And I thought it was just me who could alienate LFC’s traditional fanbase 
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Yeah, course you are.
I shall avoid HS2 for now.
We have this instead.
Bill to link the OBR with budgetry decisions and a Covid investigation to chase the money. Please please let it lead to prosecutions.
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Good News attached to some of those points - ( Covid Corruption Commissioner ) 
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Hard to disagree with the SNP’s Stephen Flynn this evening:
“This is now the Labour government’s two-child cap…”
The seven Labour MPs who rebelled and voted in favour of the amendment were: Apsana Begum, Richard Burgon, Ian Byrne, Imran Hussain, Rebecca Long-Bailey, John McDonnell and Zarah Sultana.
They have all apparently had the whip suspended.
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Bravo Sir Keir… the usual Corbynite suspects of course.
Quite easy. This was largely performative as the government have already been trailing messages implying it will likely go.
The government has to do two things first though.
1 determine where the money is coming from to pay for the measure ( probably the easy bit)
2 set out what the next steps will be (and how that will be funded) because removing the cap can only begin the process of tackling child poverty (the harder bit) hence the recent announcement of the anti poverty task force.
I expect the plan was always to announce it around the next budget from savings made, or higher than expected tax receipts.
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They could still have taken the principled stance and supported the motion. After all, that doesn’t mean the law changes overnight.
And removing the whip from those seven was reprehensible.
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Bravo Sir Kier… choosing not to lift 300,000 children out of poverty, and suspending those who think this is cruel. What a hero!
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As Liz Kendall said this morning they don’t have a bottomless pit of money. If they pay more child support then they have to take that money from the NHS budget. She got quite emotional about it. Rebelling at this early stage of a government when it has been fully explained to them is ridiculous. It smacks of posturing.
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I’m not sure this bolded bit will be 100% true and is probably more about setting expectations and buying time to get the two things I referred to above lined up for a proper announcement.
Narrative will be really important for this government if it is to build up and maintain the momentum necessary for sorting out the issues it has inherited.
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That’s the bullshit they feed us. There’s no magic money tree. Until there’s a war to fund, or banks to bail out, or a pandemic, or a performative immigration stunt. Then there’s billions on the tree.
Not to mention that early intervention, like lifting children out of poverty, has huge economic benefit in the long term. Check out the Heckman Equation
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It was about capacity. Except the brilliant galaxy-brained previous government gutted that and made capacity worse.
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Who’s this “they”?
I don’t agree with suspending the whip (why are you arsed about a couple of rebels with a 170 seat majority - Blair never was) but the rebellion was fucking stupid. As @redfanman said, it’s entirely performative.
The problem is that this is a Government still getting its feet under the table and still finding skeletons in the closet (See Yvette Coopers speech yesterday) and everything Labour are being told they must do costs money.
And yet those calls come from all sides. Open the opinion pages of the guardian and it’s a daily parade of stuff Labour must do. There is a new one every day. And - in the opinion of the vested interest writing it - it absolutely matters more than anything else on the agenda, and uniquely mean Labour should rip up the finances to sort out.
Then open the option pages of the Telegraph, and you’ll see articles about how profligate Labour are inevitably going to be with the nations finances, how they are going to bankrupt the country with reckless spending.
This is the course that Labour have to navigate. There are loads of things that Labour would love to do, and lifting the two child benefit cap is clearly top of that list. But it can’t happen until there is the money available. I suspect it will be gone in the next budgetary cycle.
The rebels know that - they understand the challenges and know everything isn’t possible on day one, but given they are a cohort who probably have zero ambition beyond sitting on the back benches lobbing grenades, the point isn’t to try and defeat the Government - there is no way they are losing a vote. They are setting their stall out.
Starmer needs to just ignore them. Blair consistently had a handful of rebels, but that comes with such a big majority. Blair treated them as a minor irritant, and Starmer should remember that it isn’t the rebellion that looks weak - it’s the over the top reaction to it.
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Notso has confirmed that he will be standing to be leader of the Conservative Party.
Pity that it’ll never happen. He’s one of the thickest politicians I have ever seen, and that’s saying something.
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I think like you said, it’s performative too. It’s part of the messaging for the next general election that this government will be fiscally responsible and not write a blank cheque for the sake of the principle.
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First PMQs today
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Superb performance and very well mannered from the opposition today. Finally, an adult conversation at PMQs. Starmer really is Basil from The Acolyte who’s been shaved and given glasses.
The previous and current governments