Labour isn't working - Thread 26

[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.

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An ageing lettuce, an empty ring-binder, a bollard, a mug without a handle.

The possibilities are endless….

I’m not convinced Starmer will last until the end of this thread the ways things are going!

48 more posts can he do it?!

I feel the same. I am a Tory, i.e. a sensible and thinking person. I recognise that governments come and go. I take for granted that all politicians are aiming for a better, more prosperous and secure country.

Starmer was never a good PM. Reeves was never a good chancellor. They both should go.

But the government has a five year mandate and that should be honoured unless it really can’t govern. Which with a massive majority is not likely.

Good governance is needed now.

James Matthewson (sorry got his name wrong in my pp) saying the the whole PLP of Scottish Labour is fully behind Anas Sarwar.

Unfortunately, I'm not sure there is the talent required amongst the Labour MPs to provide good governance. I wish to god there was, but what a motley crew they are!

Starmer, a political leper, and inverse Midas.

One can only assume that the left, in general, are intellectually challenged.
The Labour party had fourteen years to gather the brightest and the best and get them elected, fourteen years to come up with a coherent plan to run this country, and this is what we get.

A massive problem is the party members / MPs who don't agree on their party's direction between themselves. They're so busy engaging in internal battles to come up with policies they're all 'happy' with that they can't function in government.

Look at all the benefits bollocks. Brought down by the left of the party. Fucking idiots the lot of them.

McSweeney kept everyone on a tight leash apparently, controlling, bullying even, but also quite effective. Starmer will find it hard to lose that and it looks like chaos is incoming already with statements to press.

That is so true. Through all those years Labour managed to nurture and promote this bunch of hopeless losers.

I just hope to god that they can find a sensible and firm leader who’s not shit scared of the Labour left. Doubtful.

Get that.

Nature abhors a vacuum, as they say. It will be a free-for-all.

Any observation is becoming redundant by the minute

But yesterday I found myself wondering if Starmer wanted to stay until his court case - I don't know if being Prime Minister will protect him from that information becoming public? But surely he'll get protection as a former prime minister as well. So that might be totally irrelevant.

I rather think it will be a LW appointee - c’est marche.

The sooner they will self-immolate, when the economic data proves existential.

This is so true.

But however unsuited KS is to being PM it’s terrifying the thought of who could replace him. They are all literally much worse.

AR would be a travesty and so out of her depth with severe leanings more to the left. The economy would just implode.

Meanwhile, the Guardian is evidently closing comments on this story.

Funny that.

People seem to refer to the bond yields rather than prices - which are inversely proportional to bond price, and hence proportional to interest rates.

The way I understand it, is that as you say if interest rates rise then eg a £100 bond with a £4/year coupon becomes less attractive, so the price of buying that historic bond falls. So perhaps you can buy that £100 bond for £80, which means that you're getting a £4 coupon for an £80 bond, ie yield has gone up from 4% to 5% And of course, the government has to reflect that in newly issued bonds: so they will sell a new £100 bond with a £5 coupon.

So bond yields (which that graph shows) should go up proportionally to interest rates - and it's any discrepancy from that being proportional that is due to distrust in the government.

Interesting to compare German and UK bond rates! That does seem to show a very similar rise as interest rates went up. And seemingly only a brief jump for Truss, (yellow highlight) which seemed to come back into line if you compare the shape to the German bonds.

We're a full 1.5% higher to Germany. But oresumably that actually reflects German inflation being only 2.1% currently compared to our 3.4%.

So presumably, the 'idiot premium' is just about how inflationary the markets think a government's policy will be?

I also used to take for granted all politicians would aim for a better, prosperous and secure country. Labour, however, have shown that assumption was completely wrong, instead demonstrating democracy isn't a given.

This shower were closet dictators who lied their way into power, collapsed our economy, enabled illegal immigration, and sought to silence free speech.

Answering your last question, I struggle to attribute any ‘idiot premium’ currently.
The recent price action is simply a function of bond investors worrying that any removal of Starmer would see a LW replacement, who would attempt to tighten fiscal policy further etc., increasing capital flight, while also significantly increasing state spending, which is inflationary of course.

Moving away from any possible resignation for a minute

You know how you hear people talking about how foreign agitators want to stabilise Britain

Are we important enough to be targeted for that sort of thing? For example, haven't we become a matter of irrelevance to China and Russia?

I probably missed something. I feel as if we used to be a big player globally, but I don't think we are now. I don't quite know when we stopped being one. Or maybe I'm hopelessly out of touch and we still are.

maybe very important high-level spy things still happen here! obviously, no one keeps me in the loop about that 😂

I don’t think the UK is an irrelevance to Moscow and Beijing but they might be quietly content to allow domestic politics to run its course, at the moment.

I am sure that Putin has weaponised immigration though, through Belarus - and, of course, that is one of the political hot potatoes. Otherwise, daily cyber incursions, deep sea cable recon/interference, and misinformation is par for the course.

If you believe the posters on the ‘other’ thread, anyone who disagrees with them, is a Kremlin hood…

Streeting and Rayner have enough MPs behind them apparently, whether they go for it is another issue.

Angela Rayner has pledged her 'full support' to Keir Starmer as she joined the Cabinet in rallying around the Prime Minister following a call from the Scottish Labour leader to resign.
Ms Rayner, Keir Starmer's former housing secretary and ex-Labour deputy leader, said the party needed to learn from the Peter Mandelson scandal but urged MPs not to 'play politics and factional games'.
Her intervention came as Cabinet ministers rallied around the Prime Minister after Scottish Labour leader Anas Sarwar said his leadership was 'not good enough'.

Eluned Morgan and Anas Sarwar...almost like they have seen an opportunity to shake off the stink in time for May.

Starmer doesn’t mind throwing them under the bus to stay in.

They will tank but the self interest in WM is bigger.