Can Starmer stop the stench from rising?
Funding the Future
Can Starmer stop the stench from rising?
Will Keir Starmer ever get anything right? Having made a complete mess of Labour’s reputation for both honesty and integrity within weeks of g...
 Will Keir Starmer ever get anything right? Or are his days inevitably numbered now?
Reeves: the slave of defunct economists
Funding the Future
Reeves: the slave of defunct economists
As the Guardian noted yesterday evening: Ministers are being asked to draw up billions of pounds in cuts to infrastructure projects over the nex...
 Reeves is demanding cuts from ministers despite all the very obvious evidence that it would be madness to do so. Keynes' suggestion that she might be the slave of defunct economic thinking looks to be apposite.
Is £90,000 a year a middle-class income?
Funding the Future
Is £90,000 a year a middle-class income?
When being interviewed on the radio, I was told by the broadcaster that £90,000 was only ‘middle-class income’ and not enough for MPs. She was...
 When being interviewed on the radio, I was told by the broadcaster that £90,000 was only ‘middle-class income’ and not enough for MPs. She was, very clearly, out of touch with reality.
Quantitative tightening denies us the investment we need The Bank of England is selling about £100 billion a year of government bonds it bought during the Covid crisis back into City financial markets. There’s no need to. It’s making massive losses doing so. But worst of all, that £100 billion is preventing the government from spending on the investment in the real economy we really need. QT has to stop, now.
Labour: the resignations begin
Funding the Future
Labour: the resignations begin
Rosie Duffield MP has, I know, had a difficult relationship with Labour ever since being elected MP for Canterbury in 2015. She has now been electe...
 Labour has already sacked seven of its MPs and now one has had enough and has resigned in disgust. How many more must feel as Rosie Duffield MP does about Keir Starmer? Many people will agree with her resignation letter, whatever policy differences they have with her.
Covid has not gone away
Funding the Future
Covid has not gone away
I noted this in the Guardian overnight: Covid is on the rise in England, and experts have warned that more must be done to prevent and control i...
 Boris Johnson once said Covid had gone away, and quite bizarrely it seems that public policy is still based on that wholly mistaken claim. It has not gone away, and until politicians accept that fact we will still be paying a very price for failing to tackle it.
The tax avoiders are working overtime to save the domicile rule
Funding the Future
The tax avoiders are working overtime to save the domicile rule
The Guardian carried an article yesterday in which suggested that HM Treasury projections suggested that the proposed abolition of the so-called no...
 Abolition of the blatantly unfair and discriminatory domicile rule within UK taxation is one of the few things Labour has promised for a long time. Now, there are hints that they might U-turn on that. They shouldn't. Even if non-doms leave, it does not matter: others will take their place.
Labour isn’t interested in reform youtu.be/9rThkIicmkw?si… via @npub1m3vq...9xp3 If Labour was really a party interested in reform it would be radically overhauling the UK constitution and the way in which the government is managed. But it isn’t. As a result, they send out the strongest possible signal that nothing is really going to change on their watch.
The UK has helped create the crisis in the Middle East. Do we now have the objectivity to help solve it?
Funding the Future
The UK has helped create the crisis in the Middle East. Do we now have the objectivity to help solve it?
UN Secretary-General, António Guterres, told a UN Security Council meeting yesterday that “hell is breaking loose” in Lebanon. He is right....
 Hell on earth could break out in the Middle East, very soon. It’s time the UK accepted its responsibility for what is happening, and changed tack.
The speech Kier Starmer should have given youtu.be/e3M7WZY53pg?si… The speech Keir Starmer gave to the Labour Party conference on Tuesday was profoundly disappointing, including, I suspect, to most in Labour, if only they were honest about it. So, I decided I should write my own version. This is it, with only slight apologies for it being almost as long as his was.