The Labour Party conference has begun. It must be agony for those newly promoted to high ministerial posts. Recently granted status as Privy Councillors, and so newly adorned with the title of ‘Right Honourable', those holding Cabinet office must have spent years dreaming of what they might do when finally given the opportunity to exercise power. Now, they have discovered the reality.
Firstly, they are required to do media rounds defending the near impossible actions of Keir Starmer.
Secondly, they have to explain, as if they really mean it, that the purpose of a Labour government is to punish those who are weakest within our society.
Thirdly, instead of delivering the programmes that they longed to create, they now discover that their only task is to cut the already miserable agenda that their Tory predecessors put in place. Any initiative that costs more than a pack of photocopier paper will not get the approval of Rachel Reeves.
The net consequence is that being a Cabinet minister must now be about as much fun as being an accountant in a failing company shortly before the liquidators move in.
Despite this, the possessors of shiny new red boxes are required to say that Keir Starmer will recover his popularity, which is reportedly now lower than that of Rishi Sunak.
It is also demanded that they explain that cuts are the necessary precursors of growth, even though no one on earth believes that.
And, they must now suffer the indignity of speculation on whether they bought their own new suit for conference, or not.
This is, as should be obvious, a position that none of them ever wanted to find themselves in, and the fact that they are the subjects of so much discomfort is almost entirely the fault of Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves. Every single one of them is aware of that. In that case, there is an obvious question to ask, which is for how long will they put up with this?
Starmer and Reeves appear to belong to that school of management that should have disappeared long ago, which believed that ritual humiliation is a valid form of motivation. It isn't, and it never was. It is, however, a rich source of resentment. That must already exist. It can only grow. The likelihood that this is a very happy Labour government is very low indeed.
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What is the likelihood that Labour Party members will have the integrity to get rid of “Free Gear Kier” a leader with Zero Integrity? Not very likely I would argue:-
https://plmr.co.uk/2021/09/starmers-labour-rule-changes-explained/
I’m not sure how Labour Party members could get rid of Starmer or Reeves, but I’d love to see Labour MPs vote against Reeves’ dreadful (and wholly unnecessary) proposals. Not abstaining but actually voting against the whip. If they became independent MPs they’d be free to carry on voting with their conscience. Their constituents might well be delighted.
The way Johnson was got rid of…
Johnson was “almost “called out for lying has Kier Rodney Starmer?
Clearly I am no fan of Sunak and as Britains first Prime Minister of Indian Heritage he must be a slightly higher security risk than Starmer, BUT he seemed to manage to sit in the stands when he went to watch Football unlike Starmer who seems to need an executive box.
A clear own goal
“A clear own goal.”
And they’ll keep on coming. Here, for example, is a quote from Andrew Rawnsley’s article in today’s Observer:-
“Those who cackle that Sue Gray is the only pensioner to have been made better off by this government have come up with a joke that wounds.”
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/sep/22/give-us-your-vision-for-the-country-sir-keir-costly-glasses-shouldnt-be-required
Starmer is out of his depth and needs to be replaced but the chances of this will not be easy there is so much sleaze in the Labour Party:-
https://www.theguardian.com/global/2024/sep/21/revealed-mps-accepted-more-than-700000-in-free-gifts-and-hospitality-last-year
It was never confined to the Tory Party!
“Starmer who seems to need an executive box.”
Question for thought: Did Starmer want to sit in an executive box or did he just want to sit with the people who were sitting in the executive box?
Not that I wish to defend Starmer, who is useless, but it will be much easier to get a seat at a Southampton game in comparison to an Arsenal game. Without a season ticket, the only way Starmer could get a seat at the Emirates would be in an executive box.
Then, like the rest of us, he couldn’t go.
One thing now being revealed.
The only thing holding the then Shadow Labour Cabinet together was a wild desire for power (and free clothes).
That’s it. No ideas. No coherent economic policy. No moral code.
Unfortunately, “Free Clothes” have become a way of life for any one in the media with a high profile.
Like the Royal Family, Starmer needs to wear ethically sourced British at all times no matter who pays for it. The Funding the Future commentariat is tuff and can at times be brutal but we are nothing compared to the green fashion bloggers and The Daily Fail commentariat. If they will go after Carrie & Blojo Johnson, they will go after Starmer creating noise that will effect his ability to govern. $10,000.00 a roll wallpaper anyone.
Starmer needs to tread this water very carefully.
I am reminded of Dobby the house elf, in Harry Potter, who gained his freedom when his master, Malfoy, was tricked by Potter into giving Dobby “clothes” (an old sock).
I shall think of Dobby every time I see a member of the Labour Cabinet…
Its quite astounding that Starmer’s popularity has fallen lower than Sunak’s – genuinely an achievment (of the wrong sort) in and of itself but to reach such a nadir in fewer than three months in office. Its a good job that ‘the adults are back in charge’.
Many people, myself included, thought Labour with Starmer leading would roll up their sleeves and get to work fixing the problems of a state lying in the Intensive Care Unit.
No one thought Starmer would rip-off the Tory applied band-aid and let the patient bleed out.
Sorry Tampa Bay. Some of us did believe they would do that. After all they told us they would
“Some of us did believe they would do that. After all they told us they would”.
On what grounds? On what evidence? On what record?
Running away from the Conservative Party shouldn’t be confused with running toward the Labour Party. They are the same Political Party; you can only tell them apart by the clothes. The Labour Party clothes are newer, but they even have the same designer labels.
It is unbelievable to me that so many people keep falling for the same old political swindle; again.
John
Just to clarify. Some of us DID believe they would let the patient bleed out. They told us they would do that wghen they announced they would be following Tory fiscal policy.
They knew what they were getting into – all of them.
Observations: two elections, two govs, both landslide victories, both followed by great unhappiness – amongst the electorate & party in gov. I wonder if UK serfs will get tired of these oscillations: give a big majority to one, followed by total incompetance, given a big majority to another – ditto – with lying & corruption at similar levels for both.
From this, one concludes that UK serfs enjoy “punishment beatings” whilst being told by the UK meeja that it’s good for them, grin and bear it, sunlit uplands will soon be in sight (= “Get Brexit done” & now = “we will grow the economy”). The meeja of course are also culpable of being incapable of even wanting to ask the right questions to those in gov/those wanting to be in gov – all to keep UK serfs ignorant & the whole ghastly show on the road.
I wonder what UK fascism will look like when it emerges from the wreckage of the tory 1/tory2 omi-shambles?
BlairBrown fixed the school roofs after Tory neglect
How crass can you get as a government when persistently rabbitting on about “tough economic times ahead” to the bulk of the population whilst Starmer, Reeves, Rayner and Streeting (to name the main culprits) accept bribes (so-called “freebies”) behind our backs?
Truly it’s 101 Optics that you don’t do this if you want to keep voters on-side!
And the corruption news about Starmer continues to get worse and this time it involves Sue Gray who we were told was an experienced safe pair of hands who understood the workings of Whitehall:-
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/starmer-labour-conference-gray-liverpool-latest-b2616904.html
From the above referenced article:
“Rayner: We will clamp down on damp and mouldy homes”
How is she going to do this when the “government” cannot even ensure residential fire safety and a post office system that works?
Rhetoric….
@Richard
Me or Ms. Rayner person?
In my defense, it is my understanding that toxic mold has been a problem in the UK for over 30 years with increased average temperatures due to climate change causing global warming has made the problem worse.
Living in Florida, I know a thing or two about toxic mold.
I think you are asking someone else?
They will do it through the Social Housing (Regulation) Reform Act 2023 set up by the Tories.
The Tories – and Labour – have put the onus on the housing sector to put this right, even though they have deliberately under-funded capital investment, curbed rent rises to below inflation levels despite so-called Localism Bill (denied landlords who have to manage their housing revenue accounts as stand-alone local business budgets the revenue with which to manage the stock), brought in measures to reduce housing benefit payments (bedroom tax, LHA rates) and inhibited new build in the sector – their latest ruse being high interest rates. etc.
So, from a registered social landlord (RSL) point of view, we will be penalised with ‘unlimited fines’ for having damp or combustible homes created out of the government rules or lack of rules and investment that helped create them in the first place. Local councils and housing associations will be left holding the baby so to speak, whilst Starmer and Rayner tell us they are broke.
To cope with this, RSLs are having to extend the life of kitchens and bathrooms – component life cycles – kick the can down the road so that the we have an ever decreasing standard of housing stock. But this time, there will be no decent homes programme to the rescue as in 1997. So, like the NHS, they will break housing, create a crisis and on that basis the private sector will hoover it all up at a discount. You’ll see.
The result? Well, I think we are beginning to see now that the end of social housing for sure is possible as most other things.
How long before we get ‘The BBC Philharmonic brought to you by Taco Bell’?
It’s only a matter of time.
“Rhetoric….”
BayTampaBay or Rayner???
Rayner
Thatcherite dogma has become orthodox in this country – she/it casts a long shadow over us to this day.
Maggie purported to raise the status of this country but did so in an old fashioned empiricist way, projecting our ‘power’ (yeah, right) from the top only whilst emmiserating most of the population below into conformity whom she thought had grown soft in the post war period social security era (totally ignoring the changing world around her and blaming the people who voted for her – sick or what?).
In essence, the external goodies that propped up Maggies dogma – north sea oil, and latterly membership of the EU – are now gone. With those two factors gone, we can see how we really are and also realise how vulnerable we are to U.S. exploitation (which is why we increasingly seem to have similarities with U.S. politics – it’s the way they like to roll, we are terra-forming for U.S. corporations). England is just another Indian reservation to our cousins over the pond.
This for me is why Labour have no ideas for us except the idea of walking into the arms of one of the most rapacious capitalist systems in the world. This also helps Labour to avoid doing real work – like rejoining the EU – because cowards like Starmer will always choose what suits them.
He’s a winner already whether we turf him out or not, the patronage system he is part of will reward him for compliance to ‘inward investment’. The freebies will make it seem worth it for him because tell me this – do you find him credible? This country has been an asset strippers dream since the 1970’s – please do seek out ‘The Mayfair Set’ (1999) by BBC’s Adam Curtis and ask yourself what has changed? John Warren – please do take a look.
How do we think history will look at Starmer? I tell you, this is already written and it amounts to very little.
Incidentally, Adam Curtis – someone whom I find impossible to see how he survives in the BBC as a canary in the coalmine – is a national asset to me, and led me to Professor Murphy in the long run.
Anyhow………..
Last night in Manchester I saw another national asset – the BBC Philharmonic. When introduced as ‘your BBC Phil’ by the programme director I nearly laughed out loud in incredulity . They played Beethoven’s 3rd Piano Concerto which I had forgotten was so good. Maybe the 5th is not my favourite after all (but I will not make way for the 4th).
But it was their rendition of Holst’s ‘Planet Suite’ that got me. They played ‘Mars’ with such conviction, such force I thought the stage was going to go through the floor and they’d confront the Devil in Hell himself. Was this the wider anger and frustration in the country as art?; their rendition of Jupiter had me signing up for my country, tears welling up and putting my hand to my chest especially when ‘I Thou to Thee’ sprang out as it does and I’m no ‘my country, right or wrong’ nationalist I tell you.
Afterwards my 19 year old wearily reflected on how it nice it was to feel proud about something ‘English’ for once – a fantastic piece of music moulded by walks in the countryside with Vaughan Williams and the intelligent, inquiring and humanistic mind of is creator; an orchestra that seemed to be desperate to exist at all in the way it played.
It was telling really looking back at ‘I Vow to Thee My Country’. To me this is the national anthem we have been denied – not the dirge we have to sing to to show our fealty to an obscenely rich family and their cling-ons who continue to immiserate us at their leisure.
I’m still looking for Albion; a country that I can be proud of and worth believing in. Until then, I am a citizen of nowhere except in my imagination. And that is mine, and I will keep it.
Sounds good!
By Jove it was – and it was not perfect – another theme this morning here – but the music was played with feeling. If only our politics was playing out the same eh?
Indeed…
“With those two factors gone, we can see how we really are and also realise how vulnerable we are to U.S. exploitation”
This may be true of the US Government and US based multi-national corporations but it is NOT true of the US people.
What I do not understand is where did Johnson & Farage think they were going to go after BREXIT trade wise? It seems to me that there were only two choices North America and the Commonwealth. I know very little about the Commonwealth but I read nothing that suggest to me that the average British man-on-the street wants a closer relationship with North America.
PSG,
Spot on. Curtis’ Mayfair set, North Sea Oil, Privatisation and EU membership help explain the moments of economic positivity in the UK since the 70’s — none provided long term investment (the reverse). Apart from the EU, they were all just asset stripping. There is little evidence of any successful British industry or ‘innovation’ to rival the tech giants — we’ve had ARM (maybe also CSR, and a few bio-techs) — all sold before becoming globally significant. In the meantime, our public/private-organisation management and investment has been woeful (compared to, say, Germany, France) and hence we’ve had a decline in productivity, significant. But the UK is pretty good at ‘spin’ – and management consultancy arts……
We’ve spun the ‘feel good factor’ of those ‘highs’ of the asset stripping (“bought my council house”, “made £200 by selling my mortgage company out”) has been used to justify flawed assessments of ‘successful policy’ (back to that critical thinking thing) — any empirical evaluation of economic policy would expose the gap — sigh!
But you know this.
And now we have a party in charge devoid of leadership, strategy or any moral compass. and now we can add Corrupt. It’s about governance and integrity. Where do we see this in any of our political parties ?
In Holst’s defence – he didn’t write those words. Sir Cecil Spring Rice did. Holst called it Thaxted, which is in Essex.
He did not write the words, but it is the sentiment, the music and not having to mention Charlie that I like – but the tune above all else.
Starmer, Rayner and Co have lost all credibility. We are obviously not ‘all in it together’. They keep saying they are entitled to free gifts while they have put in place rules to punish pensioners on £15000 or less per month. All gifts should be given to charity and politicians should be put up in secure flats when in London, allocated by those who police the public purse (No second homes). Starmer and Co should pay out of their wages for the things we all pay for such as clothing, entertainment, heating. Labour have already created an ‘us’ and ‘them’ barrier. They seem to care little for us and more for them.
Companies do pay entertaining costs for employees
And the flat suggestyion do9es not reflect the realities of MPs’ family lives
As a huge supporter of yours Richard, I’m intrigued to know why you think the flats idea wouldn’t work. I find it hard to believe that MPs with children drag them between their constituency home and their London home on a regular basis, and that certainly can’t happen once children start school. So why do you think an MP couldn’t make use of a state-supplied room instead of the current system?
Also, for several years, my partner worked in places (including in or around London) too far from our family home to return every evening so stayed in a mixture of hotels, AirBnBs and rental flats during the week, returning to our family home at weekends. Our children and I remained in our family home. We paid for this additional accommodation out of his income (at the time I wasn’t working so it was our sole income) and he was on a similar income to that of an MP. We had no allowances for travel, food, heating or anything else. We managed and MPs should be able to manage!
If I was an MP for a constituency well out of London with my workplace in London I would want my family home in London. I would never see my family otherwise. And I would then need a second constituency home. Being an MP is tough. Making it only ok to those who do not want a family life would make the choice of politics even worse.
WARNING! WARNING! Yank opinion:
If you get rid of the housing allowance for 2nd homes for a London residence, then the only MPs you will have are MPs who are wealthy enough to already own a second London Home such as Rishi Sunak or the 10th Earl of Home plus the David Beckham & Jeremy Clarkson media star types who want to be MPs.
In my Yank opinion, the 2nd home housing allowance is just part of the MPs compensation package.
I agree with you
I meant to say £15000 per annum, not month. Hopefully folk worked that one out.
Try ‘less than £12,000 per annum’.
£15,000 per month? Even if you meant £1,500 per month, that would be wonderful. The point at which the WFA cannot be claimed is income of less than £950 per month for a single pensioner.
Look on the bright side. Now their wardrobes are full of ‘donated’ clothes, they have announced no further clothing donations will be accepted/needed. On the other hand, their announcement is silent on other donations, bribes in actual fact, so expect them to continue to roll in.
They would sell their granny for a few thousand quid whilst freezing everyone else’s.
Who else is buying them other than the foreign powers we already know about? That’s the thing about corruption, isn’t it. Where do the corrupt draw the line? Is there even a line?
With a mere 33% of the vote, then there is room for something new. The disenfranchised have more to do and I’m sure they will! Maybe that’s for the next generation? Or AI? Not sure we could have,,, so f##cked it up if we tried? Sad times! I do feel this phase of politics has lost its self serving cause.
Understanding the neoliberal paradigm is not easy for those coming into power. Surely the cushioning blow is spectacles and free clothes? Sorry (cheap shot) , but aren’t governments run by interests other than those actually in government? This kinda harks back to the Ronald Reagan era
(Obvs trickle down) and Margaret Thatcher? I literally joked with a friend last week that Kier Thatcher was making the same mistakes.
Should we be concerned about Ms Gray? I really think we should.
https://www.ons.gov.uk/economy/nationalaccounts/uksectoraccounts/bulletins/nationalbalancesheet/2021
When U.K. is fifth richest nation in the world, why are we being told there’s no money?
I think it was Ha Joon Chang that understood this. Yes we are one of the richest countries. However we are one of the lowest producers of goods (other than service) . In his words” we have many bringing food to the table”. In fact Switzerland produces more goods than us. We rank around the 20s and above Switzerland in actual production?
And , and and they still haven’t settled the sub postmasters. What the hell?
How about the Labour Party set to Carmina Burana by Carl Orff?! *Perfect* mood music on BBC’s Broadcasting House, 7mins 50secs in
https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m00236r8
The Labour Party conference is a joke. It’s full of delegates who can’t for the life of them provide a clear cut understanding of how the country’s monetary system works yet here they are voting for harsh cuts in public spending that will adversely affect some citizens even to the point of death. Meanwhile the party leaders have been on the take to the tune of thousand of pounds. Their attempt to pretend that there’s any morality left in this party should now fall on deaf ears!
So we have had Ronald Thatcher, Donald Blair and Kier ? Given up hope!
Starmtrooper, Thieves and Cheating. A really unholy trio.
Perhaps an immediate compulsory training session on anti bullying from the top down through Westminster and adherence to the Ubuntu philosophy of Kindness, caring and compassion would be a very good idea.
But that is probably outside the neoliberal frame of reference.