It’s always funny as the older hands in London Labour remember the vicious fights in the 90s and 2000s with the Lib Dem’s and Tories, while a whole cohort just basically rode the waves of 2010, ‘14 and ‘22- all historically good years for Labour at LG level
Love the fact that most of the boroughs just have four parties all between 20-30%. London will throw up some weird results- I expect reform to win a very leafy affluent ward by accident such as Blackheath.
Yes it’s even more damning that his argument is that the machine is operating by itself and doesn’t correctly know what the boss wanted and is making it up!
I despise public inquires, we have too many but I actually think the Govt should have just ordered one in September and that would have avoided the humble address.
Yes it appears now it was an overreaction and a panic to sack him hours after the story broke when we now know they knew from Tuesday- would they have sacked him if the guardian story didn’t break?
It can? The UK is still bound by the ECHR?
I’m also sorry but it’s not helpful to talk in such vague broad strokes- ‘fix the foundations of our economy’ does not really mean anything in a policy sense. Have they fixed our tax system? Not really. Have they fixed our productivity crisis? Not really. Have they looked at new models of FDI? No
They tried to cripple the creative economy, they refused for over a year to carry out the most effective child poverty measure and introduced a tax rise (NICs) that really hit small businesses and made the problem of high street, NEETs and hospitality worse!
This is very binary and not true- as someone who believes in a market economy and a form of socialism it’s clear the governments policy programme is not rational! They are doing immigration reforms that will ruin our economy and cost £10 billion!
Ambassadors (from my non expert view!) don’t get a lot of face time with POTUS. The idea it was all because Mandelson and Trump could become best friends is very odd when the ambassador spends time at a level below that
The one thing I find annoying is how much its all about Trump rather than the US administration as a whole- the job of ambassador is far more about your work with the top guys advisors, congress etc than the POTUS
As much as it’s clear we should never do another external appointment I still don’t see how Osborne lost out when he was clearly better qualified! Mandelson has not held a government role for 14 years
It really was a big flashing warning sign and a sign of how little they get London politics- it’s like if they tried to deselect Virenda Sharma and then wondered why they had problems in Southall!
The MO for the project and this government is crossing the road to slap someone on your side and then wondering why they did an intervention like Abbott did today
Everyone in 94 said too the shadow cabinet was so weak compared to 60s/70s and people called that cabinet with Foot, Crossman, Crosland, Healy and Jenkins poor compared to 45!
They all have flaws and could be disasters in different ways but still each have a clear and different way they would be better PMs. In fact I even think 75% of the cabinet would be better
Ed M, Bridget Phillipson, Angela, Wes, Sadiq and Andy B all have plausible cases for why they would be better
An absolute joke- it’s funny as if you read books from the Brown era it’s clear that virtually every other person think he’s useless, and the same was said during the Ed M period…
Yeah it’s so odd that at one moment we will bemoan our performance on maths and then equally bemoan exams/book learning! We also forget how much our economy benefits from a flexible labour market- we are not Germany!
Reminds me of a story in the Liverpool Echo about an old man at an Aldi who told the security guard to fuck off, and then moaned about ‘respect and decency’ having gone when he was barred from said store.
I don’t at all disagree but it does lead to the Government making poor decisions- I’m not sure how closely you followed the Ajax scandal but if the vehicle wasn’t being made in the UK I really doubt we would still be going ahead with it.
The government tried to reform the law and faced a really aggressive pushback from parts of the right who said it was some form of state socialism that was seeking to direct U.K. pensions
Take London for example- there is no threat from reform for Labour but they took so long to sort out funding that the councils who benefit from more funding have not had time to actually do anything with the money
This isn’t exactly accurate as even when reform run councils it is still largely officers who drive the car and decide where funding goes
The politicians who have been most effective since 2016 have been the ones who have big visual aids- the bee network, the airport in Tees, eat out to help out stickers- you really need visual aids in an era of smart phones and declining attention
It was 100% a mistake to put £40 billion extra into the NHS when a small part of that money could have solved local govt and just allowled a complete blitz on stuff people see every day- I would have done a gimmick like getting HCLG staff in high vis jackets walking around town centres!
Again I remain baffled how many people seem unable to read what happened in the 1951 and the 1970 elections!
Rail nationalisation has not finished and has not made a material difference to the services that that many people experience!
A great Labour factional divide among the party’s right in 2020 was who backed Nandy (angry old right), who backed Phillips (blairite ideologues) and who backed Keir (actual organisers who knew the party).
Yes it is why I was always surprised the move to get support from the left was so effective- as someone who was very very Corbynsceptic it was obvious to me why Keir was running and it was to put Corbynism back in the tomb (to paraphrase Mandelson)