British Politics

James Cleverly?

Never heard of 'Simon de Jever', who appears only to exist as that X account. Phillips doesn't strike me as particularly disagreeable -- maybe a smoothiechops like many others who floats unaccountably from one top job to another on a film of privileged oil, but that's not quite the same thing. The interview is a conversation, so you can't blame one party for actually saying anything and not just letting the other party run on. The problem is that Sky's producer only allowed a bite-size seven-minute slot, which reduced the whole thing to a nonsense, where a twenty-minute slot for such a serious subject might have been more productive (if, that is, that the producer had regarded the issue as a serious one, but if you're old enough to remember Spitting Image you may remember that British TV news producers do not regard 'Foreign Death' as serious, just as 'filler' material).

Even so, under British public-service broadcasting rules, I don't think the interviewer could let Barghouti blandly claim that all killings by Hamas are merely 'a response' but all killings by the IDF are 'terrorism' and therefore murder. It's a point of view (from a vocal bystander who knows his own precious hide is not on the line), but it's not an unchallengeable one.

I think we've established that it's Cameron. Quite why Burley was fangirling so breathlessly and all but writing her phone number in lipstick on his shirtfront, God knows.

Wouldn't calling for hotels housing migrants to be burned... qualify as incitement?

Move could raise £24Bn/year.

Good luck getting that money. They don't learn from the 70s do they, that rich people and big businesses react to such moves, usually in a way that actually decreases revenue.

I like the sentiment though, but I wonder if they've really analysed the possible outcomes.

Depends how they go about collecting it. Notice it says a tax on wealth, not income. So if you tax fixed assets which can’t be moved abroad, such as property and also catch people who switched ownership of the property to foreign entities recently…

Maybe you’re right and the wealthy will always stay one step ahead but some things should be done because they’re the right thing to do.

I agree, but you need to be clever.

I would just prefer they be more honest about tax raises and be explicit about the spend (saying stuff like x% goes to health, y% goes to roads and infrastrcture etc), and stop pretending they're not really a tax on people when they are (re the employers tax)

The being clever part may be a challenge for Starmer and Reeves.

It's ac challange for anyone and needs to be very well thought out. Otherwise they run rings round us.

The first thing is not to sell of everything that's left to PE. That at leat is very easy. Oh ****!

It also needs to be properly cost-benefitted + how much will it really, really raise, not just 'THIS WILL RAISE THIS GIVEN CURRENT NUMBERS FALLING WITHIN THE CATCHMENT' with absolutely no sense of how those caught are likely to counter/change behaviours.

Like when they went on about how much charging private schools VAT would generate with no consideration how many kids would end up back in public education and how much that would cost, how many private schools might just wind up etc etc

I largely agree although inequality is a huge problem in it's own right. Quite possibly the biggest general problem we have for democracy.

I do hate the lies about how much will be raised. As if those using loop holes will continue to use them if they dont exist anymore.

Public schools are an example where the richest ones are imo a big problem. They wont suffer for pupils because the advantage is so great but apparantly they will be able to claim back 10 years vat which will be a windfall for them

Talking of inequality, despite Farage's mountain of lies Reform are joining the Tories in voting against ending fire and rehire, against banning zero hours contracts, against unfair dismissal and against strong protections for pregnant women and new mothers' sick pay.

****s gonna be ****s

What usually happens is they hire "consultants" and find various other ways to benefit friends and relatives with the finances they control, and there is never any "profit" to give back at the end of it.

The normal way to regulate actual monopolies is to allow for a fixed profit, a reasonable return on capital that you can vary in time depending on how much capital returns in the economy overall, and you regulate prices through that.

Just dropping this here on the off chance we haven't died in a nuclear holocaust by the time of the next GE, and some idiot says he's thinking of voting Reform.

So here we are...

Yes I expect it to be bad. Maybe just not as bad.

The only good way to do it public ownership

I didn't really need Guido to reveal that Reeves claiming to have worked as an economist was bullshit, I could work that one out for myself, but thanks for the confirmation

News management

At leasts she has undone a lot of the toatl bollocks talked about fiscal responsibility during the truss farce

If they reverse on giving it all to PE companies then I'll even be happy.

So the National Cake wasn't a fixed size after all? What a shock.

I wonder if they miscalculated though, and won't get enough of a bounce in popularity to lift them out of the doldrums where their doom and gloom messaging had cast them.