No it won’t because they’ll take drastic action to avoid it. I think the hundreds of thousands stuck on high mortgage rates will be entitled to ask why they had to go up so much in the the first place.

“Deflation” isn’t about to happen.

How do you know? I’m not saying the reduction in inflation is a bad thing, clearly it’s not but the danger of deflation is there. Probably won’t happen cos they’ll slash interest rates to prevent it but again it shows that the BoE should never have hiked them up in the first place. My mortgage is now fixed at around £400/month more than it was before along with lots of other people so forgive me if I don’t get too excited as the damage is already done.

A deflating economy means deflating economic growth.

Also the public will expect to see lower prices and the cost of living improving in their favour. If that doesn’t happen (which is likely) then Labour will take the flak for that.

Interesting inflation figures this morning. Admittedly mostly due to deflation in fuel prices but it looks like those of us who said the BoE were completely over-egging interest rate rises were right and deflation beckons. That’s going to cause Starmer and Reeves a whole bunch of new headaches.

The super-rich left Norway in 2022 and it resulted in a 40% reduction in revenue from that sector

It’s not just about tax revenue. it’s about fairness and principle. It sends a signal to the voters that the govt is on their side and that their interests are just as important as those of billionaires.

Have all those wealthy non-doms buggered off yet, to avoid paying their fair share? No? Thought not.

Not often I agree with Polly Toynbee!

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/oct/11/super-rich-flee-britain-labour-tax-grab-exit

John McDonnell eat your heart out!

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2024/oct/10/rachel-reeves-capital-gains-tax-rise-budget

I think you’re massively underestimating the animosity between Farage

Possibly. But the prospect of acquiring power has enormous potential to resolve disagreements and personal grudges. We know from history that the tories are experts at adapting and reacting to the political landscape to win power. They’ve done it time and again and will this time. They’ll dangle some irresistable temptations in front of Farage and Tice and they won’t be able to resist.

while anyone sane left in the Tory Party (are any left?) would be off

I’m not sure there are many moderates left in the tory party after Johnson’s purges. The assumption that centrists will leave the party split and marginalised is probably overegged.

Hoping for a Reform – Conservative merger of any sort is nihilistic in the extreme

Don’t understand it either. If they merge (or more likely agree a non-aggression pact) they could win the next election, probably with Farage as leader. I know Ed Davey has fantasies of the libdems becoming the official opposition, but they’re just that, a fantasy. It’s much more likely that the labour and libdem vote will be split and the combined tory and reform vote will be larger, putting them in govt.

No agenda can “defeat” Reform, or whatever they’ll be called next.

Of course there is. People considering voting reform will do so on the simple assessment of whether they can get a GP appointment, not have to wait months for hospital treatment, if their kids can go to the local school, and afford the weekly shop and be able to pay their rent/mortgage. If they can do all those things by the time the next election comes around and be reassured that govt acts in their interests, they will forget all the stuff about immigrants and will be much less likely to vote for Farage. If the govt carries on telling them these things aren’t possible though or attempts to make excuses, Farage is nailed on to be in govt in some form (perhaps as PM) next time around.

Cleverley knocked out of tory leadership race. Starmer just got very lucky (again)!

And to think McDonnell would be a rousing success, given his history and more importantly, how an actual western economy interacts and works is fanciful at best

Given that ‘expertise’ seems to be prized on here and among centrists, I suspect McDonnell knows a tad more than you about the working of western economies seeing as he was shadow chancellor for quite a few years. If you look at what he was proposing rather than swallow the right wing propaganda about revolutionary marxist socialists, you’ll see it wasn’t anything particularly radical that hadn’t happened before. Given what’s happened since with public services at the point of collapse, the economy stagnant and the cost of living through the roof, I reckon that more than supports the view that in 2019 we needed McDonnell’s plan much more than what we actually got. Reeves and Starmer seem to be realising that too, however belatedly and unenthusiastically.

I’d imagine increasing the taxes of handymen and hairdressers would’ve been somewhat counter productive and a difficult sell.

Wasn’t the exact same argument made about the minimum wage?

Anyway I’m always astonished at the ability of right wing propaganda to persuade the likes of argee that evil socialist utopians are not on the side of working people whereas free market capitalists are. Unless of course argee is a multi-millionaire in which case his suspicion of socialists is entirely justified. :-)

Good to see in any case that Reeves and Starmer are inching slowly towards something that looks a bit more like the stuff McD would have done, however incompetently they’re doing it. Who knows maybe they’ll double down and inject 100bn into the NHS and local authorities to complete the job?

and dream to run the treasury and the country as a socialist utopia.

Oh give over, McD wanted to do nothing of the sort. If you seriously think rebalancing treasury focus towards working people and away from the corporate and financial elite is ‘socialist utopia’ then there really is very little hope for any sort of better society. It’s quite pathetic really.

So i take it by your post you want the government to tighten their belts and spend less via austerity?

On the contrary, I want her to spend a hell of a lot more. But it has to be done with some clear ideological direction, consistency and most importantly stubborn resolve to see it through. At almost every juncture Starmer and Reeves have flip-flopped or given in to outside pressure. In 2017 and 2019 McDonnell presented a plan to spend approximately 250bn to restore public services, invest in british industry and improve working conditions across the economy. Part of that plan was how they were going to manage the inevitable market and media reaction in relation to a potential devaluation of the currency. Reeves should pick up the phone and ask her predecessor for some advice.

They have always been clear about borrowing to invest in infrastructure

Three weeks ago Reeves was cancelling road projects to fill her black hole for fear of the pound collapsing, now she’s spending 80bn, rewriting fiscal rules and borrowing more whilst the price of 10-year gilts has increased. You call that clear?

might all be bollocks, but its the internet, so here you go

Definitely not bollocks IMO. Generally what is reported in the media is the tip of the iceberg of what’s really going on. If the media (especially friendly media like the guardian) are reporting about ‘dysfunction’ then you can bet it’s much worse than that. It all supports the view that the problem here is Starmer and the people around him. Those of us who never liked him to start with pointed to his political naivety and inexperience, but I don’t think any of us thought he’d match that with the  managerial incompetence we’ve seen. I reckon the thing they’re most guilty of is hubris following their victory over Corbyn and the left and that they could repeat that in govt only to find out it’s much, much more difficult. My main question now is how long the labour party give him before questions and gossip about the leadership begin?

@nickc, it’ll be easier to try this approach first, and if it’s not working, to switch to spend, spend, spend

They’ve already made that switch. 22bn on (pointless) CCS, 57bn on infrastructure a few weeks after hyping up a 22bn ‘black hole’ and tax rises to fill it.

I can imagine however that post budget headlines of “Runaway Inflation Fears” and “Interest Rates Set to Soar” from the usual suspects are probably keeping her awake.

She’s almost certainly worried about a Truss-like market reaction, which is why she should be getting ahead of it by explaining and defending her actions and the benefits that will have. Markets react to uncertainty, inconsistency and incompetence. Reeves and Starmer are displaying all three of those quite spectacularly. She also has the power to mitigate any negative reaction if it materialises. Time to grow a pair I think.

But, in any case, if certain folk are happy

Who’s happy? Certainly not me, I welcome all posts and discussion unlike many others here who always want to shut other people down or prevent any sort of debate or disagreement. The more disagreement the better as far as I’m concerned.

The celebratory tone

Think you’ve imagined that. No one wanted or forced jonv to flounce, he did it all on his own. I still don’t really know why to be honest, but if you’re going to set yourself up as the arbiter of truth on a thread that is inherently about opinions and political gossip then you’re probably going to get a lot of push back.

Back on topic, I see now that Reeves has seen the light and decided to change the fiscal rules to remove her self-imposed straitjacket, the tory press and financial establishment are starting to talk up the prospect of the markets reacting negatively. Not really a surprise really, and another result of Starmer and Reeves political naivety. Had they declared their intentions from the outset and held an early budget to implement it all no one would have batted an eyelid, but now after chaos in Downing St and various u-turns at the treasury it looks like it’s going to be the next problem for Starmer. They really don’t know what they’re doing do they?

If all they leave with is a degree and the knowhow to work a washing machine / make cheap pasta then I’d humbly suggest they are missing a huge part of what Uni can be about..

True, along with a mediocre degree and basic life skills I left uni with a massive drug and alcohol problem. :-/

Thread has died now that jonv is no longer here. :-/ Funny isn’t it how people complain of petty bickering but then when it stops you get no posts about the actual subject. It’s almost like forum threads aren’t here to be serious places of discussion.

Anyway, I note in the news today there are reports that McSweeney is going to be ‘radical’ in his shake up of govt. Kind of ironic that we now have a labour version of Boris and Dom. I suspect it’ll end the same way. I hope McSweeney got some savings, I give him less than a year.

Back on topic, the most significant takeaway from the Sue Gray debacle for me is that all the claims on here and elsewhere that the one thing we could all be absolutely sure of was that Starmer is an extremely competent and experienced manager and leader. Given all the reports of the dysfunctionality of the No 10 operation from infighting between advisors to ministers not having clear direction on what the PM wanted, the assumption of managerial competency seems very far from the reality. We appear to have a PM who is politically naive, operationally incompetent and economically illiterate. It’s like a holy trinity of uselessness. :-)

Most members on here can probably shrug off the more heated exchanges but not everyone can.

Maybe I’ve got an iron mental shield or something but I don’t think I’ve ever been affected by anything anyone has ever posted on here about me or something I’ve said. I exchange opinions (some quite strong) regularly on here with people like binners, TJ, nickc and a few others who I have met IRL or know quite well and funnilly enough what we say on here never comes up in real conversations. What’s said on the forum, stays on the forum is probably a good rule to live by. I’m pretty sure most people who know me IRL would agree I’m very different to what I’m like on here (I’m far more polite and easy going than my internet persona of ‘argumentative tw*t with a chip on his shoulder’) so no one should take anything too seriously.

I’m really trying so I’ve reported my post and asked the Mods to ban me, until my subscription lapses anyway.

So we’re back to flouncing because people disagree with you? The problem is that all your posts come across as ‘I’m too clever to talk to you’ or ‘don’t you know who I am’? Posting your LI profile only exacerbates that. You may well have a lifetime of professional and academic experience in some of these matters but don’t expect the respect you garner in professional circles to count for anything here. This is an internet forum, not a professional forum or serious thing where you will be held to account for anything. People here don’t care who you are or what you do, and they can respond to your posts in whatever way they like as long as they don’t break the forum rules. Instead though you expect everyone to defer to you because that’s what they probably do IRL. Think of this place as a leveller and then accept that you’re no more important than anyone else, and you might start to have a bit of fun or amusement, which ATEOTD is all that this place is for.

Well, I’ve just asked one of our experts on CCUS and he’s going to send me a primer that I’ll share.

I work for a leading sustainable development consultancy, and whilst its not my field I don’t know of a single project we’re working on which involves CCS. Given we’re all over wind, solar, hydro, nuclear, habitat restoration and a multitude of other things in the sustainability space that tells me CCS isn’t taken very seriously, because if it was I’d be reading all about it in our internal bulletins and other comms.

It’s greenwash. A convenient way to funnel billions to fossil fuel companies who can use it as an excuse to carry on extracting oil and gas with the promise of a magical technology to be introduced at some uspecified time in the future that will undo all the damage they cause.

CCS has been talked up for decades now to little effect, and continues to draw public investment away from stuff that actually works.

CCS is the new nuclear fusion. By the time they figure out how to make it work we’ll all be long gone and the world will be in a 4 degree of warming hellscape. Still though, it gives the PM an opportunity for a nice speech which makes him look like he’s doing something useful. Won’t be long before he’s making speeches about mirrors in space. :-/

you do realise that’s an investment of 22bn over 25 years.

Yes of course I do. I’m not talking about whether it’s a good thing or not*, I’m talking about the optics and the politics of it. The voting public won’t make the distiction you have, they will do a simple sum in their heads of no 22bn for WFP and other stuff (along with higher taxes) versus a 22bn handout to fossil fuel companies and others to ‘do research’ into technology that doesn’t exist yet that has no perceived benefit for them. Their conclusion will then be that the labour govt is on the side of big business and not the working man/woman struggling to make ends meet. I have no real problem with labour spending 22bn on research, but announcing it with a massive fanfare like it’s going to save everyone is going to massively backfire. I wonder how many votes went to reform this morning?

*Although 22bn would be far better spent on proven tech like planting trees and restoring and extending peat bogs, something we are uniquely able to do given our geography. But that’s not as shiny and impressive is it? Far better to pretend we’re all going to be saved by fantasy technology of the future.

FFS after all the we have no money bollocks Reeves and Starmer have now found 22bn (coincidence?) down the back of the sofa to spend on fantasy greenwash nonsense. Unless of course they’re planning on spending all that money on planting trees – which is still the only proven CCS technology – but I doubt those are the skilled jobs they’re prattling on about.

Who the hell is running the labour PR machine? It’s like they’re trying to be the most unpopular government in history. “Sorry we can’t afford to help you heat your homes or help you get a doctor’s appointment, but we’ve got loads of cash to spend on pie in the sky technologies which don’t do anything”. F***** clueless!

Well history teaches us all lessons

Doesn’t seem to be many lessons learned from history among the Israeli govt, military and those who support them. You’d think they’d have a unique pespective on the issue of genocide but apparently not.

I wouldn’t be surprised if the 47,000 dead Palestinians including 17,000 was widely dismissed as untrue.

They’re probably thinking ‘false flag’.

I’m saying the adverts for houses for sale is a false flag

If I had a quid for every time someone used the phrase ‘false flag’ on here I’d be able to retire. It’s such a lazy phrase. Don’t agree or like something that is reported in the news? False flag. Don’t want to believe something is happening? False flag. Don’t want to accept that the side you’re supporting isn’t doing as well as you want? False flag. Yes, there are people in the world who want to mislead you and misrepresent stuff, but not everything you read in the news, see on tv or read on the internet is the result of some sort of conspiracy. Most of it is just shit that happens, so maybe try to accept it at face value?

which will draw in the US, the UK, and France.

Keir Starmer will be relieved.

Is anyone still suggesting on here that Israel is facing an existential threat?

Absolutely. It might look like they are in control for now but the actions they’ve taken in the past 12 months will reverberate for decades. From this point forward Israel will be a country under siege. They will spend the next 30 years with a target on their back and will face political and cultural isolation on the world stage. If Israelis currently feel like the rest of the world hates them, they’re going to have to get used to that and live with it for a very long time.

He wasn’t prepared to allow trans rights to be a battle the Labour Party had in open on the run up to the election though, was he? Coward or wise…

Wise probably. If I was labour leader the last thing I’d want to be talking about when interviewed is whether a woman can have penis or not. I’d rather be talking about economic, health and education policy.

Job done then.

If you mean Labour politicians betraying the lie that they are any different to the tories and are only really interested in being in power for their own interests, then yes I think you’re probably correct. You don’t mean that though do you?

In other news, remember a few days ago when someone presented Labour’s abolition of non-doms as an example of how the super rich are not untouchable? Well that didn’t last long did it? :-)

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2024/sep/27/rachel-reeves-reconsiders-end-to-non-dom-tax-status-over-obr-forecast-fears

Corbyn would have in no way been immune to this effect if he had won a GE.

What’s Corbyn got to do with this? He’s long gone.

However, not everyone lives in a white working class town and so we are exposed to and forced to consider other viewpoints.

No but it was largely white working class towns returning to Labour who put them into govt. That’s pretty much f***** now.

There are many other institutions back then that actually worked pretty well too, as opposed to being totally buggered now, social care, schools, prisons, you name it.

Yes and we can thank austerity for that. People voted for labour for the very opposite, but they’re getting more of the same. If Reeves doesn’t do an extreme about turn they’re screwed. They probably are already because first impressions last. For the next 5 years they will be known as the freeloading doom and gloom party, lining their pockets while they tell everyone else to tighten their belts. It’s the worst possible combination of optics.

Public is nowhere near as critical of the gov policies as ‘you lot’ would lead us to think.

I live in a mostly white working class town and I can tell you virtually no one here thinks Starmer or Labour are on their side or will help them in any way. Still I’m sure the response to that here will be ‘they’re all idiots’ or something like that. That might be true, but these are the idiots who will vote for Reform or the tories and leave labour out of power.

The level of delusion on this thread/forum about politics is astonishing quite frankly. Do you guys know what people out there in the real world are saying? They’re not sayiing ‘it’s early days, we need to give them a chance because we know it’s really difficult’, they’re saying ‘they’re no different to the tories, they’re looking after themselves as usual and have no interest in us’. I don’t usually talk about politics IRL (I save that for here) but when it crops every now and again down the pub or on a bike ride or something, this is what I hear from almost everyone.

It’s like brexit all over again. A load of chattering middle class educated types telling each other ‘they couldn’t possibly vote us out, it would be economic suicide’ whilst everyone else is thinking ‘f*** it, what have we got to lose?’. Hope you’re all looking forward to the Tory-Reform govt in a few years with Farage as PM or chancellor.