He made Labour electable again but sheesh he was dreary and uninspiring and, frankly, comes across as not particularly astute.
Burnham is the obvious choice but I hope he doesn’t throw the baby out with the bath water. Rachel Reeves is excellent so I really hope she remains in place.
That concludes my brief foray back into this thread.
Carry on.
Yeah , and I did. 
I honestly thought that nobody could have less political nous or look less comfortable in their own skin than Rishi … and then along came Keir. (I think it’s a good shout putting him in the FO. Von der Leyen has already given him a gushing eulogy and if we are serious about some kind of rapprochment then we could probably do a lot worse than him.
I suspect that the Eurocrats like dealing with someone who will have read their brief and understands the legal framework. I don’t think the Johnson government even read the documents that they signed. In fact I know they didn’t, because I did and I could pick out the utter rubbish that they came out with.
We did, on more than one occasion. Johnson and Truss.
I’m not surprised. She has had a target on her back from Day 1 and it only got bigger with the questions regarding here expertise.
Truth is any Chancellor is probably on a hiding to nothing at the moment.
I doubt it.
He’d be shitting himself in case his party won..
Answer to grown up versus playground - no they are not ready!
Yes Reeves was enacting the same old left wing ideas - not really her fault. Clearly personality and presentation and expertise were lacking! If you have the parliamentary Labour Party blocking anything to do with progressive welfare then you are always going to be constrained.
I cannot say the same about Welsh Water. On the surface it looks a good set up, non profit etc. but it gets complicated under the surface and it’s not working. But it is also tied to the difficulties WG have with regard to funding and the rules that deliver that from Westminster.
Don’t feel sad in the slightest. He gave (on behalf of the UK) a green light for genocide when he said that Israel had the right to cut off power and water to Gaza.
Had a huge majority and could have made a real difference if he’d pushed through progressive change despite the right-wing flak. Instead he chose to try and placate them and got the flak anyway. Coward. Good riddance
Was she? Not 100%. I wouldn’t say removing winter fuel payment was a left wing policy.
Truth is the UK is hampered with no wiggle room regarding borrowing and a stuck economy.
That’s who he is - I said years ago, he is essentially a pragmatist who doesn’t want to rock the boat. What he doesn’t have an instinct for is when the boat needs rocking.
That said, I think the criticism of him has been totally disproportionate. He was never given a chance and it was knives out from day one.
It will be for his successor as well. I wonder what their angle will be?
You can’t enact tax increases on business and increase the minimum wage and expect private sector growth. It will never happen. You also cannot grow the public sector as a way to growth.
We are hampered but it does not take a genius.
The welfare bill is greater than income tax take. Unsustainable.
The NHS is not fit for purpose anymore. The old system cannot work and throwing money at it will not fix it. Unsustainable despite all the brilliant people working there.
The hot potatoes of immigration needs to be sorted. Currently it’s a mess. Headlines about boats and criminals but the need for skilled migrants and a services economy that relied on cheaper foreign labour as the British people seem to not want to be waiters etc despite unemployment. Clear link to welfare. Unsustainable.
We are currently obsessed with net zero and getting there at pace. I get it but we are small and so many other countries are at fault more than us. It’s too expensive and is currently hitting jobs and energy security by not using the North Sea. Unsustainable.
It needs boldness. Something different. A reset. But if all you care about is your own election and pay lip service to “I love the country and want to make a difference” you never will change.
I despair. I care but I have no way of changing things other than stand for PM. But of course, given the political system, I would have to join a major party, attempt to get selected as an MP candidate (say and do the right things) and generally follow the political herd.
He does sound quite choked when he mentions his family at the end:
Yup, they’ll be destroyed by the billionaire owned press and social media algorithms. The choice is either to fight back, or try to placate and get destroyed anyway. It will need someone who has clear values and integrity. Starmer never showed what he stood for (if anything). Just changed his mind to whatever he thought would keep him in power
Yes you can, you just need a heap of cash to do it. If you flood the market with construction projects (for example), you can still increase growth in that sector.
We haven’t got that cash which is where the problem is. Any Chancellor is going to struggle to generate some cash to give themselves some squirming room to at least get some policies in place.
The alternative is to cut costs and Reeves has done that to a degree (RW policy) . But that slows any growth.
Bar net zero, everything else are just issues which have been in existence already and are challenges facing any Chancellor in post today.
If there was an obvious answer that wouldn’t blow up politically it would have been put in place already. There’s no obvious answer which doesn’t involve sitting on a hand grenade.
Increasing the minimum wage and business taxes reduces the amount that the state has to subsidise the private sector. That does mean some rationalisation in borderline businesses. That’s pretty brutal but it does promote productivity.
Stimulating the economy through the public sector is just basic Keynesian economics.
It has been for a long time, but income tax is only one form of taxation. National Insurance is probably a better gauge
It is entirely about money. I could show you how much my German healthcare costs (18% of gross salary) but I suspect that no one wants to pay that much. The NHS is fundamentally more efficient but it does need a sustainable model.
I thought you were opposed to increasing the minimum wage.
The North Sea is around 90% depleted. The only thing I would agree with is prioritising energy security over “net zero”. That’s going to involve overhauling the system to be driven by generation rather than demand.
Most of the privatizations done in the late 80s and early 90s were fundamentally flawed - the architects were obsessed with reducing what probably were bloated operating costs, and more or less took the long term capital assets as fixed. That works in a five year horizon, but many of those assets have lifetimes of 30-50 years and many of them were already well into that cycle. They simply did not solve the problem of creating an incentive for the private sector owners to reinvest to sustain the capital base. Adding capacity was another problem on top of that.
The result is seen at its worst in Thames Water, where a huge percentage of the network has been in need of major repair for the best part of a generation, in some areas probably a complete structural overhaul. Instead, the bare minimum was done year after year to keep the system working and the dividends flowing.
Now, any new owner, public or private, faces a wave of major investment simply to keep things as they are - the only return will be on reduced maintenance costs, which is not much of a basis for a RoI.