Inceptions – PMQs 22nd January 2025

 It’s not been a good week for the PM.

Yesterday, he attempted some damage limitation over the Axel Rudakubana case and the associated initial official and legal responses, but nevertheless, social media has been busy fisking him. It is not true, as some online have claimed, that he represented the Rwandan father in an asylum appeal, but immigration issues have flared up again. Why can the Government not take swift and decisive action, as Trump has done straight from his inception as President?

Belatedly, Labour have announced a public enquiry, previously avoided in favour of locally-based investigations (which might be a prey to local intimidation.) “We will not let any institution deflect from its failures,” said Sir Keir now, bowing to the inevitable.

There was a sense of predators circling at PMQs. Andrew Snowden (Con) twitted Starmer with Labour’s “honeymoon period” sackings, resignations and counter-briefings; was Sir Keir himself the root cause? “We have just won a landslide victory,” came the non-reply.

Not one like Trump’s, it must be said. Bearing in mind the slender support for Labour in July’s General Election, perhaps we should have a referendum on the PM’s radical agenda. There is a triple precedent in Britain for votes on major constitutional change – Brexit (twice) and the Alternative Vote (once, but in the light of 2024, maybe again sometime).

In the light of recent dismal news about unemployment and government borrowing, did Starmer still believe the Chancellor was doing a good job? This was asked by Rebecca Smith (Con), to which Sir Keir gave another flippant answer: “I thought the honourable Lady was just reading out the last Government’s record.”

That was hardly adequate, for as Reeves flew to Davos, a hedge fund manager was warning of a potential “debt death spiral” here. Yet the PM told Sir Bernard Jenkin (Con) that, despite our recently increased taxes and regulation, the IMF was predicting the UK would see better growth than Europe. Perhaps we should ‘trust the science’? Or at least compare results with the US, which is taking the opposite tack.

America is certainly giving us pause for thought. Lib Dem leader Sir Ed Davey wanted a reassurance that our farmers were not going to be undercut in trade deals with the US. The PM replied that “we will never lower our standards”. On the other hand, Trump was yesterday bemoaning America’s trade deficit with Europe and, whereas Sir Keir was telling Mike Martin (Lib Dem) of his commitment to spending 2.5% of GDP on defence, The Donald opined to his press conference that Europe needed to boost that to 5%.

Clearly, there is much for us to discuss with our special friends in Washington. Whether or not Lord Mandelson is the man to speak for us is moot; some say yes, while others think he will be somewhat restricted in his duties.

Marx said that capitalism’s inherent contradictions would cause it to collapse. Labour’s paradoxical approach to economic recovery may well do the same for us and for its own party, what with aiming for growth while making it harder and more expensive to employ people. Similarly, we still have Miliband the Mad driving for Net Zero while the Government plans to approve Heathrow’s third runway – a U-turn on Starmer and Co’s 2018 position – as Adrian Ramsay (Green) pointed out. But then, Ramsay himself is a NIMBY on ‘renewable infrastructure’, as Sir Keir reminded him.

When Will Stone (Lab) boasted of the Panattoni Park development in Swindon, the PM used the chance to mention the new National Wealth Fund’s potential contribution to economic stability and growth. Here, we have another double bind, for ‘no man can serve two masters’: exploiting our pensions for HMG’s projects may well hamper fund performance, which could in turn impact pensioners; still, the latter are by definition not ‘working people’, who ‘don’t have savings’.

The theme of the exchanges between Starmer and Badenoch was education – another field bristling in difficulties. Kemi highlighted the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill’s cap on teachers’ pay and restrictions on hiring talented non-qualified staff; Sir Keir spoke of breakfast clubs and limiting uniform expenses. Kemi said that the Bill was an ‘attack on excellence’, something that did not bother Anthony Crosland when, in 1965, he promised to ‘destroy every f***ing Grammar School in England. And Wales. And Northern Ireland.’

Checking on home education was a safeguard against domestic child abuse, claimed the PM, skirting around another relevant issue – that of raising children with a radicalised political or religious agenda. Home education is a vexed area; the right to educate one’s own child ‘otherwise’, in defiance of a creeping State power grab, has become complicated by an influx of people who, in some cases, seem to have some very different values to our own. Now, we are into the culture wars, as well as a political conflict.

As of Monday, the transatlantic ideological divide seems now to be between those who want to level up, versus those determined to level down.

Different beginnings – how will the seeds grow?

Reposted from Wolves of Westminster

Dragonflies

This is an extraordinary animation video about dragonflies. The information about their eyes and brain, the Alien-like grabber used by the nymphs in water!

First, take care of business. Wokery is second.

The world will work better if we try to see things as they are, not as we would like them to be. We have to tackle our tasks conscientiously and fairly, not try to lead the people back to Eden and make the lion lie down with the lamb.

When police and political representatives colluded with and covered-up systematic child sexual exploitation for fear of being seen as racist, the problem grew to a scale beyond calculation. Had the authorities acted early and firmly a huge amount of suffering could have been prevented. Instead the scandal is tempting many people to tar most of the Muslim population here with the same brush, so that community relations are far worse than if responsible parties had acted impartially.

Similarly much of the fire devastation in California could have been headed off by proper attention to basic precautions - clearing away flammable underbrush, ensuring adequate water supplies. This could have been done before (not instead of) winning virtue points for affirmative employment practices and nature conservation projects. First things first.

Perhaps the theme for our time is to reframe political disagreements. They should not be a matter of Left versus Right but of limited, practical and achievable good versus well-meaning fantasy and over-reach.

This theme is everywhere now, even in something as basic as internet search engines.

Take Google for example. If you say things their shadowy ideological teams and computer algorithms don't like, you can have your Blogger account cancelled altogether - sometimes containing many years of content. Or they can find ways to 'shadow ban' you to make you hard to find.

It has got to the point where Google's core function as a data finder has been hampered. Yesterday I sought a funny Spectator piece from 2012 by Melissa Kite about her crazy spaniel Cydney; I put in the names and other key words, in several different ways: nothing. Why? Is it because she's 'right wing'? Yet when I switched to Bing.com - bingo!

Similarly two days earlier I looked for a sexually frank poem by the Middle Scots poet William Dunbar. Too sexy, even when it's half a thousand years old? For again it was Google 0, Bing 1.

It's worrying when the world's leading search engine can't search.

I thought it might be just me, but apparently the way Google's algorithms hamper its service may be causing it to lose market share:

"Google's algorithm updates have been well documented, starting out sporadically with one in 2000 and another in 2002, then becoming increasingly more frequent over the years. In the present climate, hundreds of search algorithm changes are made every year, ranging from minor changes to far-reaching broad core algorithm updates that shake up the search engine results pages (SERPs). By contrast, Bing algorithm changes are rarely spoken about in the SEO community.

"Although Google still dominates the global search market in 2025, Microsoft has seen some incremental gains in recent times. Google retains an 89.73% share of the global market, although this has fallen from 93.47% since February 2023; during the same timeframe, Bing's share has risen from 2.18% up to 3.98%."

Ironically, I found that article without trouble!

Away with grand schemes and attempting to remake humanity by force and propaganda. Let's have openness, humility and mutual respect.

Reposted from the Bruges Group blog

Starmer: A whim of iron

At this week’s PMQs, the Prime Minister called the Conservative Opposition ‘economic vandals and fantasists’ who wanted the benefits of the Budget without saying how they would pay for them. He contrasted their approach with his - making difficult cuts, raising taxes, investing in health, public services and housing with ‘an iron-clad commitment to our fiscal rules.’

We shall see how long that iron bears the weight of reality thundering across the bridge. Starmer mocked Liz Truss for ‘crashing the economy’ but some of the trusses underpinning his own grand construction are buckling already.

That is because key parts are not welded to each other.

• For example Labour’s Naushabah Khan highlighted the shortage of staff to teach construction skills to young people; Sir Keir’s solution was another new quango, Skills England, which he linked to the Government’s commitment to build 1.5 million new homes.

Are those homes needed? The ONS has predicted an increase in our population of 6.6 million between 2021 and 2036, 92% of which will be down to net immigration. Without that we would see a decline - and perhaps we should.

Besides, our housing is not overcrowded. The average number of occupants per household has dropped over 20+ years, and 8.4 million people are living alone.

What we could do with is a program of retrofitting over 3 million interwar houses to make them more energy-efficient, and perhaps dividing many of them into smaller self-contained units. No need to concrete over the green belt and our vital farmland.

But yes, if we play it right we could be entering a golden age for the skilled manual worker, and about time too.

• LibDem leader Ed Davey noted the winter flu crisis in hospitals (exacerbated by problems of discharging patients who have no-one to care for them at home) and urged the PM to shorten the three-year timetable for the Casey Commission on social care. Starmer responded by blaming the Conservative Party; his iron refusal to change course ‘disappointed’ Davey.

• Scottish Labour’s Kirsteen Sullivan raised the issue of access to NHS dentists north of the border. While sympathising and promising to work with the Scottish Government, Sir Keir could not resist once again attacking the SNP, who he said ‘should be ashamed.’

We need to connect this with his grand plan for UK devolution, which will quango-ise the country with mayors and regional councils, robbing power from Parliament but also from the troublesome people - goodbye district councils. There will be opportunities for corruption as our demos fragments and groups co-ordinate to take control of these new layers of government. It will all end in ‘tiers’.

• The Conservatives’ Peter Bedford spoke of Age UK’s difficulties in supporting pensioners who have lost their winter fuel allowance (WFA) while themselves coping with the increase in employer’s national insurance.

Starmer reverted to his familiar strategy, a counterattack on the Tories, which served as a distraction from some more of his stubbornness. He has previously assured David Lammy of his job until the next General Election and as Rachel Reeves came under fire he has promised her the same. Goodness forbid he should change his mind.

Similarly Reeves’ disaster on the WFA and NIC could be fixed, but won’t be. What possessed Labour in taxing the employed as though they were an unhealthy luxury?

A better solution would be to tax wealthy retirees more, never mind what the manifesto said - ‘events, dear boy’. If the 40 per cent income tax threshold was dropped by £1,500 then prosperous retirees - Well-Off Older Persons (‘Woopies’) - would in effect be repaying the £300 WFA that everybody should have. It could be taken further: in Scotland there is an intermediate 21% tax band for those with an income above £25,281; their higher rate band starts at £43,663 (not £52,271 as in the rest of the UK) - and is 42%, not 40% as here. The top rate is also two points higher than in England.

Unlike younger, struggling workers WOOPIES don’t pay NIC or pension contributions, often no longer pay rent or a mortgage or have to feed, clothe and entertain children. If my paying more would help the nation out of a jam, I’d be for it, as long as it didn’t get spaffed away with incompetent management.

• The exchanges between Badenoch and Starmer were the usual, what he terms ‘knockabout’, while remaining silent on the elephant in the room. Kemi has commented publicly elsewhere on the need to discriminate among groups of immigrants and their descendants, and some realistic discrimination is long overdue, not just on account of jihadism and r*p* gangs but also on the net economic effect of importing the poorer sort. Perhaps there is a degree of cross-party collusion involved in not gifting political ammo to rising new parties.

Perhaps we will not see radical, beneficial change without a great disaster. The Starmernaut will rumble on until it hits a major national pothole.

Today’s PMQs can be viewed here (starting 12:00); the Hansard transcript is here.

Reposted from Wolves of Westminster

Systemic failure – PMQs 8th January 2025

The great boil of UK child abuse has been lanced and has spattered its contents over all three major political parties. Now, said Sir Keir numerous times in this session, is the time for “action”.

What action? Why a Bill, of course: the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill, receiving its second reading this afternoon. How dare the Tories introduce a wrecking amendment (requiring a national enquiry into ‘grooming’ gangs) when the Government is so keen to get this sorted fast!

It is not clear why it should be necessary to complete such an enquiry before doing anything to prosecute and punish those who have broken existing laws. But it is clear why a full historic investigation into police and local/national government negligence and collusion would be embarrassing – and not just for Labour.

Political parties have a will to survive, just like living organisms. Self-protection ranks above public service. So when Sir Roger Gale (Herne Bay and Sandwich) ended PMQs by asking Starmer why the latter, when DPP, had not instigated a prosecution for rape and sexual abuse against Mohamed Fayed, the PM took refuge in proceduralism: “That case never crossed my desk.” No time for a supplementary question as to why not – curtain down and off to the green room, quick!

All the laws and administrative arrangements in the world will not solve problems if there is no will to do so. Let’s look at an existing plan that can help the young but has sometimes failed.

Education, Health and Care Plans (EHCPs) were introduced in 2014 to coordinate the work of professionals in safeguarding and promoting the interests of children. They came into being in response to the slow parental murder in 2000 of eight-year-old Victoria Climbié; yet despite the new arrangements, ten-year-old Sara Sharif was killed in 2023 by her father and stepmother. I was involved from their beginning in putting EHCPs together for some SEND children and, within a couple of years, as the Local Authority’s budget became tight, the educational psychologists (typically the gatekeepers for practical help) seemed to become more of an obstacle than a leg up in the process of assessment.

Now, the proposed new Bill will grant officials more powers to intervene, especially with (allegedly) home-schooled children – but how and why will those powers be used? Will there be some fresh disaster, lessons learned, a line drawn under, a moving-on? A cover-up, a scapegoating? Or effective and consistent action?

How much would be happening even now about the rape gangs without Elon Musk sticking his oar in is moot, bearing in mind that this has been going on for decades and our Civil Service has been careful not to collect relevant data for fear of controversy. Musk has not only called Sir Ed Davey a “snivelling cretin“, but connected Jess Phillips’ opposition to a national enquiry with the need to insulate Starmer.

Phillips is politically between a rock and a hard place. She did much good work for women and girls as a local councillor and safeguarding them is now her brief as a Parliamentary Under-Secretary; yet in July’s General Election, she was very nearly unseated by an Islamist playing on local Muslims’ feelings about Gaza. Calling for a thorough investigation into the rape gangs might alienate enough of her constituents to see her out of Westminster in due course.

Because of issues not addressed, our systemic problems have grown. Labour thought it could rely on Asian voters, provided it let sleeping dogs lie; now, we see the beginnings of a political separation. Did no-one among the powers-that-have-been since 1997 have any concept of the implications of bringing into this country a culture and religion so different and so vigorous? How much history is taught on a PPE course?

Labour is so last season in political fashion, still pursuing its passion for conflict on the basis of class war. Its real programme is to complete the Blairite project that Peter Hitchens calls Eurocommunism, though in Sir Keir’s case we might term it Bureaucommunism – mutating our Constitution into a cat’s cradle of faux devolutions that will leave the people disempowered. The Mayor of London answers questions ten times annually, but does not get the democratic bullyragging we see in the Commons; that is the future we face elsewhere.

Delegating budgets and power will allow the PM to rise above blame and become more presidential, after the model of France, where the operator at the next level down is traditionally described as a ‘fuse’. So when Stephen Flynn (Aberdeen South) asked about the withdrawn Winter Fuel Allowance in Scotland, he was told (and I paraphrase) that the SNP had been given the tools and it was for them to get on with the job.

The theme of insulation from the people extends to Labour’s dealings with the EU. Sojan Joseph (Ashford) hooked his question about restoring Ashford’s Eurostar service onto this.

Those who are concerned about the revolutionary assault on democracy should follow what is going on in Switzerland, where their Federal President Viola Amherd has just negotiated a systematic rearrangement of Swiss-EU relations with the EU’s controversial President Ursula von der Leyen. The hundred Lilliputian threads tying Gulliver down will eventually, if the EU succeeds, be replaced by a stout rope. For now, the Schengen demand for free popular movement across borders has been resisted, but voluntary financial contributions to Brussels’ coffers will become compulsory and the general tendency is unmistakable.

The deal has yet to be officially validated and the frequently-exercised Swiss right to a referendum is likely to be employed – certainly, the ‘hard-right’ Swiss People’s Party (SVP) will call for one. Watch that space over the next year or so.

But the sane eye peeping out of the delusional mask of Europe may find its lid drooping, if the people forget their love of liberty.

Will we remember ours?

Reposted from Wolves of Westminster

New Year smiles

 ukabong !

Yorkshire Airlines

Guinness 'Rhythm of Life' advert - bleah!

Fart for fart's sake - Leonard Rossiter as Le Petomane

And finally... Dinner For One:

Happy New Year!

Boxing Day smiles

pretty duckling https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=178712254490630

back to alcohol-free until NYE:

but don't dunk Oreos, they are indestructible: https://x.com/ur_rumi9/status/1872253913610555516

and don't forget the music...

not all dogs are that well trained though...

Merry Christmas smiles

free at last... er... https://x.com/AMAZlNGNATURE/status/1870257542292455467

brushbaby https://www.facebook.com/watch?v=1489758598336720

howl https://www.facebook.com/watch?v=3462591047377493

"iguana go home !" https://www.facebook.com/photo/?fbid=1051815623651612&set=a.502626141903899

Duckling Lake... https://www.facebook.com/voicesofsa/videos/1188468802669052

bathtime https://www.facebook.com/reel/569755315950498

...and on a different scale...

playing basketpumpkin https://www.facebook.com/watch?v=1615425809183104

after Christmas lunch... https://www.facebook.com/watch/?ref=search&v=1263936344820781&external_log_id=5b82767e-0dd4-430a-b130-fd8ccfeee0f2&q=OMG!%20Keep%20going%2C%20it%27s%20so%20good

Smiles 2

panda v pumpkin https://www.facebook.com/watch?v=1716517669106753

lion massage https://www.facebook.com/photo/?fbid=563848293099237&set=gm.508530018877505&idorvanity=342779168785925

bob and tom https://www.facebook.com/watch?v=3479814515657247

peek-a-boo ! https://x.com/gunsnrosesgirl3/status/1870424248906625242

yes very good - WHAT !!! https://www.facebook.com/reel/954237983266667



and after the big dinner... https://www.facebook.com/reel/605013425517780

Smiles

what scares a bear? https://www.facebook.com/watch?v=1313585209856459

colour matching https://www.facebook.com/watch?v=1256916652242855

lovely smiles! https://www.facebook.com/photo/?fbid=122173497098250162&set=a.122129484122250162

dog nanny https://www.facebook.com/watch?v=1100235631503345

dog takes man for walk https://www.facebook.com/watch?v=609207961619567

skywatch https://x.com/gunsnrosesgirl3/status/1869994393924489511

playful pandas https://x.com/gunsnrosesgirl3/status/1869990985381323199

snowdog https://x.com/gunsnrosesgirl3/status/1869990618274857297

knockout Balkan jazz https://ashaftofsunlight.blogspot.com/2010/10/romany-wedding-jazz-number.html

A furious swarm of WASPIs - PMQs 18th December 2024

The loudest buzz this week was about WASPIs - Women Against State Pension Inequality.

In 1995 the then Conservative Government raised women’s State Pension Age (SPA) by five years to equalise it with men’s - and in 2011 the Con/LibDem coalition accelerated the phasing-in. In July this year the Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman (PHSO) found the Department of Work and Pensions (DWP) guilty of maladministration in not promptly and adequately informing those affected, and recommended compensation - which Labour yesterday refused.

Four people raised this issue in today’s PMQs.

The first was the leader of the Opposition. Kemi Badenoch is not trained in law, and it shows: she has not the knack of merciless forensic drilling that allows no escape for the victim. Once again she asked a portmanteau question, in this case combining WASPIs with those who have applied for pension credit since the scrapping of the Winter Fuel Allowance.

Starmer gladly grabbed the latter alternative, boasting of his retention of the State Pension ‘triple lock’ and scoring off Kemi by noting that her Shadow Chancellor recently called it ‘unsustainable.’ It was a hit aimed at the weak coordination of her Cabinet. also instanced when her Shadow Science Minister contradicted her on NIC policy.

How much longer can Badenoch retain her grip on the perfidious Conservative rump in Parliament? She identifies as Yoruba, but that could easily mean ‘taxi’s here, Kemi!’

The next to tackle the PM on WASPIs was Plaid Cymru’s Ben Lake and Sir Keir finally gave a detailed response. He admitted that the DWP’s failures under Labour in the mid-Noughties was ‘unacceptable’ but paired that with George Osborne’s ‘equally unacceptable’ speeding up the SPA-matching process - which the ‘Austerity Chancellor’ infamously told global investors ‘probably saved more money than anything else we’ve [the Conservative administration] done.’

Starmer added that the country cannot afford the compo because of ‘the state of our economy’ and gave us one of his Killer Factoids: ‘the evidence shows that 90% of those impacted knew about the changes.’

A legally-trained Killer-Driller might ask more about the evidence, and whether the other ten per cent should not be made whole. Similarly the PM’s claim - repeated today - about the IHT threshold for farmers being £3 million, and the other one about £5 billion to be invested in farming (er, over two years, and spent on what, exactly?) both need meticulous unpacking.

This approach is vital in puncturing Labour’s dreamworld, the one in which they force us to live. For in other, non-PMQ Parliamentary hearings the Foreign Office has been squirming over the Chagos Islands giveaway, which reportedly the new Mauritian PM has rejected, and sketchwriter Quentin Letts has had sport with Energy Secretary Ed Miliband’s body language during interrogation by Claire Coutinho.

A third questioner on WASPI was Ian Byrne, one of the seven Labour rebels who had the whip withdrawn for supporting an end to the two child benefit cap. A stuttering Starmer repeated points he had made earlier to Ben Lake.

Nor was the PM off the hook even then. ‘Mother of the House’ Diane Abbott reminded him ‘we did promise [the WASPI women] that we would give them justice.’ Indeed not merely ‘we’ but ‘he’: in 2021 Starmer helped two WASPI campaigners hold a sign supporting ‘fair and fast compensation’ and in 2022 he told BBC Radio Merseyside that it was ‘a real injustice’ and ‘we need to do something about it.’ So when Abbott asked ‘does the Prime Minister really understand how let down they feel today?’ all he could do was to reply ‘I do understand the concern.’

As Letts notes, thanks to the electoral landslide there are numerous Labour backbenchers with no hope of ministerial office and facing defeat in their constituencies next time round and who may begin gossiping about their ‘inept, absent Prime Minister.’

Perhaps Starmer and Badenoch make a pair of wobbly bookends.

Crossposted from Wolves of Westminster

A room full of elephants - PMQs 11th December 2024

Watching the PM and Kemi Badenoch go at each other over immigration today an independent observer might be inclined to conclude despairingly ‘they’re as bad as each other.’ And so of course they are, what with the faux Conservatives having looked at Blair ‘The Master’ and decided that was the model to follow from 2010 onwards.

Yet for all his radical talk of fixing problems at their foundation Starmer is reluctant to tackle them at that level. Instead his approach is semi-reactive, for example reaching agreements with European partners to catch and prosecute people-smugglers - Yvette Cooper made a ministerial statement about this straight after PMQs. Kemi noted that this issue was not even one of Sir Keir’s priorities in his new ‘Plan For Change.’ Yet other countries are dealing with the problem more directly - Sweden, for one.

By the way, again it seems that Starmer’s SpAds have a tin ear for propaganda: in his 28 November migration speech he said ‘mark my words – this government will turn the page,’ using a Kamala slogan just after she rode it into the biggest electoral failure in recent US political history.

Also in passing, there is another aspect that is not receiving much attention: net emigration by British nationals; 787,000 in the decade to 2021. These are likely to be people with marketable skills and initiative. Is there a 1960s-style ‘brain drain’ in progress? How will that impact our prospects for growth?

Immigration is merely one Jumbo in the room. The biggest one, the Mama Tembo, is energy.

Labour’s Noah Law soothed his boss’s nerves after the spat with the Opposition leader by pitching an easy question on how Starmer could ‘help Britain become a clean energy superpower.’

Here is a quiz for Ed Miliband: place the following adjectives for Britain’s energy policy in order of importance - ‘cheap, plentiful, reliable, clean.’ Anyone in his right mind - like India, China, the USA, Russia - has to put ‘clean’ at Number Four. Fortunately with nuclear reactors and an abandonment of Net Zero all may be achievable, as Reform’s Nigel Farage told Question Time last week.

It will be needed so we can earn a living in the world. GDP is a hopeless yardstick of national prosperity, since all it does is measure economic activity. Spend money like a sailor on shore leave and it will go up; but if you do it by increasing the population of dependant low-skilled and unemployed people the GDP per capita will decline.

What counts is energy use per capita. There has to be enough to house, feed and clothe everyone with more left over to produce goods and services for them but also for export, to keep our international trade in some sort of balance. How, with the most expensive electricity in the world, are our industries supposed to compete? What happens if they can’t? We import half our food as it is; how shall we pay for it? Is that not a sustainability question too, you Greens?

Which brings us back to another neglected pachyderm: farming. When Jerome Mayhew (Con) spoke of farms being lost and irreplaceable the PM responded as usual, with an undetailed claim about the IHT threshold for the ‘ordinary family case’ being £3 million. He also boasted that Labour will be investing £5 billion in farming over two years - the expected revenue from the new IHT rules is only 20% of that, so why do it? Why bring the tractors out in York over it?

Look more closely into that five billion pounds and see that little of it is to do with making our farmers produce more food for us. A lot is to do with Greenery, but not the kind we can eat. No wonder Mayhew called Sir Keir ‘duplicitous.’ Meanwhile, as well as the soaring costs of fertiliser and fuel for their machinery, Ed Davey noted that farmers have been undercut by the last administration’s Oz/NZ trade deals.

Starmer was also confronted with the usual queue of begging bowls for good causes and ticklish issues of diplomacy - post-Assad Syria, picking sides in Gaza, arming against Russia, freeing a Brit long imprisoned in Dubai. Somehow we have to stay out of more of the wars that have nearly eviscerated us since 1914 and keep the home fires burning.

We are in crisis. If Labour goes on playing at Johnny Head-In-Air, indulging itself in back-to-Eden crazes, fantasising about punching above our weight on the global stage and thinking other countries will always meet our needs because all we require is international law and fiat money, we are headed for a fall.

If the elephants don’t trample us first.

Crossposted from Wolves of Westminster

An infinite number of flunkeys

A month after the petition to call a fresh General Election, the Government has issued an official response. It appears to have been written by an infinite number of monkeys.

“This Government was elected on a mandate of change at the July 2024 general election… The Government was elected by the British people on a mandate of change at the July 2024 general election… On entering office, a £22 billion black hole was identified in the nation’s finances… The Government will continue to deliver the manifesto of change that it was elected on.”

We have a whole sentence repeated, a black hole entering office and a last line that should read ‘on which it was elected’ rather than ending in a preposition.

Who wrote this drivel? More to the point, who approved it? Perhaps it escaped the notice of the current Cabinet Secretary Simon Case because he is sadly unwell and it was not yet technically under the purview of his successor Sir Christopher Wormald, due to take over soon. Or maybe it is a touchstone exemplifying the mediocre quality of staff that Dominic Cummings sees throughout government and bureaucracy.

My wife suggests it was given to ChatGPT to write. Or possibly some half-educated researcher - a Chap-GPT? - was tasked with it; if so, the Cabinet Office needs to recruit a subeditor from Fleet Street, for the carelessness of the prose seems to betray a panicky haste - not so much spin as a ‘flat spin.’

We turn now from the grammar to the content, a by-the-yard wallpaper of political assertions, offcuts of which are served weekly in PMQs. The petition claims that Labour has gone back on its promises; paste this question into your AI chatbot and judge for yourself: ‘What pledges in the Labour 2024 manifesto have been abandoned in practice since the General Election?’

Presumably when the Government refers to a ‘manifesto of change’ it does not mean a number of retrospective changes to the manifesto itself. Also the claim to have a ‘mandate’ is leading with the chin, since only one-fifth of the electorate legitimised Starmer’s victory and many of them must now be experiencing ‘buyer’s remorse.’

It would be far better for our masters to take down this nonsense and reconcile themselves with having allowed the debate scheduled for 6 January; which will of course ‘change’ nothing.

Yet something should change. As Sarah Olney noted in her ten-minute-rule speech advocating the Single Transferable Vote, only 96 out of 650 MPs won a majority of their constituents’ votes in July’s General Election. How, on such a slender basis, can Labour repeat Blair’s claim to be the ‘political wing of the British people’?

Naturally Starmer will dismiss the 6 January Westminster Hall debate as merely ‘noises off’, taking the legalistic view that he won by the rules and waving his lottery ticket of validation.

His thinking is limited. Rules, like the Sabbath, are made for man, not the other way round. They are downstream of power, which in turn flows from the collective identity of the populace. Our customs precede our statutes.

For decades that commonality, a willingness to live and let live learned the hard way through centuries of blood and strife, has been under attack from multiple ideologies. Our governments have tried to shore up our unity with an ersatz culture of abstract rights and principles as though there is a Platonic world more real than this one. Lawyers may live in it, but we don’t.

Democratic control is minimal: our representatives ignore us and please themselves once elected. We may throw out a rascally government yet our ability to choose its successor is warped by the oddities of the constituency system. Starmer rejected Ed Davey’s call for proportional representation, but then why expect the cat to bell itself?

A Prime Minister with a large Parliamentary majority has five years to wield a monarch’s arbitrary power. Sir Keir is on plan to inflict huge damage to the country and only a disaster - likely one of his making - can save us. For who can otherwise stop our ‘red-green’ General?

Despite our young - less than a century old - democracy the State apparatus he has inherited can enforce its fantasies with spies, police and propaganda. It has limitless numbers of servants - flunky monkeys - to do it, thanks to their taking and spending half our earnings. Chattering and screaming, they will destroy the machine.

Crossposted from Wolves of Westminster



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The Cabinet Office statement in full (in case it does get taken down):
“Government responded


This response was given on 6 December 2024


This Government was elected on a mandate of change at the July 2024 general election. Our full focus is on fixing the foundations, rebuilding Britain, and restoring public confidence in government.

The Prime Minister can call a general election at a time of their choosing by requesting a dissolution of Parliament from the Sovereign within the five-year life of a Parliament. The Government was elected by the British people on a mandate of change at the July 2024 general election.

This Government is fixing the foundations and delivering change with investment and reform to deliver growth, with more jobs, more money in people’s pockets, to rebuild Britain and get the NHS back on its feet. This will be built on the strong foundations of a stable economy, national security and secure borders as we put politics back in the service of working people.

On entering office, a £22 billion black hole was identified in the nation’s finances. We inherited unprecedented challenges, with crumbling public services and crippled public finances, but will deliver a decade of national renewal through our five missions: economic growth, fixing the NHS, safer streets, making Britain a clean energy super-power and opportunity for all. This is what was promised and is what we are delivering.

The Government’s first Budget freed up tens of billions of pounds to invest in Britain’s future while locking in stability, preventing devastating austerity in our public services and protecting working people’s payslips.

Mission-led government rejects the sticking-plaster solutions of the past and unites public and private sectors, national, devolved and local government, business and unions, and the whole of civil society in a shared purpose. The Government will continue to deliver the manifesto of change that it was elected on.

Cabinet Office”