Follow The “Blue Labour” strategy still being promoted by some on Labour right is premised on being able to win social conservatives while holding on to social liberals.
Failure state for this strategy is failing to win social cons while alienating social liberals. Here is a map of that failure state:
In 2024 Labour won by being just acceptable enough to just enough people. Now they are unacceptable, for different reasons, to just enough people almost everywhere.
Follow The “Blue Labour” strategy still being promoted by some on Labour right is premised on being able to win social conservatives while holding on to social liberals.
Failure state for this strategy is failing to win social cons while alienating social liberals. Here is a map of that failure state:
Joshua Kim won the sixth seat at Blaenau Gwent Caerffili Rhymni for Reform but missed the count because he was doing a shift as a supply teacher. Kim tells the BBC he was "shellshocked" and "did not think for one minute" he would be elected, appearing "distraught, utterly shocked and confused". The supply teacher says he hadn’t told his pupils about his candidacy and wasn’t at the count because it would have meant losing a day’s pay.
The accompanying photo on him on the bbc website, you might confuse him for a pupil rather than a teacher.
If you're "distraught" to be elected you have to question why you'd want to ave your name put forward in the first place.
Shocked, surprised, regretful I could understand, but distraught?
To be fair, that is the journalist saying they appear that and it could be distraught they missed the announcement.
But I do find the idea of these paper candidates who then immediately go sorry not for me I am off on holiday really weird.
Follow The “Blue Labour” strategy still being promoted by some on Labour right is premised on being able to win social conservatives while holding on to social liberals.
Failure state for this strategy is failing to win social cons while alienating social liberals. Here is a map of that failure state:
In 2024 Labour won by being just acceptable enough to just enough people. Now they are unacceptable, for different reasons, to just enough people almost everywhere.
Follow The “Blue Labour” strategy still being promoted by some on Labour right is premised on being able to win social conservatives while holding on to social liberals.
Failure state for this strategy is failing to win social cons while alienating social liberals. Here is a map of that failure state:
Whatever we think about SKS and the current woes of the Labour Party, does anyone really think Farage will be the PM after the next GE? Surely the heat of a GE campaign will expose Farage and his blackshirts as brainless populists who have no idea on how to solve the country’s problems. The UK under Farage will be a shit show to beat any shit show this country has seen. Fortunately, a Reform government is unlikely to happen.
I’d hope they won’t be in government and become exposed by questioning, but I’d say the exact same thing about the Greens who, in my view, are epically clueless in much the opposite direction.
It is however three years out, in all likelihood, to the next GE and we live in a world where next week might seem a long way off by the time we get there.
Trump/Iran/Ukraine ( Taiwan?). Does AI crash the markets and lead to a big recession?. Does Reform implode because Nigel can’t get on with his underlings? Do inherent tensions within the Green Party and its voters render it asunder? Will electoral pacts between parties come to the fore as an FPTP GE approaches and five parties ( six in Scotland and Wales) are all 20% +/-? What if there’s incumbent voter remorse but now against Plaid and the SNP?
There’s a lot to happen yet.
Northern Ireland has a 5-party system (plus two smaller ones with the TUV and PBP). They have STV for most elections, so no pacts needed, but they’ve been around long enough that they often organise pacts on a constituency basis. I’m not certain GB politics has reached that level of maturity, but maybe it can work. PC, the LibDems and Greens have done small scale pacts before. Reform chose to step down in a bunch of seats to help the Tories, but their ambitions and egos are bigger now, so I doubt they’ll be up for any similar arrangement. Labour and the Tories have always considered themselves above the machinations of the smaller parties; I doubt they’re willing yet to admit that they’re the same size as those other parties now!
Follow The “Blue Labour” strategy still being promoted by some on Labour right is premised on being able to win social conservatives while holding on to social liberals.
Failure state for this strategy is failing to win social cons while alienating social liberals. Here is a map of that failure state:
It’s important that we reflect and respond to these results - we haven’t done enough to offer people hope for the future.
In the coming days I’ll be setting out the path ahead.
I AM THE CHANGE.
Funny isn't it how they somehow never come up with these brilliant plans *before* the electoral drubbing but 24h later they are poised to leap into the brave new future, fizzing with ideas.
Being serious for a moment, I think there is a huge vacuum of good workable ideas at the moment being proposed by any party.
It seems to me that the first good idea for all governments, before they start on sunlit uplands and all becoming plutocrats is just to run very well all the things the state has undertaken to be responsible for. That alone would be transformative.
You don't really know what improvements and changes you need until you have got to first base of running the status quo you inherit very well.
Indeed.
Competence is something much underrated.
Within the broad framework of belief in constitutional democracy, the rule of law and the separation of powers, the only really significant quality a government needs is competence. The rest is window dressing, substitution and displacement activity, metaphysical abstraction, and abstract nouns. Most new schemes simply show up a current and ongoing competence failure.
Whatever we think about SKS and the current woes of the Labour Party, does anyone really think Farage will be the PM after the next GE? Surely the heat of a GE campaign will expose Farage and his blackshirts as brainless populists who have no idea on how to solve the country’s problems. The UK under Farage will be a shit show to beat any shit show this country has seen. Fortunately, a Reform government is unlikely to happen.
I’d hope they won’t be in government and become exposed by questioning, but I’d say the exact same thing about the Greens who, in my view, are epically clueless in much the opposite direction.
It is however three years out, in all likelihood, to the next GE and we live in a world where next week might seem a long way off by the time we get there.
Trump/Iran/Ukraine ( Taiwan?). Does AI crash the markets and lead to a big recession?. Does Reform implode because Nigel can’t get on with his underlings? Do inherent tensions within the Green Party and its voters render it asunder? Will electoral pacts between parties come to the fore as an FPTP GE approaches and five parties ( six in Scotland and Wales) are all 20% +/-? What if there’s incumbent voter remorse but now against Plaid and the SNP?
There’s a lot to happen yet.
Northern Ireland has a 5-party system (plus two smaller ones with the TUV and PBP). They have STV for most elections, so no pacts needed, but they’ve been around long enough that they often organise pacts on a constituency basis. I’m not certain GB politics has reached that level of maturity, but maybe it can work. PC, the LibDems and Greens have done small scale pacts before. Reform chose to step down in a bunch of seats to help the Tories, but their ambitions and egos are bigger now, so I doubt they’ll be up for any similar arrangement. Labour and the Tories have always considered themselves above the machinations of the smaller parties; I doubt they’re willing yet to admit that they’re the same size as those other parties now!
(FPT)
Its easier to make it work when the money is coming from elsewhere.
Lab 43 (-15) Indies 9 (+9) Con 5 (nc) Green 5 (+5) Reform 1 (+1)
Perhaps a faint ray of hope for young Wes to cling onto Ilford North next time? Only 4 of the 9 Indies were in wards in his seat.
I’ve told you multiple times already that Wes will hold his seat by miles next time. The Indies polled well, and won a few seats, but their overall vote suggests that the pro-Gaza stance is already fading as an electoral impediment to Labour, and the key takeaway from those results is that the Tories - who used to hold the seat - made no progress whatsoever, while the Greens only picked up isolated seats along the west of the Borough. Surely you ought to see that there’s no coherent challenge there at all to Streeting holding that seat next time?
Whatever we think about SKS and the current woes of the Labour Party, does anyone really think Farage will be the PM after the next GE? Surely the heat of a GE campaign will expose Farage and his blackshirts as brainless populists who have no idea on how to solve the country’s problems. The UK under Farage will be a shit show to beat any shit show this country has seen. Fortunately, a Reform government is unlikely to happen.
I’d hope they won’t be in government and become exposed by questioning, but I’d say the exact same thing about the Greens who, in my view, are epically clueless in much the opposite direction.
It is however three years out, in all likelihood, to the next GE and we live in a world where next week might seem a long way off by the time we get there.
Trump/Iran/Ukraine ( Taiwan?). Does AI crash the markets and lead to a big recession?. Does Reform implode because Nigel can’t get on with his underlings? Do inherent tensions within the Green Party and its voters render it asunder? Will electoral pacts between parties come to the fore as an FPTP GE approaches and five parties ( six in Scotland and Wales) are all 20% +/-? What if there’s incumbent voter remorse but now against Plaid and the SNP?
There’s a lot to happen yet.
Northern Ireland has a 5-party system (plus two smaller ones with the TUV and PBP). They have STV for most elections, so no pacts needed, but they’ve been around long enough that they often organise pacts on a constituency basis. I’m not certain GB politics has reached that level of maturity, but maybe it can work. PC, the LibDems and Greens have done small scale pacts before. Reform chose to step down in a bunch of seats to help the Tories, but their ambitions and egos are bigger now, so I doubt they’ll be up for any similar arrangement. Labour and the Tories have always considered themselves above the machinations of the smaller parties; I doubt they’re willing yet to admit that they’re the same size as those other parties now!
(FPT)
Its easier to make it work when the money is coming from elsewhere.
Yes it seems crypto from Thailand works particularly well in avoiding scrutiny.
Isn't Gordon Brown a very strong advocate of much stronger devolution?
I honestly think that will strongly appeal, as a start, to many centre left leaning voters.
Shall we review the current track record of devolution first?
It's working very well in Manchester, in fact, I would strongly argue it's the reason it's economic growth has been the strongest in the country for the last decade or so.
For some reason the voters of Wigan and Tameside aren't too impressed by the foreign owned apartment blocks which have sprung up in Deansgate.
Indeed, which is why much greater devolution is required, including to places like Manchester so the education, the industrial strategy etc it set locally to help Wigan, Tameside etc etc
Having those decisions made in London is what's causing those areas of the region to be so poor and ill equipped for today.
No other self respecting democratic country operates such a centric system leading to such an inability to shape the local population to grow a local economy.
What happens when some of the decisions made are the wrong ones ?
With devolution goes responsibility.
The spending and the 'big ideas' are the easy bit.
The higher taxes and the bailouts are when it gets hard.
Amazingly other countries manage to deal with these issues.
I've the confidence this country can do as well.
Well we haven't managed to deal with such issues at national level so what makes you confident that greater devolution will lead to anything other than higher spending 'funded' by higher borrowing ?
If you can make a list of people who want devolution so that their local area can live within its means then you've made a start on how devolution can be handled competently.
Introduce devo max for Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland, Manchester, Teesside, Birmingham, etc. Full tax raising and borrowing powers. A fixed percentage to be paid to Westminster for national and international expenditure. Thereafter, stand or fall on their own budgetary ability. Some will succeed. Some will fail.
Whatever we think about SKS and the current woes of the Labour Party, does anyone really think Farage will be the PM after the next GE? Surely the heat of a GE campaign will expose Farage and his blackshirts as brainless populists who have no idea on how to solve the country’s problems. The UK under Farage will be a shit show to beat any shit show this country has seen. Fortunately, a Reform government is unlikely to happen.
I’d hope they won’t be in government and become exposed by questioning, but I’d say the exact same thing about the Greens who, in my view, are epically clueless in much the opposite direction.
It is however three years out, in all likelihood, to the next GE and we live in a world where next week might seem a long way off by the time we get there.
Trump/Iran/Ukraine ( Taiwan?). Does AI crash the markets and lead to a big recession?. Does Reform implode because Nigel can’t get on with his underlings? Do inherent tensions within the Green Party and its voters render it asunder? Will electoral pacts between parties come to the fore as an FPTP GE approaches and five parties ( six in Scotland and Wales) are all 20% +/-? What if there’s incumbent voter remorse but now against Plaid and the SNP?
There’s a lot to happen yet.
Northern Ireland has a 5-party system (plus two smaller ones with the TUV and PBP). They have STV for most elections, so no pacts needed, but they’ve been around long enough that they often organise pacts on a constituency basis. I’m not certain GB politics has reached that level of maturity, but maybe it can work. PC, the LibDems and Greens have done small scale pacts before. Reform chose to step down in a bunch of seats to help the Tories, but their ambitions and egos are bigger now, so I doubt they’ll be up for any similar arrangement. Labour and the Tories have always considered themselves above the machinations of the smaller parties; I doubt they’re willing yet to admit that they’re the same size as those other parties now!
(FPT)
Northern Ireland is very very different because of the power-sharing arrangements, and even then one party or another has flounced to bring the whole thing crashing down often enough for one reason or another (cash for ash, the Irish Sea border, etc).
I wouldn't describe it as mature politics, except insofar as the bitterness that exists between the different political currents has had a very long time to mature.
Follow The “Blue Labour” strategy still being promoted by some on Labour right is premised on being able to win social conservatives while holding on to social liberals.
Failure state for this strategy is failing to win social cons while alienating social liberals. Here is a map of that failure state:
Whatever we think about SKS and the current woes of the Labour Party, does anyone really think Farage will be the PM after the next GE? Surely the heat of a GE campaign will expose Farage and his blackshirts as brainless populists who have no idea on how to solve the country’s problems. The UK under Farage will be a shit show to beat any shit show this country has seen. Fortunately, a Reform government is unlikely to happen.
I’d hope they won’t be in government and become exposed by questioning, but I’d say the exact same thing about the Greens who, in my view, are epically clueless in much the opposite direction.
It is however three years out, in all likelihood, to the next GE and we live in a world where next week might seem a long way off by the time we get there.
Trump/Iran/Ukraine ( Taiwan?). Does AI crash the markets and lead to a big recession?. Does Reform implode because Nigel can’t get on with his underlings? Do inherent tensions within the Green Party and its voters render it asunder? Will electoral pacts between parties come to the fore as an FPTP GE approaches and five parties ( six in Scotland and Wales) are all 20% +/-? What if there’s incumbent voter remorse but now against Plaid and the SNP?
There’s a lot to happen yet.
Northern Ireland has a 5-party system (plus two smaller ones with the TUV and PBP). They have STV for most elections, so no pacts needed, but they’ve been around long enough that they often organise pacts on a constituency basis. I’m not certain GB politics has reached that level of maturity, but maybe it can work. PC, the LibDems and Greens have done small scale pacts before. Reform chose to step down in a bunch of seats to help the Tories, but their ambitions and egos are bigger now, so I doubt they’ll be up for any similar arrangement. Labour and the Tories have always considered themselves above the machinations of the smaller parties; I doubt they’re willing yet to admit that they’re the same size as those other parties now!
(FPT)
Northern Ireland is very very different because of the power-sharing arrangements, and even then one party or another has flounced to bring the whole thing crashing down often enough for one reason or another (cash for ash, the Irish Sea border, etc).
I wouldn't describe it as mature politics, except insofar as the bitterness that exists between the different political currents has had a very long time to mature.
My comment was with respect to how to win seats, not to what comes next!
Follow The “Blue Labour” strategy still being promoted by some on Labour right is premised on being able to win social conservatives while holding on to social liberals.
Failure state for this strategy is failing to win social cons while alienating social liberals. Here is a map of that failure state:
The problem for that thesis is that Labour have been pursuing a 'Green Labour' strategy.
Have they? I think their problem is that they've been kaleidescopically bad. Through whichever facet you view them, they look plausibly terrible.
I like kaleidoscopically bad as a description. I think that captures nicely the way in which Labour have managed to upset almost everyone in one way or another.
A glorious afternoon here in East London and the detritus of leaflets and sorry-looking posterboards are as the fallen on the political battlefiled.
Newham have yet to post the numbers for each Ward in the Council elections so I can't really do any proper analysis of what happened and why it happened let alone ask what might have happened and why it didn't.
A little mea culpa of sorts - I think I predicted Labour 25 and Newham Independents 23 so at 26 and 24 I think I did pretty well. What I got badly wrong were the Greens - we saw little or no Green activity in this part of the Borough and while I thought they would hold Olympic Park and win Royal Victoria (which they did), their performance in Forest Gate against Labour and the NIP was unexpected and 16 seats was well beyond even my most optimistic thoughts.
In the Mayoral elections, the Labour candidate won with 30.4% of the vote (compared with 56.2% in 2018 and 73.2% in 2014). Mehmood Mirza will be disappointed tripling his vote wasn't enough while the Green candidate scored an astonishing 19,000 votes more than doubling their vote share to 22.6% of the vote.
The irony of all this is Labour, the Newham Independents and the Greens are all bitter rivals yet their respective leaders were all once together in the Labour Party.
Mrs Stodge asked me this morning "how will all this work?" and the short answer was and is, I've no clue. There are 27 Labour and 40 non-Labour Councillors. I don't know if anyone is talking to anyone else but under the rules Labour leads as they have the Mayor. It's all fine when you have a majority but Labour aren't used to being a minority in the Council chamber and they now face two bitter rivals and presumably their only hope will be to play off one against the other.
Tuesday'smeeting will be interesting as Mayor Forhad Hussain has to pick his Cabinet and we'll get a sense of whether there are or have bene any deals done.
As an aside, both East Ham, West Ham & Beckton and Stratford & Bow Westminster seats are now three way marginals.
Follow The “Blue Labour” strategy still being promoted by some on Labour right is premised on being able to win social conservatives while holding on to social liberals.
Failure state for this strategy is failing to win social cons while alienating social liberals. Here is a map of that failure state:
The problem for that thesis is that Labour have been pursuing a 'Green Labour' strategy.
The problem is that Labour have not pursued a Green, Red or Blue Labour strategy.
Just a mishmash of policies, announced to upset as many as possible. Then U-turned to upset everyone else.
I’m an Evil Baby Eating Tory - but I swear I could have come up with a better, joined up set of policies for each of the above options.
To start with, every political party is a coalition. Each part of the coalition needs to be fed and watered, otherwise they leave.
Reminds me of my days on Cumbria County Council and my colleague sitting next to me bemoaning yet another Social Services Report - "Don't get me wrong, I like babies, but I couldn't eat a whole one !"
The Kellner verdict Labour, 1,100, between relief and disappointment Con, 800, between joy and relief Lib Dem, 850, relief Reform, 1,500, near disaster Green, 550, disappointment
Well the way Lewisham is going, the final Labour loss figure won't be that far short of 1,500, not 1,100. It could be 150,000 and "tis but a scratch" would still be saying he was taking full responsibility and therefore carrying on.
Isn't Gordon Brown a very strong advocate of much stronger devolution?
I honestly think that will strongly appeal, as a start, to many centre left leaning voters.
Shall we review the current track record of devolution first?
It's working very well in Manchester, in fact, I would strongly argue it's the reason it's economic growth has been the strongest in the country for the last decade or so.
For some reason the voters of Wigan and Tameside aren't too impressed by the foreign owned apartment blocks which have sprung up in Deansgate.
Indeed, which is why much greater devolution is required, including to places like Manchester so the education, the industrial strategy etc it set locally to help Wigan, Tameside etc etc
Having those decisions made in London is what's causing those areas of the region to be so poor and ill equipped for today.
No other self respecting democratic country operates such a centric system leading to such an inability to shape the local population to grow a local economy.
What happens when some of the decisions made are the wrong ones ?
With devolution goes responsibility.
The spending and the 'big ideas' are the easy bit.
The higher taxes and the bailouts are when it gets hard.
Amazingly other countries manage to deal with these issues.
I've the confidence this country can do as well.
Well we haven't managed to deal with such issues at national level so what makes you confident that greater devolution will lead to anything other than higher spending 'funded' by higher borrowing ?
If you can make a list of people who want devolution so that their local area can live within its means then you've made a start on how devolution can be handled competently.
Introduce devo max for Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland, Manchester, Teesside, Birmingham, etc. Full tax raising and borrowing powers. A fixed percentage to be paid to Westminster for national and international expenditure. Thereafter, stand or fall on their own budgetary ability. Some will succeed. Some will fail.
Don’t do that in Teesside - I can smell the crap finances from the other side of Darlington (mayor’s office is in the airport).
I think we are still waiting for the 2022 finances to be signed off and that’s from before things got seriously dodgy
A glorious afternoon here in East London and the detritus of leaflets and sorry-looking posterboards are as the fallen on the political battlefiled.
Newham have yet to post the numbers for each Ward in the Council elections so I can't really do any proper analysis of what happened and why it happened let alone ask what might have happened and why it didn't.
A little mea culpa of sorts - I think I predicted Labour 25 and Newham Independents 23 so at 26 and 24 I think I did pretty well. What I got badly wrong were the Greens - we saw little or no Green activity in this part of the Borough and while I thought they would hold Olympic Park and win Royal Victoria (which they did), their performance in Forest Gate against Labour and the NIP was unexpected and 16 seats was well beyond even my most optimistic thoughts.
In the Mayoral elections, the Labour candidate won with 30.4% of the vote (compared with 56.2% in 2018 and 73.2% in 2014). Mehmood Mirza will be disappointed tripling his vote wasn't enough while the Green candidate scored an astonishing 19,000 votes more than doubling their vote share to 22.6% of the vote.
The irony of all this is Labour, the Newham Independents and the Greens are all bitter rivals yet their respective leaders were all once together in the Labour Party.
Mrs Stodge asked me this morning "how will all this work?" and the short answer was and is, I've no clue. There are 27 Labour and 40 non-Labour Councillors. I don't know if anyone is talking to anyone else but under the rules Labour leads as they have the Mayor. It's all fine when you have a majority but Labour aren't used to being a minority in the Council chamber and they now face two bitter rivals and presumably their only hope will be to play off one against the other.
Tuesday'smeeting will be interesting as Mayor Forhad Hussain has to pick his Cabinet and we'll get a sense of whether there are or have bene any deals done.
As an aside, both East Ham, West Ham & Beckton and Stratford & Bow Westminster seats are now three way marginals.
Where we currently are in Ardnamurchan, the SNP posters have been removed, but the Lib Dems are still “winning here”, which they did.
The Kellner verdict Labour, 1,100, between relief and disappointment Con, 800, between joy and relief Lib Dem, 850, relief Reform, 1,500, near disaster Green, 550, disappointment
Well the way Lewisham is going, the final Labour loss figure won't be that far short of 1,500, not 1,100. It could be 150,000 and "tis but a scratch" would still be saying he was taking full responsibility and therefore carrying on.
The way things are going we could be at next May before London and Bradford finish counting.
Isn't Gordon Brown a very strong advocate of much stronger devolution?
I honestly think that will strongly appeal, as a start, to many centre left leaning voters.
Shall we review the current track record of devolution first?
It's working very well in Manchester, in fact, I would strongly argue it's the reason it's economic growth has been the strongest in the country for the last decade or so.
For some reason the voters of Wigan and Tameside aren't too impressed by the foreign owned apartment blocks which have sprung up in Deansgate.
Indeed, which is why much greater devolution is required, including to places like Manchester so the education, the industrial strategy etc it set locally to help Wigan, Tameside etc etc
Having those decisions made in London is what's causing those areas of the region to be so poor and ill equipped for today.
No other self respecting democratic country operates such a centric system leading to such an inability to shape the local population to grow a local economy.
What happens when some of the decisions made are the wrong ones ?
With devolution goes responsibility.
The spending and the 'big ideas' are the easy bit.
The higher taxes and the bailouts are when it gets hard.
Amazingly other countries manage to deal with these issues.
I've the confidence this country can do as well.
Well we haven't managed to deal with such issues at national level so what makes you confident that greater devolution will lead to anything other than higher spending 'funded' by higher borrowing ?
If you can make a list of people who want devolution so that their local area can live within its means then you've made a start on how devolution can be handled competently.
Introduce devo max for Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland, Manchester, Teesside, Birmingham, etc. Full tax raising and borrowing powers. A fixed percentage to be paid to Westminster for national and international expenditure. Thereafter, stand or fall on their own budgetary ability. Some will succeed. Some will fail.
Don’t do that in Teesside - I can smell the crap finances from the other side of Darlington (mayor’s office is in the airport).
I think we are still waiting for the 2022 finances to be signed off and that’s from before things got seriously dodgy
Surely that’s a reason to introduce it. One of the considerations when voting should be “will my authority go bust?”
It’s important that we reflect and respond to these results - we haven’t done enough to offer people hope for the future.
In the coming days I’ll be setting out the path ahead.
I AM THE CHANGE.
Funny isn't it how they somehow never come up with these brilliant plans *before* the electoral drubbing but 24h later they are poised to leap into the brave new future, fizzing with ideas.
Being serious for a moment, I think there is a huge vacuum of good workable ideas at the moment being proposed by any party.
It seems to me that the first good idea for all governments, before they start on sunlit uplands and all becoming plutocrats is just to run very well all the things the state has undertaken to be responsible for. That alone would be transformative.
You don't really know what improvements and changes you need until you have got to first base of running the status quo you inherit very well.
Indeed.
Competence is something much underrated.
Not so much underrated as under rewarded. I have never seen a councillor retain his seat just because he was competent. I have seen plenty of councillors lose seats to inferior opponents, including myself because they were too competent and too honest.
Lab 43 (-15) Indies 9 (+9) Con 5 (nc) Green 5 (+5) Reform 1 (+1)
Perhaps a faint ray of hope for young Wes to cling onto Ilford North next time? Only 4 of the 9 Indies were in wards in his seat.
I’ve told you multiple times already that Wes will hold his seat by miles next time. The Indies polled well, and won a few seats, but their overall vote suggests that the pro-Gaza stance is already fading as an electoral impediment to Labour, and the key takeaway from those results is that the Tories - who used to hold the seat - made no progress whatsoever, while the Greens only picked up isolated seats along the west of the Borough. Surely you ought to see that there’s no coherent challenge there at all to Streeting holding that seat next time?
When "multiple times"? Maybe I was off line that day
Isn't Gordon Brown a very strong advocate of much stronger devolution?
I honestly think that will strongly appeal, as a start, to many centre left leaning voters.
Shall we review the current track record of devolution first?
It's working very well in Manchester, in fact, I would strongly argue it's the reason it's economic growth has been the strongest in the country for the last decade or so.
For some reason the voters of Wigan and Tameside aren't too impressed by the foreign owned apartment blocks which have sprung up in Deansgate.
Indeed, which is why much greater devolution is required, including to places like Manchester so the education, the industrial strategy etc it set locally to help Wigan, Tameside etc etc
Having those decisions made in London is what's causing those areas of the region to be so poor and ill equipped for today.
No other self respecting democratic country operates such a centric system leading to such an inability to shape the local population to grow a local economy.
What happens when some of the decisions made are the wrong ones ?
With devolution goes responsibility.
The spending and the 'big ideas' are the easy bit.
The higher taxes and the bailouts are when it gets hard.
Amazingly other countries manage to deal with these issues.
I've the confidence this country can do as well.
Well we haven't managed to deal with such issues at national level so what makes you confident that greater devolution will lead to anything other than higher spending 'funded' by higher borrowing ?
If you can make a list of people who want devolution so that their local area can live within its means then you've made a start on how devolution can be handled competently.
Introduce devo max for Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland, Manchester, Teesside, Birmingham, etc. Full tax raising and borrowing powers. A fixed percentage to be paid to Westminster for national and international expenditure. Thereafter, stand or fall on their own budgetary ability. Some will succeed. Some will fail.
Don’t do that in Teesside - I can smell the crap finances from the other side of Darlington (mayor’s office is in the airport).
I think we are still waiting for the 2022 finances to be signed off and that’s from before things got seriously dodgy
Surely that’s a reason to introduce it. One of the considerations when voting should be “will my authority go bust?”
At the moment all the terrible decisions are made in London, leaving us with a huge deficit and debt, yet somehow allowing people locally to make decisions, some of which could be bad cannot possibly happen, despite literally every other democracy in the planet having far greater devotion than us
Many of us away from London and the London parties want to be able to make the right or wrong decision close to home and be able to have a democracy that enables us to hold those people to account
Follow The “Blue Labour” strategy still being promoted by some on Labour right is premised on being able to win social conservatives while holding on to social liberals.
Failure state for this strategy is failing to win social cons while alienating social liberals. Here is a map of that failure state:
In 2024 Labour won by being just acceptable enough to just enough people. Now they are unacceptable, for different reasons, to just enough people almost everywhere.
2 more Reform seats in Croydon (which remains NOC, Lab and Con almost level pegging).
My Uncle refused to accept that Croydon was not still part of Surrey and continued to provide his address incorrectly until his death in the early 2000s.
Labour MP Catherine West says if a cabinet minister does not put themselves forward to challenge Keir Starmer as party leader by Monday, she will attempt to trigger a leadership contest herself. West, a former junior Foreign Office minister, says she currently has 10 people prepared to back her in a leadership bid but she is “confident” enough people would come forward to trigger a contest.
Delusional angry backbench MP or is this a coordinated firing of the starting pistol?
Labour MP Catherine West says if a cabinet minister does not put themselves forward to challenge Keir Starmer as party leader by Monday, she will attempt to trigger a leadership contest herself. West, a former junior Foreign Office minister, says she currently has 10 people prepared to back her in a leadership bid but she is “confident” enough people would come forward to trigger a contest.
Delusional angry backbench MP or is this a coordinated firing of the starting pistol?
I'm not sure her solution would work
“My preferred option is for the cabinet to do a reshuffle within itself, where there's plenty of talent, and for Keir to be given a different role, which he might enjoy, perhaps an international role,” she says
Labour MP Catherine West says if a cabinet minister does not put themselves forward to challenge Keir Starmer as party leader by Monday, she will attempt to trigger a leadership contest herself. West, a former junior Foreign Office minister, says she currently has 10 people prepared to back her in a leadership bid but she is “confident” enough people would come forward to trigger a contest.
Delusional angry backbench MP or is this a coordinated firing of the starting pistol?
Labour MP Catherine West says if a cabinet minister does not put themselves forward to challenge Keir Starmer as party leader by Monday, she will attempt to trigger a leadership contest herself. West, a former junior Foreign Office minister, says she currently has 10 people prepared to back her in a leadership bid but she is “confident” enough people would come forward to trigger a contest.
Delusional angry backbench MP or is this a coordinated firing of the starting pistol?
More than a straightforward backbencher; also years of local government experience.
Labour MP Catherine West says if a cabinet minister does not put themselves forward to challenge Keir Starmer as party leader by Monday, she will attempt to trigger a leadership contest herself. West, a former junior Foreign Office minister, says she currently has 10 people prepared to back her in a leadership bid but she is “confident” enough people would come forward to trigger a contest.
Delusional angry backbench MP or is this a coordinated firing of the starting pistol?
Labour MP Catherine West says if a cabinet minister does not put themselves forward to challenge Keir Starmer as party leader by Monday, she will attempt to trigger a leadership contest herself. West, a former junior Foreign Office minister, says she currently has 10 people prepared to back her in a leadership bid but she is “confident” enough people would come forward to trigger a contest.
Delusional angry backbench MP or is this a coordinated firing of the starting pistol?
She’s got bigger balls than the lot of them. Get her in no.10 pronto
It’s important that we reflect and respond to these results - we haven’t done enough to offer people hope for the future.
In the coming days I’ll be setting out the path ahead.
I AM THE CHANGE.
Funny isn't it how they somehow never come up with these brilliant plans *before* the electoral drubbing but 24h later they are poised to leap into the brave new future, fizzing with ideas.
Being serious for a moment, I think there is a huge vacuum of good workable ideas at the moment being proposed by any party.
It seems to me that the first good idea for all governments, before they start on sunlit uplands and all becoming plutocrats is just to run very well all the things the state has undertaken to be responsible for. That alone would be transformative.
You don't really know what improvements and changes you need until you have got to first base of running the status quo you inherit very well.
Indeed.
Competence is something much underrated.
Not so much underrated as under rewarded. I have never seen a councillor retain his seat just because he was competent. I have seen plenty of councillors lose seats to inferior opponents, including myself because they were too competent and too honest.
I rarely agree with you but you make a significant point.
When I did politics properly back in the Iron Age, the most heart rending part was seeing years of good solid work wiped out in one evening. Losing a seat in which you have invested political, personal and emotional capital can be akin to a bereavement for some and, as you say, whereas if you suffer a bereavement when the overwhelming majority of humanity will offer various levels of sympathy, if you lose a council seat, most people shrug or don't care.
I rarely stood as a candidate but I remember running a campaign which ousted a Conservative lady in the mid 90s. Now, I'm not so vain as to believe it was just my campigning skills (it was a very tough time to be a Conservative candidate) which caused her defeat but I remember at the count as the result came through wanting to punch the air in joy but then I saw the Conservative and she was close to tears.
Politics IS a rough trade as a wise man once said and as we celebrate "our" wins and the "enemy's" losses, there are people involved.
Labour MP Catherine West says if a cabinet minister does not put themselves forward to challenge Keir Starmer as party leader by Monday, she will attempt to trigger a leadership contest herself. West, a former junior Foreign Office minister, says she currently has 10 people prepared to back her in a leadership bid but she is “confident” enough people would come forward to trigger a contest.
Delusional angry backbench MP or is this a coordinated firing of the starting pistol?
An Owen Smith for our age.
Fire up the ice cream vans....
She's Australian (well born there) - so more like fire up the barbecue, this sausage is done.
It’s important that we reflect and respond to these results - we haven’t done enough to offer people hope for the future.
In the coming days I’ll be setting out the path ahead.
I AM THE CHANGE.
Funny isn't it how they somehow never come up with these brilliant plans *before* the electoral drubbing but 24h later they are poised to leap into the brave new future, fizzing with ideas.
Being serious for a moment, I think there is a huge vacuum of good workable ideas at the moment being proposed by any party.
It seems to me that the first good idea for all governments, before they start on sunlit uplands and all becoming plutocrats is just to run very well all the things the state has undertaken to be responsible for. That alone would be transformative.
You don't really know what improvements and changes you need until you have got to first base of running the status quo you inherit very well.
Indeed.
Competence is something much underrated.
Not so much underrated as under rewarded. I have never seen a councillor retain his seat just because he was competent. I have seen plenty of councillors lose seats to inferior opponents, including myself because they were too competent and too honest.
I rarely agree with you but you make a significant point.
When I did politics properly back in the Iron Age, the most heart rending part was seeing years of good solid work wiped out in one evening. Losing a seat in which you have invested political, personal and emotional capital can be akin to a bereavement for some and, as you say, whereas if you suffer a bereavement when the overwhelming majority of humanity will offer various levels of sympathy, if you lose a council seat, most people shrug or don't care.
I rarely stood as a candidate but I remember running a campaign which ousted a Conservative lady in the mid 90s. Now, I'm not so vain as to believe it was just my campigning skills (it was a very tough time to be a Conservative candidate) which caused her defeat but I remember at the count as the result came through wanting to punch the air in joy but then I saw the Conservative and she was close to tears.
Politics IS a rough trade as a wise man once said and as we celebrate "our" wins and the "enemy's" losses, there are people involved.
"Nothing except a battle lost can be half so melancholy as a battle won" - Wellington
Labour MP Catherine West says if a cabinet minister does not put themselves forward to challenge Keir Starmer as party leader by Monday, she will attempt to trigger a leadership contest herself. West, a former junior Foreign Office minister, says she currently has 10 people prepared to back her in a leadership bid but she is “confident” enough people would come forward to trigger a contest.
Delusional angry backbench MP or is this a coordinated firing of the starting pistol?
Isn't that what the Conservatives term a stalking horse?
New: Gordon Brown last year proposed taking some defence spending out of the fiscal rules in order to issue joint war bonds alongside NATO allies, but Rachel Reeves remains opposed to that idea.
The Treasury continues to rule out taking defence out of the fiscal rules because the increased borrowing would still be debt, just recorded differently, and therefore would risk an adverse bond market reaction.
It means as things stand Keir Starmer will not be accepting that proposal from his new special envoy for global finance.
Labour MP Catherine West says if a cabinet minister does not put themselves forward to challenge Keir Starmer as party leader by Monday, she will attempt to trigger a leadership contest herself. West, a former junior Foreign Office minister, says she currently has 10 people prepared to back her in a leadership bid but she is “confident” enough people would come forward to trigger a contest.
Delusional angry backbench MP or is this a coordinated firing of the starting pistol?
An Owen Smith for our age.
Fire up the ice cream vans....
She's Australian (well born there) - so more like fire up the barbecue, this sausage is done.
Bloody foreigners coming over here doing the jobs our British born MPs won't do....
'Labour MP Catherine West says if a cabinet minister does not put themselves forward to challenge Keir Starmer as party leader by Monday, she will attempt to trigger a leadership contest herself.
In an exclusive interview with the BBC, the MP for Hornsey and Friern Barnet tells Radio 4’s PM programme her preferred option would be for the cabinet to “reorganise themselves” and put forward their “best communicator” to replace the PM, avoiding a leadership election.
However, West says she was putting the cabinet “on notice” and if she does not hear from a leadership hopeful by Monday she would ask Labour MPs to back her to trigger a contest.
For a leadership election to be set in motion, 20% of Labour MPs - 81 people - would have to back a single challenger.
West, a former junior Foreign Office minister, says she currently has 10 people prepared to back her in a leadership bid but she is “confident” enough people would come forward to trigger a contest.'
Labour MP Catherine West says if a cabinet minister does not put themselves forward to challenge Keir Starmer as party leader by Monday, she will attempt to trigger a leadership contest herself. West, a former junior Foreign Office minister, says she currently has 10 people prepared to back her in a leadership bid but she is “confident” enough people would come forward to trigger a contest.
Delusional angry backbench MP or is this a coordinated firing of the starting pistol?
Isn't that what the Conservatives term a stalking horse?
Presumably she is the Sir Anthony Meyer of Labour, does that mean Burnham is Heseltine and Streeting Major?
Labour MP Catherine West says if a cabinet minister does not put themselves forward to challenge Keir Starmer as party leader by Monday, she will attempt to trigger a leadership contest herself. West, a former junior Foreign Office minister, says she currently has 10 people prepared to back her in a leadership bid but she is “confident” enough people would come forward to trigger a contest.
Delusional angry backbench MP or is this a coordinated firing of the starting pistol?
She does seem more Anthony Meyer than Michael Heseltine.
Or 'How do you expect to be taken seriously?" than "Go West".
'Labour MP Catherine West says if a cabinet minister does not put themselves forward to challenge Keir Starmer as party leader by Monday, she will attempt to trigger a leadership contest herself.
In an exclusive interview with the BBC, the MP for Hornsey and Friern Barnet tells Radio 4’s PM programme her preferred option would be for the cabinet to “reorganise themselves” and put forward their “best communicator” to replace the PM, avoiding a leadership election.
However, West says she was putting the cabinet “on notice” and if she does not hear from a leadership hopeful by Monday she would ask Labour MPs to back her to trigger a contest.
For a leadership election to be set in motion, 20% of Labour MPs - 81 people - would have to back a single challenger.
West, a former junior Foreign Office minister, says she currently has 10 people prepared to back her in a leadership bid but she is “confident” enough people would come forward to trigger a contest.'
While in inner London the Tories won control of Westminster council and held Kensington and Chelsea council and won most seats in Wandsworth and there were 3 Tory councillors elected in Camden and 6 in Hackney on Thursday.
Inner London is clearly far more of a fan of Kemi than Farage
Labour MP Catherine West says if a cabinet minister does not put themselves forward to challenge Keir Starmer as party leader by Monday, she will attempt to trigger a leadership contest herself. West, a former junior Foreign Office minister, says she currently has 10 people prepared to back her in a leadership bid but she is “confident” enough people would come forward to trigger a contest.
Delusional angry backbench MP or is this a coordinated firing of the starting pistol?
I'm not sure her solution would work
“My preferred option is for the cabinet to do a reshuffle within itself, where there's plenty of talent, and for Keir to be given a different role, which he might enjoy, perhaps an international role,” she says
She’s clearly delusional! The only PM who accepted a lesser role in recent times was Cameron after he had been out of politics for years .
Labour MP Catherine West says if a cabinet minister does not put themselves forward to challenge Keir Starmer as party leader by Monday, she will attempt to trigger a leadership contest herself. West, a former junior Foreign Office minister, says she currently has 10 people prepared to back her in a leadership bid but she is “confident” enough people would come forward to trigger a contest.
Delusional angry backbench MP or is this a coordinated firing of the starting pistol?
An Owen Smith for our age.
Fire up the ice cream vans....
She's Australian (well born there) - so more like fire up the barbecue, this sausage is done.
Bloody foreigners coming over here doing the jobs our British born MPs won't do....
They don’t mess about in Australia. They make the Tories look like amateurs when it comes to getting rid of leaders.
2 more Reform seats in Croydon (which remains NOC, Lab and Con almost level pegging).
My Uncle refused to accept that Croydon was not still part of Surrey and continued to provide his address incorrectly until his death in the early 2000s.
I think there is still a postal address 'Cockfosters, Barnet, Herts' followed by the postcode.
Cockfosters is in fact in the London Borough of Enfield, within the Greater London area. Prior to being in Enfield, London, it was in Middlesex not Hertfordshire. It wasn't and isn't in the borough of Barnet. Apart from that the address is right.
Labour MP Catherine West says if a cabinet minister does not put themselves forward to challenge Keir Starmer as party leader by Monday, she will attempt to trigger a leadership contest herself. West, a former junior Foreign Office minister, says she currently has 10 people prepared to back her in a leadership bid but she is “confident” enough people would come forward to trigger a contest.
Delusional angry backbench MP or is this a coordinated firing of the starting pistol?
She does seem more Anthony Meyer than Michael Heseltine.
Or 'How do you expect to be taken seriously?" than "Go West".
If she revives the Labour party she could be more Westlife?
2 more Reform seats in Croydon (which remains NOC, Lab and Con almost level pegging).
My Uncle refused to accept that Croydon was not still part of Surrey and continued to provide his address incorrectly until his death in the early 2000s.
I think there is still a postal address 'Cockfosters, Barnet, Herts' followed by the postcode.
Cockfosters is in fact in the London Borough of Enfield, within the Greater London area. Prior to being in Enfield, London, it was in Middlesex not Hertfordshire. It wasn't and isn't in the borough of Barnet. Apart from that the address is right.
Isn't 'the correct postal address' an urban myth ?
Reality is all you need is
2 Some Road POSTCODE
And that is what the post office need, anything else is utterly irrelevant and has no 'right' or 'wrong' about it
Follow The “Blue Labour” strategy still being promoted by some on Labour right is premised on being able to win social conservatives while holding on to social liberals.
Failure state for this strategy is failing to win social cons while alienating social liberals. Here is a map of that failure state:
In 2024 Labour won by being just acceptable enough to just enough people. Now they are unacceptable, for different reasons, to just enough people almost everywhere.
2 more Reform seats in Croydon (which remains NOC, Lab and Con almost level pegging).
My Uncle refused to accept that Croydon was not still part of Surrey and continued to provide his address incorrectly until his death in the early 2000s.
I think there is still a postal address 'Cockfosters, Barnet, Herts' followed by the postcode.
Cockfosters is in fact in the London Borough of Enfield, within the Greater London area. Prior to being in Enfield, London, it was in Middlesex not Hertfordshire. It wasn't and isn't in the borough of Barnet. Apart from that the address is right.
Isn't 'the correct postal address' an urban myth ?
Reality is all you need is
2 Some Road POSTCODE
And that is what the post office need, anything else is utterly irrelevant and has no 'right' or 'wrong' about it
Were I looking for a Big Bang policy - especially for the young - I'd do something on student loans: reducing the interest rate to zero, for instance.
We underestimate how much this issue annoys the young - a debt which no matter how much they pay off only increases.
Yes, the main problem with that would be finding the £30-50 billion or so that it would cost over the next 30 years or so.
Also it would of course advantage a wealthier section of society at the expense of the taxpayer as a whole - I don't have a problem with that, but good luck selling it to the Labour Party, which still occasionally pretends to care about equality.
I think the solution to the student loans problem has to be reducing the number of each year group who go to university back towards the 30% or so that it was before that lying idiot Blair decided that 50% was the right number, deceitfully claiming that some research backed it up, when there was none. That would mean lower subsidies and enable fees to be cut, and would also mean that fewer jobs pointlessly ask for degrees.
Guardian - Several frontbenchers told the Guardian the PM’s time in office should not go beyond the end of the year
Yeh, yeh, blah, blah, blah... definitely by end of the year... maybe after the next locals... in good time to give a new leader chance to introduce themselves to the public... just before the General Election... oh.
Oh dear. The 2 candidates were arrested for allegedly inciting racial hatred. This was the same offence for which Lucy Connolly was - rightly - convicted in 2024.
Did you object to that? Or are you in favour of inciting racial hatred now? Or only against particular groups?
AIUI one of the people arrested has been elected in Lambeth but arrested people cannot be councillors so there may need to be another election there.
Meanwhile for those who are against racial hatred there is a rally in London tomorrow at 1 pm. It would be good if there is a good turnout because the hatred of minorities or indifference to them which has disfigured this country has got to stop.
While in inner London the Tories won control of Westminster council and held Kensington and Chelsea council and won most seats in Wandsworth and there were 3 Tory councillors elected in Camden and 6 in Hackney on Thursday.
Inner London is clearly far more of a fan of Kemi than Farage
the sitting Reform councillor in Bromley who lost his seat yesterday actually lived in Belgravia
Labour MP Catherine West says if a cabinet minister does not put themselves forward to challenge Keir Starmer as party leader by Monday, she will attempt to trigger a leadership contest herself. West, a former junior Foreign Office minister, says she currently has 10 people prepared to back her in a leadership bid but she is “confident” enough people would come forward to trigger a contest.
Delusional angry backbench MP or is this a coordinated firing of the starting pistol?
An Owen Smith for our age.
Fire up the ice cream vans....
She's Australian (well born there) - so more like fire up the barbecue, this sausage is done.
I have no idea who Catherine West is, but the whole embarrassing spectacle probably does need drawing to a close now.
I think Starmer's already blocked off this sort of shrapnel challenge in that the cabinet have basically said they support him (presumably for a week or so at least)
I too had never heard of Catherine West, and I suspect neither of us will again. (Moment in too much sun, rather than a serial nutter)
I have no idea who Catherine West is, but the whole embarrassing spectacle probably does need drawing to a close now.
I think Starmer's already blocked off this sort of shrapnel challenge in that the cabinet have basically said they support him (presumably for a week or so at least)
I too had never heard of Catherine West, and I suspect neither of us will again. (Moment in too much sun, rather than a serial nutter)
That would change If Angela Rayner quietly encouraged enough people to nominate West to trigger a contest.
I have no idea who Catherine West is, but the whole embarrassing spectacle probably does need drawing to a close now.
I think Starmer's already blocked off this sort of shrapnel challenge in that the cabinet have basically said they support him (presumably for a week or so at least)
I too had never heard of Catherine West, and I suspect neither of us will again. (Moment in too much sun, rather than a serial nutter)
That would change If Angela Rayner quietly encouraged enough people to nominate West to trigger a contest.
I'm not sure what the rules are about changing your nomination.
It's quite clear that Catherine West has more chance of being next Labour leader than Burnham, but little else is.
Were I looking for a Big Bang policy - especially for the young - I'd do something on student loans: reducing the interest rate to zero, for instance.
We underestimate how much this issue annoys the young - a debt which no matter how much they pay off only increases.
Yes, the main problem with that would be finding the £30-50 billion or so that it would cost over the next 30 years or so.
Also it would of course advantage a wealthier section of society at the expense of the taxpayer as a whole - I don't have a problem with that, but good luck selling it to the Labour Party, which still occasionally pretends to care about equality.
I think the solution to the student loans problem has to be reducing the number of each year group who go to university back towards the 30% or so that it was before that lying idiot Blair decided that 50% was the right number, deceitfully claiming that some research backed it up, when there was none. That would mean lower subsidies and enable fees to be cut, and would also mean that fewer jobs pointlessly ask for degrees.
Pension relief at 25% for all.
Having said that, a proper policy for the young would not be pissing around with student loans. Housing, housing, housing.
I alarmed myself when I found I was nodding along to the economic policies of Reform UK Scotland, or whatever they call themselves. ie they have economic policies.
No way I will vote for that collection of antisemites, Islamophobes, all-sorts-of-other-phobes. Worrying nevertheless.
Scottish Labour's line is 'time for change". A message I am very receptive to. They didn't think it necessary to explain even in the broadest terms what they would change, why and how.
I think this is an interesting straw in the wind. Reform are serious about winning power and are attracting serious people with serious ideas.
All very well, until you think "Ah, but Nigel Farage, though". A deeply unserious chancer with no hidden intellect and not too many political principles either.
Labour MP Catherine West says if a cabinet minister does not put themselves forward to challenge Keir Starmer as party leader by Monday, she will attempt to trigger a leadership contest herself. West, a former junior Foreign Office minister, says she currently has 10 people prepared to back her in a leadership bid but she is “confident” enough people would come forward to trigger a contest.
Delusional angry backbench MP or is this a coordinated firing of the starting pistol?
I'm not sure her solution would work
“My preferred option is for the cabinet to do a reshuffle within itself, where there's plenty of talent, and for Keir to be given a different role, which he might enjoy, perhaps an international role,” she says
She’s clearly delusional! The only PM who accepted a lesser role in recent times was Cameron after he had been out of politics for years .
Labour MP Catherine West says if a cabinet minister does not put themselves forward to challenge Keir Starmer as party leader by Monday, she will attempt to trigger a leadership contest herself. West, a former junior Foreign Office minister, says she currently has 10 people prepared to back her in a leadership bid but she is “confident” enough people would come forward to trigger a contest.
Delusional angry backbench MP or is this a coordinated firing of the starting pistol?
I'm not sure her solution would work
“My preferred option is for the cabinet to do a reshuffle within itself, where there's plenty of talent, and for Keir to be given a different role, which he might enjoy, perhaps an international role,” she says
She’s clearly delusional! The only PM who accepted a lesser role in recent times was Cameron after he had been out of politics for years .
Starmer can become Ambassador to the US.
Far too sleazy to pass the needed tests. He was pictured with Mandelson, don't you know!
Labour MP Catherine West says if a cabinet minister does not put themselves forward to challenge Keir Starmer as party leader by Monday, she will attempt to trigger a leadership contest herself. West, a former junior Foreign Office minister, says she currently has 10 people prepared to back her in a leadership bid but she is “confident” enough people would come forward to trigger a contest.
Delusional angry backbench MP or is this a coordinated firing of the starting pistol?
It would be good to lance the boil that is Starmer.
Labour MP Catherine West says if a cabinet minister does not put themselves forward to challenge Keir Starmer as party leader by Monday, she will attempt to trigger a leadership contest herself. West, a former junior Foreign Office minister, says she currently has 10 people prepared to back her in a leadership bid but she is “confident” enough people would come forward to trigger a contest.
Delusional angry backbench MP or is this a coordinated firing of the starting pistol?
I'm not sure her solution would work
“My preferred option is for the cabinet to do a reshuffle within itself, where there's plenty of talent, and for Keir to be given a different role, which he might enjoy, perhaps an international role,” she says
She’s clearly delusional! The only PM who accepted a lesser role in recent times was Cameron after he had been out of politics for years .
Were I looking for a Big Bang policy - especially for the young - I'd do something on student loans: reducing the interest rate to zero, for instance.
We underestimate how much this issue annoys the young - a debt which no matter how much they pay off only increases.
Yes, the main problem with that would be finding the £30-50 billion or so that it would cost over the next 30 years or so.
Also it would of course advantage a wealthier section of society at the expense of the taxpayer as a whole - I don't have a problem with that, but good luck selling it to the Labour Party, which still occasionally pretends to care about equality.
I think the solution to the student loans problem has to be reducing the number of each year group who go to university back towards the 30% or so that it was before that lying idiot Blair decided that 50% was the right number, deceitfully claiming that some research backed it up, when there was none. That would mean lower subsidies and enable fees to be cut, and would also mean that fewer jobs pointlessly ask for degrees.
Pension relief at 25% for all.
Having said that, a proper policy for the young would not be pissing around with student loans. Housing, housing, housing.
If nothing else, until housing costs are sorted, any tax reductions or income increases will fairly rapidly end up in higher rents.
And whilst Labour have made teeny tiny steps on the way, they are teeny tiny.
I alarmed myself when I found I was nodding along to the economic policies of Reform UK Scotland, or whatever they call themselves. ie they have economic policies.
No way I will vote for that collection of antisemites, Islamophobes, all-sorts-of-other-phobes. Worrying nevertheless.
Scottish Labour's line is 'time for change". A message I am very receptive to. They didn't think it necessary to explain even in the broadest terms what they would change, why and how.
I think this is an interesting straw in the wind. Reform are serious about winning power and are attracting serious people with serious ideas.
All very well, until you think "Ah, but Nigel Farage, though". A deeply unserious chancer with no hidden intellect and not too many political principles either.
I thought they all have only one political principle - if you're not a winner you're a loser. I don't like Farage and don't want him as the next PM but Starmer, Badenoch and the rest of them are just as much chancers with no principles as he is.
Labour MP Catherine West says if a cabinet minister does not put themselves forward to challenge Keir Starmer as party leader by Monday, she will attempt to trigger a leadership contest herself. West, a former junior Foreign Office minister, says she currently has 10 people prepared to back her in a leadership bid but she is “confident” enough people would come forward to trigger a contest.
Delusional angry backbench MP or is this a coordinated firing of the starting pistol?
I'm not sure her solution would work
“My preferred option is for the cabinet to do a reshuffle within itself, where there's plenty of talent, and for Keir to be given a different role, which he might enjoy, perhaps an international role,” she says
She’s clearly delusional! The only PM who accepted a lesser role in recent times was Cameron after he had been out of politics for years .
Starmer can become Ambassador to the US.
Governor of the British Antarctic Territory.
With special responsibility for Northern Ireland. And industrial harmony.
I have no idea who Catherine West is, but the whole embarrassing spectacle probably does need drawing to a close now.
I think Starmer's already blocked off this sort of shrapnel challenge in that the cabinet have basically said they support him (presumably for a week or so at least)
I too had never heard of Catherine West, and I suspect neither of us will again. (Moment in too much sun, rather than a serial nutter)
I still think it’s far more likely than not that Starmer will be able to survive this, at least for another 6-12 months. However, I do think the odds of a replacement increased significantly with the frankly tone deaf response today in bringing back Gordon Brown and Harriet Harman of all people as his big reset “idea.”
I’m not sure the voters who abandoned Labour on Thursday were crying out for that, and it all just looks very desperate and clunky. Whoever thought after running into so much trouble appointing a figure from Labour’s past the PM would turn to… more figures from Labours past to demonstrate his nebulous “change”?
Were I looking for a Big Bang policy - especially for the young - I'd do something on student loans: reducing the interest rate to zero, for instance.
We underestimate how much this issue annoys the young - a debt which no matter how much they pay off only increases.
Yes, good one.
However for all that I keep posting that Starmer will (and should) carry on for now I do think the problem is more him than policy, therefore he will need to be replaced well before the GE. He simply cannot forge an emotional connection with the public. That's a killer flaw which could be mitigated only by something which is not present and is unlikely to be present anytime soon, namely a strong economy and healthy public finances. Absent this, a PM must have a vivid, broadly appealing political persona to have a chance of being reelected. Starmer hasn't and nor can he develop one.
That then is the problem but it's also the opportunity. New leader is the big card that Labour have available to play and they can play it only once. Forget all the stuff about 'delivering the change that people voted for' - that's just formula babble - it's getting the change of leader right (the person, the process, the timing) that is crucial. If they do get it right it could transform their prospects. If not, Farage enters Downing Street. So here's hoping.
2 more Reform seats in Croydon (which remains NOC, Lab and Con almost level pegging).
My Uncle refused to accept that Croydon was not still part of Surrey and continued to provide his address incorrectly until his death in the early 2000s.
I think there is still a postal address 'Cockfosters, Barnet, Herts' followed by the postcode.
Cockfosters is in fact in the London Borough of Enfield, within the Greater London area. Prior to being in Enfield, London, it was in Middlesex not Hertfordshire. It wasn't and isn't in the borough of Barnet. Apart from that the address is right.
Isn't 'the correct postal address' an urban myth ?
Reality is all you need is
2 Some Road POSTCODE
And that is what the post office need, anything else is utterly irrelevant and has no 'right' or 'wrong' about it
Actually I think it's only 2, postcode
"What is the minimum required", "what is useful extra redundancy to reduce the risk of it getting misrouted or misdelivered" and "what avoids making the postie's job unnecessarily difficult" are all different things, I think.
Were I looking for a Big Bang policy - especially for the young - I'd do something on student loans: reducing the interest rate to zero, for instance.
We underestimate how much this issue annoys the young - a debt which no matter how much they pay off only increases.
Yes, the main problem with that would be finding the £30-50 billion or so that it would cost over the next 30 years or so.
Also it would of course advantage a wealthier section of society at the expense of the taxpayer as a whole - I don't have a problem with that, but good luck selling it to the Labour Party, which still occasionally pretends to care about equality.
I think the solution to the student loans problem has to be reducing the number of each year group who go to university back towards the 30% or so that it was before that lying idiot Blair decided that 50% was the right number, deceitfully claiming that some research backed it up, when there was none. That would mean lower subsidies and enable fees to be cut, and would also mean that fewer jobs pointlessly ask for degrees.
Pension relief at 25% for all.
Having said that, a proper policy for the young would not be pissing around with student loans. Housing, housing, housing.
If nothing else, until housing costs are sorted, any tax reductions or income increases will fairly rapidly end up in higher rents.
And whilst Labour have made teeny tiny steps on the way, they are teeny tiny.
And unless we build a shed load of housing people younger than 40 are going to end up renting into their retirement which opens up a whole set of additional issues
Labour MP Catherine West says if a cabinet minister does not put themselves forward to challenge Keir Starmer as party leader by Monday, she will attempt to trigger a leadership contest herself. West, a former junior Foreign Office minister, says she currently has 10 people prepared to back her in a leadership bid but she is “confident” enough people would come forward to trigger a contest.
Delusional angry backbench MP or is this a coordinated firing of the starting pistol?
I'm not sure her solution would work
“My preferred option is for the cabinet to do a reshuffle within itself, where there's plenty of talent, and for Keir to be given a different role, which he might enjoy, perhaps an international role,” she says
She’s clearly delusional! The only PM who accepted a lesser role in recent times was Cameron after he had been out of politics for years .
Starmer can become Ambassador to the US.
Far too sleazy to pass the needed tests. He was pictured with Mandelson, don't you know!
And has just appointed with a dodgy history with PIE.
2 more Reform seats in Croydon (which remains NOC, Lab and Con almost level pegging).
My Uncle refused to accept that Croydon was not still part of Surrey and continued to provide his address incorrectly until his death in the early 2000s.
I think there is still a postal address 'Cockfosters, Barnet, Herts' followed by the postcode.
Cockfosters is in fact in the London Borough of Enfield, within the Greater London area. Prior to being in Enfield, London, it was in Middlesex not Hertfordshire. It wasn't and isn't in the borough of Barnet. Apart from that the address is right.
Isn't 'the correct postal address' an urban myth ?
Reality is all you need is
2 Some Road POSTCODE
And that is what the post office need, anything else is utterly irrelevant and has no 'right' or 'wrong' about it
Actually I think it's only 2, postcode
"What is the minimum required", "what is useful extra redundancy to reduce the risk of it getting misrouted or misdelivered" and "what avoids making the postie's job unnecessarily difficult" are all different things, I think.
Versus "what do you write on the envelope just to be bolshie."
Comments
However they describe their arrangement, the Tories will be Reform's little helpers in the former City of Culture.
The electoral valley of death.
https://bsky.app/profile/robfordmancs.bsky.social/post/3mlgg2wc4mc2p
But I do find the idea of these paper candidates who then immediately go sorry not for me I am off on holiday really weird.
Lab 43 (-15)
Indies 9 (+9)
Con 5 (nc)
Green 5 (+5)
Reform 1 (+1)
Perhaps a faint ray of hope for young Wes to cling onto Ilford North next time? Only 4 of the 9 Indies were in wards in his seat.
(FPT)
I wouldn't describe it as mature politics, except insofar as the bitterness that exists between the different political currents has had a very long time to mature.
Just a mishmash of policies, announced to upset as many as possible. Then U-turned to upset everyone else.
I’m an Evil Baby Eating Tory - but I swear I could have come up with a better, joined up set of policies for each of the above options.
To start with, every political party is a coalition. Each part of the coalition needs to be fed and watered, otherwise they leave.
A glorious afternoon here in East London and the detritus of leaflets and sorry-looking posterboards are as the fallen on the political battlefiled.
Newham have yet to post the numbers for each Ward in the Council elections so I can't really do any proper analysis of what happened and why it happened let alone ask what might have happened and why it didn't.
A little mea culpa of sorts - I think I predicted Labour 25 and Newham Independents 23 so at 26 and 24 I think I did pretty well. What I got badly wrong were the Greens - we saw little or no Green activity in this part of the Borough and while I thought they would hold Olympic Park and win Royal Victoria (which they did), their performance in Forest Gate against Labour and the NIP was unexpected and 16 seats was well beyond even my most optimistic thoughts.
In the Mayoral elections, the Labour candidate won with 30.4% of the vote (compared with 56.2% in 2018 and 73.2% in 2014). Mehmood Mirza will be disappointed tripling his vote wasn't enough while the Green candidate scored an astonishing 19,000 votes more than doubling their vote share to 22.6% of the vote.
The irony of all this is Labour, the Newham Independents and the Greens are all bitter rivals yet their respective leaders were all once together in the Labour Party.
Mrs Stodge asked me this morning "how will all this work?" and the short answer was and is, I've no clue. There are 27 Labour and 40 non-Labour Councillors. I don't know if anyone is talking to anyone else but under the rules Labour leads as they have the Mayor. It's all fine when you have a majority but Labour aren't used to being a minority in the Council chamber and they now face two bitter rivals and presumably their only hope will be to play off one against the other.
Tuesday'smeeting will be interesting as Mayor Forhad Hussain has to pick his Cabinet and we'll get a sense of whether there are or have bene any deals done.
As an aside, both East Ham, West Ham & Beckton and Stratford & Bow Westminster seats are now three way marginals.
It could be 150,000 and "tis but a scratch" would still be saying he was taking full responsibility and therefore carrying on.
I think we are still waiting for the 2022 finances to be signed off and that’s from before things got seriously dodgy
Many of us away from London and the London parties want to be able to make the right or wrong decision close to home and be able to have a democracy that enables us to hold those people to account
Their Bradford ain't my Bradford.
Delusional angry backbench MP or is this a coordinated firing of the starting pistol?
“My preferred option is for the cabinet to do a reshuffle within itself, where there's plenty of talent, and for Keir to be given a different role, which he might enjoy, perhaps an international role,” she says
When I did politics properly back in the Iron Age, the most heart rending part was seeing years of good solid work wiped out in one evening. Losing a seat in which you have invested political, personal and emotional capital can be akin to a bereavement for some and, as you say, whereas if you suffer a bereavement when the overwhelming majority of humanity will offer various levels of sympathy, if you lose a council seat, most people shrug or don't care.
I rarely stood as a candidate but I remember running a campaign which ousted a Conservative lady in the mid 90s. Now, I'm not so vain as to believe it was just my campigning skills (it was a very tough time to be a Conservative candidate) which caused her defeat but I remember at the count as the result came through wanting to punch the air in joy but then I saw the Conservative and she was close to tears.
Politics IS a rough trade as a wise man once said and as we celebrate "our" wins and the "enemy's" losses, there are people involved.
Alex Wickham
@alexwickham
New: Gordon Brown last year proposed taking some defence spending out of the fiscal rules in order to issue joint war bonds alongside NATO allies, but Rachel Reeves remains opposed to that idea.
The Treasury continues to rule out taking defence out of the fiscal rules because the increased borrowing would still be debt, just recorded differently, and therefore would risk an adverse bond market reaction.
It means as things stand Keir Starmer will not be accepting that proposal from his new special envoy for global finance.
https://x.com/alexwickham/status/2053100170049388858
In an exclusive interview with the BBC, the MP for Hornsey and Friern Barnet tells Radio 4’s PM programme her preferred option would be for the cabinet to “reorganise themselves” and put forward their “best communicator” to replace the PM, avoiding a leadership election.
However, West says she was putting the cabinet “on notice” and if she does not hear from a leadership hopeful by Monday she would ask Labour MPs to back her to trigger a contest.
For a leadership election to be set in motion, 20% of Labour MPs - 81 people - would have to back a single challenger.
West, a former junior Foreign Office minister, says she currently has 10 people prepared to back her in a leadership bid but she is “confident” enough people would come forward to trigger a contest.'
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/c1428pev1n0t
We underestimate how much this issue annoys the young - a debt which no matter how much they pay off only increases.
Or 'How do you expect to be taken seriously?" than "Go West".
That's what we need. An MP from north London to win back the no-longer-red wall.
While in inner London the Tories won control of Westminster council and held Kensington and Chelsea council and won most seats in Wandsworth and there were 3 Tory councillors elected in Camden and 6 in Hackney on Thursday.
Inner London is clearly far more of a fan of Kemi than Farage
Cockfosters is in fact in the London Borough of Enfield, within the Greater London area. Prior to being in Enfield, London, it was in Middlesex not Hertfordshire. It wasn't and isn't in the borough of Barnet. Apart from that the address is right.
Reality is all you need is
2 Some Road
POSTCODE
And that is what the post office need, anything else is utterly irrelevant and has no 'right' or 'wrong' about it
2, postcode
I have no idea who Catherine West is, but the whole embarrassing spectacle probably does need drawing to a close now.
Also it would of course advantage a wealthier section of society at the expense of the taxpayer as a whole - I don't have a problem with that, but good luck selling it to the Labour Party, which still occasionally pretends to care about equality.
I think the solution to the student loans problem has to be reducing the number of each year group who go to university back towards the 30% or so that it was before that lying idiot Blair decided that 50% was the right number, deceitfully claiming that some research backed it up, when there was none. That would mean lower subsidies and enable fees to be cut, and would also mean that fewer jobs pointlessly ask for degrees.
How many party leaders will lose their seats at the next election?
You need to work on the scansion, but the answer is blowing in the wind.
This gets you arrested these days in Starmer's Britain? The country's turning into a madhouse
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2026/apr/30/met-police-arrest-two-green-election-candidates-over-alleged-antisemitism
Oh dear. The 2 candidates were arrested for allegedly inciting racial hatred. This was the same offence for which Lucy Connolly was - rightly - convicted in 2024.
Did you object to that? Or are you in favour of inciting racial hatred now? Or only against particular groups?
AIUI one of the people arrested has been elected in Lambeth but arrested people cannot be councillors so there may need to be another election there.
Meanwhile for those who are against racial hatred there is a rally in London tomorrow at 1 pm. It would be good if there is a good turnout because the hatred of minorities or indifference to them which has disfigured this country has got to stop.
I too had never heard of Catherine West, and I suspect neither of us will again. (Moment in too much sun, rather than a serial nutter)
I'm not sure how prominently environmentalism featured in the campaign.
Greens missed out on a clean sweep by 33 votes.
It's quite clear that Catherine West has more chance of being next Labour leader than Burnham, but little else is.
However, another minister appeared open to West’s gambit, saying: “Let’s see where this goes”.
"You *do* mean you?!'
Having said that, a proper policy for the young would not be pissing around with student loans. Housing, housing, housing.
And whilst Labour have made teeny tiny steps on the way, they are teeny tiny.
I’m not sure the voters who abandoned Labour on Thursday were crying out for that, and it all just looks very desperate and clunky. Whoever thought after running into so much trouble appointing a figure from Labour’s past the PM would turn to… more figures from Labours past to demonstrate his nebulous “change”?
However for all that I keep posting that Starmer will (and should) carry on for now I do think the problem is more him than policy, therefore he will need to be replaced well before the GE. He simply cannot forge an emotional connection with the public. That's a killer flaw which could be mitigated only by something which is not present and is unlikely to be present anytime soon, namely a strong economy and healthy public finances. Absent this, a PM must have a vivid, broadly appealing political persona to have a chance of being reelected. Starmer hasn't and nor can he develop one.
That then is the problem but it's also the opportunity. New leader is the big card that Labour have available to play and they can play it only once. Forget all the stuff about 'delivering the change that people voted for' - that's just formula babble - it's getting the change of leader right (the person, the process, the timing) that is crucial. If they do get it right it could transform their prospects. If not, Farage enters Downing Street. So here's hoping.
Along with another close friend of Mandelson.
He's perfect