To despair at this government??

[IllTakeACheapSeatPlease]

This shambolic government - its utter chaos, the Tories were bad but Christ this lot are on another level.
Im really worried about where we’re heading, riots breaking out everywhere, the armed forces imploding, the police untrustworthy, we’re a laughing stock on the international stage.
Id say to call an early GE but I’m not a fan or reform either. At this point - I’d take the Tories back.
WTF is going on? I’m approaching 50 and I’ve never known the country in such a state.

AIBU to think we’re literally on the edge now? And what can actually be done to save it??

I am prone to anxiety so feel free to tell me on catastrophising

But Farage wasn't in and wouldn't have been in anyway. Labour wanted to go much harder on lockdown though you would probably would have wanted that.

A Parliamentary term is 5 years. I'll reserve judgement until then, based on facts, not hyperbole, and whether things are better at that point than they were in 2024 when they came to power.

This seems unlikely. Would likely have entered lockdown earlier, resulting in shorter lockdowns. The lockdown delays were a huge problem. They simply couldn't make a decision at all.

As for the PPE procurement scandal. I don't know how Labour would have dealt with this, but the 'free money to our friends' approach feels like it was unique to that specific government.

Although I think the government is a shambles I do agree with this. I think they are doing some good things, I’ve been really impressed with some of the NHS initiatives. I’m impressed by my local Labour MP, he’s very focussed on his constituents.

But they’re getting it all wrong by not focusing on the economy. If you have a strong economy everything flows from there. People see things differently if they have money in their pockets. Reeves hasn’t a clue and I have no idea why she’s still in the job. I’ve always liked and admired Starmer but I’m starting to despise him as he’s so weak.

Her personal net favourability is rising and she’s the most popular party leader now.

Doesn’t translate to party support.

She's the least unpopular leader, which is different and yes, not translating to a change in voting intention.

i agree you have to be stupid not to understand that. But the knock on effect of giving benefits to more children is that it incentivises people to have MORE children.

Then even more are in poverty.

AND THE COUNTRY CANNOT AFFORD IT.

What don’t YOU get about that?

The economy is performing better than most people expected.

Well yes, but that’s virtually always the case for party leaders. Ed Davey was the last to have a net positive I think.

Or we might have had fewer deaths and an NHS that was appropriately funded to deal with the aftermath.

Yes they are. He pushes out loads of bad SM. Just so few like it as you do. The more he does PR the more it annoys people.

The renters rights act has backfired spectacularly with fewer rental stock on the market and price rises on the stock that is there. Precisely because landlords are trying to protect themselves.

So it all SOUNDS nice - such as VAT on private school fees and handing out benefits to a 3rd and even 4th child born into poverty - but as seen with successive socialist economic experiments - the system shifts to negate it. And we all end up worse off.

Starmer and Reeves allowed ideology and spite to inform policy decisions.
That has not ended well - the old law of unintended consequences.

They also appear to have successfully pissed off almost every section of the electorate - with some notable and stubborn exceptions (who are net beneficiaries of state support).

Starmer is now a hostage, in the midst of a siege.

Today promises to be another headline-dominated day.

It would take a brave (or naive) person to back this government seeing out their term.

I would put money on the opposite (and I would).

That's simply not true. Now external reasons are part of the cause but excessive govt spending on things that don't contribute to economics growth (benefits) and high taxes on things like the cost of employing additional staff also contribute and were/are avoidable self inflicted injuries.

More widely a lot of people believe that the exodus of high earners out of the UK is running at a higher rate than the govt realises. If this is true this will mean lower than expected tax receipts in the future.

I’m 48 and agree with you OP.

I do find it funny being told to be more ‘empathetic’ when I think it is actually much kinder to NOT incentivise people to have more children born into poverty. And those that are born into poverty to live in a country that can actually afford to help them.

It’s a more sustainable policy surely.

And that was basically the argument that was put forward by Chamberlain in 1938 and look how that turned out.

We have a navy of the HMS Victory complete with cannons and cutlass', a rowing boat from Hyde Park lake and the pedlow that Freddie Flintoff got stuck on an island.

The raf are flying planes so old they have outside loos and Douglas Barder refused to fly them

The Army six bullets and a stick between them. Alfred the Great would complain that the equipment is obsolete.

Even the bloody French could invade us

I think when Putin’s eventually on his way out he won’t care who he takes with him…. In the meantime there’s a huge amount they can do by impacting our domestic infrastructure.
What a mess! And the last thing we need is Andy Burnham, a career politician with absolutely no experience of the real world (having spent his whole working life in Westminster). I’d absolutely rather Kier over him - but they need to sort themselves out!

Many in the Trumpist right say that we should be incentivising families to have more children. In Turkey they abolished income tax for women who had more than 4. Having loads of kids is the only way we will avoid having to top up the shrinking population with immigrants. Those who oppose both more child benefits and more immigration need to pick one.

SM is not PR.

And ' defence' isn't about ground invasion anymore. It's about cyber terrorism, drones, spying etc. Russia have already killed someone on our own soil. Iran are paying people in the UK to commit terrorist attacks against Jews.( following Russias playbook in Ukraine). To say we don't need to spend money on defence is naive.

We certainly DON’T need to be incentivising families who cannot afford to have children to have more of them.

It’s simple ‘money in the coffers minus money out of the coffers’. I am genuinely worried that the balance is going far too much to ‘money out’. And now we cannot even afford to defend ourselves as a nation.

Hence the govt in turmoil today.

Children who were groomed, sexually abused and then prosecuted for crimes, including prostitution, are still being failed, the author of a landmark report has said.

Baroness Louise Casey, who led the national investigation into grooming gangs, called on the government last year to quash any convictions of victims who were criminalised when they should have been protected.

The government has since introduced legislation to pardon "child prostitution" offences.

However, in an exclusive interview with the BBC, Baroness Casey said that was the "lazy option" and did not go far enough, adding there should be a comprehensive scheme to look at quashing all wrongful convictions for victims.
"I feel that they've gone for the easy option and, if I'm being more brutal, [the] lazy option of not setting up a disregard scheme with enough thought, enough care and enough action," Baroness Casey told the BBC.
So far, she said, "they have failed".

Indeed. Over the past few years, including under the Tories, we've seen a revolving door of PMs enter and leave Downing Street. That's not good for the country though. It's not really a flex to wish for democracy to be undermined by the impatient.