Where the Streeting has no names as Rayner becomes the favourite to be next PM –politicalbetting.com
Where the Streeting has no names as Rayner becomes the favourite to be next PM– politicalbetting.com
Wes Streeting’s team is asking MPs to support his leadership bid to trigger a contest, but arguing that they can transfer their vote to another candidate after a race begins.Suggests the Streeting team is struggling to get to 81 nominations tonight.
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Maybe HMRC can’t stand Miliband either and decided to save us all !
She was the housing minister for two years, oversaw a steep drop in housing starts, no legislation to make planning or building regs easier, and then had to resign over screwing up her own housing arrangements to the tune of £40k in tax.
£40k which she’s now managed to find under the mattress despite a huge drop in salary.
Hoping for some common sense from the MPs, when deciding who to nominate.
Ed Miliband goes in the same bucket, everything he’s done as a minister has held the country back.
The challenge for political broadcasting is enormous, and rather satisfying to watch. After years of personality-driven and chaotic, shallow politics coverage across much of the media, which was largely about instability, gossip and leadership crises we now have a govt with massive majority, widespread internal agreement and no likelihood of massive instability anytime soon. A great environment for a programme like #c4news full of policy nerds and people who prefer to argue about what ideas work than who should be the front person.
https://x.com/krishgm/status/1810445188432609681
This is now a beauty parade for morons. Labour members - like Tory members before them - now get to choose based on their narrow perceptions of what good looks like.
Streeting- all ambition, no vision, a shallow thinker with no effective executive achievements to his name.
Raymer- a vindictive class warrior trading on a sense of working class grievance whose inchoate ideology will alienate more than it rallies
Burnham- the kind of disorganization that would see him in the bunker inside a year surrounded by howling mobs
Miliband- a previous retread, weedy- will irritate more than he inspires.
None of these people are actually much of an improvement on Starmer.
Labour is now going to spend months in inward looking insularity while the problems of the country take second place to the problems of the Labour Party.
I thought it was literally impossible for Labour to be worse than the utter disgrace of the previous Tory fiasco- but they are giving it a go.
Behind all of this, of course is the terrible fear that the UK might actually have become ungovernable...
This tax news doesn’t change that.
Also worth remembering Rayner did still underpay her tax by £40k. That’s what the public will remember. The fact there was no deliberate wrongdoing does not change that.
Also could MPs or the Cabinet collectively rally round someone like John Healey or even Rachel Reeves, as a don’t-spook-the-markets compromise that avoids a prolonged contest?
Let’s hope she remembers the difference between leasehold and freehold
https://www.ons.gov.uk/economy/grossdomesticproductgdp/bulletins/gdpfirstquarterlyestimateuk/januarytomarch2026#:~:text=UK real gross domestic product,(Oct to Dec) 2025.
Growth has mildly outperformed expectations more often than not in recent years recently, under both governments. Not stellar, but better than you’d think from the headlines. The British mentality remains relentlessly negative. Which in turn holds back investment and consumer spending.
Whilst Starmer has said he isn’t going to quit, if there are challengers plural and all the focus is on who his replacement is rather than on batting away these cheeky no-hopers, surely even he will get the message.
Step aside. A contest to start with a lengthy gestation period. Actual policy debate where ideas to turn around the country gets discussed - hopefully with a view to exposing that reform have nothing to do- and then Burnham wins.
I don’t think she will stand at all.
Contrast with the Lib Dems (and I’m coming to the belated conclusion it’s probably soon time for Davey to start the succession - but not right now) who have huge talent in the new intake with some very interesting backgrounds.
https://news.sky.com/story/bluesky-13543814
How long until the Trump Tsunami hits?
Anecdotal evidence I know, but a couple of friends in the UK have started to ask me about the geopolitical situation in the sandpit, and I suspect it isn’t because they’re worried about me being hit by an Iranian drone. Not rich people, but middle-class entrepreneurial types.
We do have to prepare ourselves for the chance this is all delayed for weeks until Burnham returns. Depends on how quickly Wes can or wants to fire the starting gun.
I still don’t think Rayner will run, but I do think who she backs will be highly instrumental in who eventually wins. She will get an appropriately senior role in government in return.
Today, we care about competence.
Mind you there are hundreds of tweets and comments like this. “Adults in the room” etc
The only journalist who comes out with credit (as he often does) is Michael Crick, who sternly warned that we would regret not questioning Labour more intensively - about their plans etc - before the GE
However I'd guess most of the other contenders would be quite happy letting him finish the job at Health.
I am betting on it, but without any enthusiasm.
Also make modular homes and US-style wooden houses mortgageable.
* not suggesting anything dodgy, genuinely interested what it is that is driving it. Yes the ONS will say to the media construction or retail, but normally it takes a day or two for eggheads to really look at things to pinpoint what it is.
Wes backing off, Rayner and Ed M loyal and Burnham running around like the F1 driver with the worst agent ever.
Starmer can be ruthless with party management. If he actually attempted something of this nature I rather think he’d get away with it. He might be risking Burnham trying to nab his job in another 12-18 months’ time, but he wins the day.
https://x.com/ons/status/2054805518078673102?s=61
That could all be done by the next General Election, and it'd be noticed in hundreds of constituencies.
They need to address the enshittification, tell a story, and can then run on a "Don't Let Reform Ruin It" platform.
"Output is estimated to have increased by 0.6% in the latest quarter, following an upwardly revised 0.2% increase in Quarter 4 (Oct to Dec). Overall, in Quarter 1 (Jan to Mar) 2026, there were increases in 14 out of 20 subsectors of GDP.
The services sector increased by 0.8%, while the construction sector increased by 0.4% and production by 0.2%."
They were obviously big fans.
You say someone who isn’t going to totally screw up the finances - so not the Tories then who did just that.
Leave it to Labour…
In which case, government taxing is and spending the proceeds might not be the craziest way to make the wheels move.
Who do the public prefer in a head to head vs Farage and Reform UK?
- A Burnham led Labour govt +16
- A Starmer led Labour govt +11
- A Streeting led Labour govt +7
- A Rayner led Labour govt +6
https://x.com/keiranpedley/status/2054791544817832437
The policy has been to add to regulations, rather than revise.
So now, in theory, to do a loft conversion, you need to fill out several hundred pages. Which are never read.
Enforcement consists (if any) of some flying visits from building control.
So we are seeing blocks of flats built with structural deficiencies, insulation left out on new built houses etc.
Because sticking to the rules is so much more expensive - the cowboys “win”. Well until now.
We have reached the point where even with absurd corner cutting, the number for new starts, in many places, don’t work.
Before WWI the Royal Navy had an elaborate system for testing shells for naval guns. Expensive and complicated. It functionally added up to not doing any tests - no matter how many failures in a batch, if a couple worked… some estimates say that 70% of the shells were defective.
But there was paperwork for each and every shell, by serial number.
A longer contest just so he can run?
In Los Angeles there’s an independent guy running for mayor called Spencer Pratt. He’s unlikely to win, but he’s a really good communicator who lost his house in a big fire last year, and is running on cleaning up the city and getting it moving again.
It’s easy to see his campaign, full of straight talking about day-to-day problems seeming obvious to everyone except the political class, being a model used by others in the future.
Thats not to say that there aren't economic problems, but that looks reasonably good when looking at other mature economies.
There is so much stored up cash available to be splurged, that just a year or two of no crisis should give consumers the rationale they need.
"The country is f*cked', 'worst government ever', etc. etc. And much of this from people who lived through the 70s, for example. By any set objective measures we are immeasurably better off than we were then.
29% could well be enough to win a comfortable majority at the next GE, but it would historically be regarded as being reduced to the bedrock of core support.
The challenge for Labour is to be able to win over their base while also dealing with the realities of the problems faced in government. This is primarily a challenge of political storytelling rather than political positioning I think.
Beyond that, you have a large number of people who feel they are just working to live - nothing left over after bills.