My advice to Starmer's wife is to gently tell him it's over and to resign on Monday but offer to stay in office until his successor is appointed
Anything else is frankly cruel and whilst not quite the same, can anyone imagine what would have happened if Jill Biden had taken Joe's hand and quietly said time to pass on the batton Joe
To expose Labour to a very public and probably quite demeaning battle to hold on Starmer would be vilified
I rather disagree. Starmer has a very strong case. If the rabble seek Burnham like change then they should resign as MPs and seek re-election on an Andy-isn't-he-lovely mandate.
Starmer is toxic to the electorate and that was evidenced in spades in Makerfield
His race is over
I shall mark your card as a rabble-rouser
I'm sure you're mostly of Tory blood, as am I. So we're perhaps not the best to comment. Nonetheless Starmer has delivered broadly stable government and Reeves has delivered a broadly stable financial background. I think that in both cases this represents hat-tip like achievement.
The background they had to deal with was shameful. Several Tory PMs really let themselves down.
And so Kemi.
She's doing well, but I have no idea if she really can take the bull by the horns and pre-announce the heavy revision to the state that is long overdue. I hope she can.
Kemi will fancy herself as Maggie Thatcher to Burnham’s Harold Wilson and Starmer’s Jim Callaghan and Sunak’s Ted Heath
That's not bad
It means nothing of course but I have been quite surprised two friends who historically would be solid Labour expressing some enthusiasm for Kemi. (As I only have two friends this is powerful evidence!)
Burnham is now clearly the leftwing candidate in any Labour leadership election against Starmer and New Labour Streeting. Whereas he wasn’t in 2015 with Corbyn taking that role nor in 2010 when Ed Miliband and Abbott were the leftist candidates and he was still relatively New Labour.
Burnham might take some encouragement from Ronald Reagan who was beaten by Nixon in the 1968 Republican primaries and narrowly by Ford in the 1976 Republican primaries. As we all remember though Reagan won the 1980 Republican primaries and then the 1980 and 1984 presidential elections. Biden also ran for the Democrats nomination in 1988 and 2008 losing to Dukakis and Obama before finally winning in 2020 the nomination and presidential election
In this particular context what would 'leftwing' mean? Does it mean significantly more than having a particular rhetoric about how you talk politics? How does it relate policy and practicewise to: private enterprise, debt to GDP ratios, deficit, benefits, growth, NATO, overall tax levels, interest rates, migration, student loans, and so on? Unless it means different from Starmer, Tories, LDs, etc in ways that can be articulated, how are we to evaluate?
Burnham’s camp has said he will restore the 50% additional rate of income tax, introduce a land tax, a social care levy etc. It is not just he will renationalise utilities
Policies for which there is no mandate.
Mandates in manifestos don't matter in practice, except that the HOC can't oppose legislation that is in the manifesto.
However the House of Lords cannot block or amend taxation legislation. So a mandate is irrelevant for these measures.
Which gives Kemi an opportunity, as Reform falters after these by election defeats Labour are about to elect a leader committed to tax rises and nationalisations and taking Labour left which it had no mandate for when it won the 2024 general election with Starmer
If Burnham promotes policies that are generally popular then Kemi saying "He doesn't have a mandate" will fall on deaf ears, except for the Tory faithful.
Burnham restoring the 50% additional rate of income tax certainly won’t be popular with the city. A land tax won’t be popular with landowners and developers and if a rumoured Burnham social care levy hits average home owners that would destroy Burnham’s popularity as badly as the dementia tax did for May’s
How many in the city, or landowners and developers are Tory faithful?
Most are Tory or now Reform but they create jobs and investment and can move abroad if taxes get too high here. As happened in the brain drain of the 1970s when the high tax Labour government sent many high earners and wealth creators to Monaco, Hong Kong and Singapore, Switzerland and the USA
Two of those have been taken over by dictatorships since then however.
Nigel Farage should resist the urge to shift further to the right and consider sacking Zia Yusuf, Reform’s home affairs spokesman, figures within the party have said after its defeat to Labour in the Makerfield byelection.
We know some in the party have been after Zia for some time. He just trolls people nastily online anyway, so he's very on brand.
Burnham is now clearly the leftwing candidate in any Labour leadership election against Starmer and New Labour Streeting. Whereas he wasn’t in 2015 with Corbyn taking that role nor in 2010 when Ed Miliband and Abbott were the leftist candidates and he was still relatively New Labour.
Burnham might take some encouragement from Ronald Reagan who was beaten by Nixon in the 1968 Republican primaries and narrowly by Ford in the 1976 Republican primaries. As we all remember though Reagan won the 1980 Republican primaries and then the 1980 and 1984 presidential elections. Biden also ran for the Democrats nomination in 1988 and 2008 losing to Dukakis and Obama before finally winning in 2020 the nomination and presidential election
In this particular context what would 'leftwing' mean? Does it mean significantly more than having a particular rhetoric about how you talk politics? How does it relate policy and practicewise to: private enterprise, debt to GDP ratios, deficit, benefits, growth, NATO, overall tax levels, interest rates, migration, student loans, and so on? Unless it means different from Starmer, Tories, LDs, etc in ways that can be articulated, how are we to evaluate?
Burnham’s camp has said he will restore the 50% additional rate of income tax, introduce a land tax, a social care levy etc. It is not just he will renationalise utilities
Policies for which there is no mandate.
Mandates in manifestos don't matter in practice, except that the HOC can't oppose legislation that is in the manifesto.
However the House of Lords cannot block or amend taxation legislation. So a mandate is irrelevant for these measures.
Which gives Kemi an opportunity, as Reform falters after these by election defeats Labour are about to elect a leader committed to tax rises and nationalisations and taking Labour left which it had no mandate for when it won the 2024 general election with Starmer
If Burnham promotes policies that are generally popular then Kemi saying "He doesn't have a mandate" will fall on deaf ears, except for the Tory faithful.
Burnham restoring the 50% additional rate of income tax certainly won’t be popular with the City. A land tax won’t be popular with landowners and developers. His proposal to increase business rates on out of town warehouses won’t be popular with Amazon. While if a rumoured Burnham social care levy hits average home owners that would destroy Burnham’s popularity as badly as the dementia tax did for May’s
The City doesn't vote Labour. Landowners and Developers don't vote Labour (and it seems fair for them them to pay council tax on development land at the rate the finished properties will pay). Out of town warehouse owners and renters don't vote Labour.
Quite apart from addressing inefficiencies which seem built into the system, we just don't seem to be raising enough tax to fund the state we want. Rearmament? We can't even fix potholes.
A land value tax replacing both council tax and stamp duty would seem reasonable to me, levied on all land regardless of owner.
One problem us, of course, is that Burnham will have a maximum of 3 years to do unpopular stuff and wait for the memory to fade, or put anything complex in place, rather the normal 4-5
The City determines business confidence in the country though as New Labour and Thatcher and Cameron and Sunak and even Starmer and Reeves to an extent understood. Amazon is one of the biggest employers in the country and can move their warehouses abroad if the tax they pay in the UK gets too high.
I don't think Amazon can easily move abroad since Brexit, they would have to pay duty on all imports
Why anyone would want a professional politician with all the grubbiness and politics that causes (look at burnham and his bothering of an electorate to gain personal power) over a constitutional monarch is beyond me
People in Ireland are genuinely delighted with their new President and her ball-playing skills, and when you have a President with extremely limited constitutional power, as in Ireland, it isn't really that contentious.
I find it odd to elect a head of state if they have very limited powers - why bother then? - but clearly it does work.
I'm happy to stick with constitutional monarchy as i think it too works.
Isn't the common factor very limited powers? The advantage with an elected one is it's much cheaper and it doesn't sit at the heart of a hierarchy designed to reinforce a backward-looking, sclerotic class system
Yes aren’t US Presidents and Presidential elections very cheap, definitely not billions spent there, oh no. Isn’t the US republic also remarkably equal with its billionaire President its lack of universal healthcare, barely any welfare state and a minimum wage far lower than the UK. While those awfully class ridden unequal constitutional monarchies like Sweden, Canada, the UK, Denmark, the Netherlands, New Zealand and Japan are dreadful places to live…oh wait
Your deranged royalism has not for the first time addled your powers of comprehension. The original comparison was between British and Irish heads of state.
The Irish head of state is a leftist ex politician nonentity, virtually nobody has heard of outside Ireland and who over a third of Irish voters voted against. In any case in a current UK presidential election we might well elect President Farage
She also interferes in politics which heads of state shouldn’t do, calling Israel a ‘genocidal state’
I’m reluctant to intervene since you’ve reached the chuntering to yourself stage, but which rule book says heads of state shouldn’t interfere in politics? Since you crowbarred Trump into the conversation I fear I may have some bad news for you on the interfering in politics front.
Trump is also head of government ie the equivalent of the UK and Irish PMs NOT just head of state. Those who are ceremonial heads of state alone and not head of government too or executive head of state should not interfere in politics
You should think very carefully about the future before suggesting ceremonial heads of state shouldn’t interfere in politics.
Why? They shouldn’t end of. They should leave interfering in politics to heads of government ie the PM in constitutional monarchies
Burnham is now clearly the leftwing candidate in any Labour leadership election against Starmer and New Labour Streeting. Whereas he wasn’t in 2015 with Corbyn taking that role nor in 2010 when Ed Miliband and Abbott were the leftist candidates and he was still relatively New Labour.
Burnham might take some encouragement from Ronald Reagan who was beaten by Nixon in the 1968 Republican primaries and narrowly by Ford in the 1976 Republican primaries. As we all remember though Reagan won the 1980 Republican primaries and then the 1980 and 1984 presidential elections. Biden also ran for the Democrats nomination in 1988 and 2008 losing to Dukakis and Obama before finally winning in 2020 the nomination and presidential election
In this particular context what would 'leftwing' mean? Does it mean significantly more than having a particular rhetoric about how you talk politics? How does it relate policy and practicewise to: private enterprise, debt to GDP ratios, deficit, benefits, growth, NATO, overall tax levels, interest rates, migration, student loans, and so on? Unless it means different from Starmer, Tories, LDs, etc in ways that can be articulated, how are we to evaluate?
Burnham’s camp has said he will restore the 50% additional rate of income tax, introduce a land tax, a social care levy etc. It is not just he will renationalise utilities
Policies for which there is no mandate.
Mandates in manifestos don't matter in practice, except that the HOC can't oppose legislation that is in the manifesto.
However the House of Lords cannot block or amend taxation legislation. So a mandate is irrelevant for these measures.
Which gives Kemi an opportunity, as Reform falters after these by election defeats Labour are about to elect a leader committed to tax rises and nationalisations and taking Labour left which it had no mandate for when it won the 2024 general election with Starmer
If Burnham promotes policies that are generally popular then Kemi saying "He doesn't have a mandate" will fall on deaf ears, except for the Tory faithful.
Burnham restoring the 50% additional rate of income tax certainly won’t be popular with the City. A land tax won’t be popular with landowners and developers. His proposal to increase business rates on out of town warehouses won’t be popular with Amazon. While if a rumoured Burnham social care levy hits average home owners that would destroy Burnham’s popularity as badly as the dementia tax did for May’s
The City doesn't vote Labour. Landowners and Developers don't vote Labour (and it seems fair for them them to pay council tax on development land at the rate the finished properties will pay). Out of town warehouse owners and renters don't vote Labour.
Quite apart from addressing inefficiencies which seem built into the system, we just don't seem to be raising enough tax to fund the state we want. Rearmament? We can't even fix potholes.
A land value tax replacing both council tax and stamp duty would seem reasonable to me, levied on all land regardless of owner.
One problem us, of course, is that Burnham will have a maximum of 3 years to do unpopular stuff and wait for the memory to fade, or put anything complex in place, rather the normal 4-5
The City determines business confidence in the country though as New Labour and Thatcher and Cameron and Sunak and even Starmer and Reeves to an extent understood. Amazon is one of the biggest employers in the country and can move their warehouses abroad if the tax they pay in the UK gets too high.
I don't think Amazon can easily move abroad since Brexit, they would have to pay duty on all imports
That may still be cheaper than the Burnham’s tax hikes they have to pay and in any case it would be the customer paying the extra import duties
My advice to Starmer's wife is to gently tell him it's over and to resign on Monday but offer to stay in office until his successor is appointed
Anything else is frankly cruel and whilst not quite the same, can anyone imagine what would have happened if Jill Biden had taken Joe's hand and quietly said time to pass on the batton Joe
To expose Labour to a very public and probably quite demeaning battle to hold on Starmer would be vilified
I rather disagree. Starmer has a very strong case. If the rabble seek Burnham like change then they should resign as MPs and seek re-election on an Andy-isn't-he-lovely mandate.
Starmer is toxic to the electorate and that was evidenced in spades in Makerfield
His race is over
I shall mark your card as a rabble-rouser
I'm sure you're mostly of Tory blood, as am I. So we're perhaps not the best to comment. Nonetheless Starmer has delivered broadly stable government and Reeves has delivered a broadly stable financial background. I think that in both cases this represents hat-tip like achievement.
The background they had to deal with was shameful. Several Tory PMs really let themselves down.
And so Kemi.
She's doing well, but I have no idea if she really can take the bull by the horns and pre-announce the heavy revision to the state that is long overdue. I hope she can.
Kemi will fancy herself as Maggie Thatcher to Burnham’s Harold Wilson and Starmer’s Jim Callaghan and Sunak’s Ted Heath
That's not bad
It means nothing of course but I have been quite surprised two friends who historically would be solid Labour expressing some enthusiasm for Kemi. (As I only have two friends this is powerful evidence!)
Interesting, Farage and Lowe competing to be Enoch Powell of course
Burnham is now clearly the leftwing candidate in any Labour leadership election against Starmer and New Labour Streeting. Whereas he wasn’t in 2015 with Corbyn taking that role nor in 2010 when Ed Miliband and Abbott were the leftist candidates and he was still relatively New Labour.
Burnham might take some encouragement from Ronald Reagan who was beaten by Nixon in the 1968 Republican primaries and narrowly by Ford in the 1976 Republican primaries. As we all remember though Reagan won the 1980 Republican primaries and then the 1980 and 1984 presidential elections. Biden also ran for the Democrats nomination in 1988 and 2008 losing to Dukakis and Obama before finally winning in 2020 the nomination and presidential election
In this particular context what would 'leftwing' mean? Does it mean significantly more than having a particular rhetoric about how you talk politics? How does it relate policy and practicewise to: private enterprise, debt to GDP ratios, deficit, benefits, growth, NATO, overall tax levels, interest rates, migration, student loans, and so on? Unless it means different from Starmer, Tories, LDs, etc in ways that can be articulated, how are we to evaluate?
Burnham’s camp has said he will restore the 50% additional rate of income tax, introduce a land tax, a social care levy etc. It is not just he will renationalise utilities
Policies for which there is no mandate.
Mandates in manifestos don't matter in practice, except that the HOC can't oppose legislation that is in the manifesto.
However the House of Lords cannot block or amend taxation legislation. So a mandate is irrelevant for these measures.
Which gives Kemi an opportunity, as Reform falters after these by election defeats Labour are about to elect a leader committed to tax rises and nationalisations and taking Labour left which it had no mandate for when it won the 2024 general election with Starmer
If Burnham promotes policies that are generally popular then Kemi saying "He doesn't have a mandate" will fall on deaf ears, except for the Tory faithful.
Burnham restoring the 50% additional rate of income tax certainly won’t be popular with the City. A land tax won’t be popular with landowners and developers. His proposal to increase business rates on out of town warehouses won’t be popular with Amazon. While if a rumoured Burnham social care levy hits average home owners that would destroy Burnham’s popularity as badly as the dementia tax did for May’s
The City doesn't vote Labour. Landowners and Developers don't vote Labour (and it seems fair for them them to pay council tax on development land at the rate the finished properties will pay). Out of town warehouse owners and renters don't vote Labour.
Quite apart from addressing inefficiencies which seem built into the system, we just don't seem to be raising enough tax to fund the state we want. Rearmament? We can't even fix potholes.
A land value tax replacing both council tax and stamp duty would seem reasonable to me, levied on all land regardless of owner.
One problem us, of course, is that Burnham will have a maximum of 3 years to do unpopular stuff and wait for the memory to fade, or put anything complex in place, rather the normal 4-5
The City determines business confidence in the country though as New Labour and Thatcher and Cameron and Sunak and even Starmer and Reeves to an extent understood. Amazon is one of the biggest employers in the country and can move their warehouses abroad if the tax they pay in the UK gets too high.
I don't think Amazon can easily move abroad since Brexit, they would have to pay duty on all imports
The words
Amazon
Tax
High
Are vomit inducing, since Amazon pay minimal tax anywhere.
Tax the fuckers what any UK Company in the same Sector would pay.
Then use the proceeds to Cut Employers NI in certain sectors.
The fact there has been virtually no change in Makerfield between 2024 and now suggests that it isn’t Labour that’s the problem, it’s Keir Starmer.
The underlying problem is the country wants changes that are 1) too expensive for our budget and/or 2) implausible. So any candidate representing the status quo is going to lose to a change candidate for the next decade at least. Policies, values etc are not that important, if we had a Conservative or Reform govt they would be extremely unpopular too.
Burnham has gone too early - he should have taken over in 2027 and portrayed himself as a change candidate in 2028. It will be very difficult to portray himself as a change candidate when he has been there for a couple of years.
I think Starmer would have worked as a change candidate were it not for winter fuel. Everything that came after was downhill but that was the initial destructive act. I supported the policy but it was utterly toxic against the new Labour coalition as to be fair many Labour MPs said at the time.
Mandelson would have been easily survivable by somebody with more popularity.
From a party POV, he should have made benefit reform a confidence issue and then quit then if it hadn’t passed. Letting that go just gave the PLP the magic money tree. Burnham will have to grapple with that too but he will start with goodwill.
Surely the point of the Labour Party is to attempt to solve national problems with policies that match the culture of the Labour Party?
The WFA cut seemed like an attempt of cod-Thatcherism. No Labour MP went into politics to cheer cutting benefits.
You want to reduce the welfare bill, but are a Labour PM? What do Labour MPs like? Benefits targeted to the poorest, perhaps?
So announce all the old age extras are going in a blender. The result will be means tests/taxed, so as to target the poorest pensioners.
Then you sell that to the MPs as a reform that makes the poor better off, while being fiscally prudent.
No labour MP went into parliament wanting to make a difficult decision. They want to open fetes, garden centres, shops, and do lots of feel good social work while not upsetting anyone.
Taz, and make plenty of cash, expenses, second houses. A lucrative business for useless donkeys.
I saw recently that Glenys Kinnock's estate was valued at about £1.5million. Now she was an MEP for 15 years rather than an MP. But given that she was a teacher before entering politics, it is hard to see how she could have amassed such a fortune.
Politics is clearly about money for the politicians.
Have you seen the price of houses these days?
In the Kinnocks Wales?
We have several homes by us in the 1 million region with one seafront home within 400 yards being fully restored and going on the market for 3 million
Even in our corner of West Yorkshire there are £1m+ properties.
Even in poverty stricken County Durham there are a few.
The fact there has been virtually no change in Makerfield between 2024 and now suggests that it isn’t Labour that’s the problem, it’s Keir Starmer.
The underlying problem is the country wants changes that are 1) too expensive for our budget and/or 2) implausible. So any candidate representing the status quo is going to lose to a change candidate for the next decade at least. Policies, values etc are not that important, if we had a Conservative or Reform govt they would be extremely unpopular too.
Burnham has gone too early - he should have taken over in 2027 and portrayed himself as a change candidate in 2028. It will be very difficult to portray himself as a change candidate when he has been there for a couple of years.
I think Starmer would have worked as a change candidate were it not for winter fuel. Everything that came after was downhill but that was the initial destructive act. I supported the policy but it was utterly toxic against the new Labour coalition as to be fair many Labour MPs said at the time.
Mandelson would have been easily survivable by somebody with more popularity.
From a party POV, he should have made benefit reform a confidence issue and then quit then if it hadn’t passed. Letting that go just gave the PLP the magic money tree. Burnham will have to grapple with that too but he will start with goodwill.
Surely the point of the Labour Party is to attempt to solve national problems with policies that match the culture of the Labour Party?
The WFA cut seemed like an attempt of cod-Thatcherism. No Labour MP went into politics to cheer cutting benefits.
You want to reduce the welfare bill, but are a Labour PM? What do Labour MPs like? Benefits targeted to the poorest, perhaps?
So announce all the old age extras are going in a blender. The result will be means tests/taxed, so as to target the poorest pensioners.
Then you sell that to the MPs as a reform that makes the poor better off, while being fiscally prudent.
No labour MP went into parliament wanting to make a difficult decision. They want to open fetes, garden centres, shops, and do lots of feel good social work while not upsetting anyone.
Taz, and make plenty of cash, expenses, second houses. A lucrative business for useless donkeys.
I saw recently that Glenys Kinnock's estate was valued at about £1.5million. Now she was an MEP for 15 years rather than an MP. But given that she was a teacher before entering politics, it is hard to see how she could have amassed such a fortune.
Politics is clearly about money for the politicians.
Have you seen the price of houses these days?
In the Kinnocks Wales?
We have several homes by us in the 1 million region with one seafront home within 400 yards being fully restored and going on the market for 3 million
Even in our corner of West Yorkshire there are £1m+ properties.
Even in poverty stricken County Durham there are a few.
The fact there has been virtually no change in Makerfield between 2024 and now suggests that it isn’t Labour that’s the problem, it’s Keir Starmer.
The underlying problem is the country wants changes that are 1) too expensive for our budget and/or 2) implausible. So any candidate representing the status quo is going to lose to a change candidate for the next decade at least. Policies, values etc are not that important, if we had a Conservative or Reform govt they would be extremely unpopular too.
Burnham has gone too early - he should have taken over in 2027 and portrayed himself as a change candidate in 2028. It will be very difficult to portray himself as a change candidate when he has been there for a couple of years.
I think Starmer would have worked as a change candidate were it not for winter fuel. Everything that came after was downhill but that was the initial destructive act. I supported the policy but it was utterly toxic against the new Labour coalition as to be fair many Labour MPs said at the time.
Mandelson would have been easily survivable by somebody with more popularity.
From a party POV, he should have made benefit reform a confidence issue and then quit then if it hadn’t passed. Letting that go just gave the PLP the magic money tree. Burnham will have to grapple with that too but he will start with goodwill.
Surely the point of the Labour Party is to attempt to solve national problems with policies that match the culture of the Labour Party?
The WFA cut seemed like an attempt of cod-Thatcherism. No Labour MP went into politics to cheer cutting benefits.
You want to reduce the welfare bill, but are a Labour PM? What do Labour MPs like? Benefits targeted to the poorest, perhaps?
So announce all the old age extras are going in a blender. The result will be means tests/taxed, so as to target the poorest pensioners.
Then you sell that to the MPs as a reform that makes the poor better off, while being fiscally prudent.
No labour MP went into parliament wanting to make a difficult decision. They want to open fetes, garden centres, shops, and do lots of feel good social work while not upsetting anyone.
Taz, and make plenty of cash, expenses, second houses. A lucrative business for useless donkeys.
I saw recently that Glenys Kinnock's estate was valued at about £1.5million. Now she was an MEP for 15 years rather than an MP. But given that she was a teacher before entering politics, it is hard to see how she could have amassed such a fortune.
Politics is clearly about money for the politicians.
Have you seen the price of houses these days?
In the Kinnocks Wales?
We have several homes by us in the 1 million region with one seafront home within 400 yards being fully restored and going on the market for 3 million
Even in our corner of West Yorkshire there are £1m+ properties.
I just think @HYUFD demeaned Wales by his comment as there are million pound plus homes across the country as across England and Scotland
The majority of million pound homes are in London and the Home Counties and those who own them elsewhere are largely corporate executives and lawyers etc not Labour politicians and ex teachers
There are million pound homes in DONCASTER. I passed one for sale only yesterday.
Admittedly rather more house than you'd get in Surrey.
£1m is not a fortune these days. Public sector pensions for anyone in a vaguely professional role must be getting close to being worth £1m.
You can’t buy a million pound house with all your public sector pension
Pensioners bought their houses 40 years earlier.
The combination of house price growth, pensions and investments can easily make people millionaires.
Ronald Read (Janitor & Gas Station Attendant): Read, a rural Vermont resident who never made a high wage, secretly amassed an $8 million fortune. He achieved this over decades by living below his means, consistently purchasing blue-chip dividend stocks (like Procter & Gamble and JPMorgan Chase), and holding them for the long term. Upon his death, he left millions to his local library and hospital.
Grace Groner (Secretary): Orphaned at a young age, she spent her career working as a secretary at Abbott Laboratories. In 1935, she bought three shares of Abbott stock for $60. She never sold them, reinvested the dividends, and held the shares for over 70 years. When she passed away, she left a $7 million fortune to charity and educational trusts.
Why anyone would want a professional politician with all the grubbiness and politics that causes (look at burnham and his bothering of an electorate to gain personal power) over a constitutional monarch is beyond me
People in Ireland are genuinely delighted with their new President and her ball-playing skills, and when you have a President with extremely limited constitutional power, as in Ireland, it isn't really that contentious.
I find it odd to elect a head of state if they have very limited powers - why bother then? - but clearly it does work.
I'm happy to stick with constitutional monarchy as i think it too works.
Isn't the common factor very limited powers? The advantage with an elected one is it's much cheaper and it doesn't sit at the heart of a hierarchy designed to reinforce a backward-looking, sclerotic class system
Yes aren’t US Presidents and Presidential elections very cheap, definitely not billions spent there, oh no. Isn’t the US republic also remarkably equal with its billionaire President its lack of universal healthcare, barely any welfare state and a minimum wage far lower than the UK. While those awfully class ridden unequal constitutional monarchies like Sweden, Canada, the UK, Denmark, the Netherlands, New Zealand and Japan are lame dreadful places to live…oh wait
Your deranged royalism has not for the first time addled your powers of comprehension. The original comparison was between British and Irish heads of state.
The Irish head of state is a leftist ex politician nonentity, virtually nobody has heard of outside Ireland and who over a third of Irish voters voted against. In any case in a current UK presidential election we might well elect President Farage
The Irish President can do keepy-uppies and land a basketball through a hoop backwards, so she makes people smile and people are happy that she can speak the language. She's a good advert for an elected figurehead President.
No she is a far left politician who makes political statements attacking Israel and who over a third of Irish voters voted against.
She also is barely recognised abroad and brings in no tourism revenue while still living in a 90 room Dublin mansion and being taxpayer funded
My advice to Starmer's wife is to gently tell him it's over and to resign on Monday but offer to stay in office until his successor is appointed
Anything else is frankly cruel and whilst not quite the same, can anyone imagine what would have happened if Jill Biden had taken Joe's hand and quietly said time to pass on the batton Joe
To expose Labour to a very public and probably quite demeaning battle to hold on Starmer would be vilified
I rather disagree. Starmer has a very strong case. If the rabble seek Burnham like change then they should resign as MPs and seek re-election on an Andy-isn't-he-lovely mandate.
Starmer is toxic to the electorate and that was evidenced in spades in Makerfield
His race is over
I shall mark your card as a rabble-rouser
I'm sure you're mostly of Tory blood, as am I. So we're perhaps not the best to comment. Nonetheless Starmer has delivered broadly stable government and Reeves has delivered a broadly stable financial background. I think that in both cases this represents hat-tip like achievement.
The background they had to deal with was shameful. Several Tory PMs really let themselves down.
And so Kemi.
She's doing well, but I have no idea if she really can take the bull by the horns and pre-announce the heavy revision to the state that is long overdue. I hope she can.
Kemi will fancy herself as Maggie Thatcher to Burnham’s Harold Wilson and Starmer’s Jim Callaghan and Sunak’s Ted Heath
That's not bad
It means nothing of course but I have been quite surprised two friends who historically would be solid Labour expressing some enthusiasm for Kemi. (As I only have two friends this is powerful evidence!)
Burnham is now clearly the leftwing candidate in any Labour leadership election against Starmer and New Labour Streeting. Whereas he wasn’t in 2015 with Corbyn taking that role nor in 2010 when Ed Miliband and Abbott were the leftist candidates and he was still relatively New Labour.
Burnham might take some encouragement from Ronald Reagan who was beaten by Nixon in the 1968 Republican primaries and narrowly by Ford in the 1976 Republican primaries. As we all remember though Reagan won the 1980 Republican primaries and then the 1980 and 1984 presidential elections. Biden also ran for the Democrats nomination in 1988 and 2008 losing to Dukakis and Obama before finally winning in 2020 the nomination and presidential election
In this particular context what would 'leftwing' mean? Does it mean significantly more than having a particular rhetoric about how you talk politics? How does it relate policy and practicewise to: private enterprise, debt to GDP ratios, deficit, benefits, growth, NATO, overall tax levels, interest rates, migration, student loans, and so on? Unless it means different from Starmer, Tories, LDs, etc in ways that can be articulated, how are we to evaluate?
Burnham’s camp has said he will restore the 50% additional rate of income tax, introduce a land tax, a social care levy etc. It is not just he will renationalise utilities
Policies for which there is no mandate.
Mandates in manifestos don't matter in practice, except that the HOC can't oppose legislation that is in the manifesto.
However the House of Lords cannot block or amend taxation legislation. So a mandate is irrelevant for these measures.
Which gives Kemi an opportunity, as Reform falters after these by election defeats Labour are about to elect a leader committed to tax rises and nationalisations and taking Labour left which it had no mandate for when it won the 2024 general election with Starmer
If Burnham promotes policies that are generally popular then Kemi saying "He doesn't have a mandate" will fall on deaf ears, except for the Tory faithful.
Burnham restoring the 50% additional rate of income tax certainly won’t be popular with the City. A land tax won’t be popular with landowners and developers. His proposal to increase business rates on out of town warehouses won’t be popular with Amazon. While if a rumoured Burnham social care levy hits average home owners that would destroy Burnham’s popularity as badly as the dementia tax did for May’s
The City doesn't vote Labour. Landowners and Developers don't vote Labour (and it seems fair for them them to pay council tax on development land at the rate the finished properties will pay). Out of town warehouse owners and renters don't vote Labour.
Quite apart from addressing inefficiencies which seem built into the system, we just don't seem to be raising enough tax to fund the state we want. Rearmament? We can't even fix potholes.
A land value tax replacing both council tax and stamp duty would seem reasonable to me, levied on all land regardless of owner.
One problem us, of course, is that Burnham will have a maximum of 3 years to do unpopular stuff and wait for the memory to fade, or put anything complex in place, rather the normal 4-5
The City determines business confidence in the country though as New Labour and Thatcher and Cameron and Sunak and even Starmer and Reeves to an extent understood. Amazon is one of the biggest employers in the country and can move their warehouses abroad if the tax they pay in the UK gets too high.
I don't think Amazon can easily move abroad since Brexit, they would have to pay duty on all imports
The fact there has been virtually no change in Makerfield between 2024 and now suggests that it isn’t Labour that’s the problem, it’s Keir Starmer.
The underlying problem is the country wants changes that are 1) too expensive for our budget and/or 2) implausible. So any candidate representing the status quo is going to lose to a change candidate for the next decade at least. Policies, values etc are not that important, if we had a Conservative or Reform govt they would be extremely unpopular too.
Burnham has gone too early - he should have taken over in 2027 and portrayed himself as a change candidate in 2028. It will be very difficult to portray himself as a change candidate when he has been there for a couple of years.
I think Starmer would have worked as a change candidate were it not for winter fuel. Everything that came after was downhill but that was the initial destructive act. I supported the policy but it was utterly toxic against the new Labour coalition as to be fair many Labour MPs said at the time.
Mandelson would have been easily survivable by somebody with more popularity.
From a party POV, he should have made benefit reform a confidence issue and then quit then if it hadn’t passed. Letting that go just gave the PLP the magic money tree. Burnham will have to grapple with that too but he will start with goodwill.
Surely the point of the Labour Party is to attempt to solve national problems with policies that match the culture of the Labour Party?
The WFA cut seemed like an attempt of cod-Thatcherism. No Labour MP went into politics to cheer cutting benefits.
You want to reduce the welfare bill, but are a Labour PM? What do Labour MPs like? Benefits targeted to the poorest, perhaps?
So announce all the old age extras are going in a blender. The result will be means tests/taxed, so as to target the poorest pensioners.
Then you sell that to the MPs as a reform that makes the poor better off, while being fiscally prudent.
No labour MP went into parliament wanting to make a difficult decision. They want to open fetes, garden centres, shops, and do lots of feel good social work while not upsetting anyone.
Taz, and make plenty of cash, expenses, second houses. A lucrative business for useless donkeys.
I saw recently that Glenys Kinnock's estate was valued at about £1.5million. Now she was an MEP for 15 years rather than an MP. But given that she was a teacher before entering politics, it is hard to see how she could have amassed such a fortune.
Politics is clearly about money for the politicians.
An estate of £1.5 million, including property, is a healthy amount, but it’s not exceptional. Let me quote a website…
Figures released by HM Revenue & Customs have revealed that the number of deceased estates valued at more than £1 million has risen by over one-third in five years.
In 2013-14, there were 8,340 estates worth over a £1million, whilst in 2018-19 the number stood at 11,210.
Inflation since then has been high. £1 million in 2013-4 is basically £1.5 million now. G Kinnock was working as an MEP. She presumably inherited from her husband, who was at the top of UK politics. If they bought property in London in the 1970s, they would’ve benefited from the property boom. This seems a weird example to claim politicians are just in it for the money,
Her husband, last time I checked, is still alive so no inheritance from that source.
Ahhhhhhhhhh! My apologies. I could’ve sworn he passed away.
Nope - he's still aaaaaalllllllrrrrrriiiiggghhhhtttt!
My advice to Starmer's wife is to gently tell him it's over and to resign on Monday but offer to stay in office until his successor is appointed
Anything else is frankly cruel and whilst not quite the same, can anyone imagine what would have happened if Jill Biden had taken Joe's hand and quietly said time to pass on the batton Joe
To expose Labour to a very public and probably quite demeaning battle to hold on Starmer would be vilified
I rather disagree. Starmer has a very strong case. If the rabble seek Burnham like change then they should resign as MPs and seek re-election on an Andy-isn't-he-lovely mandate.
Starmer is toxic to the electorate and that was evidenced in spades in Makerfield
His race is over
I shall mark your card as a rabble-rouser
I'm sure you're mostly of Tory blood, as am I. So we're perhaps not the best to comment. Nonetheless Starmer has delivered broadly stable government and Reeves has delivered a broadly stable financial background. I think that in both cases this represents hat-tip like achievement.
The background they had to deal with was shameful. Several Tory PMs really let themselves down.
And so Kemi.
She's doing well, but I have no idea if she really can take the bull by the horns and pre-announce the heavy revision to the state that is long overdue. I hope she can.
Kemi will fancy herself as Maggie Thatcher to Burnham’s Harold Wilson and Starmer’s Jim Callaghan and Sunak’s Ted Heath
That's not bad
It means nothing of course but I have been quite surprised two friends who historically would be solid Labour expressing some enthusiasm for Kemi. (As I only have two friends this is powerful evidence!)
Interesting, Farage and Lowe competing to be Enoch Powell of course
I'm not actually friends with Lowe or Farage. I have no time at all for the former and have a degree of respect but would never advocate the latter,.
The fact there has been virtually no change in Makerfield between 2024 and now suggests that it isn’t Labour that’s the problem, it’s Keir Starmer.
The underlying problem is the country wants changes that are 1) too expensive for our budget and/or 2) implausible. So any candidate representing the status quo is going to lose to a change candidate for the next decade at least. Policies, values etc are not that important, if we had a Conservative or Reform govt they would be extremely unpopular too.
Burnham has gone too early - he should have taken over in 2027 and portrayed himself as a change candidate in 2028. It will be very difficult to portray himself as a change candidate when he has been there for a couple of years.
I think Starmer would have worked as a change candidate were it not for winter fuel. Everything that came after was downhill but that was the initial destructive act. I supported the policy but it was utterly toxic against the new Labour coalition as to be fair many Labour MPs said at the time.
Mandelson would have been easily survivable by somebody with more popularity.
From a party POV, he should have made benefit reform a confidence issue and then quit then if it hadn’t passed. Letting that go just gave the PLP the magic money tree. Burnham will have to grapple with that too but he will start with goodwill.
Surely the point of the Labour Party is to attempt to solve national problems with policies that match the culture of the Labour Party?
The WFA cut seemed like an attempt of cod-Thatcherism. No Labour MP went into politics to cheer cutting benefits.
You want to reduce the welfare bill, but are a Labour PM? What do Labour MPs like? Benefits targeted to the poorest, perhaps?
So announce all the old age extras are going in a blender. The result will be means tests/taxed, so as to target the poorest pensioners.
Then you sell that to the MPs as a reform that makes the poor better off, while being fiscally prudent.
No labour MP went into parliament wanting to make a difficult decision. They want to open fetes, garden centres, shops, and do lots of feel good social work while not upsetting anyone.
Taz, and make plenty of cash, expenses, second houses. A lucrative business for useless donkeys.
I saw recently that Glenys Kinnock's estate was valued at about £1.5million. Now she was an MEP for 15 years rather than an MP. But given that she was a teacher before entering politics, it is hard to see how she could have amassed such a fortune.
Politics is clearly about money for the politicians.
Have you seen the price of houses these days?
In the Kinnocks Wales?
We have several homes by us in the 1 million region with one seafront home within 400 yards being fully restored and going on the market for 3 million
The Kinnocks represented South Wales as MPs and MEPs and not even Cardiff
But they lived in London. The family home was in Ealing when Neil became LotO. House prices in Ealing from 1983 to today are up approximately 1700%! You want to make money, invent a Time Machine and buy in London in the ‘70s or early ‘80s.
From what I can discern a modest-sized terraced house in Ealing would cost around one and a half million.
My advice to Starmer's wife is to gently tell him it's over and to resign on Monday but offer to stay in office until his successor is appointed
Anything else is frankly cruel and whilst not quite the same, can anyone imagine what would have happened if Jill Biden had taken Joe's hand and quietly said time to pass on the batton Joe
To expose Labour to a very public and probably quite demeaning battle to hold on Starmer would be vilified
I rather disagree. Starmer has a very strong case. If the rabble seek Burnham like change then they should resign as MPs and seek re-election on an Andy-isn't-he-lovely mandate.
Starmer is toxic to the electorate and that was evidenced in spades in Makerfield
His race is over
I shall mark your card as a rabble-rouser
I'm sure you're mostly of Tory blood, as am I. So we're perhaps not the best to comment. Nonetheless Starmer has delivered broadly stable government and Reeves has delivered a broadly stable financial background. I think that in both cases this represents hat-tip like achievement.
The background they had to deal with was shameful. Several Tory PMs really let themselves down.
And so Kemi.
She's doing well, but I have no idea if she really can take the bull by the horns and pre-announce the heavy revision to the state that is long overdue. I hope she can.
Kemi will fancy herself as Maggie Thatcher to Burnham’s Harold Wilson and Starmer’s Jim Callaghan and Sunak’s Ted Heath
That's not bad
It means nothing of course but I have been quite surprised two friends who historically would be solid Labour expressing some enthusiasm for Kemi. (As I only have two friends this is powerful evidence!)
Interesting, Farage and Lowe competing to be Enoch Powell of course
Anyway... you didn't answer my question (albeit hidden in a longer reply to someone else so you probably missed it) why Reform got trashed in Rayleigh. Which piqued my interest as I used to live there. Or do you not have any local knowledge of the far side of the county?
My advice to Starmer's wife is to gently tell him it's over and to resign on Monday but offer to stay in office until his successor is appointed
Anything else is frankly cruel and whilst not quite the same, can anyone imagine what would have happened if Jill Biden had taken Joe's hand and quietly said time to pass on the batton Joe
To expose Labour to a very public and probably quite demeaning battle to hold on Starmer would be vilified
I rather disagree. Starmer has a very strong case. If the rabble seek Burnham like change then they should resign as MPs and seek re-election on an Andy-isn't-he-lovely mandate.
Starmer is toxic to the electorate and that was evidenced in spades in Makerfield
His race is over
I shall mark your card as a rabble-rouser
I'm sure you're mostly of Tory blood, as am I. So we're perhaps not the best to comment. Nonetheless Starmer has delivered broadly stable government and Reeves has delivered a broadly stable financial background. I think that in both cases this represents hat-tip like achievement.
The background they had to deal with was shameful. Several Tory PMs really let themselves down.
And so Kemi.
She's doing well, but I have no idea if she really can take the bull by the horns and pre-announce the heavy revision to the state that is long overdue. I hope she can.
Kemi will fancy herself as Maggie Thatcher to Burnham’s Harold Wilson and Starmer’s Jim Callaghan and Sunak’s Ted Heath
That's not bad
It means nothing of course but I have been quite surprised two friends who historically would be solid Labour expressing some enthusiasm for Kemi. (As I only have two friends this is powerful evidence!)
Kemi is the ANTI THATCHER
The Lady was NOT FOR TURNING
FFS Kemi turns 4 or 5 times a week
If you can translate this into English then I think it may be helpful.
The fact there has been virtually no change in Makerfield between 2024 and now suggests that it isn’t Labour that’s the problem, it’s Keir Starmer.
The underlying problem is the country wants changes that are 1) too expensive for our budget and/or 2) implausible. So any candidate representing the status quo is going to lose to a change candidate for the next decade at least. Policies, values etc are not that important, if we had a Conservative or Reform govt they would be extremely unpopular too.
Burnham has gone too early - he should have taken over in 2027 and portrayed himself as a change candidate in 2028. It will be very difficult to portray himself as a change candidate when he has been there for a couple of years.
I think Starmer would have worked as a change candidate were it not for winter fuel. Everything that came after was downhill but that was the initial destructive act. I supported the policy but it was utterly toxic against the new Labour coalition as to be fair many Labour MPs said at the time.
Mandelson would have been easily survivable by somebody with more popularity.
From a party POV, he should have made benefit reform a confidence issue and then quit then if it hadn’t passed. Letting that go just gave the PLP the magic money tree. Burnham will have to grapple with that too but he will start with goodwill.
Surely the point of the Labour Party is to attempt to solve national problems with policies that match the culture of the Labour Party?
The WFA cut seemed like an attempt of cod-Thatcherism. No Labour MP went into politics to cheer cutting benefits.
You want to reduce the welfare bill, but are a Labour PM? What do Labour MPs like? Benefits targeted to the poorest, perhaps?
So announce all the old age extras are going in a blender. The result will be means tests/taxed, so as to target the poorest pensioners.
Then you sell that to the MPs as a reform that makes the poor better off, while being fiscally prudent.
No labour MP went into parliament wanting to make a difficult decision. They want to open fetes, garden centres, shops, and do lots of feel good social work while not upsetting anyone.
Taz, and make plenty of cash, expenses, second houses. A lucrative business for useless donkeys.
I saw recently that Glenys Kinnock's estate was valued at about £1.5million. Now she was an MEP for 15 years rather than an MP. But given that she was a teacher before entering politics, it is hard to see how she could have amassed such a fortune.
Politics is clearly about money for the politicians.
Have you seen the price of houses these days?
In the Kinnocks Wales?
We have several homes by us in the 1 million region with one seafront home within 400 yards being fully restored and going on the market for 3 million
Even in our corner of West Yorkshire there are £1m+ properties.
I just think @HYUFD demeaned Wales by his comment as there are million pound plus homes across the country as across England and Scotland
The majority of million pound homes are in London and the Home Counties and those who own them elsewhere are largely corporate executives and lawyers etc not Labour politicians and ex teachers
There are million pound homes in DONCASTER. I passed one for sale only yesterday.
Admittedly rather more house than you'd get in Surrey.
£1m is not a fortune these days. Public sector pensions for anyone in a vaguely professional role must be getting close to being worth £1m.
You can’t buy a million pound house with all your public sector pension
Pensioners bought their houses 40 years earlier.
The combination of house price growth, pensions and investments can easily make people millionaires.
Ronald Read (Janitor & Gas Station Attendant): Read, a rural Vermont resident who never made a high wage, secretly amassed an $8 million fortune. He achieved this over decades by living below his means, consistently purchasing blue-chip dividend stocks (like Procter & Gamble and JPMorgan Chase), and holding them for the long term. Upon his death, he left millions to his local library and hospital.
Grace Groner (Secretary): Orphaned at a young age, she spent her career working as a secretary at Abbott Laboratories. In 1935, she bought three shares of Abbott stock for $60. She never sold them, reinvested the dividends, and held the shares for over 70 years. When she passed away, she left a $7 million fortune to charity and educational trusts.
Quietly giving people, very positive.
As i don't have any plans for kids I suppose i should do the same. First step, obtain a fortune.
My advice to Starmer's wife is to gently tell him it's over and to resign on Monday but offer to stay in office until his successor is appointed
Anything else is frankly cruel and whilst not quite the same, can anyone imagine what would have happened if Jill Biden had taken Joe's hand and quietly said time to pass on the batton Joe
To expose Labour to a very public and probably quite demeaning battle to hold on Starmer would be vilified
I rather disagree. Starmer has a very strong case. If the rabble seek Burnham like change then they should resign as MPs and seek re-election on an Andy-isn't-he-lovely mandate.
Starmer is toxic to the electorate and that was evidenced in spades in Makerfield
His race is over
I shall mark your card as a rabble-rouser
I'm sure you're mostly of Tory blood, as am I. So we're perhaps not the best to comment. Nonetheless Starmer has delivered broadly stable government and Reeves has delivered a broadly stable financial background. I think that in both cases this represents hat-tip like achievement.
The background they had to deal with was shameful. Several Tory PMs really let themselves down.
And so Kemi.
She's doing well, but I have no idea if she really can take the bull by the horns and pre-announce the heavy revision to the state that is long overdue. I hope she can.
I am no rabble rouser
The polls show a very different story to yours and Mandelson was the fatal appointment that,when added to everything else, has ended Starmer’s time
The fact there has been virtually no change in Makerfield between 2024 and now suggests that it isn’t Labour that’s the problem, it’s Keir Starmer.
The underlying problem is the country wants changes that are 1) too expensive for our budget and/or 2) implausible. So any candidate representing the status quo is going to lose to a change candidate for the next decade at least. Policies, values etc are not that important, if we had a Conservative or Reform govt they would be extremely unpopular too.
Burnham has gone too early - he should have taken over in 2027 and portrayed himself as a change candidate in 2028. It will be very difficult to portray himself as a change candidate when he has been there for a couple of years.
I think Starmer would have worked as a change candidate were it not for winter fuel. Everything that came after was downhill but that was the initial destructive act. I supported the policy but it was utterly toxic against the new Labour coalition as to be fair many Labour MPs said at the time.
Mandelson would have been easily survivable by somebody with more popularity.
From a party POV, he should have made benefit reform a confidence issue and then quit then if it hadn’t passed. Letting that go just gave the PLP the magic money tree. Burnham will have to grapple with that too but he will start with goodwill.
Surely the point of the Labour Party is to attempt to solve national problems with policies that match the culture of the Labour Party?
The WFA cut seemed like an attempt of cod-Thatcherism. No Labour MP went into politics to cheer cutting benefits.
You want to reduce the welfare bill, but are a Labour PM? What do Labour MPs like? Benefits targeted to the poorest, perhaps?
So announce all the old age extras are going in a blender. The result will be means tests/taxed, so as to target the poorest pensioners.
Then you sell that to the MPs as a reform that makes the poor better off, while being fiscally prudent.
No labour MP went into parliament wanting to make a difficult decision. They want to open fetes, garden centres, shops, and do lots of feel good social work while not upsetting anyone.
Taz, and make plenty of cash, expenses, second houses. A lucrative business for useless donkeys.
I saw recently that Glenys Kinnock's estate was valued at about £1.5million. Now she was an MEP for 15 years rather than an MP. But given that she was a teacher before entering politics, it is hard to see how she could have amassed such a fortune.
Politics is clearly about money for the politicians.
Have you seen the price of houses these days?
In the Kinnocks Wales?
We have several homes by us in the 1 million region with one seafront home within 400 yards being fully restored and going on the market for 3 million
The Kinnocks represented South Wales as MPs and MEPs and not even Cardiff
But they lived in London. The family home was in Ealing when Neil became LotO. House prices in Ealing from 1983 to today are up approximately 1700%! You want to make money, invent a Time Machine and buy in London in the ‘70s or early ‘80s.
Buying the house would be too hard work.
Better to head to the bookies and use your knowledge of future sporting and political events.
The fact there has been virtually no change in Makerfield between 2024 and now suggests that it isn’t Labour that’s the problem, it’s Keir Starmer.
The underlying problem is the country wants changes that are 1) too expensive for our budget and/or 2) implausible. So any candidate representing the status quo is going to lose to a change candidate for the next decade at least. Policies, values etc are not that important, if we had a Conservative or Reform govt they would be extremely unpopular too.
Burnham has gone too early - he should have taken over in 2027 and portrayed himself as a change candidate in 2028. It will be very difficult to portray himself as a change candidate when he has been there for a couple of years.
I think Starmer would have worked as a change candidate were it not for winter fuel. Everything that came after was downhill but that was the initial destructive act. I supported the policy but it was utterly toxic against the new Labour coalition as to be fair many Labour MPs said at the time.
Mandelson would have been easily survivable by somebody with more popularity.
From a party POV, he should have made benefit reform a confidence issue and then quit then if it hadn’t passed. Letting that go just gave the PLP the magic money tree. Burnham will have to grapple with that too but he will start with goodwill.
Surely the point of the Labour Party is to attempt to solve national problems with policies that match the culture of the Labour Party?
The WFA cut seemed like an attempt of cod-Thatcherism. No Labour MP went into politics to cheer cutting benefits.
You want to reduce the welfare bill, but are a Labour PM? What do Labour MPs like? Benefits targeted to the poorest, perhaps?
So announce all the old age extras are going in a blender. The result will be means tests/taxed, so as to target the poorest pensioners.
Then you sell that to the MPs as a reform that makes the poor better off, while being fiscally prudent.
No labour MP went into parliament wanting to make a difficult decision. They want to open fetes, garden centres, shops, and do lots of feel good social work while not upsetting anyone.
Taz, and make plenty of cash, expenses, second houses. A lucrative business for useless donkeys.
I have always wondered how James Callaghan was able to buy a 130 acre farm in East Sussex.
Especially when you see Harold Wilson very modest little Cottage in the Isles of Scilly.
Callaghan was born and educated about half a mile from where I live in to a fairly modest Brixham family.
A little known fact he attended Furzham Junior School, still there as a school today.
And this organisation, as noted before, is anything but singular.
When was the last time we had a vaguely competent Cabinet?
The Coalition government in 2010.
Those LibDem in that 2010 Cabinet:
Michael Moore - ex-MP David Laws - ex-MP Chris Huhne - ex-MP Danny Alexander - ex MP Vince Cable - ex MP Nick Clegg - ex-MP Ed Davey - LibDem leader
Within a decade, virtually all of that Cabinet expertise has either resigned or been booted out by the voters. That was their reward for vague competence...
NZ must be pretty confident about the weather forecast. They had enough runs to win this match ages ago. A painful reminder why one of the greatest batsmen of all time had to give up the captaincy.
It will help them in the Third Test to force England's bowlers to bowl more fruitless overs now. Archer has bowled 36 overs so far in this Test, and that won't help him for the next match.
Burnham is now clearly the leftwing candidate in any Labour leadership election against Starmer and New Labour Streeting. Whereas he wasn’t in 2015 with Corbyn taking that role nor in 2010 when Ed Miliband and Abbott were the leftist candidates and he was still relatively New Labour.
Burnham might take some encouragement from Ronald Reagan who was beaten by Nixon in the 1968 Republican primaries and narrowly by Ford in the 1976 Republican primaries. As we all remember though Reagan won the 1980 Republican primaries and then the 1980 and 1984 presidential elections. Biden also ran for the Democrats nomination in 1988 and 2008 losing to Dukakis and Obama before finally winning in 2020 the nomination and presidential election
In this particular context what would 'leftwing' mean? Does it mean significantly more than having a particular rhetoric about how you talk politics? How does it relate policy and practicewise to: private enterprise, debt to GDP ratios, deficit, benefits, growth, NATO, overall tax levels, interest rates, migration, student loans, and so on? Unless it means different from Starmer, Tories, LDs, etc in ways that can be articulated, how are we to evaluate?
Burnham’s camp has said he will restore the 50% additional rate of income tax, introduce a land tax, a social care levy etc. It is not just he will renationalise utilities
Policies for which there is no mandate.
Mandates in manifestos don't matter in practice, except that the HOC can't oppose legislation that is in the manifesto.
However the House of Lords cannot block or amend taxation legislation. So a mandate is irrelevant for these measures.
Which gives Kemi an opportunity, as Reform falters after these by election defeats Labour are about to elect a leader committed to tax rises and nationalisations and taking Labour left which it had no mandate for when it won the 2024 general election with Starmer
If Burnham promotes policies that are generally popular then Kemi saying "He doesn't have a mandate" will fall on deaf ears, except for the Tory faithful.
Burnham restoring the 50% additional rate of income tax certainly won’t be popular with the City. A land tax won’t be popular with landowners and developers. His proposal to increase business rates on out of town warehouses won’t be popular with Amazon. While if a rumoured Burnham social care levy hits average home owners that would destroy Burnham’s popularity as badly as the dementia tax did for May’s
The City doesn't vote Labour. Landowners and Developers don't vote Labour (and it seems fair for them them to pay council tax on development land at the rate the finished properties will pay). Out of town warehouse owners and renters don't vote Labour.
Quite apart from addressing inefficiencies which seem built into the system, we just don't seem to be raising enough tax to fund the state we want. Rearmament? We can't even fix potholes.
A land value tax replacing both council tax and stamp duty would seem reasonable to me, levied on all land regardless of owner.
One problem us, of course, is that Burnham will have a maximum of 3 years to do unpopular stuff and wait for the memory to fade, or put anything complex in place, rather the normal 4-5
The City determines business confidence in the country though as New Labour and Thatcher and Cameron and Sunak and even Starmer and Reeves to an extent understood. Amazon is one of the biggest employers in the country and can move their warehouses abroad if the tax they pay in the UK gets too high.
I don't think Amazon can easily move abroad since Brexit, they would have to pay duty on all imports
The words
Amazon
Tax
High
Are vomit inducing, since Amazon pay minimal tax anywhere.
Tax the fuckers what any UK Company in the same Sector would pay.
Then use the proceeds to Cut Employers NI in certain sectors.
Then you need to fundamentally look at how foreign multinationals in the U.K. operate.
My last company declared all its profits via Switzerland. All POs I sent out for inventory items had the Swiss head office as the legal entity.
Non inventory was the local sister.
We had to run two separate supply bases to service it.
My advice to Starmer's wife is to gently tell him it's over and to resign on Monday but offer to stay in office until his successor is appointed
Anything else is frankly cruel and whilst not quite the same, can anyone imagine what would have happened if Jill Biden had taken Joe's hand and quietly said time to pass on the batton Joe
To expose Labour to a very public and probably quite demeaning battle to hold on Starmer would be vilified
I rather disagree. Starmer has a very strong case. If the rabble seek Burnham like change then they should resign as MPs and seek re-election on an Andy-isn't-he-lovely mandate.
Starmer is toxic to the electorate and that was evidenced in spades in Makerfield
His race is over
I shall mark your card as a rabble-rouser
I'm sure you're mostly of Tory blood, as am I. So we're perhaps not the best to comment. Nonetheless Starmer has delivered broadly stable government and Reeves has delivered a broadly stable financial background. I think that in both cases this represents hat-tip like achievement.
The background they had to deal with was shameful. Several Tory PMs really let themselves down.
And so Kemi.
She's doing well, but I have no idea if she really can take the bull by the horns and pre-announce the heavy revision to the state that is long overdue. I hope she can.
Kemi will fancy herself as Maggie Thatcher to Burnham’s Harold Wilson and Starmer’s Jim Callaghan and Sunak’s Ted Heath
That's not bad
It means nothing of course but I have been quite surprised two friends who historically would be solid Labour expressing some enthusiasm for Kemi. (As I only have two friends this is powerful evidence!)
My advice to Starmer's wife is to gently tell him it's over and to resign on Monday but offer to stay in office until his successor is appointed
Anything else is frankly cruel and whilst not quite the same, can anyone imagine what would have happened if Jill Biden had taken Joe's hand and quietly said time to pass on the batton Joe
To expose Labour to a very public and probably quite demeaning battle to hold on Starmer would be vilified
I rather disagree. Starmer has a very strong case. If the rabble seek Burnham like change then they should resign as MPs and seek re-election on an Andy-isn't-he-lovely mandate.
Starmer is toxic to the electorate and that was evidenced in spades in Makerfield
His race is over
I shall mark your card as a rabble-rouser
I'm sure you're mostly of Tory blood, as am I. So we're perhaps not the best to comment. Nonetheless Starmer has delivered broadly stable government and Reeves has delivered a broadly stable financial background. I think that in both cases this represents hat-tip like achievement.
The background they had to deal with was shameful. Several Tory PMs really let themselves down.
And so Kemi.
She's doing well, but I have no idea if she really can take the bull by the horns and pre-announce the heavy revision to the state that is long overdue. I hope she can.
Kemi will fancy herself as Maggie Thatcher to Burnham’s Harold Wilson and Starmer’s Jim Callaghan and Sunak’s Ted Heath
That's not bad
It means nothing of course but I have been quite surprised two friends who historically would be solid Labour expressing some enthusiasm for Kemi. (As I only have two friends this is powerful evidence!)
Interesting, Farage and Lowe competing to be Enoch Powell of course
Anyway... you didn't answer my question (albeit hidden in a longer reply to someone else so you probably missed it) why Reform got trashed in Rayleigh. Which piqued my interest as I used to live there. Or do you not have any local knowledge of the far side of the county?
As Reform are now in power in Essex county council and Rochford district council so the Tories can now be a local as well as national protest vote
The fact there has been virtually no change in Makerfield between 2024 and now suggests that it isn’t Labour that’s the problem, it’s Keir Starmer.
The underlying problem is the country wants changes that are 1) too expensive for our budget and/or 2) implausible. So any candidate representing the status quo is going to lose to a change candidate for the next decade at least. Policies, values etc are not that important, if we had a Conservative or Reform govt they would be extremely unpopular too.
Burnham has gone too early - he should have taken over in 2027 and portrayed himself as a change candidate in 2028. It will be very difficult to portray himself as a change candidate when he has been there for a couple of years.
I think Starmer would have worked as a change candidate were it not for winter fuel. Everything that came after was downhill but that was the initial destructive act. I supported the policy but it was utterly toxic against the new Labour coalition as to be fair many Labour MPs said at the time.
Mandelson would have been easily survivable by somebody with more popularity.
From a party POV, he should have made benefit reform a confidence issue and then quit then if it hadn’t passed. Letting that go just gave the PLP the magic money tree. Burnham will have to grapple with that too but he will start with goodwill.
Surely the point of the Labour Party is to attempt to solve national problems with policies that match the culture of the Labour Party?
The WFA cut seemed like an attempt of cod-Thatcherism. No Labour MP went into politics to cheer cutting benefits.
You want to reduce the welfare bill, but are a Labour PM? What do Labour MPs like? Benefits targeted to the poorest, perhaps?
So announce all the old age extras are going in a blender. The result will be means tests/taxed, so as to target the poorest pensioners.
Then you sell that to the MPs as a reform that makes the poor better off, while being fiscally prudent.
No labour MP went into parliament wanting to make a difficult decision. They want to open fetes, garden centres, shops, and do lots of feel good social work while not upsetting anyone.
Taz, and make plenty of cash, expenses, second houses. A lucrative business for useless donkeys.
I have always wondered how James Callaghan was able to buy a 130 acre farm in East Sussex.
Especially when you see Harold Wilson very modest little Cottage in the Isles of Scilly.
Callaghan was born and educated about half a mile from where I live in to a fairly modest Brixham family.
A little known fact he attended Furzham Junior School, still there as a school today.
I don't know his connection to Devon, if any - but Michael Foot was a big Plymouth Argyle fan...
The fact there has been virtually no change in Makerfield between 2024 and now suggests that it isn’t Labour that’s the problem, it’s Keir Starmer.
The underlying problem is the country wants changes that are 1) too expensive for our budget and/or 2) implausible. So any candidate representing the status quo is going to lose to a change candidate for the next decade at least. Policies, values etc are not that important, if we had a Conservative or Reform govt they would be extremely unpopular too.
Burnham has gone too early - he should have taken over in 2027 and portrayed himself as a change candidate in 2028. It will be very difficult to portray himself as a change candidate when he has been there for a couple of years.
I think Starmer would have worked as a change candidate were it not for winter fuel. Everything that came after was downhill but that was the initial destructive act. I supported the policy but it was utterly toxic against the new Labour coalition as to be fair many Labour MPs said at the time.
Mandelson would have been easily survivable by somebody with more popularity.
From a party POV, he should have made benefit reform a confidence issue and then quit then if it hadn’t passed. Letting that go just gave the PLP the magic money tree. Burnham will have to grapple with that too but he will start with goodwill.
Surely the point of the Labour Party is to attempt to solve national problems with policies that match the culture of the Labour Party?
The WFA cut seemed like an attempt of cod-Thatcherism. No Labour MP went into politics to cheer cutting benefits.
You want to reduce the welfare bill, but are a Labour PM? What do Labour MPs like? Benefits targeted to the poorest, perhaps?
So announce all the old age extras are going in a blender. The result will be means tests/taxed, so as to target the poorest pensioners.
Then you sell that to the MPs as a reform that makes the poor better off, while being fiscally prudent.
No labour MP went into parliament wanting to make a difficult decision. They want to open fetes, garden centres, shops, and do lots of feel good social work while not upsetting anyone.
Taz, and make plenty of cash, expenses, second houses. A lucrative business for useless donkeys.
I have always wondered how James Callaghan was able to buy a 130 acre farm in East Sussex.
Especially when you see Harold Wilson very modest little Cottage in the Isles of Scilly.
Callaghan was born and educated about half a mile from where I live in to a fairly modest Brixham family.
A little known fact he attended Furzham Junior School, still there as a school today.
To correct that he was born in Portsmouth but moved at an early age to Brixham
And this organisation, as noted before, is anything but singular.
When was the last time we had a vaguely competent Cabinet?
The Coalition government in 2010.
Those LibDem in that 2010 Cabinet:
Michael Moore - ex-MP David Laws - ex-MP Chris Huhne - ex-MP Danny Alexander - ex MP Vince Cable - ex MP Nick Clegg - ex-MP Ed Davey - LibDem leader
Within a decade, virtually all of that Cabinet expertise has either resigned or been booted out by the voters. That was their reward for vague competence...
When I look at that list I see vague but not necessarily competence.
The fact there has been virtually no change in Makerfield between 2024 and now suggests that it isn’t Labour that’s the problem, it’s Keir Starmer.
The underlying problem is the country wants changes that are 1) too expensive for our budget and/or 2) implausible. So any candidate representing the status quo is going to lose to a change candidate for the next decade at least. Policies, values etc are not that important, if we had a Conservative or Reform govt they would be extremely unpopular too.
Burnham has gone too early - he should have taken over in 2027 and portrayed himself as a change candidate in 2028. It will be very difficult to portray himself as a change candidate when he has been there for a couple of years.
I think Starmer would have worked as a change candidate were it not for winter fuel. Everything that came after was downhill but that was the initial destructive act. I supported the policy but it was utterly toxic against the new Labour coalition as to be fair many Labour MPs said at the time.
Mandelson would have been easily survivable by somebody with more popularity.
From a party POV, he should have made benefit reform a confidence issue and then quit then if it hadn’t passed. Letting that go just gave the PLP the magic money tree. Burnham will have to grapple with that too but he will start with goodwill.
Surely the point of the Labour Party is to attempt to solve national problems with policies that match the culture of the Labour Party?
The WFA cut seemed like an attempt of cod-Thatcherism. No Labour MP went into politics to cheer cutting benefits.
You want to reduce the welfare bill, but are a Labour PM? What do Labour MPs like? Benefits targeted to the poorest, perhaps?
So announce all the old age extras are going in a blender. The result will be means tests/taxed, so as to target the poorest pensioners.
Then you sell that to the MPs as a reform that makes the poor better off, while being fiscally prudent.
No labour MP went into parliament wanting to make a difficult decision. They want to open fetes, garden centres, shops, and do lots of feel good social work while not upsetting anyone.
Taz, and make plenty of cash, expenses, second houses. A lucrative business for useless donkeys.
I saw recently that Glenys Kinnock's estate was valued at about £1.5million. Now she was an MEP for 15 years rather than an MP. But given that she was a teacher before entering politics, it is hard to see how she could have amassed such a fortune.
Politics is clearly about money for the politicians.
Have you seen the price of houses these days?
In the Kinnocks Wales?
We have several homes by us in the 1 million region with one seafront home within 400 yards being fully restored and going on the market for 3 million
The Kinnocks represented South Wales as MPs and MEPs and not even Cardiff
But they lived in London. The family home was in Ealing when Neil became LotO. House prices in Ealing from 1983 to today are up approximately 1700%! You want to make money, invent a Time Machine and buy in London in the ‘70s or early ‘80s.
Buying the house would be too hard work.
Better to head to the bookies and use your knowledge of future sporting and political events.
And then go to a stockbroker.
That would be more suspicious. The bookies would all ban you.
But, yeah, you could just buy some shares in Microsoft and the Home Depot.
Why anyone would want a professional politician with all the grubbiness and politics that causes (look at burnham and his bothering of an electorate to gain personal power) over a constitutional monarch is beyond me
People in Ireland are genuinely delighted with their new President and her ball-playing skills, and when you have a President with extremely limited constitutional power, as in Ireland, it isn't really that contentious.
I find it odd to elect a head of state if they have very limited powers - why bother then? - but clearly it does work.
I'm happy to stick with constitutional monarchy as i think it too works.
Isn't the common factor very limited powers? The advantage with an elected one is it's much cheaper and it doesn't sit at the heart of a hierarchy designed to reinforce a backward-looking, sclerotic class system
Yes, that's my view.
A strong executive Presidency is probably an inferior form of government to a constitutional monarchy, but I'd prefer an elected President to act as a national figurehead.
Trump is such a unifying figure in the US as an elected President, as was Biden as a national figurehead
The US has a strong executive President. As I said, I think that's not a good form of government.
The fact there has been virtually no change in Makerfield between 2024 and now suggests that it isn’t Labour that’s the problem, it’s Keir Starmer.
The underlying problem is the country wants changes that are 1) too expensive for our budget and/or 2) implausible. So any candidate representing the status quo is going to lose to a change candidate for the next decade at least. Policies, values etc are not that important, if we had a Conservative or Reform govt they would be extremely unpopular too.
Burnham has gone too early - he should have taken over in 2027 and portrayed himself as a change candidate in 2028. It will be very difficult to portray himself as a change candidate when he has been there for a couple of years.
I think Starmer would have worked as a change candidate were it not for winter fuel. Everything that came after was downhill but that was the initial destructive act. I supported the policy but it was utterly toxic against the new Labour coalition as to be fair many Labour MPs said at the time.
Mandelson would have been easily survivable by somebody with more popularity.
From a party POV, he should have made benefit reform a confidence issue and then quit then if it hadn’t passed. Letting that go just gave the PLP the magic money tree. Burnham will have to grapple with that too but he will start with goodwill.
Surely the point of the Labour Party is to attempt to solve national problems with policies that match the culture of the Labour Party?
The WFA cut seemed like an attempt of cod-Thatcherism. No Labour MP went into politics to cheer cutting benefits.
You want to reduce the welfare bill, but are a Labour PM? What do Labour MPs like? Benefits targeted to the poorest, perhaps?
So announce all the old age extras are going in a blender. The result will be means tests/taxed, so as to target the poorest pensioners.
Then you sell that to the MPs as a reform that makes the poor better off, while being fiscally prudent.
No labour MP went into parliament wanting to make a difficult decision. They want to open fetes, garden centres, shops, and do lots of feel good social work while not upsetting anyone.
Taz, and make plenty of cash, expenses, second houses. A lucrative business for useless donkeys.
I have always wondered how James Callaghan was able to buy a 130 acre farm in East Sussex.
Especially when you see Harold Wilson very modest little Cottage in the Isles of Scilly.
Callaghan was born and educated about half a mile from where I live in to a fairly modest Brixham family.
A little known fact he attended Furzham Junior School, still there as a school today.
There are a limited number of properties for sale on the Isles of Scilly (mostly being owned and leased by the Duchy of Cornwall The ones you can buy are not cheap....
Nigel Farage should resist the urge to shift further to the right and consider sacking Zia Yusuf, Reform’s home affairs spokesman, figures within the party have said after its defeat to Labour in the Makerfield byelection.
Requires 140,000 Reform members to write and send a physical letter expressing no confidence. File under not going to happen and buy Royal Mail shares if you think there is the slightest chance it might. Actually probably needs more like 150,000 letters to allow for the Royal Mail losing a few of them.
Why anyone would want a professional politician with all the grubbiness and politics that causes (look at burnham and his bothering of an electorate to gain personal power) over a constitutional monarch is beyond me
People in Ireland are genuinely delighted with their new President and her ball-playing skills, and when you have a President with extremely limited constitutional power, as in Ireland, it isn't really that contentious.
I find it odd to elect a head of state if they have very limited powers - why bother then? - but clearly it does work.
I'm happy to stick with constitutional monarchy as i think it too works.
Isn't the common factor very limited powers? The advantage with an elected one is it's much cheaper and it doesn't sit at the heart of a hierarchy designed to reinforce a backward-looking, sclerotic class system
Yes, that's my view.
A strong executive Presidency is probably an inferior form of government to a constitutional monarchy, but I'd prefer an elected President to act as a national figurehead.
Trump is such a unifying figure in the US as an elected President, as was Biden as a national figurehead
The US has a strong executive President. As I said, I think that's not a good form of government.
Obviously different to the Irish Presidency.
The Irish President is an ex politician who makes statements on issues like Israel ceremonial heads of state should not.
No foreign tourists go to Dublin for her inauguration or her family’s weddings or jubilees or soldiers parades either
The fact there has been virtually no change in Makerfield between 2024 and now suggests that it isn’t Labour that’s the problem, it’s Keir Starmer.
The underlying problem is the country wants changes that are 1) too expensive for our budget and/or 2) implausible. So any candidate representing the status quo is going to lose to a change candidate for the next decade at least. Policies, values etc are not that important, if we had a Conservative or Reform govt they would be extremely unpopular too.
Burnham has gone too early - he should have taken over in 2027 and portrayed himself as a change candidate in 2028. It will be very difficult to portray himself as a change candidate when he has been there for a couple of years.
I think Starmer would have worked as a change candidate were it not for winter fuel. Everything that came after was downhill but that was the initial destructive act. I supported the policy but it was utterly toxic against the new Labour coalition as to be fair many Labour MPs said at the time.
Mandelson would have been easily survivable by somebody with more popularity.
From a party POV, he should have made benefit reform a confidence issue and then quit then if it hadn’t passed. Letting that go just gave the PLP the magic money tree. Burnham will have to grapple with that too but he will start with goodwill.
Surely the point of the Labour Party is to attempt to solve national problems with policies that match the culture of the Labour Party?
The WFA cut seemed like an attempt of cod-Thatcherism. No Labour MP went into politics to cheer cutting benefits.
You want to reduce the welfare bill, but are a Labour PM? What do Labour MPs like? Benefits targeted to the poorest, perhaps?
So announce all the old age extras are going in a blender. The result will be means tests/taxed, so as to target the poorest pensioners.
Then you sell that to the MPs as a reform that makes the poor better off, while being fiscally prudent.
No labour MP went into parliament wanting to make a difficult decision. They want to open fetes, garden centres, shops, and do lots of feel good social work while not upsetting anyone.
Taz, and make plenty of cash, expenses, second houses. A lucrative business for useless donkeys.
I have always wondered how James Callaghan was able to buy a 130 acre farm in East Sussex.
Especially when you see Harold Wilson very modest little Cottage in the Isles of Scilly.
Callaghan was born and educated about half a mile from where I live in to a fairly modest Brixham family.
A little known fact he attended Furzham Junior School, still there as a school today.
Land was very very cheap in the post war period when compared with today. I suspect farmland has been even worse than housing for inflation.
She's doing well, but I have no idea if she really can take the bull by the horns and pre-announce the heavy revision to the state that is long overdue. I hope she can.
Kemi's big problem, apart from having the charisma of a burst pile, is that she won't square up to the Fukkers and dare not criticise them as most tories actually prefer Fukker/Restrasserite policies to their own. She keeps picking fights with Labour which is very much the tory comfort zone but not where she needs to go to move her polling from their current eschatonic levels.
It worth remembering that while the tories on here grovel at Kemi's feet as if she were Ayesha of Kor, the reality is that the tories poll 20% on a good day. Abject.
The fact there has been virtually no change in Makerfield between 2024 and now suggests that it isn’t Labour that’s the problem, it’s Keir Starmer.
The underlying problem is the country wants changes that are 1) too expensive for our budget and/or 2) implausible. So any candidate representing the status quo is going to lose to a change candidate for the next decade at least. Policies, values etc are not that important, if we had a Conservative or Reform govt they would be extremely unpopular too.
Burnham has gone too early - he should have taken over in 2027 and portrayed himself as a change candidate in 2028. It will be very difficult to portray himself as a change candidate when he has been there for a couple of years.
I think Starmer would have worked as a change candidate were it not for winter fuel. Everything that came after was downhill but that was the initial destructive act. I supported the policy but it was utterly toxic against the new Labour coalition as to be fair many Labour MPs said at the time.
Mandelson would have been easily survivable by somebody with more popularity.
From a party POV, he should have made benefit reform a confidence issue and then quit then if it hadn’t passed. Letting that go just gave the PLP the magic money tree. Burnham will have to grapple with that too but he will start with goodwill.
Surely the point of the Labour Party is to attempt to solve national problems with policies that match the culture of the Labour Party?
The WFA cut seemed like an attempt of cod-Thatcherism. No Labour MP went into politics to cheer cutting benefits.
You want to reduce the welfare bill, but are a Labour PM? What do Labour MPs like? Benefits targeted to the poorest, perhaps?
So announce all the old age extras are going in a blender. The result will be means tests/taxed, so as to target the poorest pensioners.
Then you sell that to the MPs as a reform that makes the poor better off, while being fiscally prudent.
No labour MP went into parliament wanting to make a difficult decision. They want to open fetes, garden centres, shops, and do lots of feel good social work while not upsetting anyone.
Taz, and make plenty of cash, expenses, second houses. A lucrative business for useless donkeys.
I saw recently that Glenys Kinnock's estate was valued at about £1.5million. Now she was an MEP for 15 years rather than an MP. But given that she was a teacher before entering politics, it is hard to see how she could have amassed such a fortune.
Politics is clearly about money for the politicians.
Have you seen the price of houses these days?
In the Kinnocks Wales?
We have several homes by us in the 1 million region with one seafront home within 400 yards being fully restored and going on the market for 3 million
The Kinnocks represented South Wales as MPs and MEPs and not even Cardiff
But they lived in London. The family home was in Ealing when Neil became LotO. House prices in Ealing from 1983 to today are up approximately 1700%! You want to make money, invent a Time Machine and buy in London in the ‘70s or early ‘80s.
Buying the house would be too hard work.
Better to head to the bookies and use your knowledge of future sporting and political events.
And then go to a stockbroker.
That would be more suspicious. The bookies would all ban you.
But, yeah, you could just buy some shares in Microsoft and the Home Depot.
My time machine would take me back to the early days of the tech bros. Beg, borrow and steal as much as you can to invest in them, early days.
Why anyone would want a professional politician with all the grubbiness and politics that causes (look at burnham and his bothering of an electorate to gain personal power) over a constitutional monarch is beyond me
People in Ireland are genuinely delighted with their new President and her ball-playing skills, and when you have a President with extremely limited constitutional power, as in Ireland, it isn't really that contentious.
I find it odd to elect a head of state if they have very limited powers - why bother then? - but clearly it does work.
I'm happy to stick with constitutional monarchy as i think it too works.
Isn't the common factor very limited powers? The advantage with an elected one is it's much cheaper and it doesn't sit at the heart of a hierarchy designed to reinforce a backward-looking, sclerotic class system
Yes aren’t US Presidents and Presidential elections very cheap, definitely not billions spent there, oh no. Isn’t the US republic also remarkably equal with its billionaire President its lack of universal healthcare, barely any welfare state and a minimum wage far lower than the UK. While those awfully class ridden unequal constitutional monarchies like Sweden, Canada, the UK, Denmark, the Netherlands, New Zealand and Japan are lame dreadful places to live…oh wait
Your deranged royalism has not for the first time addled your powers of comprehension. The original comparison was between British and Irish heads of state.
The Irish head of state is a leftist ex politician nonentity, virtually nobody has heard of outside Ireland and who over a third of Irish voters voted against. In any case in a current UK presidential election we might well elect President Farage
The Irish President can do keepy-uppies and land a basketball through a hoop backwards, so she makes people smile and people are happy that she can speak the language. She's a good advert for an elected figurehead President.
No she is a far left politician who makes political statements attacking Israel and who over a third of Irish voters voted against.
She also is barely recognised abroad and brings in no tourism revenue while still living in a 90 room Dublin mansion and being taxpayer funded
In case it has passed you by, it's pretty much a universal consensus in Ireland that Israel are a worthy target of condemnation, so that's hardly a demerit for the Irish President.
People did vote against her, but they have been able to accept the result and support her afterwards. Lots of warm words spoken when she was inaugurated, lots of people smiling who had campaigned for the other candidate in the election.
Ireland's history attracts a lot of tourists, and I don't think that would be any different if the country had a High King now, or a Governor-General. I would bet there would still be loads of tourists wanting to see the Royal Palaces in Britain even if there wasn't a current monarch. Possibly more.
She's doing well, but I have no idea if she really can take the bull by the horns and pre-announce the heavy revision to the state that is long overdue. I hope she can.
Kemi's big problem, apart from having the charisma of a burst pile, is that she won't square up to the Fukkers and dare not criticise them as most tories actually prefer Fukker/Restrasserite policies to their own. She keeps picking fights with Labour which is very much the tory comfort zone but not where she needs to go to move her polling from their current eschatonic levels.
It worth remembering that while the tories on here grovel at Kemi's feet as if she were Ayesha of Kor, the reality is that the tories poll 20% on a good day. Abject.
She will now let Rupert Lowe eat into Farage’s white nationalist vote.
Kemi is focused on getting centrist swing voters who voted for Blair, Tory from 2010 until 2019 then for Starmer in 2024 and won’t like Burnham’s tax rises
My advice to Starmer's wife is to gently tell him it's over and to resign on Monday but offer to stay in office until his successor is appointed
Anything else is frankly cruel and whilst not quite the same, can anyone imagine what would have happened if Jill Biden had taken Joe's hand and quietly said time to pass on the batton Joe
To expose Labour to a very public and probably quite demeaning battle to hold on Starmer would be vilified
I rather disagree. Starmer has a very strong case. If the rabble seek Burnham like change then they should resign as MPs and seek re-election on an Andy-isn't-he-lovely mandate.
Starmer is toxic to the electorate and that was evidenced in spades in Makerfield
His race is over
I shall mark your card as a rabble-rouser
I'm sure you're mostly of Tory blood, as am I. So we're perhaps not the best to comment. Nonetheless Starmer has delivered broadly stable government and Reeves has delivered a broadly stable financial background. I think that in both cases this represents hat-tip like achievement.
The background they had to deal with was shameful. Several Tory PMs really let themselves down.
And so Kemi.
She's doing well, but I have no idea if she really can take the bull by the horns and pre-announce the heavy revision to the state that is long overdue. I hope she can.
Kemi will fancy herself as Maggie Thatcher to Burnham’s Harold Wilson and Starmer’s Jim Callaghan and Sunak’s Ted Heath
That's not bad
It means nothing of course but I have been quite surprised two friends who historically would be solid Labour expressing some enthusiasm for Kemi. (As I only have two friends this is powerful evidence!)
Interesting, Farage and Lowe competing to be Enoch Powell of course
Anyway... you didn't answer my question (albeit hidden in a longer reply to someone else so you probably missed it) why Reform got trashed in Rayleigh. Which piqued my interest as I used to live there. Or do you not have any local knowledge of the far side of the county?
As Reform are now in power in Essex county council and Rochford district council so the Tories can now be a local as well as national protest vote
Thanks. Obviously I thought it might be no more than that, but wondered if there had been some local scandal beyond the usual Reform being shit at running councils
My advice to Starmer's wife is to gently tell him it's over and to resign on Monday but offer to stay in office until his successor is appointed
Anything else is frankly cruel and whilst not quite the same, can anyone imagine what would have happened if Jill Biden had taken Joe's hand and quietly said time to pass on the batton Joe
To expose Labour to a very public and probably quite demeaning battle to hold on Starmer would be vilified
I rather disagree. Starmer has a very strong case. If the rabble seek Burnham like change then they should resign as MPs and seek re-election on an Andy-isn't-he-lovely mandate.
Starmer is toxic to the electorate and that was evidenced in spades in Makerfield
His race is over
I shall mark your card as a rabble-rouser
I'm sure you're mostly of Tory blood, as am I. So we're perhaps not the best to comment. Nonetheless Starmer has delivered broadly stable government and Reeves has delivered a broadly stable financial background. I think that in both cases this represents hat-tip like achievement.
The background they had to deal with was shameful. Several Tory PMs really let themselves down.
And so Kemi.
She's doing well, but I have no idea if she really can take the bull by the horns and pre-announce the heavy revision to the state that is long overdue. I hope she can.
Kemi will fancy herself as Maggie Thatcher to Burnham’s Harold Wilson and Starmer’s Jim Callaghan and Sunak’s Ted Heath
That's not bad
It means nothing of course but I have been quite surprised two friends who historically would be solid Labour expressing some enthusiasm for Kemi. (As I only have two friends this is powerful evidence!)
Interesting, Farage and Lowe competing to be Enoch Powell of course
Anyway... you didn't answer my question (albeit hidden in a longer reply to someone else so you probably missed it) why Reform got trashed in Rayleigh. Which piqued my interest as I used to live there. Or do you not have any local knowledge of the far side of the county?
As Reform are now in power in Essex county council and Rochford district council so the Tories can now be a local as well as national protest vote
Thanks. Obviously I thought it might be no more than that, but wondered if there had been some local scandal beyond the usual Reform being shit at running councils
She's doing well, but I have no idea if she really can take the bull by the horns and pre-announce the heavy revision to the state that is long overdue. I hope she can.
Kemi's big problem, apart from having the charisma of a burst pile, is that she won't square up to the Fukkers and dare not criticise them as most tories actually prefer Fukker/Restrasserite policies to their own. She keeps picking fights with Labour which is very much the tory comfort zone but not where she needs to go to move her polling from their current eschatonic levels.
It worth remembering that while the tories on here grovel at Kemi's feet as if she were Ayesha of Kor, the reality is that the tories poll 20% on a good day. Abject.
She will now let Rupert Lowe eat into Farage’s white nationalist vote.
Kemi is focused on getting centrist swing voters who voted for Blair, Tory from 2010 until 2019 then for Starmer in 2024 and won’t like Burnham’s tax rises
Lowe is a flash in the pan. There's a reason Farage avoids going that far - whatever his views might be he knows at that point it would lose more votes than it gains.
Musk boosting a nothing party will keep them in the conversation but not make them a force.
My advice to Starmer's wife is to gently tell him it's over and to resign on Monday but offer to stay in office until his successor is appointed
Anything else is frankly cruel and whilst not quite the same, can anyone imagine what would have happened if Jill Biden had taken Joe's hand and quietly said time to pass on the batton Joe
To expose Labour to a very public and probably quite demeaning battle to hold on Starmer would be vilified
I rather disagree. Starmer has a very strong case. If the rabble seek Burnham like change then they should resign as MPs and seek re-election on an Andy-isn't-he-lovely mandate.
Starmer is toxic to the electorate and that was evidenced in spades in Makerfield
His race is over
I shall mark your card as a rabble-rouser
I'm sure you're mostly of Tory blood, as am I. So we're perhaps not the best to comment. Nonetheless Starmer has delivered broadly stable government and Reeves has delivered a broadly stable financial background. I think that in both cases this represents hat-tip like achievement.
The background they had to deal with was shameful. Several Tory PMs really let themselves down.
And so Kemi.
She's doing well, but I have no idea if she really can take the bull by the horns and pre-announce the heavy revision to the state that is long overdue. I hope she can.
Kemi will fancy herself as Maggie Thatcher to Burnham’s Harold Wilson and Starmer’s Jim Callaghan and Sunak’s Ted Heath
That's not bad
It means nothing of course but I have been quite surprised two friends who historically would be solid Labour expressing some enthusiasm for Kemi. (As I only have two friends this is powerful evidence!)
Interesting, Farage and Lowe competing to be Enoch Powell of course
Anyway... you didn't answer my question (albeit hidden in a longer reply to someone else so you probably missed it) why Reform got trashed in Rayleigh. Which piqued my interest as I used to live there. Or do you not have any local knowledge of the far side of the county?
As Reform are now in power in Essex county council and Rochford district council so the Tories can now be a local as well as national protest vote
Thanks. Obviously I thought it might be no more than that, but wondered if there had been some local scandal beyond the usual Reform being shit at running councils
Currently on holiday in Kos and enjoying this bad boy for 3 euros. It’s in a mug as I bought it in the local Market and brought it into the hotel
By contrast I'm just across the water in Turkey -Izmir today and tomorrow, heading to Ankara tomorrow night - where Erdogan has continually raised alcohol duties (known here as the liberal punishment tax) to the point that strong liquor in a bar is practically at Danish levels.
Cheapest local wines in the supermarket knocking on £10.
She's doing well, but I have no idea if she really can take the bull by the horns and pre-announce the heavy revision to the state that is long overdue. I hope she can.
Kemi's big problem, apart from having the charisma of a burst pile, is that she won't square up to the Fukkers and dare not criticise them as most tories actually prefer Fukker/Restrasserite policies to their own. She keeps picking fights with Labour which is very much the tory comfort zone but not where she needs to go to move her polling from their current eschatonic levels.
It worth remembering that while the tories on here grovel at Kemi's feet as if she were Ayesha of Kor, the reality is that the tories poll 20% on a good day. Abject.
She will now let Rupert Lowe eat into Farage’s white nationalist vote.
Kemi is focused on getting centrist swing voters who voted for Blair, Tory from 2010 until 2019 then for Starmer in 2024 and won’t like Burnham’s tax rises
She's got no chance
Cleverly, Mordaunt, Hunt would have a better than even chance.
She nerds to regain 30 Labour seats and 30 LD seats in old Tory heartland, they would, she's hot little chance as reasoned why very well above.
Why anyone would want a professional politician with all the grubbiness and politics that causes (look at burnham and his bothering of an electorate to gain personal power) over a constitutional monarch is beyond me
People in Ireland are genuinely delighted with their new President and her ball-playing skills, and when you have a President with extremely limited constitutional power, as in Ireland, it isn't really that contentious.
I find it odd to elect a head of state if they have very limited powers - why bother then? - but clearly it does work.
I'm happy to stick with constitutional monarchy as i think it too works.
Isn't the common factor very limited powers? The advantage with an elected one is it's much cheaper and it doesn't sit at the heart of a hierarchy designed to reinforce a backward-looking, sclerotic class system
Yes aren’t US Presidents and Presidential elections very cheap, definitely not billions spent there, oh no. Isn’t the US republic also remarkably equal with its billionaire President its lack of universal healthcare, barely any welfare state and a minimum wage far lower than the UK. While those awfully class ridden unequal constitutional monarchies like Sweden, Canada, the UK, Denmark, the Netherlands, New Zealand and Japan are lame dreadful places to live…oh wait
Your deranged royalism has not for the first time addled your powers of comprehension. The original comparison was between British and Irish heads of state.
The Irish head of state is a leftist ex politician nonentity, virtually nobody has heard of outside Ireland and who over a third of Irish voters voted against. In any case in a current UK presidential election we might well elect President Farage
The Irish President can do keepy-uppies and land a basketball through a hoop backwards, so she makes people smile and people are happy that she can speak the language. She's a good advert for an elected figurehead President.
No she is a far left politician who makes political statements attacking Israel and who over a third of Irish voters voted against.
She also is barely recognised abroad and brings in no tourism revenue while still living in a 90 room Dublin mansion and being taxpayer funded
In case it has passed you by, it's pretty much a universal consensus in Ireland that Israel are a worthy target of condemnation, so that's hardly a demerit for the Irish President.
People did vote against her, but they have been able to accept the result and support her afterwards. Lots of warm words spoken when she was inaugurated, lots of people smiling who had campaigned for the other candidate in the election.
Ireland's history attracts a lot of tourists, and I don't think that would be any different if the country had a High King now, or a Governor-General. I would bet there would still be loads of tourists wanting to see the Royal Palaces in Britain even if there wasn't a current monarch. Possibly more.
Anyone who doesn't criticise Israel under it's current leadership is a full on fascist genocidal nut job.
Currently on holiday in Kos and enjoying this bad boy for 3 euros. It’s in a mug as I bought it in the local Market and brought it into the hotel
By contrast I'm just across the water in Turkey -Izmir today and tomorrow, heading to Ankara tomorrow night - where Erdogan has continually raised alcohol duties (known here as the liberal punishment tax) to the point that strong liquor in a bar is practically at Danish levels.
Cheapest local wines in the supermarket knocking on £10.
Ouch !!!!
We were thinking of Antalya or Bodrum next year but maybe not now.
Off topic, but possibly a problem that some of you may be able to help with.
We have been at war with the mullahs in Iran since 1989. After we overthrew Saddam Hussein, the mullahs changed their strategy to avoid direct confrontations with the US, and instead use proxies, and indirect means, in their war against us.
A series of presidents, Carter, Reagan, George H. W. Bush, Clinton, George W. Bush, and Barack Obama have tried different strategies in this war, with varying degrees of success. Reagan and George W. Bush used threats. Obama worked with European allies to constrain the mullah’s efforts to get nuclear weapons.
What should our grand strategy be against the mullahs? That’s a genuine question, to which I do not have a full answer. But I do think we need to think hard about the problem, and I do think we can solve it, just as we solved the problem of the Soviet Union.
If we are willing to think long term.
I’ll start the discussion by saying what we should not do. We should not shut down the Voice of America. And, it seems, majorities in the Congress agree with me on that:
Lawmakers from both parties and houses of Congress have agreed to provide about $653 million to fund Voice of America’s parent agency, rejecting President Donald Trump’s demand to defund the international broadcaster and shut it down.
A bipartisan spending bill released Sunday would allocate $643 million for broadcasting from the U.S. Agency for Global Media, which oversees VOA, plus nearly $10 million for capital improvements. That figure is down from the $867 million appropriated for the agency each of the past two years, but it’s more than four times the $153 million Trump requested that Congress provide to “support the orderly shutdown of USAGM operations.”
Why anyone would want a professional politician with all the grubbiness and politics that causes (look at burnham and his bothering of an electorate to gain personal power) over a constitutional monarch is beyond me
People in Ireland are genuinely delighted with their new President and her ball-playing skills, and when you have a President with extremely limited constitutional power, as in Ireland, it isn't really that contentious.
I find it odd to elect a head of state if they have very limited powers - why bother then? - but clearly it does work.
I'm happy to stick with constitutional monarchy as i think it too works.
Isn't the common factor very limited powers? The advantage with an elected one is it's much cheaper and it doesn't sit at the heart of a hierarchy designed to reinforce a backward-looking, sclerotic class system
Yes aren’t US Presidents and Presidential elections very cheap, definitely not billions spent there, oh no. Isn’t the US republic also remarkably equal with its billionaire President its lack of universal healthcare, barely any welfare state and a minimum wage far lower than the UK. While those awfully class ridden unequal constitutional monarchies like Sweden, Canada, the UK, Denmark, the Netherlands, New Zealand and Japan are lame dreadful places to live…oh wait
Your deranged royalism has not for the first time addled your powers of comprehension. The original comparison was between British and Irish heads of state.
The Irish head of state is a leftist ex politician nonentity, virtually nobody has heard of outside Ireland and who over a third of Irish voters voted against. In any case in a current UK presidential election we might well elect President Farage
The Irish President can do keepy-uppies and land a basketball through a hoop backwards, so she makes people smile and people are happy that she can speak the language. She's a good advert for an elected figurehead President.
No she is a far left politician who makes political statements attacking Israel and who over a third of Irish voters voted against.
She also is barely recognised abroad and brings in no tourism revenue while still living in a 90 room Dublin mansion and being taxpayer funded
In case it has passed you by, it's pretty much a universal consensus in Ireland that Israel are a worthy target of condemnation, so that's hardly a demerit for the Irish President.
People did vote against her, but they have been able to accept the result and support her afterwards. Lots of warm words spoken when she was inaugurated, lots of people smiling who had campaigned for the other candidate in the election.
Ireland's history attracts a lot of tourists, and I don't think that would be any different if the country had a High King now, or a Governor-General. I would bet there would still be loads of tourists wanting to see the Royal Palaces in Britain even if there wasn't a current monarch. Possibly more.
Not overly convinced by this part. Buckingham Palace isn’t that lovely - it’s in a good location and if it’s stuffed full of the royal collection then it’s worth a visit but not the same draw without the curiosity for tourists of whether the royals are in there and having the guards/changing of the guards etc.
Versailles on the other hand is beautiful and people want to go there to see the extraordinary palace but also it has that haunting quality where people go to see and imagine the last days of the French monarchy and imagine Marie Antoinette and Louis before it went to pot so it has a mystique and beauty.
Windsor castle is impressive and obviously attractive as a dirty great castle not just a palace so people will still go but again it would be stripped of the curiosity of it being a royal home and the guards etc.
People already go to Hampton court as it’s a great building and the history with Henry VIII as a draw.
Otherwise is St James’ palace a big draw?
So I think that if you strip them of their real living attraction then I do t think it’s going to see any boost in tourists.
The occasional tax and duty discussions on here are always an interesting reminder of what it's like to read laypeople's views about something you do for a living. Gets me all Richard Tyndalled.
Why anyone would want a professional politician with all the grubbiness and politics that causes (look at burnham and his bothering of an electorate to gain personal power) over a constitutional monarch is beyond me
People in Ireland are genuinely delighted with their new President and her ball-playing skills, and when you have a President with extremely limited constitutional power, as in Ireland, it isn't really that contentious.
I find it odd to elect a head of state if they have very limited powers - why bother then? - but clearly it does work.
I'm happy to stick with constitutional monarchy as i think it too works.
Isn't the common factor very limited powers? The advantage with an elected one is it's much cheaper and it doesn't sit at the heart of a hierarchy designed to reinforce a backward-looking, sclerotic class system
Yes, that's my view.
A strong executive Presidency is probably an inferior form of government to a constitutional monarchy, but I'd prefer an elected President to act as a national figurehead.
Trump is such a unifying figure in the US as an elected President, as was Biden as a national figurehead
The US has a strong executive President. As I said, I think that's not a good form of government.
Obviously different to the Irish Presidency.
The Irish President is an ex politician who makes statements on issues like Israel ceremonial heads of state should not.
No foreign tourists go to Dublin for her inauguration or her family’s weddings or jubilees or soldiers parades either
What constitutional changes do you think Britain could make to attract more tourists?
Perhaps unpopular MPs could have a spell in the stocks. That would certainly be a great public spectacle.
Maybe nomination for election could involve a series of public trials in the style of Gladiators or It's a Knockout. If it involves Tudor-style dress and is held at the Tower of London, I'm sure it would boost tourism.
The fact there has been virtually no change in Makerfield between 2024 and now suggests that it isn’t Labour that’s the problem, it’s Keir Starmer.
The underlying problem is the country wants changes that are 1) too expensive for our budget and/or 2) implausible. So any candidate representing the status quo is going to lose to a change candidate for the next decade at least. Policies, values etc are not that important, if we had a Conservative or Reform govt they would be extremely unpopular too.
Burnham has gone too early - he should have taken over in 2027 and portrayed himself as a change candidate in 2028. It will be very difficult to portray himself as a change candidate when he has been there for a couple of years.
I think Starmer would have worked as a change candidate were it not for winter fuel. Everything that came after was downhill but that was the initial destructive act. I supported the policy but it was utterly toxic against the new Labour coalition as to be fair many Labour MPs said at the time.
Mandelson would have been easily survivable by somebody with more popularity.
From a party POV, he should have made benefit reform a confidence issue and then quit then if it hadn’t passed. Letting that go just gave the PLP the magic money tree. Burnham will have to grapple with that too but he will start with goodwill.
Surely the point of the Labour Party is to attempt to solve national problems with policies that match the culture of the Labour Party?
The WFA cut seemed like an attempt of cod-Thatcherism. No Labour MP went into politics to cheer cutting benefits.
You want to reduce the welfare bill, but are a Labour PM? What do Labour MPs like? Benefits targeted to the poorest, perhaps?
So announce all the old age extras are going in a blender. The result will be means tests/taxed, so as to target the poorest pensioners.
Then you sell that to the MPs as a reform that makes the poor better off, while being fiscally prudent.
No labour MP went into parliament wanting to make a difficult decision. They want to open fetes, garden centres, shops, and do lots of feel good social work while not upsetting anyone.
Taz, and make plenty of cash, expenses, second houses. A lucrative business for useless donkeys.
I have always wondered how James Callaghan was able to buy a 130 acre farm in East Sussex.
Especially when you see Harold Wilson very modest little Cottage in the Isles of Scilly.
Callaghan was born and educated about half a mile from where I live in to a fairly modest Brixham family.
A little known fact he attended Furzham Junior School, still there as a school today.
There are a limited number of properties for sale on the Isles of Scilly (mostly being owned and leased by the Duchy of Cornwall The ones you can buy are not cheap....
I agree, I've looked previously as what's available as holiday there each year.
The fact is though that by ex PM standards it's very modest.
A local resident I've seen a few times in Old Town knew the Wilsons and especially his wife who lived to a ripe old age.
She's doing well, but I have no idea if she really can take the bull by the horns and pre-announce the heavy revision to the state that is long overdue. I hope she can.
Kemi's big problem, apart from having the charisma of a burst pile, is that she won't square up to the Fukkers and dare not criticise them as most tories actually prefer Fukker/Restrasserite policies to their own. She keeps picking fights with Labour which is very much the tory comfort zone but not where she needs to go to move her polling from their current eschatonic levels.
It worth remembering that while the tories on here grovel at Kemi's feet as if she were Ayesha of Kor, the reality is that the tories poll 20% on a good day. Abject.
You have to start somewhere.
Are you really telling me that you don't see glimmers of progress?
My advice to Starmer's wife is to gently tell him it's over and to resign on Monday but offer to stay in office until his successor is appointed
Anything else is frankly cruel and whilst not quite the same, can anyone imagine what would have happened if Jill Biden had taken Joe's hand and quietly said time to pass on the batton Joe
To expose Labour to a very public and probably quite demeaning battle to hold on Starmer would be vilified
I rather disagree. Starmer has a very strong case. If the rabble seek Burnham like change then they should resign as MPs and seek re-election on an Andy-isn't-he-lovely mandate.
Starmer is toxic to the electorate and that was evidenced in spades in Makerfield
His race is over
I shall mark your card as a rabble-rouser
I'm sure you're mostly of Tory blood, as am I. So we're perhaps not the best to comment. Nonetheless Starmer has delivered broadly stable government and Reeves has delivered a broadly stable financial background. I think that in both cases this represents hat-tip like achievement.
The background they had to deal with was shameful. Several Tory PMs really let themselves down.
And so Kemi.
She's doing well, but I have no idea if she really can take the bull by the horns and pre-announce the heavy revision to the state that is long overdue. I hope she can.
Kemi will fancy herself as Maggie Thatcher to Burnham’s Harold Wilson and Starmer’s Jim Callaghan and Sunak’s Ted Heath
That's not bad
It means nothing of course but I have been quite surprised two friends who historically would be solid Labour expressing some enthusiasm for Kemi. (As I only have two friends this is powerful evidence!)
Kemi is the ANTI THATCHER
The Lady was NOT FOR TURNING
FFS Kemi turns 4 or 5 times a week
If you can translate this into English then I think it may be helpful.
My advice to Starmer's wife is to gently tell him it's over and to resign on Monday but offer to stay in office until his successor is appointed
Anything else is frankly cruel and whilst not quite the same, can anyone imagine what would have happened if Jill Biden had taken Joe's hand and quietly said time to pass on the batton Joe
To expose Labour to a very public and probably quite demeaning battle to hold on Starmer would be vilified
I rather disagree. Starmer has a very strong case. If the rabble seek Burnham like change then they should resign as MPs and seek re-election on an Andy-isn't-he-lovely mandate.
Starmer is toxic to the electorate and that was evidenced in spades in Makerfield
His race is over
I shall mark your card as a rabble-rouser
I'm sure you're mostly of Tory blood, as am I. So we're perhaps not the best to comment. Nonetheless Starmer has delivered broadly stable government and Reeves has delivered a broadly stable financial background. I think that in both cases this represents hat-tip like achievement.
The background they had to deal with was shameful. Several Tory PMs really let themselves down.
And so Kemi.
She's doing well, but I have no idea if she really can take the bull by the horns and pre-announce the heavy revision to the state that is long overdue. I hope she can.
Kemi will fancy herself as Maggie Thatcher to Burnham’s Harold Wilson and Starmer’s Jim Callaghan and Sunak’s Ted Heath
That's not bad
It means nothing of course but I have been quite surprised two friends who historically would be solid Labour expressing some enthusiasm for Kemi. (As I only have two friends this is powerful evidence!)
Kemi is the ANTI THATCHER
The Lady was NOT FOR TURNING
FFS Kemi turns 4 or 5 times a week
If you can translate this into English then I think it may be helpful.
The occasional tax and duty discussions on here are always an interesting reminder of what it's like to read laypeople's views about something you do for a living. Gets me all Richard Tyndalled.
Pfff. We are not mere laypeople. We are the pb pontificators.
She's doing well, but I have no idea if she really can take the bull by the horns and pre-announce the heavy revision to the state that is long overdue. I hope she can.
Kemi's big problem, apart from having the charisma of a burst pile, is that she won't square up to the Fukkers and dare not criticise them as most tories actually prefer Fukker/Restrasserite policies to their own. She keeps picking fights with Labour which is very much the tory comfort zone but not where she needs to go to move her polling from their current eschatonic levels.
It worth remembering that while the tories on here grovel at Kemi's feet as if she were Ayesha of Kor, the reality is that the tories poll 20% on a good day. Abject.
You have to start somewhere.
She started at 25% and 6 points ahead of the Fukkers.
Why anyone would want a professional politician with all the grubbiness and politics that causes (look at burnham and his bothering of an electorate to gain personal power) over a constitutional monarch is beyond me
People in Ireland are genuinely delighted with their new President and her ball-playing skills, and when you have a President with extremely limited constitutional power, as in Ireland, it isn't really that contentious.
I find it odd to elect a head of state if they have very limited powers - why bother then? - but clearly it does work.
I'm happy to stick with constitutional monarchy as i think it too works.
Isn't the common factor very limited powers? The advantage with an elected one is it's much cheaper and it doesn't sit at the heart of a hierarchy designed to reinforce a backward-looking, sclerotic class system
Yes aren’t US Presidents and Presidential elections very cheap, definitely not billions spent there, oh no. Isn’t the US republic also remarkably equal with its billionaire President its lack of universal healthcare, barely any welfare state and a minimum wage far lower than the UK. While those awfully class ridden unequal constitutional monarchies like Sweden, Canada, the UK, Denmark, the Netherlands, New Zealand and Japan are lame dreadful places to live…oh wait
Your deranged royalism has not for the first time addled your powers of comprehension. The original comparison was between British and Irish heads of state.
The Irish head of state is a leftist ex politician nonentity, virtually nobody has heard of outside Ireland and who over a third of Irish voters voted against. In any case in a current UK presidential election we might well elect President Farage
The Irish President can do keepy-uppies and land a basketball through a hoop backwards, so she makes people smile and people are happy that she can speak the language. She's a good advert for an elected figurehead President.
No she is a far left politician who makes political statements attacking Israel and who over a third of Irish voters voted against.
She also is barely recognised abroad and brings in no tourism revenue while still living in a 90 room Dublin mansion and being taxpayer funded
In case it has passed you by, it's pretty much a universal consensus in Ireland that Israel are a worthy target of condemnation, so that's hardly a demerit for the Irish President.
People did vote against her, but they have been able to accept the result and support her afterwards. Lots of warm words spoken when she was inaugurated, lots of people smiling who had campaigned for the other candidate in the election.
Ireland's history attracts a lot of tourists, and I don't think that would be any different if the country had a High King now, or a Governor-General. I would bet there would still be loads of tourists wanting to see the Royal Palaces in Britain even if there wasn't a current monarch. Possibly more.
Not overly convinced by this part. Buckingham Palace isn’t that lovely - it’s in a good location and if it’s stuffed full of the royal collection then it’s worth a visit but not the same draw without the curiosity for tourists of whether the royals are in there and having the guards/changing of the guards etc.
Versailles on the other hand is beautiful and people want to go there to see the extraordinary palace but also it has that haunting quality where people go to see and imagine the last days of the French monarchy and imagine Marie Antoinette and Louis before it went to pot so it has a mystique and beauty.
Windsor castle is impressive and obviously attractive as a dirty great castle not just a palace so people will still go but again it would be stripped of the curiosity of it being a royal home and the guards etc.
People already go to Hampton court as it’s a great building and the history with Henry VIII as a draw.
Otherwise is St James’ palace a big draw?
So I think that if you strip them of their real living attraction then I do t think it’s going to see any boost in tourists.
Plus tourists can rarely even visit the Elysee Palace where President Macron lives
She's doing well, but I have no idea if she really can take the bull by the horns and pre-announce the heavy revision to the state that is long overdue. I hope she can.
Kemi's big problem, apart from having the charisma of a burst pile, is that she won't square up to the Fukkers and dare not criticise them as most tories actually prefer Fukker/Restrasserite policies to their own. She keeps picking fights with Labour which is very much the tory comfort zone but not where she needs to go to move her polling from their current eschatonic levels.
It worth remembering that while the tories on here grovel at Kemi's feet as if she were Ayesha of Kor, the reality is that the tories poll 20% on a good day. Abject.
You have to start somewhere.
She started at 25% and 6 points ahead of the Fukkers.
She's doing well, but I have no idea if she really can take the bull by the horns and pre-announce the heavy revision to the state that is long overdue. I hope she can.
Kemi's big problem, apart from having the charisma of a burst pile, is that she won't square up to the Fukkers and dare not criticise them as most tories actually prefer Fukker/Restrasserite policies to their own. She keeps picking fights with Labour which is very much the tory comfort zone but not where she needs to go to move her polling from their current eschatonic levels.
It worth remembering that while the tories on here grovel at Kemi's feet as if she were Ayesha of Kor, the reality is that the tories poll 20% on a good day. Abject.
You have to start somewhere.
Are you really telling me that you don't see glimmers of progress?
To really increase her popularity, she needs to find a way to make Donald Trump attack her.
She's doing well, but I have no idea if she really can take the bull by the horns and pre-announce the heavy revision to the state that is long overdue. I hope she can.
Kemi's big problem, apart from having the charisma of a burst pile, is that she won't square up to the Fukkers and dare not criticise them as most tories actually prefer Fukker/Restrasserite policies to their own. She keeps picking fights with Labour which is very much the tory comfort zone but not where she needs to go to move her polling from their current eschatonic levels.
It worth remembering that while the tories on here grovel at Kemi's feet as if she were Ayesha of Kor, the reality is that the tories poll 20% on a good day. Abject.
She will now let Rupert Lowe eat into Farage’s white nationalist vote.
Kemi is focused on getting centrist swing voters who voted for Blair, Tory from 2010 until 2019 then for Starmer in 2024 and won’t like Burnham’s tax rises
Lowe is a flash in the pan. There's a reason Farage avoids going that far - whatever his views might be he knows at that point it would lose more votes than it gains.
Musk boosting a nothing party will keep them in the conversation but not make them a force.
Restore have just come third in a by election and Lowe now intends to stand candidates across the country in the local elections next year
Defense companies MBDA, MGI Engineering, and Rotron Aerospace are currently developing three competing weapon systems. Testing is scheduled to take place in the UK and Ukraine in the coming months, with the goal of deploying the new weapons to the front line within a year.
She's doing well, but I have no idea if she really can take the bull by the horns and pre-announce the heavy revision to the state that is long overdue. I hope she can.
Kemi's big problem, apart from having the charisma of a burst pile, is that she won't square up to the Fukkers and dare not criticise them as most tories actually prefer Fukker/Restrasserite policies to their own. She keeps picking fights with Labour which is very much the tory comfort zone but not where she needs to go to move her polling from their current eschatonic levels.
It worth remembering that while the tories on here grovel at Kemi's feet as if she were Ayesha of Kor, the reality is that the tories poll 20% on a good day. Abject.
She will now let Rupert Lowe eat into Farage’s white nationalist vote.
Kemi is focused on getting centrist swing voters who voted for Blair, Tory from 2010 until 2019 then for Starmer in 2024 and won’t like Burnham’s tax rises
Lowe is a flash in the pan. There's a reason Farage avoids going that far - whatever his views might be he knows at that point it would lose more votes than it gains.
Musk boosting a nothing party will keep them in the conversation but not make them a force.
Restore have just come third in a by election and Lowe now intends to stand candidates across the country in the local elections next year
He can intend all he likes. Jo Swinson (claimed) to intend to be PM.
We don't need to swallow their PR as gospel, he's a racist old coot who has been fortunate to get the attention of rich americans.
She's doing well, but I have no idea if she really can take the bull by the horns and pre-announce the heavy revision to the state that is long overdue. I hope she can.
Kemi's big problem, apart from having the charisma of a burst pile, is that she won't square up to the Fukkers and dare not criticise them as most tories actually prefer Fukker/Restrasserite policies to their own. She keeps picking fights with Labour which is very much the tory comfort zone but not where she needs to go to move her polling from their current eschatonic levels.
It worth remembering that while the tories on here grovel at Kemi's feet as if she were Ayesha of Kor, the reality is that the tories poll 20% on a good day. Abject.
You have to start somewhere.
Are you really telling me that you don't see glimmers of progress?
To really increase her popularity, she needs to find a way to make Donald Trump attack her.
What I shudder to think of is a Trump/Burnham meeting. The North of England will never walk the same way again.
Currently on holiday in Kos and enjoying this bad boy for 3 euros. It’s in a mug as I bought it in the local Market and brought it into the hotel
By contrast I'm just across the water in Turkey -Izmir today and tomorrow, heading to Ankara tomorrow night - where Erdogan has continually raised alcohol duties (known here as the liberal punishment tax) to the point that strong liquor in a bar is practically at Danish levels.
Cheapest local wines in the supermarket knocking on £10.
Reflecting on the Makerfield byelection result, I think (as I said) that Burnham was the favourite going in, and never really looked troubled.
Reform would always have struggled, but I think could have performed better if they had developed an effective counternarrative against Burnham, beyond their charge that he was using Makerfield as a stepping stone. That was clearly believed by a lot of people, but it couldn't really go anywhere. I felt where Burnham was weakest was at the point of WASPI - it was an embarrassing f U-turn in real time. But for whatever reason it didn't seem that this was capitalised on.
They also had a problem with the plumber, who I don't think was a terrible candidate, but was undoubtedly damaged, particularly by the Vorderman letter to the women of Makerfield. The letter was an utterly cynical piece of confected outrage, and I think in response I would have issued an utterly cynical confected apology, and gone the 'bad boy forgiven' route. I also might have been tempted to put Kenyon up for an interrogation with someone like Kuensberg so the public could see him sweat it out. High risk, but I think many women might have seen it and ended up with some sneaking sympathy. His line would have been - 'sorry, regret my comments, however do we want a society where the only people who are allowed to hold office are people who have never said anything regrettable on social media?'.
Even with all that, I think Reform's best result would have been to be 'robbed' by Restore. That would have fit their narrative nicely. Sadly they just missed out.
I agree on your second paragraph (notsomuch that the outrage was confected, more than people can change) but I wonder if the issue might have been that he hadn't really changed and Kuenssberg or someone similar would have found that out? We (or at least I) can't know that, but perhaps Reform themselves did and so avoided the spotlight strategy. They don't exactly have a track record of slick media performance, Farage aside.
Point about Farage's and Kenyon's controversial opinions - people reasonably, and on the evidence, believe they haven't changed at all but Farage and Kenyon are too cowardly to own what they actually think. You can either say, yes I made those comments and I stand by them, or you can sincerely say, I made those comments, they are wrong and I have changed.
Complaining about people repeating what you said as examples of what you really think, or a I-have-changed-but-not-really only make people despise you even more.
Why anyone would want a professional politician with all the grubbiness and politics that causes (look at burnham and his bothering of an electorate to gain personal power) over a constitutional monarch is beyond me
People in Ireland are genuinely delighted with their new President and her ball-playing skills, and when you have a President with extremely limited constitutional power, as in Ireland, it isn't really that contentious.
I find it odd to elect a head of state if they have very limited powers - why bother then? - but clearly it does work.
I'm happy to stick with constitutional monarchy as i think it too works.
Isn't the common factor very limited powers? The advantage with an elected one is it's much cheaper and it doesn't sit at the heart of a hierarchy designed to reinforce a backward-looking, sclerotic class system
Yes aren’t US Presidents and Presidential elections very cheap, definitely not billions spent there, oh no. Isn’t the US republic also remarkably equal with its billionaire President its lack of universal healthcare, barely any welfare state and a minimum wage far lower than the UK. While those awfully class ridden unequal constitutional monarchies like Sweden, Canada, the UK, Denmark, the Netherlands, New Zealand and Japan are lame dreadful places to live…oh wait
Your deranged royalism has not for the first time addled your powers of comprehension. The original comparison was between British and Irish heads of state.
The Irish head of state is a leftist ex politician nonentity, virtually nobody has heard of outside Ireland and who over a third of Irish voters voted against. In any case in a current UK presidential election we might well elect President Farage
The Irish President can do keepy-uppies and land a basketball through a hoop backwards, so she makes people smile and people are happy that she can speak the language. She's a good advert for an elected figurehead President.
No she is a far left politician who makes political statements attacking Israel and who over a third of Irish voters voted against.
She also is barely recognised abroad and brings in no tourism revenue while still living in a 90 room Dublin mansion and being taxpayer funded
In case it has passed you by, it's pretty much a universal consensus in Ireland that Israel are a worthy target of condemnation, so that's hardly a demerit for the Irish President.
People did vote against her, but they have been able to accept the result and support her afterwards. Lots of warm words spoken when she was inaugurated, lots of people smiling who had campaigned for the other candidate in the election.
Ireland's history attracts a lot of tourists, and I don't think that would be any different if the country had a High King now, or a Governor- General. I would bet there would still be loads of tourists wanting to see the Royal Palaces in Britain even if there wasn't a current monarch. Possibly more.
Jews in Ireland certainly weren't happy nor was Israel, Connolly is completely unknown outside of Ireland and we would get fewer tourosts to London and Windsor with no royals. President Farage or President Blair or President Johnson would probably be living and working in Buckingham Palace anyway restricting tourist visits
The fact there has been virtually no change in Makerfield between 2024 and now suggests that it isn’t Labour that’s the problem, it’s Keir Starmer.
The underlying problem is the country wants changes that are 1) too expensive for our budget and/or 2) implausible. So any candidate representing the status quo is going to lose to a change candidate for the next decade at least. Policies, values etc are not that important, if we had a Conservative or Reform govt they would be extremely unpopular too.
Burnham has gone too early - he should have taken over in 2027 and portrayed himself as a change candidate in 2028. It will be very difficult to portray himself as a change candidate when he has been there for a couple of years.
I think Starmer would have worked as a change candidate were it not for winter fuel. Everything that came after was downhill but that was the initial destructive act. I supported the policy but it was utterly toxic against the new Labour coalition as to be fair many Labour MPs said at the time.
Mandelson would have been easily survivable by somebody with more popularity.
From a party POV, he should have made benefit reform a confidence issue and then quit then if it hadn’t passed. Letting that go just gave the PLP the magic money tree. Burnham will have to grapple with that too but he will start with goodwill.
Surely the point of the Labour Party is to attempt to solve national problems with policies that match the culture of the Labour Party?
The WFA cut seemed like an attempt of cod-Thatcherism. No Labour MP went into politics to cheer cutting benefits.
You want to reduce the welfare bill, but are a Labour PM? What do Labour MPs like? Benefits targeted to the poorest, perhaps?
So announce all the old age extras are going in a blender. The result will be means tests/taxed, so as to target the poorest pensioners.
Then you sell that to the MPs as a reform that makes the poor better off, while being fiscally prudent.
No labour MP went into parliament wanting to make a difficult decision. They want to open fetes, garden centres, shops, and do lots of feel good social work while not upsetting anyone.
Taz, and make plenty of cash, expenses, second houses. A lucrative business for useless donkeys.
I saw recently that Glenys Kinnock's estate was valued at about £1.5million. Now she was an MEP for 15 years rather than an MP. But given that she was a teacher before entering politics, it is hard to see how she could have amassed such a fortune.
Politics is clearly about money for the politicians.
£1.5 is a four bed, terraced house in parts of London.
If you bought 40 years ago, you’d have paid a tiny fraction of that.
The pension pot for a decent retirement would be of that order. Remember, the state pension is effectively at £240k asset.
She's doing well, but I have no idea if she really can take the bull by the horns and pre-announce the heavy revision to the state that is long overdue. I hope she can.
Kemi's big problem, apart from having the charisma of a burst pile, is that she won't square up to the Fukkers and dare not criticise them as most tories actually prefer Fukker/Restrasserite policies to their own. She keeps picking fights with Labour which is very much the tory comfort zone but not where she needs to go to move her polling from their current eschatonic levels.
It worth remembering that while the tories on here grovel at Kemi's feet as if she were Ayesha of Kor, the reality is that the tories poll 20% on a good day. Abject.
You have to start somewhere.
Are you really telling me that you don't see glimmers of progress?
To really increase her popularity, she needs to find a way to make Donald Trump attack her.
She's black and definitely doesn't have Mar-a-Lago Face so that's a decent start in that regard.
She's doing well, but I have no idea if she really can take the bull by the horns and pre-announce the heavy revision to the state that is long overdue. I hope she can.
Kemi's big problem, apart from having the charisma of a burst pile, is that she won't square up to the Fukkers and dare not criticise them as most tories actually prefer Fukker/Restrasserite policies to their own. She keeps picking fights with Labour which is very much the tory comfort zone but not where she needs to go to move her polling from their current eschatonic levels.
It worth remembering that while the tories on here grovel at Kemi's feet as if she were Ayesha of Kor, the reality is that the tories poll 20% on a good day. Abject.
You have to start somewhere.
Are you really telling me that you don't see glimmers of progress?
To really increase her popularity, she needs to find a way to make Donald Trump attack her.
She's way too argumentative and never wrong
Her colleagues openly say that
A little contrition and humility goes a long way.
It could help her to learn that.
The aggressive tone leads her to shoot from the hip, good on occasions but kit on every topic.
That leads to the constant u turns, then denial of what she said, even when it's played to her time after time.
Off topic, but possibly a problem that some of you may be able to help with.
We have been at war with the mullahs in Iran since 1989. After we overthrew Saddam Hussein, the mullahs changed their strategy to avoid direct confrontations with the US, and instead use proxies, and indirect means, in their war against us.
A series of presidents, Carter, Reagan, George H. W. Bush, Clinton, George W. Bush, and Barack Obama have tried different strategies in this war, with varying degrees of success. Reagan and George W. Bush used threats. Obama worked with European allies to constrain the mullah’s efforts to get nuclear weapons.
What should our grand strategy be against the mullahs? That’s a genuine question, to which I do not have a full answer. But I do think we need to think hard about the problem, and I do think we can solve it, just as we solved the problem of the Soviet Union.
If we are willing to think long term.
I’ll start the discussion by saying what we should not do. We should not shut down the Voice of America. And, it seems, majorities in the Congress agree with me on that:
Lawmakers from both parties and houses of Congress have agreed to provide about $653 million to fund Voice of America’s parent agency, rejecting President Donald Trump’s demand to defund the international broadcaster and shut it down.
A bipartisan spending bill released Sunday would allocate $643 million for broadcasting from the U.S. Agency for Global Media, which oversees VOA, plus nearly $10 million for capital improvements. That figure is down from the $867 million appropriated for the agency each of the past two years, but it’s more than four times the $153 million Trump requested that Congress provide to “support the orderly shutdown of USAGM operations.”
Iran has vast renewables potential particularly solar but also wind. Offer to invest in these as an Alternative to Civil Nuclear.
I am not saying send John Sweeney but as a country that has had civil nuclear and has rejected it in favour of renewables you make the case that Nuclear is last centuries technology not this one’s.
Harder to do if you yourself have a nuclear programme!
It gets a dialogue going it offers them something and it undermines their argument for enrichment.
We could redirect or build it into the £300bn reconstruction fund.
Also just to add.
Like Iraq under Saddam and indeed Russia and China, they talk of revolution and defeating us, but their core priority is their own survival not defeating us.
She's doing well, but I have no idea if she really can take the bull by the horns and pre-announce the heavy revision to the state that is long overdue. I hope she can.
Kemi's big problem, apart from having the charisma of a burst pile, is that she won't square up to the Fukkers and dare not criticise them as most tories actually prefer Fukker/Restrasserite policies to their own. She keeps picking fights with Labour which is very much the tory comfort zone but not where she needs to go to move her polling from their current eschatonic levels.
It worth remembering that while the tories on here grovel at Kemi's feet as if she were Ayesha of Kor, the reality is that the tories poll 20% on a good day. Abject.
She will now let Rupert Lowe eat into Farage’s white nationalist vote.
Kemi is focused on getting centrist swing voters who voted for Blair, Tory from 2010 until 2019 then for Starmer in 2024 and won’t like Burnham’s tax rises
Lowe is a flash in the pan. There's a reason Farage avoids going that far - whatever his views might be he knows at that point it would lose more votes than it gains.
Musk boosting a nothing party will keep them in the conversation but not make them a force.
Restore have just come third in a by election and Lowe now intends to stand candidates across the country in the local elections next year
Why anyone would want a professional politician with all the grubbiness and politics that causes (look at burnham and his bothering of an electorate to gain personal power) over a constitutional monarch is beyond me
People in Ireland are genuinely delighted with their new President and her ball-playing skills, and when you have a President with extremely limited constitutional power, as in Ireland, it isn't really that contentious.
I find it odd to elect a head of state if they have very limited powers - why bother then? - but clearly it does work.
I'm happy to stick with constitutional monarchy as i think it too works.
Isn't the common factor very limited powers? The advantage with an elected one is it's much cheaper and it doesn't sit at the heart of a hierarchy designed to reinforce a backward-looking, sclerotic class system
Yes aren’t US Presidents and Presidential elections very cheap, definitely not billions spent there, oh no. Isn’t the US republic also remarkably equal with its billionaire President its lack of universal healthcare, barely any welfare state and a minimum wage far lower than the UK. While those awfully class ridden unequal constitutional monarchies like Sweden, Canada, the UK, Denmark, the Netherlands, New Zealand and Japan are lame dreadful places to live…oh wait
Your deranged royalism has not for the first time addled your powers of comprehension. The original comparison was between British and Irish heads of state.
The Irish head of state is a leftist ex politician nonentity, virtually nobody has heard of outside Ireland and who over a third of Irish voters voted against. In any case in a current UK presidential election we might well elect President Farage
The Irish President can do keepy-uppies and land a basketball through a hoop backwards, so she makes people smile and people are happy that she can speak the language. She's a good advert for an elected figurehead President.
No she is a far left politician who makes political statements attacking Israel and who over a third of Irish voters voted against.
She also is barely recognised abroad and brings in no tourism revenue while still living in a 90 room Dublin mansion and being taxpayer funded
In case it has passed you by, it's pretty much a universal consensus in Ireland that Israel are a worthy target of condemnation, so that's hardly a demerit for the Irish President.
People did vote against her, but they have been able to accept the result and support her afterwards. Lots of warm words spoken when she was inaugurated, lots of people smiling who had campaigned for the other candidate in the election.
Ireland's history attracts a lot of tourists, and I don't think that would be any different if the country had a High King now, or a Governor- General. I would bet there would still be loads of tourists wanting to see the Royal Palaces in Britain even if there wasn't a current monarch. Possibly more.
Jews in Ireland certainly weren't happy nor was Israel, Connolly is completely unknown outside of Ireland and we would get fewer tourosts to London and Windsor with no royals. President Farage or President Blair or President Johnson would probably be living and working in Buckingham Palace anyway restricting tourist visits
Boris Johnson would have been much better suited to being a figurehead President than Prime Minister.
If becoming a republic would divert characters like him into the Presidency rather then that would be an additional benefit.
She's doing well, but I have no idea if she really can take the bull by the horns and pre-announce the heavy revision to the state that is long overdue. I hope she can.
Kemi's big problem, apart from having the charisma of a burst pile, is that she won't square up to the Fukkers and dare not criticise them as most tories actually prefer Fukker/Restrasserite policies to their own. She keeps picking fights with Labour which is very much the tory comfort zone but not where she needs to go to move her polling from their current eschatonic levels.
It worth remembering that while the tories on here grovel at Kemi's feet as if she were Ayesha of Kor, the reality is that the tories poll 20% on a good day. Abject.
She will now let Rupert Lowe eat into Farage’s white nationalist vote.
Kemi is focused on getting centrist swing voters who voted for Blair, Tory from 2010 until 2019 then for Starmer in 2024 and won’t like Burnham’s tax rises
She's got no chance
Cleverly, Mordaunt, Hunt would have a better than even chance.
She nerds to regain 30 Labour seats and 30 LD seats in old Tory heartland, they would, she's hot little chance as reasoned why very well above.
People said the same about Thatcher in 1977 and that the Tories should bring back Heath or get Whitelaw or Pym as leader. Yet Thatcher beat the like Burnham more likeable Callaghan as voters were fed up with Labour tax rises, inflation, inefficient nationalised industry and union strikes. Burnham has a platform similar to that Wilson and Callaghan had
I think the United (Opposed To Everything) Kingdom is apt .
Nothing gets done because politicians are too frightened to tell some home truths . Put taxes up to pay for defence opposed, try and build anything opposed , try and deal with social care opposed etc .
The public just aren’t interested in anyone telling them the reality so just want to continue down the path into la la land .
Reflecting on the Makerfield byelection result, I think (as I said) that Burnham was the favourite going in, and never really looked troubled.
Reform would always have struggled, but I think could have performed better if they had developed an effective counternarrative against Burnham, beyond their charge that he was using Makerfield as a stepping stone. That was clearly believed by a lot of people, but it couldn't really go anywhere. I felt where Burnham was weakest was at the point of WASPI - it was an embarrassing f U-turn in real time. But for whatever reason it didn't seem that this was capitalised on.
They also had a problem with the plumber, who I don't think was a terrible candidate, but was undoubtedly damaged, particularly by the Vorderman letter to the women of Makerfield. The letter was an utterly cynical piece of confected outrage, and I think in response I would have issued an utterly cynical confected apology, and gone the 'bad boy forgiven' route. I also might have been tempted to put Kenyon up for an interrogation with someone like Kuensberg so the public could see him sweat it out. High risk, but I think many women might have seen it and ended up with some sneaking sympathy. His line would have been - 'sorry, regret my comments, however do we want a society where the only people who are allowed to hold office are people who have never said anything regrettable on social media?'.
Even with all that, I think Reform's best result would have been to be 'robbed' by Restore. That would have fit their narrative nicely. Sadly they just missed out.
On your last point - I appreciate the short term benefit of that (consolidate the hard-right vote) - but isn’t that an extremely limited strategy?
Having a big argument with Lowe about split votes and precisely how many pogroms to conduct isn’t going to put Farage into No 10. At least this time they aren’t blaming “family voting”, which suggests they’ve learnt the lesson from last time.
Marina Hyde analyses it rather better than does Lucky.
Nobody fetishises plain speaking like Farage, so we owe it to him to honour that and observe that Reform really shat the bed. Makerfield is among the party’s top 10 target seats for a general election, and Reform strategists’ decision to field yet another inadequate liability, whose past social media activity they simply couldn’t be arsed checking, seems to have proved something of a turn-off – for example for women, who strangely didn’t feel minded to vote for someone who had said: “I’m sexist, sorry but I am.” Rob Kenyon will no doubt be back on his plumbing rounds next week. So, Makerfield ladies, make sure your husband’s home to be consulted as to whether you really want your sink unblocked. It’ll honestly be cheaper to replace it.
Meanwhile it would take a heart of stone not to cackle at the fact that Reform is now losing votes to an insurgent party to its right. The thing to remember about Restore is that it is a party that genuinely only exists because Nigel couldn’t handle some light strategic criticism from Rupert Lowe. Why? Because Nigel is, and always has been, a diva who has huge fallouts with colleagues and allies...
Yes, if anyone is ever going to get their finger on the pulse of Reform and working class areas like Makerfield it’s Guardian writing upper class tedious Posho, Marina Hyde.
So what exactly that she said is inaccurate;
Reform had a poor candidate? They didn’t do a good enough job vetting him? It’s a poor performance in their No 10 target if they are to win power? Farage can’t take criticism? Woman don’t like sexism? Restore are causing them Problems?
Play the Ball, not the Woman!
Peter.
Possibly, but don't forget Reform are going for the sexist vote (or anti-woke, if you prefer) They increased their vote from the GE. The next election won't be next Thursday and Restore won't be standing against them in most seats. What they do now doesn't have much relevance to 2 or 3 years time. Of course a huge crash might show they are a spent force, but this isn't it. Restore didn't make the difference anyway No politician can take criticism, our system doesn't allow it.
It might be slightly sub par but I think what she said is just left-liberal wishcasting. Reform's ascent to power isn't going to be linear in any case, you expect ups and downs.
The biggest issue is the willingness of the non-Reform voter to vote tactically which I am not sure is yet understood
The dynamic will be very different in a GE where the individual candidate matters far less. I have no idea what the Fukkers thought they were doing when they went with that moronic Deano.
I am guessing they didn't have anyone else. He was already the candidate in the GE and did OK. But moronic or not, I think he could have been presented in in a better light.
Marina Hyde's piece is not an analysis, it is a centre-left happy ending massage. That's fine, and she makes a good living doing it, but to think it has actual validity as commentary shows a remarkable lack of perception.
To Eabhal's point, you are right, Reform should not spend their time moaning about Restore, but had Restore blocked them, the implication would have been clear enough not to mention it.
I think the United (Opposed To Everything) Kingdom is apt .
Nothing gets done because politicians are too frightened to tell some home truths . Put taxes up to pay for defence opposed, try and build anything opposed , try and deal with social care opposed etc .
The public just aren’t interested in anyone telling them the reality so just want to continue down the path into la la land .
FIFY:
The public sector isn't interested in anyone telling them the reality so just want to continue down the path into la la land
The fact there has been virtually no change in Makerfield between 2024 and now suggests that it isn’t Labour that’s the problem, it’s Keir Starmer.
The underlying problem is the country wants changes that are 1) too expensive for our budget and/or 2) implausible. So any candidate representing the status quo is going to lose to a change candidate for the next decade at least. Policies, values etc are not that important, if we had a Conservative or Reform govt they would be extremely unpopular too.
Burnham has gone too early - he should have taken over in 2027 and portrayed himself as a change candidate in 2028. It will be very difficult to portray himself as a change candidate when he has been there for a couple of years.
I think Starmer would have worked as a change candidate were it not for winter fuel. Everything that came after was downhill but that was the initial destructive act. I supported the policy but it was utterly toxic against the new Labour coalition as to be fair many Labour MPs said at the time.
Mandelson would have been easily survivable by somebody with more popularity.
From a party POV, he should have made benefit reform a confidence issue and then quit then if it hadn’t passed. Letting that go just gave the PLP the magic money tree. Burnham will have to grapple with that too but he will start with goodwill.
Surely the point of the Labour Party is to attempt to solve national problems with policies that match the culture of the Labour Party?
The WFA cut seemed like an attempt of cod-Thatcherism. No Labour MP went into politics to cheer cutting benefits.
You want to reduce the welfare bill, but are a Labour PM? What do Labour MPs like? Benefits targeted to the poorest, perhaps?
So announce all the old age extras are going in a blender. The result will be means tests/taxed, so as to target the poorest pensioners.
Then you sell that to the MPs as a reform that makes the poor better off, while being fiscally prudent.
No labour MP went into parliament wanting to make a difficult decision. They want to open fetes, garden centres, shops, and do lots of feel good social work while not upsetting anyone.
Taz, and make plenty of cash, expenses, second houses. A lucrative business for useless donkeys.
I have always wondered how James Callaghan was able to buy a 130 acre farm in East Sussex.
Especially when you see Harold Wilson very modest little Cottage in the Isles of Scilly.
Callaghan was born and educated about half a mile from where I live in to a fairly modest Brixham family.
A little known fact he attended Furzham Junior School, still there as a school today.
There are a limited number of properties for sale on the Isles of Scilly (mostly being owned and leased by the Duchy of Cornwall The ones you can buy are not cheap....
I agree, I've looked previously as what's available as holiday there each year.
The fact is though that by ex PM standards it's very modest.
A local resident I've seen a few times in Old Town knew the Wilsons and especially his wife who lived to a ripe old age.
When I'm in the Old Town churchyard looking for a rare migrant, I will go and pay my respects at his grave.
Reflecting on the Makerfield byelection result, I think (as I said) that Burnham was the favourite going in, and never really looked troubled.
Reform would always have struggled, but I think could have performed better if they had developed an effective counternarrative against Burnham, beyond their charge that he was using Makerfield as a stepping stone. That was clearly believed by a lot of people, but it couldn't really go anywhere. I felt where Burnham was weakest was at the point of WASPI - it was an embarrassing f U-turn in real time. But for whatever reason it didn't seem that this was capitalised on.
They also had a problem with the plumber, who I don't think was a terrible candidate, but was undoubtedly damaged, particularly by the Vorderman letter to the women of Makerfield. The letter was an utterly cynical piece of confected outrage, and I think in response I would have issued an utterly cynical confected apology, and gone the 'bad boy forgiven' route. I also might have been tempted to put Kenyon up for an interrogation with someone like Kuensberg so the public could see him sweat it out. High risk, but I think many women might have seen it and ended up with some sneaking sympathy. His line would have been - 'sorry, regret my comments, however do we want a society where the only people who are allowed to hold office are people who have never said anything regrettable on social media?'.
Even with all that, I think Reform's best result would have been to be 'robbed' by Restore. That would have fit their narrative nicely. Sadly they just missed out.
On your last point - I appreciate the short term benefit of that (consolidate the hard-right vote) - but isn’t that an extremely limited strategy?
Having a big argument with Lowe about split votes and precisely how many pogroms to conduct isn’t going to put Farage into No 10. At least this time they aren’t blaming “family voting”, which suggests they’ve learnt the lesson from last time.
Marina Hyde analyses it rather better than does Lucky.
Nobody fetishises plain speaking like Farage, so we owe it to him to honour that and observe that Reform really shat the bed. Makerfield is among the party’s top 10 target seats for a general election, and Reform strategists’ decision to field yet another inadequate liability, whose past social media activity they simply couldn’t be arsed checking, seems to have proved something of a turn-off – for example for women, who strangely didn’t feel minded to vote for someone who had said: “I’m sexist, sorry but I am.” Rob Kenyon will no doubt be back on his plumbing rounds next week. So, Makerfield ladies, make sure your husband’s home to be consulted as to whether you really want your sink unblocked. It’ll honestly be cheaper to replace it.
Meanwhile it would take a heart of stone not to cackle at the fact that Reform is now losing votes to an insurgent party to its right. The thing to remember about Restore is that it is a party that genuinely only exists because Nigel couldn’t handle some light strategic criticism from Rupert Lowe. Why? Because Nigel is, and always has been, a diva who has huge fallouts with colleagues and allies...
Yes, if anyone is ever going to get their finger on the pulse of Reform and working class areas like Makerfield it’s Guardian writing upper class tedious Posho, Marina Hyde.
So you feel upper class tedious Posho Marina Hyde doesn't have the finger on the pulse of upper class tedious Posho Nigel Farage's failed attempt to gain a working class area like Makerfield for the fascists ?
Not that I noticed during 13 years in Parliament - it's not that I deliberately refrained from making money, but I can't even think of an opportunity that MPs have to make it, though they're much better paid than when I first applied (£98K vs £39K IIRC). Perhaps Glenys inherited money?
Hardly a big number for Glenys. However overlapping your time NP would be Mandelson. Did it never strike you as odd that he funded his lifestyle so easily?
MPs don't particularly socialise (your time is divided between office and constituency, with maybe the odd dinner with colleagues), so I never had a view about Mandelson's wealth or otherwise. My only contact with him was as a Minister, in which he was fairly effective and (not all that common) had interesting ideas.
MPs do read newspapers though. There must have been at least a vague sense of it being odd?
I don't recall any newspaper articles about Mandelson's savings, in the period 1997-2010 when I was in Parliament. There are various wealthy MPs for diverse reasons - you're vaguely aware of them but not to the point of thinking that it's odd. I think you overestimate the time and scope for MPs to wonder about each other's private circumstances.
I think the United (Opposed To Everything) Kingdom is apt .
Nothing gets done because politicians are too frightened to tell some home truths . Put taxes up to pay for defence opposed, try and build anything opposed , try and deal with social care opposed etc .
The public just aren’t interested in anyone telling them the reality so just want to continue down the path into la la land .
I think this is wrong.
Politicians have bought into the focus group bullshit to the point they don’t want to upset anyone.
Why anyone would want a professional politician with all the grubbiness and politics that causes (look at burnham and his bothering of an electorate to gain personal power) over a constitutional monarch is beyond me
People in Ireland are genuinely delighted with their new President and her ball-playing skills, and when you have a President with extremely limited constitutional power, as in Ireland, it isn't really that contentious.
I find it odd to elect a head of state if they have very limited powers - why bother then? - but clearly it does work.
I'm happy to stick with constitutional monarchy as i think it too works.
Isn't the common factor very limited powers? The advantage with an elected one is it's much cheaper and it doesn't sit at the heart of a hierarchy designed to reinforce a backward-looking, sclerotic class system
Yes aren’t US Presidents and Presidential elections very cheap, definitely not billions spent there, oh no. Isn’t the US republic also remarkably equal with its billionaire President its lack of universal healthcare, barely any welfare state and a minimum wage far lower than the UK. While those awfully class ridden unequal constitutional monarchies like Sweden, Canada, the UK, Denmark, the Netherlands, New Zealand and Japan are lame dreadful places to live…oh wait
Your deranged royalism has not for the first time addled your powers of comprehension. The original comparison was between British and Irish heads of state.
The Irish head of state is a leftist ex politician nonentity, virtually nobody has heard of outside Ireland and who over a third of Irish voters voted against. In any case in a current UK presidential election we might well elect President Farage
The Irish President can do keepy-uppies and land a basketball through a hoop backwards, so she makes people smile and people are happy that she can speak the language. She's a good advert for an elected figurehead President.
No she is a far left politician who makes political statements attacking Israel and who over a third of Irish voters voted against.
She also is barely recognised abroad and brings in no tourism revenue while still living in a 90 room Dublin mansion and being taxpayer funded
In case it has passed you by, it's pretty much a universal consensus in Ireland that Israel are a worthy target of condemnation, so that's hardly a demerit for the Irish President.
People did vote against her, but they have been able to accept the result and support her afterwards. Lots of warm words spoken when she was inaugurated, lots of people smiling who had campaigned for the other candidate in the election.
Ireland's history attracts a lot of tourists, and I don't think that would be any different if the country had a High King now, or a Governor- General. I would bet there would still be loads of tourists wanting to see the Royal Palaces in Britain even if there wasn't a current monarch. Possibly more.
Jews in Ireland certainly weren't happy nor was Israel, Connolly is completely unknown outside of Ireland and we would get fewer tourosts to London and Windsor with no royals. President Farage or President Blair or President Johnson would probably be living and working in Buckingham Palace anyway restricting tourist visits
Boris Johnson would have been much better suited to being a figurehead President than Prime Minister.
If becoming a republic would divert characters like him into the Presidency rather then that would be an additional benefit.
Why anyone would want a professional politician with all the grubbiness and politics that causes (look at burnham and his bothering of an electorate to gain personal power) over a constitutional monarch is beyond me
People in Ireland are genuinely delighted with their new President and her ball-playing skills, and when you have a President with extremely limited constitutional power, as in Ireland, it isn't really that contentious.
I find it odd to elect a head of state if they have very limited powers - why bother then? - but clearly it does work.
I'm happy to stick with constitutional monarchy as i think it too works.
Isn't the common factor very limited powers? The advantage with an elected one is it's much cheaper and it doesn't sit at the heart of a hierarchy designed to reinforce a backward-looking, sclerotic class system
Yes aren’t US Presidents and Presidential elections very cheap, definitely not billions spent there, oh no. Isn’t the US republic also remarkably equal with its billionaire President its lack of universal healthcare, barely any welfare state and a minimum wage far lower than the UK. While those awfully class ridden unequal constitutional monarchies like Sweden, Canada, the UK, Denmark, the Netherlands, New Zealand and Japan are lame dreadful places to live…oh wait
Your deranged royalism has not for the first time addled your powers of comprehension. The original comparison was between British and Irish heads of state.
The Irish head of state is a leftist ex politician nonentity, virtually nobody has heard of outside Ireland and who over a third of Irish voters voted against. In any case in a current UK presidential election we might well elect President Farage
The Irish President can do keepy-uppies and land a basketball through a hoop backwards, so she makes people smile and people are happy that she can speak the language. She's a good advert for an elected figurehead President.
No she is a far left politician who makes political statements attacking Israel and who over a third of Irish voters voted against.
She also is barely recognised abroad and brings in no tourism revenue while still living in a 90 room Dublin mansion and being taxpayer funded
In case it has passed you by, it's pretty much a universal consensus in Ireland that Israel are a worthy target of condemnation, so that's hardly a demerit for the Irish President.
People did vote against her, but they have been able to accept the result and support her afterwards. Lots of warm words spoken when she was inaugurated, lots of people smiling who had campaigned for the other candidate in the election.
Ireland's history attracts a lot of tourists, and I don't think that would be any different if the country had a High King now, or a Governor- General. I would bet there would still be loads of tourists wanting to see the Royal Palaces in Britain even if there wasn't a current monarch. Possibly more.
Jews in Ireland certainly weren't happy nor was Israel, Connolly is completely unknown outside of Ireland and we would get fewer tourosts to London and Windsor with no royals. President Farage or President Blair or President Johnson would probably be living and working in Buckingham Palace anyway restricting tourist visits
Boris Johnson would have been much better suited to being a figurehead President than Prime Minister.
If becoming a republic would divert characters like him into the Presidency rather then that would be an additional benefit.
Johnson as President would be more likely as unlike Ireland but like the US or France we areba UNSC P5 and G7 power so bigger politicians would fill the role. So then bang goes the head of state being a unifying figure
Does anyone have a spreadsheet featuring MPs who called for a fresh general election when the Conservatives changed their leaders in mid-term?
You don’t need a spreadsheet! All the opposition MPs would have called for a new election . This time Kemi better muzzle it , indeed all the Tories shouldn’t embarrass themselves given the amount of leaders they got through .
I think the United (Opposed To Everything) Kingdom is apt .
Nothing gets done because politicians are too frightened to tell some home truths . Put taxes up to pay for defence opposed, try and build anything opposed , try and deal with social care opposed etc .
The public just aren’t interested in anyone telling them the reality so just want to continue down the path into la la land .
I think the United (Opposed To Everything) Kingdom is apt .
Nothing gets done because politicians are too frightened to tell some home truths . Put taxes up to pay for defence opposed, try and build anything opposed , try and deal with social care opposed etc .
The public just aren’t interested in anyone telling them the reality so just want to continue down the path into la la land .
I think this is wrong.
Politicians have bought into the focus group bullshit to the point they don’t want to upset anyone.
This leads to upsetting everyone.
See the driving test farce.
Even with big majorities they get frit. The idea of tradeoffs or less than perfect policies seems opposed.
Reflecting on the Makerfield byelection result, I think (as I said) that Burnham was the favourite going in, and never really looked troubled.
Reform would always have struggled, but I think could have performed better if they had developed an effective counternarrative against Burnham, beyond their charge that he was using Makerfield as a stepping stone. That was clearly believed by a lot of people, but it couldn't really go anywhere. I felt where Burnham was weakest was at the point of WASPI - it was an embarrassing f U-turn in real time. But for whatever reason it didn't seem that this was capitalised on.
They also had a problem with the plumber, who I don't think was a terrible candidate, but was undoubtedly damaged, particularly by the Vorderman letter to the women of Makerfield. The letter was an utterly cynical piece of confected outrage, and I think in response I would have issued an utterly cynical confected apology, and gone the 'bad boy forgiven' route. I also might have been tempted to put Kenyon up for an interrogation with someone like Kuensberg so the public could see him sweat it out. High risk, but I think many women might have seen it and ended up with some sneaking sympathy. His line would have been - 'sorry, regret my comments, however do we want a society where the only people who are allowed to hold office are people who have never said anything regrettable on social media?'.
Even with all that, I think Reform's best result would have been to be 'robbed' by Restore. That would have fit their narrative nicely. Sadly they just missed out.
On your last point - I appreciate the short term benefit of that (consolidate the hard-right vote) - but isn’t that an extremely limited strategy?
Having a big argument with Lowe about split votes and precisely how many pogroms to conduct isn’t going to put Farage into No 10. At least this time they aren’t blaming “family voting”, which suggests they’ve learnt the lesson from last time.
Marina Hyde analyses it rather better than does Lucky.
Nobody fetishises plain speaking like Farage, so we owe it to him to honour that and observe that Reform really shat the bed. Makerfield is among the party’s top 10 target seats for a general election, and Reform strategists’ decision to field yet another inadequate liability, whose past social media activity they simply couldn’t be arsed checking, seems to have proved something of a turn-off – for example for women, who strangely didn’t feel minded to vote for someone who had said: “I’m sexist, sorry but I am.” Rob Kenyon will no doubt be back on his plumbing rounds next week. So, Makerfield ladies, make sure your husband’s home to be consulted as to whether you really want your sink unblocked. It’ll honestly be cheaper to replace it.
Meanwhile it would take a heart of stone not to cackle at the fact that Reform is now losing votes to an insurgent party to its right. The thing to remember about Restore is that it is a party that genuinely only exists because Nigel couldn’t handle some light strategic criticism from Rupert Lowe. Why? Because Nigel is, and always has been, a diva who has huge fallouts with colleagues and allies...
Yes, if anyone is ever going to get their finger on the pulse of Reform and working class areas like Makerfield it’s Guardian writing upper class tedious Posho, Marina Hyde.
So you feel upper class tedious Posho Marina Hyde doesn't have the finger on the pulse of upper class tedious Posho Nigel Farage's failed attempt to gain a working class area like Makerfield for the fascists ?
Reflecting on the Makerfield byelection result, I think (as I said) that Burnham was the favourite going in, and never really looked troubled.
Reform would always have struggled, but I think could have performed better if they had developed an effective counternarrative against Burnham, beyond their charge that he was using Makerfield as a stepping stone. That was clearly believed by a lot of people, but it couldn't really go anywhere. I felt where Burnham was weakest was at the point of WASPI - it was an embarrassing f U-turn in real time. But for whatever reason it didn't seem that this was capitalised on.
They also had a problem with the plumber, who I don't think was a terrible candidate, but was undoubtedly damaged, particularly by the Vorderman letter to the women of Makerfield. The letter was an utterly cynical piece of confected outrage, and I think in response I would have issued an utterly cynical confected apology, and gone the 'bad boy forgiven' route. I also might have been tempted to put Kenyon up for an interrogation with someone like Kuensberg so the public could see him sweat it out. High risk, but I think many women might have seen it and ended up with some sneaking sympathy. His line would have been - 'sorry, regret my comments, however do we want a society where the only people who are allowed to hold office are people who have never said anything regrettable on social media?'.
Even with all that, I think Reform's best result would have been to be 'robbed' by Restore. That would have fit their narrative nicely. Sadly they just missed out.
On your last point - I appreciate the short term benefit of that (consolidate the hard-right vote) - but isn’t that an extremely limited strategy?
Having a big argument with Lowe about split votes and precisely how many pogroms to conduct isn’t going to put Farage into No 10. At least this time they aren’t blaming “family voting”, which suggests they’ve learnt the lesson from last time.
Marina Hyde analyses it rather better than does Lucky.
Nobody fetishises plain speaking like Farage, so we owe it to him to honour that and observe that Reform really shat the bed. Makerfield is among the party’s top 10 target seats for a general election, and Reform strategists’ decision to field yet another inadequate liability, whose past social media activity they simply couldn’t be arsed checking, seems to have proved something of a turn-off – for example for women, who strangely didn’t feel minded to vote for someone who had said: “I’m sexist, sorry but I am.” Rob Kenyon will no doubt be back on his plumbing rounds next week. So, Makerfield ladies, make sure your husband’s home to be consulted as to whether you really want your sink unblocked. It’ll honestly be cheaper to replace it.
Meanwhile it would take a heart of stone not to cackle at the fact that Reform is now losing votes to an insurgent party to its right. The thing to remember about Restore is that it is a party that genuinely only exists because Nigel couldn’t handle some light strategic criticism from Rupert Lowe. Why? Because Nigel is, and always has been, a diva who has huge fallouts with colleagues and allies...
Yes, if anyone is ever going to get their finger on the pulse of Reform and working class areas like Makerfield it’s Guardian writing upper class tedious Posho, Marina Hyde.
So you feel upper class tedious Posho Marina Hyde doesn't have the finger on the pulse of upper class tedious Posho Nigel Farage's failed attempt to gain a working class area like Makerfield for the fascists ?
I’m sure she’ll file copy and make a wage from it and her army of online sycophants will keep stroking her ego.
Burnham is now clearly the leftwing candidate in any Labour leadership election against Starmer and New Labour Streeting. Whereas he wasn’t in 2015 with Corbyn taking that role nor in 2010 when Ed Miliband and Abbott were the leftist candidates and he was still relatively New Labour.
Burnham might take some encouragement from Ronald Reagan who was beaten by Nixon in the 1968 Republican primaries and narrowly by Ford in the 1976 Republican primaries. As we all remember though Reagan won the 1980 Republican primaries and then the 1980 and 1984 presidential elections. Biden also ran for the Democrats nomination in 1988 and 2008 losing to Dukakis and Obama before finally winning in 2020 the nomination and presidential election
In this particular context what would 'leftwing' mean? Does it mean significantly more than having a particular rhetoric about how you talk politics? How does it relate policy and practicewise to: private enterprise, debt to GDP ratios, deficit, benefits, growth, NATO, overall tax levels, interest rates, migration, student loans, and so on? Unless it means different from Starmer, Tories, LDs, etc in ways that can be articulated, how are we to evaluate?
I think it is Burnham's willingness to take strategic monopolies such as Thames Water into public ownership. Starmer is very reluctant because it looks too left wing, even though it is very popular with electors.
If that's all I'm left wing too, especially if Thames Water's value is £0 and its debts don't fall on the tax payer. Otherwise, it can't be done because the government's bank balance is minus £3 trillion.
I am pretty pragmatic when it comes to public ownership but in my view if something has obviously failed in the private sector who can’t we just accept it and move on. It’s this weird idea that it can only be temporary that is terrible for long term planning.
There is nothing left or right about natural and essential monopolies being outside the private sector. The essence of private enterprise is free and open competition. With water this cannot happen, so you have to invent a regulator who (not very well) governs activity and profits. That is more like rentierdom.
If water were in the public sector now it would not occur to right or left to privatise it any more than they plan to privatise the M1.
Well my point. We tried it and it has failed. Just accept some things are better nor in private ownership and call it a day. Why does the UK always decide to operate outside of every other country in Europe?
Water industry is nationalised in China, mostly privately owned now in France
The water industry in the United States is predominantly in public ownership. Publicly owned municipal water utilities serve 87% of customers in the US. It's not just China.
One reason why water was privatised was because a large amount of expensive work was required that couldn't be justified / placed on government borrowing.
Given that Thames Water has been going bankrupt now for 2 years hopefully we have a plan where bond holders who have bought debt designed to pay Thames Water's owners dividends are left holding the can.
And yes that does mean there are some teachers in Canada about to lose a tiny bit of their pensions.
“Given that Thames Water has been going bankrupt now for 2 years hopefully we have a plan..”
It’s been going bankrupt for longer than that.
Plus there’s a tiny flaw in your sentence. “Hopefully we have a plan”.
About a third of Thames Water's income goes to paying interest on its debt. Incredible. Remove the debt (because it's bankrupt) and suddenly it's profitable and cash generating. Its investors will argue that makes it a valuable company and they should receive massive compensation. £100b has been mentioned!
But because the company's debts far exceed its assets, existing shareholders cannot "walk away" from the debt while keeping the underlying value of the pipes and treatment plants.
If Thames Water goes bankrupt and enters the government's Special Administration Regime (SAR), its existing equity is legally wiped out and treated as completely worthless.
So there is the plan. Do SAR and its cash generation can finance better environmental protection, mend leaks, perhaps a reservoir, and hopefully a reduction in consumer prices.
Just ignore the special pleading from the Private Equity vultures which Starmer seems unwilling to do.
It’s not so much the “hedge funds” as things like the Foreigner Office getting upset on behalf of Canadian Pension funds etc.
Most of the debt went to people looking for long term, safe investment.
Where it went wrong was in the company management and the advisors to the outside investors. Both management and the advisors were on return+ - that is, if they delivered the expected returns they got ok money. If they delivered above that, big money.
Comments
It means nothing of course but I have been quite surprised two friends who historically would be solid Labour expressing some enthusiasm for Kemi. (As I only have two friends this is powerful evidence!)
Amazon
Tax
High
Are vomit inducing, since Amazon pay minimal tax anywhere.
Tax the fuckers what any UK Company in the same Sector would pay.
Then use the proceeds to Cut Employers NI in certain sectors.
Like this stunning modern home.
It’s most tacky
https://www.rightmove.co.uk/properties/168946754#/?channel=RES_BUY
Like this stunning modern home.
It’s most tacky
https://www.rightmove.co.uk/properties/168946754#/?channel=RES_BUY
The combination of house price growth, pensions and investments can easily make people millionaires.
Ronald Read (Janitor & Gas Station Attendant): Read, a rural Vermont resident who never made a high wage, secretly amassed an $8 million fortune. He achieved this over decades by living below his means, consistently purchasing blue-chip dividend stocks (like Procter & Gamble and JPMorgan Chase), and holding them for the long term. Upon his death, he left millions to his local library and hospital.
Grace Groner (Secretary): Orphaned at a young age, she spent her career working as a secretary at Abbott Laboratories. In 1935, she bought three shares of Abbott stock for $60. She never sold them, reinvested the dividends, and held the shares for over 70 years. When she passed away, she left a $7 million fortune to charity and educational trusts.
She also is barely recognised abroad and brings in no tourism revenue while still living in a 90 room Dublin mansion and being taxpayer funded
The Lady was NOT FOR TURNING
FFS Kemi turns 4 or 5 times a week
As i don't have any plans for kids I suppose i should do the same. First step, obtain a fortune.
Market and brought it into the hotel
The polls show a very different story to yours and Mandelson was the fatal appointment that,when added to everything else, has ended Starmer’s time
Better to head to the bookies and use your knowledge of future sporting and political events.
And then go to a stockbroker.
Callaghan was born and educated about half a mile from where I live in to a fairly modest Brixham family.
A little known fact he attended Furzham Junior School, still there as a school today.
Michael Moore - ex-MP
David Laws - ex-MP
Chris Huhne - ex-MP
Danny Alexander - ex MP
Vince Cable - ex MP
Nick Clegg - ex-MP
Ed Davey - LibDem leader
Within a decade, virtually all of that Cabinet expertise has either resigned or been booted out by the voters. That was their reward for vague competence...
My last company declared all its profits via Switzerland. All POs I sent out for inventory items had the Swiss head office as the legal entity.
Non inventory was the local sister.
We had to run two separate supply bases to service it.
They’re not alone.
But, yeah, you could just buy some shares in Microsoft and the Home Depot.
Obviously different to the Irish Presidency.
No foreign tourists go to Dublin for her inauguration or her family’s weddings or jubilees or soldiers parades either
It worth remembering that while the tories on here grovel at Kemi's feet as if she were Ayesha of Kor, the reality is that the tories poll 20% on a good day. Abject.
People did vote against her, but they have been able to accept the result and support her afterwards. Lots of warm words spoken when she was inaugurated, lots of people smiling who had campaigned for the other candidate in the election.
Ireland's history attracts a lot of tourists, and I don't think that would be any different if the country had a High King now, or a Governor-General. I would bet there would still be loads of tourists wanting to see the Royal Palaces in Britain even if there wasn't a current monarch. Possibly more.
Kemi is focused on getting centrist swing voters who voted for Blair, Tory from 2010 until 2019 then for Starmer in 2024 and won’t like Burnham’s tax rises
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c78yjwwxq01o
Musk boosting a nothing party will keep them in the conversation but not make them a force.
Cheapest local wines in the supermarket knocking on £10.
Cleverly, Mordaunt, Hunt would have a better than even chance.
She nerds to regain 30 Labour seats and 30 LD seats in old Tory heartland, they would, she's hot little chance as reasoned why very well above.
We were thinking of Antalya or Bodrum next year but maybe not now.
We have been at war with the mullahs in Iran since 1989. After we overthrew Saddam Hussein, the mullahs changed their strategy to avoid direct confrontations with the US, and instead use proxies, and indirect means, in their war against us.
A series of presidents, Carter, Reagan, George H. W. Bush, Clinton, George W. Bush, and Barack Obama have tried different strategies in this war, with varying degrees of success. Reagan and George W. Bush used threats. Obama worked with European allies to constrain the mullah’s efforts to get nuclear weapons.
What should our grand strategy be against the mullahs? That’s a genuine question, to which I do not have a full answer. But I do think we need to think hard about the problem, and I do think we can solve it, just as we solved the problem of the Soviet Union.
If we are willing to think long term.
I’ll start the discussion by saying what we should not do. We should not shut down the Voice of America. And, it seems, majorities in the Congress agree with me on that: https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2026/01/13/voice-of-america-trump-congress-funding/
But not the Loser.
Versailles on the other hand is beautiful and people want to go there to see the extraordinary palace but also it has that haunting quality where people go to see and imagine the last days of the French monarchy and imagine Marie Antoinette and Louis before it went to pot so it has a mystique and beauty.
Windsor castle is impressive and obviously attractive as a dirty great castle not just a palace so people will still go but again it would be stripped of the curiosity of it being a royal home and the guards etc.
People already go to Hampton court as it’s a great building and the history with Henry VIII as a draw.
Otherwise is St James’ palace a big draw?
So I think that if you strip them of their real living attraction then I do t think it’s going to see any boost in tourists.
Perhaps unpopular MPs could have a spell in the stocks. That would certainly be a great public spectacle.
Maybe nomination for election could involve a series of public trials in the style of Gladiators or It's a Knockout. If it involves Tudor-style dress and is held at the Tower of London, I'm sure it would boost tourism.
The fact is though that by ex PM standards it's very modest.
A local resident I've seen a few times in Old Town knew the Wilsons and especially his wife who lived to a ripe old age.
Are you really telling me that you don't see glimmers of progress?
https://www.kyivpost.com/post/78590
Defense companies MBDA, MGI Engineering, and Rotron Aerospace are currently developing three competing weapon systems. Testing is scheduled to take place in the UK and Ukraine in the coming months, with the goal of deploying the new weapons to the front line within a year.
We don't need to swallow their PR as gospel, he's a racist old coot who has been fortunate to get the attention of rich americans.
Complaining about people repeating what you said as examples of what you really think, or a I-have-changed-but-not-really only make people despise you even more.
Nothing confected about it.
happy nor was Israel, Connolly is completely unknown outside of Ireland and we would get fewer tourosts to London and Windsor with no royals. President Farage or President Blair or President Johnson would probably be living and working in Buckingham Palace anyway restricting tourist visits
If you bought 40 years ago, you’d have paid a tiny fraction of that.
The pension pot for a decent retirement would be of that order. Remember, the state pension is effectively at £240k asset.
Her colleagues openly say that
A little contrition and humility goes a long way.
It could help her to learn that.
The aggressive tone leads her to shoot from the hip, good on occasions but kit on every topic.
That leads to the constant u turns, then denial of what she said, even when it's played to her time after time.
A glint of calmness would be start
But not the Loser.
Bit left field but…..
Renewables!
Iran has vast renewables potential particularly solar but also wind. Offer to invest in these as an Alternative to Civil Nuclear.
I am not saying send John Sweeney but as a country that has had civil nuclear and has rejected it in favour of renewables you make the case that Nuclear is last centuries technology not this one’s.
Harder to do if you yourself have a nuclear programme!
It gets a dialogue going it offers them something and it undermines their argument for enrichment.
We could redirect or build it into the £300bn reconstruction fund.
Also just to add.
Like Iraq under Saddam and indeed Russia and China, they talk of revolution and defeating us, but their core priority is their own survival not defeating us.
Don’t turn a Nasty Thug into a Bond Villian!
Peter.
We did this earlier.
If becoming a republic would divert characters like him into the Presidency rather then that would be an additional benefit.
Thatcher beat the like Burnham
more likeable Callaghan as voters
were fed up with Labour tax rises,
inflation, inefficient nationalised
industry and union strikes. Burnham has a platform similar to that Wilson and Callaghan had
Nothing gets done because politicians are too frightened to tell some home truths . Put taxes up to pay for defence opposed, try and build anything opposed , try and deal with social care opposed etc .
The public just aren’t interested in anyone telling them the reality so just want to continue down the path into la la land .
And then said “Israel is not subject to the United States, and we are an independent and sovereign nation!”
Ignoring the fact that without military aid from the USA it would be fxcked .
I’ve never seen a video where every point made is completely wrong. Matt Goodwin is a moron.
Marina Hyde's piece is not an analysis, it is a centre-left happy ending massage. That's fine, and she makes a good living doing it, but to think it has actual validity as commentary shows a remarkable lack of perception.
To Eabhal's point, you are right, Reform should not spend their time moaning about Restore, but had Restore blocked them, the implication would have been clear enough not to mention it.
The public sector isn't interested in anyone telling them the reality so just want to continue down the path into la la land
Politicians have bought into the focus group bullshit to the point they don’t want to upset anyone.
This leads to upsetting everyone.
See the driving test farce.
Big crane has arrived to lift Keir out of Downing Street
Most of the debt went to people looking for long term, safe investment.
Where it went wrong was in the company management and the advisors to the outside investors. Both management and the advisors were on return+ - that is, if they delivered the expected returns they got ok money. If they delivered above that, big money.