Labour isn't working - Thread 10

[TheNuthatch]

A chat thread for those who don't like this Labour government.

The problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people's money.

Previous thread:
https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/_chat/5411817-labour-isnt-working-thread-9?utm_campaign=thread&utm_medium=share

We're near to two Booths. We splurge a little at Christmas (we're not rich / posh enough to shop there often!).

@CaveMum and @Rivalled if you are interested in US politics I highly recommend the NPR politics podcast.

i get really irritated with my husband when he draws a false equivalence between ‘left’ or ‘right in the uk vs us - it is a totally different landscape with different fault lines. I am a solid democrat in the us, but in the uk I am ideologically mostly somewhere between conservative and Lib Dem, and definitively anti-Labour. On the odd policy i actually agree with reform, which I would only acknowledge anonymously on the internet.

I love Wes

Me too
He’s one of the few that’s always had his head screwed on with what a women is
Unlike Starmer who thinks women can have penises.

He owns up to mistakes. I’ve never heard anything like it.

FT

Burnham acknowledged nationalisation could be expensive at a time when Rachel Reeves, chancellor, is facing a fiscal hole of up to £30bn at her November 26 Budget. But he argued his programme could be partly funded by higher council tax on expensive homes in London and the home counties, a 50p income tax rate for the highest paid and £40bn of borrowing to build council houses.

Asked if this might alarm bond markets, Burnham said: “We’ve got to get beyond this thing of being in hock to the bond markets.” One Starmer ally scoffed: “Markets, what markets?”

Meanwhile, Burnham was asked by the Daily Telegraph if he was being urged to stand against Starmer. “People have contacted me through the summer — yeah,” he said. Asked if he still wanted to be prime minister, he said: “I stood twice to be leader of the Labour party. And I think that tells you, doesn’t it?”

My God, this guy is an utter moron - I mean, certifiable.

He's come to have his head screwed on about what a woman is but that hasn't always been the case. He was a fully paid up member of trans women are women zealotry, when he worked in Stonewall and president of the NUS. And he sat on his hands while that cunt Russel-Moyle heckled Duffield in the commons for knowing what a woman is and being a general bullying shit.

Wes, to his credit, did apologise to Duffield that he didn't speak up and he has demonstrated capacity to change his mind and take decisive action in protecting children from the medical harms of gender nonsense and weather the backlash that came with it.

I think he's far more capable than the other members of the cabinet. I think he'd be a better pm than Burnham and Starmer. And I, ignoring shitty tweets/emails from over a decade ago, think he's alright - far more bandwidth of human and personable enough to extend him a bit of grace for mistakes.

So tax "the rich" and more borrowing. How original of him.

Perhaps Streeting will bide his time. Let Labour get Burnham out of their system and mess things up even further before he puts his hat in the ring.

Anybody who has any sense needs to hang back until Labour have wrangled the welfare budget into a state where we can demonstrate financial competence and bring the cost of servicing our debt down and the further away he keeps from the business end when that goes down, the better for him, I suppose.

I think Wes is playing g a longer game.

Same. If Burnham makes a bid or pressure causes Starmer to panic and introduce some of those barmy policies then they could implode first.

I know we know Labour have run out of ideas, well now they're copying the Conservatives.

Deprived areas of the UK will be given tens of millions of pounds each from a new fund that Keir Starmer hopes will help Labour tackle the threat posed by Reform UK.
The prime minister will launch the regeneration initiative on Thursday, gambling that an updated version of “levelling up” will address anger about Britain’s broken communities.
He will say the money will help “get rid of the boarded-up shops, shuttered youth clubs and crumbling parks that have become symbols of a system that stopped listening”.
More than 300 areas across the country will each be given the cash to patch up derelict shops, pubs and libraries, as well as new powers to decide which businesses can set up on their high streets.
Keir Starmer’s relationship with his chief of staff faces biggest test yet
Read more
The fund forms a central plank of Labour’s policy response to the rise of Reform, which the prime minister believes is thriving in part because of voters’ discontent over the poor state of their local communities.

This in particular gave me the horrors.

Unlike the levelling up funds, local authorities will be given the freedom to decide where the money will be spent, as well as extra powers to help them regenerate their high streets. Experts warn, however, that the money will need to be allocated and spent quickly to make a difference on either an economic or political level.

It's just a carte blanche for all those wannabe leftie grandees sitting on the council to spaff yet more of our money up the wall on their diversity and unity vanity projects or making their mates richer at our expense. I bet not a penny will be spent on their local communities. Makes my blood boil. Surely Starmer can see if so many councils are close to bankruptcy giving them more money simply validates their policies?

Oooops. Wrong link. Although the one in my last is iteresting too. Here's the one for my post.

Starmer gambles on ‘levelling up’-style initiative to tackle Reform threat | Labour | The Guardian

So where is the money coming from?
Where is the accountability?
Which councils ie only Labour councils or will Reform councils get the money too?
Will the money be ringfenced?
How will it be monitored and tracked?

Someone on X is doing an expose on NE councils spaffing millions of ££ on pet projects and dodgy record keeping at councils.

My sentiments exactly @twistyizzy . There are 300 areas that will get this money, quite a number are coastal towns, which by the way tend to be Labour strongholds, so it will be interesting to see if they do include Conservative or Reform councils.Colour me cynical, but I doubt it.

O.MG at “We’ve got to get beyond this thing of being in hock to the bond markets."

We are in hock to the bond markets. To the tune of £2.8 trillion, an entire year of GDP. Furthermore, being 'in hock' to the markets costs us £110 billion each year in interest - the rates getting more expensive with each fiscally irresponsible act of stupidity.

Another entitled grafter, who thinks that other people (in this case the markets) should hand over money to him just because he wants it. Typical delusional Labour..

I suppose given that he's always worked in the government and public sector, that's worked for him in the past. I increasingly think that having serious private sector experience should be a hard prerequisite for government front bench... let alone PM!

I read that Burnham piece and it’s not serious - they’re softening us up for tax rises that’ll be not quite as bad as that, so we can all have faith that Reeves is keeping the even more left at bay.

if Burnham was really after that job, he’d have made a better case than that.

not to say there hasn’t been some deal
about a year or two down the line!

@Labraradabrador same
here politically, I love NPR I shall look for that thanks!

has any sitting PM/team ever reversed ratings this low before?

the podcast number crunchers should get on it!

Yes my thinking is the Burnham stuff is more fleece. He’s not serious and if he is the markets will indeed show him what happens with those policies.

Indeed it could be Liz Truss all over again.

Reeves has taken that honour

Hard to know what Labour would do in that case, they wouldn’t have Rishi Sunak predicting it and turning it around.

Well ladies off to measure up my new old farties apartment today, I'm trying to find a nice warm beige colour for the lounge that doesn't remind me of baby poo. First world problems and all that! 😂

I can see it now - ‘call up the torygraph Andy and set the pigeons fluttering over something eye catching like a top rate of 50p’