Almost three-quarters (72%) of respondents said they’d be “put off” if they found out a match on a dating app was a Reform supporter.
“In a survey of 1,000 Wisp users aged 25-40, political affiliation (39%) ranked higher than smoking (22%), poor hygiene (17%), bad manners (12%), or even living with parents (10%) when it came to dating red flags.”
What's remarkable about that is how being a Conservative isn't a problem at all - 72% for Reform voters, 11% for Conservatives, 10% for Labour. I guess having Reform there makes the very few people aged under 50 who vote Conservative look comparatively normal and reasonable in comparison.
Kemi is also quite trendy and hip unlike Farage and Starmer with younger people image wise and the area the Tories have made the most progress in since the general election is wealthy areas of London Labour won but where the government are now unpopular and where Reform are weak. Indeed after Polanksi Kemi probably has the best image of the main UK party leaders with young people.
However rightwing parties almost never win under 35s anyway, so while being a Tory is becoming acceptable again amongst younger people it is Reform still making the waves electorally as they now lead with the middle aged and pensioners. Farage may be an old saloon bar white male with corduroys and flat cap but he doesn't care, he isn't cool and hip and the cool people won't vote for him but the average voter is close to 50 and not cool and not hip and lives in the provinces not London so it won't harm him much at the ballot box
Morning, I noticed Con majority at next GE was in to around 10/1 or thereabouts, having been 16/1 or higher a couple of months ago.
Tories have definitely stemmed the flow away from them, and Kemi Badenoch will be happy to see her approval rating (relative to Starmers) in the yougov poll
I still think the Tories are a long way back from power, a lot will depend on Farage (and his health) for the next 3 and a half years
It will be a very split electoral map in 2029. FPTP is great for betting opportunities, but I dont think it can survive long once it fragments into a 5 or 6 way split
I'm less convinced, regrettably.
Neither Labour nor Conservative show any desire to switch to a proportional system which would ensure not only that all votes are counted but every vote counts.
As for Reform, what they say now and what they do if they win a majority in the next Commons are, I suspect, on this as well as a host of other issues, not quite the same.
Generally, in democracies, whatever the parties call themselves or however they align, the process is adversarial and you finish up with two or perhaps three rival blocs. You could argue 1984 is an allegory of Labour, Conservative and Liberal - they are fundamentally the same but switch rivalries out of convenience (just a thought).
It would be fascinating to see Badenoch distance her party from Reform and sit as a distinct group beside Labour, the LDs, Reform and Greens but governance and government requires building majorities to get legislation through the Commons and how would that work practically in such a divided chamber? Answer - by negotiation, doing deals, getting the things you want and having to support the things you don't.
That's not a politics to which we are accustomed and it might look chaotic at first but oddly enough it could work quite well.
Surely there are only the 2 usual factors to determine the result - the party in government has the election to lose and the economy stupid. The rest is normally just froth.
It does, but the difficult thing about the next GE is that someone has to win. PC and SNP are impossible, Greens or LDs nearly so, which leaves Reform, Labour and Tories, all of which have strong cases against.
NOC perhaps most likely, which would make the chaos of 2017-19 look like a model of stable government.
If the Tories and Reform have the seats to form a coalition, I doubt it would be that difficult for them to agree on most policies
The Tories found it impossible to agree on most policies on their own once Johnson took over. It was a jumbled mess, doing one thing, whilst saying two or three other things. I admire your optimism!
Some festive modelling from @CPSThinkTank on incomes/tax thresholds. If OBR is right, by 2030-1 you will be:
- £505 poorer (in real terms) on a £50k salary - £290 richer on UC - £306 richer on state pension - £537 richer on state pension under 'quadruple lock'
“According to a poll by Wisp, the dating app that prioritises getting singletons meeting face-to-face, Reform UK voters have officially been crowned the number one political ‘ick’ among British singles.
“Almost three-quarters (72%) of respondents said they’d be “put off” if they found out a match on a dating app was a Reform supporter.
“In a survey of 1,000 Wisp users aged 25-40, political affiliation (39%) ranked higher than smoking (22%), poor hygiene (17%), bad manners (12%), or even living with parents (10%) when it came to dating red flags.”
Nothing to stop Reform voters dating Reform voters
Isn't the point, rather, that there is an excess of young males amongst Reform voters? And a distinct deficit of females? Your thinking would be relevant to Young Conservatives c. 1950s, sure, but Reform in 2026?
Fukkers will have to adapt to reproduce asexually like aphids (with whom they share intellectual capacity) or sharks (with whom they share a system of ethics).
Sociopaths lecturing people on ethics? Got to admire the chutzpah I suppose.
Come across some social media discussion as to why the BBC is giving so little prominence to what is happening in Iran. John Simpson explained that it's all rather difficult as international media are banned from the country. A bit like Gaza.....
Of course that hasn't stopped the BBC reporting on Gaza.
Checking, the BBC news website was giving 50% more coverage to Iran this last month than to Gaza. Edit: using the search function.
Nothing that I can see on the front page with regard to the current disruption there. Whereas at the top there is a tab for Israel-Gaza war next to Home/In depth.
People like you and Bondegezou are obsessed. You probably think when someone gets accused of something in a front page spread and then a correction is printed on page 23 that's reasonable.
What a nasty reply to a perfectly neutral and, in fact, reassuring response using the actual data.
Look even John Simpson has acknowledged that the BBC isn't giving the Iran protests much attention. Notice how in your data you instead focused on coverage of Iran in the last month, NOT the protests of the last five days - which is the blindly obvious point.
John's excuse is that they are banned from Iran (just like Gaza). Although that has hardly stopped it being a lead item on BBC news for two years.
“According to a poll by Wisp, the dating app that prioritises getting singletons meeting face-to-face, Reform UK voters have officially been crowned the number one political ‘ick’ among British singles.
“Almost three-quarters (72%) of respondents said they’d be “put off” if they found out a match on a dating app was a Reform supporter.
“In a survey of 1,000 Wisp users aged 25-40, political affiliation (39%) ranked higher than smoking (22%), poor hygiene (17%), bad manners (12%), or even living with parents (10%) when it came to dating red flags.”
What's remarkable about that is how being a Conservative isn't a problem at all - 72% for Reform voters, 11% for Conservatives, 10% for Labour. I guess having Reform there makes the very few people aged under 50 who vote Conservative look comparatively normal and reasonable in comparison.
Kemi is also quite trendy and hip unlike Farage and Starmer with younger people image wise and the area the Tories have made the most progress in since the general election is wealthy areas of London Labour won but where the government are now unpopular and where Reform are weak. Indeed after Polanksi Kemi probably has the best image of the main UK party leaders with young people.
However rightwing parties almost never win under 35s anyway, so while being a Tory is becoming acceptable again amongst younger people it is Reform still making the waves electorally as they now lead with the middle aged and pensioners. Farage may be an old saloon bar white male with curdorys and flat cap but he doesn't care, he isn't cool and hip and the cool people won't vote for him but the average voter is close to 50 and not cool and hip and lives in the provinces not London so it won't harm him much at the ballot box
The evidence for a Conservative revival in "wealthy areas of London" is flimsy. The last London only poll from Savanta at the beginning of November had Labour on 32%, Reform on 23%, the Conservatives on 20%, the LDs on 11% and the Greens on 10% - the last three parties were close to their July 2024 numbers but Labour were down 11 and Reform up 14 from the last GE.
The local election story will be more nuanced as you well know. IF success for the Conservatives is regaining Westminster and Barnet, fine, but it's likely you'll lose Bromley and perhaps Bexley to Reform so the voters giveth and the voters taketh away.
The Conservatives, like the LDs, are largely irrelevant in Inner London and Labour's battles with the Greens and pro-Gaza Independents aren't easy to figure out. What happens in Newham may not be the same as Redbridge - Hackney may be different from Lewisham etc. etc.
Some festive modelling from @CPSThinkTank on incomes/tax thresholds. If OBR is right, by 2030-1 you will be:
- £505 poorer (in real terms) on a £50k salary - £290 richer on UC - £306 richer on state pension - £537 richer on state pension under 'quadruple lock'
“According to a poll by Wisp, the dating app that prioritises getting singletons meeting face-to-face, Reform UK voters have officially been crowned the number one political ‘ick’ among British singles.
“Almost three-quarters (72%) of respondents said they’d be “put off” if they found out a match on a dating app was a Reform supporter.
“In a survey of 1,000 Wisp users aged 25-40, political affiliation (39%) ranked higher than smoking (22%), poor hygiene (17%), bad manners (12%), or even living with parents (10%) when it came to dating red flags.”
Nothing to stop Reform voters dating Reform voters
Isn't the point, rather, that there is an excess of young males amongst Reform voters? And a distinct deficit of females? Your thinking would be relevant to Young Conservatives c. 1950s, sure, but Reform in 2026?
Fukkers will have to adapt to reproduce asexually like aphids (with whom they share intellectual capacity) or sharks (with whom they share a system of ethics).
Sociopaths lecturing people on ethics? Got to admire the chutzpah I suppose.
Come across some social media discussion as to why the BBC is giving so little prominence to what is happening in Iran. John Simpson explained that it's all rather difficult as international media are banned from the country. A bit like Gaza.....
Of course that hasn't stopped the BBC reporting on Gaza.
Checking, the BBC news website was giving 50% more coverage to Iran this last month than to Gaza. Edit: using the search function.
Oh dear. Next it will be 'Yes but that 50% more coverage is not entirely negative about the Iran regime!!'
I suppose the loons have to find something new to be outraged about now that their deranged Sadiq removed the Star of David claims have proved to be predictably baseless.
they were complaining about the guardian having an article about Iran the other day. Yet treat the NY Post as gospel.
On the substantive, parties can win seats without doing very much if a) they are popular and b) none of their opponents are doing very much to stop them. I don't know the situation regarding the local organisations of, for example, Labour in Amber Valley or the Conservatives in Hornchurch & Upminster but, and I can speak for the former, they aren't moribund and when the election comes, it will be interesting to see Reform have any "ground game" or whether it is a social media chimera.
Reform certainly have plenty of angry people to shrill for them on X or wherever but that's not the same as working in communties and the record of the Reform County Councils elected in May is likely to undermine some of their more grandiose claims around Council Tax cuts.
We know there's a tension between the Thatcherite aspirations of Farage and Tice for large scale spending cuts and tax cuts for the rich and the ex-Labour Reform voter base which wants money spent on local services in WWC areas (and not on migrants in hotels). I imagine Farage will try to keep both on side and end up losing both as the contradictions of his "policy" are laid bare.
Ask me on a cold January morning more than three years before the event (if you must), my view is Labour will be the largest party though possibly short of a majority and the intriguing question(s) are whether Labour plus LD will be a majority or whether Reform plus Conservative will be a majority (possibly neither will be the case).
The other side of this question is whether the next election will be Labour vs Not Labour or Reform vs Not Reform or both and sometimes both in the same constituencies.
It will certainly be interesting in Havering in May. Historically Upminster wards have been held by the Residents Association with unassailable majorities, Hornchurch wards tending to be more split between Con and RA with occasional Labour wins in good years for them. In Romford Rosindell has dug in and ensured all councillors are Con except for one Labour in a split ward in the more ethnically mixed centre of Romford. Ironically I reckon the sole Tory in St Alban's Ward is the safest of the lot, as Labour will lose and it is the one ward with no chance of a Reform win.
Overall I suspect the RAs will mostly be sept aside by Reform (based on how localist votes have been going elsewhere), I would expect Labour to lose all their Harold Hill seats to Reform too, so it will depend on how well the Tories can withstand the assault in Hornchurch and especially Romford whether or not Reform win a majority here. I expect they will.
Local party organisations here aren't that great outside the Tories in Romford. In my Hornchurch-but-in-Romford constituency ward, I get an occasional Rosindell-gram in which the name of my current councillor features only in the 'contact us' box. I have had 2 leaflets from Labour since the last election, but unfortunately for the wrong ward (the middle of my road is the boundary), nothing from the RAs in the 3 years I've lived here despite having 2 councillors, the LDs don't exist in Havering, and 2 leaflets recently from Reform including one pledging a whole bunch of policies that are mostly outside the council's remit and would require massive tax increases to fund.
“According to a poll by Wisp, the dating app that prioritises getting singletons meeting face-to-face, Reform UK voters have officially been crowned the number one political ‘ick’ among British singles.
“Almost three-quarters (72%) of respondents said they’d be “put off” if they found out a match on a dating app was a Reform supporter.
“In a survey of 1,000 Wisp users aged 25-40, political affiliation (39%) ranked higher than smoking (22%), poor hygiene (17%), bad manners (12%), or even living with parents (10%) when it came to dating red flags.”
Nothing to stop Reform voters dating Reform voters
Isn't the point, rather, that there is an excess of young males amongst Reform voters? And a distinct deficit of females? Your thinking would be relevant to Young Conservatives c. 1950s, sure, but Reform in 2026?
Fukkers will have to adapt to reproduce asexually like aphids (with whom they share intellectual capacity) or sharks (with whom they share a system of ethics).
Sociopaths lecturing people on ethics? Got to admire the chutzpah I suppose.
Come across some social media discussion as to why the BBC is giving so little prominence to what is happening in Iran. John Simpson explained that it's all rather difficult as international media are banned from the country. A bit like Gaza.....
Of course that hasn't stopped the BBC reporting on Gaza.
Checking, the BBC news website was giving 50% more coverage to Iran this last month than to Gaza. Edit: using the search function.
Nothing that I can see on the front page with regard to the current disruption there. Whereas at the top there is a tab for Israel-Gaza war next to Home/In depth.
People like you and Bondegezou are obsessed. You probably think when someone gets accused of something in a front page spread and then a correction is printed on page 23 that's reasonable.
What a nasty reply to a perfectly neutral and, in fact, reassuring response using the actual data.
Look even John Simpson has acknowledged that the BBC isn't giving the Iran protests much attention. Notice how in your data you instead focused on coverage of Iran in the last month, NOT the protests of the last five days - which is the blindly obvious point.
John's excuse is that they are banned from Iran (just like Gaza). Although that has hardly stopped it being a lead item on BBC news for two years.
Away with you, chum. You didn't specify a time period. I picked a month as being a reasonable one, avoiding the holiday period to some extent, but with no other preconceptions. You picked one to suit yourself.
“According to a poll by Wisp, the dating app that prioritises getting singletons meeting face-to-face, Reform UK voters have officially been crowned the number one political ‘ick’ among British singles.
“Almost three-quarters (72%) of respondents said they’d be “put off” if they found out a match on a dating app was a Reform supporter.
“In a survey of 1,000 Wisp users aged 25-40, political affiliation (39%) ranked higher than smoking (22%), poor hygiene (17%), bad manners (12%), or even living with parents (10%) when it came to dating red flags.”
Insulting voters isn't the way to go, which is what surveys of this type are trying to do if we're honest.
“According to a poll by Wisp, the dating app that prioritises getting singletons meeting face-to-face, Reform UK voters have officially been crowned the number one political ‘ick’ among British singles.
“Almost three-quarters (72%) of respondents said they’d be “put off” if they found out a match on a dating app was a Reform supporter.
“In a survey of 1,000 Wisp users aged 25-40, political affiliation (39%) ranked higher than smoking (22%), poor hygiene (17%), bad manners (12%), or even living with parents (10%) when it came to dating red flags.”
What's remarkable about that is how being a Conservative isn't a problem at all - 72% for Reform voters, 11% for Conservatives, 10% for Labour. I guess having Reform there makes the very few people aged under 50 who vote Conservative look comparatively normal and reasonable in comparison.
Kemi is also quite trendy and hip unlike Farage and Starmer with younger people image wise and the area the Tories have made the most progress in since the general election is wealthy areas of London Labour won but where the government are now unpopular and where Reform are weak. Indeed after Polanksi Kemi probably has the best image of the main UK party leaders with young people.
However rightwing parties almost never win under 35s anyway, so while being a Tory is becoming acceptable again amongst younger people it is Reform still making the waves electorally as they now lead with the middle aged and pensioners. Farage may be an old saloon bar white male with curdorys and flat cap but he doesn't care, he isn't cool and hip and the cool people won't vote for him but the average voter is close to 50 and not cool and hip and lives in the provinces not London so it won't harm him much at the ballot box
The evidence for a Conservative revival in "wealthy areas of London" is flimsy. The last London only poll from Savanta at the beginning of November had Labour on 32%, Reform on 23%, the Conservatives on 20%, the LDs on 11% and the Greens on 10% - the last three parties were close to their July 2024 numbers but Labour were down 11 and Reform up 14 from the last GE.
The local election story will be more nuanced as you well know. IF success for the Conservatives is regaining Westminster and Barnet, fine, but it's likely you'll lose Bromley and perhaps Bexley to Reform so the voters giveth and the voters taketh away.
The Conservatives, like the LDs, are largely irrelevant in Inner London and Labour's battles with the Greens and pro-Gaza Independents aren't easy to figure out. What happens in Newham may not be the same as Redbridge - Hackney may be different from Lewisham etc. etc.
The latest Nowcast has the Conservatives gaining Cities of London and Westminster, Chelsea and Fulham, Kensington and Bayswater, Finchley and Golders Green and Chipping Barnet. So there is clear evidence for a Conservative revival in wealthy areas of London actually. Westminster is certainly inner London, so if the Tories regain it next year that will be a boost for Kemi.
Indeed the fact the Conservatives are polling as well in London as nationally on the Savanta poll you gave is a huge shift from five years ago https://electionmaps.uk/nowcast
And since when were Bromley and Bexley wealthy areas of London and trendy and hip? They are outer suburbs of the city not especially cool places to live in and closer culturally to Kent in some respects than inner London so even if Reform won there my point still stands
“According to a poll by Wisp, the dating app that prioritises getting singletons meeting face-to-face, Reform UK voters have officially been crowned the number one political ‘ick’ among British singles.
“Almost three-quarters (72%) of respondents said they’d be “put off” if they found out a match on a dating app was a Reform supporter.
“In a survey of 1,000 Wisp users aged 25-40, political affiliation (39%) ranked higher than smoking (22%), poor hygiene (17%), bad manners (12%), or even living with parents (10%) when it came to dating red flags.”
Nothing to stop Reform voters dating Reform voters
Isn't the point, rather, that there is an excess of young males amongst Reform voters? And a distinct deficit of females? Your thinking would be relevant to Young Conservatives c. 1950s, sure, but Reform in 2026?
Fukkers will have to adapt to reproduce asexually like aphids (with whom they share intellectual capacity) or sharks (with whom they share a system of ethics).
Sociopaths lecturing people on ethics? Got to admire the chutzpah I suppose.
Come across some social media discussion as to why the BBC is giving so little prominence to what is happening in Iran. John Simpson explained that it's all rather difficult as international media are banned from the country. A bit like Gaza.....
Of course that hasn't stopped the BBC reporting on Gaza.
Checking, the BBC news website was giving 50% more coverage to Iran this last month than to Gaza. Edit: using the search function.
Oh dear. Next it will be 'Yes but that 50% more coverage is not entirely negative about the Iran regime!!'
I suppose the loons have to find something new to be outraged about now that their deranged Sadiq removed the Star of David claims have proved to be predictably baseless.
they were complaining about the guardian having an article about Iran the other day. Yet treat the NY Post as gospel.
The Guardian gave an op ed to Iran's foreign minister. An interesting moment to platform him I'd say. However you can argue in the spirit of open debate that his opinion should be heard. I merely suggested that I hoped the Guardian would give an equivalent platform to an Iranian dissident to call out the BS.
“According to a poll by Wisp, the dating app that prioritises getting singletons meeting face-to-face, Reform UK voters have officially been crowned the number one political ‘ick’ among British singles.
“Almost three-quarters (72%) of respondents said they’d be “put off” if they found out a match on a dating app was a Reform supporter.
“In a survey of 1,000 Wisp users aged 25-40, political affiliation (39%) ranked higher than smoking (22%), poor hygiene (17%), bad manners (12%), or even living with parents (10%) when it came to dating red flags.”
Nothing to stop Reform voters dating Reform voters
Isn't the point, rather, that there is an excess of young males amongst Reform voters? And a distinct deficit of females? Your thinking would be relevant to Young Conservatives c. 1950s, sure, but Reform in 2026?
Fukkers will have to adapt to reproduce asexually like aphids (with whom they share intellectual capacity) or sharks (with whom they share a system of ethics).
Sociopaths lecturing people on ethics? Got to admire the chutzpah I suppose.
Come across some social media discussion as to why the BBC is giving so little prominence to what is happening in Iran. John Simpson explained that it's all rather difficult as international media are banned from the country. A bit like Gaza.....
Of course that hasn't stopped the BBC reporting on Gaza.
Checking, the BBC news website was giving 50% more coverage to Iran this last month than to Gaza. Edit: using the search function.
Nothing that I can see on the front page with regard to the current disruption there. Whereas at the top there is a tab for Israel-Gaza war next to Home/In depth.
People like you and Bondegezou are obsessed. You probably think when someone gets accused of something in a front page spread and then a correction is printed on page 23 that's reasonable.
What a nasty reply to a perfectly neutral and, in fact, reassuring response using the actual data.
Look even John Simpson has acknowledged that the BBC isn't giving the Iran protests much attention. Notice how in your data you instead focused on coverage of Iran in the last month, NOT the protests of the last five days - which is the blindly obvious point.
John's excuse is that they are banned from Iran (just like Gaza). Although that has hardly stopped it being a lead item on BBC news for two years.
Away with you, chum. You didn't specify a time period. I picked a month as being a reasonable one, avoiding the holiday period to some extent, but with no other preconceptions. You picked one to suit yourself.
Are you aware of what is going on? The protests have exploded in the last week.
I mean I can understand you may not have heard much about it. Not as if the news gives it much prominence.
On @bbcr4today: 1. Former no.10 strategy boss on the knotweed of single-issue campaigns with no democratic mandate, led by well-connected political and legal figures, which are choking the political process. 2. Lord Falconer trying to resurrect his campaign for assisted suicide.
On the substantive, parties can win seats without doing very much if a) they are popular and b) none of their opponents are doing very much to stop them. I don't know the situation regarding the local organisations of, for example, Labour in Amber Valley or the Conservatives in Hornchurch & Upminster but, and I can speak for the former, they aren't moribund and when the election comes, it will be interesting to see Reform have any "ground game" or whether it is a social media chimera.
Reform certainly have plenty of angry people to shrill for them on X or wherever but that's not the same as working in communties and the record of the Reform County Councils elected in May is likely to undermine some of their more grandiose claims around Council Tax cuts.
We know there's a tension between the Thatcherite aspirations of Farage and Tice for large scale spending cuts and tax cuts for the rich and the ex-Labour Reform voter base which wants money spent on local services in WWC areas (and not on migrants in hotels). I imagine Farage will try to keep both on side and end up losing both as the contradictions of his "policy" are laid bare.
Ask me on a cold January morning more than three years before the event (if you must), my view is Labour will be the largest party though possibly short of a majority and the intriguing question(s) are whether Labour plus LD will be a majority or whether Reform plus Conservative will be a majority (possibly neither will be the case).
The other side of this question is whether the next election will be Labour vs Not Labour or Reform vs Not Reform or both and sometimes both in the same constituencies.
It will certainly be interesting in Havering in May. Historically Upminster wards have been held by the Residents Association with unassailable majorities, Hornchurch wards tending to be more split between Con and RA with occasional Labour wins in good years for them. In Romford Rosindell has dug in and ensured all councillors are Con except for one Labour in a split ward in the more ethnically mixed centre of Romford. Ironically I reckon the sole Tory in St Alban's Ward is the safest of the lot, as Labour will lose and it is the one ward with no chance of a Reform win.
Overall I suspect the RAs will mostly be sept aside by Reform (based on how localist votes have been going elsewhere), I would expect Labour to lose all their Harold Hill seats to Reform too, so it will depend on how well the Tories can withstand the assault in Hornchurch and especially Romford whether or not Reform win a majority here. I expect they will.
Local party organisations here aren't that great outside the Tories in Romford. In my Hornchurch-but-in-Romford constituency ward, I get an occasional Rosindell-gram in which the name of my current councillor features only in the 'contact us' box. I have had 2 leaflets from Labour since the last election, but unfortunately for the wrong ward (the middle of my road is the boundary), nothing from the RAs in the 3 years I've lived here despite having 2 councillors, the LDs don't exist in Havering, and 2 leaflets recently from Reform including one pledging a whole bunch of policies that are mostly outside the council's remit and would require massive tax increases to fund.
And Happy New Year!
And to you.
Agree on your central prediction- Reform are putting money and effort into Havering (direct mail from Nigel and all that), but once you have three parties fishing in variants of the same pool (Reform, Conservative and Residents'), almost anything could happen under F3PTP. Reform could plausibly sweep the board, or they could just miss out everywhere. It's conceivable that all the new flats in central Romford and Beam Park save Labour's bacon, though I wouldn't be confident about that.
The catch will be the same one that the RA administration has had over the last four years. Running a council where a lack of money continues to pour in is no fun at all.
Politicians have given away too much power to lawyers, activists and regulators, and cannot deliver their promises, an ex-aide to the prime minister has said.
Writing in The Times,, external Paul Ovenden, who quit as Keir Starmer's director of political strategy last September after offensive messages he had sent in 2017 surfaced, said the British state had got "bigger and bigger while simultaneously and systematically emasculating itself".
He also said the case of the British-Egyptian activist Alaa Abd El Fattah "revealed the sheer weirdness of how Whitehall spends its time".
“According to a poll by Wisp, the dating app that prioritises getting singletons meeting face-to-face, Reform UK voters have officially been crowned the number one political ‘ick’ among British singles.
“Almost three-quarters (72%) of respondents said they’d be “put off” if they found out a match on a dating app was a Reform supporter.
“In a survey of 1,000 Wisp users aged 25-40, political affiliation (39%) ranked higher than smoking (22%), poor hygiene (17%), bad manners (12%), or even living with parents (10%) when it came to dating red flags.”
Nothing to stop Reform voters dating Reform voters
Isn't the point, rather, that there is an excess of young males amongst Reform voters? And a distinct deficit of females? Your thinking would be relevant to Young Conservatives c. 1950s, sure, but Reform in 2026?
Fukkers will have to adapt to reproduce asexually like aphids (with whom they share intellectual capacity) or sharks (with whom they share a system of ethics).
Sociopaths lecturing people on ethics? Got to admire the chutzpah I suppose.
Come across some social media discussion as to why the BBC is giving so little prominence to what is happening in Iran. John Simpson explained that it's all rather difficult as international media are banned from the country. A bit like Gaza.....
Of course that hasn't stopped the BBC reporting on Gaza.
Checking, the BBC news website was giving 50% more coverage to Iran this last month than to Gaza. Edit: using the search function.
Oh dear. Next it will be 'Yes but that 50% more coverage is not entirely negative about the Iran regime!!'
I suppose the loons have to find something new to be outraged about now that their deranged Sadiq removed the Star of David claims have proved to be predictably baseless.
they were complaining about the guardian having an article about Iran the other day. Yet treat the NY Post as gospel.
The Guardian gave an op ed to Iran's foreign minister. An interesting moment to platform him I'd say. However you can argue in the spirit of open debate that his opinion should be heard. I merely suggested that I hoped the Guardian would give an equivalent platform to an Iranian dissident to call out the BS.
I know that you are trying for some sort for some sort of point-scoring, but The Guardian has been running stories on Iran recently:
'And STILL as of 22.39 pm on NY eve, nothing, nothing, bupkis, rien, niente, nichts, niets, whatsoever on BBC News website on Iran .... it's now extremely bizarre - but hey we've always got the regime's Foreign Minister to read in the Guardian'
“According to a poll by Wisp, the dating app that prioritises getting singletons meeting face-to-face, Reform UK voters have officially been crowned the number one political ‘ick’ among British singles.
“Almost three-quarters (72%) of respondents said they’d be “put off” if they found out a match on a dating app was a Reform supporter.
“In a survey of 1,000 Wisp users aged 25-40, political affiliation (39%) ranked higher than smoking (22%), poor hygiene (17%), bad manners (12%), or even living with parents (10%) when it came to dating red flags.”
Insulting voters isn't the way to go, which is what surveys of this type are trying to do if we're honest.
It's actually quite interesting and relevant to PB. We know that Reform voters are much more equally distributed across ages groups than Conservatives, and also that there is a deep contrast between some young men and young women in political outlook. Nowadays, that can be quite important in finding a partner.
This explains the increasingly deranged conspiracy theories about why women aren't interested in having kids, "Tradwives" etc etc. Given young people don't vote much, it perhaps isn't that important. However, the Conservatives have retained some reputation for sanity in this survey and it might be a niche that serves them well, particularly as the press go digging into the various incels that occupy the Reform/MAGA space.
Politicians have given away too much power to lawyers, activists and regulators, and cannot deliver their promises, an ex-aide to the prime minister has said.
Writing in The Times,, external Paul Ovenden, who quit as Keir Starmer's director of political strategy last September after offensive messages he had sent in 2017 surfaced, said the British state had got "bigger and bigger while simultaneously and systematically emasculating itself".
He also said the case of the British-Egyptian activist Alaa Abd El Fattah "revealed the sheer weirdness of how Whitehall spends its time".
This is something @Sandpit and I were driving at a couple of days ago articulated very well in the article
The Stakeholder State is not a single phenomenon. Instead, it is the gradual but decisive shift of politics and power away from voters and towards groups with the time, money and institutional access to make themselves too important to ignore. In this state, the government rows with muffled oars in order to appease a complex coalition of campaign groups, regulators, litigators, trade bodies and well-networked organisations. If the language of priorities is the religion of socialism, then consultations and reviews are the sacred texts of the Stakeholder State.
Once you start noticing it, you see it everywhere: in the democratic powers handed to arm’s-length bodies or the many small government departments too powerless or captured to resist lobbying efforts. The Stakeholder State ferments between the NGO and the campaign group, the celebrity letter-writing campaign and the activist lawyers. It is given voice by political podcasts where everyone violently agrees. It is canonised through a corrupted honours system.
If you want to imagine a typical scene in the Stakeholder State, it is a government elected on a promise to build an entire generation of housing and infrastructure in just five years spending time and money lobbying itself to water down those commitments through its own quangos. If you want a vision of the future, it is endless, cheap judicial reviews enabled by the Unece Convention on Access to Information, Public Participation in Decision-making and Access to Justice in Environmental Matters (1998).
Politicians have given away too much power to lawyers, activists and regulators, and cannot deliver their promises, an ex-aide to the prime minister has said.
Writing in The Times,, external Paul Ovenden, who quit as Keir Starmer's director of political strategy last September after offensive messages he had sent in 2017 surfaced, said the British state had got "bigger and bigger while simultaneously and systematically emasculating itself".
He also said the case of the British-Egyptian activist Alaa Abd El Fattah "revealed the sheer weirdness of how Whitehall spends its time".
This is something @Sandpit and I were driving at a couple of days ago articulated very well in the article
The Stakeholder State is not a single phenomenon. Instead, it is the gradual but decisive shift of politics and power away from voters and towards groups with the time, money and institutional access to make themselves too important to ignore. In this state, the government rows with muffled oars in order to appease a complex coalition of campaign groups, regulators, litigators, trade bodies and well-networked organisations. If the language of priorities is the religion of socialism, then consultations and reviews are the sacred texts of the Stakeholder State.
Once you start noticing it, you see it everywhere: in the democratic powers handed to arm’s-length bodies or the many small government departments too powerless or captured to resist lobbying efforts. The Stakeholder State ferments between the NGO and the campaign group, the celebrity letter-writing campaign and the activist lawyers. It is given voice by political podcasts where everyone violently agrees. It is canonised through a corrupted honours system.
If you want to imagine a typical scene in the Stakeholder State, it is a government elected on a promise to build an entire generation of housing and infrastructure in just five years spending time and money lobbying itself to water down those commitments through its own quangos. If you want a vision of the future, it is endless, cheap judicial reviews enabled by the Unece Convention on Access to Information, Public Participation in Decision-making and Access to Justice in Environmental Matters (1998).
Its echos what Big Dom was wittering about on the Spectator podcast. Its not just the actual judicial reviews we end up witnessing, it is the legal advice time and time again that every move you might want to make probably will result in one so better not to.
Obviously Big Doms solution is to put a bomb under the whole system and blow it all up and find a modern day William Pitt the Younger assisted by Elon Musk types.
'And STILL as of 22.39 pm on NY eve, nothing, nothing, bupkis, rien, niente, nichts, niets, whatsoever on BBC News website on Iran .... it's now extremely bizarre - but hey we've always got the regime's Foreign Minister to read in the Guardian'
Don't worry it's just an alt right talking point.
So is criticising Al-Fatteh according to, you guessed it, The Guardian 🤣
On the substantive, parties can win seats without doing very much if a) they are popular and b) none of their opponents are doing very much to stop them. I don't know the situation regarding the local organisations of, for example, Labour in Amber Valley or the Conservatives in Hornchurch & Upminster but, and I can speak for the former, they aren't moribund and when the election comes, it will be interesting to see Reform have any "ground game" or whether it is a social media chimera.
Reform certainly have plenty of angry people to shrill for them on X or wherever but that's not the same as working in communties and the record of the Reform County Councils elected in May is likely to undermine some of their more grandiose claims around Council Tax cuts.
We know there's a tension between the Thatcherite aspirations of Farage and Tice for large scale spending cuts and tax cuts for the rich and the ex-Labour Reform voter base which wants money spent on local services in WWC areas (and not on migrants in hotels). I imagine Farage will try to keep both on side and end up losing both as the contradictions of his "policy" are laid bare.
Ask me on a cold January morning more than three years before the event (if you must), my view is Labour will be the largest party though possibly short of a majority and the intriguing question(s) are whether Labour plus LD will be a majority or whether Reform plus Conservative will be a majority (possibly neither will be the case).
The other side of this question is whether the next election will be Labour vs Not Labour or Reform vs Not Reform or both and sometimes both in the same constituencies.
I think the influential social media for Reform will probably be Facebook. Here, that is where local voters aged 40+ gather, which is a big part of the demographic.
Yes, I think so.
Much of the Reform effort will go on Facebook and Twitter, much of it unofficial.
They did quite well in July 2024 with paper candidates and no ground presence in constituencies around my way. I expect the same in May 26.
Politicians have given away too much power to lawyers, activists and regulators, and cannot deliver their promises, an ex-aide to the prime minister has said.
Writing in The Times,, external Paul Ovenden, who quit as Keir Starmer's director of political strategy last September after offensive messages he had sent in 2017 surfaced, said the British state had got "bigger and bigger while simultaneously and systematically emasculating itself".
He also said the case of the British-Egyptian activist Alaa Abd El Fattah "revealed the sheer weirdness of how Whitehall spends its time".
This is something @Sandpit and I were driving at a couple of days ago articulated very well in the article
The Stakeholder State is not a single phenomenon. Instead, it is the gradual but decisive shift of politics and power away from voters and towards groups with the time, money and institutional access to make themselves too important to ignore. In this state, the government rows with muffled oars in order to appease a complex coalition of campaign groups, regulators, litigators, trade bodies and well-networked organisations. If the language of priorities is the religion of socialism, then consultations and reviews are the sacred texts of the Stakeholder State.
Once you start noticing it, you see it everywhere: in the democratic powers handed to arm’s-length bodies or the many small government departments too powerless or captured to resist lobbying efforts. The Stakeholder State ferments between the NGO and the campaign group, the celebrity letter-writing campaign and the activist lawyers. It is given voice by political podcasts where everyone violently agrees. It is canonised through a corrupted honours system.
If you want to imagine a typical scene in the Stakeholder State, it is a government elected on a promise to build an entire generation of housing and infrastructure in just five years spending time and money lobbying itself to water down those commitments through its own quangos. If you want a vision of the future, it is endless, cheap judicial reviews enabled by the Unece Convention on Access to Information, Public Participation in Decision-making and Access to Justice in Environmental Matters (1998).
Its echos what Big Dom was wittering about on the Spectator podcast. Its not just the actual judicial reviews it is the legal advice time and time again that every move you might want to make probably will result in one so better not to.
It’s the sheer cost of it all as well. Big Dom gets dismissed because it’s Big Dom, but he fell foul of it too.
It’s like that Police song
Every breath you take and every move you make……..I’ll be watching you.
“According to a poll by Wisp, the dating app that prioritises getting singletons meeting face-to-face, Reform UK voters have officially been crowned the number one political ‘ick’ among British singles.
“Almost three-quarters (72%) of respondents said they’d be “put off” if they found out a match on a dating app was a Reform supporter.
“In a survey of 1,000 Wisp users aged 25-40, political affiliation (39%) ranked higher than smoking (22%), poor hygiene (17%), bad manners (12%), or even living with parents (10%) when it came to dating red flags.”
Insulting voters isn't the way to go, which is what surveys of this type are trying to do if we're honest.
It's actually quite interesting and relevant to PB. We know that Reform voters are much more equally distributed across ages groups than Conservatives, and also that there is a deep contrast between some young men and young women in political outlook. Nowadays, that can be quite important in finding a partner.
This explains the increasingly deranged conspiracy theories about why women aren't interested in having kids, "Tradwives" etc etc. Given young people don't vote much, it perhaps isn't that important. However, the Conservatives have retained some reputation for sanity in this survey and it might be a niche that serves them well, particularly as the press go digging into the various incels that occupy the Reform/MAGA space.
It may simply be that young Conservatives are so rare in this age group that it doesn't arise as an issue. The Manosphere is quite Reformy.
Politicians have given away too much power to lawyers, activists and regulators, and cannot deliver their promises, an ex-aide to the prime minister has said.
Writing in The Times,, external Paul Ovenden, who quit as Keir Starmer's director of political strategy last September after offensive messages he had sent in 2017 surfaced, said the British state had got "bigger and bigger while simultaneously and systematically emasculating itself".
He also said the case of the British-Egyptian activist Alaa Abd El Fattah "revealed the sheer weirdness of how Whitehall spends its time".
This is something @Sandpit and I were driving at a couple of days ago articulated very well in the article
The Stakeholder State is not a single phenomenon. Instead, it is the gradual but decisive shift of politics and power away from voters and towards groups with the time, money and institutional access to make themselves too important to ignore. In this state, the government rows with muffled oars in order to appease a complex coalition of campaign groups, regulators, litigators, trade bodies and well-networked organisations. If the language of priorities is the religion of socialism, then consultations and reviews are the sacred texts of the Stakeholder State.
Once you start noticing it, you see it everywhere: in the democratic powers handed to arm’s-length bodies or the many small government departments too powerless or captured to resist lobbying efforts. The Stakeholder State ferments between the NGO and the campaign group, the celebrity letter-writing campaign and the activist lawyers. It is given voice by political podcasts where everyone violently agrees. It is canonised through a corrupted honours system.
If you want to imagine a typical scene in the Stakeholder State, it is a government elected on a promise to build an entire generation of housing and infrastructure in it is not just five years spending time and money lobbying itself to water down those commitments through its own quangos. If you want a vision of the future, it is endless, cheap judicial reviews enabled by the Unece Convention on Access to Information, Public Participation in Decision-making and Access to Justice in Environmental Matters (1998).
That is as clear and insightful explanation of our post democratic state as I have read anywhere. I am really not sure if there is any way back. These groups are so amorphous and so powerful that it is not even clear how you rebel against them.
I laid Reform to win most seats at 2.06 a month or so ago, and would have thought I was in good shape considering the stories about Farage’s schooldays, but they’re 2.02 to lay now
I'd reckon they should be favourites. But 2.02 when we are likely three and a half years from an election are not attractive odds. I'd probably want something closer to 2.5 before putting my money down.
Politicians have given away too much power to lawyers, activists and regulators, and cannot deliver their promises, an ex-aide to the prime minister has said.
Writing in The Times,, external Paul Ovenden, who quit as Keir Starmer's director of political strategy last September after offensive messages he had sent in 2017 surfaced, said the British state had got "bigger and bigger while simultaneously and systematically emasculating itself".
He also said the case of the British-Egyptian activist Alaa Abd El Fattah "revealed the sheer weirdness of how Whitehall spends its time".
This is something @Sandpit and I were driving at a couple of days ago articulated very well in the article
The Stakeholder State is not a single phenomenon. Instead, it is the gradual but decisive shift of politics and power away from voters and towards groups with the time, money and institutional access to make themselves too important to ignore. In this state, the government rows with muffled oars in order to appease a complex coalition of campaign groups, regulators, litigators, trade bodies and well-networked organisations. If the language of priorities is the religion of socialism, then consultations and reviews are the sacred texts of the Stakeholder State.
Once you start noticing it, you see it everywhere: in the democratic powers handed to arm’s-length bodies or the many small government departments too powerless or captured to resist lobbying efforts. The Stakeholder State ferments between the NGO and the campaign group, the celebrity letter-writing campaign and the activist lawyers. It is given voice by political podcasts where everyone violently agrees. It is canonised through a corrupted honours system.
If you want to imagine a typical scene in the Stakeholder State, it is a government elected on a promise to build an entire generation of housing and infrastructure in it is not just five years spending time and money lobbying itself to water down those commitments through its own quangos. If you want a vision of the future, it is endless, cheap judicial reviews enabled by the Unece Convention on Access to Information, Public Participation in Decision-making and Access to Justice in Environmental Matters (1998).
That is as clear and insightful explanation of our post democratic state as I have read anywhere. I am really not sure if there is any way back. These groups are so amorphous and so powerful that it is not even clear how you rebel against them.
You ignore them.
You will meet enormous systemic resistance. But once you stop funding them to oppose your own policies....
Politicians have given away too much power to lawyers, activists and regulators, and cannot deliver their promises, an ex-aide to the prime minister has said.
Writing in The Times,, external Paul Ovenden, who quit as Keir Starmer's director of political strategy last September after offensive messages he had sent in 2017 surfaced, said the British state had got "bigger and bigger while simultaneously and systematically emasculating itself".
He also said the case of the British-Egyptian activist Alaa Abd El Fattah "revealed the sheer weirdness of how Whitehall spends its time".
This is something @Sandpit and I were driving at a couple of days ago articulated very well in the article
The Stakeholder State is not a single phenomenon. Instead, it is the gradual but decisive shift of politics and power away from voters and towards groups with the time, money and institutional access to make themselves too important to ignore. In this state, the government rows with muffled oars in order to appease a complex coalition of campaign groups, regulators, litigators, trade bodies and well-networked organisations. If the language of priorities is the religion of socialism, then consultations and reviews are the sacred texts of the Stakeholder State.
Once you start noticing it, you see it everywhere: in the democratic powers handed to arm’s-length bodies or the many small government departments too powerless or captured to resist lobbying efforts. The Stakeholder State ferments between the NGO and the campaign group, the celebrity letter-writing campaign and the activist lawyers. It is given voice by political podcasts where everyone violently agrees. It is canonised through a corrupted honours system.
If you want to imagine a typical scene in the Stakeholder State, it is a government elected on a promise to build an entire generation of housing and infrastructure in just five years spending time and money lobbying itself to water down those commitments through its own quangos. If you want a vision of the future, it is endless, cheap judicial reviews enabled by the Unece Convention on Access to Information, Public Participation in Decision-making and Access to Justice in Environmental Matters (1998).
Its echos what Big Dom was wittering about on the Spectator podcast. Its not just the actual judicial reviews it is the legal advice time and time again that every move you might want to make probably will result in one so better not to.
It’s the sheer cost of it all as well. Big Dom gets dismissed because it’s Big Dom, but he fell foul of it too.
It’s like that Police song
Every breath you take and every move you make……..I’ll be watching you.
Nah that's China ;-)
Why have 1 CCTV camera when you can have 12 every 100m....
“According to a poll by Wisp, the dating app that prioritises getting singletons meeting face-to-face, Reform UK voters have officially been crowned the number one political ‘ick’ among British singles.
“Almost three-quarters (72%) of respondents said they’d be “put off” if they found out a match on a dating app was a Reform supporter.
“In a survey of 1,000 Wisp users aged 25-40, political affiliation (39%) ranked higher than smoking (22%), poor hygiene (17%), bad manners (12%), or even living with parents (10%) when it came to dating red flags.”
Insulting voters isn't the way to go, which is what surveys of this type are trying to do if we're honest.
No they're not. Surveys of this type are done by the apps to get a light-hearted story into the papers over Christmas. Ask a question then trawl the data for interesting headlines.
“According to a poll by Wisp, the dating app that prioritises getting singletons meeting face-to-face, Reform UK voters have officially been crowned the number one political ‘ick’ among British singles.
“Almost three-quarters (72%) of respondents said they’d be “put off” if they found out a match on a dating app was a Reform supporter.
“In a survey of 1,000 Wisp users aged 25-40, political affiliation (39%) ranked higher than smoking (22%), poor hygiene (17%), bad manners (12%), or even living with parents (10%) when it came to dating red flags.”
The article linked to under "gooner" is one of the most disturbing things that I have read this year. A more plausible explanation for the drop in TFR than misandrist college professors.
Is there a specific term for subtle click baiting?
Yes, attraction is not a choice.
Almost everything you read on the subject about what turns people on and off simply isn't true.
Politicians have given away too much power to lawyers, activists and regulators, and cannot deliver their promises, an ex-aide to the prime minister has said.
Writing in The Times,, external Paul Ovenden, who quit as Keir Starmer's director of political strategy last September after offensive messages he had sent in 2017 surfaced, said the British state had got "bigger and bigger while simultaneously and systematically emasculating itself".
He also said the case of the British-Egyptian activist Alaa Abd El Fattah "revealed the sheer weirdness of how Whitehall spends its time".
This is something @Sandpit and I were driving at a couple of days ago articulated very well in the article
The Stakeholder State is not a single phenomenon. Instead, it is the gradual but decisive shift of politics and power away from voters and towards groups with the time, money and institutional access to make themselves too important to ignore. In this state, the government rows with muffled oars in order to appease a complex coalition of campaign groups, regulators, litigators, trade bodies and well-networked organisations. If the language of priorities is the religion of socialism, then consultations and reviews are the sacred texts of the Stakeholder State.
Once you start noticing it, you see it everywhere: in the democratic powers handed to arm’s-length bodies or the many small government departments too powerless or captured to resist lobbying efforts. The Stakeholder State ferments between the NGO and the campaign group, the celebrity letter-writing campaign and the activist lawyers. It is given voice by political podcasts where everyone violently agrees. It is canonised through a corrupted honours system.
If you want to imagine a typical scene in the Stakeholder State, it is a government elected on a promise to build an entire generation of housing and infrastructure in it is not just five years spending time and money lobbying itself to water down those commitments through its own quangos. If you want a vision of the future, it is endless, cheap judicial reviews enabled by the Unece Convention on Access to Information, Public Participation in Decision-making and Access to Justice in Environmental Matters (1998).
That is as clear and insightful explanation of our post democratic state as I have read anywhere. I am really not sure if there is any way back. These groups are so amorphous and so powerful that it is not even clear how you rebel against them.
I thought our steak holders were Tesco, Asda and Sainsbury's...
Politicians have given away too much power to lawyers, activists and regulators, and cannot deliver their promises, an ex-aide to the prime minister has said.
Writing in The Times,, external Paul Ovenden, who quit as Keir Starmer's director of political strategy last September after offensive messages he had sent in 2017 surfaced, said the British state had got "bigger and bigger while simultaneously and systematically emasculating itself".
He also said the case of the British-Egyptian activist Alaa Abd El Fattah "revealed the sheer weirdness of how Whitehall spends its time".
This is something @Sandpit and I were driving at a couple of days ago articulated very well in the article
The Stakeholder State is not a single phenomenon. Instead, it is the gradual but decisive shift of politics and power away from voters and towards groups with the time, money and institutional access to make themselves too important to ignore. In this state, the government rows with muffled oars in order to appease a complex coalition of campaign groups, regulators, litigators, trade bodies and well-networked organisations. If the language of priorities is the religion of socialism, then consultations and reviews are the sacred texts of the Stakeholder State.
Once you start noticing it, you see it everywhere: in the democratic powers handed to arm’s-length bodies or the many small government departments too powerless or captured to resist lobbying efforts. The Stakeholder State ferments between the NGO and the campaign group, the celebrity letter-writing campaign and the activist lawyers. It is given voice by political podcasts where everyone violently agrees. It is canonised through a corrupted honours system.
If you want to imagine a typical scene in the Stakeholder State, it is a government elected on a promise to build an entire generation of housing and infrastructure in it is not just five years spending time and money lobbying itself to water down those commitments through its own quangos. If you want a vision of the future, it is endless, cheap judicial reviews enabled by the Unece Convention on Access to Information, Public Participation in Decision-making and Access to Justice in Environmental Matters (1998).
That is as clear and insightful explanation of our post democratic state as I have read anywhere. I am really not sure if there is any way back. These groups are so amorphous and so powerful that it is not even clear how you rebel against them.
Yes it is, sockpuppet groups I referred to them as the other day.
Look at what happened when The Tories tried to change rules on Nutrient Neutrality to aid home building. The response from these groups, aided and abetted by political opponents for their own self interest, was loud and vocal and in the case of the RSPB verged on the deranged.
The plans got canned and it was a win for ‘wildlife’, sadly not for those who need homes.
Politicians have given away too much power to lawyers, activists and regulators, and cannot deliver their promises, an ex-aide to the prime minister has said.
Writing in The Times,, external Paul Ovenden, who quit as Keir Starmer's director of political strategy last September after offensive messages he had sent in 2017 surfaced, said the British state had got "bigger and bigger while simultaneously and systematically emasculating itself".
He also said the case of the British-Egyptian activist Alaa Abd El Fattah "revealed the sheer weirdness of how Whitehall spends its time".
This is something @Sandpit and I were driving at a couple of days ago articulated very well in the article
The Stakeholder State is not a single phenomenon. Instead, it is the gradual but decisive shift of politics and power away from voters and towards groups with the time, money and institutional access to make themselves too important to ignore. In this state, the government rows with muffled oars in order to appease a complex coalition of campaign groups, regulators, litigators, trade bodies and well-networked organisations. If the language of priorities is the religion of socialism, then consultations and reviews are the sacred texts of the Stakeholder State.
Once you start noticing it, you see it everywhere: in the democratic powers handed to arm’s-length bodies or the many small government departments too powerless or captured to resist lobbying efforts. The Stakeholder State ferments between the NGO and the campaign group, the celebrity letter-writing campaign and the activist lawyers. It is given voice by political podcasts where everyone violently agrees. It is canonised through a corrupted honours system.
If you want to imagine a typical scene in the Stakeholder State, it is a government elected on a promise to build an entire generation of housing and infrastructure in it is not just five years spending time and money lobbying itself to water down those commitments through its own quangos. If you want a vision of the future, it is endless, cheap judicial reviews enabled by the Unece Convention on Access to Information, Public Participation in Decision-making and Access to Justice in Environmental Matters (1998).
That is as clear and insightful explanation of our post democratic state as I have read anywhere. I am really not sure if there is any way back. These groups are so amorphous and so powerful that it is not even clear how you rebel against them.
You ignore them.
You will meet enormous systemic resistance. But once you stop funding them to oppose your own policies....
In the cases of the ones the govt funds wholly, or partly, to then lobby it on policy then (if not a statutory body) just stop giving them money.
Politicians have given away too much power to lawyers, activists and regulators, and cannot deliver their promises, an ex-aide to the prime minister has said.
Writing in The Times,, external Paul Ovenden, who quit as Keir Starmer's director of political strategy last September after offensive messages he had sent in 2017 surfaced, said the British state had got "bigger and bigger while simultaneously and systematically emasculating itself".
He also said the case of the British-Egyptian activist Alaa Abd El Fattah "revealed the sheer weirdness of how Whitehall spends its time".
This is something @Sandpit and I were driving at a couple of days ago articulated very well in the article
The Stakeholder State is not a single phenomenon. Instead, it is the gradual but decisive shift of politics and power away from voters and towards groups with the time, money and institutional access to make themselves too important to ignore. In this state, the government rows with muffled oars in order to appease a complex coalition of campaign groups, regulators, litigators, trade bodies and well-networked organisations. If the language of priorities is the religion of socialism, then consultations and reviews are the sacred texts of the Stakeholder State.
Once you start noticing it, you see it everywhere: in the democratic powers handed to arm’s-length bodies or the many small government departments too powerless or captured to resist lobbying efforts. The Stakeholder State ferments between the NGO and the campaign group, the celebrity letter-writing campaign and the activist lawyers. It is given voice by political podcasts where everyone violently agrees. It is canonised through a corrupted honours system.
If you want to imagine a typical scene in the Stakeholder State, it is a government elected on a promise to build an entire generation of housing and infrastructure in it is not just five years spending time and money lobbying itself to water down those commitments through its own quangos. If you want a vision of the future, it is endless, cheap judicial reviews enabled by the Unece Convention on Access to Information, Public Participation in Decision-making and Access to Justice in Environmental Matters (1998).
That is as clear and insightful explanation of our post democratic state as I have read anywhere. I am really not sure if there is any way back. These groups are so amorphous and so powerful that it is not even clear how you rebel against them.
Bit defeatist. Govt is already doing many of the things needed like reducing number of consultations. Starmer does seem to get this imo.
In any case, it will change. The only question is whether it will be Labour who changes it or a future govt.
The right have always had an odd fascination with authoritarians.
"It is not possible to form a just judgment of a public figure who has attained the enormous dimensions of Adolf Hitler until his life-work as a whole is before us. Although no subsequent political action can condone wrong deeds, history is replete with examples of men who have risen to power by employing stern, grim, and even frightful methods, but who, nevertheless, when their life is revealed as a whole, have been regarded as great figures whose lives have enriched the story of mankind. So may it be with Hitler."
This was written in 1935 - incredibly nearly a whole year after Chamberlain had agreed with the Committee of Imperial Defence that Germany ought to be now selected as the "ultimate enemy" for British long term defence plans.
Politicians have given away too much power to lawyers, activists and regulators, and cannot deliver their promises, an ex-aide to the prime minister has said.
Writing in The Times,, external Paul Ovenden, who quit as Keir Starmer's director of political strategy last September after offensive messages he had sent in 2017 surfaced, said the British state had got "bigger and bigger while simultaneously and systematically emasculating itself".
He also said the case of the British-Egyptian activist Alaa Abd El Fattah "revealed the sheer weirdness of how Whitehall spends its time".
This is something @Sandpit and I were driving at a couple of days ago articulated very well in the article
The Stakeholder State is not a single phenomenon. Instead, it is the gradual but decisive shift of politics and power away from voters and towards groups with the time, money and institutional access to make themselves too important to ignore. In this state, the government rows with muffled oars in order to appease a complex coalition of campaign groups, regulators, litigators, trade bodies and well-networked organisations. If the language of priorities is the religion of socialism, then consultations and reviews are the sacred texts of the Stakeholder State.
Once you start noticing it, you see it everywhere: in the democratic powers handed to arm’s-length bodies or the many small government departments too powerless or captured to resist lobbying efforts. The Stakeholder State ferments between the NGO and the campaign group, the celebrity letter-writing campaign and the activist lawyers. It is given voice by political podcasts where everyone violently agrees. It is canonised through a corrupted honours system.
If you want to imagine a typical scene in the Stakeholder State, it is a government elected on a promise to build an entire generation of housing and infrastructure in it is not just five years spending time and money lobbying itself to water down those commitments through its own quangos. If you want a vision of the future, it is endless, cheap judicial reviews enabled by the Unece Convention on Access to Information, Public Participation in Decision-making and Access to Justice in Environmental Matters (1998).
That is as clear and insightful explanation of our post democratic state as I have read anywhere. I am really not sure if there is any way back. These groups are so amorphous and so powerful that it is not even clear how you rebel against them.
Is it?
It sounds to me like how democracy works. Governments have to follow the rules, and interested parties are allowed to lobby for their preferred outcomes.
“According to a poll by Wisp, the dating app that prioritises getting singletons meeting face-to-face, Reform UK voters have officially been crowned the number one political ‘ick’ among British singles.
“Almost three-quarters (72%) of respondents said they’d be “put off” if they found out a match on a dating app was a Reform supporter.
“In a survey of 1,000 Wisp users aged 25-40, political affiliation (39%) ranked higher than smoking (22%), poor hygiene (17%), bad manners (12%), or even living with parents (10%) when it came to dating red flags.”
Nothing to stop Reform voters dating Reform voters
Isn't the point, rather, that there is an excess of young males amongst Reform voters? And a distinct deficit of females? Your thinking would be relevant to Young Conservatives c. 1950s, sure, but Reform in 2026?
Fukkers will have to adapt to reproduce asexually like aphids (with whom they share intellectual capacity) or sharks (with whom they share a system of ethics).
Sociopaths lecturing people on ethics? Got to admire the chutzpah I suppose.
Come across some social media discussion as to why the BBC is giving so little prominence to what is happening in Iran. John Simpson explained that it's all rather difficult as international media are banned from the country. A bit like Gaza.....
Of course that hasn't stopped the BBC reporting on Gaza.
Checking, the BBC news website was giving 50% more coverage to Iran this last month than to Gaza. Edit: using the search function.
Nothing that I can see on the front page with regard to the current disruption there. Whereas at the top there is a tab for Israel-Gaza war next to Home/In depth.
People like you and Bondegezou are obsessed. You probably think when someone gets accused of something in a front page spread and then a correction is printed on page 23 that's reasonable.
BBC breakfast news carried a small piece about it, the protests are down to cost of living issues.
To be fair someone did commend the BBC Persian service as being a highly valuable entity.
Being in LA, many of our friends are from the Persian diaspora, and they have nothing but good things to say about the BBC World Service in Persian.
I laid Reform to win most seats at 2.06 a month or so ago, and would have thought I was in good shape considering the stories about Farage’s schooldays, but they’re 2.02 to lay now
I'd reckon they should be favourites. But 2.02 when we are likely three and a half years from an election are not attractive odds. I'd probably want something closer to 2.5 before putting my money down.
I laid Reform to win most seats at 2.06 a month or so ago, and would have thought I was in good shape considering the stories about Farage’s schooldays, but they’re 2.02 to lay now
I'd reckon they should be favourites. But 2.02 when we are likely three and a half years from an election are not attractive odds. I'd probably want something closer to 2.5 before putting my money down.
A lot of this is going to depend upon whether the other parties and media can move Farage/Reform into the set of 'they are all as bad as one another'.
For example on election day in Guildford (where Reform weren't in contention) I was knocking up. I called on several hundred doors and our data was obviously pretty good. Out of several hundred all were LDs (except one Tory) with the exception of about a dozen Reform voters. So these were people who said they would vote LD and voted Reform. Everyone else had the same experience. One got a single Green, but again a dozen Reform.
I can only put this down to voters who wanted to get rid of the Tory MP in earlier canvassing, who were then swept up by the Reform media surge. They weren't LDs, they just wanted rid of the establishment.
The right have always had an odd fascination with authoritarians.
"It is not possible to form a just judgment of a public figure who has attained the enormous dimensions of Adolf Hitler until his life-work as a whole is before us. Although no subsequent political action can condone wrong deeds, history is replete with examples of men who have risen to power by employing stern, grim, and even frightful methods, but who, nevertheless, when their life is revealed as a whole, have been regarded as great figures whose lives have enriched the story of mankind. So may it be with Hitler."
This was written in 1935 - incredibly nearly a whole year after Chamberlain had agreed with the Committee of Imperial Defence that Germany ought to be now selected as the "ultimate enemy" for British long term defence plans.
Politicians have given away too much power to lawyers, activists and regulators, and cannot deliver their promises, an ex-aide to the prime minister has said.
Writing in The Times,, external Paul Ovenden, who quit as Keir Starmer's director of political strategy last September after offensive messages he had sent in 2017 surfaced, said the British state had got "bigger and bigger while simultaneously and systematically emasculating itself".
He also said the case of the British-Egyptian activist Alaa Abd El Fattah "revealed the sheer weirdness of how Whitehall spends its time".
This is something @Sandpit and I were driving at a couple of days ago articulated very well in the article
The Stakeholder State is not a single phenomenon. Instead, it is the gradual but decisive shift of politics and power away from voters and towards groups with the time, money and institutional access to make themselves too important to ignore. In this state, the government rows with muffled oars in order to appease a complex coalition of campaign groups, regulators, litigators, trade bodies and well-networked organisations. If the language of priorities is the religion of socialism, then consultations and reviews are the sacred texts of the Stakeholder State.
Once you start noticing it, you see it everywhere: in the democratic powers handed to arm’s-length bodies or the many small government departments too powerless or captured to resist lobbying efforts. The Stakeholder State ferments between the NGO and the campaign group, the celebrity letter-writing campaign and the activist lawyers. It is given voice by political podcasts where everyone violently agrees. It is canonised through a corrupted honours system.
If you want to imagine a typical scene in the Stakeholder State, it is a government elected on a promise to build an entire generation of housing and infrastructure in it is not just five years spending time and money lobbying itself to water down those commitments through its own quangos. If you want a vision of the future, it is endless, cheap judicial reviews enabled by the Unece Convention on Access to Information, Public Participation in Decision-making and Access to Justice in Environmental Matters (1998).
That is as clear and insightful explanation of our post democratic state as I have read anywhere. I am really not sure if there is any way back. These groups are so amorphous and so powerful that it is not even clear how you rebel against them.
Is it?
It sounds to me like how democracy works. Governments have to follow the rules, and interested parties are allowed to lobby for their preferred outcomes.
The alternative is a capricious tyranny.
Nearly the entire history of democracy has been without the government funding special interest groups specifically to lobby the government to do/not do things.
And being pre-consulted on every piece of legislation.
Said special interest groups being essentially beyond scrutiny.
“According to a poll by Wisp, the dating app that prioritises getting singletons meeting face-to-face, Reform UK voters have officially been crowned the number one political ‘ick’ among British singles.
“Almost three-quarters (72%) of respondents said they’d be “put off” if they found out a match on a dating app was a Reform supporter.
“In a survey of 1,000 Wisp users aged 25-40, political affiliation (39%) ranked higher than smoking (22%), poor hygiene (17%), bad manners (12%), or even living with parents (10%) when it came to dating red flags.”
Nothing to stop Reform voters dating Reform voters
Isn't the point, rather, that there is an excess of young males amongst Reform voters? And a distinct deficit of females? Your thinking would be relevant to Young Conservatives c. 1950s, sure, but Reform in 2026?
Fukkers will have to adapt to reproduce asexually like aphids (with whom they share intellectual capacity) or sharks (with whom they share a system of ethics).
Sociopaths lecturing people on ethics? Got to admire the chutzpah I suppose.
Come across some social media discussion as to why the BBC is giving so little prominence to what is happening in Iran. John Simpson explained that it's all rather difficult as international media are banned from the country. A bit like Gaza.....
Of course that hasn't stopped the BBC reporting on Gaza.
Checking, the BBC news website was giving 50% more coverage to Iran this last month than to Gaza. Edit: using the search function.
Oh dear. Next it will be 'Yes but that 50% more coverage is not entirely negative about the Iran regime!!'
I suppose the loons have to find something new to be outraged about now that their deranged Sadiq removed the Star of David claims have proved to be predictably baseless.
they were complaining about the guardian having an article about Iran the other day. Yet treat the NY Post as gospel.
The Guardian gave an op ed to Iran's foreign minister. An interesting moment to platform him I'd say. However you can argue in the spirit of open debate that his opinion should be heard. I merely suggested that I hoped the Guardian would give an equivalent platform to an Iranian dissident to call out the BS.
I know that you are trying for some sort for some sort of point-scoring, but The Guardian has been running stories on Iran recently:
“According to a poll by Wisp, the dating app that prioritises getting singletons meeting face-to-face, Reform UK voters have officially been crowned the number one political ‘ick’ among British singles.
“Almost three-quarters (72%) of respondents said they’d be “put off” if they found out a match on a dating app was a Reform supporter.
“In a survey of 1,000 Wisp users aged 25-40, political affiliation (39%) ranked higher than smoking (22%), poor hygiene (17%), bad manners (12%), or even living with parents (10%) when it came to dating red flags.”
Nothing to stop Reform voters dating Reform voters
Isn't the point, rather, that there is an excess of young males amongst Reform voters? And a distinct deficit of females? Your thinking would be relevant to Young Conservatives c. 1950s, sure, but Reform in 2026?
Fukkers will have to adapt to reproduce asexually like aphids (with whom they share intellectual capacity) or sharks (with whom they share a system of ethics).
Sociopaths lecturing people on ethics? Got to admire the chutzpah I suppose.
Come across some social media discussion as to why the BBC is giving so little prominence to what is happening in Iran. John Simpson explained that it's all rather difficult as international media are banned from the country. A bit like Gaza.....
Of course that hasn't stopped the BBC reporting on Gaza.
Checking, the BBC news website was giving 50% more coverage to Iran this last month than to Gaza. Edit: using the search function.
Nothing that I can see on the front page with regard to the current disruption there. Whereas at the top there is a tab for Israel-Gaza war next to Home/In depth.
People like you and Bondegezou are obsessed. You probably think when someone gets accused of something in a front page spread and then a correction is printed on page 23 that's reasonable.
BBC breakfast news carried a small piece about it, the protests are down to cost of living issues.
To be fair someone did commend the BBC Persian service as being a highly valuable entity.
Being in LA, many of our friends are from the Persian diaspora, and they have nothing but good things to say about the BBC World Service in Persian.
What about when your friends switch in English? Do they start slagging it off then?
Politicians have given away too much power to lawyers, activists and regulators, and cannot deliver their promises, an ex-aide to the prime minister has said.
Writing in The Times,, external Paul Ovenden, who quit as Keir Starmer's director of political strategy last September after offensive messages he had sent in 2017 surfaced, said the British state had got "bigger and bigger while simultaneously and systematically emasculating itself".
He also said the case of the British-Egyptian activist Alaa Abd El Fattah "revealed the sheer weirdness of how Whitehall spends its time".
This is something @Sandpit and I were driving at a couple of days ago articulated very well in the article
The Stakeholder State is not a single phenomenon. Instead, it is the gradual but decisive shift of politics and power away from voters and towards groups with the time, money and institutional access to make themselves too important to ignore. In this state, the government rows with muffled oars in order to appease a complex coalition of campaign groups, regulators, litigators, trade bodies and well-networked organisations. If the language of priorities is the religion of socialism, then consultations and reviews are the sacred texts of the Stakeholder State.
Once you start noticing it, you see it everywhere: in the democratic powers handed to arm’s-length bodies or the many small government departments too powerless or captured to resist lobbying efforts. The Stakeholder State ferments between the NGO and the campaign group, the celebrity letter-writing campaign and the activist lawyers. It is given voice by political podcasts where everyone violently agrees. It is canonised through a corrupted honours system.
If you want to imagine a typical scene in the Stakeholder State, it is a government elected on a promise to build an entire generation of housing and infrastructure in it is not just five years spending time and money lobbying itself to water down those commitments through its own quangos. If you want a vision of the future, it is endless, cheap judicial reviews enabled by the Unece Convention on Access to Information, Public Participation in Decision-making and Access to Justice in Environmental Matters (1998).
That is as clear and insightful explanation of our post democratic state as I have read anywhere. I am really not sure if there is any way back. These groups are so amorphous and so powerful that it is not even clear how you rebel against them.
You ignore them.
You will meet enormous systemic resistance. But once you stop funding them to oppose your own policies....
The original article is punchier
“We don’t have to keep picking the pockets of the productive parts of our economy in order to fund inflation-busting pension increases for millionaires or an unsustainable welfare system. We don’t have to strangle small businesses at birth with regulatory burdens. We don’t have to fatten the pockets of wind-turbine operators by paying them not to produce energy. We don’t have to import antisemitic Islamists who wish us harm. And we certainly don’t have to treat British citizenship as a scrap of paper. On all this and more, we can simply choose not to.”
Some festive modelling from @CPSThinkTank on incomes/tax thresholds. If OBR is right, by 2030-1 you will be:
- £505 poorer (in real terms) on a £50k salary - £290 richer on UC - £306 richer on state pension - £537 richer on state pension under 'quadruple lock'
Morning, I noticed Con majority at next GE was in to around 10/1 or thereabouts, having been 16/1 or higher a couple of months ago.
Tories have definitely stemmed the flow away from them, and Kemi Badenoch will be happy to see her approval rating (relative to Starmers) in the yougov poll
I still think the Tories are a long way back from power, a lot will depend on Farage (and his health) for the next 3 and a half years
It will be a very split electoral map in 2029. FPTP is great for betting opportunities, but I dont think it can survive long once it fragments into a 5 or 6 way split
I'm less convinced, regrettably.
Neither Labour nor Conservative show any desire to switch to a proportional system which would ensure not only that all votes are counted but every vote counts.
As for Reform, what they say now and what they do if they win a majority in the next Commons are, I suspect, on this as well as a host of other issues, not quite the same.
Generally, in democracies, whatever the parties call themselves or however they align, the process is adversarial and you finish up with two or perhaps three rival blocs. You could argue 1984 is an allegory of Labour, Conservative and Liberal - they are fundamentally the same but switch rivalries out of convenience (just a thought).
It would be fascinating to see Badenoch distance her party from Reform and sit as a distinct group beside Labour, the LDs, Reform and Greens but governance and government requires building majorities to get legislation through the Commons and how would that work practically in such a divided chamber? Answer - by negotiation, doing deals, getting the things you want and having to support the things you don't.
That's not a politics to which we are accustomed and it might look chaotic at first but oddly enough it could work quite well.
In Scotland we've had several coalitions, minority parts governments and confidence and supply. One of the better arrangements was when Eck led the first SNP government in 2007, which needed other party support. Labour were in a bit of a huff at losing power and didn't get so much of their own agenda through after the smoking ban was passed. It meant that pro business policies and budgets went through on the back of Conservative votes, other stuff Lib Dem votes. When they won a majority in 2011, the SNP could pass whatever they wanted without needing to negotiate with other parties.
There are still issues that most MSPs are very tribal, and the quality of debate isn't the best at times, but what can you do - they can make better money else where and also avoid the limelight. It would be rubbish being a politician at christmas, you couldnt go to the pub and get plastered.
There's also no House of Lords in Scotland, so once a bill is passed it heads south for Charlie's signature, subject to Westminster not vetoing it like the gender recognition bill
Westminster is too much of a partisan bear pit for consensual politics, and is worse for it. If the Tories don't come back from their nadir and Reform stay high in the polls long term, thats exactly the type of circumstances where the Tories may change tactics and throw in the towel re FPTP
I laid Reform to win most seats at 2.06 a month or so ago, and would have thought I was in good shape considering the stories about Farage’s schooldays, but they’re 2.02 to lay now
The Farage schoolboy stories is interesting. The same people mortally offended by it go out of their way to defend the Anti British anti Semite our govt, the previous govt, the Lib Dem’s and greens went to bat for. He said sorry and he was 32 at the time. Makes it okay.
As for the Reform are Russian assets smear it looks like the Tories are on the receiving end now over Lord Wolfson defending Roman Abramovich.
Still we have the impartial review into foreign influence in UK politics the govt is carrying out. A thorough and forensic analysis which will take a couple of months and conveniently timed to come out before the locals in May,
I wonder what it will find and if it will be to labours advantage 🤔
The right have always had an odd fascination with authoritarians.
"It is not possible to form a just judgment of a public figure who has attained the enormous dimensions of Adolf Hitler until his life-work as a whole is before us. Although no subsequent political action can condone wrong deeds, history is replete with examples of men who have risen to power by employing stern, grim, and even frightful methods, but who, nevertheless, when their life is revealed as a whole, have been regarded as great figures whose lives have enriched the story of mankind. So may it be with Hitler."
This was written in 1935 - incredibly nearly a whole year after Chamberlain had agreed with the Committee of Imperial Defence that Germany ought to be now selected as the "ultimate enemy" for British long term defence plans.
Some festive modelling from @CPSThinkTank on incomes/tax thresholds. If OBR is right, by 2030-1 you will be:
- £505 poorer (in real terms) on a £50k salary - £290 richer on UC - £306 richer on state pension - £537 richer on state pension under 'quadruple lock'
Picking the pockets of the productive economy to fund the largely inactive
And if Labour adopts one of its reportedly preferred options for the TV licence renewal, free TV licenses for those on UC with the rest of us picking up the slack, that will only make it worse.
“According to a poll by Wisp, the dating app that prioritises getting singletons meeting face-to-face, Reform UK voters have officially been crowned the number one political ‘ick’ among British singles.
“Almost three-quarters (72%) of respondents said they’d be “put off” if they found out a match on a dating app was a Reform supporter.
“In a survey of 1,000 Wisp users aged 25-40, political affiliation (39%) ranked higher than smoking (22%), poor hygiene (17%), bad manners (12%), or even living with parents (10%) when it came to dating red flags.”
Nothing to stop Reform voters dating Reform voters
Isn't the point, rather, that there is an excess of young males amongst Reform voters? And a distinct deficit of females? Your thinking would be relevant to Young Conservatives c. 1950s, sure, but Reform in 2026?
Fukkers will have to adapt to reproduce asexually like aphids (with whom they share intellectual capacity) or sharks (with whom they share a system of ethics).
Sociopaths lecturing people on ethics? Got to admire the chutzpah I suppose.
Come across some social media discussion as to why the BBC is giving so little prominence to what is happening in Iran. John Simpson explained that it's all rather difficult as international media are banned from the country. A bit like Gaza.....
Of course that hasn't stopped the BBC reporting on Gaza.
Checking, the BBC news website was giving 50% more coverage to Iran this last month than to Gaza. Edit: using the search function.
Nothing that I can see on the front page with regard to the current disruption there. Whereas at the top there is a tab for Israel-Gaza war next to Home/In depth.
People like you and Bondegezou are obsessed. You probably think when someone gets accused of something in a front page spread and then a correction is printed on page 23 that's reasonable.
BBC breakfast news carried a small piece about it, the protests are down to cost of living issues.
To be fair someone did commend the BBC Persian service as being a highly valuable entity.
Being in LA, many of our friends are from the Persian diaspora, and they have nothing but good things to say about the BBC World Service in Persian.
What about when your friends switch in English? Do they start slagging it off then?
The context, for what it's worth, was the planned abolition of The Voice of America. Which they all thought insane.
“According to a poll by Wisp, the dating app that prioritises getting singletons meeting face-to-face, Reform UK voters have officially been crowned the number one political ‘ick’ among British singles.
“Almost three-quarters (72%) of respondents said they’d be “put off” if they found out a match on a dating app was a Reform supporter.
“In a survey of 1,000 Wisp users aged 25-40, political affiliation (39%) ranked higher than smoking (22%), poor hygiene (17%), bad manners (12%), or even living with parents (10%) when it came to dating red flags.”
Nothing to stop Reform voters dating Reform voters
Isn't the point, rather, that there is an excess of young males amongst Reform voters? And a distinct deficit of females? Your thinking would be relevant to Young Conservatives c. 1950s, sure, but Reform in 2026?
Fukkers will have to adapt to reproduce asexually like aphids (with whom they share intellectual capacity) or sharks (with whom they share a system of ethics).
Sociopaths lecturing people on ethics? Got to admire the chutzpah I suppose.
Come across some social media discussion as to why the BBC is giving so little prominence to what is happening in Iran. John Simpson explained that it's all rather difficult as international media are banned from the country. A bit like Gaza.....
Of course that hasn't stopped the BBC reporting on Gaza.
Checking, the BBC news website was giving 50% more coverage to Iran this last month than to Gaza. Edit: using the search function.
Oh dear. Next it will be 'Yes but that 50% more coverage is not entirely negative about the Iran regime!!'
I suppose the loons have to find something new to be outraged about now that their deranged Sadiq removed the Star of David claims have proved to be predictably baseless.
they were complaining about the guardian having an article about Iran the other day. Yet treat the NY Post as gospel.
The Guardian gave an op ed to Iran's foreign minister. An interesting moment to platform him I'd say. However you can argue in the spirit of open debate that his opinion should be heard. I merely suggested that I hoped the Guardian would give an equivalent platform to an Iranian dissident to call out the BS.
I know that you are trying for some sort for some sort of point-scoring, but The Guardian has been running stories on Iran recently:
I laid Reform to win most seats at 2.06 a month or so ago, and would have thought I was in good shape considering the stories about Farage’s schooldays, but they’re 2.02 to lay now
The Farage schoolboy stories is interesting. The same people mortally offended by it go out of their way to defend the Anti British anti Semite our govt, the previous govt, the Lib Dem’s and greens went to bat for. He said sorry and he was 32 at the time. Makes it okay.
As for the Reform are Russian assets smear it looks like the Tories are on the receiving end now over Lord Wolfson defending Roman Abramovich.
Still we have the impartial review into foreign influence in UK politics the govt is carrying out. A thorough and forensic analysis which will take a couple of months and conveniently timed to come out before the locals in May,
I wonder what it will find and if it will be to labours advantage 🤔
Speaking of May what happened to the Russian influence report under her government?
At least it would be a reason for Labour to let elections go ahead.
Politicians have given away too much power to lawyers, activists and regulators, and cannot deliver their promises, an ex-aide to the prime minister has said.
Writing in The Times,, external Paul Ovenden, who quit as Keir Starmer's director of political strategy last September after offensive messages he had sent in 2017 surfaced, said the British state had got "bigger and bigger while simultaneously and systematically emasculating itself".
He also said the case of the British-Egyptian activist Alaa Abd El Fattah "revealed the sheer weirdness of how Whitehall spends its time".
This is something @Sandpit and I were driving at a couple of days ago articulated very well in the article
The Stakeholder State is not a single phenomenon. Instead, it is the gradual but decisive shift of politics and power away from voters and towards groups with the time, money and institutional access to make themselves too important to ignore. In this state, the government rows with muffled oars in order to appease a complex coalition of campaign groups, regulators, litigators, trade bodies and well-networked organisations. If the language of priorities is the religion of socialism, then consultations and reviews are the sacred texts of the Stakeholder State.
Once you start noticing it, you see it everywhere: in the democratic powers handed to arm’s-length bodies or the many small government departments too powerless or captured to resist lobbying efforts. The Stakeholder State ferments between the NGO and the campaign group, the celebrity letter-writing campaign and the activist lawyers. It is given voice by political podcasts where everyone violently agrees. It is canonised through a corrupted honours system.
If you want to imagine a typical scene in the Stakeholder State, it is a government elected on a promise to build an entire generation of housing and infrastructure in it is not just five years spending time and money lobbying itself to water down those commitments through its own quangos. If you want a vision of the future, it is endless, cheap judicial reviews enabled by the Unece Convention on Access to Information, Public Participation in Decision-making and Access to Justice in Environmental Matters (1998).
That is as clear and insightful explanation of our post democratic state as I have read anywhere. I am really not sure if there is any way back. These groups are so amorphous and so powerful that it is not even clear how you rebel against them.
Is it?
It sounds to me like how democracy works. Governments have to follow the rules, and interested parties are allowed to lobby for their preferred outcomes.
The alternative is a capricious tyranny.
The very epitome of democracy, this.
If you want to imagine a typical scene in the Stakeholder State, it is a government elected on a promise to build an entire generation of housing and infrastructure in it is not just five years spending time and money lobbying itself to water down those commitments through its own quangos
“According to a poll by Wisp, the dating app that prioritises getting singletons meeting face-to-face, Reform UK voters have officially been crowned the number one political ‘ick’ among British singles.
“Almost three-quarters (72%) of respondents said they’d be “put off” if they found out a match on a dating app was a Reform supporter.
“In a survey of 1,000 Wisp users aged 25-40, political affiliation (39%) ranked higher than smoking (22%), poor hygiene (17%), bad manners (12%), or even living with parents (10%) when it came to dating red flags.”
What's remarkable about that is how being a Conservative isn't a problem at all - 72% for Reform voters, 11% for Conservatives, 10% for Labour. I guess having Reform there makes the very few people aged under 50 who vote Conservative look comparatively normal and reasonable in comparison.
Kemi is also quite trendy and hip unlike Farage and Starmer with younger people image wise and the area the Tories have made the most progress in since the general election is wealthy areas of London Labour won but where the government are now unpopular and where Reform are weak. Indeed after Polanksi Kemi probably has the best image of the main UK party leaders with young people.
However rightwing parties almost never win under 35s anyway, so while being a Tory is becoming acceptable again amongst younger people it is Reform still making the waves electorally as they now lead with the middle aged and pensioners. Farage may be an old saloon bar white male with corduroys and flat cap but he doesn't care, he isn't cool and hip and the cool people won't vote for him but the average voter is close to 50 and not cool and not hip and lives in the provinces not London so it won't harm him much at the ballot box
Trendy and hip? Someone who doesn't have a karaoke favourite?
Politicians have given away too much power to lawyers, activists and regulators, and cannot deliver their promises, an ex-aide to the prime minister has said.
Writing in The Times,, external Paul Ovenden, who quit as Keir Starmer's director of political strategy last September after offensive messages he had sent in 2017 surfaced, said the British state had got "bigger and bigger while simultaneously and systematically emasculating itself".
He also said the case of the British-Egyptian activist Alaa Abd El Fattah "revealed the sheer weirdness of how Whitehall spends its time".
This is something @Sandpit and I were driving at a couple of days ago articulated very well in the article
The Stakeholder State is not a single phenomenon. Instead, it is the gradual but decisive shift of politics and power away from voters and towards groups with the time, money and institutional access to make themselves too important to ignore. In this state, the government rows with muffled oars in order to appease a complex coalition of campaign groups, regulators, litigators, trade bodies and well-networked organisations. If the language of priorities is the religion of socialism, then consultations and reviews are the sacred texts of the Stakeholder State.
Once you start noticing it, you see it everywhere: in the democratic powers handed to arm’s-length bodies or the many small government departments too powerless or captured to resist lobbying efforts. The Stakeholder State ferments between the NGO and the campaign group, the celebrity letter-writing campaign and the activist lawyers. It is given voice by political podcasts where everyone violently agrees. It is canonised through a corrupted honours system.
If you want to imagine a typical scene in the Stakeholder State, it is a government elected on a promise to build an entire generation of housing and infrastructure in just five years spending time and money lobbying itself to water down those commitments through its own quangos. If you want a vision of the future, it is endless, cheap judicial reviews enabled by the Unece Convention on Access to Information, Public Participation in Decision-making and Access to Justice in Environmental Matters (1998).
Its echos what Big Dom was wittering about on the Spectator podcast. Its not just the actual judicial reviews we end up witnessing, it is the legal advice time and time again that every move you might want to make probably will result in one so better not to.
Obviously Big Doms solution is to put a bomb under the whole system and blow it all up and find a modern day William Pitt the Younger assisted by Elon Musk types.
Which is just as mad.
"Big Dom" thinks everyone else is an idiot, and the few he reserves judgement on are always on borrowed time, and since he thinks worrying about people's feelings is simply a waste of time he prefers to just detonate the lot.
We've woven this tangled web over decades and it can only be unwoven into something that works better by exceptional leadership and courage, and superb political skills.
Politicians have given away too much power to lawyers, activists and regulators, and cannot deliver their promises, an ex-aide to the prime minister has said.
Writing in The Times,, external Paul Ovenden, who quit as Keir Starmer's director of political strategy last September after offensive messages he had sent in 2017 surfaced, said the British state had got "bigger and bigger while simultaneously and systematically emasculating itself".
He also said the case of the British-Egyptian activist Alaa Abd El Fattah "revealed the sheer weirdness of how Whitehall spends its time".
This is something @Sandpit and I were driving at a couple of days ago articulated very well in the article
The Stakeholder State is not a single phenomenon. Instead, it is the gradual but decisive shift of politics and power away from voters and towards groups with the time, money and institutional access to make themselves too important to ignore. In this state, the government rows with muffled oars in order to appease a complex coalition of campaign groups, regulators, litigators, trade bodies and well-networked organisations. If the language of priorities is the religion of socialism, then consultations and reviews are the sacred texts of the Stakeholder State.
Once you start noticing it, you see it everywhere: in the democratic powers handed to arm’s-length bodies or the many small government departments too powerless or captured to resist lobbying efforts. The Stakeholder State ferments between the NGO and the campaign group, the celebrity letter-writing campaign and the activist lawyers. It is given voice by political podcasts where everyone violently agrees. It is canonised through a corrupted honours system.
If you want to imagine a typical scene in the Stakeholder State, it is a government elected on a promise to build an entire generation of housing and infrastructure in it is not just five years spending time and money lobbying itself to water down those commitments through its own quangos. If you want a vision of the future, it is endless, cheap judicial reviews enabled by the Unece Convention on Access to Information, Public Participation in Decision-making and Access to Justice in Environmental Matters (1998).
That is as clear and insightful explanation of our post democratic state as I have read anywhere. I am really not sure if there is any way back. These groups are so amorphous and so powerful that it is not even clear how you rebel against them.
Is it?
It sounds to me like how democracy works. Governments have to follow the rules, and interested parties are allowed to lobby for their preferred outcomes.
The alternative is a capricious tyranny.
The very epitome of democracy, this.
If you want to imagine a typical scene in the Stakeholder State, it is a government elected on a promise to build an entire generation of housing and infrastructure in it is not just five years spending time and money lobbying itself to water down those commitments through its own quangos
You need understand that the Democracy is too important to be left to the whims of the Head Count scum.
See the elective arrangements of the Republican Roman Senate.
Some festive modelling from @CPSThinkTank on incomes/tax thresholds. If OBR is right, by 2030-1 you will be:
- £505 poorer (in real terms) on a £50k salary - £290 richer on UC - £306 richer on state pension - £537 richer on state pension under 'quadruple lock'
Picking the pockets of the productive economy to fund the largely inactive
And if Labour adopts one of its reportedly preferred options for the TV licence renewal, free TV licenses for those on UC with the rest of us picking up the slack, that will only make it worse.
There was a similar one of these last summer (July?), which Grok repeating the pattern of previous "deep fake" type phone apps that were subsequently banned.
Responses tended to be along the lines of the gun lobby - "it's not the existence of capability; it's the people who choose to use it that are the problem".
Hmm it doesn't look like many of replies agree with her
I am not a Reeves fan (sorry for the shock, I normally hide it better) but the responses there are overly negative. It is a good thing for UK plc that money is flowing into the FTSE 100, that investment in the stock market here can produce a decent return (up over 20% in 2025), that the ratings difference between us and the US has narrowed somewhat and that there is economic activity and optimism in the City. The FTSE 100 is largely international (over 80% of sales are not in the UK) but we are seriously dependent upon the financial skills and profits of the City servicing companies listed there. Reeves is right (sudden wave of nausea there) to celebrate this, it is way over due.
Politicians have given away too much power to lawyers, activists and regulators, and cannot deliver their promises, an ex-aide to the prime minister has said.
Writing in The Times,, external Paul Ovenden, who quit as Keir Starmer's director of political strategy last September after offensive messages he had sent in 2017 surfaced, said the British state had got "bigger and bigger while simultaneously and systematically emasculating itself".
He also said the case of the British-Egyptian activist Alaa Abd El Fattah "revealed the sheer weirdness of how Whitehall spends its time".
This is something @Sandpit and I were driving at a couple of days ago articulated very well in the article
The Stakeholder State is not a single phenomenon. Instead, it is the gradual but decisive shift of politics and power away from voters and towards groups with the time, money and institutional access to make themselves too important to ignore. In this state, the government rows with muffled oars in order to appease a complex coalition of campaign groups, regulators, litigators, trade bodies and well-networked organisations. If the language of priorities is the religion of socialism, then consultations and reviews are the sacred texts of the Stakeholder State.
Once you start noticing it, you see it everywhere: in the democratic powers handed to arm’s-length bodies or the many small government departments too powerless or captured to resist lobbying efforts. The Stakeholder State ferments between the NGO and the campaign group, the celebrity letter-writing campaign and the activist lawyers. It is given voice by political podcasts where everyone violently agrees. It is canonised through a corrupted honours system.
If you want to imagine a typical scene in the Stakeholder State, it is a government elected on a promise to build an entire generation of housing and infrastructure in it is not just five years spending time and money lobbying itself to water down those commitments through its own quangos. If you want a vision of the future, it is endless, cheap judicial reviews enabled by the Unece Convention on Access to Information, Public Participation in Decision-making and Access to Justice in Environmental Matters (1998).
That is as clear and insightful explanation of our post democratic state as I have read anywhere. I am really not sure if there is any way back. These groups are so amorphous and so powerful that it is not even clear how you rebel against them.
Is it?
It sounds to me like how democracy works. Governments have to follow the rules, and interested parties are allowed to lobby for their preferred outcomes.
The alternative is a capricious tyranny.
Nearly the entire history of democracy has been without the government funding special interest groups specifically to lobby the government to do/not do things.
And being pre-consulted on every piece of legislation.
Said special interest groups being essentially beyond scrutiny.
That's been government policy for decades, though. QUANGOs are bad, so they got turned into FANGOs. Who then use their autonomy to lobby the government.
There are a couple of other problems, though.
One is that there are so many pre-existing laws to tiptoe round. And Chesterton's Fence applies to all of them.
The other is that lots more of us have the time to oppose things we don't like. Those "write to your MP" websites seemed like a brilliant idea at the time, but they probably weren't.
“According to a poll by Wisp, the dating app that prioritises getting singletons meeting face-to-face, Reform UK voters have officially been crowned the number one political ‘ick’ among British singles.
“Almost three-quarters (72%) of respondents said they’d be “put off” if they found out a match on a dating app was a Reform supporter.
“In a survey of 1,000 Wisp users aged 25-40, political affiliation (39%) ranked higher than smoking (22%), poor hygiene (17%), bad manners (12%), or even living with parents (10%) when it came to dating red flags.”
Nothing to stop Reform voters dating Reform voters
The young women the younger ones are after all vote Green nowadays
I'm reminded of Beardsley's Lysistrata where the peace loving women of Athens deny the warmongering men sexual pleasure, and the latter wander about angrily and frustratedly with vastly swollen members (muttering about woke bitches no doubt).
Politicians have given away too much power to lawyers, activists and regulators, and cannot deliver their promises, an ex-aide to the prime minister has said.
Writing in The Times,, external Paul Ovenden, who quit as Keir Starmer's director of political strategy last September after offensive messages he had sent in 2017 surfaced, said the British state had got "bigger and bigger while simultaneously and systematically emasculating itself".
He also said the case of the British-Egyptian activist Alaa Abd El Fattah "revealed the sheer weirdness of how Whitehall spends its time".
This is something @Sandpit and I were driving at a couple of days ago articulated very well in the article
The Stakeholder State is not a single phenomenon. Instead, it is the gradual but decisive shift of politics and power away from voters and towards groups with the time, money and institutional access to make themselves too important to ignore. In this state, the government rows with muffled oars in order to appease a complex coalition of campaign groups, regulators, litigators, trade bodies and well-networked organisations. If the language of priorities is the religion of socialism, then consultations and reviews are the sacred texts of the Stakeholder State.
Once you start noticing it, you see it everywhere: in the democratic powers handed to arm’s-length bodies or the many small government departments too powerless or captured to resist lobbying efforts. The Stakeholder State ferments between the NGO and the campaign group, the celebrity letter-writing campaign and the activist lawyers. It is given voice by political podcasts where everyone violently agrees. It is canonised through a corrupted honours system.
If you want to imagine a typical scene in the Stakeholder State, it is a government elected on a promise to build an entire generation of housing and infrastructure in just five years spending time and money lobbying itself to water down those commitments through its own quangos. If you want a vision of the future, it is endless, cheap judicial reviews enabled by the Unece Convention on Access to Information, Public Participation in Decision-making and Access to Justice in Environmental Matters (1998).
Its echos what Big Dom was wittering about on the Spectator podcast. Its not just the actual judicial reviews we end up witnessing, it is the legal advice time and time again that every move you might want to make probably will result in one so better not to.
Obviously Big Doms solution is to put a bomb under the whole system and blow it all up and find a modern day William Pitt the Younger assisted by Elon Musk types.
Which is just as mad.
"Big Dom" thinks everyone else is an idiot, and the few he reserves judgement on are always on borrowed time, and since he thinks worrying about people's feelings is simply a waste of time he prefers to just detonate the lot.
We've woven this tangled web over decades and it can only be unwoven into something that works better by exceptional leadership and courage, and superb political skills.
Well that is why he fails at anything other than short term campaigning. Analysis is often good, strategy to solve it is totally inspired by tech companies move fast and break shit, but you can't do that with public policy in the way you can with venture capital money (although turn pretty nasty if you piss all their money up the wall with nothing to show).
Hmm it doesn't look like many of replies agree with her
I am not a Reeves fan (sorry for the shock, I normally hide it better) but the responses there are overly negative. It is a good thing for UK plc that money is flowing into the FTSE 100, that investment in the stock market here can produce a decent return (up over 20% in 2025), that the ratings difference between us and the US has narrowed somewhat and that there is economic activity and optimism in the City. The FTSE 100 is largely international (over 80% of sales are not in the UK) but we are seriously dependent upon the financial skills and profits of the City servicing companies listed there. Reeves is right (sudden wave of nausea there) to celebrate this, it is way over due.
Also, I didn't see RR taking the credit, just being pleased for British business. And a lot of what we need is a bit of optimism.
Hmm it doesn't look like many of replies agree with her
I am not a Reeves fan (sorry for the shock, I normally hide it better) but the responses there are overly negative. It is a good thing for UK plc that money is flowing into the FTSE 100, that investment in the stock market here can produce a decent return (up over 20% in 2025), that the ratings difference between us and the US has narrowed somewhat and that there is economic activity and optimism in the City. The FTSE 100 is largely international (over 80% of sales are not in the UK) but we are seriously dependent upon the financial skills and profits of the City servicing companies listed there. Reeves is right (sudden wave of nausea there) to celebrate this, it is way over due.
It is a good thing, however she’s not really responsible. One of the issues we have with getting companies to list is our valuations relative to other major indices. So a rebalancing is good as long as it is maintained. It may encourage companies to list and others not to move.
She could do more by abolishing stamp duty rather than the timid change in the last budget and a little less regulation and a little more business friendly measures wouldn’t come amiss.
Hmm it doesn't look like many of replies agree with her
I am not a Reeves fan (sorry for the shock, I normally hide it better) but the responses there are overly negative. It is a good thing for UK plc that money is flowing into the FTSE 100, that investment in the stock market here can produce a decent return (up over 20% in 2025), that the ratings difference between us and the US has narrowed somewhat and that there is economic activity and optimism in the City. The FTSE 100 is largely international (over 80% of sales are not in the UK) but we are seriously dependent upon the financial skills and profits of the City servicing companies listed there. Reeves is right (sudden wave of nausea there) to celebrate this, it is way over due.
Its Twitter, always quick to stick the boot in over there! Wonder if any of it is in any way connected to US tariffs?
If someone can please let me know just before the next market crash is due, I will shift money to a pension instead, thanks
Hmm it doesn't look like many of replies agree with her
I am not a Reeves fan (sorry for the shock, I normally hide it better) but the responses there are overly negative. It is a good thing for UK plc that money is flowing into the FTSE 100, that investment in the stock market here can produce a decent return (up over 20% in 2025), that the ratings difference between us and the US has narrowed somewhat and that there is economic activity and optimism in the City. The FTSE 100 is largely international (over 80% of sales are not in the UK) but we are seriously dependent upon the financial skills and profits of the City servicing companies listed there. Reeves is right (sudden wave of nausea there) to celebrate this, it is way over due.
Also, I didn't see RR taking the credit, just being pleased for British business. And a lot of what we need is a bit of optimism.
That is just nonsense. Hopeium doesn't solve our underlying issues. Having been in Asia for extended periods over the last 12 months on 3 occasions. We are just so far off it now (any of this "best / envy of the world" is BS), that sticking our heads in the sand and have Rachel from Accounts say more positive things or singing Sweet Caroline while pissed upon 10 pints making us all feel a bit more positive for a day or two won't do jack shit.
Politicians have given away too much power to lawyers, activists and regulators, and cannot deliver their promises, an ex-aide to the prime minister has said.
Writing in The Times,, external Paul Ovenden, who quit as Keir Starmer's director of political strategy last September after offensive messages he had sent in 2017 surfaced, said the British state had got "bigger and bigger while simultaneously and systematically emasculating itself".
He also said the case of the British-Egyptian activist Alaa Abd El Fattah "revealed the sheer weirdness of how Whitehall spends its time".
This is something @Sandpit and I were driving at a couple of days ago articulated very well in the article
The Stakeholder State is not a single phenomenon. Instead, it is the gradual but decisive shift of politics and power away from voters and towards groups with the time, money and institutional access to make themselves too important to ignore. In this state, the government rows with muffled oars in order to appease a complex coalition of campaign groups, regulators, litigators, trade bodies and well-networked organisations. If the language of priorities is the religion of socialism, then consultations and reviews are the sacred texts of the Stakeholder State.
Once you start noticing it, you see it everywhere: in the democratic powers handed to arm’s-length bodies or the many small government departments too powerless or captured to resist lobbying efforts. The Stakeholder State ferments between the NGO and the campaign group, the celebrity letter-writing campaign and the activist lawyers. It is given voice by political podcasts where everyone violently agrees. It is canonised through a corrupted honours system.
If you want to imagine a typical scene in the Stakeholder State, it is a government elected on a promise to build an entire generation of housing and infrastructure in it is not just five years spending time and money lobbying itself to water down those commitments through its own quangos. If you want a vision of the future, it is endless, cheap judicial reviews enabled by the Unece Convention on Access to Information, Public Participation in Decision-making and Access to Justice in Environmental Matters (1998).
That is as clear and insightful explanation of our post democratic state as I have read anywhere. I am really not sure if there is any way back. These groups are so amorphous and so powerful that it is not even clear how you rebel against them.
Is it?
It sounds to me like how democracy works. Governments have to follow the rules, and interested parties are allowed to lobby for their preferred outcomes.
The alternative is a capricious tyranny.
Nearly the entire history of democracy has been without the government funding special interest groups specifically to lobby the government to do/not do things.
And being pre-consulted on every piece of legislation.
Said special interest groups being essentially beyond scrutiny.
That's been government policy for decades, though. QUANGOs are bad, so they got turned into FANGOs. Who then use their autonomy to lobby the government.
There are a couple of other problems, though.
One is that there are so many pre-existing laws to tiptoe round. And Chesterton's Fence applies to all of them.
The other is that lots more of us have the time to oppose things we don't like. Those "write to your MP" websites seemed like a brilliant idea at the time, but they probably weren't.
A counter example to the usual bullshit is the offshore wind planning process - which got streamlined, so that if your ducks (and documents) are in a line, approval is almost automatic.
A number of groups in the Enquiry Industrial Complex said that this was an attack on democracy - because, apparently, 20 years planning enquiries are a democratic fundamental.
Politicians have given away too much power to lawyers, activists and regulators, and cannot deliver their promises, an ex-aide to the prime minister has said.
Writing in The Times,, external Paul Ovenden, who quit as Keir Starmer's director of political strategy last September after offensive messages he had sent in 2017 surfaced, said the British state had got "bigger and bigger while simultaneously and systematically emasculating itself".
He also said the case of the British-Egyptian activist Alaa Abd El Fattah "revealed the sheer weirdness of how Whitehall spends its time".
This is something @Sandpit and I were driving at a couple of days ago articulated very well in the article
The Stakeholder State is not a single phenomenon. Instead, it is the gradual but decisive shift of politics and power away from voters and towards groups with the time, money and institutional access to make themselves too important to ignore. In this state, the government rows with muffled oars in order to appease a complex coalition of campaign groups, regulators, litigators, trade bodies and well-networked organisations. If the language of priorities is the religion of socialism, then consultations and reviews are the sacred texts of the Stakeholder State.
Once you start noticing it, you see it everywhere: in the democratic powers handed to arm’s-length bodies or the many small government departments too powerless or captured to resist lobbying efforts. The Stakeholder State ferments between the NGO and the campaign group, the celebrity letter-writing campaign and the activist lawyers. It is given voice by political podcasts where everyone violently agrees. It is canonised through a corrupted honours system.
If you want to imagine a typical scene in the Stakeholder State, it is a government elected on a promise to build an entire generation of housing and infrastructure in just five years spending time and money lobbying itself to water down those commitments through its own quangos. If you want a vision of the future, it is endless, cheap judicial reviews enabled by the Unece Convention on Access to Information, Public Participation in Decision-making and Access to Justice in Environmental Matters (1998).
Its echos what Big Dom was wittering about on the Spectator podcast. Its not just the actual judicial reviews we end up witnessing, it is the legal advice time and time again that every move you might want to make probably will result in one so better not to.
Obviously Big Doms solution is to put a bomb under the whole system and blow it all up and find a modern day William Pitt the Younger assisted by Elon Musk types.
Which is just as mad.
"Big Dom" thinks everyone else is an idiot, and the few he reserves judgement on are always on borrowed time, and since he thinks worrying about people's feelings is simply a waste of time he prefers to just detonate the lot.
We've woven this tangled web over decades and it can only be unwoven into something that works better by exceptional leadership and courage, and superb political skills.
The right have always had an odd fascination with authoritarians.
"It is not possible to form a just judgment of a public figure who has attained the enormous dimensions of Adolf Hitler until his life-work as a whole is before us. Although no subsequent political action can condone wrong deeds, history is replete with examples of men who have risen to power by employing stern, grim, and even frightful methods, but who, nevertheless, when their life is revealed as a whole, have been regarded as great figures whose lives have enriched the story of mankind. So may it be with Hitler."
This was written in 1935 - incredibly nearly a whole year after Chamberlain had agreed with the Committee of Imperial Defence that Germany ought to be now selected as the "ultimate enemy" for British long term defence plans.
Hmm it doesn't look like many of replies agree with her
I am not a Reeves fan (sorry for the shock, I normally hide it better) but the responses there are overly negative. It is a good thing for UK plc that money is flowing into the FTSE 100, that investment in the stock market here can produce a decent return (up over 20% in 2025), that the ratings difference between us and the US has narrowed somewhat and that there is economic activity and optimism in the City. The FTSE 100 is largely international (over 80% of sales are not in the UK) but we are seriously dependent upon the financial skills and profits of the City servicing companies listed there. Reeves is right (sudden wave of nausea there) to celebrate this, it is way over due.
Also good time to review your investments, sell any underperforming and wait for the January "beer fear" correction before reinvesting.
Hmm it doesn't look like many of replies agree with her
I am not a Reeves fan (sorry for the shock, I normally hide it better) but the responses there are overly negative. It is a good thing for UK plc that money is flowing into the FTSE 100, that investment in the stock market here can produce a decent return (up over 20% in 2025), that the ratings difference between us and the US has narrowed somewhat and that there is economic activity and optimism in the City. The FTSE 100 is largely international (over 80% of sales are not in the UK) but we are seriously dependent upon the financial skills and profits of the City servicing companies listed there. Reeves is right (sudden wave of nausea there) to celebrate this, it is way over due.
Also, I didn't see RR taking the credit, just being pleased for British business. And a lot of what we need is a bit of optimism.
Politicians have given away too much power to lawyers, activists and regulators, and cannot deliver their promises, an ex-aide to the prime minister has said.
Writing in The Times,, external Paul Ovenden, who quit as Keir Starmer's director of political strategy last September after offensive messages he had sent in 2017 surfaced, said the British state had got "bigger and bigger while simultaneously and systematically emasculating itself".
He also said the case of the British-Egyptian activist Alaa Abd El Fattah "revealed the sheer weirdness of how Whitehall spends its time".
This is something @Sandpit and I were driving at a couple of days ago articulated very well in the article
The Stakeholder State is not a single phenomenon. Instead, it is the gradual but decisive shift of politics and power away from voters and towards groups with the time, money and institutional access to make themselves too important to ignore. In this state, the government rows with muffled oars in order to appease a complex coalition of campaign groups, regulators, litigators, trade bodies and well-networked organisations. If the language of priorities is the religion of socialism, then consultations and reviews are the sacred texts of the Stakeholder State.
Once you start noticing it, you see it everywhere: in the democratic powers handed to arm’s-length bodies or the many small government departments too powerless or captured to resist lobbying efforts. The Stakeholder State ferments between the NGO and the campaign group, the celebrity letter-writing campaign and the activist lawyers. It is given voice by political podcasts where everyone violently agrees. It is canonised through a corrupted honours system.
If you want to imagine a typical scene in the Stakeholder State, it is a government elected on a promise to build an entire generation of housing and infrastructure in it is not just five years spending time and money lobbying itself to water down those commitments through its own quangos. If you want a vision of the future, it is endless, cheap judicial reviews enabled by the Unece Convention on Access to Information, Public Participation in Decision-making and Access to Justice in Environmental Matters (1998).
That is as clear and insightful explanation of our post democratic state as I have read anywhere. I am really not sure if there is any way back. These groups are so amorphous and so powerful that it is not even clear how you rebel against them.
You ignore them.
You will meet enormous systemic resistance. But once you stop funding them to oppose your own policies....
The original article is punchier
“We don’t have to keep picking the pockets of the productive parts of our economy in order to fund inflation-busting pension increases for millionaires or an unsustainable welfare system. We don’t have to strangle small businesses at birth with regulatory burdens. We don’t have to fatten the pockets of wind-turbine operators by paying them not to produce energy. We don’t have to import antisemitic Islamists who wish us harm. And we certainly don’t have to treat British citizenship as a scrap of paper. On all this and more, we can simply choose not to.”
It’s a call to arms, it really is.
The rejection of regional/nodal energy pricing is the single biggest disappointment so far IMO. That really does speak to regulatory capture, and we will continue building turbines miles away from population centres and without sufficient transmission infrastructure as a result. That decision will cost us billions in lost economic output and government spending.
Hmm it doesn't look like many of replies agree with her
I am not a Reeves fan (sorry for the shock, I normally hide it better) but the responses there are overly negative. It is a good thing for UK plc that money is flowing into the FTSE 100, that investment in the stock market here can produce a decent return (up over 20% in 2025), that the ratings difference between us and the US has narrowed somewhat and that there is economic activity and optimism in the City. The FTSE 100 is largely international (over 80% of sales are not in the UK) but we are seriously dependent upon the financial skills and profits of the City servicing companies listed there. Reeves is right (sudden wave of nausea there) to celebrate this, it is way over due.
Also good time to review your investments, sell any underperforming and wait for the January "beer fear" correction before reinvesting.
I always review ever start of the year. Good advice.
Hmm it doesn't look like many of replies agree with her
I am not a Reeves fan (sorry for the shock, I normally hide it better) but the responses there are overly negative. It is a good thing for UK plc that money is flowing into the FTSE 100, that investment in the stock market here can produce a decent return (up over 20% in 2025), that the ratings difference between us and the US has narrowed somewhat and that there is economic activity and optimism in the City. The FTSE 100 is largely international (over 80% of sales are not in the UK) but we are seriously dependent upon the financial skills and profits of the City servicing companies listed there. Reeves is right (sudden wave of nausea there) to celebrate this, it is way over due.
Also, I didn't see RR taking the credit, just being pleased for British business. And a lot of what we need is a bit of optimism.
Oh, she was definitely trying to take the credit.
How can claiming it’s a vote of confidence in the U.K. Economy not be trying to take credit 🤷♂️
Reeves is 7/2 and Starmer 4/1 to go in 2027. Both odds on to leave this year, 1/2 for Reeves and 8/11 Starmer.
Starmer won't go without a fight, and they are tied to each other's jobs. Survive the elections post May 26 and they should survive the year - easier said than done
The right have always had an odd fascination with authoritarians.
"It is not possible to form a just judgment of a public figure who has attained the enormous dimensions of Adolf Hitler until his life-work as a whole is before us. Although no subsequent political action can condone wrong deeds, history is replete with examples of men who have risen to power by employing stern, grim, and even frightful methods, but who, nevertheless, when their life is revealed as a whole, have been regarded as great figures whose lives have enriched the story of mankind. So may it be with Hitler."
This was written in 1935 - incredibly nearly a whole year after Chamberlain had agreed with the Committee of Imperial Defence that Germany ought to be now selected as the "ultimate enemy" for British long term defence plans.
I laid Reform to win most seats at 2.06 a month or so ago, and would have thought I was in good shape considering the stories about Farage’s schooldays, but they’re 2.02 to lay now
The Farage schoolboy stories is interesting. The same people mortally offended by it go out of their way to defend the Anti British anti Semite our govt, the previous govt, the Lib Dem’s and greens went to bat for. He said sorry and he was 32 at the time. Makes it okay.
As for the Reform are Russian assets smear it looks like the Tories are on the receiving end now over Lord Wolfson defending Roman Abramovich.
Still we have the impartial review into foreign influence in UK politics the govt is carrying out. A thorough and forensic analysis which will take a couple of months and conveniently timed to come out before the locals in May,
I wonder what it will find and if it will be to labours advantage 🤔
After Nathan Gill being sentenced to 10.5 years for taking Russian money, you can't just glibly dismiss the real concerns about Russian influence as a "smear". Reform has questions to answer about Farage's time working for Russia Today, and it isn't answering them.
Politicians have given away too much power to lawyers, activists and regulators, and cannot deliver their promises, an ex-aide to the prime minister has said.
Writing in The Times,, external Paul Ovenden, who quit as Keir Starmer's director of political strategy last September after offensive messages he had sent in 2017 surfaced, said the British state had got "bigger and bigger while simultaneously and systematically emasculating itself".
He also said the case of the British-Egyptian activist Alaa Abd El Fattah "revealed the sheer weirdness of how Whitehall spends its time".
This is something @Sandpit and I were driving at a couple of days ago articulated very well in the article
The Stakeholder State is not a single phenomenon. Instead, it is the gradual but decisive shift of politics and power away from voters and towards groups with the time, money and institutional access to make themselves too important to ignore. In this state, the government rows with muffled oars in order to appease a complex coalition of campaign groups, regulators, litigators, trade bodies and well-networked organisations. If the language of priorities is the religion of socialism, then consultations and reviews are the sacred texts of the Stakeholder State.
Once you start noticing it, you see it everywhere: in the democratic powers handed to arm’s-length bodies or the many small government departments too powerless or captured to resist lobbying efforts. The Stakeholder State ferments between the NGO and the campaign group, the celebrity letter-writing campaign and the activist lawyers. It is given voice by political podcasts where everyone violently agrees. It is canonised through a corrupted honours system.
If you want to imagine a typical scene in the Stakeholder State, it is a government elected on a promise to build an entire generation of housing and infrastructure in it is not just five years spending time and money lobbying itself to water down those commitments through its own quangos. If you want a vision of the future, it is endless, cheap judicial reviews enabled by the Unece Convention on Access to Information, Public Participation in Decision-making and Access to Justice in Environmental Matters (1998).
That is as clear and insightful explanation of our post democratic state as I have read anywhere. I am really not sure if there is any way back. These groups are so amorphous and so powerful that it is not even clear how you rebel against them.
You ignore them.
You will meet enormous systemic resistance. But once you stop funding them to oppose your own policies....
The original article is punchier
“We don’t have to keep picking the pockets of the productive parts of our economy in order to fund inflation-busting pension increases for millionaires or an unsustainable welfare system. We don’t have to strangle small businesses at birth with regulatory burdens. We don’t have to fatten the pockets of wind-turbine operators by paying them not to produce energy. We don’t have to import antisemitic Islamists who wish us harm. And we certainly don’t have to treat British citizenship as a scrap of paper. On all this and more, we can simply choose not to.”
It’s a call to arms, it really is.
The rejection of regional/nodal energy pricing is the single biggest disappointment so far IMO. That really does speak to regulatory capture, and we will continue building turbines miles away from population centres and without sufficient transmission infrastructure as a result. That decision will cost us billions in lost economic output and government spending.
Seconded. If this was itemised on your tax bill, people would be up in arms. I'm expecting a big solar (and battery) advance in the next 5 years
Politicians have given away too much power to lawyers, activists and regulators, and cannot deliver their promises, an ex-aide to the prime minister has said.
Writing in The Times,, external Paul Ovenden, who quit as Keir Starmer's director of political strategy last September after offensive messages he had sent in 2017 surfaced, said the British state had got "bigger and bigger while simultaneously and systematically emasculating itself".
He also said the case of the British-Egyptian activist Alaa Abd El Fattah "revealed the sheer weirdness of how Whitehall spends its time".
This is something @Sandpit and I were driving at a couple of days ago articulated very well in the article
The Stakeholder State is not a single phenomenon. Instead, it is the gradual but decisive shift of politics and power away from voters and towards groups with the time, money and institutional access to make themselves too important to ignore. In this state, the government rows with muffled oars in order to appease a complex coalition of campaign groups, regulators, litigators, trade bodies and well-networked organisations. If the language of priorities is the religion of socialism, then consultations and reviews are the sacred texts of the Stakeholder State.
Once you start noticing it, you see it everywhere: in the democratic powers handed to arm’s-length bodies or the many small government departments too powerless or captured to resist lobbying efforts. The Stakeholder State ferments between the NGO and the campaign group, the celebrity letter-writing campaign and the activist lawyers. It is given voice by political podcasts where everyone violently agrees. It is canonised through a corrupted honours system.
If you want to imagine a typical scene in the Stakeholder State, it is a government elected on a promise to build an entire generation of housing and infrastructure in it is not just five years spending time and money lobbying itself to water down those commitments through its own quangos. If you want a vision of the future, it is endless, cheap judicial reviews enabled by the Unece Convention on Access to Information, Public Participation in Decision-making and Access to Justice in Environmental Matters (1998).
That is as clear and insightful explanation of our post democratic state as I have read anywhere. I am really not sure if there is any way back. These groups are so amorphous and so powerful that it is not even clear how you rebel against them.
Politicians have given away too much power to lawyers, activists and regulators, and cannot deliver their promises, an ex-aide to the prime minister has said.
Writing in The Times,, external Paul Ovenden, who quit as Keir Starmer's director of political strategy last September after offensive messages he had sent in 2017 surfaced, said the British state had got "bigger and bigger while simultaneously and systematically emasculating itself".
He also said the case of the British-Egyptian activist Alaa Abd El Fattah "revealed the sheer weirdness of how Whitehall spends its time".
This is something @Sandpit and I were driving at a couple of days ago articulated very well in the article
The Stakeholder State is not a single phenomenon. Instead, it is the gradual but decisive shift of politics and power away from voters and towards groups with the time, money and institutional access to make themselves too important to ignore. In this state, the government rows with muffled oars in order to appease a complex coalition of campaign groups, regulators, litigators, trade bodies and well-networked organisations. If the language of priorities is the religion of socialism, then consultations and reviews are the sacred texts of the Stakeholder State.
Once you start noticing it, you see it everywhere: in the democratic powers handed to arm’s-length bodies or the many small government departments too powerless or captured to resist lobbying efforts. The Stakeholder State ferments between the NGO and the campaign group, the celebrity letter-writing campaign and the activist lawyers. It is given voice by political podcasts where everyone violently agrees. It is canonised through a corrupted honours system.
If you want to imagine a typical scene in the Stakeholder State, it is a government elected on a promise to build an entire generation of housing and infrastructure in it is not just five years spending time and money lobbying itself to water down those commitments through its own quangos. If you want a vision of the future, it is endless, cheap judicial reviews enabled by the Unece Convention on Access to Information, Public Participation in Decision-making and Access to Justice in Environmental Matters (1998).
That is as clear and insightful explanation of our post democratic state as I have read anywhere. I am really not sure if there is any way back. These groups are so amorphous and so powerful that it is not even clear how you rebel against them.
Is it?
It sounds to me like how democracy works. Governments have to follow the rules, and interested parties are allowed to lobby for their preferred outcomes.
The alternative is a capricious tyranny.
The very epitome of democracy, this.
If you want to imagine a typical scene in the Stakeholder State, it is a government elected on a promise to build an entire generation of housing and infrastructure in it is not just five years spending time and money lobbying itself to water down those commitments through its own quangos
You need understand that the Democracy is too important to be left to the whims of the Head Count scum.
See the elective arrangements of the Republican Roman Senate.
In some ways, modern government is like the Roman State in its periods of decline. Governments are increasingly ineffectual and unable make their will count. They pass shrill legislation, denouncing whatever the bad thing is that the moment, while ignoring the essentials.
The right have always had an odd fascination with authoritarians.
"It is not possible to form a just judgment of a public figure who has attained the enormous dimensions of Adolf Hitler until his life-work as a whole is before us. Although no subsequent political action can condone wrong deeds, history is replete with examples of men who have risen to power by employing stern, grim, and even frightful methods, but who, nevertheless, when their life is revealed as a whole, have been regarded as great figures whose lives have enriched the story of mankind. So may it be with Hitler."
This was written in 1935 - incredibly nearly a whole year after Chamberlain had agreed with the Committee of Imperial Defence that Germany ought to be now selected as the "ultimate enemy" for British long term defence plans.
If only we'd had Chamberlain leading us in WWII rather than Churchill.
No. The point is rather that we should perhaps be more grateful that is was Chamberlain and not Churchill who was in government in the pre-war years.
Churchill first started warning about the threat of German rearmament as early as November 1932, and this built up into an increasing crescendo of warnings throughout the 1930s, and desperately so from about 1936 onwards.
Churchill wasn't especially popular amongst the Conservative benches, and probably would have struggled to lead them had he become Premier any sooner, but it's worth bearing in mind British public opinion wasn't particularly open to increased defence spending throughout - and that only really changed after Munich.
We have no right to criticise. The warnings are just as stark today, although of a different type, and yet we still refuse to increase defence spending, preferring to put our fingers in our ears instead.
Hmm it doesn't look like many of replies agree with her
I am not a Reeves fan (sorry for the shock, I normally hide it better) but the responses there are overly negative. It is a good thing for UK plc that money is flowing into the FTSE 100, that investment in the stock market here can produce a decent return (up over 20% in 2025), that the ratings difference between us and the US has narrowed somewhat and that there is economic activity and optimism in the City. The FTSE 100 is largely international (over 80% of sales are not in the UK) but we are seriously dependent upon the financial skills and profits of the City servicing companies listed there. Reeves is right (sudden wave of nausea there) to celebrate this, it is way over due.
Yes. UK shares have been undervalued for quite some time.
I imagine that the Orange Golgothan has taken the shine off US shares, too.
Politicians have given away too much power to lawyers, activists and regulators, and cannot deliver their promises, an ex-aide to the prime minister has said.
Writing in The Times,, external Paul Ovenden, who quit as Keir Starmer's director of political strategy last September after offensive messages he had sent in 2017 surfaced, said the British state had got "bigger and bigger while simultaneously and systematically emasculating itself".
He also said the case of the British-Egyptian activist Alaa Abd El Fattah "revealed the sheer weirdness of how Whitehall spends its time".
This is something @Sandpit and I were driving at a couple of days ago articulated very well in the article
The Stakeholder State is not a single phenomenon. Instead, it is the gradual but decisive shift of politics and power away from voters and towards groups with the time, money and institutional access to make themselves too important to ignore. In this state, the government rows with muffled oars in order to appease a complex coalition of campaign groups, regulators, litigators, trade bodies and well-networked organisations. If the language of priorities is the religion of socialism, then consultations and reviews are the sacred texts of the Stakeholder State.
Once you start noticing it, you see it everywhere: in the democratic powers handed to arm’s-length bodies or the many small government departments too powerless or captured to resist lobbying efforts. The Stakeholder State ferments between the NGO and the campaign group, the celebrity letter-writing campaign and the activist lawyers. It is given voice by political podcasts where everyone violently agrees. It is canonised through a corrupted honours system.
If you want to imagine a typical scene in the Stakeholder State, it is a government elected on a promise to build an entire generation of housing and infrastructure in it is not just five years spending time and money lobbying itself to water down those commitments through its own quangos. If you want a vision of the future, it is endless, cheap judicial reviews enabled by the Unece Convention on Access to Information, Public Participation in Decision-making and Access to Justice in Environmental Matters (1998).
That is as clear and insightful explanation of our post democratic state as I have read anywhere. I am really not sure if there is any way back. These groups are so amorphous and so powerful that it is not even clear how you rebel against them.
Is it?
It sounds to me like how democracy works. Governments have to follow the rules, and interested parties are allowed to lobby for their preferred outcomes.
The alternative is a capricious tyranny.
The very epitome of democracy, this.
If you want to imagine a typical scene in the Stakeholder State, it is a government elected on a promise to build an entire generation of housing and infrastructure in it is not just five years spending time and money lobbying itself to water down those commitments through its own quangos
A fairish criticism. Whether or not Starmer can get to grips with this will determine his government's fate.
Politicians have given away too much power to lawyers, activists and regulators, and cannot deliver their promises, an ex-aide to the prime minister has said.
Writing in The Times,, external Paul Ovenden, who quit as Keir Starmer's director of political strategy last September after offensive messages he had sent in 2017 surfaced, said the British state had got "bigger and bigger while simultaneously and systematically emasculating itself".
He also said the case of the British-Egyptian activist Alaa Abd El Fattah "revealed the sheer weirdness of how Whitehall spends its time".
This is something @Sandpit and I were driving at a couple of days ago articulated very well in the article
The Stakeholder State is not a single phenomenon. Instead, it is the gradual but decisive shift of politics and power away from voters and towards groups with the time, money and institutional access to make themselves too important to ignore. In this state, the government rows with muffled oars in order to appease a complex coalition of campaign groups, regulators, litigators, trade bodies and well-networked organisations. If the language of priorities is the religion of socialism, then consultations and reviews are the sacred texts of the Stakeholder State.
Once you start noticing it, you see it everywhere: in the democratic powers handed to arm’s-length bodies or the many small government departments too powerless or captured to resist lobbying efforts. The Stakeholder State ferments between the NGO and the campaign group, the celebrity letter-writing campaign and the activist lawyers. It is given voice by political podcasts where everyone violently agrees. It is canonised through a corrupted honours system.
If you want to imagine a typical scene in the Stakeholder State, it is a government elected on a promise to build an entire generation of housing and infrastructure in it is not just five years spending time and money lobbying itself to water down those commitments through its own quangos. If you want a vision of the future, it is endless, cheap judicial reviews enabled by the Unece Convention on Access to Information, Public Participation in Decision-making and Access to Justice in Environmental Matters (1998).
That is as clear and insightful explanation of our post democratic state as I have read anywhere. I am really not sure if there is any way back. These groups are so amorphous and so powerful that it is not even clear how you rebel against them.
You ignore them.
You will meet enormous systemic resistance. But once you stop funding them to oppose your own policies....
The original article is punchier
“We don’t have to keep picking the pockets of the productive parts of our economy in order to fund inflation-busting pension increases for millionaires or an unsustainable welfare system. We don’t have to strangle small businesses at birth with regulatory burdens. We don’t have to fatten the pockets of wind-turbine operators by paying them not to produce energy. We don’t have to import antisemitic Islamists who wish us harm. And we certainly don’t have to treat British citizenship as a scrap of paper. On all this and more, we can simply choose not to.”
It’s a call to arms, it really is.
The rejection of regional/nodal energy pricing is the single biggest disappointment so far IMO. That really does speak to regulatory capture, and we will continue building turbines miles away from population centres and without sufficient transmission infrastructure as a result. That decision will cost us billions in lost economic output and government spending.
I agree. And nodal electricity charging could have done a lot to bring data processing and AI investment to Scotland in particular. We urgently need to rebuild our industrial base and cheap energy generated and sold cheaply locally is an obvious way to do it.
Comments
Here in East Ham, it could well be Labour vs Newham Indpendents vs Greens - so much will depend on the Borough elections in May.
However rightwing parties almost never win under 35s anyway, so while being a Tory is becoming acceptable again amongst younger people it is Reform still making the waves electorally as they now lead with the middle aged and pensioners. Farage may be an old saloon bar white male with corduroys and flat cap but he doesn't care, he isn't cool and hip and the cool people won't vote for him but the average voter is close to 50 and not cool and not hip and lives in the provinces not London so it won't harm him much at the ballot box
Neither Labour nor Conservative show any desire to switch to a proportional system which would ensure not only that all votes are counted but every vote counts.
As for Reform, what they say now and what they do if they win a majority in the next Commons are, I suspect, on this as well as a host of other issues, not quite the same.
Generally, in democracies, whatever the parties call themselves or however they align, the process is adversarial and you finish up with two or perhaps three rival blocs. You could argue 1984 is an allegory of Labour, Conservative and Liberal - they are fundamentally the same but switch rivalries out of convenience (just a thought).
It would be fascinating to see Badenoch distance her party from Reform and sit as a distinct group beside Labour, the LDs, Reform and Greens but governance and government requires building majorities to get legislation through the Commons and how would that work practically in such a divided chamber? Answer - by negotiation, doing deals, getting the things you want and having to support the things you don't.
That's not a politics to which we are accustomed and it might look chaotic at first but oddly enough it could work quite well.
Some festive modelling from @CPSThinkTank on incomes/tax thresholds. If OBR is right, by 2030-1 you will be:
- £505 poorer (in real terms) on a £50k salary
- £290 richer on UC
- £306 richer on state pension
- £537 richer on state pension under 'quadruple lock'
Ho, ho, ho...
https://x.com/rcolvile/status/2007016486246949159?s=61
John's excuse is that they are banned from Iran (just like Gaza). Although that has hardly stopped it being a lead item on BBC news for two years.
The local election story will be more nuanced as you well know. IF success for the Conservatives is regaining Westminster and Barnet, fine, but it's likely you'll lose Bromley and perhaps Bexley to Reform so the voters giveth and the voters taketh away.
The Conservatives, like the LDs, are largely irrelevant in Inner London and Labour's battles with the Greens and pro-Gaza Independents aren't easy to figure out. What happens in Newham may not be the same as Redbridge - Hackney may be different from Lewisham etc. etc.
Reeves taking the credit 🙄
https://x.com/rachelreevesmp/status/2007032948860854748?s=61
Overall I suspect the RAs will mostly be sept aside by Reform (based on how localist votes have been going elsewhere), I would expect Labour to lose all their Harold Hill seats to Reform too, so it will depend on how well the Tories can withstand the assault in Hornchurch and especially Romford whether or not Reform win a majority here. I expect they will.
Local party organisations here aren't that great outside the Tories in Romford. In my Hornchurch-but-in-Romford constituency ward, I get an occasional Rosindell-gram in which the name of my current councillor features only in the 'contact us' box. I have had 2 leaflets from Labour since the last election, but unfortunately for the wrong ward (the middle of my road is the boundary), nothing from the RAs in the 3 years I've lived here despite having 2 councillors, the LDs don't exist in Havering, and 2 leaflets recently from Reform including one pledging a whole bunch of policies that are mostly outside the council's remit and would require massive tax increases to fund.
And Happy New Year!
Indeed the fact the Conservatives are polling as well in London as nationally on the Savanta poll you gave is a huge shift from five years ago
https://electionmaps.uk/nowcast
And since when were Bromley and Bexley wealthy areas of London and trendy and hip? They are outer suburbs of the city not especially cool places to live in and closer culturally to Kent in some respects than inner London so even if Reform won there my point still stands
I mean I can understand you may not have heard much about it. Not as if the news gives it much prominence.
On @bbcr4today:
1. Former no.10 strategy boss on the knotweed of single-issue campaigns with no democratic mandate, led by well-connected political and legal figures, which are choking the political process.
2. Lord Falconer trying to resurrect his campaign for assisted suicide.
Agree on your central prediction- Reform are putting money and effort into Havering (direct mail from Nigel and all that), but once you have three parties fishing in variants of the same pool (Reform, Conservative and Residents'), almost anything could happen under F3PTP. Reform could plausibly sweep the board, or they could just miss out everywhere. It's conceivable that all the new flats in central Romford and Beam Park save Labour's bacon, though I wouldn't be confident about that.
The catch will be the same one that the RA administration has had over the last four years. Running a council where a lack of money continues to pour in is no fun at all.
Writing in The Times,, external Paul Ovenden, who quit as Keir Starmer's director of political strategy last September after offensive messages he had sent in 2017 surfaced, said the British state had got "bigger and bigger while simultaneously and systematically emasculating itself".
He also said the case of the British-Egyptian activist Alaa Abd El Fattah "revealed the sheer weirdness of how Whitehall spends its time".
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c75x6ew929po
https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2026/jan/01/two-people-dead-iran-economic-crisis-protests-battlefield?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Other
And in terms of publicising Iranian dissidents:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/dec/12/nobel-peace-prize-laureate-narges-mohammadi-arrested-iran?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Other
https://x.com/simon_schama/status/2006496118251876406
'And STILL as of 22.39 pm on NY eve, nothing, nothing, bupkis, rien, niente, nichts, niets, whatsoever on BBC News website on Iran .... it's now extremely bizarre - but hey we've always got the regime's Foreign Minister to read in the Guardian'
Don't worry it's just an alt right talking point.
This explains the increasingly deranged conspiracy theories about why women aren't interested in having kids, "Tradwives" etc etc. Given young people don't vote much, it perhaps isn't that important. However, the Conservatives have retained some reputation for sanity in this survey and it might be a niche that serves them well, particularly as the press go digging into the various incels that occupy the Reform/MAGA space.
This is something @Sandpit and I were driving at a couple of days ago articulated very well in the article
The Stakeholder State is not a single phenomenon. Instead, it is the gradual but decisive shift of politics and power away from voters and towards groups with the time, money and institutional access to make themselves too important to ignore. In this state, the government rows with muffled oars in order to appease a complex coalition of campaign groups, regulators, litigators, trade bodies and well-networked organisations. If the language of priorities is the religion of socialism, then consultations and reviews are the sacred texts of the Stakeholder State.
Once you start noticing it, you see it everywhere: in the democratic powers handed to arm’s-length bodies or the many small government departments too powerless or captured to resist lobbying efforts. The Stakeholder State ferments between the NGO and the campaign group, the celebrity letter-writing campaign and the activist lawyers. It is given voice by political podcasts where everyone violently agrees. It is canonised through a corrupted honours system.
If you want to imagine a typical scene in the Stakeholder State, it is a government elected on a promise to build an entire generation of housing and infrastructure in just five years spending time and money lobbying itself to water down those commitments through its own quangos. If you want a vision of the future, it is endless, cheap judicial reviews enabled by the Unece Convention on Access to Information, Public Participation in Decision-making and Access to Justice in Environmental Matters (1998).
Obviously Big Doms solution is to put a bomb under the whole system and blow it all up and find a modern day William Pitt the Younger assisted by Elon Musk types.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/dec/31/alaa-abd-el-fattah-tweets-british-right-citizenship
Much of the Reform effort will go on Facebook and Twitter, much of it unofficial.
They did quite well in July 2024 with paper candidates and no ground presence in constituencies around my way. I expect the same in May 26.
It’s the sheer cost of it all as well. Big Dom gets dismissed because it’s Big Dom, but he fell foul of it too.
It’s like that Police song
Every breath you take and every move you make……..I’ll be watching you.
You will meet enormous systemic resistance. But once you stop funding them to oppose your own policies....
Why have 1 CCTV camera when you can have 12 every 100m....
Almost everything you read on the subject about what turns people on and off simply isn't true.
Look at what happened when The Tories tried to change rules on Nutrient Neutrality to aid home building. The response from these groups, aided and abetted by political opponents for their own self interest, was loud and vocal and in the case of the RSPB verged on the deranged.
The plans got canned and it was a win for ‘wildlife’, sadly not for those who need homes.
In any case, it will change. The only question is whether it will be Labour who changes it or a future govt.
If only we'd had Chamberlain leading us in WWII rather than Churchill.
It sounds to me like how democracy works. Governments have to follow the rules, and interested parties are allowed to lobby for their preferred outcomes.
The alternative is a capricious tyranny.
For example on election day in Guildford (where Reform weren't in contention) I was knocking up. I called on several hundred doors and our data was obviously pretty good. Out of several hundred all were LDs (except one Tory) with the exception of about a dozen Reform voters. So these were people who said they would vote LD and voted Reform. Everyone else had the same experience. One got a single Green, but again a dozen Reform.
I can only put this down to voters who wanted to get rid of the Tory MP in earlier canvassing, who were then swept up by the Reform media surge. They weren't LDs, they just wanted rid of the establishment.
#pedanticbetting.com
And being pre-consulted on every piece of legislation.
Said special interest groups being essentially beyond scrutiny.
“We don’t have to keep picking the pockets of the productive parts of our economy in order to fund inflation-busting pension increases for millionaires or an unsustainable welfare system. We don’t have to strangle small businesses at birth with regulatory burdens. We don’t have to fatten the pockets of wind-turbine operators by paying them not to produce energy. We don’t have to import antisemitic Islamists who wish us harm. And we certainly don’t have to treat British citizenship as a scrap of paper. On all this and more, we can simply choose not to.”
It’s a call to arms, it really is.
There are still issues that most MSPs are very tribal, and the quality of debate isn't the best at times, but what can you do - they can make better money else where and also avoid the limelight. It would be rubbish being a politician at christmas, you couldnt go to the pub and get plastered.
There's also no House of Lords in Scotland, so once a bill is passed it heads south for Charlie's signature, subject to Westminster not vetoing it like the gender recognition bill
Westminster is too much of a partisan bear pit for consensual politics, and is worse for it. If the Tories don't come back from their nadir and Reform stay high in the polls long term, thats exactly the type of circumstances where the Tories may change tactics and throw in the towel re FPTP
As for the Reform are Russian assets smear it looks like the Tories are on the receiving end now over Lord Wolfson defending Roman Abramovich.
Still we have the impartial review into foreign influence in UK politics the govt is carrying out. A thorough and forensic analysis which will take a couple of months and conveniently timed to come out before the locals in May,
I wonder what it will find and if it will be to labours advantage 🤔
And if Labour adopts one of its reportedly preferred options for the TV licence renewal, free TV licenses for those on UC with the rest of us picking up the slack, that will only make it worse.
Presumably an op-ed from Kim Jong-Un on the joys of Juche comes next.
At least it would be a reason for Labour to let elections go ahead.
If you want to imagine a typical scene in the Stakeholder State, it is a government elected on a promise to build an entire generation of housing and infrastructure in it is not just five years spending time and money lobbying itself to water down those commitments through its own quangos
The National
@ScotNational
11m
Elon Musk's flagship AI Grok has sparked outrage after producing 'criminal' sexual images of underage girls ⬇️
https://x.com/ScotNational/status/2007062531357974959?s=20
"Big Dom" thinks everyone else is an idiot, and the few he reserves judgement on are always on borrowed time, and since he thinks worrying about people's feelings is simply a waste of time he prefers to just detonate the lot.
We've woven this tangled web over decades and it can only be unwoven into something that works better by exceptional leadership and courage, and superb political skills.
See the elective arrangements of the Republican Roman Senate.
Responses tended to be along the lines of the gun lobby - "it's not the existence of capability; it's the people who choose to use it that are the problem".
And thanks for the tip!
There are a couple of other problems, though.
One is that there are so many pre-existing laws to tiptoe round. And Chesterton's Fence applies to all of them.
The other is that lots more of us have the time to oppose things we don't like. Those "write to your MP" websites seemed like a brilliant idea at the time, but they probably weren't.
She could do more by abolishing stamp duty rather than the timid change in the last budget and a little less regulation and a little more business friendly measures wouldn’t come amiss.
If someone can please let me know just before the next market crash is due, I will shift money to a pension instead, thanks
A number of groups in the Enquiry Industrial Complex said that this was an attack on democracy - because, apparently, 20 years planning enquiries are a democratic fundamental.
The point is rather that we should perhaps be more grateful that is was Chamberlain and not Churchill who was in government in the pre-war years.
Starmer won't go without a fight, and they are tied to each other's jobs. Survive the elections post May 26 and they should survive the year - easier said than done
Churchill wasn't especially popular amongst the Conservative benches, and probably would have struggled to lead them had he become Premier any sooner, but it's worth bearing in mind British public opinion wasn't particularly open to increased defence spending throughout - and that only really changed after Munich.
We have no right to criticise. The warnings are just as stark today, although of a different type, and yet we still refuse to increase defence spending, preferring to put our fingers in our ears instead.
I imagine that the Orange Golgothan has taken the shine off US shares, too.
Whether or not Starmer can get to grips with this will determine his government's fate.