Until very recently, "experience in one of the Great Offices" was pretty much the first line in the Person Spec to be a mid-term replacement PM.
On the basis, the shortlist ought to be Cooper, Lammy, Reeves, Mahmood, Rayner at a pinch. Not even Reeves can imagine that she has a chance, but it's striking that neither Cooper or Lammy are mentioned. Not necessarily shocking, but striking.
But paraphrasing a fictional Chief Whip, who is up to the job? You can never tell, unless you suck it and see.
Toss up between those two donkeys who is actually the worst, not a fag paper between them. I would not trust either to run me a bath.
Until very recently, "experience in one of the Great Offices" was pretty much the first line in the Person Spec to be a mid-term replacement PM.
On the basis, the shortlist ought to be Cooper, Lammy, Reeves, Mahmood, Rayner at a pinch. Not even Reeves can imagine that she has a chance, but it's striking that neither Cooper or Lammy are mentioned. Not necessarily shocking, but striking.
But paraphrasing a fictional Chief Whip, who is up to the job? You can never tell, unless you suck it and see.
Problem is all of them have been found either wanting (or in the case of Mahmood implementing things that are utterly toxic to the people likely to be voting)
Cooper I also wonder if she wants it - Ed couldn't keep his current very well paid job if she was PM..
For Kemi, Davey and Starmer, the biggest defence against being replaced is the paucity of obviously better replacements.
Which says a lot about the state of politics.
Burnham was/is a rather mild threat, as these things go.
I think you misunderstand the Lib Dems here. Davey is very much respected by his Parliamentary party, even while they are a little frustrated with the polls- he just led them to the most significant result for the party in over a century. Davey has a good working relationship with colleagues, notably Daisy Cooper, who is widely spoken of as his potential successor.
What would probably cause Ed to leave office early is if the health of his wife and or son were to take a turn for the worse. For the time being there is no more than normal anti leader muttering in the party and little enough amongst the MPs. He has solved some major internal problems, got 72 MPs elected and is on the brink of further local government gains. If he chose to stand down before the next election, he would not go until long after the locals this year- once again subject to the health of his family. I have been with Ed in public and there is no doubt that people like him- relatable, intelligent and a good guy... Not what we can say of every party leader in our country. When the time does come, the Lib Dems have a clutch of very bright young new MPs- quite a contrast to the Tory benches indeed I was slightly surprised myself to see how much dead wood the Conservatives still have in the House (Sir David Davis is 77, the young Turk Sir Bernard Jenkin is 66)- and there are some very high quality people on the Lib Dem benches: Al Pinkerton, Calum Miller, Daisy Cooper to pick some names at random.
Reads like one slightly frustrated MP having a bit of a whinge and to fill column space, the Guardian has blown it up into a leadership crisis as newspapers are wont.
If the Press, including the BBC, were to make space for the LibDems instead of rushing to Farage every five minutes things might be different. I'm just waiting for Farage to be asked about his views on the Labour situation.
I have no idea what the actual stats look like, but my impression, when I think about it, is that the LDs get quite a few slots on BBC radio (no idea about telly; does anyone watch it?) but fail to convey the impression, which Reform does sadly convey, that they are talking about the opinions, actions and policies of the next government and the next government's opinions of the present one. This renders all they say a bit forgettable as neither they nor the listener thinks it adds to the sum of useful knowledge.
Listening to Reform matters because most of us want to know how the 60-70% who want them beaten will do it. We already know that the LDs seriously contesting about 100 seats is part of the plan. In the other 530 GB seats they tend to get in the way. That's politics.
Ed Davey was on the Sunday Kuenssberg show yesterday.
I rarely comment on Ed Davey, not least because I do respect the views of some Lib Dems on here, but I just do not see him as his supporters do
He speaks about the EU with devotion and the care sector, which I understand with his own family problems, but he just comes over a bit 'meh' and his clowning around does not do anything for me
I see the Lib Dems as a southern English 'Waitrose' party and whilst they should do well in May I do not know where the money is coming from for their policies, not least because they seem to want to hand 5 billion to WASPI women but as per Davey yesterday, insist on immediate increases in defence spending
Did you miss the LD proposal to issue War Bonds?
No - I did listen to that but it's just more borrowing under a different name
Well there are only 3 available options - (1) borrow more, (2) cut spending, and (3) raise taxes. Only (1) is politically acceptable.
Liz Truss was right about the fourth option: growth.
But wrong to believe that spooking the gilt market was the best way to go about achieving it.
Until very recently, "experience in one of the Great Offices" was pretty much the first line in the Person Spec to be a mid-term replacement PM.
On the basis, the shortlist ought to be Cooper, Lammy, Reeves, Mahmood, Rayner at a pinch. Not even Reeves can imagine that she has a chance, but it's striking that neither Cooper or Lammy are mentioned. Not necessarily shocking, but striking.
But paraphrasing a fictional Chief Whip, who is up to the job? You can never tell, unless you suck it and see.
Problem is all of them have been found either wanting (or in the case of Mahmood implementing things that are utterly toxic to the people likely to be voting)
Cooper I also wonder if she wants it - Ed couldn't keep his current very well paid job if she was PM..
For Kemi, Davey and Starmer, the biggest defence against being replaced is the paucity of obviously better replacements.
Which says a lot about the state of politics.
Burnham was/is a rather mild threat, as these things go.
I think you misunderstand the Lib Dems here. Davey is very much respected by his Parliamentary party, even while they are a little frustrated with the polls- he just led them to the most significant result for the party in over a century. Davey has a good working relationship with colleagues, notably Daisy Cooper, who is widely spoken of as his potential successor.
What would probably cause Ed to leave office early is if the health of his wife and or son were to take a turn for the worse. For the time being there is no more than normal anti leader muttering in the party and little enough amongst the MPs. He has solved some major internal problems, got 72 MPs elected and is on the brink of further local government gains. If he chose to stand down before the next election, he would not go until long after the locals this year- once again subject to the health of his family. I have been with Ed in public and there is no doubt that people like him- relatable, intelligent and a good guy... Not what we can say of every party leader in our country. When the time does come, the Lib Dems have a clutch of very bright young new MPs- quite a contrast to the Tory benches indeed I was slightly surprised myself to see how much dead wood the Conservatives still have in the House (Sir David Davis is 77, the young Turk Sir Bernard Jenkin is 66)- and there are some very high quality people on the Lib Dem benches: Al Pinkerton, Calum Miller, Daisy Cooper to pick some names at random.
Reads like one slightly frustrated MP having a bit of a whinge and to fill column space, the Guardian has blown it up into a leadership crisis as newspapers are wont.
If the Press, including the BBC, were to make space for the LibDems instead of rushing to Farage every five minutes things might be different. I'm just waiting for Farage to be asked about his views on the Labour situation.
I have no idea what the actual stats look like, but my impression, when I think about it, is that the LDs get quite a few slots on BBC radio (no idea about telly; does anyone watch it?) but fail to convey the impression, which Reform does sadly convey, that they are talking about the opinions, actions and policies of the next government and the next government's opinions of the present one. This renders all they say a bit forgettable as neither they nor the listener thinks it adds to the sum of useful knowledge.
Listening to Reform matters because most of us want to know how the 60-70% who want them beaten will do it. We already know that the LDs seriously contesting about 100 seats is part of the plan. In the other 530 GB seats they tend to get in the way. That's politics.
Ed Davey was on the Sunday Kuenssberg show yesterday.
I rarely comment on Ed Davey, not least because I do respect the views of some Lib Dems on here, but I just do not see him as his supporters do
He speaks about the EU with devotion and the care sector, which I understand with his own family problems, but he just comes over a bit 'meh' and his clowning around does not do anything for me
I see the Lib Dems as a southern English 'Waitrose' party and whilst they should do well in May I do not know where the money is coming from for their policies, not least because they seem to want to hand 5 billion to WASPI women but as per Davey yesterday, insist on immediate increases in defence spending
Did you miss the LD proposal to issue War Bonds?
No - I did listen to that but it's just more borrowing under a different name
Well there are only 3 available options - (1) borrow more, (2) cut spending, and (3) raise taxes. Only (1) is politically acceptable.
Surely there is a fourth - increase the size of the economy?
Yes but that’s a long term thing. You can’t just command the economy to grow, you have to put in place measures to encourage it to do so and so we come back to the above 3 options.
Until very recently, "experience in one of the Great Offices" was pretty much the first line in the Person Spec to be a mid-term replacement PM.
On the basis, the shortlist ought to be Cooper, Lammy, Reeves, Mahmood, Rayner at a pinch. Not even Reeves can imagine that she has a chance, but it's striking that neither Cooper or Lammy are mentioned. Not necessarily shocking, but striking.
But paraphrasing a fictional Chief Whip, who is up to the job? You can never tell, unless you suck it and see.
Problem is all of them have been found either wanting (or in the case of Mahmood implementing things that are utterly toxic to the people likely to be voting)
Cooper I also wonder if she wants it - Ed couldn't keep his current very well paid job if she was PM..
For Kemi, Davey and Starmer, the biggest defence against being replaced is the paucity of obviously better replacements.
Which says a lot about the state of politics.
Burnham was/is a rather mild threat, as these things go.
I think you misunderstand the Lib Dems here. Davey is very much respected by his Parliamentary party, even while they are a little frustrated with the polls- he just led them to the most significant result for the party in over a century. Davey has a good working relationship with colleagues, notably Daisy Cooper, who is widely spoken of as his potential successor.
What would probably cause Ed to leave office early is if the health of his wife and or son were to take a turn for the worse. For the time being there is no more than normal anti leader muttering in the party and little enough amongst the MPs. He has solved some major internal problems, got 72 MPs elected and is on the brink of further local government gains. If he chose to stand down before the next election, he would not go until long after the locals this year- once again subject to the health of his family. I have been with Ed in public and there is no doubt that people like him- relatable, intelligent and a good guy... Not what we can say of every party leader in our country. When the time does come, the Lib Dems have a clutch of very bright young new MPs- quite a contrast to the Tory benches indeed I was slightly surprised myself to see how much dead wood the Conservatives still have in the House (Sir David Davis is 77, the young Turk Sir Bernard Jenkin is 66)- and there are some very high quality people on the Lib Dem benches: Al Pinkerton, Calum Miller, Daisy Cooper to pick some names at random.
Reads like one slightly frustrated MP having a bit of a whinge and to fill column space, the Guardian has blown it up into a leadership crisis as newspapers are wont.
If the Press, including the BBC, were to make space for the LibDems instead of rushing to Farage every five minutes things might be different. I'm just waiting for Farage to be asked about his views on the Labour situation.
I have no idea what the actual stats look like, but my impression, when I think about it, is that the LDs get quite a few slots on BBC radio (no idea about telly; does anyone watch it?) but fail to convey the impression, which Reform does sadly convey, that they are talking about the opinions, actions and policies of the next government and the next government's opinions of the present one. This renders all they say a bit forgettable as neither they nor the listener thinks it adds to the sum of useful knowledge.
Listening to Reform matters because most of us want to know how the 60-70% who want them beaten will do it. We already know that the LDs seriously contesting about 100 seats is part of the plan. In the other 530 GB seats they tend to get in the way. That's politics.
Ed Davey was on the Sunday Kuenssberg show yesterday.
I rarely comment on Ed Davey, not least because I do respect the views of some Lib Dems on here, but I just do not see him as his supporters do
He speaks about the EU with devotion and the care sector, which I understand with his own family problems, but he just comes over a bit 'meh' and his clowning around does not do anything for me
I see the Lib Dems as a southern English 'Waitrose' party and whilst they should do well in May I do not know where the money is coming from for their policies, not least because they seem to want to hand 5 billion to WASPI women but as per Davey yesterday, insist on immediate increases in defence spending
Did you miss the LD proposal to issue War Bonds?
No - I did listen to that but it's just more borrowing under a different name
Well there are only 3 available options - (1) borrow more, (2) cut spending, and (3) raise taxes. Only (1) is politically acceptable.
Borrowing more is not possible as our credit card is maxed out
Cutting spending is essential, or more specifically redirect spending into defence from reinstating the 2 child cap and end the triple lock amomgst choices
There is always a choice but not heaping more debt onto our grandchildren
I mean borrowing more is possible. That doesn’t mean it’s a good idea. I was commenting on what is “politically acceptable”, not what is a good idea.
Until very recently, "experience in one of the Great Offices" was pretty much the first line in the Person Spec to be a mid-term replacement PM.
On the basis, the shortlist ought to be Cooper, Lammy, Reeves, Mahmood, Rayner at a pinch. Not even Reeves can imagine that she has a chance, but it's striking that neither Cooper or Lammy are mentioned. Not necessarily shocking, but striking.
But paraphrasing a fictional Chief Whip, who is up to the job? You can never tell, unless you suck it and see.
Problem is all of them have been found either wanting (or in the case of Mahmood implementing things that are utterly toxic to the people likely to be voting)
Cooper I also wonder if she wants it - Ed couldn't keep his current very well paid job if she was PM..
For Kemi, Davey and Starmer, the biggest defence against being replaced is the paucity of obviously better replacements.
Which says a lot about the state of politics.
Burnham was/is a rather mild threat, as these things go.
I think you misunderstand the Lib Dems here. Davey is very much respected by his Parliamentary party, even while they are a little frustrated with the polls- he just led them to the most significant result for the party in over a century. Davey has a good working relationship with colleagues, notably Daisy Cooper, who is widely spoken of as his potential successor.
What would probably cause Ed to leave office early is if the health of his wife and or son were to take a turn for the worse. For the time being there is no more than normal anti leader muttering in the party and little enough amongst the MPs. He has solved some major internal problems, got 72 MPs elected and is on the brink of further local government gains. If he chose to stand down before the next election, he would not go until long after the locals this year- once again subject to the health of his family. I have been with Ed in public and there is no doubt that people like him- relatable, intelligent and a good guy... Not what we can say of every party leader in our country. When the time does come, the Lib Dems have a clutch of very bright young new MPs- quite a contrast to the Tory benches indeed I was slightly surprised myself to see how much dead wood the Conservatives still have in the House (Sir David Davis is 77, the young Turk Sir Bernard Jenkin is 66)- and there are some very high quality people on the Lib Dem benches: Al Pinkerton, Calum Miller, Daisy Cooper to pick some names at random.
Reads like one slightly frustrated MP having a bit of a whinge and to fill column space, the Guardian has blown it up into a leadership crisis as newspapers are wont.
If the Press, including the BBC, were to make space for the LibDems instead of rushing to Farage every five minutes things might be different. I'm just waiting for Farage to be asked about his views on the Labour situation.
I have no idea what the actual stats look like, but my impression, when I think about it, is that the LDs get quite a few slots on BBC radio (no idea about telly; does anyone watch it?) but fail to convey the impression, which Reform does sadly convey, that they are talking about the opinions, actions and policies of the next government and the next government's opinions of the present one. This renders all they say a bit forgettable as neither they nor the listener thinks it adds to the sum of useful knowledge.
Listening to Reform matters because most of us want to know how the 60-70% who want them beaten will do it. We already know that the LDs seriously contesting about 100 seats is part of the plan. In the other 530 GB seats they tend to get in the way. That's politics.
Ed Davey was on the Sunday Kuenssberg show yesterday.
I rarely comment on Ed Davey, not least because I do respect the views of some Lib Dems on here, but I just do not see him as his supporters do
He speaks about the EU with devotion and the care sector, which I understand with his own family problems, but he just comes over a bit 'meh' and his clowning around does not do anything for me
I see the Lib Dems as a southern English 'Waitrose' party and whilst they should do well in May I do not know where the money is coming from for their policies, not least because they seem to want to hand 5 billion to WASPI women but as per Davey yesterday, insist on immediate increases in defence spending
Did you miss the LD proposal to issue War Bonds?
No - I did listen to that but it's just more borrowing under a different name
Well there are only 3 available options - (1) borrow more, (2) cut spending, and (3) raise taxes. Only (1) is politically acceptable.
Borrowing more is not possible as our credit card is maxed out
Cutting spending is essential, or more specifically redirect spending into defence from reinstating the 2 child cap and end the triple lock amomgst choices
There is always a choice but not heaping more debt onto our grandchildren
Problem is (and I know I've asked this question before) where exactly can spending be cut?
The devil will be in the detail but a freeze and a cap at £250 has been mooted
There’s also been a noticeable well funded lobbying campaign, with appearances on various news shows, from the campaigners against ground rents.
What’s the real issue here and the implications of it if it happens ?
Is it just people with buyers regret thinking they are victims or is there something more to it ?
Probably the only good thing coming from the government. I think they should completely abolish leaseholds and forcibly convert any existing ones to 999 year virtual freeholds with peppercorn ground rent using primary legislation. It is the single most unfair system of property ownership and it's a holdover from bygone era of property rights. Worse still is that freehold investors are largely foreign investment funds and serve absolutely no purpose and the only thing we see is money drain out of the UK into Saudi Arabia and other parts of the Middle East.
Has a more odious, valueless dullard ever disgraced The First Lordship of the Treasury?
He makes Boris look brave, he makes TMay look charismatic, he makes Brown look stellar, he makes Cameron look wise and insightful, he makes Liz Truss look sane, and he makes Rishi Sunak look tall
Starmer was also a QC before becoming an MP and was a top lawyer and barrister, much like Rishi was an investment banker at Goldman Sachs and ran a hedge fudge.
Just goes to show that having a brilliant career outside politics does not automatically mean you will make a great leader and be a brilliant politician if you change careers and decide you might fancy being PM with no real ideological conviction and dynamism to go with it
I'm going to say something controversial here, but I think people who build a successful career outside of politics first are invariably bad politicians. This is because politics is actually extremely difficult to do well and if you've not been practicing at it ever since you were a spotty undergrad running to be JCR Treasurer or a young trade union activist climbing the union ladder then you will probably fuck things up.
Until very recently, "experience in one of the Great Offices" was pretty much the first line in the Person Spec to be a mid-term replacement PM.
On the basis, the shortlist ought to be Cooper, Lammy, Reeves, Mahmood, Rayner at a pinch. Not even Reeves can imagine that she has a chance, but it's striking that neither Cooper or Lammy are mentioned. Not necessarily shocking, but striking.
But paraphrasing a fictional Chief Whip, who is up to the job? You can never tell, unless you suck it and see.
Problem is all of them have been found either wanting (or in the case of Mahmood implementing things that are utterly toxic to the people likely to be voting)
Cooper I also wonder if she wants it - Ed couldn't keep his current very well paid job if she was PM..
For Kemi, Davey and Starmer, the biggest defence against being replaced is the paucity of obviously better replacements.
Which says a lot about the state of politics.
Burnham was/is a rather mild threat, as these things go.
I think you misunderstand the Lib Dems here. Davey is very much respected by his Parliamentary party, even while they are a little frustrated with the polls- he just led them to the most significant result for the party in over a century. Davey has a good working relationship with colleagues, notably Daisy Cooper, who is widely spoken of as his potential successor.
What would probably cause Ed to leave office early is if the health of his wife and or son were to take a turn for the worse. For the time being there is no more than normal anti leader muttering in the party and little enough amongst the MPs. He has solved some major internal problems, got 72 MPs elected and is on the brink of further local government gains. If he chose to stand down before the next election, he would not go until long after the locals this year- once again subject to the health of his family. I have been with Ed in public and there is no doubt that people like him- relatable, intelligent and a good guy... Not what we can say of every party leader in our country. When the time does come, the Lib Dems have a clutch of very bright young new MPs- quite a contrast to the Tory benches indeed I was slightly surprised myself to see how much dead wood the Conservatives still have in the House (Sir David Davis is 77, the young Turk Sir Bernard Jenkin is 66)- and there are some very high quality people on the Lib Dem benches: Al Pinkerton, Calum Miller, Daisy Cooper to pick some names at random.
Reads like one slightly frustrated MP having a bit of a whinge and to fill column space, the Guardian has blown it up into a leadership crisis as newspapers are wont.
If the Press, including the BBC, were to make space for the LibDems instead of rushing to Farage every five minutes things might be different. I'm just waiting for Farage to be asked about his views on the Labour situation.
I have no idea what the actual stats look like, but my impression, when I think about it, is that the LDs get quite a few slots on BBC radio (no idea about telly; does anyone watch it?) but fail to convey the impression, which Reform does sadly convey, that they are talking about the opinions, actions and policies of the next government and the next government's opinions of the present one. This renders all they say a bit forgettable as neither they nor the listener thinks it adds to the sum of useful knowledge.
Listening to Reform matters because most of us want to know how the 60-70% who want them beaten will do it. We already know that the LDs seriously contesting about 100 seats is part of the plan. In the other 530 GB seats they tend to get in the way. That's politics.
Ed Davey was on the Sunday Kuenssberg show yesterday.
I rarely comment on Ed Davey, not least because I do respect the views of some Lib Dems on here, but I just do not see him as his supporters do
He speaks about the EU with devotion and the care sector, which I understand with his own family problems, but he just comes over a bit 'meh' and his clowning around does not do anything for me
I see the Lib Dems as a southern English 'Waitrose' party and whilst they should do well in May I do not know where the money is coming from for their policies, not least because they seem to want to hand 5 billion to WASPI women but as per Davey yesterday, insist on immediate increases in defence spending
Did you miss the LD proposal to issue War Bonds?
No - I did listen to that but it's just more borrowing under a different name
Well there are only 3 available options - (1) borrow more, (2) cut spending, and (3) raise taxes. Only (1) is politically acceptable.
Borrowing more is not possible as our credit card is maxed out
Cutting spending is essential, or more specifically redirect spending into defence from reinstating the 2 child cap and end the triple lock amomgst choices
There is always a choice but not heaping more debt onto our grandchildren
Problem is (and I know I've asked this question before) where exactly can spending be cut?
Increasing defence spending is a low priority/pretty unpopular amongst the electorate too..🧐
Indeed, Braverman will be liked by the Reform core vote as Jenrick was but swing voters who went Boris 2019, Labour 2024 and now have floated to Reform may be having second thoughts now Jenrick, Braverman and Rosindell have joined them backing Farage.
So opportunity for Starmer and Kemi to win some of them back
Yes, there's going to be a point (if it hasn't occurred already) when all this becomes loss making for Nigel - the meme that Reform is a retirement home for failed, mad or cynical Tories is already starting to take hold.
Until very recently, "experience in one of the Great Offices" was pretty much the first line in the Person Spec to be a mid-term replacement PM.
On the basis, the shortlist ought to be Cooper, Lammy, Reeves, Mahmood, Rayner at a pinch. Not even Reeves can imagine that she has a chance, but it's striking that neither Cooper or Lammy are mentioned. Not necessarily shocking, but striking.
But paraphrasing a fictional Chief Whip, who is up to the job? You can never tell, unless you suck it and see.
Problem is all of them have been found either wanting (or in the case of Mahmood implementing things that are utterly toxic to the people likely to be voting)
Cooper I also wonder if she wants it - Ed couldn't keep his current very well paid job if she was PM..
For Kemi, Davey and Starmer, the biggest defence against being replaced is the paucity of obviously better replacements.
Which says a lot about the state of politics.
Burnham was/is a rather mild threat, as these things go.
I think you misunderstand the Lib Dems here. Davey is very much respected by his Parliamentary party, even while they are a little frustrated with the polls- he just led them to the most significant result for the party in over a century. Davey has a good working relationship with colleagues, notably Daisy Cooper, who is widely spoken of as his potential successor.
What would probably cause Ed to leave office early is if the health of his wife and or son were to take a turn for the worse. For the time being there is no more than normal anti leader muttering in the party and little enough amongst the MPs. He has solved some major internal problems, got 72 MPs elected and is on the brink of further local government gains. If he chose to stand down before the next election, he would not go until long after the locals this year- once again subject to the health of his family. I have been with Ed in public and there is no doubt that people like him- relatable, intelligent and a good guy... Not what we can say of every party leader in our country. When the time does come, the Lib Dems have a clutch of very bright young new MPs- quite a contrast to the Tory benches indeed I was slightly surprised myself to see how much dead wood the Conservatives still have in the House (Sir David Davis is 77, the young Turk Sir Bernard Jenkin is 66)- and there are some very high quality people on the Lib Dem benches: Al Pinkerton, Calum Miller, Daisy Cooper to pick some names at random.
Reads like one slightly frustrated MP having a bit of a whinge and to fill column space, the Guardian has blown it up into a leadership crisis as newspapers are wont.
If the Press, including the BBC, were to make space for the LibDems instead of rushing to Farage every five minutes things might be different. I'm just waiting for Farage to be asked about his views on the Labour situation.
I have no idea what the actual stats look like, but my impression, when I think about it, is that the LDs get quite a few slots on BBC radio (no idea about telly; does anyone watch it?) but fail to convey the impression, which Reform does sadly convey, that they are talking about the opinions, actions and policies of the next government and the next government's opinions of the present one. This renders all they say a bit forgettable as neither they nor the listener thinks it adds to the sum of useful knowledge.
Listening to Reform matters because most of us want to know how the 60-70% who want them beaten will do it. We already know that the LDs seriously contesting about 100 seats is part of the plan. In the other 530 GB seats they tend to get in the way. That's politics.
Ed Davey was on the Sunday Kuenssberg show yesterday.
I rarely comment on Ed Davey, not least because I do respect the views of some Lib Dems on here, but I just do not see him as his supporters do
He speaks about the EU with devotion and the care sector, which I understand with his own family problems, but he just comes over a bit 'meh' and his clowning around does not do anything for me
I see the Lib Dems as a southern English 'Waitrose' party and whilst they should do well in May I do not know where the money is coming from for their policies, not least because they seem to want to hand 5 billion to WASPI women but as per Davey yesterday, insist on immediate increases in defence spending
Did you miss the LD proposal to issue War Bonds?
No - I did listen to that but it's just more borrowing under a different name
Well there are only 3 available options - (1) borrow more, (2) cut spending, and (3) raise taxes. Only (1) is politically acceptable.
Borrowing more is not possible as our credit card is maxed out
Cutting spending is essential, or more specifically redirect spending into defence from reinstating the 2 child cap and end the triple lock amomgst choices
There is always a choice but not heaping more debt onto our grandchildren
Problem is (and I know I've asked this question before) where exactly can spending be cut?
Everywhere.
No-one likes spending cuts. All departments will squeal and say it can't be done. But it can.
The trick is to avoid the unintended consequences.
Until very recently, "experience in one of the Great Offices" was pretty much the first line in the Person Spec to be a mid-term replacement PM.
On the basis, the shortlist ought to be Cooper, Lammy, Reeves, Mahmood, Rayner at a pinch. Not even Reeves can imagine that she has a chance, but it's striking that neither Cooper or Lammy are mentioned. Not necessarily shocking, but striking.
But paraphrasing a fictional Chief Whip, who is up to the job? You can never tell, unless you suck it and see.
Problem is all of them have been found either wanting (or in the case of Mahmood implementing things that are utterly toxic to the people likely to be voting)
Cooper I also wonder if she wants it - Ed couldn't keep his current very well paid job if she was PM..
For Kemi, Davey and Starmer, the biggest defence against being replaced is the paucity of obviously better replacements.
Which says a lot about the state of politics.
Burnham was/is a rather mild threat, as these things go.
I think you misunderstand the Lib Dems here. Davey is very much respected by his Parliamentary party, even while they are a little frustrated with the polls- he just led them to the most significant result for the party in over a century. Davey has a good working relationship with colleagues, notably Daisy Cooper, who is widely spoken of as his potential successor.
What would probably cause Ed to leave office early is if the health of his wife and or son were to take a turn for the worse. For the time being there is no more than normal anti leader muttering in the party and little enough amongst the MPs. He has solved some major internal problems, got 72 MPs elected and is on the brink of further local government gains. If he chose to stand down before the next election, he would not go until long after the locals this year- once again subject to the health of his family. I have been with Ed in public and there is no doubt that people like him- relatable, intelligent and a good guy... Not what we can say of every party leader in our country. When the time does come, the Lib Dems have a clutch of very bright young new MPs- quite a contrast to the Tory benches indeed I was slightly surprised myself to see how much dead wood the Conservatives still have in the House (Sir David Davis is 77, the young Turk Sir Bernard Jenkin is 66)- and there are some very high quality people on the Lib Dem benches: Al Pinkerton, Calum Miller, Daisy Cooper to pick some names at random.
Reads like one slightly frustrated MP having a bit of a whinge and to fill column space, the Guardian has blown it up into a leadership crisis as newspapers are wont.
If the Press, including the BBC, were to make space for the LibDems instead of rushing to Farage every five minutes things might be different. I'm just waiting for Farage to be asked about his views on the Labour situation.
I have no idea what the actual stats look like, but my impression, when I think about it, is that the LDs get quite a few slots on BBC radio (no idea about telly; does anyone watch it?) but fail to convey the impression, which Reform does sadly convey, that they are talking about the opinions, actions and policies of the next government and the next government's opinions of the present one. This renders all they say a bit forgettable as neither they nor the listener thinks it adds to the sum of useful knowledge.
Listening to Reform matters because most of us want to know how the 60-70% who want them beaten will do it. We already know that the LDs seriously contesting about 100 seats is part of the plan. In the other 530 GB seats they tend to get in the way. That's politics.
Ed Davey was on the Sunday Kuenssberg show yesterday.
I rarely comment on Ed Davey, not least because I do respect the views of some Lib Dems on here, but I just do not see him as his supporters do
He speaks about the EU with devotion and the care sector, which I understand with his own family problems, but he just comes over a bit 'meh' and his clowning around does not do anything for me
I see the Lib Dems as a southern English 'Waitrose' party and whilst they should do well in May I do not know where the money is coming from for their policies, not least because they seem to want to hand 5 billion to WASPI women but as per Davey yesterday, insist on immediate increases in defence spending
Did you miss the LD proposal to issue War Bonds?
No - I did listen to that but it's just more borrowing under a different name
Well there are only 3 available options - (1) borrow more, (2) cut spending, and (3) raise taxes. Only (1) is politically acceptable.
Borrowing more is not possible as our credit card is maxed out
Cutting spending is essential, or more specifically redirect spending into defence from reinstating the 2 child cap and end the triple lock amomgst choices
There is always a choice but not heaping more debt onto our grandchildren
Health spending is on an inexorable upward trajectory, given an ageing population and the rising cost of diagnosis, medication and surgery. Social care cost is on an upward trajectory for related reasons, as are pension costs. The future costs of pensions could be reduced by scrapping the triple lock, but that’s avoiding some extra spending, not cutting it. At the moment, welfare spending excluding pensions is also rising, and while not all of that appears justified, even levelling off the increase would be an heroic achievement by government. Education spending isn’t easily going to be cut, given existing underfunding and the backlog of capital investment and repairs in schools. Local government is already cut to the bone and struggling to fulfil even its statutory responsibilities, with a string of councils going bankrupt. Defence spending clearly needs to increase. Aid spending has already been cut (and shouldn’t have been).
Where, Big G, are these cuts of yours going to come from?
Indeed, Braverman will be liked by the Reform core vote as Jenrick was but swing voters who went Boris 2019, Labour 2024 and now have floated to Reform may be having second thoughts now Jenrick, Braverman and Rosindell have joined them backing Farage.
So opportunity for Starmer and Kemi to win some of them back
Has a more odious, valueless dullard ever disgraced The First Lordship of the Treasury?
He makes Boris look brave, he makes TMay look charismatic, he makes Brown look stellar, he makes Cameron look wise and insightful, he makes Liz Truss look sane, and he makes Rishi Sunak look tall
Starmer was also a QC before becoming an MP and was a top lawyer and barrister, much like Rishi was an investment banker at Goldman Sachs and ran a hedge fudge.
Just goes to show that having a brilliant career outside politics does not automatically mean you will make a great leader and be a brilliant politician if you change careers and decide you might fancy being PM with no real ideological conviction and dynamism to go with it
I'm going to say something controversial here, but I think people who build a successful career outside of politics first are invariably bad politicians. This is because politics is actually extremely difficult to do well and if you've not been practicing at it ever since you were a spotty undergrad running to be JCR Treasurer or a young trade union activist climbing the union ladder then you will probably fuck things up.
And yet the higher you climb in any organisation, the more you need political skills. The difference is in the focus of those skills. Whether political ability itself is transferrable is another question.
Somewhat different skills, though.
Politics is unusual in that the minions can vote to overthrow the boss- see the header. Or they can take their employment to a different boss with no penalty- see Suella. That requires a different skill set to normal bosses.
Part of SKS's problem is his tendency to treat MPs as employees. Accurate in terms of hierarchy, but it's not a simple as that.
A federal judge (appointed by Trump) has granted a temporary restraining order to the Minnesota police ordering ICE, a federal agency, not to destroy further evidence relating to the killing of Alex Pretti. I mean, what has it come to when such an order is thought to be necessary?
What prospect is there of the order making much of a difference ?
It opens a whole new world for her rid of the worst aspects of Jenrick and Braverman
Even better. Not only has she got rid of them but Farage seems determined to give them Offices of Great State opposition speaking roles. So they will be on TV a lot reminding everyone what UK Trumpland will be like.
Braverman running UK ICE is enough to give anyone nightmares frankly.
Can we lay off the pile on on Sandpit please? 1) He's been on the site for fucking ages; I find it vanishingly unlikely he's being paid to make pro-Trump noises. 2) I've rarely heard him make pro-Trump noises. Not thinking Trump = Hitler does not equal pro-Trump. 3) As it happens, I do think Trump roughly equals Hitler. But I am very interested in the views of a seemingly intelligent poster who does not hold that view. Why wouldn't you be?
It's ridiculous to fall into the trap of 'poster x does not hate politician y as much as I do - therefore poster x loves politician y.' We saw this with Boris too.
It seems fair to defend Trump [and the administration] on some levels - many things are arguable. TDS is still a thing.
But justifying the shooting of someone in the street who is protesting peacefully would seem a different matter.
The phrase TDS is often trotted out by trump apologists who don't want to see the whole picture.
I certainly wouldn't apologise for him but what I would take it to mean is not taking each specific action on its own merits.
He might accidentally do something right. Increasingly long odds on that, perhaps.
DS applies to all politicians, including Starmer, who also manages to blunder into doing the right thing sometimes, having announced the wrong thing first.
We were assured he was going to invade Greenland a couple of days ago. That he was a deranged dementia patient who had lost the capacity to reason, and therefore he'd as happily soak Greenland in European blood as eat his morning cornflakes.
Except it has now all been wrapped up diplomatically, he seems to have got everything he asked for, and he now says force was never on the agenda. Yet no embarrassed climb down from our resident Trump experts, just on to the next civilisation-ending outrage and hope nobody will notice.
No one thought he’d actually invade Greenland. And he didn’t get what he wanted . I see you omitted his trashing of NATO troops who died supporting the USA . He’s now given immunity to ICE to execute anyone they see fit and you’re still trying to sanewash his actions . He might not be mad but he is true evil .
Lucky is just telling us who he is.
Yet he’s not wrong to point out the resident Trump experts cocked up there and just pivoted onto the next issue to rant about.
Who "cocked up" ? Are you denying that Trump threatened at various times both military occupation and sanctions ?
I think most of us said that the former was unlikely but not impossible, and I'd stand by that. The sanctions, against US allies, if they didn't hand over territory, were a very real threat.
No one has "just pivoted to the next issue to rant about". It's now a fact, as a result of the affair, that the entire basis of US commitment to NATO is in question. The US itself has in the had few data completely rearranged its national security strategy, and will be withdrawing forces from Europe.
Luckyguy is simply strawmanning again to say "we were assured that he was going to invade".
None of the issues raised by this are going away - not least because there's no formal agreement for the supposed "deal" negotiated by Rutte.
The US commitment to NATO was in question well before this.
Yeah yeah, that Trump playbook stuff has been doing the rounds, we've all seen it. The point is that Lucky said
"it has now all been wrapped up diplomatically, he seems to have got everything he asked for"
and that isn't true.
Permanent damage to diplomatic relations has been caused, around the world Trump's erratic and offensive behaviour is driving other nations away from the US politically and economically, political parties seen to be aligned with Trump are suffering in the polls, a key point has been reached where other countries' leaders now calculate that causing personal offence to Trump and the subsequent retribution are a price worth paying in order to publicly demonstrate support for the values their own voters hold dear and for alliances with other countries that feel the same.
Trump hasn't got everything he asked for. What specific greater rights over Greenland territory has the USA now obtained ? What changes to the political sovereignty of Greenland or Denmark have been promised ? And how exactly has the USA benefited from the further decline in international confidence in the USA and in the dollar ? Do you understand what it means for a country when its government debt yield is climbing at the same time as its currency is weakening ?
It's not been without consequence, as you note. Even if it was art of the deal stuff militarily threatening allies crossed a line, that will have negative effect. Not immediate, but there.
The defenders of this think politicians and electorates elsewhere will not remember this in long term planning, so he can do as he likes no issue.
Until very recently, "experience in one of the Great Offices" was pretty much the first line in the Person Spec to be a mid-term replacement PM.
On the basis, the shortlist ought to be Cooper, Lammy, Reeves, Mahmood, Rayner at a pinch. Not even Reeves can imagine that she has a chance, but it's striking that neither Cooper or Lammy are mentioned. Not necessarily shocking, but striking.
But paraphrasing a fictional Chief Whip, who is up to the job? You can never tell, unless you suck it and see.
Problem is all of them have been found either wanting (or in the case of Mahmood implementing things that are utterly toxic to the people likely to be voting)
Cooper I also wonder if she wants it - Ed couldn't keep his current very well paid job if she was PM..
For Kemi, Davey and Starmer, the biggest defence against being replaced is the paucity of obviously better replacements.
Which says a lot about the state of politics.
Burnham was/is a rather mild threat, as these things go.
I think you misunderstand the Lib Dems here. Davey is very much respected by his Parliamentary party, even while they are a little frustrated with the polls- he just led them to the most significant result for the party in over a century. Davey has a good working relationship with colleagues, notably Daisy Cooper, who is widely spoken of as his potential successor.
What would probably cause Ed to leave office early is if the health of his wife and or son were to take a turn for the worse. For the time being there is no more than normal anti leader muttering in the party and little enough amongst the MPs. He has solved some major internal problems, got 72 MPs elected and is on the brink of further local government gains. If he chose to stand down before the next election, he would not go until long after the locals this year- once again subject to the health of his family. I have been with Ed in public and there is no doubt that people like him- relatable, intelligent and a good guy... Not what we can say of every party leader in our country. When the time does come, the Lib Dems have a clutch of very bright young new MPs- quite a contrast to the Tory benches indeed I was slightly surprised myself to see how much dead wood the Conservatives still have in the House (Sir David Davis is 77, the young Turk Sir Bernard Jenkin is 66)- and there are some very high quality people on the Lib Dem benches: Al Pinkerton, Calum Miller, Daisy Cooper to pick some names at random.
Reads like one slightly frustrated MP having a bit of a whinge and to fill column space, the Guardian has blown it up into a leadership crisis as newspapers are wont.
If the Press, including the BBC, were to make space for the LibDems instead of rushing to Farage every five minutes things might be different. I'm just waiting for Farage to be asked about his views on the Labour situation.
I have no idea what the actual stats look like, but my impression, when I think about it, is that the LDs get quite a few slots on BBC radio (no idea about telly; does anyone watch it?) but fail to convey the impression, which Reform does sadly convey, that they are talking about the opinions, actions and policies of the next government and the next government's opinions of the present one. This renders all they say a bit forgettable as neither they nor the listener thinks it adds to the sum of useful knowledge.
Listening to Reform matters because most of us want to know how the 60-70% who want them beaten will do it. We already know that the LDs seriously contesting about 100 seats is part of the plan. In the other 530 GB seats they tend to get in the way. That's politics.
Ed Davey was on the Sunday Kuenssberg show yesterday.
I rarely comment on Ed Davey, not least because I do respect the views of some Lib Dems on here, but I just do not see him as his supporters do
He speaks about the EU with devotion and the care sector, which I understand with his own family problems, but he just comes over a bit 'meh' and his clowning around does not do anything for me
I see the Lib Dems as a southern English 'Waitrose' party and whilst they should do well in May I do not know where the money is coming from for their policies, not least because they seem to want to hand 5 billion to WASPI women but as per Davey yesterday, insist on immediate increases in defence spending
Did you miss the LD proposal to issue War Bonds?
No - I did listen to that but it's just more borrowing under a different name
Well there are only 3 available options - (1) borrow more, (2) cut spending, and (3) raise taxes. Only (1) is politically acceptable.
Borrowing more is not possible as our credit card is maxed out
Cutting spending is essential, or more specifically redirect spending into defence from reinstating the 2 child cap and end the triple lock amomgst choices
There is always a choice but not heaping more debt onto our grandchildren
Health spending is on an inexorable upward trajectory, given an ageing population and the rising cost of diagnosis, medication and surgery. Social care cost is on an upward trajectory for related reasons, as are pension costs. The future costs of pensions could be reduced by scrapping the triple lock, but that’s avoiding some extra spending, not cutting it. At the moment, welfare spending excluding pensions is also rising, and while not all of that appears justified, even levelling off the increase would be an heroic achievement by government. Education spending isn’t easily going to be cut, given existing underfunding and the backlog of capital investment and repairs in schools. Local government is already cut to the bone and struggling to fulfil even its statutory responsibilities, with a string of councils going bankrupt. Defence spending clearly needs to increase. Aid spending has already been cut (and shouldn’t have been).
Where, Big G, are these cuts of yours going to come from?
Firstly means test the state pension so that it provides the safety net for pensioners, also consider similar in the NHS
Not paying WASPI women, reinstate the 2 child cap, incentivise all the milionaires and non doms to return with their taxes, and use AI
Now, these are controversial but what is certain we cannot go on as we are
Tne Tories cannot keep weathering defections as 'good riddance'.
Unless they start rising significantly in the polls, and soon, their future is as junior partner to Reform.
It’s rubbish for them in the short term, as they’re looking very disfunctional and unserious (again), but the Tories have to play the long game if they stand any chance of regaining relevance, and these defections do actually help if they’re disciplined enough to do so and don’t cause ructions over the leadership.
Has a more odious, valueless dullard ever disgraced The First Lordship of the Treasury?
He makes Boris look brave, he makes TMay look charismatic, he makes Brown look stellar, he makes Cameron look wise and insightful, he makes Liz Truss look sane, and he makes Rishi Sunak look tall
Starmer was also a QC before becoming an MP and was a top lawyer and barrister, much like Rishi was an investment banker at Goldman Sachs and ran a hedge fudge.
Just goes to show that having a brilliant career outside politics does not automatically mean you will make a great leader and be a brilliant politician if you change careers and decide you might fancy being PM with no real ideological conviction and dynamism to go with it
I'm going to say something controversial here, but I think people who build a successful career outside of politics first are invariably bad politicians. This is because politics is actually extremely difficult to do well and if you've not been practicing at it ever since you were a spotty undergrad running to be JCR Treasurer or a young trade union activist climbing the union ladder then you will probably fuck things up.
Like Mark Carney ? "Invariably" overstates it.
Carney is a good counterexample, yes. Although he is perhaps sui generis.
Mitt Romey; Arnold Schwarzenegger ?
It's different in the US. The party machines are much weaker and individual candidates can build big teams of professional political operators to compensate for their own lack of political experience. I would imagine Canada's Westminster model of politics would make it more similar to the UK so Carney is more of an outlier. But he is a remarkable man in many respects. His political ambitions were well know even before he got the BOE role.
Michael Heseltine was a very successful businessman...
It opens a whole new world for her rid of the worst aspects of Jenrick and Braverman
Even better. Not only has she got rid of them but Farage seems determined to give them Offices of Great State opposition speaking roles. So they will be on TV a lot reminding everyone what UK Trumpland will be like.
Braverman running UK ICE is enough to give anyone nightmares frankly.
There is a lot of talk about a UK version of ICE. Like so much of the discussion about Trump/USA and Farage/UK its overblown. For one thing any version of UKICE would not be armed. Although the recent deaths have been horrific, its not in a vacuum. How many people have been shot dead by US police officers in the last month, for instance?
I am not sure that Keir Starmer had a 'brilliant' career - he had a very senior career. That doesn't correlate to brilliance, indeed the two things are likely to be negatively correlated.
Until very recently, "experience in one of the Great Offices" was pretty much the first line in the Person Spec to be a mid-term replacement PM.
On the basis, the shortlist ought to be Cooper, Lammy, Reeves, Mahmood, Rayner at a pinch. Not even Reeves can imagine that she has a chance, but it's striking that neither Cooper or Lammy are mentioned. Not necessarily shocking, but striking.
But paraphrasing a fictional Chief Whip, who is up to the job? You can never tell, unless you suck it and see.
Problem is all of them have been found either wanting (or in the case of Mahmood implementing things that are utterly toxic to the people likely to be voting)
Cooper I also wonder if she wants it - Ed couldn't keep his current very well paid job if she was PM..
For Kemi, Davey and Starmer, the biggest defence against being replaced is the paucity of obviously better replacements.
Which says a lot about the state of politics.
Burnham was/is a rather mild threat, as these things go.
I think you misunderstand the Lib Dems here. Davey is very much respected by his Parliamentary party, even while they are a little frustrated with the polls- he just led them to the most significant result for the party in over a century. Davey has a good working relationship with colleagues, notably Daisy Cooper, who is widely spoken of as his potential successor.
What would probably cause Ed to leave office early is if the health of his wife and or son were to take a turn for the worse. For the time being there is no more than normal anti leader muttering in the party and little enough amongst the MPs. He has solved some major internal problems, got 72 MPs elected and is on the brink of further local government gains. If he chose to stand down before the next election, he would not go until long after the locals this year- once again subject to the health of his family. I have been with Ed in public and there is no doubt that people like him- relatable, intelligent and a good guy... Not what we can say of every party leader in our country. When the time does come, the Lib Dems have a clutch of very bright young new MPs- quite a contrast to the Tory benches indeed I was slightly surprised myself to see how much dead wood the Conservatives still have in the House (Sir David Davis is 77, the young Turk Sir Bernard Jenkin is 66)- and there are some very high quality people on the Lib Dem benches: Al Pinkerton, Calum Miller, Daisy Cooper to pick some names at random.
Reads like one slightly frustrated MP having a bit of a whinge and to fill column space, the Guardian has blown it up into a leadership crisis as newspapers are wont.
If the Press, including the BBC, were to make space for the LibDems instead of rushing to Farage every five minutes things might be different. I'm just waiting for Farage to be asked about his views on the Labour situation.
I have no idea what the actual stats look like, but my impression, when I think about it, is that the LDs get quite a few slots on BBC radio (no idea about telly; does anyone watch it?) but fail to convey the impression, which Reform does sadly convey, that they are talking about the opinions, actions and policies of the next government and the next government's opinions of the present one. This renders all they say a bit forgettable as neither they nor the listener thinks it adds to the sum of useful knowledge.
Listening to Reform matters because most of us want to know how the 60-70% who want them beaten will do it. We already know that the LDs seriously contesting about 100 seats is part of the plan. In the other 530 GB seats they tend to get in the way. That's politics.
Ed Davey was on the Sunday Kuenssberg show yesterday.
I rarely comment on Ed Davey, not least because I do respect the views of some Lib Dems on here, but I just do not see him as his supporters do
He speaks about the EU with devotion and the care sector, which I understand with his own family problems, but he just comes over a bit 'meh' and his clowning around does not do anything for me
I see the Lib Dems as a southern English 'Waitrose' party and whilst they should do well in May I do not know where the money is coming from for their policies, not least because they seem to want to hand 5 billion to WASPI women but as per Davey yesterday, insist on immediate increases in defence spending
Did you miss the LD proposal to issue War Bonds?
No - I did listen to that but it's just more borrowing under a different name
Well there are only 3 available options - (1) borrow more, (2) cut spending, and (3) raise taxes. Only (1) is politically acceptable.
Borrowing more is not possible as our credit card is maxed out
Cutting spending is essential, or more specifically redirect spending into defence from reinstating the 2 child cap and end the triple lock amomgst choices
There is always a choice but not heaping more debt onto our grandchildren
Health spending is on an inexorable upward trajectory, given an ageing population and the rising cost of diagnosis, medication and surgery. Social care cost is on an upward trajectory for related reasons, as are pension costs. The future costs of pensions could be reduced by scrapping the triple lock, but that’s avoiding some extra spending, not cutting it. At the moment, welfare spending excluding pensions is also rising, and while not all of that appears justified, even levelling off the increase would be an heroic achievement by government. Education spending isn’t easily going to be cut, given existing underfunding and the backlog of capital investment and repairs in schools. Local government is already cut to the bone and struggling to fulfil even its statutory responsibilities, with a string of councils going bankrupt. Defence spending clearly needs to increase. Aid spending has already been cut (and shouldn’t have been).
Where, Big G, are these cuts of yours going to come from?
Firstly means test the state pension so that it provides the safety net for pensioners, also consider similar in the NHS
Not paying WASPI women, reinstate the 2 child cap, incentivise all the milionaires and non doms to return with their taxes, and use AI
Now, these are controversial but what is certain we cannot go on as we are
Sadly the gov is uturning on Waspi, one of their initially good decisions.
I am not sure that Keir Starmer had a 'brilliant' career - he had a very senior career. That doesn't correlate to brilliance, indeed the two things are likely to be negatively correlated.
Tne Tories cannot keep weathering defections as 'good riddance'.
Unless they start rising significantly in the polls, and soon, their future is as junior partner to Reform.
It’s rubbish for them in the short term, as they’re looking very disfunctional and unserious (again), but the Tories have to play the long game if they stand any chance of regaining relevance, and these defections do actually help if they’re disciplined enough to do so and don’t cause ructions over the leadership.
And if the public think it detoxifies them. That's the part i'm skeptical about, as they may have less time than they think to play the long game - for some, indicating Reform support is becoming the new normal.
I am not sure that Keir Starmer had a 'brilliant' career - he had a very senior career. That doesn't correlate to brilliance, indeed the two things are likely to be negatively correlated.
#NU24K (is that the hashtag?)
Wasn’t it more a case that he was less useless than his successor and predecessor rather than being brilliant in his job.
looking at reddit.com/r/all right now is wild. 80% of the posts are anti ice from every kind of subreddit like NBA, climbing, nursing, batman, catbongos and music
Absolutely wild. You really should check it out yourself. Every corner of Reddit is inflamed. Forget about “breaking containment.” This is simply everywhere.
Even r/conservative, the most locked down and heavily moderated Reddit forum I know, has plenty of people saying, "Obviously I support Trump and ICE, but maybe they shouldn't have done this".
I think the best example is perhaps /r/conspiracy. After /r/The_Donald* closed down due to all the threats of violence a lot of the lunatics decamped to /r/conspiracy as one of the most lightly moderated subreddits with a political tinge. For a few years /r/conspiracy was swamped with MAGA and Q-Anon claptrap, and essentially everything Trump did would be defended, that's a subreddit where believing that Jan 6th is a false-flag op is a widely held opinion, but even there the failure to disclose the Epstein files and the blatant murders carried out by ICE seem to have broken the dam. My hunch is that the fanatics will soon be saying that Trump's been nobbled, and that someone else needs to replace him to MAGA.
* More or less MAGA HQ on the internet at one point.
In his 2025 book ‘Ungovernable’, former Tory Chief Whip Simon Hart provides a scathing account of Braverman’s conduct during her time as Home Secretary, describing her as one of several figures who "emerge particularly badly" from his record.
Hart recalls Braverman’s reaction upon being sacked in November 2023, claiming she launched a "ghastly 10-minute diatribe of vindictive and personal bile" while on loudspeaker. He notes that he and others in the room sat in "astonished silence, doing our best not to grimace, smile or give any indication of what we feel" as she spoke.
Hart details her 2022 resignation for leaking confidential information to backbencher Sir John Hayes, which he describes as being "put down to lazy misuse of the internal email system". He notes that the person who received the sensitive material by mistake was a friend of his who "rightly minded to ‘do the right thing’ by alerting the authorities".
Reflecting on Rishi Sunak's decision to reappoint her shortly after that breach, Hart writes, "Understandably, the PM is loath to lose her this soon, so we gloss it over, at least for now. Let’s hope she remembers".
Hart groups Braverman with a "band of Brexiters" whom he characterizes as "oblivious to the numerical realities of what they were demanding". He argues this cohort "knowingly made things so hard that what tiny chances we had of a fifth term were extinguished".
He recalls that Braverman tried to get the civil service to allow her to do a speeding awareness course on her own, rather than with others who had also been speeding, but was refused. And that her offered apology didn’t actually apologise.
He remembers how she put out a controversial op ed criticising police for their handling of Palestinian protests without clearing it with number ten.
Until very recently, "experience in one of the Great Offices" was pretty much the first line in the Person Spec to be a mid-term replacement PM.
On the basis, the shortlist ought to be Cooper, Lammy, Reeves, Mahmood, Rayner at a pinch. Not even Reeves can imagine that she has a chance, but it's striking that neither Cooper or Lammy are mentioned. Not necessarily shocking, but striking.
But paraphrasing a fictional Chief Whip, who is up to the job? You can never tell, unless you suck it and see.
Problem is all of them have been found either wanting (or in the case of Mahmood implementing things that are utterly toxic to the people likely to be voting)
Cooper I also wonder if she wants it - Ed couldn't keep his current very well paid job if she was PM..
For Kemi, Davey and Starmer, the biggest defence against being replaced is the paucity of obviously better replacements.
Which says a lot about the state of politics.
Burnham was/is a rather mild threat, as these things go.
I think you misunderstand the Lib Dems here. Davey is very much respected by his Parliamentary party, even while they are a little frustrated with the polls- he just led them to the most significant result for the party in over a century. Davey has a good working relationship with colleagues, notably Daisy Cooper, who is widely spoken of as his potential successor.
What would probably cause Ed to leave office early is if the health of his wife and or son were to take a turn for the worse. For the time being there is no more than normal anti leader muttering in the party and little enough amongst the MPs. He has solved some major internal problems, got 72 MPs elected and is on the brink of further local government gains. If he chose to stand down before the next election, he would not go until long after the locals this year- once again subject to the health of his family. I have been with Ed in public and there is no doubt that people like him- relatable, intelligent and a good guy... Not what we can say of every party leader in our country. When the time does come, the Lib Dems have a clutch of very bright young new MPs- quite a contrast to the Tory benches indeed I was slightly surprised myself to see how much dead wood the Conservatives still have in the House (Sir David Davis is 77, the young Turk Sir Bernard Jenkin is 66)- and there are some very high quality people on the Lib Dem benches: Al Pinkerton, Calum Miller, Daisy Cooper to pick some names at random.
Reads like one slightly frustrated MP having a bit of a whinge and to fill column space, the Guardian has blown it up into a leadership crisis as newspapers are wont.
If the Press, including the BBC, were to make space for the LibDems instead of rushing to Farage every five minutes things might be different. I'm just waiting for Farage to be asked about his views on the Labour situation.
I have no idea what the actual stats look like, but my impression, when I think about it, is that the LDs get quite a few slots on BBC radio (no idea about telly; does anyone watch it?) but fail to convey the impression, which Reform does sadly convey, that they are talking about the opinions, actions and policies of the next government and the next government's opinions of the present one. This renders all they say a bit forgettable as neither they nor the listener thinks it adds to the sum of useful knowledge.
Listening to Reform matters because most of us want to know how the 60-70% who want them beaten will do it. We already know that the LDs seriously contesting about 100 seats is part of the plan. In the other 530 GB seats they tend to get in the way. That's politics.
Ed Davey was on the Sunday Kuenssberg show yesterday.
I rarely comment on Ed Davey, not least because I do respect the views of some Lib Dems on here, but I just do not see him as his supporters do
He speaks about the EU with devotion and the care sector, which I understand with his own family problems, but he just comes over a bit 'meh' and his clowning around does not do anything for me
I see the Lib Dems as a southern English 'Waitrose' party and whilst they should do well in May I do not know where the money is coming from for their policies, not least because they seem to want to hand 5 billion to WASPI women but as per Davey yesterday, insist on immediate increases in defence spending
Did you miss the LD proposal to issue War Bonds?
No - I did listen to that but it's just more borrowing under a different name
Well there are only 3 available options - (1) borrow more, (2) cut spending, and (3) raise taxes. Only (1) is politically acceptable.
Borrowing more is not possible as our credit card is maxed out
Cutting spending is essential, or more specifically redirect spending into defence from reinstating the 2 child cap and end the triple lock amomgst choices
There is always a choice but not heaping more debt onto our grandchildren
Health spending is on an inexorable upward trajectory, given an ageing population and the rising cost of diagnosis, medication and surgery. Social care cost is on an upward trajectory for related reasons, as are pension costs. The future costs of pensions could be reduced by scrapping the triple lock, but that’s avoiding some extra spending, not cutting it. At the moment, welfare spending excluding pensions is also rising, and while not all of that appears justified, even levelling off the increase would be an heroic achievement by government. Education spending isn’t easily going to be cut, given existing underfunding and the backlog of capital investment and repairs in schools. Local government is already cut to the bone and struggling to fulfil even its statutory responsibilities, with a string of councils going bankrupt. Defence spending clearly needs to increase. Aid spending has already been cut (and shouldn’t have been).
Where, Big G, are these cuts of yours going to come from?
Firstly means test the state pension so that it provides the safety net for pensioners, also consider similar in the NHS
Not paying WASPI women, reinstate the 2 child cap, incentivise all the milionaires and non doms to return with their taxes, and use AI
Now, these are controversial but what is certain we cannot go on as we are
Ah yes “use AI” of course. That’s the magic bullet.
Until very recently, "experience in one of the Great Offices" was pretty much the first line in the Person Spec to be a mid-term replacement PM.
On the basis, the shortlist ought to be Cooper, Lammy, Reeves, Mahmood, Rayner at a pinch. Not even Reeves can imagine that she has a chance, but it's striking that neither Cooper or Lammy are mentioned. Not necessarily shocking, but striking.
But paraphrasing a fictional Chief Whip, who is up to the job? You can never tell, unless you suck it and see.
Problem is all of them have been found either wanting (or in the case of Mahmood implementing things that are utterly toxic to the people likely to be voting)
Cooper I also wonder if she wants it - Ed couldn't keep his current very well paid job if she was PM..
For Kemi, Davey and Starmer, the biggest defence against being replaced is the paucity of obviously better replacements.
Which says a lot about the state of politics.
Burnham was/is a rather mild threat, as these things go.
I think you misunderstand the Lib Dems here. Davey is very much respected by his Parliamentary party, even while they are a little frustrated with the polls- he just led them to the most significant result for the party in over a century. Davey has a good working relationship with colleagues, notably Daisy Cooper, who is widely spoken of as his potential successor.
What would probably cause Ed to leave office early is if the health of his wife and or son were to take a turn for the worse. For the time being there is no more than normal anti leader muttering in the party and little enough amongst the MPs. He has solved some major internal problems, got 72 MPs elected and is on the brink of further local government gains. If he chose to stand down before the next election, he would not go until long after the locals this year- once again subject to the health of his family. I have been with Ed in public and there is no doubt that people like him- relatable, intelligent and a good guy... Not what we can say of every party leader in our country. When the time does come, the Lib Dems have a clutch of very bright young new MPs- quite a contrast to the Tory benches indeed I was slightly surprised myself to see how much dead wood the Conservatives still have in the House (Sir David Davis is 77, the young Turk Sir Bernard Jenkin is 66)- and there are some very high quality people on the Lib Dem benches: Al Pinkerton, Calum Miller, Daisy Cooper to pick some names at random.
Reads like one slightly frustrated MP having a bit of a whinge and to fill column space, the Guardian has blown it up into a leadership crisis as newspapers are wont.
If the Press, including the BBC, were to make space for the LibDems instead of rushing to Farage every five minutes things might be different. I'm just waiting for Farage to be asked about his views on the Labour situation.
I have no idea what the actual stats look like, but my impression, when I think about it, is that the LDs get quite a few slots on BBC radio (no idea about telly; does anyone watch it?) but fail to convey the impression, which Reform does sadly convey, that they are talking about the opinions, actions and policies of the next government and the next government's opinions of the present one. This renders all they say a bit forgettable as neither they nor the listener thinks it adds to the sum of useful knowledge.
Listening to Reform matters because most of us want to know how the 60-70% who want them beaten will do it. We already know that the LDs seriously contesting about 100 seats is part of the plan. In the other 530 GB seats they tend to get in the way. That's politics.
Ed Davey was on the Sunday Kuenssberg show yesterday.
I rarely comment on Ed Davey, not least because I do respect the views of some Lib Dems on here, but I just do not see him as his supporters do
He speaks about the EU with devotion and the care sector, which I understand with his own family problems, but he just comes over a bit 'meh' and his clowning around does not do anything for me
I see the Lib Dems as a southern English 'Waitrose' party and whilst they should do well in May I do not know where the money is coming from for their policies, not least because they seem to want to hand 5 billion to WASPI women but as per Davey yesterday, insist on immediate increases in defence spending
Did you miss the LD proposal to issue War Bonds?
No - I did listen to that but it's just more borrowing under a different name
Well there are only 3 available options - (1) borrow more, (2) cut spending, and (3) raise taxes. Only (1) is politically acceptable.
Borrowing more is not possible as our credit card is maxed out
Cutting spending is essential, or more specifically redirect spending into defence from reinstating the 2 child cap and end the triple lock amomgst choices
There is always a choice but not heaping more debt onto our grandchildren
Health spending is on an inexorable upward trajectory, given an ageing population and the rising cost of diagnosis, medication and surgery. Social care cost is on an upward trajectory for related reasons, as are pension costs. The future costs of pensions could be reduced by scrapping the triple lock, but that’s avoiding some extra spending, not cutting it. At the moment, welfare spending excluding pensions is also rising, and while not all of that appears justified, even levelling off the increase would be an heroic achievement by government. Education spending isn’t easily going to be cut, given existing underfunding and the backlog of capital investment and repairs in schools. Local government is already cut to the bone and struggling to fulfil even its statutory responsibilities, with a string of councils going bankrupt. Defence spending clearly needs to increase. Aid spending has already been cut (and shouldn’t have been).
Where, Big G, are these cuts of yours going to come from?
Firstly means test the state pension so that it provides the safety net for pensioners, also consider similar in the NHS
Not paying WASPI women, reinstate the 2 child cap, incentivise all the milionaires and non doms to return with their taxes, and use AI
Now, these are controversial but what is certain we cannot go on as we are
Sadly the gov is uturning on Waspi, one of their initially good decisions.
They are re-looking at it. Hopefully they won’t u-turn on it and stand firm against the entitled Boomers.
Tne Tories cannot keep weathering defections as 'good riddance'.
Unless they start rising significantly in the polls, and soon, their future is as junior partner to Reform.
It’s rubbish for them in the short term, as they’re looking very disfunctional and unserious (again), but the Tories have to play the long game if they stand any chance of regaining relevance, and these defections do actually help if they’re disciplined enough to do so and don’t cause ructions over the leadership.
And if the public think it detoxifies them. That's the part i'm skeptical about, as they may have less time than they think to play the long game - for some, indicating Reform support is becoming the new normal.
Losing the folk that made the Tory brand toxic is no loss. The nastiest of the Nasty Party are now in Reform.
Tne Tories cannot keep weathering defections as 'good riddance'.
Unless they start rising significantly in the polls, and soon, their future is as junior partner to Reform.
It’s rubbish for them in the short term, as they’re looking very disfunctional and unserious (again), but the Tories have to play the long game if they stand any chance of regaining relevance, and these defections do actually help if they’re disciplined enough to do so and don’t cause ructions over the leadership.
And if the public think it detoxifies them. That's the part i'm skeptical about, as they may have less time than they think to play the long game - for some, indicating Reform support is becoming the new normal.
Losing the folk that made the Tory brand toxic is no loss. The nastiest of the Nasty Party are now in Reform.
Until very recently, "experience in one of the Great Offices" was pretty much the first line in the Person Spec to be a mid-term replacement PM.
On the basis, the shortlist ought to be Cooper, Lammy, Reeves, Mahmood, Rayner at a pinch. Not even Reeves can imagine that she has a chance, but it's striking that neither Cooper or Lammy are mentioned. Not necessarily shocking, but striking.
But paraphrasing a fictional Chief Whip, who is up to the job? You can never tell, unless you suck it and see.
Problem is all of them have been found either wanting (or in the case of Mahmood implementing things that are utterly toxic to the people likely to be voting)
Cooper I also wonder if she wants it - Ed couldn't keep his current very well paid job if she was PM..
For Kemi, Davey and Starmer, the biggest defence against being replaced is the paucity of obviously better replacements.
Which says a lot about the state of politics.
Burnham was/is a rather mild threat, as these things go.
I think you misunderstand the Lib Dems here. Davey is very much respected by his Parliamentary party, even while they are a little frustrated with the polls- he just led them to the most significant result for the party in over a century. Davey has a good working relationship with colleagues, notably Daisy Cooper, who is widely spoken of as his potential successor.
What would probably cause Ed to leave office early is if the health of his wife and or son were to take a turn for the worse. For the time being there is no more than normal anti leader muttering in the party and little enough amongst the MPs. He has solved some major internal problems, got 72 MPs elected and is on the brink of further local government gains. If he chose to stand down before the next election, he would not go until long after the locals this year- once again subject to the health of his family. I have been with Ed in public and there is no doubt that people like him- relatable, intelligent and a good guy... Not what we can say of every party leader in our country. When the time does come, the Lib Dems have a clutch of very bright young new MPs- quite a contrast to the Tory benches indeed I was slightly surprised myself to see how much dead wood the Conservatives still have in the House (Sir David Davis is 77, the young Turk Sir Bernard Jenkin is 66)- and there are some very high quality people on the Lib Dem benches: Al Pinkerton, Calum Miller, Daisy Cooper to pick some names at random.
Reads like one slightly frustrated MP having a bit of a whinge and to fill column space, the Guardian has blown it up into a leadership crisis as newspapers are wont.
If the Press, including the BBC, were to make space for the LibDems instead of rushing to Farage every five minutes things might be different. I'm just waiting for Farage to be asked about his views on the Labour situation.
I have no idea what the actual stats look like, but my impression, when I think about it, is that the LDs get quite a few slots on BBC radio (no idea about telly; does anyone watch it?) but fail to convey the impression, which Reform does sadly convey, that they are talking about the opinions, actions and policies of the next government and the next government's opinions of the present one. This renders all they say a bit forgettable as neither they nor the listener thinks it adds to the sum of useful knowledge.
Listening to Reform matters because most of us want to know how the 60-70% who want them beaten will do it. We already know that the LDs seriously contesting about 100 seats is part of the plan. In the other 530 GB seats they tend to get in the way. That's politics.
Ed Davey was on the Sunday Kuenssberg show yesterday.
I rarely comment on Ed Davey, not least because I do respect the views of some Lib Dems on here, but I just do not see him as his supporters do
He speaks about the EU with devotion and the care sector, which I understand with his own family problems, but he just comes over a bit 'meh' and his clowning around does not do anything for me
I see the Lib Dems as a southern English 'Waitrose' party and whilst they should do well in May I do not know where the money is coming from for their policies, not least because they seem to want to hand 5 billion to WASPI women but as per Davey yesterday, insist on immediate increases in defence spending
Did you miss the LD proposal to issue War Bonds?
No - I did listen to that but it's just more borrowing under a different name
Well there are only 3 available options - (1) borrow more, (2) cut spending, and (3) raise taxes. Only (1) is politically acceptable.
Borrowing more is not possible as our credit card is maxed out
Cutting spending is essential, or more specifically redirect spending into defence from reinstating the 2 child cap and end the triple lock amomgst choices
There is always a choice but not heaping more debt onto our grandchildren
Health spending is on an inexorable upward trajectory, given an ageing population and the rising cost of diagnosis, medication and surgery. Social care cost is on an upward trajectory for related reasons, as are pension costs. The future costs of pensions could be reduced by scrapping the triple lock, but that’s avoiding some extra spending, not cutting it. At the moment, welfare spending excluding pensions is also rising, and while not all of that appears justified, even levelling off the increase would be an heroic achievement by government. Education spending isn’t easily going to be cut, given existing underfunding and the backlog of capital investment and repairs in schools. Local government is already cut to the bone and struggling to fulfil even its statutory responsibilities, with a string of councils going bankrupt. Defence spending clearly needs to increase. Aid spending has already been cut (and shouldn’t have been).
Where, Big G, are these cuts of yours going to come from?
Firstly means test the state pension so that it provides the safety net for pensioners, also consider similar in the NHS
Not paying WASPI women, reinstate the 2 child cap, incentivise all the milionaires and non doms to return with their taxes, and use AI
Now, these are controversial but what is certain we cannot go on as we are
Sadly the gov is uturning on Waspi, one of their initially good decisions.
They are re-looking at it. Hopefully they won’t u-turn on it and stand firm against the entitled Boomers.
Of historic wrongs that need righting, paying wrongly convicted/imprisoned postmasters should be top of the list. Paying a bunch of greedy, lazy, entitled women who couldn't be arsed to plan for their retirement properly or keep up to date with the news should be right at the bottom.
Until very recently, "experience in one of the Great Offices" was pretty much the first line in the Person Spec to be a mid-term replacement PM.
On the basis, the shortlist ought to be Cooper, Lammy, Reeves, Mahmood, Rayner at a pinch. Not even Reeves can imagine that she has a chance, but it's striking that neither Cooper or Lammy are mentioned. Not necessarily shocking, but striking.
But paraphrasing a fictional Chief Whip, who is up to the job? You can never tell, unless you suck it and see.
Problem is all of them have been found either wanting (or in the case of Mahmood implementing things that are utterly toxic to the people likely to be voting)
Cooper I also wonder if she wants it - Ed couldn't keep his current very well paid job if she was PM..
For Kemi, Davey and Starmer, the biggest defence against being replaced is the paucity of obviously better replacements.
Which says a lot about the state of politics.
Burnham was/is a rather mild threat, as these things go.
I think you misunderstand the Lib Dems here. Davey is very much respected by his Parliamentary party, even while they are a little frustrated with the polls- he just led them to the most significant result for the party in over a century. Davey has a good working relationship with colleagues, notably Daisy Cooper, who is widely spoken of as his potential successor.
What would probably cause Ed to leave office early is if the health of his wife and or son were to take a turn for the worse. For the time being there is no more than normal anti leader muttering in the party and little enough amongst the MPs. He has solved some major internal problems, got 72 MPs elected and is on the brink of further local government gains. If he chose to stand down before the next election, he would not go until long after the locals this year- once again subject to the health of his family. I have been with Ed in public and there is no doubt that people like him- relatable, intelligent and a good guy... Not what we can say of every party leader in our country. When the time does come, the Lib Dems have a clutch of very bright young new MPs- quite a contrast to the Tory benches indeed I was slightly surprised myself to see how much dead wood the Conservatives still have in the House (Sir David Davis is 77, the young Turk Sir Bernard Jenkin is 66)- and there are some very high quality people on the Lib Dem benches: Al Pinkerton, Calum Miller, Daisy Cooper to pick some names at random.
Reads like one slightly frustrated MP having a bit of a whinge and to fill column space, the Guardian has blown it up into a leadership crisis as newspapers are wont.
If the Press, including the BBC, were to make space for the LibDems instead of rushing to Farage every five minutes things might be different. I'm just waiting for Farage to be asked about his views on the Labour situation.
I have no idea what the actual stats look like, but my impression, when I think about it, is that the LDs get quite a few slots on BBC radio (no idea about telly; does anyone watch it?) but fail to convey the impression, which Reform does sadly convey, that they are talking about the opinions, actions and policies of the next government and the next government's opinions of the present one. This renders all they say a bit forgettable as neither they nor the listener thinks it adds to the sum of useful knowledge.
Listening to Reform matters because most of us want to know how the 60-70% who want them beaten will do it. We already know that the LDs seriously contesting about 100 seats is part of the plan. In the other 530 GB seats they tend to get in the way. That's politics.
Ed Davey was on the Sunday Kuenssberg show yesterday.
I rarely comment on Ed Davey, not least because I do respect the views of some Lib Dems on here, but I just do not see him as his supporters do
He speaks about the EU with devotion and the care sector, which I understand with his own family problems, but he just comes over a bit 'meh' and his clowning around does not do anything for me
I see the Lib Dems as a southern English 'Waitrose' party and whilst they should do well in May I do not know where the money is coming from for their policies, not least because they seem to want to hand 5 billion to WASPI women but as per Davey yesterday, insist on immediate increases in defence spending
Did you miss the LD proposal to issue War Bonds?
No - I did listen to that but it's just more borrowing under a different name
Well there are only 3 available options - (1) borrow more, (2) cut spending, and (3) raise taxes. Only (1) is politically acceptable.
Borrowing more is not possible as our credit card is maxed out
Cutting spending is essential, or more specifically redirect spending into defence from reinstating the 2 child cap and end the triple lock amomgst choices
There is always a choice but not heaping more debt onto our grandchildren
Health spending is on an inexorable upward trajectory, given an ageing population and the rising cost of diagnosis, medication and surgery. Social care cost is on an upward trajectory for related reasons, as are pension costs. The future costs of pensions could be reduced by scrapping the triple lock, but that’s avoiding some extra spending, not cutting it. At the moment, welfare spending excluding pensions is also rising, and while not all of that appears justified, even levelling off the increase would be an heroic achievement by government. Education spending isn’t easily going to be cut, given existing underfunding and the backlog of capital investment and repairs in schools. Local government is already cut to the bone and struggling to fulfil even its statutory responsibilities, with a string of councils going bankrupt. Defence spending clearly needs to increase. Aid spending has already been cut (and shouldn’t have been).
Where, Big G, are these cuts of yours going to come from?
Firstly means test the state pension so that it provides the safety net for pensioners, also consider similar in the NHS
Not paying WASPI women, reinstate the 2 child cap, incentivise all the milionaires and non doms to return with their taxes, and use AI
Now, these are controversial but what is certain we cannot go on as we are
Sadly the gov is uturning on Waspi, one of their initially good decisions.
They are re-looking at it. Hopefully they won’t u-turn on it and stand firm against the entitled Boomers.
Of historic wrongs that need righting, paying wrongly convicted/imprisoned postmasters should be top of the list. Paying a bunch of greedy, lazy, entitled women who couldn't be arsed to plan for their retirement properly or keep up to date with the news should be right at the bottom.
Couldn’t agree more, I’d also add the victims of the infected blood scandal need recompense too.
So let me get this straight. Vote Reform because those awful people ruined the country. Meet the new team, it's those awful people who ruined the country!
It opens a whole new world for her rid of the worst aspects of Jenrick and Braverman
Even better. Not only has she got rid of them but Farage seems determined to give them Offices of Great State opposition speaking roles. So they will be on TV a lot reminding everyone what UK Trumpland will be like.
Braverman running UK ICE is enough to give anyone nightmares frankly.
There is a lot of talk about a UK version of ICE. Like so much of the discussion about Trump/USA and Farage/UK its overblown. For one thing any version of UKICE would not be armed. Although the recent deaths have been horrific, its not in a vacuum. How many people have been shot dead by US police officers in the last month, for instance?
Is there anything stopping Reform creating an armed ICE? Culturally it would make many feel queasy at the un-Britishness of it all, but Reform's contention is that British culture is utterly depraved anyway and needs to be destroyed and rebuilt from the ground up with the US as the model.
Has a more odious, valueless dullard ever disgraced The First Lordship of the Treasury?
He makes Boris look brave, he makes TMay look charismatic, he makes Brown look stellar, he makes Cameron look wise and insightful, he makes Liz Truss look sane, and he makes Rishi Sunak look tall
Starmer was also a QC before becoming an MP and was a top lawyer and barrister, much like Rishi was an investment banker at Goldman Sachs and ran a hedge fudge.
Just goes to show that having a brilliant career outside politics does not automatically mean you will make a great leader and be a brilliant politician if you change careers and decide you might fancy being PM with no real ideological conviction and dynamism to go with it
I'm going to say something controversial here, but I think people who build a successful career outside of politics first are invariably bad politicians. This is because politics is actually extremely difficult to do well and if you've not been practicing at it ever since you were a spotty undergrad running to be JCR Treasurer or a young trade union activist climbing the union ladder then you will probably fuck things up.
Like Mark Carney ? "Invariably" overstates it.
Carney is a good counterexample, yes. Although he is perhaps sui generis.
Mitt Romey; Arnold Schwarzenegger ?
It's different in the US. The party machines are much weaker and individual candidates can build big teams of professional political operators to compensate for their own lack of political experience. I would imagine Canada's Westminster model of politics would make it more similar to the UK so Carney is more of an outlier. But he is a remarkable man in many respects. His political ambitions were well know even before he got the BOE role.
Michael Heseltine was a very successful businessman...
Heseltine was president of the Oxford Union and a Conservative activist from an early age, who studied PPE and first stood for election 5 years after leaving Oxford!
It opens a whole new world for her rid of the worst aspects of Jenrick and Braverman
Even better. Not only has she got rid of them but Farage seems determined to give them Offices of Great State opposition speaking roles. So they will be on TV a lot reminding everyone what UK Trumpland will be like.
Braverman running UK ICE is enough to give anyone nightmares frankly.
There is a lot of talk about a UK version of ICE. Like so much of the discussion about Trump/USA and Farage/UK its overblown. For one thing any version of UKICE would not be armed. Although the recent deaths have been horrific, its not in a vacuum. How many people have been shot dead by US police officers in the last month, for instance?
Is there anything stopping Reform creating an armed ICE? Culturally it would make many feel queasy at the un-Britishness of it all, but Reform's contention is that British culture is utterly depraved anyway and needs to be destroyed and rebuilt from the ground up with the US as the model.
New Immigration rules for the US (Hat tip: Private Eye)
Wonderful news about Braverman, always repulsed me and so good riddance and hopefully Farage's May ultimatum might help this cleansing process wrap up shortly and we can all move on
I'm resigned to a coalition of lefties ultimately winning power in 2029 and not delivering what the country needs, so the detoxifcation of the Tories now and a return to moderate one nationism has to be the way forward long term and especially once Farage fails to deliver at GE2029 and proves a busted flush.
So let me get this straight. Vote Reform because those awful people ruined the country. Meet the new team, it's those awful people who ruined the country!
They're getting the band back together. They're on a mission from God!
So let me get this straight. Vote Reform because those awful people ruined the country. Meet the new team, it's those awful people who ruined the country!
This statement from Braverman stands out for me: "Why has this happened? Because over the last decade, defence spending has been hollowed out. Our armed forces stand at the smallest number in 200 years. Our equipment is inadequate. Our aircraft carriers don’t even have enough aircraft or destroyers. Our resilience is depleted. We can’t even defend ourselves. What kind of country is that?"
And who was in charge for almost all of that decade? Her shamelessness is quite remarkable.
I think this defection probably hurts Reform (and helps the Tories) more than the Jenrick one because it isn't in any way a surprise. In fact it feels almost felt inevitable - Reform is clearly the place for nasty Tories to now hang out. I'm still not sure the country wants to elect nasty Tories.
Has a more odious, valueless dullard ever disgraced The First Lordship of the Treasury?
He makes Boris look brave, he makes TMay look charismatic, he makes Brown look stellar, he makes Cameron look wise and insightful, he makes Liz Truss look sane, and he makes Rishi Sunak look tall
Starmer was also a QC before becoming an MP and was a top lawyer and barrister, much like Rishi was an investment banker at Goldman Sachs and ran a hedge fudge.
Just goes to show that having a brilliant career outside politics does not automatically mean you will make a great leader and be a brilliant politician if you change careers and decide you might fancy being PM with no real ideological conviction and dynamism to go with it
I'm going to say something controversial here, but I think people who build a successful career outside of politics first are invariably bad politicians. This is because politics is actually extremely difficult to do well and if you've not been practicing at it ever since you were a spotty undergrad running to be JCR Treasurer or a young trade union activist climbing the union ladder then you will probably fuck things up.
Like Mark Carney ? "Invariably" overstates it.
Carney is a good counterexample, yes. Although he is perhaps sui generis.
Mitt Romey; Arnold Schwarzenegger ?
It's different in the US. The party machines are much weaker and individual candidates can build big teams of professional political operators to compensate for their own lack of political experience. I would imagine Canada's Westminster model of politics would make it more similar to the UK so Carney is more of an outlier. But he is a remarkable man in many respects. His political ambitions were well know even before he got the BOE role.
Michael Heseltine was a very successful businessman...
Heseltine was president of the Oxford Union and a Conservative activist from an early age, who studied PPE and first stood for election 5 years after leaving Oxford!
Heseltine stood for election in order to escape national service. Being an Oxford man, he'd not thought of bone spurs.
The devil will be in the detail but a freeze and a cap at £250 has been mooted
There’s also been a noticeable well funded lobbying campaign, with appearances on various news shows, from the campaigners against ground rents.
What’s the real issue here and the implications of it if it happens ?
Is it just people with buyers regret thinking they are victims or is there something more to it ?
Means rich land owners/builders will not be able to grift people who buy a house on a lease and these feckers then keep ramping up the lease cost. Luckily in Scotland it was done away with and eth only one I know of is revcent builds on MOD land. They have leases and they can up them any time they like, why anyone would buy a leasehold is crazy.
So let me get this straight. Vote Reform because those awful people ruined the country. Meet the new team, it's those awful people who ruined the country!
This statement from Braverman stands out for me: "Why has this happened? Because over the last decade, defence spending has been hollowed out. Our armed forces stand at the smallest number in 200 years. Our equipment is inadequate. Our aircraft carriers don’t even have enough aircraft or destroyers. Our resilience is depleted. We can’t even defend ourselves. What kind of country is that?"
One that you bequeathed to the current government.
Wonderful news about Braverman, always repulsed me and so good riddance and hopefully Farage's May ultimatum might help this cleansing process wrap up shortly and we can all move on
I'm resigned to a coalition of lefties ultimately winning power in 2029 and not delivering what the country needs, so the detoxifcation of the Tories now and a return to moderate one nationism has to be the way forward long term and especially once Farage fails to deliver at GE2029 and proves a busted flush.
As one of those lefties I could certainly live with that future - indeed I would look on it with some relief!
Until very recently, "experience in one of the Great Offices" was pretty much the first line in the Person Spec to be a mid-term replacement PM.
On the basis, the shortlist ought to be Cooper, Lammy, Reeves, Mahmood, Rayner at a pinch. Not even Reeves can imagine that she has a chance, but it's striking that neither Cooper or Lammy are mentioned. Not necessarily shocking, but striking.
But paraphrasing a fictional Chief Whip, who is up to the job? You can never tell, unless you suck it and see.
Problem is all of them have been found either wanting (or in the case of Mahmood implementing things that are utterly toxic to the people likely to be voting)
Cooper I also wonder if she wants it - Ed couldn't keep his current very well paid job if she was PM..
For Kemi, Davey and Starmer, the biggest defence against being replaced is the paucity of obviously better replacements.
Which says a lot about the state of politics.
Burnham was/is a rather mild threat, as these things go.
I think you misunderstand the Lib Dems here. Davey is very much respected by his Parliamentary party, even while they are a little frustrated with the polls- he just led them to the most significant result for the party in over a century. Davey has a good working relationship with colleagues, notably Daisy Cooper, who is widely spoken of as his potential successor.
What would probably cause Ed to leave office early is if the health of his wife and or son were to take a turn for the worse. For the time being there is no more than normal anti leader muttering in the party and little enough amongst the MPs. He has solved some major internal problems, got 72 MPs elected and is on the brink of further local government gains. If he chose to stand down before the next election, he would not go until long after the locals this year- once again subject to the health of his family. I have been with Ed in public and there is no doubt that people like him- relatable, intelligent and a good guy... Not what we can say of every party leader in our country. When the time does come, the Lib Dems have a clutch of very bright young new MPs- quite a contrast to the Tory benches indeed I was slightly surprised myself to see how much dead wood the Conservatives still have in the House (Sir David Davis is 77, the young Turk Sir Bernard Jenkin is 66)- and there are some very high quality people on the Lib Dem benches: Al Pinkerton, Calum Miller, Daisy Cooper to pick some names at random.
Reads like one slightly frustrated MP having a bit of a whinge and to fill column space, the Guardian has blown it up into a leadership crisis as newspapers are wont.
If the Press, including the BBC, were to make space for the LibDems instead of rushing to Farage every five minutes things might be different. I'm just waiting for Farage to be asked about his views on the Labour situation.
I have no idea what the actual stats look like, but my impression, when I think about it, is that the LDs get quite a few slots on BBC radio (no idea about telly; does anyone watch it?) but fail to convey the impression, which Reform does sadly convey, that they are talking about the opinions, actions and policies of the next government and the next government's opinions of the present one. This renders all they say a bit forgettable as neither they nor the listener thinks it adds to the sum of useful knowledge.
Listening to Reform matters because most of us want to know how the 60-70% who want them beaten will do it. We already know that the LDs seriously contesting about 100 seats is part of the plan. In the other 530 GB seats they tend to get in the way. That's politics.
Ed Davey was on the Sunday Kuenssberg show yesterday.
I rarely comment on Ed Davey, not least because I do respect the views of some Lib Dems on here, but I just do not see him as his supporters do
He speaks about the EU with devotion and the care sector, which I understand with his own family problems, but he just comes over a bit 'meh' and his clowning around does not do anything for me
I see the Lib Dems as a southern English 'Waitrose' party and whilst they should do well in May I do not know where the money is coming from for their policies, not least because they seem to want to hand 5 billion to WASPI women but as per Davey yesterday, insist on immediate increases in defence spending
Did you miss the LD proposal to issue War Bonds?
No - I did listen to that but it's just more borrowing under a different name
Well there are only 3 available options - (1) borrow more, (2) cut spending, and (3) raise taxes. Only (1) is politically acceptable.
Liz Truss was right about the fourth option: growth.
But wrong to believe that spooking the gilt market was the best way to go about achieving it.
Until very recently, "experience in one of the Great Offices" was pretty much the first line in the Person Spec to be a mid-term replacement PM.
On the basis, the shortlist ought to be Cooper, Lammy, Reeves, Mahmood, Rayner at a pinch. Not even Reeves can imagine that she has a chance, but it's striking that neither Cooper or Lammy are mentioned. Not necessarily shocking, but striking.
But paraphrasing a fictional Chief Whip, who is up to the job? You can never tell, unless you suck it and see.
Problem is all of them have been found either wanting (or in the case of Mahmood implementing things that are utterly toxic to the people likely to be voting)
Cooper I also wonder if she wants it - Ed couldn't keep his current very well paid job if she was PM..
For Kemi, Davey and Starmer, the biggest defence against being replaced is the paucity of obviously better replacements.
Which says a lot about the state of politics.
Burnham was/is a rather mild threat, as these things go.
I think you misunderstand the Lib Dems here. Davey is very much respected by his Parliamentary party, even while they are a little frustrated with the polls- he just led them to the most significant result for the party in over a century. Davey has a good working relationship with colleagues, notably Daisy Cooper, who is widely spoken of as his potential successor.
What would probably cause Ed to leave office early is if the health of his wife and or son were to take a turn for the worse. For the time being there is no more than normal anti leader muttering in the party and little enough amongst the MPs. He has solved some major internal problems, got 72 MPs elected and is on the brink of further local government gains. If he chose to stand down before the next election, he would not go until long after the locals this year- once again subject to the health of his family. I have been with Ed in public and there is no doubt that people like him- relatable, intelligent and a good guy... Not what we can say of every party leader in our country. When the time does come, the Lib Dems have a clutch of very bright young new MPs- quite a contrast to the Tory benches indeed I was slightly surprised myself to see how much dead wood the Conservatives still have in the House (Sir David Davis is 77, the young Turk Sir Bernard Jenkin is 66)- and there are some very high quality people on the Lib Dem benches: Al Pinkerton, Calum Miller, Daisy Cooper to pick some names at random.
Reads like one slightly frustrated MP having a bit of a whinge and to fill column space, the Guardian has blown it up into a leadership crisis as newspapers are wont.
If the Press, including the BBC, were to make space for the LibDems instead of rushing to Farage every five minutes things might be different. I'm just waiting for Farage to be asked about his views on the Labour situation.
I have no idea what the actual stats look like, but my impression, when I think about it, is that the LDs get quite a few slots on BBC radio (no idea about telly; does anyone watch it?) but fail to convey the impression, which Reform does sadly convey, that they are talking about the opinions, actions and policies of the next government and the next government's opinions of the present one. This renders all they say a bit forgettable as neither they nor the listener thinks it adds to the sum of useful knowledge.
Listening to Reform matters because most of us want to know how the 60-70% who want them beaten will do it. We already know that the LDs seriously contesting about 100 seats is part of the plan. In the other 530 GB seats they tend to get in the way. That's politics.
Ed Davey was on the Sunday Kuenssberg show yesterday.
I rarely comment on Ed Davey, not least because I do respect the views of some Lib Dems on here, but I just do not see him as his supporters do
He speaks about the EU with devotion and the care sector, which I understand with his own family problems, but he just comes over a bit 'meh' and his clowning around does not do anything for me
I see the Lib Dems as a southern English 'Waitrose' party and whilst they should do well in May I do not know where the money is coming from for their policies, not least because they seem to want to hand 5 billion to WASPI women but as per Davey yesterday, insist on immediate increases in defence spending
Did you miss the LD proposal to issue War Bonds?
No - I did listen to that but it's just more borrowing under a different name
Well there are only 3 available options - (1) borrow more, (2) cut spending, and (3) raise taxes. Only (1) is politically acceptable.
Mental, 2 is the answer , lower taxes and encourage growth, otherwise it is IMF in the not too distant future.
So let me get this straight. Vote Reform because those awful people ruined the country. Meet the new team, it's those awful people who ruined the country!
This statement from Braverman stands out for me: "Why has this happened? Because over the last decade, defence spending has been hollowed out. Our armed forces stand at the smallest number in 200 years. Our equipment is inadequate. Our aircraft carriers don’t even have enough aircraft or destroyers. Our resilience is depleted. We can’t even defend ourselves. What kind of country is that?"
One that you bequeathed to the current government.
Ha! Nigelb - great minds think alike.
ETA or rather, I think you might have done something funny with block quotes.
Until very recently, "experience in one of the Great Offices" was pretty much the first line in the Person Spec to be a mid-term replacement PM.
On the basis, the shortlist ought to be Cooper, Lammy, Reeves, Mahmood, Rayner at a pinch. Not even Reeves can imagine that she has a chance, but it's striking that neither Cooper or Lammy are mentioned. Not necessarily shocking, but striking.
But paraphrasing a fictional Chief Whip, who is up to the job? You can never tell, unless you suck it and see.
Problem is all of them have been found either wanting (or in the case of Mahmood implementing things that are utterly toxic to the people likely to be voting)
Cooper I also wonder if she wants it - Ed couldn't keep his current very well paid job if she was PM..
For Kemi, Davey and Starmer, the biggest defence against being replaced is the paucity of obviously better replacements.
Which says a lot about the state of politics.
Burnham was/is a rather mild threat, as these things go.
I think you misunderstand the Lib Dems here. Davey is very much respected by his Parliamentary party, even while they are a little frustrated with the polls- he just led them to the most significant result for the party in over a century. Davey has a good working relationship with colleagues, notably Daisy Cooper, who is widely spoken of as his potential successor.
What would probably cause Ed to leave office early is if the health of his wife and or son were to take a turn for the worse. For the time being there is no more than normal anti leader muttering in the party and little enough amongst the MPs. He has solved some major internal problems, got 72 MPs elected and is on the brink of further local government gains. If he chose to stand down before the next election, he would not go until long after the locals this year- once again subject to the health of his family. I have been with Ed in public and there is no doubt that people like him- relatable, intelligent and a good guy... Not what we can say of every party leader in our country. When the time does come, the Lib Dems have a clutch of very bright young new MPs- quite a contrast to the Tory benches indeed I was slightly surprised myself to see how much dead wood the Conservatives still have in the House (Sir David Davis is 77, the young Turk Sir Bernard Jenkin is 66)- and there are some very high quality people on the Lib Dem benches: Al Pinkerton, Calum Miller, Daisy Cooper to pick some names at random.
Reads like one slightly frustrated MP having a bit of a whinge and to fill column space, the Guardian has blown it up into a leadership crisis as newspapers are wont.
If the Press, including the BBC, were to make space for the LibDems instead of rushing to Farage every five minutes things might be different. I'm just waiting for Farage to be asked about his views on the Labour situation.
I have no idea what the actual stats look like, but my impression, when I think about it, is that the LDs get quite a few slots on BBC radio (no idea about telly; does anyone watch it?) but fail to convey the impression, which Reform does sadly convey, that they are talking about the opinions, actions and policies of the next government and the next government's opinions of the present one. This renders all they say a bit forgettable as neither they nor the listener thinks it adds to the sum of useful knowledge.
Listening to Reform matters because most of us want to know how the 60-70% who want them beaten will do it. We already know that the LDs seriously contesting about 100 seats is part of the plan. In the other 530 GB seats they tend to get in the way. That's politics.
Ed Davey was on the Sunday Kuenssberg show yesterday.
I rarely comment on Ed Davey, not least because I do respect the views of some Lib Dems on here, but I just do not see him as his supporters do
He speaks about the EU with devotion and the care sector, which I understand with his own family problems, but he just comes over a bit 'meh' and his clowning around does not do anything for me
I see the Lib Dems as a southern English 'Waitrose' party and whilst they should do well in May I do not know where the money is coming from for their policies, not least because they seem to want to hand 5 billion to WASPI women but as per Davey yesterday, insist on immediate increases in defence spending
Did you miss the LD proposal to issue War Bonds?
No - I did listen to that but it's just more borrowing under a different name
Well there are only 3 available options - (1) borrow more, (2) cut spending, and (3) raise taxes. Only (1) is politically acceptable.
Borrowing more is not possible as our credit card is maxed out
Cutting spending is essential, or more specifically redirect spending into defence from reinstating the 2 child cap and end the triple lock amomgst choices
There is always a choice but not heaping more debt onto our grandchildren
Problem is (and I know I've asked this question before) where exactly can spending be cut?
should be simple to cut 10% off public spending , cut out lots of quangos, useless regulators , duplication , etc
The devil will be in the detail but a freeze and a cap at £250 has been mooted
There’s also been a noticeable well funded lobbying campaign, with appearances on various news shows, from the campaigners against ground rents.
What’s the real issue here and the implications of it if it happens ?
Is it just people with buyers regret thinking they are victims or is there something more to it ?
Means rich land owners/builders will not be able to grift people who buy a house on a lease and these feckers then keep ramping up the lease cost. Luckily in Scotland it was done away with and eth only one I know of is revcent builds on MOD land. They have leases and they can up them any time they like, why anyone would buy a leasehold is crazy.
I agree. I wouldn’t touch leasehold. However I get the issue with service charges. Especially for modern properties where people (mugs) buy an uncapped liability.
The govt should also be looking at Holiday Parks, as opposed to Park Himes.
But the major ground rent problem, doubling every ten years, seems to have been resolved.
Until very recently, "experience in one of the Great Offices" was pretty much the first line in the Person Spec to be a mid-term replacement PM.
On the basis, the shortlist ought to be Cooper, Lammy, Reeves, Mahmood, Rayner at a pinch. Not even Reeves can imagine that she has a chance, but it's striking that neither Cooper or Lammy are mentioned. Not necessarily shocking, but striking.
But paraphrasing a fictional Chief Whip, who is up to the job? You can never tell, unless you suck it and see.
Problem is all of them have been found either wanting (or in the case of Mahmood implementing things that are utterly toxic to the people likely to be voting)
Cooper I also wonder if she wants it - Ed couldn't keep his current very well paid job if she was PM..
For Kemi, Davey and Starmer, the biggest defence against being replaced is the paucity of obviously better replacements.
Which says a lot about the state of politics.
Burnham was/is a rather mild threat, as these things go.
I think you misunderstand the Lib Dems here. Davey is very much respected by his Parliamentary party, even while they are a little frustrated with the polls- he just led them to the most significant result for the party in over a century. Davey has a good working relationship with colleagues, notably Daisy Cooper, who is widely spoken of as his potential successor.
What would probably cause Ed to leave office early is if the health of his wife and or son were to take a turn for the worse. For the time being there is no more than normal anti leader muttering in the party and little enough amongst the MPs. He has solved some major internal problems, got 72 MPs elected and is on the brink of further local government gains. If he chose to stand down before the next election, he would not go until long after the locals this year- once again subject to the health of his family. I have been with Ed in public and there is no doubt that people like him- relatable, intelligent and a good guy... Not what we can say of every party leader in our country. When the time does come, the Lib Dems have a clutch of very bright young new MPs- quite a contrast to the Tory benches indeed I was slightly surprised myself to see how much dead wood the Conservatives still have in the House (Sir David Davis is 77, the young Turk Sir Bernard Jenkin is 66)- and there are some very high quality people on the Lib Dem benches: Al Pinkerton, Calum Miller, Daisy Cooper to pick some names at random.
Reads like one slightly frustrated MP having a bit of a whinge and to fill column space, the Guardian has blown it up into a leadership crisis as newspapers are wont.
If the Press, including the BBC, were to make space for the LibDems instead of rushing to Farage every five minutes things might be different. I'm just waiting for Farage to be asked about his views on the Labour situation.
I have no idea what the actual stats look like, but my impression, when I think about it, is that the LDs get quite a few slots on BBC radio (no idea about telly; does anyone watch it?) but fail to convey the impression, which Reform does sadly convey, that they are talking about the opinions, actions and policies of the next government and the next government's opinions of the present one. This renders all they say a bit forgettable as neither they nor the listener thinks it adds to the sum of useful knowledge.
Listening to Reform matters because most of us want to know how the 60-70% who want them beaten will do it. We already know that the LDs seriously contesting about 100 seats is part of the plan. In the other 530 GB seats they tend to get in the way. That's politics.
Ed Davey was on the Sunday Kuenssberg show yesterday.
I rarely comment on Ed Davey, not least because I do respect the views of some Lib Dems on here, but I just do not see him as his supporters do
He speaks about the EU with devotion and the care sector, which I understand with his own family problems, but he just comes over a bit 'meh' and his clowning around does not do anything for me
I see the Lib Dems as a southern English 'Waitrose' party and whilst they should do well in May I do not know where the money is coming from for their policies, not least because they seem to want to hand 5 billion to WASPI women but as per Davey yesterday, insist on immediate increases in defence spending
Did you miss the LD proposal to issue War Bonds?
No - I did listen to that but it's just more borrowing under a different name
Well there are only 3 available options - (1) borrow more, (2) cut spending, and (3) raise taxes. Only (1) is politically acceptable.
Borrowing more is not possible as our credit card is maxed out
Cutting spending is essential, or more specifically redirect spending into defence from reinstating the 2 child cap and end the triple lock amomgst choices
There is always a choice but not heaping more debt onto our grandchildren
Health spending is on an inexorable upward trajectory, given an ageing population and the rising cost of diagnosis, medication and surgery. Social care cost is on an upward trajectory for related reasons, as are pension costs. The future costs of pensions could be reduced by scrapping the triple lock, but that’s avoiding some extra spending, not cutting it. At the moment, welfare spending excluding pensions is also rising, and while not all of that appears justified, even levelling off the increase would be an heroic achievement by government. Education spending isn’t easily going to be cut, given existing underfunding and the backlog of capital investment and repairs in schools. Local government is already cut to the bone and struggling to fulfil even its statutory responsibilities, with a string of councils going bankrupt. Defence spending clearly needs to increase. Aid spending has already been cut (and shouldn’t have been).
Where, Big G, are these cuts of yours going to come from?
Firstly means test the state pension so that it provides the safety net for pensioners, also consider similar in the NHS
Not paying WASPI women, reinstate the 2 child cap, incentivise all the milionaires and non doms to return with their taxes, and use AI
Now, these are controversial but what is certain we cannot go on as we are
Ah yes “use AI” of course. That’s the magic bullet.
We could certainly save ourselves the PM's salary by employing an AI instead. It's vanishingly unlikely anyone would notice he'd become an actual robot, instead of just behaving like one.
The reaction of the Tories on here to prominent right wingers leaving the party sadly validates my view that the party is now just a bluer version of the Lib Dems, and incapable of forming a big enough tent to ever be electable again.
Until very recently, "experience in one of the Great Offices" was pretty much the first line in the Person Spec to be a mid-term replacement PM.
On the basis, the shortlist ought to be Cooper, Lammy, Reeves, Mahmood, Rayner at a pinch. Not even Reeves can imagine that she has a chance, but it's striking that neither Cooper or Lammy are mentioned. Not necessarily shocking, but striking.
But paraphrasing a fictional Chief Whip, who is up to the job? You can never tell, unless you suck it and see.
Problem is all of them have been found either wanting (or in the case of Mahmood implementing things that are utterly toxic to the people likely to be voting)
Cooper I also wonder if she wants it - Ed couldn't keep his current very well paid job if she was PM..
For Kemi, Davey and Starmer, the biggest defence against being replaced is the paucity of obviously better replacements.
Which says a lot about the state of politics.
Burnham was/is a rather mild threat, as these things go.
I think you misunderstand the Lib Dems here. Davey is very much respected by his Parliamentary party, even while they are a little frustrated with the polls- he just led them to the most significant result for the party in over a century. Davey has a good working relationship with colleagues, notably Daisy Cooper, who is widely spoken of as his potential successor.
What would probably cause Ed to leave office early is if the health of his wife and or son were to take a turn for the worse. For the time being there is no more than normal anti leader muttering in the party and little enough amongst the MPs. He has solved some major internal problems, got 72 MPs elected and is on the brink of further local government gains. If he chose to stand down before the next election, he would not go until long after the locals this year- once again subject to the health of his family. I have been with Ed in public and there is no doubt that people like him- relatable, intelligent and a good guy... Not what we can say of every party leader in our country. When the time does come, the Lib Dems have a clutch of very bright young new MPs- quite a contrast to the Tory benches indeed I was slightly surprised myself to see how much dead wood the Conservatives still have in the House (Sir David Davis is 77, the young Turk Sir Bernard Jenkin is 66)- and there are some very high quality people on the Lib Dem benches: Al Pinkerton, Calum Miller, Daisy Cooper to pick some names at random.
Reads like one slightly frustrated MP having a bit of a whinge and to fill column space, the Guardian has blown it up into a leadership crisis as newspapers are wont.
If the Press, including the BBC, were to make space for the LibDems instead of rushing to Farage every five minutes things might be different. I'm just waiting for Farage to be asked about his views on the Labour situation.
I have no idea what the actual stats look like, but my impression, when I think about it, is that the LDs get quite a few slots on BBC radio (no idea about telly; does anyone watch it?) but fail to convey the impression, which Reform does sadly convey, that they are talking about the opinions, actions and policies of the next government and the next government's opinions of the present one. This renders all they say a bit forgettable as neither they nor the listener thinks it adds to the sum of useful knowledge.
Listening to Reform matters because most of us want to know how the 60-70% who want them beaten will do it. We already know that the LDs seriously contesting about 100 seats is part of the plan. In the other 530 GB seats they tend to get in the way. That's politics.
Ed Davey was on the Sunday Kuenssberg show yesterday.
I rarely comment on Ed Davey, not least because I do respect the views of some Lib Dems on here, but I just do not see him as his supporters do
He speaks about the EU with devotion and the care sector, which I understand with his own family problems, but he just comes over a bit 'meh' and his clowning around does not do anything for me
I see the Lib Dems as a southern English 'Waitrose' party and whilst they should do well in May I do not know where the money is coming from for their policies, not least because they seem to want to hand 5 billion to WASPI women but as per Davey yesterday, insist on immediate increases in defence spending
Did you miss the LD proposal to issue War Bonds?
No - I did listen to that but it's just more borrowing under a different name
Well there are only 3 available options - (1) borrow more, (2) cut spending, and (3) raise taxes. Only (1) is politically acceptable.
Borrowing more is not possible as our credit card is maxed out
Cutting spending is essential, or more specifically redirect spending into defence from reinstating the 2 child cap and end the triple lock amomgst choices
There is always a choice but not heaping more debt onto our grandchildren
Health spending is on an inexorable upward trajectory, given an ageing population and the rising cost of diagnosis, medication and surgery. Social care cost is on an upward trajectory for related reasons, as are pension costs. The future costs of pensions could be reduced by scrapping the triple lock, but that’s avoiding some extra spending, not cutting it. At the moment, welfare spending excluding pensions is also rising, and while not all of that appears justified, even levelling off the increase would be an heroic achievement by government. Education spending isn’t easily going to be cut, given existing underfunding and the backlog of capital investment and repairs in schools. Local government is already cut to the bone and struggling to fulfil even its statutory responsibilities, with a string of councils going bankrupt. Defence spending clearly needs to increase. Aid spending has already been cut (and shouldn’t have been).
Where, Big G, are these cuts of yours going to come from?
Firstly means test the state pension so that it provides the safety net for pensioners, also consider similar in the NHS
Not paying WASPI women, reinstate the 2 child cap, incentivise all the milionaires and non doms to return with their taxes, and use AI
Now, these are controversial but what is certain we cannot go on as we are
Ah yes “use AI” of course. That’s the magic bullet.
Your response is sarcastic, of course, but I’d wager that, like email, AI as it impacts regular office jobs and the like will end up creating as much work as it eliminates
So let me get this straight. Vote Reform because those awful people ruined the country. Meet the new team, it's those awful people who ruined the country!
This statement from Braverman stands out for me: "Why has this happened? Because over the last decade, defence spending has been hollowed out. Our armed forces stand at the smallest number in 200 years. Our equipment is inadequate. Our aircraft carriers don’t even have enough aircraft or destroyers. Our resilience is depleted. We can’t even defend ourselves. What kind of country is that?"
One that you bequeathed to the current government.
Ha! Nigelb - great minds think alike.
ETA or rather, I think you might have done something funny with block quotes.
Yes, I messed them up and did my best to rectify in the brief edit window.
Until very recently, "experience in one of the Great Offices" was pretty much the first line in the Person Spec to be a mid-term replacement PM.
On the basis, the shortlist ought to be Cooper, Lammy, Reeves, Mahmood, Rayner at a pinch. Not even Reeves can imagine that she has a chance, but it's striking that neither Cooper or Lammy are mentioned. Not necessarily shocking, but striking.
But paraphrasing a fictional Chief Whip, who is up to the job? You can never tell, unless you suck it and see.
Problem is all of them have been found either wanting (or in the case of Mahmood implementing things that are utterly toxic to the people likely to be voting)
Cooper I also wonder if she wants it - Ed couldn't keep his current very well paid job if she was PM..
For Kemi, Davey and Starmer, the biggest defence against being replaced is the paucity of obviously better replacements.
Which says a lot about the state of politics.
Burnham was/is a rather mild threat, as these things go.
I think you misunderstand the Lib Dems here. Davey is very much respected by his Parliamentary party, even while they are a little frustrated with the polls- he just led them to the most significant result for the party in over a century. Davey has a good working relationship with colleagues, notably Daisy Cooper, who is widely spoken of as his potential successor.
What would probably cause Ed to leave office early is if the health of his wife and or son were to take a turn for the worse. For the time being there is no more than normal anti leader muttering in the party and little enough amongst the MPs. He has solved some major internal problems, got 72 MPs elected and is on the brink of further local government gains. If he chose to stand down before the next election, he would not go until long after the locals this year- once again subject to the health of his family. I have been with Ed in public and there is no doubt that people like him- relatable, intelligent and a good guy... Not what we can say of every party leader in our country. When the time does come, the Lib Dems have a clutch of very bright young new MPs- quite a contrast to the Tory benches indeed I was slightly surprised myself to see how much dead wood the Conservatives still have in the House (Sir David Davis is 77, the young Turk Sir Bernard Jenkin is 66)- and there are some very high quality people on the Lib Dem benches: Al Pinkerton, Calum Miller, Daisy Cooper to pick some names at random.
Reads like one slightly frustrated MP having a bit of a whinge and to fill column space, the Guardian has blown it up into a leadership crisis as newspapers are wont.
If the Press, including the BBC, were to make space for the LibDems instead of rushing to Farage every five minutes things might be different. I'm just waiting for Farage to be asked about his views on the Labour situation.
I have no idea what the actual stats look like, but my impression, when I think about it, is that the LDs get quite a few slots on BBC radio (no idea about telly; does anyone watch it?) but fail to convey the impression, which Reform does sadly convey, that they are talking about the opinions, actions and policies of the next government and the next government's opinions of the present one. This renders all they say a bit forgettable as neither they nor the listener thinks it adds to the sum of useful knowledge.
Listening to Reform matters because most of us want to know how the 60-70% who want them beaten will do it. We already know that the LDs seriously contesting about 100 seats is part of the plan. In the other 530 GB seats they tend to get in the way. That's politics.
Ed Davey was on the Sunday Kuenssberg show yesterday.
I rarely comment on Ed Davey, not least because I do respect the views of some Lib Dems on here, but I just do not see him as his supporters do
He speaks about the EU with devotion and the care sector, which I understand with his own family problems, but he just comes over a bit 'meh' and his clowning around does not do anything for me
I see the Lib Dems as a southern English 'Waitrose' party and whilst they should do well in May I do not know where the money is coming from for their policies, not least because they seem to want to hand 5 billion to WASPI women but as per Davey yesterday, insist on immediate increases in defence spending
I agree with you on Davey. He’s not a serious politician and reacts to events. Their policy on WASPI is a cynical vote grab from entitled boomers who are a victim of little more than their own entitlement.
They make these promises as they expect they will never have to put them into practise. That bit them when they went into govt with the Tories and tuition fees.
I also find it bizarre Lib Dem supporters seem to have discovered ‘patriotism’, only as a stick to beat Reform, when they would happily hand our sovereignty over to unelected EU bodies.
Hobby horse...neighhhhhhhhhhhh
I’ll talk about what I want. If you want to be one of Pavlov’s dogs crack on sunshine.
The reaction of the Tories on here to prominent right wingers leaving the party sadly validates my view that the party is now just a bluer version of the Lib Dems, and incapable of forming a big enough tent to ever be electable again.
Was it not Johnson that shrank the tent with his demand for loyalty to his bastardised Brexit deal (not that I necessarily blame him for that - he probably took the only possible action to break the impasse)?
A party that could once again accommodate e.g. a Ken Clarke will be far more electable than one that can accommodate e.g. a Jenrick.
The devil will be in the detail but a freeze and a cap at £250 has been mooted
There’s also been a noticeable well funded lobbying campaign, with appearances on various news shows, from the campaigners against ground rents.
What’s the real issue here and the implications of it if it happens ?
Is it just people with buyers regret thinking they are victims or is there something more to it ?
Leasehold properties have two components: ground rents and maintenance costs.
The maintenance costs are what they say: a charge for activities required to keep the property and its land in good order. They are charged periodically, say monthly, quarterly, whatever.
Ground rents are payments for the privilege of existing on the land. This is usually a nominal payment, paid yearly. It can be bought and sold.
The unscrupulous freeholder can keep ratcheting the ground rent skyward to and past the point of ridiculousness. So existing legislation exists to compulsorily convert the ground rent into a peppercorn rent. A peppercorn rent is a nominal amount of minimal financial value that exists solely to make the contract legal but is so small it's not demanded in practice.
I spent X thousand pounds to convert mine to a peppercorn rent and it took me about two years.
The proposed legislation would just cut-to-the-chase, but it does remove a guaranteed slice of income from the freeholder without recompense, so I'm not sure what to think about it.
Until very recently, "experience in one of the Great Offices" was pretty much the first line in the Person Spec to be a mid-term replacement PM.
On the basis, the shortlist ought to be Cooper, Lammy, Reeves, Mahmood, Rayner at a pinch. Not even Reeves can imagine that she has a chance, but it's striking that neither Cooper or Lammy are mentioned. Not necessarily shocking, but striking.
But paraphrasing a fictional Chief Whip, who is up to the job? You can never tell, unless you suck it and see.
Problem is all of them have been found either wanting (or in the case of Mahmood implementing things that are utterly toxic to the people likely to be voting)
Cooper I also wonder if she wants it - Ed couldn't keep his current very well paid job if she was PM..
For Kemi, Davey and Starmer, the biggest defence against being replaced is the paucity of obviously better replacements.
Which says a lot about the state of politics.
Burnham was/is a rather mild threat, as these things go.
I think you misunderstand the Lib Dems here. Davey is very much respected by his Parliamentary party, even while they are a little frustrated with the polls- he just led them to the most significant result for the party in over a century. Davey has a good working relationship with colleagues, notably Daisy Cooper, who is widely spoken of as his potential successor.
What would probably cause Ed to leave office early is if the health of his wife and or son were to take a turn for the worse. For the time being there is no more than normal anti leader muttering in the party and little enough amongst the MPs. He has solved some major internal problems, got 72 MPs elected and is on the brink of further local government gains. If he chose to stand down before the next election, he would not go until long after the locals this year- once again subject to the health of his family. I have been with Ed in public and there is no doubt that people like him- relatable, intelligent and a good guy... Not what we can say of every party leader in our country. When the time does come, the Lib Dems have a clutch of very bright young new MPs- quite a contrast to the Tory benches indeed I was slightly surprised myself to see how much dead wood the Conservatives still have in the House (Sir David Davis is 77, the young Turk Sir Bernard Jenkin is 66)- and there are some very high quality people on the Lib Dem benches: Al Pinkerton, Calum Miller, Daisy Cooper to pick some names at random.
Reads like one slightly frustrated MP having a bit of a whinge and to fill column space, the Guardian has blown it up into a leadership crisis as newspapers are wont.
If the Press, including the BBC, were to make space for the LibDems instead of rushing to Farage every five minutes things might be different. I'm just waiting for Farage to be asked about his views on the Labour situation.
I have no idea what the actual stats look like, but my impression, when I think about it, is that the LDs get quite a few slots on BBC radio (no idea about telly; does anyone watch it?) but fail to convey the impression, which Reform does sadly convey, that they are talking about the opinions, actions and policies of the next government and the next government's opinions of the present one. This renders all they say a bit forgettable as neither they nor the listener thinks it adds to the sum of useful knowledge.
Listening to Reform matters because most of us want to know how the 60-70% who want them beaten will do it. We already know that the LDs seriously contesting about 100 seats is part of the plan. In the other 530 GB seats they tend to get in the way. That's politics.
Ed Davey was on the Sunday Kuenssberg show yesterday.
I rarely comment on Ed Davey, not least because I do respect the views of some Lib Dems on here, but I just do not see him as his supporters do
He speaks about the EU with devotion and the care sector, which I understand with his own family problems, but he just comes over a bit 'meh' and his clowning around does not do anything for me
I see the Lib Dems as a southern English 'Waitrose' party and whilst they should do well in May I do not know where the money is coming from for their policies, not least because they seem to want to hand 5 billion to WASPI women but as per Davey yesterday, insist on immediate increases in defence spending
Did you miss the LD proposal to issue War Bonds?
No - I did listen to that but it's just more borrowing under a different name
Well there are only 3 available options - (1) borrow more, (2) cut spending, and (3) raise taxes. Only (1) is politically acceptable.
Borrowing more is not possible as our credit card is maxed out
Cutting spending is essential, or more specifically redirect spending into defence from reinstating the 2 child cap and end the triple lock amomgst choices
There is always a choice but not heaping more debt onto our grandchildren
Health spending is on an inexorable upward trajectory, given an ageing population and the rising cost of diagnosis, medication and surgery. Social care cost is on an upward trajectory for related reasons, as are pension costs. The future costs of pensions could be reduced by scrapping the triple lock, but that’s avoiding some extra spending, not cutting it. At the moment, welfare spending excluding pensions is also rising, and while not all of that appears justified, even levelling off the increase would be an heroic achievement by government. Education spending isn’t easily going to be cut, given existing underfunding and the backlog of capital investment and repairs in schools. Local government is already cut to the bone and struggling to fulfil even its statutory responsibilities, with a string of councils going bankrupt. Defence spending clearly needs to increase. Aid spending has already been cut (and shouldn’t have been).
Where, Big G, are these cuts of yours going to come from?
Firstly means test the state pension so that it provides the safety net for pensioners, also consider similar in the NHS
Not paying WASPI women, reinstate the 2 child cap, incentivise all the milionaires and non doms to return with their taxes, and use AI
Now, these are controversial but what is certain we cannot go on as we are
Ah yes “use AI” of course. That’s the magic bullet.
We could certainly save ourselves the PM's salary by employing an AI instead. It's vanishingly unlikely anyone would notice he'd become an actual robot, instead of just behaving like one.
I strongly suspect when the relevant papers eventually become declassified we will find that this particular cost saving has already been made. In partnership with Palantir, no doubt.
It opens a whole new world for her rid of the worst aspects of Jenrick and Braverman
Even better. Not only has she got rid of them but Farage seems determined to give them Offices of Great State opposition speaking roles. So they will be on TV a lot reminding everyone what UK Trumpland will be like.
Braverman running UK ICE is enough to give anyone nightmares frankly.
There is a lot of talk about a UK version of ICE. Like so much of the discussion about Trump/USA and Farage/UK its overblown. For one thing any version of UKICE would not be armed. Although the recent deaths have been horrific, its not in a vacuum. How many people have been shot dead by US police officers in the last month, for instance?
Is there anything stopping Reform creating an armed ICE? Culturally it would make many feel queasy at the un-Britishness of it all, but Reform's contention is that British culture is utterly depraved anyway and needs to be destroyed and rebuilt from the ground up with the US as the model.
I don’t think that's Reform's contention at all. It might be that of some of their online followers, but it mostly just appears to be an imaginary straw man created by Reform's opponents.
See all the way that you can't criticise the structure of the NHS without being accused of wanting the to move to American heathcare system, despite there being many systems used by other countries that have potential to be better than either the NHS or the American system.
The reaction of the Tories on here to prominent right wingers leaving the party sadly validates my view that the party is now just a bluer version of the Lib Dems, and incapable of forming a big enough tent to ever be electable again.
Was it not Johnson that shrank the tent with his demand for loyalty to his bastardised Brexit deal (not that I necessarily blame him for that - he probably took the only possible action to break the impasse)?
A party that could once again accommodate e.g. a Ken Clarke will be far more electable than one that can accommodate e.g. a Jenrick.
Boris attempted to follow The Donald's ruthless disregard for constitutional convention (and facts) but here, finally, the Supreme Court stopped him and the Cabinet wearied of him. Britain Trump indeed.
Comments
Another win for the Conservatives if so.
Or how about Braverman quits Reform?
https://www.jewishnews.co.uk/rael-braverman-quits-reform-uk-following-suella-criticism/
Really clearing the crap out of the party now.
Not sure why.
Braverman is utterly awful.
Not quite sure how these right wing Tories going Reform appeals to the Red Wall.
@DPJHodges
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8m
He really knows how to pick 'em...
So opportunity for Starmer and Kemi to win some of them back
As I have said before, Labour need to hammer home that this is the Trump Party and they will bring to UK the same shite that USA are enduring.
No-one likes spending cuts. All departments will squeal and say it can't be done. But it can.
The trick is to avoid the unintended consequences.
Where, Big G, are these cuts of yours going to come from?
Sam Freedman
@samfr.bsky.social
It's like watching a doctor remove all the infected organs and wondering if they'll be enough left to allow the uninfected patient to live.
https://bsky.app/profile/samfr.bsky.social/post/3mdda2adrmv2k
Politics is unusual in that the minions can vote to overthrow the boss- see the header. Or they can take their employment to a different boss with no penalty- see Suella. That requires a different skill set to normal bosses.
Part of SKS's problem is his tendency to treat MPs as employees. Accurate in terms of hierarchy, but it's not a simple as that.
Unless they start rising significantly in the polls, and soon, their future is as junior partner to Reform.
Braverman running UK ICE is enough to give anyone nightmares frankly.
The defenders of this think politicians and electorates elsewhere will not remember this in long term planning, so he can do as he likes no issue.
Not paying WASPI women, reinstate the 2 child cap, incentivise all the milionaires and non doms to return with their taxes, and use AI
Now, these are controversial but what is certain we cannot go on as we are
#NU24K (is that the hashtag?)
* More or less MAGA HQ on the internet at one point.
Hart recalls Braverman’s reaction upon being sacked in November 2023, claiming she launched a "ghastly 10-minute diatribe of vindictive and personal bile" while on loudspeaker. He notes that he and others in the room sat in "astonished silence, doing our best not to grimace, smile or give any indication of what we feel" as she spoke.
Hart details her 2022 resignation for leaking confidential information to backbencher Sir John Hayes, which he describes as being "put down to lazy misuse of the internal email system". He notes that the person who received the sensitive material by mistake was a friend of his who "rightly minded to ‘do the right thing’ by alerting the authorities".
Reflecting on Rishi Sunak's decision to reappoint her shortly after that breach, Hart writes, "Understandably, the PM is loath to lose her this soon, so we gloss it over, at least for now. Let’s hope she remembers".
Hart groups Braverman with a "band of Brexiters" whom he characterizes as "oblivious to the numerical realities of what they were demanding". He argues this cohort "knowingly made things so hard that what tiny chances we had of a fifth term were extinguished".
He recalls that Braverman tried to get the civil service to allow her to do a speeding awareness course on her own, rather than with others who had also been speeding, but was refused. And that her offered apology didn’t actually apologise.
He remembers how she put out a controversial op ed criticising police for their handling of Palestinian protests without clearing it with number ten.
So no real loss to the Tories….
There are now more members of Liz Truss' Cabinet in Nigel Farage's team than in Kemi Badenoch's team.
Gets Burnham out of the headlines.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-14898661/Reform-warns-wouldnt-Liz-Truss-Suella-Braverman-decided-leave-Tories-amid-concerns-damage-partys-image.html
Theories: Farage is putting pleasure before business.
Or Reform is a Bialystock and Bloom production.
How many times do we think Liz has asked to join?
I'm resigned to a coalition of lefties ultimately winning power in 2029 and not delivering what the country needs, so the detoxifcation of the Tories now and a return to moderate one nationism has to be the way forward long term and especially once Farage fails to deliver at GE2029 and proves a busted flush.
And who was in charge for almost all of that decade? Her shamelessness is quite remarkable.
I think this defection probably hurts Reform (and helps the Tories) more than the Jenrick one because it isn't in any way a surprise. In fact it feels almost felt inevitable - Reform is clearly the place for nasty Tories to now hang out. I'm still not sure the country wants to elect nasty Tories.
The ex-Prime Minister described the new club as ‘a strategic nexus for a global network of pro-growth leaders’
https://www.standard.co.uk/news/politics/liz-truss-mayfair-members-club-leconfield-house-neighbours-b1267909.html
That's easy for her to say!
ETA or rather, I think you might have done something funny with block quotes.
I agree. I wouldn’t touch leasehold. However I get the issue with service charges. Especially for modern properties where people (mugs) buy an uncapped liability.
The govt should also be looking at Holiday Parks, as opposed to Park Himes.
But the major ground rent problem, doubling every ten years, seems to have been resolved.
A party that could once again accommodate e.g. a Ken Clarke will be far more electable than one that can accommodate e.g. a Jenrick.
The maintenance costs are what they say: a charge for activities required to keep the property and its land in good order. They are charged periodically, say monthly, quarterly, whatever.
Ground rents are payments for the privilege of existing on the land. This is usually a nominal payment, paid yearly. It can be bought and sold.
The unscrupulous freeholder can keep ratcheting the ground rent skyward to and past the point of ridiculousness. So existing legislation exists to compulsorily convert the ground rent into a peppercorn rent. A peppercorn rent is a nominal amount of minimal financial value that exists solely to make the contract legal but is so small it's not demanded in practice.
I spent X thousand pounds to convert mine to a peppercorn rent and it took me about two years.
The proposed legislation would just cut-to-the-chase, but it does remove a guaranteed slice of income from the freeholder without recompense, so I'm not sure what to think about it.
Are there any more vile Tories to defect?
See all the way that you can't criticise the structure of the NHS without being accused of wanting the to move to American heathcare system, despite there being many systems used by other countries that have potential to be better than either the NHS or the American system.