An analog prime minister in a digital age. Like a number of people who came to politics in middle age, he seems to have very little idea of how to do politics other than to proclaim “we’re not as bad as the last lot” - a fairly low bar.
Rayner, who holds the housing brief in the Labour government and has forged a reputation as one of its most forthright speakers, has often railed against those who deliberately underpay tax, particularly those in the preceding Conservative administration, which Labour replaced in July 2024.
Starmer defended his deputy during weekly prime minister’s questions in Parliament, adding that he was “very proud to sit alongside” Rayner.
But surely, just a minor oversight–it was only 40,000 pounds she avoided spending.
And she’s gone. Great day for king-across-the-water Andy Burnham, I would have thought. The party needs a token senior northerner to fill the gap left by Our Ange, so that it can pretend to still be the party of labour, a role pioneered by John Prescott.
Someone would have to retire and generate a by-election to get him back into the Commons.
Meanwhile, children, this is very naughty indeed:
A very worrying and yet quite hilarious security breach.
Numerous jokes about ‘I can see clearly, now the Rayner’s gone’.
Also not good for the PM:
As I mentioned on the other thread. This is god-damned depressing, Stamer is sooo bad at this. This is a completely self inflicted wound. All the dodginess with Mandleson and Epstein happened a decade or two before Stamer took office, he could have acted immediately and taken a hard line: “These allegations are disgusting and I expect Madelsons resignation on my desk by the end of the day, he should expect an interview from the Met’s child protection task force about what he witnessed with his time with Epstein”.
He would have looked strong and the decision would have been universally popular. Instead he defended him for a while and then eventually caved and sacked him when more evidence appeared. So he looks both weak and willing to protect party grandees who are associated a paedophile.
It like he’s trying to get Farage elected FFS
Can be arranged. This is the Labour Party we are talking about here.
From the cite-
Mandelson had been under mounting pressure over his relationship with Epstein after US lawmakers on Monday released a “birthday book,” compiled for Epstein’s 50th birthday in 2003, in which the veteran Labour party politician had penned a handwritten note describing Epstein as “my best pal.”
This was in 2003, before any allegations or arrests had been made. It is no big deal.
As in when he was actually doing all the child.abuse (or most of it, I don’t actually know if he carried on after the sweetheart deal Trump’s buddy got him in 2008, he probably did but it was more on the DL).
It was completely the right call to sack someone from your government who, it transpires, was part of Epstein’s circle in 2003. There may have been no formal legal allegations in 2003 but everyone involved either knew what he was up to or was too dumb to be a ambassador of anywhere.
There was substantial continuing support after the allegations and arrests:
Why doesn’t anybody ever tell Keir anything?
Christ, he is so bad at this.
I didn’t previously know Mandelson was friends with Epstein. I did, however, know he was a corrupt and odious scumbag.
It’s an old joke that the first item on the agenda for any new leftwing movement is “The Split”, so no surprises here:
You are going to received a sternly worded letter from the People’s Front of Judea.
They are struggling together!
This stupid decision has come back to blow up in Starmer and Reeves’ faces in teh most predictable yet cack-handed way possible.
Rachel Reeves to abandon plans to raise income tax rates in budget | Budget 2025 | The Guardian
Everyone knew, even at the time this election pledge was made, that it was impossible. Public services desperately need cash,and Labour’s other pledge was indeed that they would fix public services. Serious taxes were always going to be needed and the best route to this was broad based tax increases. But these had been ruled out.
In her first budget, Reeves went for a variety of clever-clever methods of raising taxes in lots of little ways. This brought in not enough money, and although the frist reactions were positive the truth is that tax is tax and people can feel it.
This year, in teh run up to the Autumn Statement, Reeves has spent an enormous amount of time and political capital on preparing the ground to reverse these pledges and raise income tax. This has hurt her iwthin the Labour party and with some of the public but does have the advantage of being actually good policy. So she’s taken the political hit to do the right thing.
Except last night news broke that she and Starmer are U-turning on this. Journalists were briefed that the government has redone its figures, submitted a new plan for scrutiny to the oversight board the Office of Budget Responsibility and are preparing a budget of tweaks and stealth taxes. Which will not raise enough money,and still hurt people.
This is utterly inept! If you dint’ want to break the pledge - which is a defensible position - then don’t pend weeks telling people to get ready for a bit of the old pledge breaking! If you are going to bite thebullet, keep biting it! Do the thing you’ve got people ready to do!
The immediate response is that the markets have responded by making government borrowing more expensive (which is what, at greater intensity, did for Truss). As and when the realisation that the government won’t be able to fund its promises breaks on the wider public, Labour and Starmers already historically shit approval rates will go further down the toilet.
The difficult economic siutation they inherited was not Labour’s doing. The response whcih provides maxmimum political pain for minimum economic gain is all theirs.
The other big story this week was a leak from Downing Street that Starmer was under internal threat and getting ready to deal with his rivals. This largely had the effect of making it look like Starmer was weak because a) he was under threat and b) he couldn’t control his internal staff and also making the rival named in the leak look good, because he got to do a lot of media where he swore loyalty, attacked the Tories and got in some digs about leadership culture.
Starmer is in short, rapidly making his way up the list of shit 21st century prime ministers. Which is a long and undistinguished list, but he is certainly the worst Labour PM, possibly ever.
In the meantime, if you want to have a go yourself, you can do it here: