A Streeting Named Desire – politicalbetting.com
A Streeting Named Desire – politicalbetting.com
In the 1990s the sign of an impending leadership contest was the installation of phone lines, these days it is being sent text messages/being added to WhatsApp groups.
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Young East Lothian footballers slammed for 'explicit and misogynistic' t-shirts
'This is very inappropriate for minors and raises serious concerns'
An East Lothian youth football club has branded a photo of its players 'unacceptable'. The image, which was shared on Instagram, shows members of the Musselburgh Windsor team while they were taking part in a tournament in Barcelona for six days over the Easter holidays.
The group are posing in t-shirts with slogans such as 'I love big t**s' and 'I love drunk girls'. The teenagers, aged 14-15, wore other tops including 'I love doggy style' and 'I love MILFS'.
https://www.edinburghlive.co.uk/news/edinburgh-news/young-east-lothian-footballers-slammed-33862976
Superdry co-founder James Holder has been convicted of rape.
Here’s a thought that made a political consultant turn pale when I suggested it to him.
When you make a promise to subsidise the *production* of something - such as Wh of zero emission power for vehicles (batteries without naming the tech) - you do it via a kind of government security.
So if you produce nothing, you get no return. If you produce something, you get a subsidy per Watt Hour, scaled according to U.K. content.
Why make it a government security? - well, it makes changing/abolishing it a default. Tying the hands of your successors.
And they would cost next to nothing to issue *now* - but 10 years down the line the money becomes due.
The ultimate cheap boiled sweet of government finance.
We could call it the “Metallurgical Research Corporation”
So who is the unity candidate? Can't be those intending to knife Starmer.
Falling down in the Strangers Bar
Starmer stretched the political coalition that is the Labour Party until it snapped.
A cleverer solution would have been a major re-work that used taxation (via taxable benefits) to give to the poorest pensioners, while getting it back from the richer ones. You could pitch that to the left and right.
And so on. It’s about method, framing and groups effected.
The leader survived but the damage was done.
Perhaps that would lead you to conclude that this Labour government is doomed, and it's not an unreasonable assessment.
Andrew Learmonth
@andrewlearmonth
EXC: New mega-poll predicts SNP majority as Labour falls to fourth behind Reform and Greens. Tories to come sixth.
https://x.com/andrewlearmonth/status/2050464039029895196?s=20
This is fun. Iain Dale allowing one of Trump's Reverends to dig himself in deeper and deeper over the King Charles speech ('he should be kissing babies'). This is Mark Burns - not a faith adviser but a church founder then televangelist who reached Congress. It's wrapped with a bit of commentary at the end, but is nearly all verbatim.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y0tde01tAxk
It's not quite as much fun as Piers Morgan giving Russell Brand 2 minutes of silence to embarrass himself, though.
In Labour land he is seen as "right wing".
In other news I’ve finally resolved a debate which has vexed PB for decades, and led to much acrimony and bitterness. Yes. I actually have an answer to THE question: which is better, London or Kigali?
It’s…. London. The British capital. Kigali has quite clean roundabouts and hillier areas, but London edges it in architecture, history, wealth, beauty, culture, parks, palaces, and supermarkets. It’s actually not even close
The key is coming into office with a programme and sticking to that programme - that was the lesson of both Heath after 1970 and Thatcher in 1979. The former backtracked when it all got too difficult while the latter stuck to her guns even when, for example in the autumn of 1981, it all looked very bad for her.
In truth, neither Blair in 1997 nor Starmer in 2024 came into office with a radical programme (unlike Attlee for example in 1945 or even Campbell-Bannerman in 1906) or indeed much idea of how to significantly transform Britain for the better.
Johnson in 2019 talked a radical plan but we'll never know if such a plan really existed.
MY view on Starmer is similar to that of Mark Gatiss except I'm disappointed in how he's thrown away the political capital of a huge majority but the truth was (I suspect) for all the talk of "change", he and his team had no real idea what that "change" was and the timidity that caused has bedevilled everything. To be honest, given where they are now, had they decided to raise income tax or VAT, break their manifesto pledge and face the vitriol on July 5th 2024, I doubt they'd be in a worse state politically now and possibly a better one financially.
(Though I'm not sure I would agree about a Blair lack of programme, but taking it as so for purposes of argument.)
Rayner would be more comfortable as Labour leader in opposition, I feel. Wes, meanwhile, knows it is now or never. He probably won't win his seat unless he turns things around...
majority it might be one of a new PM Streeting's first acts to refuse indyref2 and tell Swinney to sod off
Tr: it’s all over the place.
So the next best is to be elected on a broad platform, as Starmer was, and then within a few weeks announce that you have now examined the state of things from within government blah blah, and here is the programme, including all the issues voters don't vote for. You then have five years nearly to prove your worth. But the essential is that a small group of people have done the work before the election and had the rare ability to shut up about it.
If Streeting has the 81 MPs (and it seems he does) he can seize the crown. Yes his constituency is an issue but MPs will rightly believe that can be fixed in the next 3 years whereas Labour is drowning NOW
I am prepared to look a total idiot on May 8
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2yh3dlMFtoo
I think SNP will be just shy of a majority.
Pick Miliband and the polls won't improve from Starmer. What then?
Michael Weiss
@michaeldweiss
The NDAA stipulates that any reduction of U.S. troops below 76,000 in Europe for more than 45 days requires congressional oversight. This reduction would still leave about 80,000 in theatre; however, the removal of any American hardware over $500,000 or any handover of facilities still triggers oversight. I’m sure Hegseth has thought this one through...
https://x.com/michaeldweiss/status/2050354417225056298
I think it has some relevance in that it would hang over his premiership as a constant question of whether he can save them if he cannot save himself.
As has been noted it depends if a Gazan Indy was a flash in the pan.
What do they do with their time?
Since none of the alternatives for PM seem to have a scooby about what to do differently (with the possible exception of Burnham) then the result would likely be the same as under Sunak. Labour MPs minds will quickly turn to how they are going to earn a living after the inevitable election defeat.
I feel like very often on PB.com there are two different discussions going on. There's a discussion about what the optimal course of action might be. And then there's a discussion about what the most likely course of action is thought to be.
These are very different things.
I'd suggest that the optimal course of action for Labour would be to come up with a plan for fixing the country's ills, and then choose the person best able to implement that plan.
My expectation is that they will end up choosing a new PM on the basis of that person not being various other people - not a friend of Mandelson, not being investigated by HMRC, not being ineligible for the contest, etc - and on providing gentle reassurance that everything is going to be okay. Miliband is the likely comfort blanket.
Opinium
@OpiniumResearch
·
1h
🚨 Latest Opinium @ObserverUK poll 🚨
Key local issues in England ahead of next week are:
🏥Local NHS services (39%)
🚗Road maintenance & potholes (37%)
👮Crime & anti-social behaviour (30%)
💸Council tax rates (29%)
https://x.com/OpiniumResearch/status/2050482925461016872
In any case, as we saw with Brexit, the question is not what concerns voters but what determines their votes.
In any case, as we saw with Brexit, the question is not what concerns voters but what determines their votes.
They could have named schools, social care, bin collections, planning, housing, parks, buses (in some areas), street cleaning.
So the decision who to vote for will by necessity be based on other things.
If you've got Wes doing a Hezza and trying to seize the crown I think there will be a reaction from the soft-left and those in the cabinet seeking "unity" to find another candidate. I don't think Rayner is that unity candidate, but someone like Miliband could be (and potentially bring Rayner into the tent and get Burnham back into the Commons and into a high profile job). He is popular with members and can be pitched as palatable to all wings of the party. He also has the profile in a way that someone like Healey doesn't. Cooper would be another possible unity candidate, but she has been noticeably poor in her roles in government (not that this has stopped others before).
The bigger question is this. How do politicians do anything about the first three issues without upsetting people for who the fourth one is key?
The political triumph of Reform is to convince a winning coalition of voters that there is so much waste and woke that it's possible to cut taxes and make people's surroundings better at the same time.
The political failure of Reform is that... there isn't really.
Ignoring the obvious answer that Congress does that.
Who blame Trump for rising US gas prices:
Dems - 95%
Indies - 82%
Republicans - 55%
(Actually, who reads the Romford Recorder these days, apart from me?)
....increase from 10% last year to 5% this year.
I'm not sure that this is such a vote winner, however.
However, she did have to go, because effectively she was told by the Cabinet Secretary to reverse the Corporation Tax freeze or the business of Government would stop. It was effectively a threat to strike.
Once she'd been forced to reverse such a key step so publicly, she couldn't carry on long term. She was a prisoner in the castle not the ruler of the castle.
It's a very peculiar thing to demand - cancelling the CT raise was not a massively costly part of the overall budget and clearly would have had beneficial dynamic impacts later on (though we can argue about their level). I think it was pretty much an outright order from the USA, who had been campaigning for years to get other countries to increase their corporate tax levels so it could repatriate companies. Biden himself publicly attacked the budget.
It's no surprise under the circumstances that Truss has a lifelong antipathy toward the blob.
Reform are shouting about Starmer, which is another irrelevance. It's only the Greens who are doing anything.
His line was that 'Trump won't be around forever', so we should just grin and bear it.
I don't think Americans quite realise to what extent the damage Trump has done is likely to continue once he has gone.
It's also why the idea of PCCs being judged on their records was always nonsense.
Hugo Gye
@HugoGye
·
1h
NEW POLL
Reform holds on to 9pt lead ahead of Labour/Tory/Green cluster
Ref 28%
Lab 19%
Con 17%
Grn 16%
LD 12%
@BMGResearch
for
@theipaper
, 29-30 April