Mailwatch(ed) Forum

Rich people talking about their money are such fucking liars.

Witness all those asset rich cash poor protestors in London recently.

Telling all the asset poor, cash poor people why they have it easy.

Iain Dale

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2025/0 ... his-wreck/

Keir Starmer has begun to adopt the demeanour of a prime minister who has been in power for six years, rather than only six months. One can only hope that his winter break in Madeira has enabled him to recover his mojo and banish the tetchiness that has begun to define his public utterances.

It is certainly true that, far from enjoying any sort of honeymoon period, Starmer’s first six months in office have been challenging, to say the least, not helped by apparently not knowing which levers to pull to make things happen. He’s not alone in that. Most of his Cabinet don’t either.

As the Prime Minister looks ahead to 2025, his political fate may well be determined by those Cabinet ministers who deliver, and those who don’t. If they have shown no signs of turning things around by Christmas this year, the long-term prospects for a second Starmer term will look even more shaky than they do now. And Nigel Farage won’t just be licking his lips, he will be positively salivating.

There can’t be any more failed resets or relaunches. No more talk of foundations, milestones or missions, which mean little to Joe Public down the Dog and Duck, and little more to think tank wonks. It leaves voters scratching their heads, thinking politicians like Starmer live on a different planet to the one they inhabit.

This is evidenced in a new Deltapoll survey, which shows that 69 per cent of people think the country is heading in the wrong direction. A mere 18 per cent disagree. If that doesn’t cause alarm bells to ring loudly in Downing Street, nothing will. One third of voters also believe Starmer won’t be prime minister by the end of the year, with his approval rating sinking to its lowest ever levels.

Talk privately to Labour MPs, and indeed some Labour ministers, and there is a growing frustration that most of the errors made by the Government have been unforced or self-inflicted. All governments can be blown off course by “events”, but this one seems to revel in making mistakes that anyone with half a political brain can see will not end well. And too many of these mistakes are being made by the Chancellor, Rachel Reeves. Where are the greybeards and wise old owls who urge caution before it’s too late? Instead, as in the previous Conservative administrations, too much reliance is being put on 20-something, inexperienced special advisers.

Wes Streeting, the Health Secretary, is one of the few who seems to know what he’s doing and can pull the levers of change. Yet over the weekend he launched yet another “independent commission” to look into social care, when the sector is in crisis. It won’t report until 2028, the most likely year of a general election. There is already a consensus about social care, it just needs political leadership to decide how to reform and fund the system. The last thing that is needed is another three-year-long talking shop, even if it is being chaired by the excellent Louise Casey.

On the day that Parliament returns, Keir Starmer finds the murky waters of the child grooming gang scandal lapping around his feet, partly courtesy of Elon Musk, partly because his safeguarding minister, Jess Phillips, failed to explain adequately why she wouldn’t agree to a proper inquiry, rather than just a local one in Oldham. If this isn’t gripped, and properly accounted for, the issue has the potential to topple a prime minister, and I don’t say that lightly.

Starmer’s record on this as Director of Public Prosecutions at the Crown Prosecution Service had better be squeaky clean – but as his evidence to the Home Affairs Select Committee seemed to show in January 2013, he has displayed a worrying degree of nonchalance and buck passing.

The mistakes of 2024 must not be repeated in 2025. No more tax rises without a full explanation of how a tax rise will grow the economy. (Clue: it never will.) No more handing the NHS £22 billion with no guarantees of improvements. No more new quangos, leading to an ever-increasingly bloated state and ever more regulation. It really does come to something when the Prime Minister appeals to regulators for ideas on how to stimulate economic growth. The irony beggars belief.

It’s a make or break year for Keir Starmer. I wonder if he realises it.

The fact that Starmer helped to prosecute grooming gangs is of course not mentioned.

So the Prime Minister, who's the fifth one since the scandal broke, is going to get brought down when nobody cared about the other four not holding an inquiry? There was a national public inquiry into child sexual abuse anyway, just not one specifically on Pakistanis. The chair says that governments haven't implemented the recommendations.

Regulators are supposed to balance economic growth with regulation, that's always been the case. What's the issue there?

It's an amusing joke for neoliberal Thatcherites. Regulators are just meddlesome bureaucrats with no purpose other than shackling the entrepreneurial spirit. Used to like Iain Dale as a more thoughtful Conservative pundit but everytime I took something he said on board, he'd get it wrong.

It really does come to something when the Prime Minister appeals to regulators for ideas on how to stimulate economic growth. The irony beggars belief.

That would be Ian 'Thick as Pigshit and Twice as Unpleasant' Dale, then?

He does call his own side out, and is fairly watchable. But like lots of that sort, his day job attack Labour stuff isn't very good.

Youngian wrote: ↑Mon Jan 06, 2025 2:40 pm It's an amusing joke for neoliberal Thatcherites. Regulators are just meddlesome bureaucrats with no purpose other than shackling the entrepreneurial spirit.

[/quote]

And yet lots of regulators were Thatcher-Major inventions that became necessary with privatization. One example is the Office of Rail Regulation who were in the news today trying to promote more competition on the HS1 line by reducing the track access charges, and have the same role more generally with open access train companies that spot gaps in rail provision, which will continue (quite rightly) after the main franchises have been taken back in house. Growth promoting.

This isn't some bizarre notion Sir Keir's invented.

Tubby Isaacs wrote: ↑Mon Jan 06, 2025 2:11 pm So the Prime Minister, who's the fifth one since the scandal broke, is going to get brought down when nobody cared about the other four not holding an inquiry? There was a national public inquiry into child sexual abuse anyway, just not one specifically on Pakistanis. The chair says that governments haven't implemented the recommendations.

Regulators are supposed to balance economic growth with regulation, that's always been the case. What's the issue there?

Yeah but the four previous ones where tories so it's different I guess. Meanwhile fuck off Tim Stanley

Out of control. It's the only way to describe them.

Tim Stanley. Man’s a cunt.

They've gone with the "Starmer called concerned people far right" lie as the headline.

I saw that, no doubt that will dominate the discourse.

This is disgraceful.

Did God save Farage from his plane crash to make Clacton great again?

I remember when the Telegraph was a newspaper but tell the young people that today, they won't believe you.

Telegraph Comment editor.

Tempted to say that this isn't exactly news, and that they only cover arbitration in civil matters. And that there are Jewish ones as well. But he knows that.

The Telegraph has a story that the Chagos deal will cost £52bn. The source? Nigel Farage.

The daily express for people who can do joined-up writing seems to think councils should provide care-home spaces for free.

Thousands of families are being forced to hand over their estates to councils to pay off care home fees, The Telegraph can reveal.

Cash-strapped local authorities across the country are in line to claim back £343m from care home residents’ home sales after they die, NHS data shows...

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/money/prope ... home-fees/

Nowhere in the article (not pay-walled) do they mention the reason for councils being so short of funds (quelle surprise), or offer any thoughts on alternative methods of funding - just evil caahncils stealing your inheritance.

It wasn't that long ago that the Torygraph was full of serious journalism, one just didn't bother reading the editorials or opinion pieces. It's even worse than the daily fucking mail now.