Here's another ideal candidate for Chancellor; educated at Eton and Trinity College, Cambridge, worked as a financial analyst at JP Morgan, WestLB and Odey Asset Management, in 2018 became PPS to the then Chancellor, in 2019 became Minister of State at the Dept of Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, and then on 22nd September 2022 he became the Chancellor. Anyone who didn't think he was eminently qualified would just be being 'thickheaded'. 38 days later Kwasi Kwarteng was sacked after proposing a mini budget that overnight decimated the stock market, the UK economy and is still notorious to this day.
So shall we let the tea lady have a pop at it? No clue what Kwasi Kwarteng has to with Ed Miliband but hey I guess man looks funny eating bacon sandwich still drives your political thoughts.
Seriously? You deemed Miliband suitable for the Chancellors job because of his past experience, I pointed out that such past experience doesn't necessarily make a good Chancellor. Also Kwarteng's apparent qualifications are/were considerably more recent than Miliband's. No idea what the bacon sandwich reference is about - sorry.
So because Kwasi Kwarteng screwed up we should stop employing people to ministerial jobs they have a background knowledge and experience of?
I normally agree with your stuff but that's a load of bollocks. The BBC isn't right wing at all and getting Reform into power would sign their death warrant because they'll be the first to defund the BBC. The problem with the BBC is they've been stuck between a rock and a hard place in recent years, desperately trying to stay neutral whilst being battered by the increasingly polarised forces on both sides. For years they were accused of sidelining the far right and ignoring the 'will of the people'. Now they're platforming the Reform people to placate the right wing, and also because they're the most 'newsworthy' people at the moment because of their controversial opinions and the general worldwide narrative at the moment of the rise of the far right. Which then means they're getting attacked by left wing people like you accusing them of being part of a wider media bias aimed at getting them into power. What the BBC need to start doing is grow some balls and tell everyone to shut the f*ck up and stick to being completely neutral and balanced in all their programming. Have someone from every side on all of their political shows so everyone gets an equal platform regardless of how unpalatable opposite sides will view the opinions of certain people. And the public can ultimately make their mind up. No more kowtowing to whichever side is shouting the loudest and slagging them off the most. Stay straight down the middle and say it how it is, and the public can decide what they think after all flavours of views have been aired. Regardless of how unpalatable some of those opinions may be.
You tell me mate, it's obvious previous 'form' is no indication of ability to do the job, which is probably why the Tories tried a new Chancellor every 6 months. (Slight exaggeration).
Miliband would be a solid appointment in both economic and political terms if there was a vacancy at the Treasury. But there isn't one and I don't see there being one in the foreseeable future, despite the events of this week. History tells us that Prime Ministers who replace their Chancellors don't tend to last much longer after they've done so and, in policy terms, I don't think things are going anywhere near as badly for Labour as they would need to be for a move as drastic as that to be considered necessary. That is also why I consider the recent media talk of crisis to be massively overblown. We are only a year into this Parliament and it has been obvious for some time that the Government has been trying to get through all the painful measures early in the expectation that things will improve more noticeably as we get closer to the next election. Quite apart from the fact that we are nowhere near the levels of mess that we saw at times during the previous Parliament, it is a matter of fact that things are already improving in key areas of concern to the public such as the performance of the NHS. Those improvements do need to be accelerated and extended to other areas, particularly with the Welsh and Scottish elections in mind next May, but we are a long way from what I would consider a genuine crisis right now.
The problem is that the electorate might perceive a government that has to U-turn almost every time it proposes change as both shambolic and pointless. It now seems certain that Reeves will have to break another Manifesto pledge in the Autumn and raise taxes, and there are still ongoing protests about the changes proposed to inheritance tax for farmers. That said, as a Labour voter I remain aghast at an administration that is too scared of the orange rapist across the Atlantic to impose any tax hikes on any of the big tech companies but seems to have an entire list of policies that attack the old, sick, disabled and poor.
A lot of what led to the crisis of this past week wasn't down to policy, but more bad politics. Starmer seems to have been operating as if his own backbench MPs do not exist and in the end they served him a reminder that they did. It might seem ridiculous but yeah, you are more likely to get someone to go along with your controversial policy idea if you've at least taken the time to say hello to them. But numerous Labour MPs have claimed they're yet to have a single conversation with him. How to make friends and influence people...
I think one of the biggest problems Labour have is they've tied themselves in a knot with the promise not to raise taxes on 'working people'. It's left them no room to manoeuvre when circumstances change for the worse, as they have done on numerous occasions since they've come to power such as when they found the finances were in a much worse state than they expected, Trump coming to power, the ever escalating conflict in the Middle East etc. So they've constantly been trying to find ways to cut costs and raise money without breaking that pledge, leading to desperation measures like cutting Winter Fuel Allowance and disabled benefits. And trying to pull the wool over people's eyes with the employers National Insurance rise and trying to claim it's a business tax only that doesn't affect the finances of ordinary people. And because their options to both raise revenue or make cuts are very limited and all very controversial, it's led to these constant messes where they've announced controversial things, there's been an enormous backlash and they've been forced to fully or partially U-turn because of how bad the rebellion has been either publicly or within the party. They were always going to win the last election because of the mess that the Tories had made of things. They'd have been better off being honest in their election campaign and admitting that some taxes will have to rise because of the mess that the country was in and the fact that money needs to be raised to pay for the improvements that needed to be made to public services. They'd have still got voted in with a solid majority, maybe slightly smaller but still a very good one. And they then wouldn't have had their hands so tied when it came to how they can react to the circumstances they've faced and if tax rises were needed, they'd have a mandate to do it and they wouldn't have faced anywhere near as much criticism because it would have been in their manifesto and part of what the public had voted them in to do. They wouldn't have been forced to scrape the desperation barrel and try to cut the benefits of vulnerable people or try to pull the wool over our eyes with stealth tax rises that everyone can see straight through.
Yeah, basically the debate over taxation was totally unrealistic, and childish. In the end the two major parties gave us promises neither would (or should have) kept. Tories said they'd lower taxes (would have imploded the economy again) and Labour pledged to not raise them - and now we are seeing the outcome of this stupid pledge as you say.
I disagree partially. Labour won by a landslide because people wanted a change, not because people particularly supported Starmer and co. So if Labour had promised more of the same, ie. even more tax rises to add to the already highest tax burden since before WWII I'm not sure they'd have had it quite as easy as they did. I've read that this massive Labour majority came from the lowest voter turnout (59.4%) since 2001, and 2001 is the lowest since 1928. That means Starmer's Labour came to power on 34% of the available votes, hardly a resounding endorsement. Voter apathy is a real thing these days, and of course the Tories attempts to make it even harder to vote by requiring photo-ID were designed to discourage people even more. This year’s General Election left millions of voices unheard How Britain voted in the 2024 general election | YouGov
I know of one left wing commentator (A Different Bias on YouTube) who has suggested that a wealth tax is becoming a more likely possibility based on certain comments that Starmer made recently and that would seem more sellable than either across the board tax increases directly affecting working people or further funding reductions to services. Clearly the welfare reforms proposed went too far for many Labour MPs, particularly after the winter fuel decision last year. But I would still argue that the latter decision was the correct one in principle, given my belief that such benefits should not be universal, though it went too far in its initial execution and, beyond the specific PIP question, there does remain a significant challenge of getting people who can work back into employment. At least some of what the Government is talking about in that area seems to me to have potential to get results. My worry is that the problem has been allowed to grow for so long that it may almost be too late to do anything significant about it. As for the orange sex offender, the Government seems to have made a diplomatic calculation that the costs of keeping him onside are less than those of getting dragged into the kind of tariff wars we've seen with other nations and that seems to be a reasonable approach, as much as it sticks in the throat. On the "shambolic and pointless" point, I accept that is a possibility, particularly if you believe in the notion that governments lose elections rather than opposition parties winning them. But for that risk to be maximised, there has to be a sufficiently credible alternative on offer and there just isn't one at the moment. The Tories are a joke and all the signs from the first weeks of Reform administration at the local level is that they are rapidly hurtling from shambles to farce. There is a long way to go to the next election and that is better news for Labour in my view than for their main challengers. In fairness to Starmer, he seems to have taken that on the chin from the comments I saw from him over the last couple of days and a warning shot across the bows may actually prove to be a blessing in disguise in the longer term. But while that claim may well have substance to it, it just seems odd that you wouldn't do more to make sure you had your backbenchers on board, regardless of the regular Parliamentary arithmetic.
Also in fairness to Starmer he has 412 MPs, it's no surprise he hasn't spoken to a great many of them personally, not least since he seems to spend half his time abroad . . .
I agree that the winter fuel decision was actually correct. But the problem is that politics, especially these days, is more about image and impressions rather than facts and reality and inflicting any sort of cut on pensioners is so politically toxic. They are the most reliable demographic in terms of turning out to vote so they wield a lot of power. And it's very easy for opponents to attack and create images of little old Doris freezing to death in her draughty old home because the nasty government have taken her fuel allowance away. The reality is that pensioners are probably the wealthiest demographic because of the huge property wealth they've built up over the years from buying houses for peanuts 40 odd years ago that are now worth often over 10 times more. And benefiting from the years where Britain was a much wealthier country and could afford things like final salary pensions and having reliable, well paying jobs with good benefits that they were able to stay in for most of their working lives. There was very little unreliable agency and zero hours contract crap in their day. The majority of pensioners don't need it and means testing is the fairest way to make sure it goes to only the ones who really need it. But it was always going to be hugely controversial and incredibly easy to attack. So to do it so early in their government before they'd had chance to get some wins on the board and build up some goodwill was incredibly foolish. Taking on pensioners is something you only do when you're in a position of strength and have a reputation for competence so that the public are more likely to trust that it's really necessary and you've got the strong track record behind you to convince people. The timing of when they did it was suicide.
Good point . Every time they wanted to make a change which probably had to be made a group of people have been up in arms. Be it the elderly , farmers , private schools , the disabled and vulnerable. And now working folk won’t like the potential tax rises .
Labour didn't 'means test' the Winter Fuel Allowance though, they arbitrarily stripped it from 9 million pensioners. I'd be absolutely in favour of means testing for all state benefits, when I reach pension age I won't need a few hundred quid towards my bills. That said, if UK pensioners got what a French pensioner gets, £16,273 pa (not the highest in Europe) rather than £11,973, and if UK energy costs weren't so high for no reason whatsoever there'd be no need to hand out a bit extra to prevent the poorest from being cold. I'd also add that I have a final salary work pension, I've paid 6% of my income into it every year since I was 20, so I'm not going to apologise to anyone because I won't be poor when I retire.
It was means tested. You could still get it if you qualified for pension credit which is a means tested pension top up. So if you met the criteria, you still got it. So it wasn't arbitrarily stripped, you could still get it if you qualified for it (and get extra too from the pension credit). So some poorer pensioners would actually have been better off if they hadn't claimed pension credit previously and removing the universal right to winter fuel allowance had encouraged them to apply for it. Because they'd not just retain the fuel allowance they'd also get the extra pension credit top up. This was part of the problem. The fact that it was still available for the poorest pensioners got drowned out in all the shouting and controversy. So the take away message for most people was that it had been removed from all pensioners with no way of getting it back. When in reality, whilst it was technically true that the automatic right had been removed from all pensioners, you could still get it if you qualified for it and took action to apply for it. In other words, means testing. As for final salary pensions, I completely agree that you or anyone else in receipt of one has absolutely no need to apologise for it. At the end of the day you've worked hard for it and you were lucky enough that these pensions were available in your working life, I absolutely don't begrudge you for being able to benefit from it. I pay 6% and my wife pays 9.5% into our pensions. My pension currently tracks to give me an income of about 6 grand a year on top of my state pension which is shockingly shit considering I'm paying 6% a month and my company paying the same meaning 12% a month is going in. So it's not like I'm scrimping on what I pay in, it's just the terms are infinitely less generous. So while I'm definitely envious of your generation and the pensions that were available to you, I don't resent you and your generation for having them. I resent that they got taken away for sure, but not those who were lucky enough to receive them. It's just how the world works, everything gets gradually worse from one generation to the next. I'm 41 and in early middle age now and whilst I definitely lost compared to previous generations with many things, there are things I've benefitted from that generations younger than me won't have had. Like affordable rent when I was younger that allowed me to save up for a mortgage. Would be almost impossible to do it now on today's rents, unless you get significant help from the bank of mum and dad or have a very good job, you have to live with your parents into your early 30s now to have a chance. Learning to drive was a lot more affordable. And believe it or not, my shit pension is more generous than the pensions available to new starters now . It's just the way things go and are likely to continue going as the country gradually gets poorer and poorer.
