[The Weeping Angel]

1. They don't really have to

2. Some but also plenty have welcomed the move

3. That's just your opinion.

[NevTheSweeper]

1. They don't really have to

2. Some but also plenty have welcomed the move

3. That's just your opinion.

1. The government should have done.
2. Handover overdue, but some argue it's still a bad deal.
3. Not just MY opinion. Plently of commentators have criticised it.

[The Weeping Angel]

Conservative ones mainly.

[Youngian]

Thirdly, it exposes the government's failings on foreign policy at a time of geo-political crisis.

What geo-political crisis are you referring to? Tories and Farage having their East of Suez imperial fantasies disturbed isn't a real crisis. The leased US base on Diego Garcia will continue for at least 99 years.
Unless you're referring to the boats turning up on the islands carrying Sri Lankan refugees, that shit sandwich is Mauritius's problem now.

[davidjay]

I'd like you to explain how the Chagos Islands was a wrong decision.

St Jeremy didn't make it.

[Tubby Isaacs]

I think we have to allow that this is all a mess. It's not just a matter of "briefing wars" either. There are major tax policies that seem to be fallig apart. I wasn't expecting the private school VAT to start in January, assumed it would be the next school year. Assumed they knew what they were doing, seems like it's not possible now. Apparently a U-turn on the non-dom inheritance tax policy coming too. Maybe some sort of fudge might help there, but still going to be short.

Not terminal by any means, but what are they going to do? Delay some of the spending promises? Would think borrowing would be going up anyway with the overdue public sector pay increases.

[NevTheSweeper]

I think we have to allow that this is all a mess. It's not just a matter of "briefing wars" either. There are major tax policies that seem to be fallig apart. I wasn't expecting the private school VAT to start in January, assumed it would be the next school year. Assumed they knew what they were doing, seems like it's not possible now. Apparently a U-turn on the non-dom inheritance tax policy coming too. Maybe some sort of fudge might help there, but still going to be short.

Not terminal by any means, but what are they going to do? Delay some of the spending promises? Would think borrowing would be going up anyway with the overdue public sector pay increases.

You're right, it is a mess, some of it the government's own making. The damaging policies such as the restrictions of the WFA and the continuation of the two-child benefit cap need never have happened.

Before the election, Labour wanted to prove to the public that they were not going to raise taxes and spent so much time refusing to reveal any sort of spending commitments that the Conservatives and their supporters in the media could attack. As a result, they gave themselves very little room for manoeuvre. Now any hopes of raising large sums of revenue relatively quickly are now effectively gone.

Many media reports suggest that the government will be forced to abandon most of their infrastructure plans and to cut day-to-day public spending every year for the entire parliament.

[mattomac]

You keep saying “many”, but you don’t seem to be wary of sources.

One piece over the weekend said Labour would cancelling funding for a project that hadn’t had any funding.

As is the case with many conservative promises as for WFA it does not need to go to everyone. I do agree their messaging has been shit, all seems to go back to that speech that Starmer didn’t have to do post summer break.

Then again you’ll attack the very sensible Chagos policy. You don’t particularly have a mind of your own it seems which can’t be helped I guess.

[The Weeping Angel]

You keep saying “many”, but you don’t seem to be wary of sources.

One piece over the weekend said Labour would cancelling funding for a project that hadn’t had any funding.

As is the case with many conservative promises as for WFA it does not need to go to everyone. I do agree their messaging has been shit, all seems to go back to that speech that Starmer didn’t have to do post summer break.

Then again you’ll attack the very sensible Chagos policy. You don’t particularly have a mind of your own it seems which can’t be helped I guess.

Nev should save himself the time and effort and jsut post this is bad.

[NevTheSweeper]

You keep saying “many”, but you don’t seem to be wary of sources.

One piece over the weekend said Labour would cancelling funding for a project that hadn’t had any funding.

As is the case with many conservative promises as for WFA it does not need to go to everyone. I do agree their messaging has been shit, all seems to go back to that speech that Starmer didn’t have to do post summer break.

Then again you’ll attack the very sensible Chagos policy. You don’t particularly have a mind of your own it seems which can’t be helped I guess.

Do I have to repeat myself? The government is collapsing under our very eyes and you criticise me for stating the obvious?

[The Weeping Angel]

No that's your opinion and you've made claims on here before that have been proven wrong.

[Tubby Isaacs]

Many media reports suggest that the government will be forced to abandon most of their infrastructure plans and to cut day-to-day public spending every year for the entire parliament.

Why? There are other taxes they can raise without breaking promises. Or much easier, change the fiscal rule to allow for infrastructure investment. Most people who vote for them wouldn't care about either.

[Youngian]

Nothing to see, folks. National debt is really national savings but Rachel Reeves can't see this as she's really stupid and I'm a genius, claimed Richard Murphy.

[Oboogie]

Do I have to repeat myself? The government is collapsing under our very eyes and you criticise me for stating the obvious?

If that were true, there'd be some evidence for you to post rather than just parroting unfounded assertions you've cribbed from GBNews. This government has delivered more in 100 days than your lot did in the last five.

[Oboogie]

Nothing to see, folks. National debt is really national savings but Rachel Reeves can't see this as she's really stupid and I'm a genius, claimed Richard Murphy.

Jesus, that's Liz Truss level economics!

[Arrowhead]

No, the government is not "collapsing under our very eyes" right now. FFS.

[Bones McCoy]

No, the government is not "collapsing under our very eyes" right now. FFS.

Only on Xitter is this happening.

And Xitter isn't real, it's just the "wisdom" of crowds.

[Andy McDandy]

From the Daily Mash, an exclusive by every fucker in the Tory party:

THE dismissal of the prime minister’s chief of staff after just three months in the job makes it unignorable: Labour are over, the Tories have won and an election is a formality.

There is no way the government can possibly recover from this. Nor will the electorate allow them to. It was Sue Gray they voted to put in Downing Street, not Starmer.

How can they justify limping on for another few months before the inevitable general election while presiding over a government of chaos and disorder? Where nobody knows who’s in charge from one day to the next?

Sue Gray, a vicious, biased excuse for a civil servant whose lies about Partygate unfairly ousted a prime minister, was the only integrity this sorry excuse for an administration had left. Now Starmer has betrayed this traitor what’s left? Someone nobody’s heard of?

This cannot compare to the Cummings affair, where a private and decent man was pilloried for accidentally driving the length of the country during lockdown and again to Barnard Castle, whose reasonable excuses were instantly widely accepted. Not the same.

Starmer was already on his last legs, his 165 majority already whittled down to a pathetic, unworkable 157, battered by riots he himself caused by not being Nigel Farage. Now Sue Gray has departed, no excuse is left.

The Conservative party is limber, refreshed, ready to rule and will no doubt be elected in a landslide. Don’t worry about us not having a leader yet. We’ll sort that out after we get in and if we don’t like the first one we can always switch.

And as I've said before, just remember that it's only the beginning of October. The budget is more than 3 weeks away. Most of the time since the election, parliament has been in recess and it's been the traditional "silly season". The right wing media are dredging public records, MPs' bins, and their own memory banks, for anything they can find to discredit the government, because - as predicted - a major line of attack will be that the government has no mandate despite its large parliamentary majority.

Honeymoon period is an artificial concept anyway. It was clear on July 5th that there wouldn't be one from the opposition. The party should have been much more strident in rebutting attacks, but everything else so far is pretty thin gruel.

[Abernathy]

Rather a good article from Rafael Behr in today's Grauniad :

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfr ... byelection

[Crabcakes]

Do I have to repeat myself? The government is collapsing under our very eyes and you criticise me for stating the obvious?

Governments collapse when the leader or cabinet lose the support of their party and peers. As seen with May, Johnson, Truss and (at least an attempt) Sunak. You see mass ministerial resignations, MPs on manoeuvres testing the water on their leadership credentials, very obvious briefings against the government from within government.

None of this is happening.

This has been a concocted equivalence row about declared gifts no one had an issue with at the time that are also dwarfed by the (often undeclared) freebies the Tories raked in, an opportunist policy attack on adding eligibility to a small payout that regularly gave pocket money to millionaires, another that could probably do with review but we’re in tight times (and haven’t had the budget yet), and a wholly hypocritical wages row about a chief of staff who the Tories and their press chums have had it in for for ages because she didn’t absolutely exonerate Boris Johnson. Mainly because he was and remains guilty as all fuck. Oh, and the return of the Chagos islands, which was a Tory policy that was already in motion who they can’t decide who’s at fault for. Not that it’s a ‘fault’ at all.

Decisive action has been taken on the majority of these points. Pension credit applications have soared. There is a new chief of staff. Gifts have been repayed and rules and guidance around this tightened up.

So continuing to amplify this nonsense means one of two things: you’re a right-wing shill, or you’re a useful idiot doing the right wing press’s dirty work for them because you’re actually delighted at this as perfect (Jeremy) is always the enemy of good (actually doing what’s needed to get into power and make a fucking difference rather than spending 70-odd years just waffling on about the difference you want other people to make for you and then give you credit for).

The 2 parts of the join that is the ouroboros of politics where hard right and hard left meet. So with that imagery in mind, the only real question left is are you staring up your own arse or just an absolute anus?