This post has been put on Twitter in the last couple of hours:
I highlight these paragraphs:
Why highlight this?
Firstly, to show that at least one member of this Cabinet has had the courage to resign over Starmer's callousness.
Second, to show that the arguments I have made are known within the Labour Party, and even within the Cabinet.
Third, to make it clear that Starmer really is intent on causing massive harm in the world, all to appease Trump.
I have since heard Anneliese Dodds, with whom I engaged quite a lot when she was an MEP with an interest in tax issues, described as 'hard left'. Whoever thinks so jas to be kidding. Shye is anything but that. She is just still in possession of a conscience. Too few in Labour are.
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A principled stand which is worthy of huge respect.
I note her use of the words ‘you informed me’, which suggests a very autocratic approach by Starmer. How much better it would be if she had been able to write ‘the cabinet has decided’. Apparently this was not a decision taken by the whole cabinet after full discussion of the options, which is both worrying and disappointing. No wonder Starmer’s ratings are tanking.
She was not involved in the discussion to slash her budget
Collective responsibility is not known about by Starmer, very obviously.
Thank you, both.
With regard to Richard’s reply, Starmer is replicating Blair’s sofa government or government by Tony and his mates*, phrases regularly used by Aurelien. Aurelien resigned from the civil service at the turn of the century, after nearly three decades, in part due to this style of government and the use of spads.
*Including civil servants who should have known better and became drinking buddies with ministers and political advisers.
General Dannatt was the former Chief of General Staff. His opinion is worth noting. He says targeted air reduces the burden on the military. We should not cut aid.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/feb/27/britain-armed-forces-cut-aid-fund-defence
I think it was US General McRaven that said, ‘If you are going to cut back on diplomats, you better give me more bullets’. This was to the first Trump administration. It almost feels like we want war.
Nice to see the McSweeney engine in flow. Dodds hard left? PSML.
I note (in today’s Guardian live politics blog) that, following Aneliesse Dodd’s resignation, Clive Lewis said on Radio 4 today that “A wealth tax of just 2% on wealth above £10m (affecting just 0.04% of the population) would raise £24bn annually.”
I know you think, with good reasons, that this is not the best way to go. Maybe now is the moment to firmly point Clive (and others on the left including the Greens who appear to favour a similar approach) to the alternatives proposed in your excellent report for taxing the wealthy rather than their wealth as such.
He knows about them
He has seen it
Simplistic narratives are easy though, mores the pity
Annaliese Dodds is my MP and, having exchanged quite a lot of correspondence with her since she entered the House of Commons, I quite agree that it’s silly to call her ‘hard left.’
However, I admire her decision and I’ve just e-mailed her to express my full support for both her decision and her reasons for it – as I added, the decision to slash international aid from 0.5% of GDP to 0.3% is counterproductive in every respect.
People who believe that governmental foreign aid should be communicable diseases and emergencies only also have a conscience, they just happen to disagree with you. The rest of foreign aid can be dealt with by the Not Government sector of the cappuccino economy.
That was your last post here.
You plainly do not have the sligtest idea of what are talking about.
“I have since heard Anneliese Dodds, with whom I engaged quite a lot when she was an MEP with an interest in tax issues, described as ‘hard left’. ”
I was speaking to the nice Mr McSweeney-Todd the other day and he quite rightly described Ms Dodds as a supporter of Pol-Pot-Stalin-Mao-Trotsky and a few others who I forget (perhaps satan was mentioned – things tend to blur given we were on our second bottle of scotch). Anyway, Sweeney-Todd promised me that it was all under control and that all the aid went to people in countries far away and in which the UK has little interest. I think I passed out at that point. Hic.
LINO, reaching the depths that other parties fail to reach (apart from Deform).
🙂
Annaliese stood in East Reading when I lived and sadly lost to an awful Conservative candidate and remained active in Reading until she became an MEP. I saw her out canvassing with her young baby in tow in she was a hard worker. She always seemed decent and without doubt highly intelligent, but I would say she was fairly mainstream Labour before it’s lurch to the right. She definitely was not hard left, but as you say an MP with a conscience who has been pushed too far. Good on her for taking a stance and speaking out.
Dear oh dear.
Well, I suppose it will do.
If she had spoken about the false choices being presented here I would have agreed with you wholeheartedly but I can’t see that being mentioned at all. ‘Soft-left’ they call her in the Guardian and an ‘intellectual’.
It does not take much to be called an intellectual in this Neo-lib authoritarian world does it? If she’s an intellectual I must be off the bloody scale!!!
At last! It begins (I hope).
Describing her as “hard left” is simply an attempt to discredit her and minimise the impact of this v significant resignation. The “left” in the past were quite critical of her in her Shadow Treasury roles.
I was v heartened to see her mention “fiscal rules”. That too is v significant. At last a suggestion that there might be other ways of managing the macro-economic challenge of increased defence expenditure other than cutting budgets in other departments not popular with the right.
Interesting that former Army head Lord Dannat seems to agree with her.
https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/politics/ex-army-chiefs-dire-warning-34691307
I never thought Starmer had much political nouse but it seems even I overestimated his political intelligence. I hadn’t realised just how politically inept he is.
Given the global security situation as well as climate change, reducing our aid budget is an utterly boneheadedly criminally irresponsible STUPID thing to do. Our Foreign Secretary criticised Trump for doing it, but now has do do some contortions to avoid criticising Starmer for doing the same. He seems to spend most of his time nowadays explaining why he is standing on his head.
I also was interested to see this article echoing a point I’ve made several times about Starmer’s boss, Morgan McSweeney’s permanent election campaign chasing Reform votes.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/feb/28/migration-german-election-political-centre
Might that be worth a blog post but with a UK slant?
Events are overtaking this, right now.
Last night at our Constituency Labour Party meeting an attempt was made to put forward an emergency motion condemning the aid cut. It was ruled out of order. Not totally surprising, since our good Labour MP was removed in a stitch up to allow a friend of Starmer’s to be parachuted in.
That will be replicated up and down the country.
CLP’s are under the total control of Starmer/McSweeney, and if they aren’t, then the Labour NEC simply take them over, sack the executive, and appoint their placemen/women.
It’s why those hoping for “change from within” in the Labour Party are whistling in the wind. If the people at the top don’t change their minds, then those further down are simply got rid of. If you persist then they expel you from the party anyway.
I already know that Labour is not my party any more. They went to a lot of trouble during the election campaign to make that crystal clear. So I obediently didn’t vote for them.
It seems as if now, many of those who criticised those like me who used their vote elsewhere (Putin sympathisers, Tory enablers, Anti-Semites, Corbyn-cultists etc etc choose your favourite smear) are now a bit worried.
Good.