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.
A brand may be left unaided by her own popularity it’s true, but it certainly can’t be helped by an unpopular leader, and this week a leader is how she’s looked.
The fact is the Labour backbenches, the Labour movement, and anything to the left of them all, thinks greater welfare spending is not just the solution to Britain’s woes, but a moral mission, and worse, completely sustainable and affordable
The Samson act is a dangerous one to follow. Bringing down a temple that is evidently failing Britain but burying yourself in the process is a moot stratagem at best.
Right now, who is going to bet that any of the current Cabinet will be in their current role by the end of this year. Whatever happens in the Labour civil war, the Opposition shouldn’t interfere, and simply adapt to what emerges at the end of it all.
Politics viewed from afar has become horribly loud. Blocking it all out, gives you an idea of how most people see politics. It pops in and out their consciousness because it is not their main priority, or topic of conversation. They don’t ignore it, but they aren’t awash with it.
For Conservative members Andy Burnham was out in front, ten points ahead of Keir Starmer, as to whom they expected to lead into an election, and that was before the rows of this week, but who’d they’d prefer to lead told a different story. Not one Starmer would enjoy.
Today is not the end, perhaps the beginning of the end, but the endgame was laid down years ago, and depressingly still has some way to run.
Saddle up, it’s going to be bumpy ride.