Could this German stop Andy Burnham becoming Prime Minister on Monday? – politicalbetting.com
Could this German stop Andy Burnham becoming Prime Minister on Monday? – politicalbetting.com
The countdown is ON! ??????????? England v Argentina, World Cup semi-final | Live on BBC One and BBC iPlayer from 1900 BST??? Watch, listen and follow build-up across BBC iPlayer, BBC Sounds and the BBC Sport website and app. pic.twitter.com/c2M7JOyQqy
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I think it will be a step too far, Argentina are good and we have half the team seemingly playing injuried, spending days on the bog with dodgy guts or suffering terrific back pain from carrying the rest of the team every game.
On to the big betting event of the day which I'm told is NOT the 6.50 at Lingfield - just 26 runners in the 6 races and RON'S ANGEL in the aforementioned 6.50 backed from 2s to 6/4 with Billy Loughnane probably the reason.
Paddy have England at 13/8, Argentina at 2s and 9/5 the Draw at 90 minutes. Both teams have dodgy defences - IF I were playing and God help me, I know next to nothing about "the beautiful game" at least in comparison to the "sport of kings", I'd be on 2-2 at 12s.
Mr Tuchel would be offered British citizenship as Sir Thomas Tuchel (or better yet change his name as some other Germans did in 1917).
He’d have been unable to score the “Goal of the Century” a few minutes later, where he dribbled the ball past the whole England team single-handedly.
The stick seems to have been removed from his arse
FT reporting Shabana Mahmood to be Burnham’s Chancellor.
- Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood is now expected to become Chancellor of the Exchequer
- Opponents of Ed Miliband campaigned to stop his appointment as Chancellor. He is expected to be offered Foreign Secretary.
- A Labour insider sympathetic to Miliband said his prospects of becoming Chancellor had suffered not so much because of scepticism about his net zero agenda, but because many in the party had not forgiven him for Labour's 2015 general election defeat.
- Also in line for Cabinet positions are Louise Haigh who will be in a “beefed up" role as Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, a senior Cabinet Office minister who drives cross-government policy and collaboration.
- Former Health Secretary Wes Streeting, Labour’s deputy leader Lucy Powell and former Housing Secretary Angela Rayner are all in line for Cabinet positions.
- Cabinet expected to be announced late Monday afternoon
https://x.com/kitty_donaldson/status/2077389081969864969?s=46
Another go at electing a leader will take place tonight at a full council meeting scheduled from 5.30-9pm.
Nationally there are currently two councils who have failed to select a leader, ourselves and Oldham, all other impasses, in such as Birmingham, Cambridge, iirc Chelmsford have been resolved. It seems over a lot of the last few years politics has often mirrored across Standedge, albeit in different variants.
Previously, the two candidates, the Green leader of a coalition containing LD and varying Independents and the Reform leader have failed to gain the leadership. It is not an X vs Y FPTP vote, it takes the form of two votes, one for or against X (or abstain), one for or against Y.
The Conservative group of 9 councillors have voted against both Green and Reform candidates in previous meetings, defeating both and saying they will only support a grand coalition.
It seems a lot of the preliminary fact finding discussions and questions between the parties were conducted on copy to all councillor email chains with a view to transparency. (some of the article covering this, for which I bought a physical newspaper as a one off as the best form of reading - over £3!!! - is below).
https://www.examinerlive.co.uk/news/local-news/kirklees-council-crisis-heated-confrontations-34150156
It looks like the Reform leader Cllr Wood (of, "we don't know what an amendment is" fame) is quite a radical her way or no way type who stonewalls anything not entirely to her liking, and would have liked to meet opposing politicians individually and face-to-face (perhaps to pick off individual Conservatives) so refused to engage at all with the email discovery.
It was also the Reform group that refused to countenance any rescheduling around the England game.
She has lost two councillors since May, one went independent one resigned (by-election 13/8), so the numbers are:
Green 12
Varied Ind 14
LD 5 (31 supporting Green coalition)
Con 9
Reform 27
ex-Reform Ind 1 (27 or 28 supporting Reform)
I think tonight some of the business prior to the vote will debate a Reform motion along the lines of "per precedent largest party should be able to form a cabinet" (let us be in charge). There is a Tory suggested amendment that in the circumstances the leadership only be valid for 12 months (Cllr Wood - "in they did not consult me on this amendment").
The thought crosses my mind that the coalition grouping could all sign up as a single group and reveal they have greater numbers in a single political group than Reform, though I feel such a trick improbable.
It does look to be edging a little towards a 12 month Reform led council though, the alternative being a process whereby the auditors invite the government to ultimately take over running of the council. I'm not at all certain of that outcome though.
All will become clear, or not, tonight.
https://x.com/MarcoFoster_/status/2077355291578876010
A Republican Senator ?
Maybe she will surprise on the upside. Which is another way of saying there's no reason to believe she will.
Does she have a clue about economics?
We know perfectly well that he is personable social democrat who by temperament will find spending money easier than raising it and that he faces problems to which there are no easy solutions.
In that sense he can't be that much different from Starmer. He may get luckier, and he can't be worse at making stupid mistakes and at communicating. So he starts 1-0 up.
Let's see what happens on Monday.
I thought they supported free speech !
After he was asked by Lineker about new wealth taxes Burnham said he wouldn’t rule it out but that it’s a decision “for another day”:
“I’m going to obviously take my time to properly look at the state of things, particularly the state of finances. And I just said a moment ago, Gary, about bringing people together. You know, I don’t want to come in and sort of, if you like, create new divisions and pitch people one against another.
“I’m not going rule things out right now. I do believe we need a greater sense of fairness and people feeling that things are being done in the right way and a fair way. But at the same time, you know, I don’t want to sort of be perceived as somebody who’s coming in with grudges and agendas and, you know, going to just immediately find or demonise one group or create a new way of dividing people.
“So, you know, decisions to be taken in time, they’re going to be difficult. I’m not going to shy away from that. You know, we are going to have to work quite hard to make sure, you know, we can pay our way.
“And at some point that might be having to ask for a little more. But, you know, those decisions are not for now. They’re for another day.”
https://x.com/EthanCroft98/status/2077410370751205433?s=20
Should this stuff be leaking now, though?
There's no denying he inherited a Labour Party in deep trouble after the 2019 defeat but the extent to which he was personally responsible for its renaissance and the extent to which said renaissance was the sole reserve of the disastrous Conservative administrations of Johnson, Truss and Sunak, buffeted as they were by events often outside their immediate control but nonetheless seemingly ill-equipped (for the most part) to deal with the consequences, I'm less certain.
The so-called "loveless landslide" of July 2024 doesn't alter the fact Labour won a big majority and you could argue in the 1983-97 period the groundwork for the 1997 success was as much laid by Kinnock, Smith and Blair as it was by Major and his own Cabinet and the events of "Black" Wednesday.
To be fair, it's not easy to come into Government after so long in Opposition - just ask Blair and Cameron - and you could appreciate the frustration if there was a substantial programme of radical legislation planned and being slow to be enacted but with Starmer, all I heard was "change".
Okay - "change", but from what to what? We couldn't go on as we were or had done from 2019-24 but there seemed no sense of what the incoming Government was trying to do - had it possessed, like Attlee in 1945 and Thatcher in 1979 and even Blair/Brown with the independence of the BoE in 1997, a radical programme of legislation, yes, we might have said, "let's see if this works".
Southport ended the honeymoon as did the hamfisted measures on winter fuel allowance which seemed an example of doing something just to be seen to be doing it. Yes, political nerds wanted immediate action but the country was heading on its summer holidays and could have waited.
The fundamental questions of the public finances and immigration (though the latter has evolved beyond the issues of "boats") remain largely unresolved and future administrations (starting with Burnham but not excluding a future Reform or Conservative Government) are going to have to face some difficult choices.
Starmer seems a prime example of a man leading a Government in office but not in power - his own authority over his backbenchers was challenged and found wanting over welfare. You can argue backbenchers have always had the power - after all, Conservative MPs undermined and forced the resignations of Thatcher, IDS, Cameron (arguably), May, Johnson and Truss.
We can only speculate what a Harris White House would have been like but the return of the arch-disruptor Trump left Starmer (as it would Sunak) looking uncomfortable trying to navigate a complex relationship.
It may well be (and only time will tell) history will judge both Sunak and Starmer rather better than is the case currently.
Cameron and Blair at least came in with a vision and a plan. Starmer, nothing.
I went in a cab I didn’t have to pay for with my friends who invited me. We met up with an old friend of mine who had introduced me to the band years ago
I was initially disappointed that the brilliant singer wasn’t there with them, but the guitarist was an excellent singer
And we got to hear the band better than we would have with the other singer, so I made peace with it. They were immaculate
From left to right is clarinet, cornet (played by the band leader; she stomps quietly at the beginning of every song to set the tempo), trombone, guitar, sousaphone, some sort of French named banjo, and the washboard
I briefly met the washboard player while I bought my new T-shirt
Tuba Skinny at Ronnie’s last night
Not me of course.
Ben Kentish
@BenKentish
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1h
So a Chancellor with no economic experience who made clear she didn’t want the job (and was doing well at the Home Office), and a Foreign Secretary with no foreign policy experience who also didn’t want the job…
https://x.com/BenKentish/status/2077411113864454603
In the intro to one of the songs she told us that her grandfather had played sax at Ronnie’s sixty years ago. She seemed to be loving life in London
It would also have been called back by VAR.
It was a fun evening, with great food, made all the more memorable by the fact that Nigella Lawson was at the next door table. For 66, she looks absolute fabulous. And it's fair to say she was having a marvelous (and very loud) time.
@AaronBastani
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34m
“You get to be foreign secretary because this faction lobbied against you having a different job”
This stuff is killing the two major parties. And deservedly so.
https://x.com/AaronBastani/status/2077420245182976361
But anything other than a direct threat/incitement certainly shouldn't be something for the police to get involved in.
In answer to your question though, yes, as we know from the regular complaints and police apologies, the police have been more than happy to arrest people for making nasty comments online, though usually people on the political right who apprently deserve all they get. At least that is the impression many on here give when defending such arrests.
I think it's possible that this would play into the thinking on the replacement. Context being Reeves has only done two years and the new leader is yet again male.
It would, on this basis, devolve into a Mahmood v Cooper choice. And Mahmood is the sharper tougher politician of those two.
Aftertime wisdom from me here though. I backed Pat McFadden.
She was put there with a brief to bring down immigration and has turned a poison chalice into an asset politically.
KING: Who won the 2020 election?
CLAYTON: I've answered that question. I'm going to get into that
KING: You have not answered that question. Could you answer it?
CLAYTON: Joe Biden was certified
KING: No. That's not an answer. You told us you'd tell truth to power, and you won't answer a very simple question.
https://x.com/atrupar/status/2077408671055634935
Maybe in the past it was. Especially in the era of the Empire. Or even much of the latter part of the 20th Century.
But today? Every major foreign policy adventure I can think of from Blair onwards (my adult life) has been fronted by the PM personally.
Home Secretary has big policies linked to them personally. So does Chancellor. So too other Secretaries like Education or Health. However anything major on foreign politics is the PM first and foremost.
To me it seems Foreign Secretary should be akin to Chief Secretary of the Treasury, very much a second-fiddle role, not a primary one.
(if Mahmood is CoE and Ed is Foreign - which is where the betting has strongly gone)
Maybe best to just wait, I suppose. Not long now.
Donald Trump is providing ample evidence that he should have been certified in 2020.
Hopefully the policies will continue.
It's probably the job that involves the most actual work of any role in the Cabinet (including PM) because it's always changing due to factors outside your control. The Chancellor has a few big set pieces a year that everything revolves around, if there's a crisis the Home Secretary at least can pull her own levers of power. But a Foreign Secretary may be making hurried, difficult decisions and dealing with major changes from day to day due to things over which she has no control whatsoever.
Plus, it means meeting lots of other foreign leaders and seeing how they do things.
It is no coincidence that the Foreign Office has usually been seen as a better proving ground for PMs than being Chancellor for that reason. There was no shortage of serious commentary that one of Brown's (and Sunak's) big weaknesses was he came from the Treasury not the FO. To some extent you can see that also with Neville Chamberlain.
Of course, it's not a rule of physics. Neither Eden nor Truss were much cop.
In other words, Mahmood may surprise us lefties on the upside if she's CoE by being a reasonable re-distributive Chancellor.
Baaaaah!
Although whenever it happens when I’m on public transport I’m willing them to be struck down by the almighty and despatched to Hades
Hes already folding on ILR in the face of the Far Left in Labour and their lobbying.
Still, it’s not as if the welfare and benefits bill isn’t big enough. Plenty more to pay out.
What to do?
Nearly all the bad stuff is in fact a crime; incitement, threats, hate crime etc. nearly all of it goes uninvestigated and unpunished. it seems to me that we have a choice in society. Either accept that this will continue, and a tiny % of the population cause mayhem while some especially women MPs live in fear and threat; or develop of culture of massive and well publicised criminal law enforcement of thousands of cases which drives it into unacceptability. A parallel: drink driving.
“ The UK government is working on a ban on imports and exports to illegal Israeli settlements, the trade minister confirmed on Wednesday morning.
Both services and goods will be prohibited from flowing to and from the outposts, Sir Chris Bryant told MPs of the Business and Trade Committee.”
https://x.com/skynews/status/2077399342999121971?s=61
https://x.com/msmelchen/status/2077381219700863294
A reply to a video of hundreds of England fans heading home after the Norway match, singing “There’ll be no f***ing rowing in New York”.
(One threat each, from 10000 different people is, of course, a different matter.)