The Gorton & Denton might become the most (in)famous by-election in history – politicalbetting.com
The Gorton & Denton might become the most (in)famous by-election in history – politicalbetting.com
The Gorton & Denton by-election might be the most momentous by-election since the Kinross and Western Perthshire by-election of 1963. By-elections seldom have the direct ability to see either the current or likely next Prime Minister being ousted at the ballot box but this one might.
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'Hoping George Galloway can win a by-election to stop me losing several hundred pounds is like the time I had sex in an elevator with my friend's girlfriend, wrong on so many levels.'
Quarter of a century ago, Professor Michael Moran came up with the concept of the “regulatory state” to describe the way British government works. He has since passed away but no one has yet produced a better analysis. Nor have many politicians engaged with his ideas, which is a shame because without doing so it’s hard to understand why we are where we are. His argument was that until the 1970s Britain was run like a London club with minimal regulatory oversight. Professions like medicine and finance were self-regulated. Public services had almost no accountability to central government. Private businesses were barely regulated at all. Nor was there any social regulation, like protection of disability rights. Though the state did a lot, Whitehall didn’t.
This form of “club governance” fell apart across a series of crises in the 1970s, 80s and 90s, from the collapse of Barings Bank to the mad cow disease scandal. Margaret Thatcher also wanted to use the power of government to attack what she saw as low quality taxpayer funded services and inadequate oversight of left-wing public sector workforces. The great myth of Thatcherism is that it was all about making the state smaller whereas, while it reduced capacity at local government level, it made Whitehall a lot larger and more powerful.
After 1997 New Labour added more oversight of the private sector and social regulation to enforce their human rights legislation. Collectively this led to the creation of a regulatory state without that ever being the intention. An enormous surveillance apparatus was created in an ad hoc fashion. We now have bodies that regulate the professions; that inspect hospitals, schools and other services; that oversee privatised utilities; and try to protect the vulnerable. Across government there are now almost a hundred regulators, and hundreds more public bodies many of which have a quasi-regulatory responsibility, for instance running school assessment or managing public complaints about the NHS. DEFRA alone works with 34 different agencies and public bodies.
But the creation of this apparatus was not accompanied by any change in the way politicians manage their departments. That has stayed as it was in the club government days, which has created a massive disconnect between expectations of politicians and what they can actually achieve.
Given ICE appears to have a memo stating that their view is an executive order trumps, ahem, the 4th amendment, they may well be instructing all their agents they can basically do anything.
I still have no idea how WPB were organised enough to put up 150 candidates at the GE. Your Party have broken out into factional slates just to select their leadership committee.
He's got enough credibility in WWC places like Denton, whereas some 27 year old SPAD imposed on the CLP would get trounced.
The latest model of ChatGPT has begun to cite Elon Musk’s Grokipedia as a source on a wide range of queries, including on Iranian conglomerates and Holocaust deniers, raising concerns about misinformation on the platform.
Starmer loyalists claim to have sufficient control over the party’s decision-making processes to strangle any Burnham challenge at birth by simply vetoing him as a candidate for parliament… but vetoing him is freighted with considerable danger for the prime minister.
If Labour MPs and members make enough noisy fuss about it, there’s a chance the resolve of Number 10 will crumble, as it has before on other issues. The peril facing Sir Keir is that he looks paranoid about one of his party’s more successful figures and frit of a leadership challenge. And a challenge may happen with or without the presence of Mr Burnham in parliament because, as you may have noticed, others – including some who sit in the cabinet – are also interested in taking the prime minister’s job.
Though there was a chunky Labour majority at the 2024 general election, there’s really no such thing as a safe Labour seat these days. Mr Burnham’s overarching claim is that he has the personality and the ideas to turn things around for his party. If he wants to start proving that concept, the best place to begin is by testing it at the ballot box. Power is rarely given; it has to be pursued. The whirligig of opportunity only comes round every so often. For sure, this is a gamble, but it is one he kind of had to take.
I would imagine both Maitlis and Sopel are one nation Tories whist Goodall who has been a Labour Party card holder is very critical of the Government. The problem we have now is one nation Tories are considered left wing firebrands.
You even see this at local government level. Councillors are less powerful and even more financially constrained, subject to whim of central government, but some councillors come into the job thinking it's like a US state, that outside clearly defined areas they are somehow sovereign.
This is most obvious in planning where they can get very upset and even abusive to staff at being recommended to approve things against the wishes of residents, as they are outraged they're supposed to follow rules set by government.
Whereas the various factions involved with YP have the centralising mentality that's much more common on the left, and have immediately launched into pitched battles to take control of the central apparatus of the new party, before it's even been created.
I've not used grok so that's just something i'd read
The above extract is from a paywalled article, so it would be wrong to paste much more of it, but Freedman goes on to argue that each government tries to tackle the problem by slapping new bodies or levers on top of what's already there, rather than changing anything fundamental. And that state capacity at every level below Westminster is so denuded that many of the things Westminster tries to achieve at the centre simply cannot be delivered out in the localities. The direction of his solutions - toward increasing local capacity and devolving the power to tackle problems - is one that I agree with, but as he observes, national politicians are always schizophrenic towards decentralisation, understanding it conceptually, but ultimately unwilling to cede their own power - even though it's often illusory. As he says, "Any serious attempt to rewire the state needs to focus on the disconnects between power and capacity rather than power per se. "
'Keir Starmer would make a great Foreign Secretary in an Andy Burnham government'
Centralisation is not inherently bad, but it is treated as though it is, so instead we get dissonance from centralising and calling it something else.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h3Yrhv33Zb8&list=RDh3Yrhv33Zb8&start_radio=1
We've also apparently a Labour nominee, but AToW, no mention of a Conservative, although in the recent past it was a Conservative seat. A LibDem is, I think, unlikely.
The Council is Conservative controlled and the Opposition is a Green/Independent alliance.
I'm getting sick and tired of these cold calls.
Now the common complaint is that Number 10 is still not powerful enough – see for instance Dominic Cummings' laments. Our political masters watched The West Wing and want to be not President Bartlet but Leo, his omniscient Chief of Staff.
Jeremy Hunt's two books are worth a read as he is more reflective than most politicians who seek mainly to justify themselves. Contrast Hunt discovering that another clinical directive to hospitals added to the dozens already in place, with David Cameron's detailed explanation of why he chose to wear black socks on Monday the 19th and why this was the better choice over dark grey.
Once the levers and organisations of state and society had been fully captured, the existence of semi-detached paramilitary power became a liabilty rather than asset, and an unwelcome alternative source of power, since the ability then existed (and the obstacles had been removed) to deploy violence under direct state control, and send many centre and left wing politicians off for a spell in Dachau.
Successive laws, mainly but not exclusively added as part of the Blair project have made Britain ungovernable. Any solution must begin with the repeal of those laws, to get us back to square one. These include the Constitutional Reform Act, the Equality Act, The Human Rights Act and several more.
No need to panic TSE
Methinks you have no idea how entrenched and pathetic the controlling clique are.
They would rather hand the keys to Farage than let go of the keys of the stinking carcus of the Party formerly known as Labour to anyone else.
In fairness to SKS he is merely a puppet soon to be discarded anyway
*if he were still around I'm sure he'd have no trouble, given the current makeup of the court.
A Starmerite, a Brownite, a Corbynite and a Blairite walk into a pub. And the Landlord says 'Evening Andy'.
When the latter gets eviscerated, it takes on a less productive role.
Although Galloway has a remarkable record I really don't think he'll get close if he runs against Burnham.
There is a protest vote, of course, but I suspect people also want a return to competent normalcy. Which, incidentally, is why I think Ruth Davidson and Andy Street may be on to something with their recent announcement.
https://x.com/Kaleidicworld/status/2015058240418300075
Rogan is poorly read and beliefs are all over the place and often inconsistent, but that allowed him in "peak Rogan" period to ask the sort of questions the vast majority of the public might be asking themselves to interesting people (and some crazies). Now its less of the interesting guests, more of the crazies and much more of the "hot takes".
Carr on the other hand is extremely well read across many different topics and has clearly considered his position on lots of things, and has come to a particular world view that I would say definitely leans right economically, socially liberal and then some interesting takes in the middle.
The preconceptions of an inquiry can shut out lots of relevant information, or, in extremis, lead to bastardisation of reality in favour of prejudice, (such as pretending Cleopatra VII was black instead of looking at the actually black Kushite dynasty from around 750 to 650 BC).
Money, or lack of it, is as much the problem as power. Central government is often faced with choices between spending money, or cutting spending, itself, or passing the funding or cuts down to local government and, no surprise, when there is money available the centre usually prefers to spend it itself (or at least devise ways to control what localities spend it on, by ring-fenced funding and bidding competitions accompanied by a stack of legal obligations, measurements, league tables and targetry) and when there are cuts they prefer to pass the difficult decisions, and accompanying negative publicity, down to local councils. Simultaneously the centre acts to prevent local councils from increasing their own funding base (with the notable exception of parishes, which are free to raise as much tax as they like), by retaining national control of the tax base and restricting councils from increasing or expanding it. A good recent example was the talk of having a tourist tax, which - unlike in any other country - was suggested as a new source of government funding, rather than going to the local authority in the area where the tourist actually is.
is something which everyone in politics should bear in mind.
Mind, I don't quite know what you do when your opponent is clearly not a person of honour!
Comedians are generally very good at picking up societal changes well before anyone else, because they go to every town in the country and know what makes people laugh, and what doesn’t, at any given moment.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mWDCZIvLrS4
They’re letting him into the sandpit next month, in the middle of Ramadan of all times. Two shows sold out, 4,000 tickets.
P.S I am also King of Canada.
I recall that one of the better critiques of Thatcher, while she was in power, was very much along those lines.
And it's simply carried on since then.
Slashing the regulatory state, though, has to be accompanied by a re-empowering of local government. And the process is likely to be messy.
Reform have a chance. I do think their recent polling travails are somewhat exaggerated, and if they pick a charismatic candidate it could be game on.
But Burnham is strong favourite.
The enthusiastic support for the Nazis from big business is the biggest refutation of the idiots' cry 'but they were socialists!'. The tech bros falling into line with Trump is yet another startling parallel.
Elon Musk
@elonmusk
Hitler was a far left socialist. His party was called the national socialists.
https://x.com/ddiamond/status/2015239226141331949?s=20
On Topic 2025 rule change by the clique
The Rules: Under Labour party rules introduced recently, serving directly elected mayors, such as Mr. Burnham, must receive express permission from the NEC to stand for Parliament.
Burnham has less chance of becoming a Lab MP than Nigel Farage under the SKS clique
Why are some billionaires seemingly just as credulous and idiotic as random people on the street?
Russian oil ad gas revenues 2025 - 7.1 trillion rubles.
But the figures are worse than that. The Ukrainia blitz on refineries, export facilities and storage only kicked in from August. Plus, the effective new sanctions on oil only kicked in from November.
2026 - 5 trillion? 4?
Insofar as it makes sense, it appears to be some mix of, an attempt to influence the media agenda by pushing immigration and tackling crime to the fore - issues that the Republicans expect to play to their advantage; an attempt to trigger counter-protest in the hope that this will over-react and do more damage to the left than the original injustice does to the right, and playing to their base living in small rural communities far away from the US cities who probably have less understanding of US city life than we do, who will simply see 'their' government "finally getting tough".
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2017_Manchester_Gorton_by-election?wprov=sfla1
I'd bank on him beating that given the last GE result, though unless the dominoes fall as absurdly as they did in Rochdale, I don't see him running this one close.
Showing that entryism works if you want to set up a fascist party.
During the early days, it did have a strong proto-socialist wing, aimed at capturing the working classes from the communists, and this guy, who was a brilliant organiser, built the party up from nothing in the industrial north and west:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gregor_Strasser
Around the time the Nazis came to power, Hitler took on and dispensed with this wing of the party, whose outlook didn't conform to Hitler's personal agenda, and because he was unable to tolerate any potential challenge to his leadership. Strasser was forced out of politics and his followers forced to toe the emerging party line, and although Strasser was allowed to stay out of politics and keep his head down for a year or so, he met his end during the 'Night of the Long Knives'.
While, per the horseshoe theory, there are many aspects of Nazi policy and reality that mirror how the communists ran the USSR (such as party-control of 'fake' labour unions), its relationship with business was entirely different, as was its having supremacist ideology based on race at its very heart.