It doesn’t look good for Kentish Town Keir.
Had things been rattling along splendidly for a strong, stable and successful Starmer government since winning the election, then Mandelson would have been nerve-wracking but probably survivable.
But given the malaise at No 10, the successive policy balls-ups over the last year or so, the constant comms cock-ups, the ongoing lack of a strong, central message, McSweeney gone, Sarwar openly calling for him to go – looks bleak. Even if he hangs on this week, it could become rapidly terminal should the parliamentary enquiry around Mandelson find something even slightly iffy there.
So is he toast? And if so, who would be the likeliest successor?
I’d say yes he absolutely is toast if it wasn’t so hard to answer your second question. Burnham can’t stand, nor can Rayner until her tax investigation is concluded, Sweeting and Mahmood are Marmite within the party, Milliband and Cooper are probably too tainted by past Labour failures. So not impossible that he staggers on at least until the February by-election or the May Council, devolved, and Mayoral elections. I think some of the people with eyes on the job would rather sit and wait for now. But I fear that that will leave Starmer not so much toast as a dead man walking.
This is the sticking point as far as I can see. There is no obvious successor. People have been bandying Streeting’s name around this evening but the strong Mandelson connection there would make a Starmer defenestration pointless.
Hard to imagine Angela Rayner getting any cooperation from Trump. I like Rayner but whoever is PM has to be credible outside the UK. That goes for Ed Milliband too.
Rayner is out of the question until the investigation of her housing finances is concluded. Burnham cannot run without an exemption from party rules and that’s just not going to happen.
Much as I am sceptical of Starmer’s abilities, I don’t see anyone better in a position to take the reins. He may as well carry on as best he can.
Not optimistic that McSweeney quitting will make any difference to Labour’s direction, given that his two deputies have been put in interim control of strategy. Who’s to say he won’t be instructing them from the shadows? It’s still Labour Together in charge.
No.
What I had beneath my beans this morning?
Yes, that definitely was toast, and very nice it was too, but what cannot be denied is that the beans added to the whole toast scenario.
Admittedly I’m not a close follower of politics, as the current members of the House make me despair, but I would say yes, his days are numbered.
Clearly the idea of Keir’s steady/dull hand on the tiller after years of Tory chaos has failed to win over voters who, you know, actually want their lives to improve. All Reform have to do is mutter bleakly about immigrants, without having a single workable policy between them, and Labour immediately react with some poorly considered policy that creates headlines to distract everybody from Farage and is then reversed or forgotten a few weeks later. I expect this is not the sort of leadership people wanted.
I thought that after 14 years or so on the sidelines, watching their opponents flounder and fall apart, Labour would have come in full of beans, with fists packed with imaginative ideas about how to turn things around. Isn’t that partly the point of being in opposition? You have time to plan ahead without bearing any day-to-day responsibility.
Instead, they seem weak and uncertain, with few major improvements that have really hit home and won widespread support. As is the way of things, Starmer has to carry the can for this, whether deserved or not. He seems well-meaning but with none of the vision and outward drive to pull people with him for a great leap forward.
Compared to, say, BoJo (who should still be going door to door begging forgiveness for the Covid parties at No. 10, among myriad other faults), he is a relative heavyweight, but I’m not sure any non-Labour supporter would ever say, “Let’s follow Kier! He’s full of passion about improving society!” The problem, as mentioned above, is who among his cabinet or the wider party is demonstrably full of that passion and has the good ideas to match? If Starmer is out, would Rayner, Streeting, or somebody else lead us to the sunlit uplands? They weren’t good enough to lead Labour last time, so how are they good enough now?
Lisa Nandy with Emily Thornbury as her deputy.
Two strong straight talking women is what Labour needs now
And I say that as a Lib Dem voter.
Re: Labour, rather than Starmer.
Did you know that the latest date for the next election to be called is Wednesday 15th August 2029?
Long time – especially if your party is racist – to navigate, and we know that one week in politics is a long time.
Quite so. I have never known a parliamentary term like this one, where Reform were greeted as a government-in-waiting within weeks of the previous election. The more local councils they run, the more oddballs who win by-elections, the more mayoral candidates who tell Lammy to go back to where he comes from, the more they are likely to become ungovernable as a party.
Indeed. I get the impression from the media that we/voters are all just waiting for Reform to step into the breach as heirs apparent and take their rightful place, if only Labour would get on with the humdrum business of calling an election.
But when has there been a report saying that a Reform-run council has done a great job, or a Reform member or candidate has made a powerful, erudite speech packed with good, workable ideas that appeal to more than just a hard core?
Considering that so many people are supposedly looking for Farage and co. to take over, I don’t hear much about what a difference that would actually make to the average person’s life, nor how things would get better on a realistic, day-to-day basis.
For what little it’s worth, I had dinner with a couple of MPs and a bunch of political consultants last week and their consensus was that the Mandelson thing would ultimately bring him down.
I have no idea whether he’ll stay or go, but I do think if we keep binning off PMs every five seconds we’re going to end up in a real state, particularly given the lack of appealing replacements and that the economy is showing signs of turning a corner under current leadership.
Did your dinner companions offer an opinion on how Starmer has dealt with Trump?
Yeah, they thought he’d done reasonably well given the pretty challenging circumstances.
There was a bunch of other stuff, but the only things worth mentioning here were that having a svengali figure running things in the background à la Cummings, McSweeney, does not survive contact with the requirements of actual government and the memorable observation that “Nigel is definitely trying to be less racist than he used to be”. 🤮
Corbyn?
Not a member of the Labour Party, which could be a challenge.
Yes I know
Couldn’t even run a conference without his co-leader boycotting it
With almost the entire media, national and international gunning against anyone to the left of Farage, I don’t think Kier and tfe labour party even had even a ghost of a chance. Even after 14 years of the Tories. The future seems solely in the hands of the billionaires
No, I don’t think so. Starmer had nothing to do with Epstein. I don’t mind boring when it comes to PMs.
I think he probably is toast, but more concerning is that he’s likely to be the last dull, sensible, competent leader this country has. And this, whoever replaces him until the Election, will be the last Centrist Government.
It’s been a shock to me to see how quickly ‘centrism’ has become first a concept, and then a discredited one. Time was that every Government of either hue tried to seek compromise and co-operation across differing opinions. It didn’t need to have a name. Now these are signs of weakness and capitulation.
Farage and Corbyn, and now the lovely Zach, all benefit from not having to actually govern, and you feel that might be part of the ideal game plan for all of them. Snipe from the shadows. Farage must be terrified of actually winning an election. He’d have to do some work.
I had high hopes for Starmer and I still think we’ll see the benefits of what Labour have done since the election, which has been the exact opposite of the flashy quick fixes that both extremes are offering. But boy, considering they’re the sensible ones, they didn’t half make some stoopid mistakes.
Inclined to agree about dull, sensible leadership. If you take all the PMs of my lifetime, stick them in a list and ask the public to rank them I strongly suspect that it’s the competent technicians (the Majors and Browns) who would find their way to the top and the populists and ideologues who would rest at the bottom.
I also agree about Centrism, which has lately been falsely characterised as a kind of small c conservatism, when in reality it’s simply the absence of a fixed political ideology and a willingness to borrow policy from across the political spectrum. You can argue (perhaps with some merit in Starmer’s case) that there’s a danger of Centrists not knowing what they actually stand for and therefore being at risk of governing ineffectively. But the beliefs should really simply attach to values and broad social goals, rather than creeping into every area of policy and turning every single decision into a tedious political litmus test.
Personally, I’d like to see Starmer stay. I think there are positive signs that are in danger of being overlooked, and all the alternatives look pretty grim. The idea that you only get 18 months to fix this whole mess seems largely farcical.
What concerns me most of all is that I detect a kind of electoral death wish at play, of the same stripe one encounters at the edge of tall buildings. We don’t want calm and stable, or careful progress. We want some mad bastard to come in telling us tall tales. We don’t want politics to be “boring”, when – really – boring politics is the absolute privilege of the ages. We want excitement and drama and to see people rise and fall, even as we castigate the participants for their roles in the whole mucky business.
The best hope of seeing off Farage isn’t to wheel in one PM after another in the hope that the polls eventually catch light. This isn’t speed dating. They have another three years until the next election, if they’ve any sense – that time should be spent patiently and carefully rebuilding and improving. Y’know – actually governing.
I also have a suspicion in all of this that what we’re really seeing is the venting of a perfectly understandable fury about the Epstein files. We know none of the people involved, bar apparently two, will ever be brought to justice. That there will be no proper investigation, no public hearings, no holding to account. And into that vacuum, as ever, steps public rage and internet justice – if you can be tarred, even tangentially, with the Epstein brush and we can lay hands on you then we will. Perhaps that’s better than nothing, but it’s not a good sign.
He’ll be fine. He fucked up taking Mandy at his word. As many have said, he’s the least worst option.
I don’t think so. But he needs a period of good news and no in fighting. I think good news may be the more likely of the two.
Labour appears hell bent on arguing about what to do and how rather than taking responsibility for leading the country. I don’t see anyone in Labour as capable of wearing the thick skin a Labour PM needs than Starmer.
No. Has his government been the success that it’s needed to be to justify the majority it won. Again, no. Did the cutting of the Winter Fuel Allowance in month one eternally wing them with its appalling tone deafness? Absolutely.
That and much much more.
But he’s not Johnson or Truss or any of the swivel eyed chancers we binned with relish. My God, does he need a substantial win at something, a fuck you lot to all the detractors including me it seems.
But for the moment he’s right to tell us to get bent while he continues to sort out 14 years of craven slip-shoddery and fucking Brexit.
This, yes.
I fervently hope he hangs on, and that some good news begins to elbow its way past the deplorable drivel that surfaces into too many people’s sources of news comprehension.
Can’t help thinking, too, that the promise not to raise taxes was a big mistake. They should have challenged the electorate to grasp that, after a decade and a half of incompetence, rampant revolving-door-ism, Lords-stuffing and asset stripping by the super wealthy, as a nation we needed to dig deep to collectively pull ourselves up by the bootlaces and get the place fixed.
Labour will be aware that most people are very keen on tax rises, so long as someone else is paying. They will also have doubtless notices that there are now more tax payers over the age of 70 than under 30. Not a group, it has to said, that are sanguine when asked to stump up or take a hit ( see winter fuel allowance, frozen personal tax allowances, triple lock etc). Extending NI to encompass all income would raise 10s of billions, and there is a strong moral argument in favour, but there is little prospect of it happening.
Just to point out that being a tax-payer doesn’t mean you’re living in the lap of luxury. There are certainly a huge number of over-70s who are technically tax payers, but only just. Hitting them might not be where to look, as there are plenty of younger folk a lot further up the tree who could well afford (new SUVs, nail bar residency, foreign holidays, personal tattooists) to put their hands in their pockets for a little more contribution.
Neverthelss, as the ONS has demonstrated, the average retired household is now better off than the average working household. Ignoring this simply reinforces my original point about older people not being keen on stumping up ( assuming they have the means to do so).
I recently turned seventy and I pay tax. I’m happy to do so.
It’s never all that productive when this turns into one generation vs another, but I have a lot of sympathy for the ones coming up behind mine. They’re buying houses later, having fewer kids and have seen wages relatively stagnant for nearly two decades. Decent chance the state pension will be gone entirely, or at least means tested, by the time they retire.
When I talk with them about their lives it feels like I just about got the last chopper out before things got really quite tough.
They do have all the good music though, so there’s that 😁
And they are following a generation where the percentage of homeowners and pensioned oldies is higher than before. Bear that in mind if your tea starts tasting a little off…..
We will be better off once we retire, even if we don’t wait for the state pension, but we pay ourselves a low wage from our business and put money into personal pensions. I hope I live long enough to reap the benefits, a number of work colleagues haven’t made it that far and I don’t want to die with my boots on so I may quit early.
Incidentally, when talking about anyone paying tax, whether workers or pensioners, it’s worth remembering that the personal allowance has been frozen for 5 years, while inflation went through the roof.
Hope your pension schemes are not heavily into AI firms.
There are around 9m people retired who have a state pension supplemented by a defined benefit / final salary pension plan. These plans were phased out from the mid 90’s onwards in the private sector (they hung on in the public sector albeit in revised or restricted form). As these literally die out average income in retirement is going to fall fairly quickly.
Aside from the limitations of deeming an entire aged based cohort as having the same outlook and beliefs, I’m inclined to wonder what strata of society is tax friendly? In planning for my retirement I took advantage of some of the tax breaks that pension law permits, and I’ll be a tax payer in retirement just like I was all my working life. I don’t have any problem with paying for services (including the ones I don’t use) but it’s also possible to hold that view as well as not handing over money you don’t actually have to.
On the other hand Ernie, what you’ve just said ably illuminates my point that there is a large cohort of younger-than-retirement-age folk who seem to have an astonishing amount of disposable. Those even younger than them are the ones facing the generational challenges of house price = 10 times average salary and so on, and many of those who are older than them are those for whom the only tax they pay is that levied against their state pension. It’s in the middle ground – late 30s, 40s, 50s maybe, where a little belt tightening for collective benefit might be in order.
I’m not retired and I pay tax, and when I do finally call it quits I’ll still pay tax, and that’s fine with me. But we don’t live extravagantly, or beyond our means, and neither do we have a lot of cash to spare, but while I am still working I’m happy for Income Tax to be raised if it gets us out of the interminable national decline I see around me. If I’m happy for that to be the case, I’m also entitled to think that those who are not so community minded are, basically, shortsighted and selfish.
If you’re saying that NI should no longer be a tax solely related to employment, but should become another universal tax on income, then to my mind there’s no longer a point in it being separate from income tax.
One thing Streeting has at least recognised is that whilst the government knows that real economic growth is tha absolute imperative, it has no plan to actually achieve it. And I can’t see that any of the likely successors to Starmer, ( assuming he goes sometime this year), have any better ideas, or the will to make it happen..
The global economy is too big for a single country to wield much influence, especially one of the size of the UK. Short term, the UK can do disastrous things to the economy (Truss proved that with aplomb). But long term, you do what you can until a global upturn arrives.
Government has a rich tradition of planning on a 12 month budget cycle which will then change during the 12 months because of political storms. It has no chance.
There have been global upturns, but the UK hasn’t benefited from them. The only ‘growth’ has come as a consequence of the population growing, but GDP has fallen. People are poorer than they were in 2008. The gulf between the US and UK has grown hugely since, say, 1990.
If nothing is done then the UK, particularly if it doesn’t curtail its spending, looks to be heading down the same path as Argentina, which was one of the wealthiest economies in the world a century ago.
This is the unfortunate reality that no amount of repositioning or wishful thinking can change. We are living beyond our means, and that’s not a position that can be remedied purely by increasing taxes. You have to either boost productivity, cut costs or both.
The economies of the UK and the Argentina of a century ago are pretty dissimilar in lots of ways, but I do think Argentina offers us a warning in terms of the dangers of a corrupted political class and a culture in which rule breaking becomes endemic.
One might expect that simply ceasing to live beyond one’s means might be the remedy to living beyond one’s means.
“Annual income twenty pounds…” and all that.
Argentina doing a lot better now, albeit with some sucking up to Trump to get some loans… Millei seems to have got them back on track
I wouldn’t advocate exactly what he has done but to get back on track we need something radical.. cutting the winter fuel allowance was a perfectly reasonable policy and the fact that taking money off rich pensioners caused such a furore shows what a mess we are in
The young are completely screwed. Can’t afford a house, preposterous student loan rates, can’t work in the EU and AI taking jobs. Only direction this is going in the long run is a proper left wing party getting in and financial ruin
People who know him rather than political commentators who don’t say he’s a tough cookie and won’t crack easily. It’s his lack of a clear vision and the ability to turn it into a plan and clear program which is the basic problem. They may even be doing great stuff but seem to be incapable of communicating it. He can get past this drama if he is seen to be delivering against people’s priorities.
He needs a good team around him. The idea that one individual can understand all that is needed, turn that into a plan (a set of plans really) and execute that whilst doing all of that global stage stuff is a fantasy. He seems to have failed to get that team in place to date I think this period of change will be his last chance to get that right.
The most telling moment yesterday was when the Director of Communications resigned. You mean there’s been someone in charge of getting the message out? Well, by any corporate standards, he’s been an abject failure.
Have been routinely stunned he’s hung on to his job this long. Utterly woeful.
Agreed, one of the key points of leadership is building a good team to implement the vision.
If you listen to Mason, Peston, Kuenssberg, Coates, Rigby, etc then he was toast yesterday. However, luckily, that shower of shite doesn’t get to decide who our elected PM.
They all got played yesterday. For once, No.10 played a blinder, Sarwar got hung out to dry, the entire Cabinet came out in support and we wowed the PLP in the evening. Crisis averted.
At least until the Uriah Heep of the BBC, Chris Mason, is wound up by Robbie Gibb again. Probably in May.
Crisis averted until the enormous electoral spanking in May.
I think local elections generally reflect anti-Government sentiment and it won’t be the first time.
No PM has ever lost their job because of poor local election results. I don’t see that trend changing.
Until recently, PMs seldom lost thier jobs at all. Times have changed, if Labour gets hammered in London, with Scotland already a lost cause,, I wouldn’t fancy Starmer’s chances.
In May it’s not just English council and mayoral elections, but also the Scottish Parliament and Welsh Senned. Losses in all of these seem inevitable on current form. The powers of councils are very limited and losses there can be shrugged off, but the Welsh and Scottish assemblies have a bit more clout and therefore greater importance. Reform are making inroads in both of them. In the old South Wales industrial heartland, Reform look to me like they could do well. The SNP are no longer as popular as they were in Scotland, but I don’t think Labour can revive their fortunes there yet. Reform will gain some ground. Not sure the Greens have enough traction in either. Yet.
I couldn’t believe that my earliest stamping ground, Worcestershire, had a minority Reform Council. Not to be rude, but they didn’t look like the sharpest tools in the box. I hadn’t graped how many inroads they have made into the shires. Bilbo will be quaking.
There’s a YouTube channel which reports on all council byelection results. Recent results have been catastrophic for Labour. If their vote is down 20%, then that is a comparatively good result for them.
Strangely I feel Starmer may be in a stronger position today than he has been for a while. I base this on nothing more than gut instinct and a hopeless faith that Labour have finally realised how close they were to collapse and will now coalesce around their leader and focus in a bit better. Yes there will be many bumps in the short term to ride out and Streeting is making his position/ambition too obvious and I suspect may end up being the guy in the firing line.
I suspect this could be the case. Streeting seems to have overplayed his hand too soon – the release of the Mandelson exchanges etc.
I’m going to bleat on now about the majority of the news media being right wing. Well, they are – and it’s just as bad as it has always been.
Imagine if Kier Starmer stumbled onto a stage at G7 with hair sticking out everywhere, tie askew, shirt untucked and blathering on about Peppa Pig. Actually he should do exactly that. That would be brilliant to see.
A lot of the media is right wing, but if those are the prevailing long term conditions then there’s not a lot of point moaning about it. Adapt and survive. Stop dropping the ball on comms, stop handing them easy wins (see: Ed Miliband’s media round this morning – oof).
All of that said, the idea – floated during the election – that the media would go soft on Starmer is clearly laughable.
Nowadays most people don’t read newspapers or watch t..v news, so I am not sure it matters that much whether traditional news media is right wing or not.
Last year Ofcom ran research on news consumption (I had to sit through a tedious presentation about it at work).
Perhaps surprisingly, 50% of news consumption is still via TV and radio. Online is about 40%, but 10% of that is direct from news sites and a reasonable chunk of the other 30% is article sharing.
Print has obviously died on its arse.
I saw someone suggest the other day that he should use this ‘opportunity’ to press the fuck-it button, with nothing to lose, and go for it. Prioritise things like rejoining the EU, scrapping the triple lock, sort out the BBC and stop it becoming the Farage Broadcasting Corporation etc etc. He doesn’t seem to be the type who would throw the dice like this but I wish he would.
How would rejoining the EU work? Presumably, there’d have to be a rejoin referendum to counter accusations of “ignoring the will of the British people”?
But to your wider point yes, I’d love to see him rip his tie off and yell I have had it with these motherf*cking snakes on this mother*cking plane.
Actually, I think Starmer’s approach to Europe and the EU is pretty much on the money. Start acting like part of Europe (Trump is certainly helping) build the relationships and see what can be done to improve trade etc. without tackling the hugely devisive EU debate about membership. Build trade, relationships and trust. Don’t make it political.
This makes total sense.
Agreed
Just out of interest and per my comment above, how would we all rank the PMs of the last half century or so?
I’ve got the following:
Blair
Major
Brown
Thatcher
Starmer
May
Sunak
Johnson
Cameron
Truss
That’s about it for me. Cameron may be better than Johnson but they both still in the relegation spots.
I’d give Gordon the Silver and demote John to Bronze. Thatch and Starmer would swap places in the runners-up. The bottom five are all so appalling that they don’t even get on the bus to the camp.
Blair could be the best but I can’t forgive his war crimes. Thatcher destroyed British manufacturing so she is bottom apart from Truss who was/is a lunatic. Of the other Tories, May is my choice for top one, she was dealt a very difficult hand and did her best and I thought showed some empathy which not many do. Cameron certainly above Johnson. Brown was ok, can’t judge Starmer yet, don’t really have an opinion on Sunak either.
Going to need a list, dai. It’s easy enough to reel off what they each did wrong, but the point of the exercise is to stack rank them to give it a bit of context ❤️
I think Blair’s war crimes are pretty much the only real blot against him (admittedly a huge blot). The others didn’t achieve as much even taking that into account. And he wasn’t the only one up for going to war. But he was responsible.
I think the adoption of PFI, though improving health services and waiting lists in the short term, has had and continues to have serious consequences for the public sector economy.
PFI wasn’t wrong per se. It was over used and poorly managed through the life of the contracts in many places. I would say the implementation was, at least, half the problem.
There are plenty of public contracts that were not PFI that are worse.
While accepting the general criticism, personally think “war crime” is hyperbolic, and a term we should reserve for when it’s really needed. A little like the way “nazi” was bandied around for years and had lost much of its shock value by the time actual nazis showed up again.
For me, Blair’s chief negative legacy is that his handling of Iraq probably began the process by which the public lost all trust in politicians (albeit the expenses scandal put the whole thing on steroids). Additionally, much of what he’s been up to since leaving office looks pretty inglorious.
Still the best of the lot though, because there was a decent amount of good to outweigh the bad, because he was highly effective and because – uniquely for this list – he left on his own terms.
Gosh! What a load of rubbish in that list. We haven’t been well served, have we?
I think Sunak should be higher. He did well with the hand he was dealt. Ended up behaving more like a Labour PM than a Tory one.
The Blair/Brown combination was pretty good until Iraq and an over-reliance on PFI, which is costing one hospital in my area £52 million pounds a year before it can open its door. When that mortgage is paid off, the building is still owned by the PFI company. 😏
There’s a lot to be said for compulsory purchase.
Ten quid, there you go, that’s your lot, now f*ck off.
If we’re ranking the Prime Ministers of the past 50 years, then Jim Callaghan (1976-79) should definitely be included. And maybe even Harold Wilson (although admittedly only a month or two of his final term as PM).
I think Callaghan is a fair addition. I limited myself to those in my lifetime (thankfully still less than the half century), but feel free to add him.
Anything before that and we start to get to the point where comparisons become a bit meaningless – such a different world. Plus, Wilson is a complicating factor because the majority of his tenure was a decade prior, which means you also probably have to include Heath.
If we were all to chip in and buy a private island for AWers, is it tax deductable?
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cdx4xkkly9qo
Handy for Festival Number 6
Starmer has until the middle of May to pull a rabbit of some kind from his hat, or he is indeed toast.
Nobody in his party will challenge him until after the council and regional elections are done, for fear of being the one to whom the buck is passed if they tank completely.
From this week’s Economist, “With or without Sir Keir, the Labour government is likely to retreat to its soft-left comfort-zone, rather than pursuing reforms to unleash growth. But … a prime minister who clings to power by handing out treats is not running a government but an ice-cream van.”
More a stale loaf than toast.
Grows mould and ends up in the bin.
Harsh but fair critique of The Economist?
I can’t stand the adverts Judi Dench does for them at the moment. As soon as I hear her querulous voice go “Where do you find…”, I switch off.
Not just me then.
It’s lazy thinking too. Which reforms? And if they think a few reforms will instantly create growth they are deluded. Growth needs a skilled workforce and excellent infrastructure and I don’t see any policies to create this. Schools running on their arse bones. Where are the equivalent of TOPS courses to drive retraining? Even night school barely exists. These things take time so they should have started on day 1.
A fascinating 24 hours coming up. I would expect Labour to come third, because no one likes a sitting Government, or a central position then you’ve got far simpler solutions at either extreme. So it’s a case of which three-word slogan wins the day – will it be Blame The Rich or Blame The Poor?
It feels a bit existential, you know?
Interesting that the Greens and Reform are essentially two iterations of the same phenomenon – a reactionary populism drawing inspiration from 1930s Germany.
@Lando Cakes not being argumentative but could you elaborate on why the Greens draw inspiration from 1930s Germany please? No need in Reform Party UK Ltd’s case obviously.
Because Ad*lf H*tl*r was a vegetarian?
Their anti-science stance, particularly as regards GM crops and the use of animals in medical research. The only party to have passed a law banning “vivisection” is, in fact, the Nazi party.
@Lando – well I don’t know but AFAIK the Greens aren’t populated by racists and Trump worshippers
I think their opposition to medical research is as bad. Interesting that – as far as I know – none of their local councillors has tried to stop any council’s environmental protection work that involves killing animals. They’re just against helping the sick and disabled. There’s more than a hint of the brownshirt about the greens, I’m afraid.
@chiz wins the white carnation – Labour came third.
I see Farage is already whining about cheating, just like his mentor Trump. What a tosser.
He could be toast but at the minute no credible alternatives
I reckon he might go and Streeting or Nandy get in and will be destroyed electorally. Equivalent of Truss for the Tories
Burnham would be the man but he can’t get in
We are heading for a coalition of Reform and Tories at the next election for sure
Didn’t Ladbrokes have the Labour Party as favourites (albeit very slight favourites) for the next General Election? Not sure I dreamt that, and it sure didn’t get much publicity, so maybe I did dream it!
Anyway, probably said it before… but there’s a long time to go until 15/8/29, and that’s a far, far longer time for Fromage to (a) stay interested, (b) not be seduced by more money somewhere else, and/or (c) control the nutters in his party/orbit.
I wouldn’t bet on him.
Well, the Greens have a new MP. I’m very pleased about that. However, the Greens could really hurt Labour by taking away, say, 10% of the Labour vote in marginal seats at the next GE. With First Past the Post, dozens of seats could flip to Reform as a result.
Perhaps the Greens could negotiate Proportional Representation or MMP as a condition for working alongside Labour. There are very few countries where a 33% share of the vote delivers such a landslide victory. I tend to support Labour but it’s time to change when we get an outcome like that.
It’s good news, and James O’Brien, speaking at the moment, is full of joy, as you might expect. While competing Parties on the left could hurt each other under FPTP, the experience of tactical voting in the last General Election suggests a rather sophisticated electorate willing to vote for the best candidate if they are most likely to keep out Tory/Reform. Negotiating PR would only be meaningful for the following election, as I don’t see it happening in this parliament.
The Tory vote in 2024 collapsed to 6.8M from 13.9M in 2019. It was the lack of tactical voting by right wing voters that won Labour the election. Huge numbers wouldn’t vote Tory and switched to Reform. An ideal situation for Labour in a first past the post system, who also got fewer votes than they did in 2019.
I think there were also quite a lot of normally Tory voters, who wouldn’t vote for Reform, or anyone – staying away from the election booths completely. No one they could vote tactically for.
The turnout in 2024 may have been the lowest ever in terms of percentage of the electorate. I would have suggested the Lib Dems were a possible vote for the disillusioned Tory voters, but I see that their vote went down too, although the number of MPs went up from 11 to 72.
I’m always a little dubious of this sort of analysis of voter turnout. The data feels very chaotic to be drawing simple conclusions.
Political parties under our current system don’t attempt to maximise turnout, they attempt to win seats, so it feels a little like grading them against a KPI they never worked to. I’m sure if you offered Zack Polanski an all-time record low voter turnout at the next election and 200 seats for the Greens he’d have your arm off before you even finished the sentence.
Turnout is also a product of factors beyond the direct control of any individual party. The 2017 election almost certainly had higher than usual turnout as it became a proxy re-run of the Brexit campaign, and coming so soon after the referendum political participation was at a comparative high point. Likewise, the 2019 election saw two highly polarising candidates running against one another, which will have driven people to the polls.
Meanwhile, 2024 was an election that was largely seen as a foregone conclusion before it even began, which will have driven down voter turnout. Some of it will also have been that Starmer is an uninspiring candidate, but we have very little way of telling how much. Frankly, the weather has as much of an impact on turnout as anything else.
What’s definitely true is that turnout dived sharply in 2001 and has never really recovered to previous levels. Previous elections saw turnout at a routine 70-80%. Every election since has been in the 60-70% range.
Under our current system, if you get the most seats you have won. Everything else is largely conjecture and spin, with the odd bit of truth. I suspect that in elections to come people will vote with their feet far more to stop a politician they don’t like than to support a politician they do. Elections with crap/controversial candidates will probably lead to higher turnouts. Whether they lead to better governments is the question that really matters.
Lest we forget, the Tory candidate lost her deposit, with only 4 times as many votes as the Monster Raving Loony Party.
As did the Lib Dem candidate with even fewer votes. 14 years of bad rule will take some shaking off, but the Tories only came 5th in 2024, so the deposit loss isn’t a big surprise, is it?
The arithmetic of the election is weird. Similar turnout to the 2024 GE, the Green Party increase (+/-10,000) is about the same as the Labour (+/-9100), & Lib Dem (+/-700) drop combined. The Reform increase of +/-5000 takes in the Tory drop of +/-2000. Where does the rest come from? The Workers Party vote in ’24 of +/-3700 surely didn’t go to the right? Does that mean disgruntled Labour voters went populist in both directions?
I guess it does. 2/3 to Green, 1/3 to Reform.
Do you think a party would be elected in New Zealand if they undertook to legalise all drugs and grant an amnesty to all illegal immigrants ? And do you think people in NZ would support an economic policy based on modern economic theory ? And if so, why ?
Legalise all drugs? No.
Amnesty to all illegal immigrants? Perhaps – it’s not such a big issue here.
Modern economic theory? If explained well, yes.
If the same Green UK policies were promoted in NZ, there would still be around 7-10% who would vote for that (largely for environmental reasons) and as a result they get about that number of MPs in parliament. But only if they achieve a threshold of 5% voter share or, failing that, they manage win at least one constituency seat. At the moment Auckland Central is Green – but they got more than 5% of the voter share anyway.
Have you heard of a Dr John Marks? He ran a drug clinic in the North West of England and supplied clean needles and medical heroin to addicts to reduce harm. His approach protected them against HIV and reduced crime. He was controversial and emigrated to New Zealand. Did he not do similar there?
I haven’t heard of him but that doesn’t mean he’s not active. The Greens over here have been successful in having facilities where people can have their drugs tested – especially at festivals and the like.
He’ll be very old now. Too old to be still working.
The problem with MET theory is that then prospect of anyone a) explaining it well and b) anyone understanding it are slim. The Greens in the UK certainly don’t, in as much they seemingly fail to grasp two of the key elements required to make it work (pre- supposing for the sake of argument that it can work). Firstly, you need to start from a position of not having a very big pre-existing national debt. Secondly, you need to be able to halt or even reduce government spending as and when inflation kicks in. The current Labour government struggles with that, I suspect that a Green government would find it impossible.
Mid-term by elections are always like this. What’s the fuss?
Certain elements of the press really do have it in for Starmer – in the Times today it was very much bemoaning Starmer’s prevarication on using British bases for Iran and headlines of Trump saying “he’s no Churchill”, yet Pedro Sanchez, the Spanish Prime Minister, is standing up to Trump in not allowing the use of Spains bases…….
Certain elements of the press would have it in for Jesus Christ if he was a Labour prime minister.
This ⬆️
What the press says is arguably irrelevant given hardly anyone reads it anymore. Certainly not the younger generations, many of whom are critical of Starmer gor very different reasons than the Times.
Newspapers
Daily Mail/Mail on Sunday 8% weekly reach
The Guardian/Observer 5% weekly reach
The Sun/Sun on Sunday 5% weekly reach
The Times/Sunday Times 4% weekly reach
Digital news sites have a greater reach, Monthly visits, which could be people anywhere in the world, and or the same people viewing multiple times.
BBC.com/BBC.co.uk http://www.bbc.com: 166.9M
The Sun http://www.thesun.co.uk: 21.6M
Sky News http://www.sky.com: 19.3M
The Independent http://www.independent.co.uk: 18.6M
Daily Mail/MailOnline http://www.dailymail.co.uk: 17.6M
By way of comparison, over 50% of the UK population use Facebook, Tik Tok, Instagram and You Tube to get news.
The developments of the last few days demonstrate once again that anyone who claims they can tell you what will happen in an election to be held in 2029 is either a fool or a liar. Events, dear boy, events.
It is interesting to see a view that Starmer is prevaricating on supporting the US and Israel actions emanating from the same people that bemoan Blair’s war crimes. The ability for people to support a news narrative without considering it is becoming greater everyday.
Indeed.
Opposition to Starmer overrules logic or sense for some. Our political sewage Badenoch and Farage could have been helpful in building a sane critical consensus to keep the UK’s response focused and effective. But it’s just more gormless shouting and gaseous blaming.
No particular fan of Starmer’s but applaud anyone approaching the situation with a degree of restraint and foresight, right now. The man is in a complete bind, dealing with the most unhinged US president of all time in combination with the demented unchecked expansionism of Israel.
That’s the hobbyist left in a nutshell. Actually doing stuff and making a difference is *boring*. Slogans and posturing is what really matters. Aside from Starmer getting it right on Iran, another striking example is the abolition of the two-child cap on child benefit. Not much remembered now but it was a cause celebre for the government’s first year. It was the solution to child poverty and the government’s inaction was *proof* (not that any was needed) that they were the same as the Tories. Labour duly abolished the two-child cap, at a time and in a manner that did not spook the markets. And lo, the two-child cap was never mentioned again by anyone on the hobbyist left… Reducing child poverty? *Boring*
It’s not really mentioned anywhere else either, given who owns all our news outlets.
I am signed up to get Telegraph emails – there must have been an article I was interested in – and they are absolutely rabid in their hatred of Starmer. Almost identical to the hobbyist left. There’s your horseshoe theory right there.
Should be interesting to see if there is any change to its reporting now that the mail has failed in its bid to purchase the telegraph and it now has a German owner.
You could have missed out “in their hatred of Starmer” and you’d have The Telegraph today in a nutshell.
While I can see that Blair and Starmer could be criticised from both the left and the right for different policies they held/hold, I can’t imagine which constituency would bemoan Blair’s war crimes (presumably because they thought the Iraq War was a bad idea) and then also criticize Starmer for hesitating in supporting US and Israel actions.
Not the ‘hobbyist left’, who I can’t see supporting Trump or Netanyahu, nor the Telegraph-reading right, who I can’t see as having being opposed to the Iraq War.
Maybe I am missing something. I often do.
There’s logic in Fromage wanting a war.
Where do all the people displaced go?
They flee, some on small boats across the Channel.
Voila!