Ben

Bad unemployment figures this morning (a rise to 5%) as the predicted impact of Reeves’s Employer NIC rise continues. I’m personally seeing this on the ground

Where is Starmer?

Another migrant returns from France after deportation under the ‘one-in-one-out’ programme. That daft scheme is going to be rich pickings for the media and Labour’s enemies.

Tim Davie should’ve been sacked from the BBC July2024 and now he steps down over a rightwing whine about nothing. His replacement is in Labour’s gift but watch what it does. I doubt it has the sense to get someone in there can rescue it from the damage the Tory placement have done to it

Bill Clinton raised income tax on the rich in 1993 and there followed a long economic boom plus re-election

Starmer won’t do anything that provokes outrage and wild conspiracies from the Daily Mail even as that organ dumps on him daily anyway and his poll ratings are already in the toilet

incredible photo that's definitely worth at least 1,000 words from Andrew Harnik of Getty

Incredible!

More prisoners on the run, Labour suffering yet again from accepting the Tory narrative. The country was in an emergency at last general election. Public Services were wrecked. Refinancing had to be first clearest priority. Yet Starmer went into number ten basically promising to do… not much more

Funny how people completely missed the rightwing radicalisation of the over 60s. First UKIP, then Brexit, then Johnson now flocked back to Farage especially after the Winter Fuel announcement. Entitlement of that age group is enormous but… they vote

‘She needs to finds 25bn…’
Reality check: this is just 2% of everything the government spends. Back of sofa stuff

We all know these kind of men.

I’m sure they are too. And thoughts with the 2 still fighting for their lives.

Xmas adverts are now playing and to be fair Asda’s one is pretty good. 8/10

Police update on #Huntingdon train stabblings. Not terrorist incident. Black British nationals are the suspects

The howling you’re hearing is the crashing disappointment coming from the ghouls on X\Gab

Wordle 1,597 5/6

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Spot on with the observation that stopping freedom of movement is a prison the British put around themselves, and is a massive risk to standards of living, for, as you say, we have cut off an alternative if it all goes wrong here.

A debt is a liability, but always that liability is matched by someone else’s asset. Your pension fund - an asset - (if you are approaching retirement age) will have lots of govt debt in it, to protect your asset value from crashing. The interest paid by govt, is return on your asset. Scary, huh?

The govt knows who lends it money. It is largely finance houses, pension funds and the govt itself through quantitative easing. But it is also us directly. If you have a national savings account your savings are govt debt. Are you really that fearful of your own asset? Of course not.

No matter which party makes it (Labour before July 2024, Tories and opposition parties now). I repeat: THE SUMS ALWAYS ADD UP! When clutching pearls over govt borrowing you never hear about who is doing the lending. Where does the money come from? What are the motives of the lenders?

Perhaps the highest optimal govt finance is a budget balanced between govt spending and receipts from taxation. But that is nigh on impossible to actively make happen. So a govt ends up with a gap, which it plugs by borrowing. Note here please: the sums ALWAYS add up. I hate that twee talking point

That the govt borrows is a normal function of govt finance. It does it nearly every month, and nearly every year in the democratic era has been a net borrowing year. Debt rarely gets paid back. Mature debt nearly always gets rolled into newer debt. This has been happening for 200 years.

Not sure how you turn around the dominant perception of government borrowing that is out there. The damaging portrayal of borrowing that treats it like a car loan or mortgage that ‘needs to be paid back’. The hysteria around borrowing is deliberate, to trap the govt into doing nothing.

The most epic buyers remorse in Democratic history!

I probably shouldn’t, but I do post to X and witnessed some egregious grok bullshitting (about the ECHR). Yeah, we all know that particular chatbot (it isn’t AI) is rigged, but still arresting to see it happening.

Welcome. Far right populists under Wilders dumped on. Every time far right populism is tried it fucks up.

Chasing Reform voters definitely working then? Time for a clear out of Blue Labour

The select committee report on the asylum hotel shambles highlights a point I made repeatedly - the absurd gimicks pursued by the last govt like Rwanda took resources away from running the actual system properly.

There is a clear path from imposing on yourself an omertà on #Brexit to now being forced to condemn the British Right for openly racist remarks. Starmer ought to have nipped in the bud the current far right spasm on the day he took office. Instead he has mollycoddled it.

More of Fraser Nelson speaking truth to the X cult.
By the way, they don’t like it!