This is this morning's YouTube short video:
The transcript is:
An opinion poll published in the Daily Mail recently suggested that the Tories could have just 66 MPs in the next Parliament.
Now, frankly, I'm not really convinced that's going to happen. I think the poll was probably a little unreliable, but it's clear the Tories are going to be severely reduced in numbers.
What happens to the Conservative Party in that case?
What happens to democracy in that case?
What happens when we don't have an effective opposition, or one that is made up of a few quite small parties in parliament, none of whom are willing to talk to each other?
Where will UK democracy go if Keir Starmer gets a massive majority on July the 4th? I don't know. I'm worried about it. What will he do with that considerable power he's got? Will he use it wisely? Or will he need people to hold him to account? And who will that be?
It's a question you need to ask.
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“Where will UK democracy go if Keir Starmer gets a massive majority on July the 4th?”
LINO have published a doc called “Make Britain a Clean Energy Super Power”. In it LINO talks about increasing power networks by 4x more.
There are growing numbers of people who are very unhappy with the idea of more pylons marching across their land. (& LINO are explicit about this)
Given Starmer’s authoritarian inclinations this could end badly. It is worth noting that there are alternatives (to loads more pylons) but my guess is that with a monster majority, LINO will think it can do what it wants ably supported by the unthinking jobs-worths in National Grid/Ofgem. Civil disturbance here we come.
One of the great surprises of recent times has been the absence of the sort of rioting that usually marks Tory governments, such as the poll tax riots that heralded the decline and defenestration of Margaret Thatcher, and the rioting in the early years of the Cameron premiership.
I have little problem imagining the social unrest and visible disaffection that could occur if LINO do nothing to make any or insufficiently few noticable improvements in the face of the problems which beset an increasing number of ordinary citizens.
The following Guardian news item reveals that the British need to re-engage with reality!
https://www.theguardian.com/education/article/2024/jun/04/english-pupil-funding-at-same-level-as-when-tories-took-power-study-finds
Part of that re-engaging includes recognising we are not self-sufficient as an island for modern day living and need to export and this means encouraging inward investment. How on Earth are we going to encourage this successfully and consistently when we starve our educational system of funding?
Much of modern production including research requires a skilled workforce yet there is a widespread failure among the public to understand how money is created and best regulated to fund public investment for such necessities as a good educational system.
Will the British ever live in the real world? Would not appear they will until the country’s on its knees and the ownership of mainstream media restructured to avoid the Kamikaze views of the rich being dominant!
This question is probably best directed to Blair and Mandelson.
However, the response has to be:
in remediating child poverty – Not Enough
in levelling up for the bottom 20% – Not Enough
in resolving the crisis in the NHS – Not Enough
in acting on environmental and climate change imperatives – Not Enough
In terms of party SKS will undoubtedly continue to purge the left, and be ruthless in party ‘management’.
Five years of a Starmer government will have a record of underachievement.
Thank you and well said, Tony. Please have a look at my comments posted yesterday and disquiet about how much engagement with Labour is by way of Blair and Mandelson.
@ Col S
Yes, indeed. I fear that Blairism v2 will be worse than the original, and we have had 15 more years of evidence of his egotism and Mandelson’s self serving at the altar of neoliberalism. It is difficult to see how a return to the thinking that brought us poor VFM PFI can benefit the UK at all.
Their militant centrist mindset is almost as bad as the Thatcherite ideologues.
I encountered Milburn when I lived in Co Durham and he was despised locally by the left even then. We know he is an arch proselytiser for health privatisation, and it is very worrying that he is advising Streeting.
Starmer has recently restated the freezing of tax thresholds will be maintainded for 4 years, which puts the mockers on any leveliing up for the bottom 20%, and relief of child poverty.
One of the SNP’s successes has been the supplementary child payments made here, but Labour will further undermine that in the next five years, so there is no escape.
Another poll suggests only 140 Conservative seats. It appears to be enough for the British electorate to be rid of the Conservatives, without thinking very much about the fact they are voting in a Labour Government that will change very little. One poll suggests the Scottish central belt will broadly return to Labour. Why on earth the Scottish central belt electorate would think Labour has learned anything in the last fifteen years, or improved the talent available to it to govern (if anything it has descended further down a bleak dead end of inarticulate ignorance); is quite beyond me.
Does anyone actually think the meat of this decision is the ferry fiasco, or a politician’s bad judgement over a roaming charge? Forget Brexit. Forget the Post Office. Forget Londongrad. Forget the blood scandal. Forget Grenfell. Forget the defence spending failures, and the claim of the end of conventional warfare. Forget austerity. Forget the Waspi women. Forget Windrush. Forget the Covid shambles. Forget the energy policy fiasco. Forget the two child cap – in the middle of a demographic birth-rate collapse. Forget the NHS crisis. Forget renewables investment policy. Forget the endemic, unending productivity failure. Forget the balance of payments problem – everybody does. Forget the catastrophic privatisation failures – electricity, railways, water and sewage (fortunately Scotland missed the worst of it, but only partially). Forget the menu of lies. And Labour missed the significance of most of them; they are followers, not leaders. And with some of the worst – the blood scandal or the Post Offfice, over the history they were part of the problem; and still did not stand out as a redemptive force.
Agreed
British Defence spending, in a European stability context, and given the foreseeable route Russia and Putin has followed doggedly throughout the 21st century, has been an unforgivable Conservative Government failure. Combine that with the inadequate response to the Litvinenko assassination (2006), the complacency over Russia’s aggression in Georgia (2008) and Ukraine (2014); while simultaneously inviting Russian oligarchs freedom to invest in London; the sordid financial scandal of Londongrad; and the disastrous impact on European security and unity with Brexit (2016); the final green light to Putin that Britain was weak and lost in corruption; and Europe was disintegrating. The Ukraine war is merely the outcome; ludicrously followed by Johnson taking credit for rushing to support Zelensky, while claiming to the Defence Select Committee that conventional warfare was the past; the future was cyber warfare. The scale of Britain’s failure is profound.
Thank you and well said, John.
Just a quibble: If one’s ancestors hail from a former colony, one may not find defence spending failures disagreeable. My father served God, Queen and Country for 25 years, including three wars, and reckons that much of that spending was for grift and empire, not to defend Blighty from anything.
You are right to highlight conventional warfare. Unfortunately, the military industrial complex, chicken hawk civilian policy makers and corrupt officers looking to make money after service thought otherwise. The stavka did not.
Some of my ancestors fled red coats in the early 18th century. The clan lands, over 100,000 acres in Aberdeenshire, are owned by an English aristocrat from the Midlands. Like me, he’s a female line descendant. The clan motto is by faith and fortitude. You may recognise.
Many thanks John, your para 2 is a perfect ‘cut-out and keep’ for the forthcoming barrage of doorstep canvassers: Tories will be reminded of their myriad failures, Labour will be asked what they’ll do to rectify the problems and prevent similar gaffes. SNP will be provided with a copy and asked what they’ll do to protect Scotland from the manifest incompetence of Westminster governance, and ALBA will be asked why they think splitting the Independence vote would be good for Scotland.
There’s also the question of the accuracy of the polls, where some are still weighting with 2014 data. Support for Independence is reportedly somewhere between 44% and 55%, but clearly around 50% of our electorate want independence, so why on earth would they vote for Unionist parties whose policies threaten our economy, our polity, our NHS, our identity? For Scotland and its people, it doesn’t matter whether Labour or Tories get into power – their policies and political positioning are so similar – and Lib Dems, Reform etc will have no traction here, so our electoral choice, in reality, boils down to ‘do we want to be independent and make our own decisions about our governance and social structures?’ or ‘do we want to be permanently outvoted and sidelined in Westminster, with no effective control of the things that really matter; things which would enable us to act in the best interests of our people?’ Seems a no-brainer to me.
Starmer’s latest sop is the siting of GB Energy in Scotland, but, by the admission of Labour’s Shadow Business Secretary, Jonathan Reynolds, this will be “management of the investments, which we believe are essential to unlock these markets and opportunities”. That doesn’t sound like an energy provider, more like an intermediary body with the energy being captured by private companies and sold to the UK for distribution and sale to the consumers. In other words, ‘we the state don’t do anything, we just overview everything’, so it’s PFI v2 all over again.
I view GB Energy as a private equity fund
Keir Starmer today made an issue of Energy and tied it to Putin, when the latest gas price spike was, rather caused by a Norwegian pipeline leak. How to beg the question. It is near slapstick in the hapless mistiming (reminiscent of Sunak), that should focus attention on the deeper market failure, but you can forget that. Starmer runs away from market problems. Fast. Starmer said: “Energy policy is now a matter of national security. It is a key component of our country’s resilience and capacity to weather future shocks. We simply cannot afford to remain as vulnerable to price spikes as we have been in the past. Keeping the lights on and heating our homes should not mean leaving our front door open to Russia”.
It is a national security issue, but it is also both a cost-of-living, and a business growth issue; energy is a major, phoney ‘free-market’ failure of national importance, that is economy-shrinking. So far, I do not see how Starmer’s sound-bite Putin focus answers the structural problem of UK energy supply, or changes our ‘world price’ basis for domestic energy costs. Just more of the same old-fashioned, dead-in-the-water sound-bite politics we see endlessly recycled by politicians who are transparently ill-equipped, ill-informed and not up to tackling the real tasks facing Britain. More kick-the-can-down-the-road, and fiddle with policy at the edges. More failure coming down the line.
The whole domestic energy market requires restructured to serve consumers and economic growth for business; especially SMEs. It has to be recognised that most of the domestic energy market is essentially a monopoly, because of the production or delivery network. The windfall tax issue that Starmer wants to use should be brought within a working relationship with the oil industry to drive the green transition; with trade-offs for the investment and most of all technical expertise they alone can bring to bear, at scale; including tidal, which is the hardest to crack, but potentially the biggest of all. Starmer is right to focus it on Scotland, but not as this trifling piece of confectionary flim-flam. We saw all this GB Energy style politics in the 1970s , in the first oil boom. Gone and unremembered. Much like most starmer policies, and he is not yet even in power……………..
I have done a demolition of both the LINO doc “Make Britain a Clean Energy Super Power” and by extension GB Energy. Richard is right – it is a conduit for the hegies and privaet equity – think of it as socialism for what is losely called “capitalism”. Wall to wall nonesense. Happy to furnish the demolition to those interested.
Might I publish it?
Thank you and well said, Richard.
Yesterday early evening, I caught up with a friend. He’s a former British diplomat and now teaches at an elite and elite forming institution in the Latin Quarter.
My friend is in touch with former colleagues still serving HM. Starmer is considered a small time manager, not the statesman the country desperately needs, authoritarian, somewhat provincial, a micro manager and intolerant. No one is surprised by his reliance on Blair and Mandelson and utterly pathetic responses to things like waiting lists and teacher shortages. This was echoed by Michael Crick online later yesterday evening.
The circle doesn’t think the Starmer mega majority is worth anything. The crises coming render that insignificant, something they suspect convinced Sunak to no longer prolong the agony and get to the sunny Cali ASAP. My friend compared winning the election to winning a pageant on the Titanic.
May I conclude by saying that I find it grimly amusing centrist grifters getting excited about the second coming of Farage. These scoundrels did their damndest to undermine Corbyn. What did they expect to happen when Johnson self destructed?
Farage and Paul Staines, aka Guido Fawkes, are creations of Murdoch going back to the mid-1990s and and late 1980s, something Leveson II may have discovered and, when Corbyn announced he would launch the enquiry, painted a big target on his back, although the Grauniad was the main saboteur. This part explains the persistent platforming of Farage even by media not connected to Murdoch. If hacks want to prosper, they have to play by Murdoch’s rules and later take his shilling, although Farage, like Trump, provides good copy.
I’m looking forward to centrist grifter hacks enjoying the Spectator’s bubbly with Farage and Murdoch for company next month.
Colonel Smithers,
Excellent post!
I take issue with Trump vs. Farage. Farage is intelligent, has his finger on the pulse of the UK populace which is totally fed-up seeing no options (his base of pro-BREXIT voters) and can be mildly entertaining in the “Talking Head” you love to hate way.
Trump is an “Orange Court Jester” running to stay out of jail who can not answer a simple question as he has no understanding of the question or any question for that matter.
Thank you.
I don’t disagree.
Farage was a City trader, which requires some fleet of foot. He would have come across the types he courts as the City is full of them.
Small correction needed, Tampa: You’re conflating England and UK in your statement that “Farage has his finger on the pulse of the UK populace”. In common with many (most?) English politicians and commentators, he hasn’t a clue about Scottish public opinion and politics (Richard is one of the few who does).
Thank you
And agreed
@Ken Mathieson,
You are correct! Please accept my apology for the wrong phraseology.
When you are a Yank living in a true Federalized country, it is very easy to forget, due to lack of well thought out thinking, that England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland are separate countries in a Kingdom.
Some times, the fingers (and mouth) work faster than the brain or at least they do in my case.
I believe our country is in mortal danger of becoming a totalitarian state . The Labour Party has been hijacked . Starmer became a member of the Tripartite Commission which is probably the most Far Right organisation in the world. Its members included Henry Kissinger who is bracketed with the worst monsters in human history responsible for the death of millions in Cambodia and Laos. Mike Pompeo ,a CIA official who promised Jeremy Corbyn would never become PM even if he won the election. A foreign state interfering in UK affairs. The Tripartite Commission educated Starmer in its plan for a world government by oligarchs ,massively wealthy corporations and media moguls. Democracy is to be eliminated save for a meaningless periodic vote. Tony Blairs institute has the same aim. My believe is Starmer firmly believes in the UK being a vassal state of the US and its ally Israel. Labour is accepting funding from Israel as well as hugely wealthy oligarchs. To claim he is a social democrat is laughable . The genocide in Palestine has finally revealed to the world the mortal danger to humanity is the USA. Close examination of the bloody record since 1945 should be sufficient proof. No American leader has been charged with war crimes Why? No discussion on this topic is allowed. The anniversary of D Day is in a few days. Those brave troops fought to save the world from Naziism. They have been betrayed. The Nazis are back in the ascendency They deny the genocide visible to all of us . They applaud the crimes. They giggle at the sight of babies being incinerated. They support mowing the lawn which is the equivalent of a cull. Its a cull of human beings as opposed to badgers. Keep the numbers down. What sort of beings are they? No crumb of humanity. I was a Labour member for seven decades. I mourn what has become of them.
Thanks
“The genocide in Palestine has finally revealed to the world the mortal danger to humanity is the USA.”
Stephen Mitchell, Why do say this?
Moi aussi, Stephen. Joined in 1970, left 2003 (PFI, not Iraq), rejoined 2012, left Xmas 2019. I cannot believe what has happened to the Party, and agree 100% with your points. Even worse, as I am still in contact with Party members, the level of denial is staggering. The ones that aren’t unreformed right wingers (the pals of Josan and Woodcock) seem cowed and accepting of a near total divorce between branch membership and central office. They have even obeyed an instruction not to engage with the pro-Palestinian movement – only ONE local member has appeared at the monthly stall in our city.
As I’ve posted elsewhere today, face it, we’ve lost.
I agree with much of what you say Mr Mitchel – I had the priviledge to work with one of the bravest men I ever knew – 3rd wave Normandy – fought his way through to Hamburg.
What we are seeing now are not Nazis (reflect momentarily on the name). This is much more like everything we were warned about by JK Galbriath and others – the hyper monied few calling the shots & using the mass media to groom the “electorate” who for the most part are clueless – by design All that said, as Colonel Smithers observed in an excellent post: what is coming down the track is going to expose the Labour “government” for the rabble that it will be compose of. What follows after that is anybody’s guess.
The last point is my biggest concern
He will escalate War into an open global conflict. That is why he was selected and is being installed.
If LINO get a big a majority, I’m confident that they’ll miss an historical opportunity to reverse our decline.
Richard: “I view GB Energy as a private equity fund.”
GBE has always been marketed to the City as that. It’s the brainchild of the private equity stream organised by Blair to do the thinking for Starmer and Reeves. It’s also seen as the model for public services and infrastructure. A private sector give away wrapped up in the flag.
Stephen mitchell:
Not Tripartite Commission.
It’s
Trilateral Commission.
Thank you for your remarks.