The Commons was in gentler mood in saying farewell to Starmer before he leaves Downing Street for good.
It was, no doubt of it, a surprise to many given the stern, strident headmistress-like persona she had in public life, that she was, privately, immensely kind and gentle.
If Farage does beat a bin, and a fox, in an odd mirror of the count at Makerfield just to get his old job back – the result will be rubbish, if the Standards Committee simply carries on the investigation, suspends him, a recall ballot is held, and we end up doing it all over again.
We find ourselves at a rules crossroads. Where in some cases the rules that exist are being ignored by some, need to be challenged in others, and the people whose job it is to adhere to rules, and indeed make the rules don’t see the point or come up with really stupid ones.
If the Conservatives are stuck with that label of being unprepared, they’ll never get a second chance. Everything they have said and done in the last twelve months suggests they know that, have been doing the work, but it’s not the same as the showing your workings.
We are entitled to more than the carefully crafted cheeky chap with his dress down bonhomie but real, solid, answers to politically serious questions about Britain’s future and his plans for shaping that.
Kemi Badenoch in many ways was doing – not to Starmer, but those that have moved him on – something she’s there to do: tell the truth. And yes, the truth hurts. And when that truth is far tamer than some of the things Labour have said about Conservatives my sympathy-gland shrivels.
I see no appetite for introspection from Starmer or Reform. Anything but the mirror, and despite the fact that such a weakness helps us, it seems a crying shame they can’t, for their own good, take a hard look and go ‘You know what folks, this is on us, and we need to do better’
Burnham won. He didn’t squeak it. Restore in the end were as irrelevant as the Tories. And the Tories beat the odds and the SNP in Aberdeen. So if you’ve been told for two years that the Conservatives are ‘dead, finished, over’ – the results this morning are Lab 1, Cons 1, Reform 0.
We need an offer to the younger generation. Not just us, the country needs an offer to the younger generation. Given how much we will rely on them, whilst curbing their opportunities and piling on the debt.
The likelihood of any deal with the Tories seems to have greatly diminished. The question ‘why not’? – to which there are many good answers – doesn’t.
His loss is a blow to Labour not just Starmer. However I doubt this is the last we see of John Healey in government, for what inevitably must come next: a change at the top.
Three recent interventions from Reform are, even as an opponent reasonable enough, tactically understandable, but expose; a lack of thinking about overall strategy, chinks in the armour of constantly stated positions, and a attempting a drift to the left and right simultaneously
Gareth Southgate did an amazing job, raised hopes and changed the narrative over eight years but we all know the ending – he didn’t actually win the prize. And there’s no point doing the grand ‘Ta-DAH!’ moment, for the Tories, if the crowd has already left the stadium months before.