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?

Hi LL - how are we today?

You do realise that the note was a long standing joke?

WRONG.

Guardian - I assume the Guardian is OK for you?

Party members ask me: “What on earth were you thinking?” But members of the public ask: “How could you do something so crass? And so bloody offensive?”
I’ve asked myself that question every day for five years and believe me, every day I have burnt with the shame of it. Nowhere more than when standing on doorsteps with good comrades, listening to voters demanding to know what I thought I was playing at. It was always excruciating.
Some speculated that I’d written “the note” for my Tory opponent Philip Hammond who I’d often debated and saw as an honourable man….
Yet “the note” was not just stupid. It was offensive. That’s why it has made so many people so angry. And that why it was so wrong to write.
People’s anger – and my party’s anger – at me, will never ever match my anger with myself or my remorse at such a crass mistake. I made it easy for our opponents to bash our economic record by bashing me. And for millions of people and businesses who have had to make such sacrifices over the last five years, there was nothing funny about the national debt when the national task of cutting it has brought them such pain in their everyday life.

Some joke - you may find if funny, but many people did not.

I'm sure some people who own shares and get dividend payments who work. I have a small number of shares and I work. But the dividend payments are not payment for the work that I do in my job so no, I do not consider that a tax on me as a working person.

Dividends paid to someone who is actually working for the company paying said dividends, where those dividends are part of their remuneration package, could be said to be a tax on working people. But someone taking a job like that would know this is a risk they run. It isn't a simple black and white thing.

Are you familiar with packages where part of the compensation is in shares or options, whereby a portion of base salary is foregone.

How would you class dividends derived from those?

Oh no it’s going to be Monday…

check the BBC

I've just described that in my post, and yes that is a tax on working people. But such remuneration schemes are a way for companies and their staff to legitimately pay less tax because it is not classed as wages, so I can't have a great deal of sympathy. It usually happens to people in very highly paid roles. Effectively it's a loophole, and I'm glad it's being closed. Schemes like that are legal, but their morality is debatable.

THANK YOU!!!!

Why are you shouting?

BECAUSE I’M EXCITED!!!

It's a motion of no confidence from approximately 10 MPs. It will get nowhere.

What do you see happening if Starmer does go? Because it won't be a General Election.

We’ve been over this - feel free to look up my posts, thanks.

Must dash.

Dividends are paid by company directors on active income - they are very much 'working people'. It's really very black and white. Reeves has raised tax on working people and it's not possible to argue otherwise

Dividends are not a 'loop hole' and it's not being closed.

Yes. Here's the link to the article which you partially copied and pasted where he made it clear not only that he was profoundly sorry but it was a tradition that predated him.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/may/09/liam-byrne-apology-letter-there-is-no-money-labour-general-election

I never passed an opinion on whether it was funny.

This has been overtaken by live events.

The "no more money note" was meant as a joke as per tradition, as set out in the Spectator article. Whether it was funny or not another matter.

Btw: I think it is always nice to put a link to where a copy and paste is from. Otherwise there is always the possibility that the copy and past-er may be selective in their choices. So thanks for rectifying that @ilovesooty for pp.

Ok, good.

Events are unfolding - positive events.

Are you disputing past events or that your copy and paste was selective?

Precisely. And this one was selective.

He's still here. There is meant to be some sort of rebellion on Monday. I think he'll cling on for a few more months. But it's anybody's guess.

A Labour MP who is not a prominent public critic of Keir Starmer just called me and said that while they had been blindsided by Catherine West’s announcement, they will be giving her their support on Monday.
They say: “I am reasonably confident she will be able to get to 81."
That’s the number of supporters required to trigger a leadership ballot.
The MP says: “The frustration on the backbenches runs far wider than the voices we’ve heard from publicly. There are far more moderate centrist Labour MPs who also think his time is up.
“Like most Labour MPs I am utterly furious at the cabinet for putting their jobs before the country.”

She'll be able to get the 81 names because the assumption is that this is the first move in a play for Streeting to dislodge Starmer.

Yes, I think so, too.

Starmer is damaged goods - this will flush out all the runners, and riders.

Do you reckon Streeting put her up to this, then?