On thread - I'm happy to agree that a Conservative extinction is likely. But I could only see this as a failure of Kemi Badenoch if it was clear that someone else would do better. The best the Cons can hope for in the new political landscape is minor party status. It's implausible to think a different leader would be doing better. I find it unlikely either of the names sonetimes suggested here - Cleverly or Hunt - could be doung better. They've had their time, whoever is leader.
+1 - for the Tory party to survive Reform needs to completely implode and I just don't see it...
I still think that we could be moving towards a form of two-party politics between Reform and the Tories. The Tories just need hold their nerve until they're again seen as respectable by Lib Dem/Coalition type voters.
That’s not going to happen . Continuing to be anti EU and pulling the UK out of the ECHR is a big issue .
I think that as part of the realignment, the type of voters I'm talking about will begin to support those things but in a nice and pragmatic way rather than a nasty and ideological way.
Sorry but Gallowgate is right - no-one who is looking at Labour / Green / Lib Dem is going to vote for a Tory party looking at changing the ECHR or that is anti-EU.
And that's 45% minimum of voters... Reform and the tories are fighting over the same voters at the moment.
I think it's a bit more nuanced than that. If they put an inverted triple-lock on student loans, two-state on Israel Palestine, and cracked into landlords on a home ownership ticket, that would be more than enough to offset an anti-EU position.
ECHR is a different because it depends on what you replace it with - I think a large majority if people would agree that small boats is not an optimal refugee mechanism.
I actually think a lot of the ECHR problems could be solved by openly legislating conflicts with them and very publicly daring the "unelected foreign judges" to overrule the "elected sovereign British government" and face consequences such as suspension of all funding, suspension of UK membership and repealing all legislation relating to the ECHR in the country. Putting them in their place a bit would work wonders and I don't think they'd be able to defy the UK (and many other countries).
Right now the unelected judges make crazy rulings and get away with it because they don't believe any country will defy them. As soon as one country does it they'll start to fall in line. Failing that start making consequences for them and suspend our membership while we enact proper border controls and deportation of foreign criminals and illegal immigrants.
I don't see any other way out because the judges need to be brought to heel by the nation states.
If you don't like the rulings, either change the laws or bin them altogether. I don't know why you'd fanny about with all the judge-defying stuff.
How do you do that without leaving the ECHR? That's why you need strong politicians across Europe to start facing down the unelected judges and start forcing consequences on them when they make these ridiculous rulings.
European politicians already have started to do so. Keep up.
As I understand it, the new declaration doesn't have any legal force, so judges can still use an expansive interpretation of the ECHR rules if they choose.
***EXCLUSIVE*** Andy Burnham fully rules out changing Rachel Reeves’ fiscal rules if he becomes PM
At the weekend his team had left it open whether he might change them in future
But tonight his spokesperson tells Bloomberg he is explicitly ruling out any changes to the existing fiscal rules
AND crucially Burnham is now also ruling out exempting defence spending from the fiscal rules to spend more on the military
No change with the EU relationship and no change to the economy, exactly what is Burnham going to do differently?!
His one policy of significance is regional devolution of power. The extent of that is unclear, but it goes against forty years of centralisation which was economically disastrous for the regions, so I'll give him credit there for a policy of some significance.
No doubt PB's London residents will be sceptical, but that's their problem.
I’d hope he does follow through on the devolution of power.
In the past we’ve had plenty talk about it but they always roll back.
Sitting watching a regional French TV slot about a mobile solar powered hen hutch. Much more preferable to the trials and tribulations of the Manchester Messiah
On thread - I'm happy to agree that a Conservative extinction is likely. But I could only see this as a failure of Kemi Badenoch if it was clear that someone else would do better. The best the Cons can hope for in the new political landscape is minor party status. It's implausible to think a different leader would be doing better. I find it unlikely either of the names sonetimes suggested here - Cleverly or Hunt - could be doung better. They've had their time, whoever is leader.
+1 - for the Tory party to survive Reform needs to completely implode and I just don't see it...
I still think that we could be moving towards a form of two-party politics between Reform and the Tories. The Tories just need hold their nerve until they're again seen as respectable by Lib Dem/Coalition type voters.
That’s not going to happen . Continuing to be anti EU and pulling the UK out of the ECHR is a big issue .
I think that as part of the realignment, the type of voters I'm talking about will begin to support those things but in a nice and pragmatic way rather than a nasty and ideological way.
Sorry but Gallowgate is right - no-one who is looking at Labour / Green / Lib Dem is going to vote for a Tory party looking at changing the ECHR or that is anti-EU.
And that's 45% minimum of voters... Reform and the tories are fighting over the same voters at the moment.
I think it's a bit more nuanced than that. If they put an inverted triple-lock on student loans, two-state on Israel Palestine, and cracked into landlords on a home ownership ticket, that would be more than enough to offset an anti-EU position.
ECHR is a different because it depends on what you replace it with - I think a large majority if people would agree that small boats is not an optimal refugee mechanism.
I actually think a lot of the ECHR problems could be solved by openly legislating conflicts with them and very publicly daring the "unelected foreign judges" to overrule the "elected sovereign British government" and face consequences such as suspension of all funding, suspension of UK membership and repealing all legislation relating to the ECHR in the country. Putting them in their place a bit would work wonders and I don't think they'd be able to defy the UK (and many other countries).
Right now the unelected judges make crazy rulings and get away with it because they don't believe any country will defy them. As soon as one country does it they'll start to fall in line. Failing that start making consequences for them and suspend our membership while we enact proper border controls and deportation of foreign criminals and illegal immigrants.
I don't see any other way out because the judges need to be brought to heel by the nation states.
If you don't like the rulings, either change the laws or bin them altogether. I don't know why you'd fanny about with all the judge-defying stuff.
How do you do that without leaving the ECHR? That's why you need strong politicians across Europe to start facing down the unelected judges and start forcing consequences on them when they make these ridiculous rulings.
European politicians already have started to do so. Keep up.
As I understand it, the new declaration doesn't have any legal force, so judges can still use an expansive interpretation of the ECHR rules if they choose.
They can, but governments can rewrite the treaties - as they did a couple of years back, when they introduced a subsidiarity principle.
Part of the declaration was a message to the court to stop ignoring that change and leave more decisions to individual countries.
International law depends entirely on the consensus of signatories, and the recent declaration indicated a change in that consensus.
On thread - I'm happy to agree that a Conservative extinction is likely. But I could only see this as a failure of Kemi Badenoch if it was clear that someone else would do better. The best the Cons can hope for in the new political landscape is minor party status. It's implausible to think a different leader would be doing better. I find it unlikely either of the names sonetimes suggested here - Cleverly or Hunt - could be doung better. They've had their time, whoever is leader.
+1 - for the Tory party to survive Reform needs to completely implode and I just don't see it...
I still think that we could be moving towards a form of two-party politics between Reform and the Tories. The Tories just need hold their nerve until they're again seen as respectable by Lib Dem/Coalition type voters.
You would need Your Party to do better so that the left-wing vote was split further to achieve that.
Are they still going ?
Mind you if Burnham becomes leader he’s rumoured to want to let Jezza back in so that would leave it being run by Zarah,
IfvhevhascJezzavback he'll lose half the membership and half the votes.
If you want "team players" like he claims you root out filth like Corbyn, Abbott, Long Bailey, Burgon.
***EXCLUSIVE*** Andy Burnham fully rules out changing Rachel Reeves’ fiscal rules if he becomes PM
At the weekend his team had left it open whether he might change them in future
But tonight his spokesperson tells Bloomberg he is explicitly ruling out any changes to the existing fiscal rules
AND crucially Burnham is now also ruling out exempting defence spending from the fiscal rules to spend more on the military
No change with the EU relationship and no change to the economy, exactly what is Burnham going to do differently?!
His one policy of significance is regional devolution of power. The extent of that is unclear, but it goes against forty years of centralisation which was economically disastrous for the regions, so I'll give him credit there for a policy of some significance.
No doubt PB's London residents will be sceptical, but that's their problem.
No, I love the place but I do think the country is too London centric.
You're an old lefty prepared to make concessions. I suspect some of our regular will differ.
As I recall, even the much lamented Alistair Meeks believed London investment came before everything.
London investment comes before everything else because the Treasury's Green Book is written to make it that way.
We really need a concerted effort to transform Manchester / Leeds / Birmingham / Nottingham into the equivalent of Munich / Hamburg / Frankfurt / Cologne so that the UK isn't focused purely around London.
***EXCLUSIVE*** Andy Burnham fully rules out changing Rachel Reeves’ fiscal rules if he becomes PM
At the weekend his team had left it open whether he might change them in future
But tonight his spokesperson tells Bloomberg he is explicitly ruling out any changes to the existing fiscal rules
AND crucially Burnham is now also ruling out exempting defence spending from the fiscal rules to spend more on the military
No change with the EU relationship and no change to the economy, exactly what is Burnham going to do differently?!
His one policy of significance is regional devolution of power. The extent of that is unclear, but it goes against forty years of centralisation which was economically disastrous for the regions, so I'll give him credit there for a policy of some significance.
No doubt PB's London residents will be sceptical, but that's their problem.
No, I love the place but I do think the country is too London centric.
You're an old lefty prepared to make concessions. I suspect some of our regular will differ.
As I recall, even the much lamented Alistair Meeks believed London investment came before everything.
Yes, I don't go with that. It's a great wealth-creating place and diverse, showing those things go together. But otoh it crowds out the regions and creates an unhealthy concentration and imbalance of wealth and opportunity.
On thread - I'm happy to agree that a Conservative extinction is likely. But I could only see this as a failure of Kemi Badenoch if it was clear that someone else would do better. The best the Cons can hope for in the new political landscape is minor party status. It's implausible to think a different leader would be doing better. I find it unlikely either of the names sonetimes suggested here - Cleverly or Hunt - could be doung better. They've had their time, whoever is leader.
+1 - for the Tory party to survive Reform needs to completely implode and I just don't see it...
I still think that we could be moving towards a form of two-party politics between Reform and the Tories. The Tories just need hold their nerve until they're again seen as respectable by Lib Dem/Coalition type voters.
That’s not going to happen . Continuing to be anti EU and pulling the UK out of the ECHR is a big issue .
I think that as part of the realignment, the type of voters I'm talking about will begin to support those things but in a nice and pragmatic way rather than a nasty and ideological way.
Sorry but Gallowgate is right - no-one who is looking at Labour / Green / Lib Dem is going to vote for a Tory party looking at changing the ECHR or that is anti-EU.
And that's 45% minimum of voters... Reform and the tories are fighting over the same voters at the moment.
I think it's a bit more nuanced than that. If they put an inverted triple-lock on student loans, two-state on Israel Palestine, and cracked into landlords on a home ownership ticket, that would be more than enough to offset an anti-EU position.
ECHR is a different because it depends on what you replace it with - I think a large majority if people would agree that small boats is not an optimal refugee mechanism.
I actually think a lot of the ECHR problems could be solved by openly legislating conflicts with them and very publicly daring the "unelected foreign judges" to overrule the "elected sovereign British government" and face consequences such as suspension of all funding, suspension of UK membership and repealing all legislation relating to the ECHR in the country. Putting them in their place a bit would work wonders and I don't think they'd be able to defy the UK (and many other countries).
Right now the unelected judges make crazy rulings and get away with it because they don't believe any country will defy them. As soon as one country does it they'll start to fall in line. Failing that start making consequences for them and suspend our membership while we enact proper border controls and deportation of foreign criminals and illegal immigrants.
I don't see any other way out because the judges need to be brought to heel by the nation states.
If you don't like the rulings, either change the laws or bin them altogether. I don't know why you'd fanny about with all the judge-defying stuff.
How do you do that without leaving the ECHR? That's why you need strong politicians across Europe to start facing down the unelected judges and start forcing consequences on them when they make these ridiculous rulings.
What do you think of the recent declaration in which the Council of Europe (as far as I understand it) told judges they were doing it all wrong?
There will be a proportion of people who have suicidal empathy that will kick and scream as the foreign criminals and illegal immigrants are deported but I think overall it will be extremely popular.
What is this "suicidal empathy" you keep talking about?
Keep whacking that scapegoat if it makes you feel better. But you've become no better than others who blame all our ills on the 'enemy', seemingly consisting of judges and the wrong type of foreigner. Trumpian America being the most recent example.
The rest of us can get on with supporting our ability to manage our borders sensibly without the unnecessarily divisive rhetoric.
Have you thought of buying a personal pomposity detector? I fear there’s no point as you’d break it
***EXCLUSIVE*** Andy Burnham fully rules out changing Rachel Reeves’ fiscal rules if he becomes PM
At the weekend his team had left it open whether he might change them in future
But tonight his spokesperson tells Bloomberg he is explicitly ruling out any changes to the existing fiscal rules
AND crucially Burnham is now also ruling out exempting defence spending from the fiscal rules to spend more on the military
No change with the EU relationship and no change to the economy, exactly what is Burnham going to do differently?!
His one policy of significance is regional devolution of power. The extent of that is unclear, but it goes against forty years of centralisation which was economically disastrous for the regions, so I'll give him credit there for a policy of some significance.
No doubt PB's London residents will be sceptical, but that's their problem.
No, I love the place but I do think the country is too London centric.
You're an old lefty prepared to make concessions. I suspect some of our regular will differ.
As I recall, even the much lamented Alistair Meeks believed London investment came before everything.
The problem is the cost benefit analysis isn't it? when the beancounters run the predictions investment in London results in higher bang/£ whether that is correct is another thing
If voting for the Greens and Reform (or whoever else) started to actually mean something significant rather than just value signalling, then we'd rapidly find younger voters would not vote for them.
For as long as politics is a pissing contest, they will.
***EXCLUSIVE*** Andy Burnham fully rules out changing Rachel Reeves’ fiscal rules if he becomes PM
At the weekend his team had left it open whether he might change them in future
But tonight his spokesperson tells Bloomberg he is explicitly ruling out any changes to the existing fiscal rules
AND crucially Burnham is now also ruling out exempting defence spending from the fiscal rules to spend more on the military
No change with the EU relationship and no change to the economy, exactly what is Burnham going to do differently?!
His one policy of significance is regional devolution of power. The extent of that is unclear, but it goes against forty years of centralisation which was economically disastrous for the regions, so I'll give him credit there for a policy of some significance.
No doubt PB's London residents will be sceptical, but that's their problem.
I’d hope he does follow through on the devolution of power.
In the past we’ve had plenty talk about it but they always roll back.
I’d suspect he won’t.
I'm hardly a a Burnham fan, and I'm also sceptical, but it is at least a significant proposal (which I favour), and I'm not going to dismiss it before he actually lets everyone down.
On thread - I'm happy to agree that a Conservative extinction is likely. But I could only see this as a failure of Kemi Badenoch if it was clear that someone else would do better. The best the Cons can hope for in the new political landscape is minor party status. It's implausible to think a different leader would be doing better. I find it unlikely either of the names sonetimes suggested here - Cleverly or Hunt - could be doung better. They've had their time, whoever is leader.
+1 - for the Tory party to survive Reform needs to completely implode and I just don't see it...
I still think that we could be moving towards a form of two-party politics between Reform and the Tories. The Tories just need hold their nerve until they're again seen as respectable by Lib Dem/Coalition type voters.
That’s not going to happen . Continuing to be anti EU and pulling the UK out of the ECHR is a big issue .
I think that as part of the realignment, the type of voters I'm talking about will begin to support those things but in a nice and pragmatic way rather than a nasty and ideological way.
Sorry but Gallowgate is right - no-one who is looking at Labour / Green / Lib Dem is going to vote for a Tory party looking at changing the ECHR or that is anti-EU.
And that's 45% minimum of voters... Reform and the tories are fighting over the same voters at the moment.
I think it's a bit more nuanced than that. If they put an inverted triple-lock on student loans, two-state on Israel Palestine, and cracked into landlords on a home ownership ticket, that would be more than enough to offset an anti-EU position.
ECHR is a different because it depends on what you replace it with - I think a large majority if people would agree that small boats is not an optimal refugee mechanism.
What's the ECHR got to do with small boats - it's conflagating
On thread - I'm happy to agree that a Conservative extinction is likely. But I could only see this as a failure of Kemi Badenoch if it was clear that someone else would do better. The best the Cons can hope for in the new political landscape is minor party status. It's implausible to think a different leader would be doing better. I find it unlikely either of the names sonetimes suggested here - Cleverly or Hunt - could be doung better. They've had their time, whoever is leader.
+1 - for the Tory party to survive Reform needs to completely implode and I just don't see it...
I still think that we could be moving towards a form of two-party politics between Reform and the Tories. The Tories just need hold their nerve until they're again seen as respectable by Lib Dem/Coalition type voters.
That’s not going to happen . Continuing to be anti EU and pulling the UK out of the ECHR is a big issue .
I think that as part of the realignment, the type of voters I'm talking about will begin to support those things but in a nice and pragmatic way rather than a nasty and ideological way.
Sorry but Gallowgate is right - no-one who is looking at Labour / Green / Lib Dem is going to vote for a Tory party looking at changing the ECHR or that is anti-EU.
And that's 45% minimum of voters... Reform and the tories are fighting over the same voters at the moment.
Except in seats the Tories held in 2024, in Tory v Reform seats 45% of LDs, a third of Labour and a quarter of Green voters would vote Tory to beat Reform according to Yougov
So the Tories will be fighting to retain 120 seats at most on that basis - they aren't going to improve if the only people willing to transfer their vote to them are in seats where the Tories are the anti-Reform party..
Most Tories would be delighted with 120 seats still and a few gains….
The HY of 2021 would have been mortified had he caught a glimpse of the sort of things he’d be posting just five years’ later!
"I lived in an upscale apartment complex in Lagos, and several of the residents had council flats in the UK which they were subletting. They admitted that they couldn’t believe they were able to get away with it, and asked if Brits were retarded."
This is the next scandal waiting to explode. Social housing in London is being gamed by foreigners, everyone in local govt knows this. It is run by foreigners for foreigners, sucking money out of the UK
I was told five years ago: about this
Nothing will happen to stop it or change it.
The people complaining about it will be called racist and the problem deemed we don’t build enough.
When we do build they’re not always available. Must have been thousands of translators.
Clearly you didn't read the article as the second paragraph reads
Erin Ong is in line for compensation after winning the tribunal in Britain, even though she did not have a work permit and was only on a visitor’s visa when she was managing a hotel in the UK.
To be honest, I actually think this is valid, the employer failed to check immigration status and abused the worker by making her do things she shouldn't have been doing due to her aliments.
Yes, I have seen worse cases of Wokeness gone mad, like, er, this, from yesterday
"A trans Indian student elected to Holyrood wants Scottish taxpayers to fund reparations to Palestinians because of their “complicity” in the “occupation” of the territory.
Q Manivannan was elected as a Green Party MSP on the Edinburgh & Lothians East list for the pro-independence Scottish Greens last week."
There’s an all party political group dedicated to it.
There was a conference on it last year and the legal people behind some of the so-called equal pay shakedowns, Leigh Day, were a sponsor of it as are a few NGO’s who will benefit from it.
Dig deep Sir, it’s not going away and the Greens are sympathetic too.
There is a reckoning coming, for these people. They are parasites
Unfortunately too many white liberals have suicidal empathy and will continue to vote for higher taxes and less freedom so they can feel as though they're on the right side of history.
If only women aged 18-50 could vote, the Greens would win 500+ seats. Maybe the right should reflect on that and consider making them a palatable offer, instead of the "the voters are wrong" thing.
Voters probably are often wrong. But you have to find a way for them to realise it without directly saying they were, as no one likes to admit they were wrong.
***EXCLUSIVE*** Andy Burnham fully rules out changing Rachel Reeves’ fiscal rules if he becomes PM
At the weekend his team had left it open whether he might change them in future
But tonight his spokesperson tells Bloomberg he is explicitly ruling out any changes to the existing fiscal rules
AND crucially Burnham is now also ruling out exempting defence spending from the fiscal rules to spend more on the military
No change with the EU relationship and no change to the economy, exactly what is Burnham going to do differently?!
His one policy of significance is regional devolution of power. The extent of that is unclear, but it goes against forty years of centralisation which was economically disastrous for the regions, so I'll give him credit there for a policy of some significance.
No doubt PB's London residents will be sceptical, but that's their problem.
I’d hope he does follow through on the devolution of power.
In the past we’ve had plenty talk about it but they always roll back.
I’d suspect he won’t.
Whitehall will not like the chaos, but a chance to stop any (meaningful) devolution will find a willing audience.
So basically only St Andy can remove Starmer as Labour leader and PM. Streeting is too rightwing for Labour members who presumably think his rejoin the EU pledge just means he should join the Liberal Democrats?
I lived in an upscale apartment complex in Lagos, and several of the residents had council flats in the UK which they were subletting. They admitted that they couldn’t believe they were able to get away with it, and asked if Brits were retarded.
This was back in 2012, by the way. Imagine how much worse it is now.
I need to point out that one of my Viewcode Rants (there are several) is that we should not allow foreign nationals to own land in the UK, period. We've have a centuries-long lesson on how bad that can be in Ireland when we were doing it, and hence we should ensure that we not allow others to do that to us.
I lived in an upscale apartment complex in Lagos, and several of the residents had council flats in the UK which they were subletting. They admitted that they couldn’t believe they were able to get away with it, and asked if Brits were retarded.
This was back in 2012, by the way. Imagine how much worse it is now.
I need to point out that one of my Viewcode Rants (there are several) is that we should not allow foreign nationals to own land in the UK, period. We've have a centuries-long lesson on how bad that can be in Ireland when we were doing it, and hence we should ensure that we not allow others to do that to us.
On thread - I'm happy to agree that a Conservative extinction is likely. But I could only see this as a failure of Kemi Badenoch if it was clear that someone else would do better. The best the Cons can hope for in the new political landscape is minor party status. It's implausible to think a different leader would be doing better. I find it unlikely either of the names sonetimes suggested here - Cleverly or Hunt - could be doung better. They've had their time, whoever is leader.
+1 - for the Tory party to survive Reform needs to completely implode and I just don't see it...
I still think that we could be moving towards a form of two-party politics between Reform and the Tories. The Tories just need hold their nerve until they're again seen as respectable by Lib Dem/Coalition type voters.
That won’t happen unless the Tories eventually adopt woke because there’s a good 30%+ of us wokeys
If there is a leadership contest, your first preference: Burnham 47% Starmer 31% Rayner 8% Streeting 4% Miliband 3% Cooper 3% Mahmood 1% Carns 0%
Head to heads: Burnham 59% v Starmer 37% Burnham 80% v Streeting 10% Miliband 58% v Streeting 28% Rayner 70% v Streeting 19%
Doesn’t look like Wes has done himself any favours over recent weeks?
Astonishing that Starmer is still at 31%. In many ways it must reflect the quality of the alternatives.
If, instead of a quick contest, Starmer gives Burnham a job in the cabinet and then the shine wears off him, it will make the leadership question even harder to resolve closer to the next election.
***EXCLUSIVE*** Andy Burnham fully rules out changing Rachel Reeves’ fiscal rules if he becomes PM
At the weekend his team had left it open whether he might change them in future
But tonight his spokesperson tells Bloomberg he is explicitly ruling out any changes to the existing fiscal rules
AND crucially Burnham is now also ruling out exempting defence spending from the fiscal rules to spend more on the military
No change with the EU relationship and no change to the economy, exactly what is Burnham going to do differently?!
His one policy of significance is regional devolution of power. The extent of that is unclear, but it goes against forty years of centralisation which was economically disastrous for the regions, so I'll give him credit there for a policy of some significance.
No doubt PB's London residents will be sceptical, but that's their problem.
No, I love the place but I do think the country is too London centric.
You're an old lefty prepared to make concessions. I suspect some of our regular will differ.
As I recall, even the much lamented Alistair Meeks believed London investment came before everything.
London investment comes before everything else because the Treasury's Green Book is written to make it that way.
We really need a concerted effort to transform Manchester / Leeds / Birmingham / Nottingham into the equivalent of Munich / Hamburg / Frankfurt / Cologne so that the UK isn't focused purely around London.
Which can, in part, be traced back to Dom Bloody Cummings and his first great referendum win.
The political equivalent of Thomas Midgley developing lead additives for petrol, and then CFCs as an encore.
On thread - I'm happy to agree that a Conservative extinction is likely. But I could only see this as a failure of Kemi Badenoch if it was clear that someone else would do better. The best the Cons can hope for in the new political landscape is minor party status. It's implausible to think a different leader would be doing better. I find it unlikely either of the names sonetimes suggested here - Cleverly or Hunt - could be doung better. They've had their time, whoever is leader.
+1 - for the Tory party to survive Reform needs to completely implode and I just don't see it...
I still think that we could be moving towards a form of two-party politics between Reform and the Tories. The Tories just need hold their nerve until they're again seen as respectable by Lib Dem/Coalition type voters.
That’s not going to happen . Continuing to be anti EU and pulling the UK out of the ECHR is a big issue .
I think that as part of the realignment, the type of voters I'm talking about will begin to support those things but in a nice and pragmatic way rather than a nasty and ideological way.
Sorry but Gallowgate is right - no-one who is looking at Labour / Green / Lib Dem is going to vote for a Tory party looking at changing the ECHR or that is anti-EU.
And that's 45% minimum of voters... Reform and the tories are fighting over the same voters at the moment.
I think it's a bit more nuanced than that. If they put an inverted triple-lock on student loans, two-state on Israel Palestine, and cracked into landlords on a home ownership ticket, that would be more than enough to offset an anti-EU position.
ECHR is a different because it depends on what you replace it with - I think a large majority if people would agree that small boats is not an optimal refugee mechanism.
I actually think a lot of the ECHR problems could be solved by openly legislating conflicts with them and very publicly daring the "unelected foreign judges" to overrule the "elected sovereign British government" and face consequences such as suspension of all funding, suspension of UK membership and repealing all legislation relating to the ECHR in the country. Putting them in their place a bit would work wonders and I don't think they'd be able to defy the UK (and many other countries).
Right now the unelected judges make crazy rulings and get away with it because they don't believe any country will defy them. As soon as one country does it they'll start to fall in line. Failing that start making consequences for them and suspend our membership while we enact proper border controls and deportation of foreign criminals and illegal immigrants.
I don't see any other way out because the judges need to be brought to heel by the nation states.
If you don't like the rulings, either change the laws or bin them altogether. I don't know why you'd fanny about with all the judge-defying stuff.
How do you do that without leaving the ECHR? That's why you need strong politicians across Europe to start facing down the unelected judges and start forcing consequences on them when they make these ridiculous rulings.
What do you think of the recent declaration in which the Council of Europe (as far as I understand it) told judges they were doing it all wrong?
There will be a proportion of people who have suicidal empathy that will kick and scream as the foreign criminals and illegal immigrants are deported but I think overall it will be extremely popular.
What is this "suicidal empathy" you keep talking about?
Keep whacking that scapegoat if it makes you feel better. But you've become no better than others who blame all our ills on the 'enemy', seemingly consisting of judges and the wrong type of foreigner. Trumpian America being the most recent example.
The rest of us can get on with supporting our ability to manage our borders sensibly without the unnecessarily divisive rhetoric.
Have you thought of buying a personal pomposity detector? I fear there’s no point as you’d break it
I'm sorry but my irony meter just exploded so I'm not sure how to respond to that.
***EXCLUSIVE*** Andy Burnham fully rules out changing Rachel Reeves’ fiscal rules if he becomes PM
At the weekend his team had left it open whether he might change them in future
But tonight his spokesperson tells Bloomberg he is explicitly ruling out any changes to the existing fiscal rules
AND crucially Burnham is now also ruling out exempting defence spending from the fiscal rules to spend more on the military
No change with the EU relationship and no change to the economy, exactly what is Burnham going to do differently?!
His one policy of significance is regional devolution of power. The extent of that is unclear, but it goes against forty years of centralisation which was economically disastrous for the regions, so I'll give him credit there for a policy of some significance.
No doubt PB's London residents will be sceptical, but that's their problem.
No, I love the place but I do think the country is too London centric.
You're an old lefty prepared to make concessions. I suspect some of our regular will differ.
As I recall, even the much lamented Alistair Meeks believed London investment came before everything.
Yes, I don't go with that. It's a great wealth-creating place and diverse, showing those things go together. But otoh it crowds out the regions and creates an unhealthy concentration and imbalance of wealth and opportunity.
Edit: I'm only 65.
I'm of similar vintage, and have accepted for most purposes I now count as "old".. 😏
On thread - I'm happy to agree that a Conservative extinction is likely. But I could only see this as a failure of Kemi Badenoch if it was clear that someone else would do better. The best the Cons can hope for in the new political landscape is minor party status. It's implausible to think a different leader would be doing better. I find it unlikely either of the names sonetimes suggested here - Cleverly or Hunt - could be doung better. They've had their time, whoever is leader.
+1 - for the Tory party to survive Reform needs to completely implode and I just don't see it...
I still think that we could be moving towards a form of two-party politics between Reform and the Tories. The Tories just need hold their nerve until they're again seen as respectable by Lib Dem/Coalition type voters.
We have already moved to two-bloc politics. there's one consisting of Lab/LD/Gre in England and another consisting of Ref/Con. In theory voters move withing the block but not between them. I'm not sure the theory is true, but I didn't invent it. If it is true then there won't be a Ref/Con two party system, although I'm not yet convinced.
***EXCLUSIVE*** Andy Burnham fully rules out changing Rachel Reeves’ fiscal rules if he becomes PM
At the weekend his team had left it open whether he might change them in future
But tonight his spokesperson tells Bloomberg he is explicitly ruling out any changes to the existing fiscal rules
AND crucially Burnham is now also ruling out exempting defence spending from the fiscal rules to spend more on the military
No change with the EU relationship and no change to the economy, exactly what is Burnham going to do differently?!
His one policy of significance is regional devolution of power. The extent of that is unclear, but it goes against forty years of centralisation which was economically disastrous for the regions, so I'll give him credit there for a policy of some significance.
No doubt PB's London residents will be sceptical, but that's their problem.
No, I love the place but I do think the country is too London centric.
You're an old lefty prepared to make concessions. I suspect some of our regular will differ.
As I recall, even the much lamented Alistair Meeks believed London investment came before everything.
Yes, I don't go with that. It's a great wealth-creating place and diverse, showing those things go together. But otoh it crowds out the regions and creates an unhealthy concentration and imbalance of wealth and opportunity.
Edit: I'm only 65.
I'm of similar vintage, and have accepted for most purposes I now count as "old".. 😏
To be fair, he has given a lot of time and effort talking about this, alas the London obsessed media rarely cover such topics when not from Whitehall...
***EXCLUSIVE*** Andy Burnham fully rules out changing Rachel Reeves’ fiscal rules if he becomes PM
At the weekend his team had left it open whether he might change them in future
But tonight his spokesperson tells Bloomberg he is explicitly ruling out any changes to the existing fiscal rules
AND crucially Burnham is now also ruling out exempting defence spending from the fiscal rules to spend more on the military
No change with the EU relationship and no change to the economy, exactly what is Burnham going to do differently?!
His one policy of significance is regional devolution of power. The extent of that is unclear, but it goes against forty years of centralisation which was economically disastrous for the regions, so I'll give him credit there for a policy of some significance.
No doubt PB's London residents will be sceptical, but that's their problem.
I’d hope he does follow through on the devolution of power.
In the past we’ve had plenty talk about it but they always roll back.
I’d suspect he won’t.
I'm hardly a a Burnham fan, and I'm also sceptical, but it is at least a significant proposal (which I favour), and I'm not going to dismiss it before he actually lets everyone down.
Oh I wasn’t dismissing it, I was saying I suspect he won’t roll back on it.
The Reform mayor of Hull was speaking positively about Burnham earlier.
I agree. I think he's got to be the favourite in Makerfield, and I feel oddly non-bothered about it, despite me wishing to see a prompt end to Labour and all its works. I think I see Burnham as a pragmatist who would be a lot better at governing the country (admittedly a very low bar) than Starmer. Let the next election be the next election. For now, let's ditch Sir Security Risk and start running the country.
***EXCLUSIVE*** Andy Burnham fully rules out changing Rachel Reeves’ fiscal rules if he becomes PM
At the weekend his team had left it open whether he might change them in future
But tonight his spokesperson tells Bloomberg he is explicitly ruling out any changes to the existing fiscal rules
AND crucially Burnham is now also ruling out exempting defence spending from the fiscal rules to spend more on the military
No change with the EU relationship and no change to the economy, exactly what is Burnham going to do differently?!
His one policy of significance is regional devolution of power. The extent of that is unclear, but it goes against forty years of centralisation which was economically disastrous for the regions, so I'll give him credit there for a policy of some significance.
No doubt PB's London residents will be sceptical, but that's their problem.
No, I love the place but I do think the country is too London centric.
You're an old lefty prepared to make concessions. I suspect some of our regular will differ.
As I recall, even the much lamented Alistair Meeks believed London investment came before everything.
Yes, I don't go with that. It's a great wealth-creating place and diverse, showing those things go together. But otoh it crowds out the regions and creates an unhealthy concentration and imbalance of wealth and opportunity.
Edit: I'm only 65.
I'm of similar vintage, and have accepted for most purposes I now count as "old".. 😏
I’m a couple of years behind. The other week we went to a gardens for a walk in in Northumberland and I got an OAP discount !
Indeed. People are more optimistic than they think, as they will give bland platitudes and vague assurances another try all the time.
On balance that's probably a good thing. Naiive optimism may be a bit destructive at times, but it's less irritating than bitter nihilistic cynicism dressed up as realism.
And at least some hopefulness can keep us open to new possibilities.
***EXCLUSIVE*** Andy Burnham fully rules out changing Rachel Reeves’ fiscal rules if he becomes PM
At the weekend his team had left it open whether he might change them in future
But tonight his spokesperson tells Bloomberg he is explicitly ruling out any changes to the existing fiscal rules
AND crucially Burnham is now also ruling out exempting defence spending from the fiscal rules to spend more on the military
No change with the EU relationship and no change to the economy, exactly what is Burnham going to do differently?!
His one policy of significance is regional devolution of power. The extent of that is unclear, but it goes against forty years of centralisation which was economically disastrous for the regions, so I'll give him credit there for a policy of some significance.
No doubt PB's London residents will be sceptical, but that's their problem.
No, I love the place but I do think the country is too London centric.
You're an old lefty prepared to make concessions. I suspect some of our regular will differ.
As I recall, even the much lamented Alistair Meeks believed London investment came before everything.
Yes, I don't go with that. It's a great wealth-creating place and diverse, showing those things go together. But otoh it crowds out the regions and creates an unhealthy concentration and imbalance of wealth and opportunity.
Edit: I'm only 65.
I'm of similar vintage, and have accepted for most purposes I now count as "old".. 😏
I’m a couple of years behind. The other week we went to a gardens for a walk in in Northumberland and I got an OAP discount !
If voting for the Greens and Reform (or whoever else) started to actually mean something significant rather than just value signalling, then we'd rapidly find younger voters would not vote for them.
For as long as politics is a pissing contest, they will.
I agree.
I'd much rather a Labour or Tory government to a Green or Reform one. Yet most young people seem to have given up on them both, regardless of political leaning?
Obviously people are disillusioned at their lives not getting better. But I think this is something broader: people's lives weren't better in the 1950s yet politics remained in the centre.
I think the internet and social media is accelerating people's move to the (relative) extremes. It's a clearer message of policy and belief. And very easy in opposition where you have no consequences for stupid policies.
I suspect we end up with a series of experiments of government at the right and then left extremes before pivoting back to the centre.
***EXCLUSIVE*** Andy Burnham fully rules out changing Rachel Reeves’ fiscal rules if he becomes PM
At the weekend his team had left it open whether he might change them in future
But tonight his spokesperson tells Bloomberg he is explicitly ruling out any changes to the existing fiscal rules
AND crucially Burnham is now also ruling out exempting defence spending from the fiscal rules to spend more on the military
No change with the EU relationship and no change to the economy, exactly what is Burnham going to do differently?!
His one policy of significance is regional devolution of power. The extent of that is unclear, but it goes against forty years of centralisation which was economically disastrous for the regions, so I'll give him credit there for a policy of some significance.
No doubt PB's London residents will be sceptical, but that's their problem.
No, I love the place but I do think the country is too London centric.
You're an old lefty prepared to make concessions. I suspect some of our regular will differ.
As I recall, even the much lamented Alistair Meeks believed London investment came before everything.
London investment comes before everything else because the Treasury's Green Book is written to make it that way.
We really need a concerted effort to transform Manchester / Leeds / Birmingham / Nottingham into the equivalent of Munich / Hamburg / Frankfurt / Cologne so that the UK isn't focused purely around London.
Two easy options:
1) Go back in history and split England into a multitude of kingdoms, dukedoms, free cities etc for a few hundred years.
2) Partition England into a free market, democratic Midlands/North and an oppressive, communist South for forty years.
***EXCLUSIVE*** Andy Burnham fully rules out changing Rachel Reeves’ fiscal rules if he becomes PM
At the weekend his team had left it open whether he might change them in future
But tonight his spokesperson tells Bloomberg he is explicitly ruling out any changes to the existing fiscal rules
AND crucially Burnham is now also ruling out exempting defence spending from the fiscal rules to spend more on the military
No change with the EU relationship and no change to the economy, exactly what is Burnham going to do differently?!
His one policy of significance is regional devolution of power. The extent of that is unclear, but it goes against forty years of centralisation which was economically disastrous for the regions, so I'll give him credit there for a policy of some significance.
No doubt PB's London residents will be sceptical, but that's their problem.
No, I love the place but I do think the country is too London centric.
You're an old lefty prepared to make concessions. I suspect some of our regular will differ.
As I recall, even the much lamented Alistair Meeks believed London investment came before everything.
The problem is the cost benefit analysis isn't it? when the beancounters run the predictions investment in London results in higher bang/£ whether that is correct is another thing
There's plenty of counter evidence from other countries. And in the Britain it is, of course, a self fulfilling prophesy.
The larger point - which Burnham appears actually to get on some level - is that without devolved power, investment in the regions is far less likely to be effective.
On thread - I'm happy to agree that a Conservative extinction is likely. But I could only see this as a failure of Kemi Badenoch if it was clear that someone else would do better. The best the Cons can hope for in the new political landscape is minor party status. It's implausible to think a different leader would be doing better. I find it unlikely either of the names sonetimes suggested here - Cleverly or Hunt - could be doung better. They've had their time, whoever is leader.
+1 - for the Tory party to survive Reform needs to completely implode and I just don't see it...
I still think that we could be moving towards a form of two-party politics between Reform and the Tories. The Tories just need hold their nerve until they're again seen as respectable by Lib Dem/Coalition type voters.
That won’t happen unless the Tories eventually adopt woke because there’s a good 30%+ of us wokeys
You'll grow out of it.
That's the thing though, Millenials simply are not growing out of it in the same way previous generations did.
If there is a leadership contest, your first preference: Burnham 47% Starmer 31% Rayner 8% Streeting 4% Miliband 3% Cooper 3% Mahmood 1% Carns 0%
Head to heads: Burnham 59% v Starmer 37% Burnham 80% v Streeting 10% Miliband 58% v Streeting 28% Rayner 70% v Streeting 19%
Doesn’t look like Wes has done himself any favours over recent weeks?
Astonishing that Starmer is still at 31%. In many ways it must reflect the quality of the alternatives.
If, instead of a quick contest, Starmer gives Burnham a job in the cabinet and then the shine wears off him, it will make the leadership question even harder to resolve closer to the next election.
He should announce it now. After all, Andy isn't reentering parliament solely to oust the PM, right?
"Andy is bringing exactly the kind of fresh ideas that this country needs. That's why i am pleased to anmounce that should he win the by-election I intend to make him Secretary of State for Health, Welfare, Defence, and Finance - I know he is the man to solve our problems".
"I lived in an upscale apartment complex in Lagos, and several of the residents had council flats in the UK which they were subletting. They admitted that they couldn’t believe they were able to get away with it, and asked if Brits were retarded."
This is the next scandal waiting to explode. Social housing in London is being gamed by foreigners, everyone in local govt knows this. It is run by foreigners for foreigners, sucking money out of the UK
I was told five years ago: about this
Nothing will happen to stop it or change it.
The people complaining about it will be called racist and the problem deemed we don’t build enough.
When we do build they’re not always available. Must have been thousands of translators.
Clearly you didn't read the article as the second paragraph reads
Erin Ong is in line for compensation after winning the tribunal in Britain, even though she did not have a work permit and was only on a visitor’s visa when she was managing a hotel in the UK.
To be honest, I actually think this is valid, the employer failed to check immigration status and abused the worker by making her do things she shouldn't have been doing due to her aliments.
Yes, I have seen worse cases of Wokeness gone mad, like, er, this, from yesterday
"A trans Indian student elected to Holyrood wants Scottish taxpayers to fund reparations to Palestinians because of their “complicity” in the “occupation” of the territory.
Q Manivannan was elected as a Green Party MSP on the Edinburgh & Lothians East list for the pro-independence Scottish Greens last week."
There’s an all party political group dedicated to it.
There was a conference on it last year and the legal people behind some of the so-called equal pay shakedowns, Leigh Day, were a sponsor of it as are a few NGO’s who will benefit from it.
Dig deep Sir, it’s not going away and the Greens are sympathetic too.
There is a reckoning coming, for these people. They are parasites
Unfortunately too many white liberals have suicidal empathy and will continue to vote for higher taxes and less freedom so they can feel as though they're on the right side of history.
If only women aged 18-50 could vote, the Greens would win 500+ seats. Maybe the right should reflect on that and consider making them a palatable offer, instead of the "the voters are wrong" thing.
So it's panic stations that if only men in that age range could vote that we'd end up with some mish mash of Labour, Tory and Reform and that's toxic masculinity but women going far left and voting for mentalist stuff is fine?
There's far too little focus on the changing voting patterns of younger women.
Important to realise though that 500 plus seats does not mean the vast majority of votes.
The New Statesman did do a group chat recently on the attitudes of young women. The atmosphere was pretty funereal. However if young women are irrationally afraid of a right wing government would you want to disabuse them of that belief if you're on the left.
***EXCLUSIVE*** Andy Burnham fully rules out changing Rachel Reeves’ fiscal rules if he becomes PM
At the weekend his team had left it open whether he might change them in future
But tonight his spokesperson tells Bloomberg he is explicitly ruling out any changes to the existing fiscal rules
AND crucially Burnham is now also ruling out exempting defence spending from the fiscal rules to spend more on the military
No change with the EU relationship and no change to the economy, exactly what is Burnham going to do differently?!
His one policy of significance is regional devolution of power. The extent of that is unclear, but it goes against forty years of centralisation which was economically disastrous for the regions, so I'll give him credit there for a policy of some significance.
No doubt PB's London residents will be sceptical, but that's their problem.
No, I love the place but I do think the country is too London centric.
You're an old lefty prepared to make concessions. I suspect some of our regular will differ.
As I recall, even the much lamented Alistair Meeks believed London investment came before everything.
London investment comes before everything else because the Treasury's Green Book is written to make it that way.
We really need a concerted effort to transform Manchester / Leeds / Birmingham / Nottingham into the equivalent of Munich / Hamburg / Frankfurt / Cologne so that the UK isn't focused purely around London.
Two easy options:
1) Go back in history and split England into a multitude of kingdoms, dukedoms, free cities etc for a few hundred years.
2) Partition England into a free market, democratic Midlands/North and an oppressive, communist South for forty years.
Compare the autonomy and financing and powers that Manchester has, even in its relatively recent mayoral form, with the equivalent that Milan or Lyon or Frankfurt has, and you will quickly see where the problem is.
***EXCLUSIVE*** Andy Burnham fully rules out changing Rachel Reeves’ fiscal rules if he becomes PM
At the weekend his team had left it open whether he might change them in future
But tonight his spokesperson tells Bloomberg he is explicitly ruling out any changes to the existing fiscal rules
AND crucially Burnham is now also ruling out exempting defence spending from the fiscal rules to spend more on the military
No change with the EU relationship and no change to the economy, exactly what is Burnham going to do differently?!
His one policy of significance is regional devolution of power. The extent of that is unclear, but it goes against forty years of centralisation which was economically disastrous for the regions, so I'll give him credit there for a policy of some significance.
No doubt PB's London residents will be sceptical, but that's their problem.
No, I love the place but I do think the country is too London centric.
You're an old lefty prepared to make concessions. I suspect some of our regular will differ.
As I recall, even the much lamented Alistair Meeks believed London investment came before everything.
Yes, I don't go with that. It's a great wealth-creating place and diverse, showing those things go together. But otoh it crowds out the regions and creates an unhealthy concentration and imbalance of wealth and opportunity.
Edit: I'm only 65.
I'm of similar vintage, and have accepted for most purposes I now count as "old".. 😏
I’m a couple of years behind. The other week we went to a gardens for a walk in in Northumberland and I got an OAP discount !
***EXCLUSIVE*** Andy Burnham fully rules out changing Rachel Reeves’ fiscal rules if he becomes PM
At the weekend his team had left it open whether he might change them in future
But tonight his spokesperson tells Bloomberg he is explicitly ruling out any changes to the existing fiscal rules
AND crucially Burnham is now also ruling out exempting defence spending from the fiscal rules to spend more on the military
No change with the EU relationship and no change to the economy, exactly what is Burnham going to do differently?!
His one policy of significance is regional devolution of power. The extent of that is unclear, but it goes against forty years of centralisation which was economically disastrous for the regions, so I'll give him credit there for a policy of some significance.
No doubt PB's London residents will be sceptical, but that's their problem.
No, I love the place but I do think the country is too London centric.
You're an old lefty prepared to make concessions. I suspect some of our regular will differ.
As I recall, even the much lamented Alistair Meeks believed London investment came before everything.
London investment comes before everything else because the Treasury's Green Book is written to make it that way.
We really need a concerted effort to transform Manchester / Leeds / Birmingham / Nottingham into the equivalent of Munich / Hamburg / Frankfurt / Cologne so that the UK isn't focused purely around London.
Two easy options:
1) Go back in history and split England into a multitude of kingdoms, dukedoms, free cities etc for a few hundred years.
2) Partition England into a free market, democratic Midlands/North and an oppressive, communist South for forty years.
3) Give regional mayors some actual tax raising ability so they can build the Metro lines every other city with a population over 1 million has.
***EXCLUSIVE*** Andy Burnham fully rules out changing Rachel Reeves’ fiscal rules if he becomes PM
At the weekend his team had left it open whether he might change them in future
But tonight his spokesperson tells Bloomberg he is explicitly ruling out any changes to the existing fiscal rules
AND crucially Burnham is now also ruling out exempting defence spending from the fiscal rules to spend more on the military
No change with the EU relationship and no change to the economy, exactly what is Burnham going to do differently?!
His one policy of significance is regional devolution of power. The extent of that is unclear, but it goes against forty years of centralisation which was economically disastrous for the regions, so I'll give him credit there for a policy of some significance.
No doubt PB's London residents will be sceptical, but that's their problem.
No, I love the place but I do think the country is too London centric.
You're an old lefty prepared to make concessions. I suspect some of our regular will differ.
As I recall, even the much lamented Alistair Meeks believed London investment came before everything.
The problem is the cost benefit analysis isn't it? when the beancounters run the predictions investment in London results in higher bang/£ whether that is correct is another thing
It's because 1% growth in London is equivalent to 7% in the NE of England, in how they contribute to overall UK growth. So any project in the NE needs to demonstrate much higher returns to attract the same kind of investment.
The first thing I would change is how we report economic stats - give politicians the opportunity to crow about 10% wage growth in Teesside.
If there is a leadership contest, your first preference: Burnham 47% Starmer 31% Rayner 8% Streeting 4% Miliband 3% Cooper 3% Mahmood 1% Carns 0%
Head to heads: Burnham 59% v Starmer 37% Burnham 80% v Streeting 10% Miliband 58% v Streeting 28% Rayner 70% v Streeting 19%
Doesn’t look like Wes has done himself any favours over recent weeks?
Astonishing that Starmer is still at 31%. In many ways it must reflect the quality of the alternatives.
From the same poll:
On Keir Starmer, should he: Take party into next election 28% Remain as leader until closer to GE 33% Step down no / in months 33%
That's a lot of Labour members who aren't keen on what's happened this week.
The leading players are too focused on what it means for them and their allies versus their internal enemies, while many members are looking on aghast at the damage being done to their party and remember all too well the Tories’ descent into ignominy.
***EXCLUSIVE*** Andy Burnham fully rules out changing Rachel Reeves’ fiscal rules if he becomes PM
At the weekend his team had left it open whether he might change them in future
But tonight his spokesperson tells Bloomberg he is explicitly ruling out any changes to the existing fiscal rules
AND crucially Burnham is now also ruling out exempting defence spending from the fiscal rules to spend more on the military
No change with the EU relationship and no change to the economy, exactly what is Burnham going to do differently?!
His one policy of significance is regional devolution of power. The extent of that is unclear, but it goes against forty years of centralisation which was economically disastrous for the regions, so I'll give him credit there for a policy of some significance.
No doubt PB's London residents will be sceptical, but that's their problem.
No, I love the place but I do think the country is too London centric.
You're an old lefty prepared to make concessions. I suspect some of our regular will differ.
As I recall, even the much lamented Alistair Meeks believed London investment came before everything.
London investment comes before everything else because the Treasury's Green Book is written to make it that way.
We really need a concerted effort to transform Manchester / Leeds / Birmingham / Nottingham into the equivalent of Munich / Hamburg / Frankfurt / Cologne so that the UK isn't focused purely around London.
Two easy options:
1) Go back in history and split England into a multitude of kingdoms, dukedoms, free cities etc for a few hundred years.
2) Partition England into a free market, democratic Midlands/North and an oppressive, communist South for forty years.
3) Give regional mayors some actual tax raising ability so they can build the Metro lines every other city with a population over 1 million has.
Don't we only have one city outside London with over 1 million people?
But given the mayors cover wider areas that should work.
I lived in an upscale apartment complex in Lagos, and several of the residents had council flats in the UK which they were subletting. They admitted that they couldn’t believe they were able to get away with it, and asked if Brits were retarded.
This was back in 2012, by the way. Imagine how much worse it is now.
I need to point out that one of my Viewcode Rants (there are several) is that we should not allow foreign nationals to own land in the UK, period. We've have a centuries-long lesson on how bad that can be in Ireland when we were doing it, and hence we should ensure that we not allow others to do that to us.
This such a populist policy I'm astounded no one has tried it yet. Ban all foreign nationals and companies from owning property here.
I am not keen on the term "Manchesterism" and am among those who feel that Mancheter's recent success was founded on the work of a great many that was much more pro-business and much less socialist than Andy Burnham most recent efforts,... however,... https://x.com/thomasforth/status/2056089216765833247
I lived in an upscale apartment complex in Lagos, and several of the residents had council flats in the UK which they were subletting. They admitted that they couldn’t believe they were able to get away with it, and asked if Brits were retarded.
This was back in 2012, by the way. Imagine how much worse it is now.
I need to point out that one of my Viewcode Rants (there are several) is that we should not allow foreign nationals to own land in the UK, period. We've have a centuries-long lesson on how bad that can be in Ireland when we were doing it, and hence we should ensure that we not allow others to do that to us.
This such a populist policy I'm astounded no one has tried it yet. Ban all foreign nationals and companies from owning property here.
A outright ban might well be counterproductive. Significant restrictions would be a very good idea.
***EXCLUSIVE*** Andy Burnham fully rules out changing Rachel Reeves’ fiscal rules if he becomes PM
At the weekend his team had left it open whether he might change them in future
But tonight his spokesperson tells Bloomberg he is explicitly ruling out any changes to the existing fiscal rules
AND crucially Burnham is now also ruling out exempting defence spending from the fiscal rules to spend more on the military
No change with the EU relationship and no change to the economy, exactly what is Burnham going to do differently?!
His one policy of significance is regional devolution of power. The extent of that is unclear, but it goes against forty years of centralisation which was economically disastrous for the regions, so I'll give him credit there for a policy of some significance.
No doubt PB's London residents will be sceptical, but that's their problem.
No, I love the place but I do think the country is too London centric.
You're an old lefty prepared to make concessions. I suspect some of our regular will differ.
As I recall, even the much lamented Alistair Meeks believed London investment came before everything.
London investment comes before everything else because the Treasury's Green Book is written to make it that way.
We really need a concerted effort to transform Manchester / Leeds / Birmingham / Nottingham into the equivalent of Munich / Hamburg / Frankfurt / Cologne so that the UK isn't focused purely around London.
Two easy options:
1) Go back in history and split England into a multitude of kingdoms, dukedoms, free cities etc for a few hundred years.
2) Partition England into a free market, democratic Midlands/North and an oppressive, communist South for forty years.
3) Give regional mayors some actual tax raising ability so they can build the Metro lines every other city with a population over 1 million has.
Don't we only have one city outside London with over 1 million people?
But given the mayors cover wider areas that should work.
There are numerous European cities of under 1m that have built their own metros. No reason that shouldn't be the case here.
***EXCLUSIVE*** Andy Burnham fully rules out changing Rachel Reeves’ fiscal rules if he becomes PM
At the weekend his team had left it open whether he might change them in future
But tonight his spokesperson tells Bloomberg he is explicitly ruling out any changes to the existing fiscal rules
AND crucially Burnham is now also ruling out exempting defence spending from the fiscal rules to spend more on the military
No change with the EU relationship and no change to the economy, exactly what is Burnham going to do differently?!
His one policy of significance is regional devolution of power. The extent of that is unclear, but it goes against forty years of centralisation which was economically disastrous for the regions, so I'll give him credit there for a policy of some significance.
No doubt PB's London residents will be sceptical, but that's their problem.
No, I love the place but I do think the country is too London centric.
You're an old lefty prepared to make concessions. I suspect some of our regular will differ.
As I recall, even the much lamented Alistair Meeks believed London investment came before everything.
London investment comes before everything else because the Treasury's Green Book is written to make it that way.
We really need a concerted effort to transform Manchester / Leeds / Birmingham / Nottingham into the equivalent of Munich / Hamburg / Frankfurt / Cologne so that the UK isn't focused purely around London.
Two easy options:
1) Go back in history and split England into a multitude of kingdoms, dukedoms, free cities etc for a few hundred years.
2) Partition England into a free market, democratic Midlands/North and an oppressive, communist South for forty years.
3) Give regional mayors some actual tax raising ability so they can build the Metro lines every other city with a population over 1 million has.
Manchester, Liverpool, Newcastle, Nottingham, Sheffield and the West Midlands all have metro / tram systems
I don't think our current problems can all be caused by Leeds being overly reliant on buses.
Indeed. People are more optimistic than they think, as they will give bland platitudes and vague assurances another try all the time.
On balance that's probably a good thing. Naiive optimism may be a bit destructive at times, but it's less irritating than bitter nihilistic cynicism dressed up as realism.
And at least some hopefulness can keep us open to new possibilities.
Burnham has a tricky line to tread. He is (presumably) standing as the Labour Party candidate in Makerfield, and as such should be broadly endorsing the current government's policies rather than setting out an alternative platform for government / the Labour Party - and I think he realises this. He should only do the latter if/when he is campaigning to replace Starmer as Leader of the Labour Party - then is the time to set out his alternative programme of government.
I think a lot of people are conflating the two events - i.e. the by-election candidate and the leadership candidate. Burnham, and others, would be wise to keep them separate.
***EXCLUSIVE*** Andy Burnham fully rules out changing Rachel Reeves’ fiscal rules if he becomes PM
At the weekend his team had left it open whether he might change them in future
But tonight his spokesperson tells Bloomberg he is explicitly ruling out any changes to the existing fiscal rules
AND crucially Burnham is now also ruling out exempting defence spending from the fiscal rules to spend more on the military
No change with the EU relationship and no change to the economy, exactly what is Burnham going to do differently?!
His one policy of significance is regional devolution of power. The extent of that is unclear, but it goes against forty years of centralisation which was economically disastrous for the regions, so I'll give him credit there for a policy of some significance.
No doubt PB's London residents will be sceptical, but that's their problem.
No, I love the place but I do think the country is too London centric.
You're an old lefty prepared to make concessions. I suspect some of our regular will differ.
As I recall, even the much lamented Alistair Meeks believed London investment came before everything.
London investment comes before everything else because the Treasury's Green Book is written to make it that way.
We really need a concerted effort to transform Manchester / Leeds / Birmingham / Nottingham into the equivalent of Munich / Hamburg / Frankfurt / Cologne so that the UK isn't focused purely around London.
Two easy options:
1) Go back in history and split England into a multitude of kingdoms, dukedoms, free cities etc for a few hundred years.
2) Partition England into a free market, democratic Midlands/North and an oppressive, communist South for forty years.
3) Give regional mayors some actual tax raising ability so they can build the Metro lines every other city with a population over 1 million has.
Manchester, Liverpool, Newcastle, Nottingham, Sheffield and the West Midlands all have metro / tram systems
I don't think our current problems can all be caused by Leeds being overly reliant on buses.
Leeds being overly reliant on busses is caused by our current problems.
On thread - I'm happy to agree that a Conservative extinction is likely. But I could only see this as a failure of Kemi Badenoch if it was clear that someone else would do better. The best the Cons can hope for in the new political landscape is minor party status. It's implausible to think a different leader would be doing better. I find it unlikely either of the names sonetimes suggested here - Cleverly or Hunt - could be doung better. They've had their time, whoever is leader.
+1 - for the Tory party to survive Reform needs to completely implode and I just don't see it...
I still think that we could be moving towards a form of two-party politics between Reform and the Tories. The Tories just need hold their nerve until they're again seen as respectable by Lib Dem/Coalition type voters.
That won’t happen unless the Tories eventually adopt woke because there’s a good 30%+ of us wokeys
You'll grow out of it.
That's the thing though, Millenials simply are not growing out of it in the same way previous generations did.
Those who don't will be left behind figures of fun.
***EXCLUSIVE*** Andy Burnham fully rules out changing Rachel Reeves’ fiscal rules if he becomes PM
At the weekend his team had left it open whether he might change them in future
But tonight his spokesperson tells Bloomberg he is explicitly ruling out any changes to the existing fiscal rules
AND crucially Burnham is now also ruling out exempting defence spending from the fiscal rules to spend more on the military
No change with the EU relationship and no change to the economy, exactly what is Burnham going to do differently?!
His one policy of significance is regional devolution of power. The extent of that is unclear, but it goes against forty years of centralisation which was economically disastrous for the regions, so I'll give him credit there for a policy of some significance.
No doubt PB's London residents will be sceptical, but that's their problem.
No, I love the place but I do think the country is too London centric.
You're an old lefty prepared to make concessions. I suspect some of our regular will differ.
As I recall, even the much lamented Alistair Meeks believed London investment came before everything.
London investment comes before everything else because the Treasury's Green Book is written to make it that way.
We really need a concerted effort to transform Manchester / Leeds / Birmingham / Nottingham into the equivalent of Munich / Hamburg / Frankfurt / Cologne so that the UK isn't focused purely around London.
Two easy options:
1) Go back in history and split England into a multitude of kingdoms, dukedoms, free cities etc for a few hundred years.
2) Partition England into a free market, democratic Midlands/North and an oppressive, communist South for forty years.
3) Give regional mayors some actual tax raising ability so they can build the Metro lines every other city with a population over 1 million has.
Manchester, Liverpool, Newcastle, Nottingham, Sheffield and the West Midlands all have metro / tram systems
I don't think our current problems can all be caused by Leeds being overly reliant on buses.
The only one of those with a light railway is Newcastle and that is a single tunnel attached to existing lines that were repurposed.
A lot of our problems relate to number high quality jobs / employees (depending on what side you are looking at) within a reasonable commuting distance.
Underground systems solve that issue by vastly increasing the number of people within a sensible commuting time..
***EXCLUSIVE*** Andy Burnham fully rules out changing Rachel Reeves’ fiscal rules if he becomes PM
At the weekend his team had left it open whether he might change them in future
But tonight his spokesperson tells Bloomberg he is explicitly ruling out any changes to the existing fiscal rules
AND crucially Burnham is now also ruling out exempting defence spending from the fiscal rules to spend more on the military
No change with the EU relationship and no change to the economy, exactly what is Burnham going to do differently?!
His one policy of significance is regional devolution of power. The extent of that is unclear, but it goes against forty years of centralisation which was economically disastrous for the regions, so I'll give him credit there for a policy of some significance.
No doubt PB's London residents will be sceptical, but that's their problem.
No, I love the place but I do think the country is too London centric.
You're an old lefty prepared to make concessions. I suspect some of our regular will differ.
As I recall, even the much lamented Alistair Meeks believed London investment came before everything.
London investment comes before everything else because the Treasury's Green Book is written to make it that way.
We really need a concerted effort to transform Manchester / Leeds / Birmingham / Nottingham into the equivalent of Munich / Hamburg / Frankfurt / Cologne so that the UK isn't focused purely around London.
Two easy options:
1) Go back in history and split England into a multitude of kingdoms, dukedoms, free cities etc for a few hundred years.
2) Partition England into a free market, democratic Midlands/North and an oppressive, communist South for forty years.
Compare the autonomy and financing and powers that Manchester has, even in its relatively recent mayoral form, with the equivalent that Milan or Lyon or Frankfurt has, and you will quickly see where the problem is.
So you're saying the answer is more taxing and more spending and I dare say more borrowing as well.
And all of this will be guaranteed to produce positive returns on capital because this time its different.
Or perhaps not and all it results in is more debt and more tax to pay the interest on that debt.
Still, I have no problem with the advocates of all this promised to be profitable infrastructure spending investing their own money in it and taking the profits if it all goes as planned.
Burnhams speech was just a load of vacuous tropes peddled out to get some good headlines .
We’ve heard it all before .
There’s no money , he’s not apparently willing to change the fiscal rules and there’s only so much tax you can stick on people before you get diminishing returns .
Admittedly he’s more charismatic than Starmer , which of course wouldn’t be difficult but I fear he’s promising a weekend at a nice hotel overlooking Lake Garda when what’s delivered will be two nights in a crummy B and B in Skegness !
The more I see of Burnham the more I like Starmer !
Devolution of powers to the regions is fine. But it's intellectually easy. It's two decades since the credit crunch began. Is there really no new economic thinking going on?
***EXCLUSIVE*** Andy Burnham fully rules out changing Rachel Reeves’ fiscal rules if he becomes PM
At the weekend his team had left it open whether he might change them in future
But tonight his spokesperson tells Bloomberg he is explicitly ruling out any changes to the existing fiscal rules
AND crucially Burnham is now also ruling out exempting defence spending from the fiscal rules to spend more on the military
No change with the EU relationship and no change to the economy, exactly what is Burnham going to do differently?!
His one policy of significance is regional devolution of power. The extent of that is unclear, but it goes against forty years of centralisation which was economically disastrous for the regions, so I'll give him credit there for a policy of some significance.
No doubt PB's London residents will be sceptical, but that's their problem.
No, I love the place but I do think the country is too London centric.
You're an old lefty prepared to make concessions. I suspect some of our regular will differ.
As I recall, even the much lamented Alistair Meeks believed London investment came before everything.
London investment comes before everything else because the Treasury's Green Book is written to make it that way.
We really need a concerted effort to transform Manchester / Leeds / Birmingham / Nottingham into the equivalent of Munich / Hamburg / Frankfurt / Cologne so that the UK isn't focused purely around London.
Two easy options:
1) Go back in history and split England into a multitude of kingdoms, dukedoms, free cities etc for a few hundred years.
2) Partition England into a free market, democratic Midlands/North and an oppressive, communist South for forty years.
3) Give regional mayors some actual tax raising ability so they can build the Metro lines every other city with a population over 1 million has.
Manchester, Liverpool, Newcastle, Nottingham, Sheffield and the West Midlands all have metro / tram systems
I don't think our current problems can all be caused by Leeds being overly reliant on buses.
Our Metro system in the North East is finally getting an extension to loop Washington in.
***EXCLUSIVE*** Andy Burnham fully rules out changing Rachel Reeves’ fiscal rules if he becomes PM
At the weekend his team had left it open whether he might change them in future
But tonight his spokesperson tells Bloomberg he is explicitly ruling out any changes to the existing fiscal rules
AND crucially Burnham is now also ruling out exempting defence spending from the fiscal rules to spend more on the military
No change with the EU relationship and no change to the economy, exactly what is Burnham going to do differently?!
His one policy of significance is regional devolution of power. The extent of that is unclear, but it goes against forty years of centralisation which was economically disastrous for the regions, so I'll give him credit there for a policy of some significance.
No doubt PB's London residents will be sceptical, but that's their problem.
No, I love the place but I do think the country is too London centric.
You're an old lefty prepared to make concessions. I suspect some of our regular will differ.
As I recall, even the much lamented Alistair Meeks believed London investment came before everything.
London investment comes before everything else because the Treasury's Green Book is written to make it that way.
We really need a concerted effort to transform Manchester / Leeds / Birmingham / Nottingham into the equivalent of Munich / Hamburg / Frankfurt / Cologne so that the UK isn't focused purely around London.
Two easy options:
1) Go back in history and split England into a multitude of kingdoms, dukedoms, free cities etc for a few hundred years.
2) Partition England into a free market, democratic Midlands/North and an oppressive, communist South for forty years.
3) Give regional mayors some actual tax raising ability so they can build the Metro lines every other city with a population over 1 million has.
Manchester, Liverpool, Newcastle, Nottingham, Sheffield and the West Midlands all have metro / tram systems
I don't think our current problems can all be caused by Leeds being overly reliant on buses.
The only one of those with a light railway is Newcastle and that is a single tunnel attached to existing lines that were repurposed.
A lot of our problems relate to number high quality jobs / employees (depending on what side you are looking at) within a reasonable commuting distance.
Underground systems solve that issue by vastly increasing the number of people within a sensible commuting time..
Not even that- rail gives a predictable commuting time. The trouble with cars and buses is that, when they snarl up, they snarl up horribly. If you are commuting by bus or car, you have to time your morning journey for the worst-case scenario, which is way slower than a typical journey.
***EXCLUSIVE*** Andy Burnham fully rules out changing Rachel Reeves’ fiscal rules if he becomes PM
At the weekend his team had left it open whether he might change them in future
But tonight his spokesperson tells Bloomberg he is explicitly ruling out any changes to the existing fiscal rules
AND crucially Burnham is now also ruling out exempting defence spending from the fiscal rules to spend more on the military
No change with the EU relationship and no change to the economy, exactly what is Burnham going to do differently?!
His one policy of significance is regional devolution of power. The extent of that is unclear, but it goes against forty years of centralisation which was economically disastrous for the regions, so I'll give him credit there for a policy of some significance.
No doubt PB's London residents will be sceptical, but that's their problem.
No, I love the place but I do think the country is too London centric.
You're an old lefty prepared to make concessions. I suspect some of our regular will differ.
As I recall, even the much lamented Alistair Meeks believed London investment came before everything.
London investment comes before everything else because the Treasury's Green Book is written to make it that way.
We really need a concerted effort to transform Manchester / Leeds / Birmingham / Nottingham into the equivalent of Munich / Hamburg / Frankfurt / Cologne so that the UK isn't focused purely around London.
Two easy options:
1) Go back in history and split England into a multitude of kingdoms, dukedoms, free cities etc for a few hundred years.
2) Partition England into a free market, democratic Midlands/North and an oppressive, communist South for forty years.
Compare the autonomy and financing and powers that Manchester has, even in its relatively recent mayoral form, with the equivalent that Milan or Lyon or Frankfurt has, and you will quickly see where the problem is.
So you're saying the answer is more taxing and more spending and I dare say more borrowing as well.
And all of this will be guaranteed to produce positive returns on capital because this time its different.
Or perhaps not and all it results in is more debt and more tax to pay the interest on that debt.
Still, I have no problem with the advocates of all this promised to be profitable infrastructure spending investing their own money in it and taking the profits if it all goes as planned.
Look at CrossRail - argued against for decades and exceeded all projected passenger figures within months.
Equally the Northumbria coast line has exceeded passenger figures. Build decent public transport and it will be used.
Have a continual stream of projects and I can guarantee that the newly trained guaranteed employment workforce will delivery projects on time and on budget because it's the messing as shown with HS2 that creates a lot of the extra costs
They make 1-2 judgements against the UK per annum, and are a very peripheral actor. If we want to tighten the definitions as used here we are free to legislate to do so - since the vast majority of judgements are made in UK Courts.
It's substantially a legacy from Churchill that Farage and copycat Kemi want to destroy, to have us line up with Russia and Belarus as the only European non-members.
To my eye this is just the latest distracting bone that Farage wants to throw at his low information voters, and Kemi is following when instead she seriously needs to start thinking for herself - but she shows little signs of doing so.
They make 1-2 judgements against the UK per annum, and are a very peripheral actor. If we want to tighten the definitions as used here we are free to legislate to do so - since teh vast majority of jusdgements are made in UK Courts.
It's substantially a legacy from Churchill that Farage and copycat Kemi want to destroy, to have us line up with Russia as Belarus as the only European non-members.
To my eye this is just the latest distracting bone that Farage wants to throw at his low information voters, and Kemi is following when she seriously needs to start thinking for herself - but she shows little signs of doing so.
The court itself is not the problem, it’s the U.K. courts’ interpretation of the rights the ECHR it affords to people.
***EXCLUSIVE*** Andy Burnham fully rules out changing Rachel Reeves’ fiscal rules if he becomes PM
At the weekend his team had left it open whether he might change them in future
But tonight his spokesperson tells Bloomberg he is explicitly ruling out any changes to the existing fiscal rules
AND crucially Burnham is now also ruling out exempting defence spending from the fiscal rules to spend more on the military
No change with the EU relationship and no change to the economy, exactly what is Burnham going to do differently?!
His one policy of significance is regional devolution of power. The extent of that is unclear, but it goes against forty years of centralisation which was economically disastrous for the regions, so I'll give him credit there for a policy of some significance.
No doubt PB's London residents will be sceptical, but that's their problem.
No, I love the place but I do think the country is too London centric.
You're an old lefty prepared to make concessions. I suspect some of our regular will differ.
As I recall, even the much lamented Alistair Meeks believed London investment came before everything.
London investment comes before everything else because the Treasury's Green Book is written to make it that way.
We really need a concerted effort to transform Manchester / Leeds / Birmingham / Nottingham into the equivalent of Munich / Hamburg / Frankfurt / Cologne so that the UK isn't focused purely around London.
Two easy options:
1) Go back in history and split England into a multitude of kingdoms, dukedoms, free cities etc for a few hundred years.
2) Partition England into a free market, democratic Midlands/North and an oppressive, communist South for forty years.
3) Give regional mayors some actual tax raising ability so they can build the Metro lines every other city with a population over 1 million has.
Manchester, Liverpool, Newcastle, Nottingham, Sheffield and the West Midlands all have metro / tram systems
I don't think our current problems can all be caused by Leeds being overly reliant on buses.
The only one of those with a light railway is Newcastle and that is a single tunnel attached to existing lines that were repurposed.
A lot of our problems relate to number high quality jobs / employees (depending on what side you are looking at) within a reasonable commuting distance.
Underground systems solve that issue by vastly increasing the number of people within a sensible commuting time..
If you're quibbling about whether a metro or tram or light railway is the appropriate system then you're losing sight of the bigger picture.
***EXCLUSIVE*** Andy Burnham fully rules out changing Rachel Reeves’ fiscal rules if he becomes PM
At the weekend his team had left it open whether he might change them in future
But tonight his spokesperson tells Bloomberg he is explicitly ruling out any changes to the existing fiscal rules
AND crucially Burnham is now also ruling out exempting defence spending from the fiscal rules to spend more on the military
No change with the EU relationship and no change to the economy, exactly what is Burnham going to do differently?!
His one policy of significance is regional devolution of power. The extent of that is unclear, but it goes against forty years of centralisation which was economically disastrous for the regions, so I'll give him credit there for a policy of some significance.
No doubt PB's London residents will be sceptical, but that's their problem.
No, I love the place but I do think the country is too London centric.
You're an old lefty prepared to make concessions. I suspect some of our regular will differ.
As I recall, even the much lamented Alistair Meeks believed London investment came before everything.
London investment comes before everything else because the Treasury's Green Book is written to make it that way.
We really need a concerted effort to transform Manchester / Leeds / Birmingham / Nottingham into the equivalent of Munich / Hamburg / Frankfurt / Cologne so that the UK isn't focused purely around London.
Two easy options:
1) Go back in history and split England into a multitude of kingdoms, dukedoms, free cities etc for a few hundred years.
2) Partition England into a free market, democratic Midlands/North and an oppressive, communist South for forty years.
3) Give regional mayors some actual tax raising ability so they can build the Metro lines every other city with a population over 1 million has.
Manchester, Liverpool, Newcastle, Nottingham, Sheffield and the West Midlands all have metro / tram systems
I don't think our current problems can all be caused by Leeds being overly reliant on buses.
The only one of those with a light railway is Newcastle and that is a single tunnel attached to existing lines that were repurposed.
A lot of our problems relate to number high quality jobs / employees (depending on what side you are looking at) within a reasonable commuting distance.
Underground systems solve that issue by vastly increasing the number of people within a sensible commuting time..
If you're quibbling about whether a metro or tram or light railway is the appropriate system then you're losing sight of the bigger picture.
And you clearly don't understand the problem with trams sharing the roads with cars...
Two horrible, horrible people at odds with each other, it is a shame only one could lose. But from the reporting I've seen Musk was not persuasive - I guess that only works on investors.
They make 1-2 judgements against the UK per annum, and are a very peripheral actor. If we want to tighten the definitions as used here we are free to legislate to do so - since teh vast majority of jusdgements are made in UK Courts.
It's substantially a legacy from Churchill that Farage and copycat Kemi want to destroy, to have us line up with Russia as Belarus as the only European non-members.
To my eye this is just the latest distracting bone that Farage wants to throw at his low information voters, and Kemi is following when she seriously needs to start thinking for herself - but she shows little signs of doing so.
The court itself is not the problem, it’s the U.K. courts’ interpretation of the rights the ECHR it affords to people.
Exactly - and that is what requires fixing.
The other problem is that "send them back" policies require agreement from the other end, which is the larger issue.
Burnhams speech was just a load of vacuous tropes peddled out to get some good headlines .
We’ve heard it all before .
There’s no money , he’s not apparently willing to change the fiscal rules and there’s only so much tax you can stick on people before you get diminishing returns .
Admittedly he’s more charismatic than Starmer , which of course wouldn’t be difficult but I fear he’s promising a weekend at a nice hotel overlooking Lake Garda when what’s delivered will be two nights in a crummy B and B in Skegness !
The more I see of Burnham the more I like Starmer !
The pattern will continue.
The problem will be when either Farage or Polanski get a go as they could do some irreparable damage.
***EXCLUSIVE*** Andy Burnham fully rules out changing Rachel Reeves’ fiscal rules if he becomes PM
At the weekend his team had left it open whether he might change them in future
But tonight his spokesperson tells Bloomberg he is explicitly ruling out any changes to the existing fiscal rules
AND crucially Burnham is now also ruling out exempting defence spending from the fiscal rules to spend more on the military
No change with the EU relationship and no change to the economy, exactly what is Burnham going to do differently?!
His one policy of significance is regional devolution of power. The extent of that is unclear, but it goes against forty years of centralisation which was economically disastrous for the regions, so I'll give him credit there for a policy of some significance.
No doubt PB's London residents will be sceptical, but that's their problem.
No, I love the place but I do think the country is too London centric.
You're an old lefty prepared to make concessions. I suspect some of our regular will differ.
As I recall, even the much lamented Alistair Meeks believed London investment came before everything.
London investment comes before everything else because the Treasury's Green Book is written to make it that way.
We really need a concerted effort to transform Manchester / Leeds / Birmingham / Nottingham into the equivalent of Munich / Hamburg / Frankfurt / Cologne so that the UK isn't focused purely around London.
Two easy options:
1) Go back in history and split England into a multitude of kingdoms, dukedoms, free cities etc for a few hundred years.
2) Partition England into a free market, democratic Midlands/North and an oppressive, communist South for forty years.
3) Give regional mayors some actual tax raising ability so they can build the Metro lines every other city with a population over 1 million has.
Manchester, Liverpool, Newcastle, Nottingham, Sheffield and the West Midlands all have metro / tram systems
I don't think our current problems can all be caused by Leeds being overly reliant on buses.
The only one of those with a light railway is Newcastle and that is a single tunnel attached to existing lines that were repurposed.
Its a stupid lie to tell given that Farage made a load of money in the city, then in the EU parliament and then all this other grifts. And I imagine like lots of people of his age has done very well out of moving up the housing ladder. Therefore, I would say it is unsurprising he could have bought a £1 million house for cash, crypto sugar daddy or not *. But instead told another whopper and one that is easy to check (people had already checked this out days ago).
* obviously if one was to think they might come into £5 million gift in the near future probably give you a lot more confidence.
This £5m, was it seriously a single paid transaction from an overseas donor straight into Farage’s personal bank account?
I understand that he wasn’t an MP at the time, but that’s the most inefficient way possible to make a donation to a politician.
If it was actually for his security, you’d set up a company called “Reform MP Security Ltd” or similar, and pay the money to that entity.
We might know, if he had declared it.
But he must have paid tax on it? As income?
Mustn't he?
Not if it is a gift.
Dan Neidle's got a piece on that due this week.
But it is if it is payment for "services rendered" surely?
If the payment is a bribe, whether Farage didn't declare it, or paid no tax on it is essentially irrelevant. It's like not declaring or not paying tax, on money you rob from the bank.
No legitimate reason has been put forward so far for Farage to accept this £5 million into his personal account. The non declaration and possible non payment of tax are maybe taken into account if and when than question gets assessed. If for some reason it isn't actually a bribe the tax question might then become relevant.
The bigger question is what has Farage promised in return for that £5m...
Under the Bribery Act you don't need to prove a direct quid pro quo because most bribes are indirect: Why don't you get your daughter to apply for a job at my firm? Then some time later contracts are issued and it so happens that firm gets the deal.
To be a bribe under the Act, two questions need to be answered in the affirmative, The first question is did Harborne offer a financial or other advantage to Farage, and did he accept it? As far as I know this is undisputed.
The second question is, was the intention to get Farage to act improperly in his role, or could Farage have acted improperly as a consequence of recieving the money? Acting improperly could include breach of trust as a reasonable person would understand it. The wording of the Act is deliberately vague.
I'm confused by this, because as far as I can see the causation is all the wrong way round. Farage and Co have always been pretty crypto friendly.
Harborne giving donations to a party that's much keener on crypto than most others is unsupprising. It's also the way of the world - people and companies donate to political parties they agree with in the hopes that they will be elected to do the things with which they agree. Thus big business tends to donate to the Tories and the Unions bankroll Labour (admittedly, I see no reason why anyone donates to the Libdems - that is true charity).
It might be different if Reform were in government, and they suddenly did a 180deg turn on a policy in a way that would suit a donor, but that's not the case here. Cf Blair and Bernie Eccleston if you want the real deal rather than fake reasons for outrage.
A key point is that the money was given to Farage personally, not the Reform Party, so part 1 of the bribe test seems to be met. Harborne offered and Farage accepted a financial advantage.
Everything hinges on part 2 I think - whether this advantage resulted or was intended to result in Farage carrying out his duties improperly, as understood by a reasonable person. The wording is deliberately vague but I would think the very large sum involved and that neither Harborne nor Farage have put forward a legitimate reason for this massive amount being passed secretly would be part of that assessment. People don't give soon-to-be MPs £5 million for no reason at all.
Like several others on this board who have worked in Financial Services I am familiar with the Bribery Act 2010. In theory it's a powerful piece of legislation. Rightly so when you see Farage doing this kind of stuff. I am not particularly confident he will ever be investigated for it, let alone convicted however.
They make 1-2 judgements against the UK per annum, and are a very peripheral actor. If we want to tighten the definitions as used here we are free to legislate to do so - since teh vast majority of jusdgements are made in UK Courts.
It's substantially a legacy from Churchill that Farage and copycat Kemi want to destroy, to have us line up with Russia as Belarus as the only European non-members.
To my eye this is just the latest distracting bone that Farage wants to throw at his low information voters, and Kemi is following when she seriously needs to start thinking for herself - but she shows little signs of doing so.
The court itself is not the problem, it’s the U.K. courts’ interpretation of the rights the ECHR it affords to people.
Exactly - and that is what requires fixing.
The other problem is that "send them back" policies require agreement from the other end, which is the larger issue.
The U.K. courts are interpreting it this way, otherwise it would end up at the ECHR. So I don’t think the fact there are only two judgements against the U.K. per year is actually relevant.
***EXCLUSIVE*** Andy Burnham fully rules out changing Rachel Reeves’ fiscal rules if he becomes PM
At the weekend his team had left it open whether he might change them in future
But tonight his spokesperson tells Bloomberg he is explicitly ruling out any changes to the existing fiscal rules
AND crucially Burnham is now also ruling out exempting defence spending from the fiscal rules to spend more on the military
No change with the EU relationship and no change to the economy, exactly what is Burnham going to do differently?!
His one policy of significance is regional devolution of power. The extent of that is unclear, but it goes against forty years of centralisation which was economically disastrous for the regions, so I'll give him credit there for a policy of some significance.
No doubt PB's London residents will be sceptical, but that's their problem.
No, I love the place but I do think the country is too London centric.
You're an old lefty prepared to make concessions. I suspect some of our regular will differ.
As I recall, even the much lamented Alistair Meeks believed London investment came before everything.
London investment comes before everything else because the Treasury's Green Book is written to make it that way.
We really need a concerted effort to transform Manchester / Leeds / Birmingham / Nottingham into the equivalent of Munich / Hamburg / Frankfurt / Cologne so that the UK isn't focused purely around London.
Two easy options:
1) Go back in history and split England into a multitude of kingdoms, dukedoms, free cities etc for a few hundred years.
2) Partition England into a free market, democratic Midlands/North and an oppressive, communist South for forty years.
3) Give regional mayors some actual tax raising ability so they can build the Metro lines every other city with a population over 1 million has.
Manchester, Liverpool, Newcastle, Nottingham, Sheffield and the West Midlands all have metro / tram systems
I don't think our current problems can all be caused by Leeds being overly reliant on buses.
The only one of those with a light railway is Newcastle and that is a single tunnel attached to existing lines that were repurposed.
A lot of our problems relate to number high quality jobs / employees (depending on what side you are looking at) within a reasonable commuting distance.
Underground systems solve that issue by vastly increasing the number of people within a sensible commuting time..
If you're quibbling about whether a metro or tram or light railway is the appropriate system then you're losing sight of the bigger picture.
And you clearly don't understand the problem with trams sharing the roads with cars...
Well if you're against that are you also against bus lanes and cycle lanes ?
Now if you want actual extensive underground rail systems in our cities then that is going to cost serious money.
With the main beneficiaries being lawyers and consultants.
I believe talking is going on, but how can he even believe his own words? He says serious negotiations 'are now taking place' - so what has all the talking for weeks now been about?
Comments
In the past we’ve had plenty talk about it but they always roll back.
I’d suspect he won’t.
YouGov Labour members polling
If there is a leadership contest, your first preference:
Burnham 47%
Starmer 31%
Rayner 8%
Streeting 4%
Miliband 3%
Cooper 3%
Mahmood 1%
Carns 0%
Head to heads:
Burnham 59% v Starmer 37%
Burnham 80% v Streeting 10%
Miliband 58% v Streeting 28%
Rayner 70% v Streeting 19%
Part of the declaration was a message to the court to stop ignoring that change and leave more decisions to individual countries.
International law depends entirely on the consensus of signatories, and the recent declaration indicated a change in that consensus.
We really need a concerted effort to transform Manchester / Leeds / Birmingham / Nottingham into the equivalent of Munich / Hamburg / Frankfurt / Cologne so that the UK isn't focused purely around London.
61% of members want Starmer to stand down near to General Election or take Labour into the General Election.
This implies members do not want Burnham to challenge Starmer immediately if he wins Makerfield.
Burnham 47%
Starmer 31%
Rayner 8%
Streeting 4%
Starmer v Burnham 37/59%
Burnham v Streeting 80/10%
Just 28% want Starmer to lead into GE
Edit: I'm only 65.
when the beancounters run the predictions investment in London results in higher bang/£
whether that is correct is another thing
For as long as politics is a pissing contest, they will.
The political equivalent of Thomas Midgley developing lead additives for petrol, and then CFCs as an encore.
https://x.com/andyburnhamgm/status/2056437342013927920
Politics isn’t working for places like ours.
I will change that.
https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/politicsandpolicy/the-two-bloc-polarisation-of-britains-voters-and-party-members/
Klealmost40
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MMhSSIpyMp4
"Starmer isn't much cop, but he's better than the alternatives."
https://www.greatermanchester-ca.gov.uk/news/mayor-sets-out-plan-to-reindustrialise-birthplace-of-industrial-revolution-with-five-global-clusters/
or better, watch this video in full for how he describes changing the way politics works...
https://www.instituteforgovernment.org.uk/event/keynote-andy-burnham-mayor-greater-manchester
The Reform mayor of Hull was speaking positively about Burnham earlier.
On balance that's probably a good thing. Naiive optimism may be a bit destructive at times, but it's less irritating than bitter nihilistic cynicism dressed up as realism.
And at least some hopefulness can keep us open to new possibilities.
I'd much rather a Labour or Tory government to a Green or Reform one. Yet most young people seem to have given up on them both, regardless of political leaning?
Obviously people are disillusioned at their lives not getting better. But I think this is something broader: people's lives weren't better in the 1950s yet politics remained in the centre.
I think the internet and social media is accelerating people's move to the (relative) extremes. It's a clearer message of policy and belief. And very easy in opposition where you have no consequences for stupid policies.
I suspect we end up with a series of experiments of government at the right and then left extremes before pivoting back to the centre.
1) Go back in history and split England into a multitude of kingdoms, dukedoms, free cities etc for a few hundred years.
2) Partition England into a free market, democratic Midlands/North and an oppressive, communist South for forty years.
And in the Britain it is, of course, a self fulfilling prophesy.
The larger point - which Burnham appears actually to get on some level - is that without devolved power, investment in the regions is far less likely to be effective.
"Andy is bringing exactly the kind of fresh ideas that this country needs. That's why i am pleased to anmounce that should he win the by-election I intend to make him Secretary of State for Health, Welfare, Defence, and Finance - I know he is the man to solve our problems".
On Keir Starmer, should he:
Take party into next election 28%
Remain as leader until closer to GE 33%
Step down no / in months 33%
That's a lot of Labour members who aren't keen on what's happened this week.
Important to realise though that 500 plus seats does not mean the vast majority of votes.
The New Statesman did do a group chat recently on the attitudes of young women. The atmosphere was pretty funereal. However if young women are irrationally afraid of a right wing government would you want to disabuse them of that belief if you're on the left.
I’m sure doing the same thing that failed last time will be a massive success this time.
The first thing I would change is how we report economic stats - give politicians the opportunity to crow about 10% wage growth in Teesside.
But given the mayors cover wider areas that should work.
I am not keen on the term "Manchesterism" and am among those who feel that Mancheter's recent success was founded on the work of a great many that was much more pro-business and much less socialist than Andy Burnham most recent efforts,... however,...
https://x.com/thomasforth/status/2056089216765833247
Significant restrictions would be a very good idea.
Author of the code.
No reason that shouldn't be the case here.
I don't think our current problems can all be caused by Leeds being overly reliant on buses.
I think a lot of people are conflating the two events - i.e. the by-election candidate and the leadership candidate. Burnham, and others, would be wise to keep them separate.
A lot of our problems relate to number high quality jobs / employees (depending on what side you are looking at) within a reasonable commuting distance.
Underground systems solve that issue by vastly increasing the number of people within a sensible commuting time..
And all of this will be guaranteed to produce positive returns on capital because this time its different.
Or perhaps not and all it results in is more debt and more tax to pay the interest on that debt.
Still, I have no problem with the advocates of all this promised to be profitable infrastructure spending investing their own money in it and taking the profits if it all goes as planned.
Burnhams speech was just a load of vacuous tropes peddled out to get some good headlines .
We’ve heard it all before .
There’s no money , he’s not apparently willing to change the fiscal rules and there’s only so much tax you can stick on people before you get diminishing returns .
Admittedly he’s more charismatic than Starmer , which of course wouldn’t be difficult but I fear he’s promising a weekend at a nice hotel overlooking Lake Garda when what’s delivered will be two nights in a crummy B and B in Skegness !
The more I see of Burnham the more I like Starmer !
They hope it will be up and running by 2033.
https://www.tomforth.co.uk/birminghamisasmallcity/
Equally the Northumbria coast line has exceeded passenger figures. Build decent public transport and it will be used.
Have a continual stream of projects and I can guarantee that the newly trained guaranteed employment workforce will delivery projects on time and on budget because it's the messing as shown with HS2 that creates a lot of the extra costs
They make 1-2 judgements against the UK per annum, and are a very peripheral actor. If we want to tighten the definitions as used here we are free to legislate to do so - since the vast majority of judgements are made in UK Courts.
It's substantially a legacy from Churchill that Farage and copycat Kemi want to destroy, to have us line up with Russia and Belarus as the only European non-members.
To my eye this is just the latest distracting bone that Farage wants to throw at his low information voters, and Kemi is following when instead she seriously needs to start thinking for herself - but she shows little signs of doing so.
Don't know if that's what happened but that seemed to be what the radio was saying.
The other problem is that "send them back" policies require agreement from the other end, which is the larger issue.
https://www.cnbc.com/2026/05/18/trump-dismiss-irs-lawsuit.html
Not so much a reparations fund, but rather an upfront payment so that they can do it all again in November.
The problem will be when either Farage or Polanski get a go as they could do some irreparable damage.
https://x.com/PolitlcsUK/status/2056408799049547942
🚨 WATCH: Reform UK Mayor of Hull Luke Campbell says he thinks Andy Burnham would be a champion for the North as PM
"He seems like a really nice guy to me"
https://x.com/AndyBurnhamGM/status/2056445699424682037
And I would say the same about Luke. We need a bit more decency in politics and much less vitriol. 👏🏻
Merseyrail is also a proper railway!
Everything hinges on part 2 I think - whether this advantage resulted or was intended to result in Farage carrying out his duties improperly, as understood by a reasonable person. The wording is deliberately vague but I would think the very large sum involved and that neither Harborne nor Farage have put forward a legitimate reason for this massive amount being passed secretly would be part of that assessment. People don't give soon-to-be MPs £5 million for no reason at all.
Like several others on this board who have worked in Financial Services I am familiar with the Bribery Act 2010. In theory it's a powerful piece of legislation. Rightly so when you see Farage doing this kind of stuff. I am not particularly confident he will ever be investigated for it, let alone convicted however.
Now if you want actual extensive underground rail systems in our cities then that is going to cost serious money.
With the main beneficiaries being lawyers and consultants.
TACO time again.
https://x.com/wallstengine/status/2056450832640647556?s=61