What will it take for the Government to enact welfare reform?

[Schlossadler]

What has to break, before the Government is finally willing to enact welfare reform?

In short, no.

The NCS is currently well covered and it looks highly unlikely Burnham will sign off on Rosebank.

Note the parent company of the operator, is Israeli…

I take it of you do work - you have today off?! 😆

I saw an interview with him yesterday. What was coming out of his mouth was weak but what struck me was the body language. It didn't match what he was saying. It looked like he was going through the motions of just saying anything but he looked like his mind was elsewhere. Like a man who had just been given a security briefing which had shocked him and he was trying to carry on as normal.

Either way it wasn't a good look.

It wasn't the leadership I was hoping for.

Macron and Tusk are doing this. Burnham doesn't seem to be on the same page.

Are you going to choose an item to debate, or continue fixating on my life?

Seems you continue to duck and dive, my friend.

Maybe your WFH? That’s why you can dedicate the day to silly arguing on Mumsnet?

This was put out an hour ago.

A fucking tweet from the MoD. A tweet.

You’ll just carry on mumsnetting!

There's a reason he never succeeded in his last attempts to be leader. He was obviously seen as not up to the job. He's a people pleaser with clearly no plan, despite deposing another man with no plan. He should have spent the time he spent on holiday and doing tiktoks on national policy instead.

And he's allowed dangerous people like Ed Milliband his head...one of the first acts as PM is to endorse an attack on a major ally. In order to please a PLP that gives more importance to the wellbeing of a foreign place than the national interest of the UK. Weak and short sighted. I was appalled. Ed Milliband is a danger to this country. Every department he heads he damages us profoundly with his ideological obsessions.

Agreed, but it’s quite funny to read though isn’t it?!

The mismatch with his body language and the sense of going through the motions, might be because his Dad just died, to be fair. But I do take your point about the need for strong, clear leadership and communication. And I also agree that over the last decade at least, our political class have been too busy drawing ideological battle lines and tinkering around the edges rather than tackling the big structural issues we face as a country. If the threat Tusk and Macron are talking about is real, then Kemi Badenoch is currently over on X, behaving appallingly by taking the moment to score party political points. Fundamentally, as a country we do need a shift towards a more serious, long term consensus driven politics - especially over matters of defence, as in Norway and Finland.

Yes, I was minded to remind people that he has lost his Dad...

Not to deny that it all does sound rather worrying.

It’s not Kemi’s to fix rn as Labour have all the levers of power, she’s not where blame lies as tempting as that is if you’re Labour. It’s Labour who will have to decide what to do.

True, but defence and national security is usually one area where parties have traditionally sought to ensure cross-party consensus and support, for obvious reasons.

I've just posted a link on the other thread to a Times article on public support v defence.

The journalist makes the point that military chiefs have been barred from doing interviews and making the case for more defence spend for months.

It's absolutely crazy at this point if that's true.

Not only that but Wes Streetings has been doing speeches to the military behind closed doors which are completely at odds with what the Cabinet and PM seem to be saying publicly and this all seems to be because of the left of the party being anti-war reality deniers.

All I can hope is that some of this is due to the bloody by-elections.

This is fucking stupid at this point given the link between a financial and fuel and defensive crisis at this stage and you have Macron apparently using the term state sponsored terrorism at least behind closed doors.

There is a reality check in the making here which is beyond domestic politics.

Absolutely - but a Leader of the Opposition also has a responsibility for the standard of political discourse in our country. If this is a serious moment in our nation’s national security, she should not be using it to score party political points.

I think all parties have been guilty of too much ideological point scoring, and not enough pragmatic, evidence-based decision making over the last decade at least. As I’ve said repeatedly I would advocate for defence spending in particular to be taken out of election cycles all together and for us to have a long term, strategic defence plan - as they do in Norway, for example - agreed by cross party consensus over a longer time frame. And I actually think long term decisions on welfare and the economy could benefit from the same approach too.

It seems that everyone at the French briefing came out stunned regardless of political persuasion from what I'm reading.

(Just read that unprompted after my comment above btw).

They do agree that it needs to be funded to a higher level, didn’t Healey say that in his resignation speech? That there was agreement on that.

It’s the how to do it that’s Labour’s call. Kemi has offered to work on cuts but in rejecting that they’ll need their own approach.

This might be bit tin foil hat but I’ve been avoiding news media this week as I couldn’t cope with all the “AI is going to kill us all” messaging which is something I feel I can do nothing about so to dwell on is the way to insanity. Does the profile of the reporting of that tie into any of this or just coincidence?

The AI will kill us all is a concern. I think the timing has many reasons though, not a single one. I think there HAS been an incident, but also AI has been funded by huge loans - to float they will need to demonstrate the worth of these companies. An incident would have implications for liability and value plus if the valuation is below expected a delay also makes sense to avoid embarrassment/admission of reality of finances.

Also these people are mates with people like the Saudi Royals. If there's a clear issue with energy / security they likely will also effectively be getting a lot of these type of briefings that politicians are getting. Not to mention the issue of fuel shortages and AI being an energy monster...

If you want me to put it another way, I don't think the AI stuff is as pressing as the energy one cos if everything goes to hell, in the way the energy one could, it'll be irrelevant anyway.

Sir Stephen Timms, the disability minister, is drawing up plans for wider reform of Pip, which is paid irrespective of employment status to compensate for the extra costs of ill health. His review is minded to scrap the current points system used to determine Pip eligibility, according to people familiar with its thinking. Instead, applicants would be triaged in an initial assessment and those with the most severe disabilities and terminal illnesses fast-tracked for payment.

Those with fluctuating conditions, including mental health problems, would be given more detailed face-to-face assessments and offered support from a broader menu of options than currently available. For some claimants, this would include equipment, aid, transport or therapy instead of cash payments.
FT

This all sounds sensible. I do think waiting for the Timms report and its recommendations is the right thing for the government to do - that way any reforms, including any cuts, are likely to be pragmatic and rooted in proper evidence, and therefore less likely to cost-shift elsewhere.

You can't have cross party consensus if they opposition want a large increase in defence spending by reducing the benefits bill and Labour by contrast prioritise increasing benefits over defence. There's not much middle ground there.

Or just give every adult in the country £1000 a month. Don’t means test, don’t age link, don’t base on their working status.

But this is where you have got to take the ideology and the party political point scoring out of it.

You cannot fill the hole in the defence budget purely through cuts to welfare. Not one single serious economist believes that you can - not least because of cost-shifting. And most economists agree you can’t fill the hole purely through tax raises either. So, a middle ground has to be found, one way or another.

Other countries manage to take the party politics out of defence spending, and agree long term strategic plans that aren’t tied to electoral cycles. We need politicians grown up enough to do the same.