UK Politics

[steviewevie]

He doesn't f**k around.

[LJS]

3 minutes ago, steviewevie said:

He doesn't f**k around.

Not interested in his sex life.

[kaosmark2]

Gotta say, I don't think those MPs are any real loss to the Labour party. Burgon and Long-Bailey are complete idiots and probably the most useless members of that generation of Labour MPs. I have more time for McDonnell, Sultana, and Byrne, but they were always going to cause Starmer problems.

 

I'm still pissed off with Starmer about this, but I suspect he decided this was the easiest way to get rid of those MPs. Maybe this is going be more effective as political manoeuvring than I thought.

 

Still wish child poverty wasn't part of these games though.

[pink_triangle]

20 minutes ago, kaosmark2 said:

Gotta say, I don't think those MPs are any real loss to the Labour party. Burgon and Long-Bailey are complete idiots and probably the most useless members of that generation of Labour MPs. I have more time for McDonnell, Sultana, and Byrne, but they were always going to cause Starmer problems.

 

I'm still pissed off with Starmer about this, but I suspect he decided this was the easiest way to get rid of those MPs. Maybe this is going be more effective as political manoeuvring than I thought.

 

Still wish child poverty wasn't part of these games though.

I think it’s 6 months so not completely gone. I guess the argument is they knew what they were standing for 2 weeks ago and could have run as an independent if they had wanted to vote how they wanted at all times.

 

From my perspective I am open to labour keeping it in place if they have a better way of getting children out of poverty. I know they will say long term things will get better, but those struggling now can’t afford to wait.

[kaosmark2]

Just now, pink_triangle said:

I think it’s 6 months so not completely gone. I guess the argument is they knew what they were standing for 2 weeks ago and could have run as an independent if they had wanted to vote how they wanted at all times.

 

From my perspective I am open to labour keeping it in place if they have a better way of getting children out of poverty. I know they will say long term things will get better, but those struggling now can’t afford to wait.

 

Well I don't think Burgon has the capacity to keep his head down and mouth shut for 6 months. I'm interested to see how they each behave. It's "reviewed after 6 months" from reports so not automatically lifted.

 

If Labour had found another solution that was cheaper by now, it would've been in their manifesto. Maybe they think that now they're in government with more data they can, but something needs to change this year, and at present they just look cruel and callous.

[steviewevie]

hey, I got an abuse badge of honour.

[LJS]

Of course, the real story is not the ones who got suspended. They, by and large, never had any prospect of promotion in the Starmer Reich.

The real story is the ones with ambition who caved in and toed the party line when they felt the boot of Keir's Starmtroopers on their throats.

And all for believing in something that we know that Starmer will do anyway in the next year or so.

All for the sake of showing that Starmer is all powerful. Not a shred of principle to be seen.

[Ryan1984]

I’ve not looked into this enough but we rightly gave the Tories abuse for wanting children to go hungry before Rashford intervened. Should treat Sir Kid Starver the same way?

[pink_triangle]

1 hour ago, LJS said:

Of course, the real story is not the ones who got suspended. They, by and large, never had any prospect of promotion in the Starmer Reich.

The real story is the ones with ambition who caved in and toed the party line when they felt the boot of Keir's Starmtroopers on their throats.

And all for believing in something that we know that Starmer will do anyway in the next year or so.

All for the sake of showing that Starmer is all powerful. Not a shred of principle to be seen.

 

I don’t really agree because the ones who caved are likely also left wing MPs Abbott, Whittome, McDonald etc who also had no chance of promotion. I think some would have been convinced by the argument of losing credibility with the electorate changing course a couple of weeks later.

 

I think others would just see it as collective responsibility and the reality of the party structure is sometimes you have to vote against what you believe. If everyone just voted for what they wanted all the time then we would potentially be left in gridlock. I have no doubt Tory MPs in Westminster, SNP MSP in Scotland and labour AM in Wales have all voted against their personal beliefs at times without it being about climbing the ladder.

[kaosmark2]

56 minutes ago, pink_triangle said:

 

I don’t really agree because the ones who caved are likely also left wing MPs Abbott, Whittome, McDonald etc who also had no chance of promotion. I think some would have been convinced by the argument of losing credibility with the electorate changing course a couple of weeks later.

 

I think others would just see it as collective responsibility and the reality of the party structure is sometimes you have to vote against what you believe. If everyone just voted for what they wanted all the time then we would potentially be left in gridlock. I have no doubt Tory MPs in Westminster, SNP MSP in Scotland and labour AM in Wales have all voted against their personal beliefs at times without it being about climbing the ladder.

Abbott said she didn't attend for a medical reason and would've voted against it.

 

I'm quite interested in the ~40 Labour MPs who abstained though.

 

Edit: Found them: https://votes.parliament.uk/votes/commons/division/1829#notrecorded

 

Reeves stands out as interesting. I'm assuming there's some other reason for that (ie couldn't attend).

Edited July 23 by kaosmark2

[kaosmark2]

Meanwhile, while we can't find money for starving kids:

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/article/2024/jul/24/king-to-receive-extra-45m-of-public-money-as-crown-estate-income-soars

[steviewevie]

Starmer gets to look tough etc but this just opens a can of worms. This going to happen every time an MP rebels? Think he's going to regret this...just sets up a bad vibe between govt and backbench MPs.

 

 

[steviewevie]

and this just makes the rebellion on this vote bigger news than it needed to be. I guess that is what Starmer (and his team) want? I don't know, just doesn't seem a good start. He has a large majority, there will always be some rebels, Blair had them, Attlee had a big rebellion on his kings' speech too apparently and there was nothing like this.

[steviewevie]

From a Robert Peston (long) tweet last night...

 

Next week Rachel Reeves will reveal an enormous funding deficit for core public services, having instructed Treasury officials to ask each department to list services that aren’t being financed adequately or are in danger of collapse or where there is some other hidden liability. 

 

Just the liabilities we know about run to untold billions - from the NHS workforce plan, to infected blood and post office compensation, to public pay sector pay awards, to the advanced manufacturing plan, to our creaking nuclear defence capability, to more mainstream defence requirements, to commitments on education and overseas development, to the welfare costs of an epidemic of physical and mental disability, and so on and so on.  

 

It is easy to get to a financing hole of well over  £50bn without even taking up the public sector equivalent of the floorboards, or worrying how many of our failing privatised services, water in particular, will end up as taxpayer costs.  

 

None of this is a surprise. I have been banging on for countless weeks that the new government would inherit a fiscal disaster. 

 

So with a face that looks as though she has chewed through a crate of lemons, Reeves is doing a George Osborne: just as in 2010 he built a political and economic strategy for an entire parliament around the charge that the previous Labour government had been spending money it didn’t have, she is blaming Johnson, Truss and Sunak for her toxic fiscal legacy.  

 

This is raw and obviously sensible politics.  It should allow her and Starmer to shift opprobrium for their remedies to their Tory predecessors.  

 

There is one big difference between her and Osborne though.  He was clear from the outset that his response would be austerity, or deep cuts in public services.  He had a plan.  In retrospect even his own Tory colleagues wish he hadn’t been quite as zealous as he was in pursuing that austerity plan.  But it was real, and simple to communicate. 

 

But what on earth is Reeves’s plan? 

 

Austerity is not available to her - partly because the mess she has inherited was caused in part by that very austerity, and because even the most Starmerite of the hundreds of Labour  MPs won’t wear it.  

 

Also she has closed off the option of letting the national debt rise for longer, and mending the fabric through additional borrowing: her fiscal rules are never to be tweaked or re-interpreted, her colleagues tell me; it is as if she went up the mountain and a deity she calls Stability dictated them as permanent commandments. 

 

So obviously she has to increase taxes.  There’s nothing else for it.  Her autumn budget will have to be a massive reset of the tax system to generate those colossal sums needed to fix the foundations of the state. 

 

Except that approach too looks almost impossible - because Starmer promised in the election he wouldn’t raise money from the biggest available pools, namely income taxes on people, or VAT or corporation tax.  

 

Reeves could increase taxes on capital, but that would alienate the investors and creditors she desperately needs to finance all those wind farms, and new homes and assorted infrastructure projects she and Starmer have promised. 

 

What she’s left with is - possibly - reducing tax breaks on saving for a pension, taxing land and increasing the yield from council tax.  

 

There are arguments for doing all or any of these.  But quite how they would raise enough defeats me. 

 

So it is all very well for Reeves and Starmer to blame and heap shame on Sunak and co.  But this is their problem now, and at some point - presumably in the next three months - they’ll have to tell us where the money’s coming from to fix it.

 

 

Edited July 24 by steviewevie

[pink_triangle]

29 minutes ago, steviewevie said:

Starmer gets to look tough etc but this just opens a can of worms. This going to happen every time an MP rebels? Think he's going to regret this...just sets up a bad vibe between govt and backbench MPs.

 

 

Isn’t the alternative you back down on the first big vote and rebels know you will always back down?

[steviewevie]

1 hour ago, pink_triangle said:

Isn’t the alternative you back down on the first big vote and rebels know you will always back down?

But this always happens anyway, and he's got a big majority so really doesn't have to worry about it.

Just seems all so performative, from both sides actually.

[Nobody Interesting]

1 hour ago, pink_triangle said:

Isn’t the alternative you back down on the first big vote and rebels know you will always back down?

 

or you just ignore them. Far easier and over quicker if you ignore them and carry on. Removing the whip gives them publicity and people who may not have known or cared about the vote may now become aware.

Like all too many things Labour does, it has been managed really badly.

[steviewevie]

From Stephen Bush's FT newsletter thingy...which may or may not be behind a paywall...

Labour government quashes first rebellion (ft.com)

Good morning. History doesn’t repeat, but it does rhyme. The first major rebellion of the last Labour government came over cuts to lone parent benefits, necessitated because Tony Blair and Gordon Brown had promised to stick to Conservative spending limits. Forty-seven Labour MPs voted against the government and many more went absent without leave.

 

In the end, just seven Labour MPs rebelled over the two-child benefit cap last night. But the rows over the two-child limit are far from over. Some more thoughts on that below.

 

The Labour government has seen off the first organised rebellion of its term in emphatic fashion and handed out the harshest of available punishments to the seven Labour rebels.

 

These two things are inextricably linked: when Tony Blair faced a rebellion over a cut to lone-parent child benefit back in 1997, the government planned to hand out harsh punishments to the rebels. The reason why he was unable to do so was because the rebellion was so large that any punishment was obviously untenable.

 

This time, facing a similar rebellion over welfare policy, the Labour whips were able to cap the rebellion at just seven, all but one of whom are among the leadership’s most consistent and implacable critics.

 

How did they do it? One big difference is that in 1997, Blair and Brown held fast against and gave the rebels nothing in the way of concessions. As a result, this led to a significant backbench revolt. Keir Starmer and his ministers — most importantly Liz Kendall, the welfare secretary and Bridget Phillipson, the education secretary, who co-chair a new child poverty task force — have signalled they will act to remove the two-child cap as soon as practicable. The task force includes a host of charities, all of which have called for the cap to be scrapped.

 

One reason why the rebellion was so limited is that Labour MPs have essentially been told that the cap is not long for this world: it may even be scrapped as soon as the first fiscal event. Another is that defeat on the King’s Speech, while vitally important because it is an issue of confidence (don’t forget that losing on the King’s Speech and failing to pass a Budget are the two mechanisms that traditionally force a general election or a motion of no confidence), was only ever a cosmetic way to scrap the cap. Many would-be rebels felt they were being asked to wound the government when all that was up for grabs was what they expected anyway, which is action on the policy in the government’s first proper fiscal event.

 

It will be more challenging for the Labour government to contain rebellions on votes where the limit is actually meaningfully up for grabs. It will get harder for it to contain rebellions over the issue and it will still have to act on it sooner rather than later.

[LJS]

 

 

[steviewevie]

9 minutes ago, LJS said:

 

 

different times etc

[steviewevie]

Starmer's first PMQs starting...by the time this gets past the moderator firewall probably already over and he's been amazing.

[steviewevie]

kin'ell, sunak and starmer are such besties these days. 

[steviewevie]

new party?

 

[steviewevie]

..although in 2017 Labour were going to stick to most of Osborne's benefit cuts so....

Edited July 24 by steviewevie

[Nobody Interesting]

I have watched PMQs for a long time (cos I be mad) and in all that time the very first one of a new parliament has pretty much always had party leaders wearing a tie of their parties colours - Tory Blue, Labour Red, Lindem yellow

Today all three main party leaders wore blue ties.