To think Starmer will be gone by the end of Friday? Or will it be Monday evening?

[SingleSexSpacesInSchools]

Whoever you are voting for today, it's probably not Labour - they might loose 2,000 seats.

How long exactly will it be before he resigns?

With respect, that’s just all nonsense.

Co-opting Charles as an extension of Starmer is a particularly bad argument.

Productivity won't increase by cutting welfare.

We can see this by looking back at periods of ideological austerity. Cameron & Osborne cut the welfare bill. Over this period, productivity was the second lowest since WW2. The experiment resulted in a lower GDP per capita path compared to pre-financial crisis trends.

People need to think much harder. To increase productivity, we need to stimulate business investment in politically stable environment, change the way we educate our kids, broaden apprenticeships and training programmes out beyond teenagers, and get serious about skilling the nation up.

To cut welfare, we need to invest in the NHS and mental health services to get people back on their feet and working again after the pandemic - these are entirely foreseen problems of the impact of lockdown and NHS pressure that were modelled at the time. People have very short memories.

Do you think Starmer had nothing to do with the King’s speech?

KS is criticised for throwing a colleague under the bus. Yet BJ repeatedly refused to get rid of people when he should have done - people who were proven to have broken lock down rules, lobbied for cash, bullied colleagues, sexually assaulted colleagues, got ppe contracts on false pretences, lied to parliament etc. I’m pretty sure KB would be lobbing people under buses too is they don’t shape up. She seems the type.

I've never read anything on MN that has influenced me politically in any way so wouldn't waste my time arguing. What I have done for the past two months is campaign on doorsteps. I see this as a much more valuable use of my time and tonight, I expect to start seeing the rewards of our collective hard work. It's all playing out very nicely so far.

It should also be pointed out that at the time of Mandelson's appointment, with only a few exceptions from writers/commentators on the left, everyone in the media and the "Westminster Village" all thought it was a masterstroke to give the job to someone who knew Trump and the people in his circle very well.
Including the leader of Reform.

I'm voting Labour. Hoping Starmer stays. Admire his handling of Trump/Iran. Think overall a better job is being done than under the revolving leadership of the last few years before the General Election.

No no I don't think cutting welfare on it's own will, not at all

I think there are many reasons behind the plummeting mental health of the country and I blame the black mirror of despair in our pockets for most of it to be honest.

Downing Street were very involved in the drafting of the kings speech. Radio 4 interviewed one of the speech writers about the process. The writers did a draft and then both KC and KS (plus DS writers no doubt) did their edits and additions. It went back and forth for weeks. There wasn’t a word in it that wasn’t signed off on by KS.

The government writers the speech, not the king.

Did anyone think the king actually wrote it?

I’m sure Starmer had a ‘role’ in it.

The speech was written by the Palace, shown to No 10, and all Starmer’s suggestions thrown in the Buckingham Palace bin.

I’m looking forward to the results later. Starmer needs to hold his nerve and remind the public the good things he’s done.
The country needs good news, everything feels joyless at the moment.
Does any newspaper like him?
What’s about Yvette Cooper? Do like Wes Streeting and Andy Burnham. Which MP has a good enough majority for him to win?

But to get that, you need political stability. Policies need chance to take affect, change needs time to filter through.

To expect to see instant change in two years after 14 years of cuts and Brexit distraction is completely unrealistic.

Blair and Brown were a lot more radical in their policies in 1997 and the country was in a better state than it was in 1994, but it still took most of the first term for the changes to take effect - for GDP and productivity to increase and for NHS waiting lists to come down.

The bond markets know that - it is the current push to oust Starmer in any way possible that is causing the fluctuations as much as who is the favourite to succeed him.

I thank God every day that I have lived long enough to retire. Work sucks - the young know it and can't be conned into thinking otherwise.

He won’t resign. He is not the type who would.

Eh? I don’t follow that at all.

The dates are confusing, but in any event Blair committed to Tory spending limits for two years. And he inherited a very good economy from the Tories.

Give it a rest on the old ChatGPT bulletpointslop, eh? It hasn't done the job before and it's not getting better.

Untrue. The government write the speech - unless you have reason to believe it was different this year?

Well, we may not require long in order to test your thesis, will we?

What is nonsense

We all saw in real time the Macron double act and the European Greenland response play out - which bit of that is factually incorrect?

As for your response about the speech made by Charles you clearly have no idea how these things work - number 10 were very very involved in writing that speech. It would have taken months to write, it would have gone through legal, policy, financial and political checks at the very highest levels of government

If you think that the UK head of state would be able to go to the seat of the US government, only the second UK monarch to have ever done so, and make a speech, particularly that speech, without it being co-written and approved by government, you are simply demonstrating your naivety.

But that's got nothing to do with how good or bad Starmer is.
The Tories are worse is such a pathetic response to anything negative about Labour.

If there is a three-way leadership election, polling of Labour members is clear that Angela Rayner will win, not Streeting. Burnham cannot stand if Starmer goes as early as you seem to think - he is not an MP. And Streeting would be viewed as the continuity Starmer candidate.

Labour historically doesn't get rid of leaders very often. They tend to stick by their leader however bad it gets. It may be different this time, but that is clearly not guaranteed. And Starmer clearly doesn't want to go, so I doubt he will go willingly. He will have to be forced out. It may be that he will go this weekend, but I wouldn't put any money on it.

With the size of majority Labour has at the moment, it is unlikely we will have a general election before 2028 regardless of what happens to the leadership. Loss of seats in local elections does not remove a government's mandate and, even if it did, it is highly unlikely they will lose 80% of their seats today. Current projections suggest they will lose around 50% of their seats, which is disappointing but not a disaster.

Even if the ‘government’ wrote the speech - which I personally doubt, or at least I doubt that Charles’s advisers wouldn’t have re-written it - what’s that got to do with leaden-prosed Starmer? It clearly didn’t come from his pen.

This is all a bit desperate by Starmer defenders.

Macron and Starmer’s double act about Greenland? Fuck me, you’d have to be very gullible to believe that those two had any effect on Trump. I can well believe that a senior US military official succeeded in getting Trump to calm down, but not Macron and Starmer FGS.

@BloominNora, the government’s state spending is to large for the rate at which the economy is growing and for the future projections.

Will stable Starmer inspire the much needed enterprise and investment that will provide growth? Or will stable Starmer just keep things stable while the country continues to decline?

Off the top of my head:

Not increasing the lowest tax thresholds, particularly for pensioners.

The total U-turn on winter fuel allowance and disability benefits rather than amending based on the challenges (e.g. increasing the income levels for winter fuel cut off from £12k to £25k, linking the PIP changes to improvements in the NHS and treatment availability).

The lack of action around school improvement - they've started to increase funding per head to a half decent level, but there needs to be radical curriculum changes and the SEND reforms are not great.

The merger of the ICBs and a general lack of speed in bringing down NHS waiting lists out of fear of the fact that people don't understand the difference between commissioning private health care and privatising health care

The implementation of the children's social care reforms which call for more of a local response without considering the impact of the merger of the ICBs - plus other lack of joined up thinking across departmental decisions.

The lack of action around green policies and renewables

The move towards banning certain protests and reducing trial by jury.

Giving government contracts to Palantir and companies linked with Palantir, particularly contracts linked to the digital ID card

The decision to remove the student visa pathway completely for Afghani women