I have just read Starmer's recent interview where he cautions Burnham that he cannot simply dismiss international affairs as it plays a considerable part in a Prime Minister's in tray
He also wants to claim he has been a success and also seems bemused why all of a sudden he is labour's shortest serving PM
There does seem to be quite a group of mps and labour supporters quite shell shocked at the Burnham coronation and indeed it is reminiscent of Johnson's exit, with anger to this day from his close associates in the manner he was treated
I hope Burnham succeeds but with each passing day it does seem he is avoiding accountability, but then that all comes to an end 2 weeks this weekend when he will be on the brink of power and will have a cabinet to announce
If the rumours are true, he wants David Miliband and Ed Ball elevated to the Lords so they can be part of his government with David Miliband tipped as Foreign Secretary you do then have to wonder just how his present 400 plus mps feel when he has parachuted in his old cronies to jobs of influence at their expense
I really hope he does appoint a COE that is not controversial, especially not Ed Miliband, and if he wants to make people feel better he needs an immediate impact offer on the cost of living
Morning PB, hope you are well, and wondering if you can offer me some advice on a rather strange problem I have.
For the last two months I have been receiving letters - clearly machine produced - for a person who does not live, and as far as I know, has never lived in this house. I just returned them with a notice that they had been misaddressed, which has clearly been ignored as they kept coming. I thought of it as a nuisance, but not that important.
However, yesterday somebody turned up to hand deliver a note to this person. Unfortunately I was at a meeting in Birmingham at the time so could not speak to him or even answer the Ring doorbell, but because it has been hand delivered it has no return address on it. It is stamped 'for immediate attention' and 'private and confidential' (no paradox there)!
I'm not altogether sure what to do about this. I can deal with idiots sending mail to the wrong address, but I don't want random total strangers on my doorstep trying to contact phantoms. Apart from anything else, whoever they are they clearly want to speak to this person very badly and I don't want to find they mistake me for him if they're going to go to these lengths.
My instinct is to take this letter to the police, with a complaint. Is that the right thing to do, or is there another course of action? I'm not willing to open the letter myself.
On reflection I suggest this:
Because the letter was not delivered via the postal service and has no return address you cannot return the letter, or deal with it in any way until another step is taken. FWIW I don't think the police would be interested. The safest and most effective next step is to open it in the presence of a reliable independent witness (to avoid future allegations of it having a million pound note or diamond necklace in it that has vanished), and make a signed written record of what you found therein. The step after that would depend on what you found.
It’s just a misdelivered letter. Open it, on your own without a witness present. You should’ve done this 5 letters back.
Is this why people talk about the UK having become too obsessed with process?
Yes, I wouldn't f*** about. Certainly if someone is trying to stiff one for an iPhone or the deeds of one's house. Anyway we all now need to know!
You can put an alert on your property at HM land registry that will flag any alert on your property.
Regarding taxes, there's plenty of scope for Burnham to increase taxes without breaking manifesto promises imo. The key relevant statements about would seem to be:
"[Labour will] keep taxes, inflation and mortgages as low as possible."
"we will not increase National Insurance, the basic, higher, or additional rates of Income Tax, or VAT."
"Labour will cap corporation tax at the current level of 25 per cent, the lowest in the G7"
So, off the top of my head: property taxes, wealth taxes, additional taxes on unearned income, IHT rates, CGT rates, non-Dom taxes, ex-pat taxes... are all options.
To those of you still wedded to the 'cut spending' panacea, I say wake up - it's not happened through 14 years of Tory rule, it's certainly not going to happen now or for the foreseeable (not should it imo).
Taxes will rise. We all know it.
My taxes have been rising for the last 14 years, and at the same time I'm constantly being lectured to by the state.
Also, regarding that poll a bigger percentage seem to be glad Labour won than actually voted for them. So I’m not sure about buyers’ remorse?
That poll looks to me that Labour have a good chance at retaining power at the next GE. Close to double their current polling are pleased that Starmer won, and a third are undecided.
His biggest risk by far is internal division and opposition from within his MPs. Understandably, not all of them will be impressed that he’s managed to parachute into the top job, and he starts with no real Westminster power base and an agenda that challenges an awful lot of Westminister and Whitehall vested interests, and also still has one or two rivals keeping their knives sharp. And will need to take some tough decisions, not least on where the money is spent. It’s very easy to see a scenario where the combination of these human factors and the left’s perennial tendency to fall out over this, that and the other leads him into a mire of strife, especially if the public shine on his new administration doesn’t last.
Sensible folk within Labour ought to recognise that this restart is likely a last chance for this government and to realise that hanging together is hugely preferable to its well-known alternative.
Not disputing what you say, but it's almost unbelievable that a first term government with a huge majority barely halfway through the five years can be described as at its last chance.
Perhaps we'll look back and realise this was just the usual midterm blues, only rather more exaggerated than usual.
Good morning, everyone.
Miss JGP, I think Labour briefly fell behind the Conservatives early in the first Blair Parliament due to the fuel protests.
That said, I think this government has been especially poor. Partly that's because the situation now (as opposed to then) is not one of deciding where to spend all the lovely money but of trying to get finances in order, partly it's because they stupidly pretended a lack of giveaways/tax cuts was a mean Conservative choice rather than economic reality (so they didn't come up with any remedy in the manifesto), and partly it's because the party and its leader has acted in a way often seen as either antagonistic, stupid, or just incompetent.
There's something in that and from an anti-Labour or anti-"Left" perspective, I understand what you're saying.
Morgan McSweeney was quite right to identify the apparent lack of planning in Labour before the election - the comparison with 1997 was striking.
The problem was the OBR prevented Starmer and Reeves from hitting the ground running with an emergency Budget and legislation so instead they simply hit the ground. The WFA announcement sounded at the time like a need to do or say something and as a result it was botched - the concept wasn't unreasonable, WFA was being handed out to people who didn't need it and had it simply been taken from higher rate taxpayers, there'd have been grumbling but that's all.
The free tickets and the largesse of Lord Alli and others was blown up into a national scandal but there's been a sensitivity ever since expenses and duck houses to what politicians are given not because of the fact of them getting nice glasses, shirts and tickets to see Taylor Swift but the expectation of getting something (power, influence) in return.
That's something to which a more adroit incoming administration could and should have been aware - being given a shirt by a friend isn't a crime but Starmer could and should have been on the front foot.
Southport then threw the whole question of immigration into focus and we know that takes us down some dark paths.
There was no detail behind the concept of "change" but Starmer wasn't the first incoming PM elected on such a platform. The problem was, after a decade and a half of self-indulgent Conservative rule which achieved the sum total of bugger all and indeed wasted Government money, time and capital on trivilaities such as leaving the EU, people understandably were impatient for something different and what they seemed to get was at best more of the same and at worst masterly inactivity.
That impatience is at the heart of the political ennui into which we've fallen thanks mainly to two decades of economic stagnation and stagnant living standards from 2008. Now, I'll be blunt, I suspect Farage, Polanski and Davey wouldn't do any better and the first two would be much worse but Conservatives, of which I suspect you are one, continue as an example, to emphasise the carrot of cuts to taxes and stamp duty without explaining in detail the stick of welfare cuts - whose benefits would you cut and by how much? It's not unreasonable to ask such questions and nor is it unreasonable for those affected to protest strongly.
"...The problem was the OBR prevented Starmer and Reeves from hitting the ground running with an emergency Budget and legislation so instead they simply hit the ground..."
In which case the solution is "abolish the OBR".
There has been a nearly thirty-year experiment in British politics with taking the politics out of politics. So many decisions are made by institutions set up by the previous parliaments: interest rates set by the BoE, the OBR, the Human Rights Act 1998, the Climate Change Act 2008, the Equality Act 2010, the EHRC, the Supreme Court, the Climate Change Committee.
I don't think people have realised that the problem isn't whether Burnham is left-wing or Truss is right-wing, it's that Government or even Parliament cannot make decisions and carry them out. We have the brakes of a 747 and the engine of an asthmatic ant
The standard response was "they can't possibly be any worse".
They certainly haven’t been any worse than the Tories imo. And the fundamental issues they’re dealing with (immigration, borrowing, poor public services, welfare costs, health service issues, defence underfunding, etc , etc.) were all caused by your Tories.
Labour have though been disappointing; I was hoping for more.
"Your Tories"
Grow up.
Grow up, says the man who readily calls posters who out-argue him 'wanker' and 'prick'.
Anyway, are you not a Tory?
It's quite endearing that you genuinely believe you "out argue" others when the mark of your posts is partisan ad hominem.
Comments
He also wants to claim he has been a success and also seems bemused why all of a sudden he is labour's shortest serving PM
There does seem to be quite a group of mps and labour supporters quite shell shocked at the Burnham coronation and indeed it is reminiscent of Johnson's exit, with anger to this day from his close associates in the manner he was treated
I hope Burnham succeeds but with each passing day it does seem he is avoiding accountability, but then that all comes to an end 2 weeks this weekend when he will be on the brink of power and will have a cabinet to announce
If the rumours are true, he wants David Miliband and Ed Ball elevated to the Lords so they can be part of his government with David Miliband tipped as Foreign Secretary you do then have to wonder just how his present 400 plus mps feel when he has parachuted in his old cronies to jobs of influence at their expense
I really hope he does appoint a COE that is not controversial, especially not Ed Miliband, and if he wants to make people feel better he needs an immediate impact offer on the cost of living
Continual tax rises haven't worked either.
In which case the solution is "abolish the OBR".
There has been a nearly thirty-year experiment in British politics with taking the politics out of politics. So many decisions are made by institutions set up by the previous parliaments: interest rates set by the BoE, the OBR, the Human Rights Act 1998, the Climate Change Act 2008, the Equality Act 2010, the EHRC, the Supreme Court, the Climate Change Committee.
I don't think people have realised that the problem isn't whether Burnham is left-wing or Truss is right-wing, it's that Government or even Parliament cannot make decisions and carry them out. We have the brakes of a 747 and the engine of an asthmatic ant
Oh, and here's the compulsory backlink to my previous article: https://www.politicalbetting.com/index.php/archives/2024/09/28/the-blob/
Still, whatever keeps you happy in your dotage.