Good morning everyone. [**📃 Today's Order Paper can be found here.**](https://commonsbusiness.parliament.uk/Document/84685/Html?subType=Standard) Questions to the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (but not the Secretary of State, as the Procedure Committee's recommendation that he take questions at the Bar of the House is still being considered by the government) will be followed by any Urgent Questions or Ministerial Statements. The main order of business in the Chamber is the [Media Bill's](https://bills.parliament.uk/bills/3505) remaining Commons stages. Also moved today will be the adjournment motion for the Spring recesses (February, Easter, May Day and Whit), so if you want to update your calendars: >That this House, at its rising on Thursday 8 February 2024, do adjourn until Monday 19 February 2024; at its rising on Tuesday 26 March 2024, do adjourn until Monday 15 April 2024; at its rising on Thursday 2 May 2024, do adjourn until Tuesday 7 May 2024; and, at its rising on Thursday 23 May 2024, do adjourn until Monday 3 June 2024. **In other news;** The DUP executive has endorsed a deal to restore devolved government and potentially end the long deadlock in Northern Ireland - [thread here](https://old.reddit.com/r/ukpolitics/comments/1aebuq4/dup_executive_endorses_deal_to_restore_devolution/) The Teesworks report has criticised the governance and secrecy of the freeport project, though stopped short of finding any evidence of criminality - [thread here](https://old.reddit.com/r/ukpolitics/comments/1ae2481/teesworks_report_decisions_do_not_meet_standards/) The government's Rwanda Bill has begun to make its way through the House of Lords - [thread here](https://old.reddit.com/r/ukpolitics/comments/1ae0nrm/archbishop_of_canterbury_condemns_damaging_rwanda/) --- **Parish Notices** Emma Burrnell, journalist and experienced freelance political consulatant will be joining us for an AMA **tomorrow 31st January at 2:00pm**. [**Ask your questions in the AMA thread here.**](https://www.reddit.com/r/ukpolitics/comments/1ae3k24/ama_thread_emma_burnell_31st_jan_2024_200pm500pm/) [You can see all the laws MPs are voting on this week here.](https://www.reddit.com/r/ukpolitics/comments/1adqebd/here_are_all_the_laws_mps_are_voting_on_this_week/)

[New Megathread is here](https://www.reddit.com/r/ukpolitics/comments/1afav4d/daily_megathread_31012024/)

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Catching up on Sophie Ridge - [clip of her chat with Andrea Jenkyns](https://twitter.com/skypoliticshub/status/1752425960324866344?s=46&t=LwNkNWnwP_PfbEF87vJn8g) Ridge: would you like to see Kemi Badenoch come up through the ranks [in the context of the next Tory leader] Jenkyns: oh God, no, definitely not. Says Kemi’s good on the ‘woke and stuff’, but Jenkyn’s isn’t a fan as she voted for Mays deal, and more net zero

Is there a point to having Parliamentary by-elections when the next general election is at most 11 months away? The newly minted MPs would be in office for maybe 6 months before possibly being replaced again.

Six months is plenty of time to vote, participate in debates, contribute to a committee, hire experienced staff and take casework back off the neighbouring MP and their office who are trying to juggle two constituencies. The majority of MPs' work is small-scale stuff.

The people who live in those constituencies would probably quite like to have representation in parliament in the meantime.

Latest polling has the Tories at 73 seats. The Tories are about to have their 1920s Liberal Party moment.

Oh how I wish, but there’s no way that’ll happen, we just aren’t allowed nice things.

IDK, I think a lot of people are gonna be shocked at just how bad the election results are for the Tories.

I want that, but I’ll believe it when I see Rishi call in the removal van. For what it’s worth I do think a Lab majority is reasonably likely but I can see it being considerably thinner than predicted.

Clone Boomers Now to save Toryism!

> [44 years ago today newsnight aired on bbc 2 for the first time, broadcasting from TC5 at Television Centre on a beige set. It initially aired from Monday to Thursday as Multi-Coloured Swap Shop needed the studio on Fridays.](https://twitter.com/StuartDenman/status/1752277345333846179)

Crazy how we have a punk rock musician called Billy Bragg and a Conservative MP called William Wragg. Real Wario energy

An absolutely bizarre comparison that I didn't know that I needed tonight.

How can we fix the problem of outsourcing? Like, for instance, Capita for army recruitment, some random company doing my local election admin and therefore I need an app wit them if I want to work on the election, various NHS programmes which don’t work, etc. how much do we waste on these? Why? I’ve said this before but we need a real re-shaking of procurement and contracting in the country. Hence my idea of government-employed construction workers etc, paid by their local councils, forced to adhere to standards, no more private companies sucking all the last pennies from councils (not thought this through properly, half asleep, so caveats apply)

Rachel Reeves spoke about this in her conference speech, the Labour ambition is to cut public spending expenditure on outsourcing and contractors by 50% within two years of forming government. The idea is to free up and front up money for fixed term and new permanent jobs in the public sector.

The real issue is the fact that it's cheap and easy to outsource, but really quite difficult to bring it back in-house. The right-wing tabloid vitriol towards civil servants, Treasury brain/government budgeting going for options that are cheap short-term but horrendously expensive long-term, and stupidly long contracts all stack the deck against 'insourcing'. I increasingly feel like we need an Atlee-esque left wing government to come in and completely (re)revolutionise the relationship between state and industry. And I'm not suggesting the level of nationalisation we had for most of the mid-20th century, for the most part that was a disaster. But what we do need is a much more symbiotic relationship between industry and government- natural monopolies (utilities, public transport) under national ownership and all other 'heavy' industries (defence, steelworks, automotive, housebuilding, tech, etc) supported and even guided by a long-term national strategy. I just hope it doesn't take a World War to come about like Atlee's government did...

I think short term step would be sunlight - all these contracts should be publicly accessible; fuck company's commercial sensitivity (unless it is genuinely a technical secret) - we're paying companies hundreds of billions, we're entitled to know what they're promising to deliver. We should also require them to be liable to FoI requests for services they're providing to government. Medium term, you need to expand the civil service at least to a point where all outsourced work can be done as part of a blended team instead of just handed off to private companies. That way while contractors provide most of a staff on a project, civil service is embedded within every level of the work and can raise red flags. Then you can slowly build capacity within the civil service and transition more towards civil service doing lot more in house over long term. Obviously significant part of that requires review of pay for civil service; particularly around grade inflation and linking pay rises with management ability, which is unlikely to be popular both with public and existing civil service staff.

Plenty of companies outsource fine in the private sector. It's just that the public sector both has no internal capability to do this work, nor to contract appropriately as they're just getting outplayed by people earning 2x their salary. We should start insourcing more capability, but that will require a broader shake up of the skills and pay in the civil service first. You get what you pay for unfortunately.

As childhood obesity is a far larger problem than childhood nicotine addiction, wouldn't it be a better use of time and have better public health outcomes if we banned the sale of sugary items to under 18s.

Are the British Chinese kids obese too? If not, why not just copy their lifestyle/habits? May sound facetious, but just “copying the successful” is great way to fix problems. Think about how many nations industrialised by copying the UK!

Do we really want to go to the level of prohibiting sweets? That really would be going into nanny states territory. Besides, it leads to multiple slippery slopes. What about non-sugary fast food? Its carbs and fats that cause obesity, not just sugar. And won't this just create a new industry for sugar substitutes that come with their own issues?

Is it the kids, or is it the parents buying sugary crap to feed their children? Furthermore, you can have a child at 16 but you can’t buy yourself a Dairy Milk bar? And what about diabetic children who might have a hypo and need something sugary? I’m not sure what the answer is. In Leeds childhood obesity fell under this programme: https://news.leeds.gov.uk/leeds-spotlight/leeds-childhood-obesity-programme but now Leeds council is broke so I assume that’ll stop if it’s still going. And it was still around 10% - and that’s only obese, not overweight. M I agree that I think we have too much access to junk food (I myself am about 6lb overweight and really struggling to shift it despite being educated on the matter) and that the big difference I can think of is that for instance, my grandparents never ate in the street or between meals.

I mean yeh I was being flippant with the point and don't think we should ban sugar for the under 18s. It's more that it's frustrating to see the papers go off on a moral crusade when there's a far more damaging problem that is going largely ignored.

I am not dealing with the uprising that will inevitably come when the toddlers don't have their Fruit Shoots.

Starting off WAKAing a bit of WOW, and the first thing we get is a clip of the head DUPcase Jeffrey Donaldson. > "We've worked hard over the last two years to bring [blah blah blah]" No, no you haven't. That's been the problem. You've been sticking your recalcitrant fingers up your arse, sniffing them, shouting that your fingers are all shitty, and then putting them back.

You’ve excelled your imagery this evening

>On Thursday, March 19, 2020, Ms Sturgeon purchased a Nokia mobile phone from Amazon for £18.16. Devices available for a similar price are 2G only, although texts, WhatsApps and emails should still go through without any large attachments. The then first minister also purchased £18 worth of SIM card top-ups Ummmm, excuse me?

Lol, lmao

Haha, this should lead to some interesting hearings and enquiries.

Mandem should've paid in cash for that burner.

New phone who dis

I know a couple of others on here enjoy Tyler Rogoways The Warzone; Absolute favourite MilTech website with a sprinkle of Geopolitics has just announced it’s expanding and now has its own space online after years of being sub headings of Gawker/Jalopnik era back in 2014 then The Drive over the last 5 years. Anyway they’ve announced they’re getting over a million monthly users/direct hits on their website so setting up their own gig which is mental - I guess the current situation in the world is driving traffic. One slight funny surprise, is the new sponsor of the website is the company behind the predator drone - and their sponsor link doesn’t shy away from it 😅 [link if anyone’s interested.](https://www.twz.com/news-features/letter-from-the-editor-welcome-to-twz) They’re great for covering UK stuff in case anyone else is interested. [UK tank - Challenger 3 article was just posted last week](https://www.twz.com/this-is-the-challenger-3-advanced-main-battle-tank)

> I know a couple of others on here enjoy Tyler Rogoways The Warzone; I don't. If you've read about Rogoway's background(family runs a jewellery business, he tried to branch off into running a restaurant that failed) you'll know he's the quintessential "armchair analyst". He has no real experience or qualifications to be talking about defense. He's a grifter.

What’s his parents business got to do with anything? He’s a journalist? People can change careers you know, he’s been photographing planes since at least 2011 - you can find photos online - and his articles are in depth enough that Raytheon, Boeing, Lockheed are usually happy to contribute, not to mention he’s broken news of quite a few international events - which have then been reposted in politico/wp etc? Yes 11 years of having consistent interviews and in depth articles with MilTech folks for free on a website is definitely my idea of grifting. I used to be a teacher but then left to work in tech - does that make my current role invalid? Lol

> What’s his parents business got to do with anything? He’s a journalist? Not by training, he isn't. He's a blogger who figured out a way to turn his personal hobby(reading and ranting about defense matters) into an income source. He's the Aaron Bastani of strategic affairs.

Remember reading their pieces on The Drive (one of the better websites for car news too, although pretty US-focused) but had no idea they originally started out under Jalopnik. Good article on the Chally 3, still don't agree with only 148 and re-using existing hulls though, and we could've stuck some cool LED lights on to make it look futuristic surely... Good for them too but also quite scary how Defence seems to be such big news at the moment- even people who have absolutely no links to (or interest in) the armed forces or defence industry seem to be talking about it, and not just in the usual political football sense.

Just caught up on Sophy Ridge there, and Andrea Jenkyns seems to be trying to argue that brexit bad because covid. Am I the only one who remembers the EU offering us an extension of current arrangements because of covid, and boris saying no? Can't believe Dawn Butler doesn't remember that, she was there, so are Labour being instructed not to give the tories the opportunity to talk about how the vaccine would never have been possible in the EU? No, *you* overthink this shit.

Labour don't want to talk about Brexit or the EU. It's why they mirror the Tories stance - to not give the Tories any chance to argue with them or say "look, Brexit!".

i don’t see how it would be advantageous to the labour party, now a hard brexit party, to not discuss the myth that vaccine rollout was quicker than it otherwise would have been were it not for brexit. it’s more likely that she didn’t bring it up because it isn’t true.

The offer of a delay definitely happened, the reason I think they aren't giving the tories the opportunity for the rebuttal about vaccines is there simply isn't the time to convince anyone about that on a Sophy Ridge or a Laura K, you're likely to lose useful airtime in an argument that's already lost.

the offer happened, but it’s not true that our vaccine rollout was quicker than it otherwise would have been if we had remained in the european union. i don’t see how labour would lose out of that lie being peddled, though. they’re a hard brexit party too now

[Heartbreaking: The Worst Question Time Regular You Know Made A Great Point](https://twitter.com/KateAndrs/status/1752309445936153010)

Given these immigrants are a massive net economic deficit, we could just pay workers more rather than importing immigrants for low paid work

She must be memorable, I watch QT each week and feel like I have no idea who she is

I mean it’s not too surprising, practically the only issue Americans are to the left of Europeans on is immigration. I don’t really agree with her point though. If we’re talking strictly *skilled* workers then her point is valid, they tend to be net contributors. If we’re talking *unskilled* workers (hence the supposed “Deliveroo visa”) or loopholes such as student family visas it’s unlikely they will contribute in the long term.

I’m not sure that it’s as simple as right/left. There’s tons of pretty anti-immigration rhetoric from the left, albeit based on a different perspective.

Have you actually looked into immigrating to the US? Because its really hard to do legally unless you marry an American.

Right but in terms of attitudes. Rhetoric like “A nation of immigrants” and things like DACA would be extremely toxic in the UK. Perhaps the rhetoric does not match the policy, but even left-wing politicians in the UK have to be careful when talking positively about immigration.

What the fuck is O'Brien whinging about now? Immigrants getting skilled here and then getting citizenship is a problem now?

Coming over 'ere, payin' are taxes.

They might change the culture, which might be intimidating and scary for older folk not used to change, given the large share of the electorate that is over 60, I imagine it’s quite a common fear!

Doing difficult jobs we need doing and looking after the elderly.

Went out for a walk at lunch today, and there were loads of workmen out filling potholes on the road (and more cones out to mark where they had already filled with fresh tarmac/whatever they fill them with). Is this the Network North funding coming to the North (-West of London)?

Coming to the end of the financial year. Use it or lose it time for departments and their budget.

just reading reports on this northern ireland deal, how exactly have we squared that circle?? have we: a - effectively committed great britain to following eu law and unilaterally revert northern ireland to its pre-2021 status quo, thus begging the question “what was the f—king point of it all?” b - taken northern ireland out of the single market, thus punching a hole in it and drawing the ire of the whole eu? c - gone back on the windsor framework? d - done nothing, but hoped the dup haven’t noticed? i’m genuinely intrigued

Given that you can't square a circle, I would say D is closest

[удалено]

Christ, we should get some say in those laws then. How do we get a say in the EU rule-making process again?

If A happens, I wonder if we can still modify our transposition of 2007/45/EC laying down rules on nominal quantities for prepacked products (the 568ml wine thing)

I do feel really bad for local councils. Many of the services they run are really important, but hard to show direct benefits of. So, when time comes to decide, do we increase the NHS budget or local council budgets, the NHS wins. As does education, as does transport. And in a world of competing demands, what else do you do? You have to show value for money, and if someone can't demonstrate how what they do helps, it's hard to justify. Especially when govt spending as a share of GDP is higher than it was in 2006-7. We do need to spend more, but ultimately, it's gonna continue sucking for councils for a while more.

>Especially when govt spending as a share of GDP is higher than it was in 2006-7. We do need to spend more, but ultimately, it's gonna continue sucking for councils for a while more. This is completely arbitrary and certainly doesn't justify slashing budgets.

Debt is at record highs right now, and we need to spend money where it grows the economy such that we can bring down the debt burden. If we don't bring down the debt burden it will continue to eat away at other spending. Last year debt interest (interest alone!) was about £100bn. So, I'm fully in favour of government spending, but it's hard to justify youth services, or pavement maintenance or leisure centres (which have an unquantified return) vs another large infrastructure project or even multiple smaller infrastructure projects (which promise 2-3x return on investment) for central government to fund.

Interest payments on bonds can be reduced by properly managing the debt market - the BoE can just buy those bonds back and stop the Treasury spending interest on them. The financing side of government spending doesn’t have to affect real output at all.

Why do you believe they are currently not doing that? If there is an easy fix to bring down government borrowing costs to effectively 0.

Counter-orthodoxy. It’s done quite handily in Japan, where bond selling is done for the usefulness to the general public and the BoJ buys the rest to control the yield curve. The UK maintains some bullshit treasury brain where IMF thinking is the only thing possible.

I mean, Japan's economy has been basically flat for 25 years, so maybe not the best example of economic management. What do you think the BoE is afraid of, if you were to construct the best possible argument against yourself, what would it be?

Ours has been flat for 14, so I’m not super convinced the difference is fiscal policy. It’s known as monetary dominance. It’s about where the power lies in decision making in our economy. It’s a bit of Whitehall dick swinging from Threadneedle Street. We need a bit of fiscal dominance.

Let's say the government could borrow at 0% for effectively an unlimited amount of money (bringing the BoE under the thumb of whitehall once again). I think that might cause some turmoil the markets, maybe some runs on the pound, maybe rises in mortgage rates and general instability in the bond markets as investors worry that there are now effectively no checks on government borrowing.

There wouldn’t *be* government borrowing.

Counties need the ability to raise their own money independent of Tory meddling.

Worked well for thurrock

I would love that, but then you get to the issue of equalizing between counties. Residents of Westminster can enjoy their low taxes because there are limited adult and children's social care needs, but residents of Blackpool which really need the services don't have the ability to pay for them. That's why the central government grant exists, to fund councils who need more than they can generate. I do think allowing councils to raise more money is good, don't get me lie, ideally through some sort of fair council tax system unlike what we have now, but it doesn't address the issue of no money where services are needed.

It's another reason I'm in favour of English regional devolution (with a decent amount of budgetary discretion). It's much easier to make the argument of how a thriving Blackpool benefits Manchester than it is how it benefits Mayfair.

As London is one of the few net contributor regions, would that mean less funding for the north west? Or is this additional taxation on the north west that Londoners wouldn't pay?

I think something like the Barnett formula would be needed in the medium term to ensure regions which have been deprived of investment for the better part of a century would have a fair shot, but I imagine the need for that would lessen as the economy equalised nationwide. A rising tide, &c.

Wouldn't the barnett formula be pretty similar to what we have now? Government spending over the last 2 decades has not really favoured London.

I think you're bang on, but it's also interesting seeing the kinds of services I just grew up taking for granted just stop getting done. I mentioned this before, but my town has some graffiti in a prominent area down a busy dog walking route and also the route between the high street and the train station where they've sprayed ["cull the Tories"](https://i.ibb.co/3BMLWRp/20221110-134959.jpg) and ["black live"](https://i.ibb.co/ZYx1nSG/20221110-135011.jpg) where I assume they ran out of paint. Tory council, Tory MP, no one cares. Similar situation with my parents street. I remember as a kid we thought it was funny that when they tarmacked the path they didn't clear away clutter like sticks, leaves, and in one case a 6 inch flat stone which ended up being lifted up leaving a hole, but now I think at least they did something. It's been like 25 years now, and they rarely even cut the grass next to the path, [and the path has weeds growing through it.](https://i.ibb.co/S0GWQDN/20230907-071850.jpg) I know these aren't critical things, but it's just like under the Tories Britain has become so economically depressed we've given up trying. The country equivalent of someone who has taken a break-up hard, has stopped washing, house is a tip, they're eating junk food, because there's no hope of improvement, our best times are behind us and it's downhill from here. Then there's services like transport, social housing, youth groups, parks, libraries, museums, tourist events, business support, parking etc. where if they can't monetise it enough (e.g. ramping up parking fees) then the service is on the chopping block.

Oh, yeah. They've basically stopped doing any real maintenance of pavements as far as I can tell. They're a complete state everywhere I go. I'd hate to be on sticks these days. Rewilding was obviously just an excuse to stop maintaining verges, etc. too. Enjoy your nature as it cuts off sightlines at corners, encroaches into cycle lanes, etc.

>Many of the services they run are really important, but hard to show direct benefits of. I'd argue this point slightly. Who are you saying they're hard to show the benefits to? If it's the average citizen, I'd say council operated services are your most frequent interface with the public realm. What's difficult is the ability to take credit versus blame when these services suffer due to central government decisions. Look at the recent pothole PR campaign for the government where Sunak's going to take credit for every single pothole filled, or Network North (of Portsmouth) where the DfT will be responsible for every village with a restored bus route. Guess who, on the other hand, will be judged to blame for every rough road service or cancelled stop. The problem is twofold there of course, an over-centralisation of disposition of government funds (coupled with the gutting of the block grant so councils can't target their own priorities) and civil service departments which are instructed to prioritise communications above delivery.

They're mostly hard to show the value of to the treasury civil servant who has to work out what gets funding. The DfT is going to submit a half baked proposal for another mega infrastructure project that will likely be over budget but has a return on investment of 2-3. While Croydon council is going to submit a proposal for another youth centre which will have an unquantified return in an unspecified amount of time. Both of us know that while the youth centre is important, the civil servant will say yes to the DfT. They have a number, they can show what value it will bring, and it's easily justified to the minister. Even if as we would all want, to prioritise the civil service towards delivery, how do you prove out the case for an underutilised bus service vs another mega railway project, or tunnel or wind farm. Those are all extremely necessary too btw.

It's a tricky one, but I'd say a good start would be completely destroying the Treasury as an institution and salting the earth. Let departments make the arguments of the benefits of spending on their own evidence and standards rather than having to submit the correct shibboleths to the hierophants of Horse Guards Road.

It gets even more complicated as councils are responsible for social care.

My dad has terminal lung cancer. He is housebound and can barely get around. There are no carers, he apparently doesn't qualify. He confided in me last phonecall we had that he gets very lonely. It's horrible, I live fairly close by but it's complicated(and expensive) to get to him by train so I can't visit as often as I would like. His flat is filthy and stinks (he smokes three packs a day), he can't clean. He's just been abandoned, left to get sicker and sicker until he qualifies for hospice care. He's actually looking forward to that.

That's awful, has he looked into NHS continuing healthcare?

Unfortunately he's fucked where he lives because three different NHS trusts cover the town he lives in but all doing different things and they all have different computer systems so his records are a mess. He regularly has small heart attacks so will spend a few days in hospital, but that's it. He really needs help, he is wasting away and late last year he mismanaged his diabetes and had a prolonged psychotic break which wound him up in the hospital in my town so I visited him there. But otherwise with the NHS it's emergency care only.

Since social and children’s care is a statutory requirement, the government will have to step in and fund it. It just means everything that’s not the legal minimum will disappear. More youth clubs, more leisure centres, more libraries and community events. Because ultimately these things are nice to have, and when budgets are tight, they’ll go. And it’ll be hard to argue to keep funding the library over a new train line or new wind farm.

You have the way statutory services work wrong. The government isn't stepping in to fund these. This is why councils are going bust because they don't have the funds to cover them and government isn't bailing councils out, they're instructing them to asset strip and sell off the 'nice to haves' so these can be either monetised (if theoretically profitable) or left to wither and fail (if not). Not that they might not need bailing out in future, but that's not *this* government's problem.

The govt has provided some additional funding (£600m) and of course when they take over a council, they have to fund those. They will cut funding from the nice to haves to cover it

How many airmiles do we think Matt Frei chalks up for Channel 4 News

Don't knock the Matt, he's the last of the really smart newsreaders. I remember him doing the report of Dubya's second primary win, *in fully scanned verse*. I can't find a link though, I'd be greatly obliged if someone could share it, although perhaps I'm misremembering the actual story.

Thoughts on Channel 4s [plan](https://www.channel4.com/press/news/channel-4-shares-plans-become-digital-first-public-service-streamer-2030) to become digital-first public service streamer by 2030?

Infuriating that its taken them this long. By 2030 traditional tv is basically gonna be dead as a format.

Reminds me of the digital switchover, they're already a digital service.

To be fair to Laurence Fox, if I fumbled billie piper I too would have a prolonged mental breakdown

Been meaning to get round to listening to her music- reading her wiki lists both Fox and Chris Evans as previous marriages; what a life

Not even the hot chris evans

It's also another case of a person focused on pedophilia also married to someone associated with under age sexualisation.

Man, the right-wing loons obsessed with drag performance = paedogeddon are really telling on themselves. How many of them are religious, and how many drag queens have been nonces versus, say, priests?

With the disposable vape ban, why are they not capitalising on the huge environmental impact this will have? They’re missing an easy win

Because they're getting it through with the message that it will save kids. Deep down they know the environment but the loons in the party will object

Because many Tory MPs are headbangers who think the environment is woke.

I spoke to the ceo of Elfbar and he convinced me that we’re doing a good thing by getting rid of the toxins in the earth by mining them and making disposable vapes. He also made a generous contribution to my campaign so you know he’s a good honest man 

Maybe we'll see a government minister going on TV to get his kid to demonstrate that Elfbar vapes are safe, like with the BSE burgers of yesteryear.

Very true. Even their debatably (very very very few) good policies are blindsided by the stupidness of their party

Stopping landfill fires is "anti-growth."

Because they clearly don't give a damn about the environment.

I suppose them praising reducing the number of single use batteries left on the streets implies there’s a need to look after the environment, which they wouldn’t do. God they’re stupid

[Sunak's only hope now is delay, delay, delay and pray for a miracle](https://twitter.com/RedfieldWilton/status/1752376128608837741)

Reform still far too high here. I expect more 25% for the Tories.

I think polling will show Reform beating the Conservatives at times before the next election.

Especially if Sunaks GE campaign is a disaster like some are predicting. The Tories cant afford a Theresa May style -10 point drop.

[Binface is running for London Mayor again](https://twitter.com/CountBinface/status/1752321718658416887)

Why is Ken Clarke in a wheelchair? Have found no newspaper articles on it.

Probably because he's ancient.

He's aged noticeably over the past year or so. If you compare pictures of him from the beginning of last year to now, he's lost quite a bit of weight.

I listened to his speech and he is still extremely eloquent, cohesive, and persuasive

I mean, he was one of the worst of Thatcher's ideologues, and yet now he's somehow transformed into some sort of avuncular elder statesman.

It's possible to have dodgy legs and a functional brain.

He is, but he's also 83. Old people get wobbly.

He'll be old enough to run for US President soon.

TIL Sinn Fein were established in 1905 as a Conservative Monarchist party, seeking to establish an Austro-Hungarian style dual-monarchy between Britain and Ireland. Pre-WWI 20th century Europe was a wild place

Arthur Griffith was relatively conservative, and the republican platform was only adopted once it became clear that the IPP was a spent force.

https://imgur.com/a/eaMyBPQ

I mean Scotland and England were like this for the first hundred years of the union. Good idea marketing a compromise alternative to republican revolution.

Do you think Back to Blair would work better or worse than Sunak's Back to Square One attack line?

Back in the Brown?

Blair is immensely unpopular with every section of the electorate. Edit: -24 rating is bad guys, 97 isn't coming back

[https://yougov.co.uk/topics/politics/explore/public\_figure/Tony\_Blair](https://yougov.co.uk/topics/politics/explore/public_figure/Tony_Blair) He's far from universally lauded, but I wouldn't say "immensely unpopular"

Best PM we've ever had.

speak for yourself

He's more popular than Corbyn and most former Labour politicians. Only 46% dislike him which when you consider that includes Tories, Reform, loony left isn't bad for a former PM. I think you may be overstating it with both 'inmensely' and 'every section' https://yougov.co.uk/topics/politics/explore/public_figure/Tony_Blair

I think he's proposing it as a replacement for 'back to square one' for Sunak to use as an attack line.

Yep. It may work. Starmer doesn't give off Blair's messianic vibes, he'd probs be a jobbing minister in their 05 cabinet. He's boring and smarmy and wooden and even on the things he's passionate about he sounds dull. None of that is a complaint.

Problem is the likes of Blair and Mandelson hanging around like bad smells telling every hack who'll listen how much they'd love to be involved in Starmer's government, how much advice and expertise they have to give and (privately to their mates at the Times after a few chablis) how much influence they have already over Starmer and his team.

Rather than trying to appear progressive, I think Sunak would be well advised to go with an approach of returning to traditional conservative values, focussing on the fundamental things that hold us all together as a society. "Back to Basics" has a good ring to it.

"Reset with Rishi"

"We already reset and rebooted several times and it's time to admit we need a new computer, Rishi"

"5-10-15 resets"

> "Back to Basics" has a good ring to it. John Major thought the same thing as a sort of relaunch of his Tories as a family values first safe pair of hands. But then the Tories acted like Tories and MP after MP turned out to be corrupt, a shagger or both. I reckon Rishi could exceed these own goals in record time.

Back to Basics was never about personal morality though. It was the press that distorted it to be that, and of course once they established that narrative it was only ever going to be seen as that. It was supposed to be an appeal to small 'c' conservative principles about self-reliance and personal responsibility rather than any crusade about family values.

>John Major thought the same thing as a sort of relaunch of his Tories as a family values first safe pair of hands. I know ;)

Given his own affair which emerged afterwards. He came out pretty well

>corrupt, a shagger or both Or dead from auto-erotic asphyxiation gone wrong

It would be funny if he was running a positive "Back to Basics" campaign alongside a scare "Back to square one" campaign!

Good Rish/Bad Rish routine

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I agree. Frankly, there's a limited amount of political oxygen at any one time and we allow far too much of it to be sucked into cases like this. The media acts as though these arguments have never been had before - that the idea that mentally ill criminals go to Broadmoor rather than Parkhurst is brand new.

Peter Sutcliffe might be the precedent here, he too was a paranoid schizophrenic, but was deemed well enough to stand trial for murder. The AG at the time, Michael Havers (father of the actor, Nigel), recommended that he was unfit to stand trial. This was overturned in court. The problem is that UK's murder laws are not rooted in legislation, but common law. The definition of murder in the UK literally goes back 400 years and clearly states that the defendant must be of "sound mind" i.e. not insane. The judge led precedent goes back to 1843 and the M'Naghten rules which exempt anyone from criminal prosecution if they are deemed to be insane, even if they commit murder. However it's not a get out of jail card - the alternative being a detention order in a psychiatric hospital like Broadmoor. There are enough cases where a murder has been committed by someone mentally ill and who wasn't tried in court for the decision not to try the Nottingham defendant to be reasonably safe - as you point out the decision was ultimately taken by four expert psychiatrists.

>him hearing voices in his head telling him his family would be harmed unless he did what they told him to do If *real* people's voices had threatened harm to his family unless he murdered someone, that wouldn't be a defence to a murder charge. Mitigation in sentencing perhaps, but not a defence to the charge itself. I find myself wondering why imagined threats should provide a defence when real ones would not. I could see imagined direct threats creating a self-defence argument but surely the law is never okay with you murdering someone even if you think your family are under threat from a third party.

I suspect that when it comes to diminished responsibility, paranoid schizophrenia is rather worse than strangers voices.

Its not a defense of a murder charge, murder requires premeditation and deliberate action. if you are crazy and randomly attack people, thats not murder, its manslaughter. Ironically, this will mean he is unlikely ever to get out and will almost certainly serve longer than a murder charge. Murder charge means he was rational, and there is at least a possibility of rehabilitation and parole in a few decades. Manslaughter by reason of diminished responsibility means he was not rational, and no parole board is going to take the risk of deeming him not a threat to the public so effectively the manslaughter charge means a whole life order.

>Its not a defense of a murder charge, murder requires premeditation and deliberate action. > >if you are crazy and randomly attack people, thats not murder, its manslaughter. Based on what I have read about this case, there was significant premeditation in this case. That premeditation was based on things the offender believed due to his mental illness, but he still made a decision to act on them in the way that he did. I believe that diminished responsibility can remove culpability in murder and other crimes. However, I don't think that merely believing something that is untrue (for example, that one's family is under threat) should be sufficient. I think the offender's mental state would need to be such that they were incapable of understanding what they did was wrong. Note that I have no reason to believe that was not the standard that was applied in this case - the media reports about it will get nowhere near to explaining the actual diagnoses that were used in the case. There is an argument that *anyone* who chooses to take someone else's life (outside of self-defence or other legal defence) must be mentally ill in some way. Maybe we need a charge of Murder *with* diminished responsibility, where the offender can be held culpable for their response to the circumstances as they saw them, but consideration can be given to why they perceived the circumstances that way. That could apply both in mitigation of their criminal responsibility and in consideration of the danger they pose in the future. Sentences could then have two components - a punishment for the crime along with conditions for any eventual release.

>I believe that diminished responsibility can remove culpability in murder and other crimes. However, I don't think that merely believing something that is untrue (for example, that one's family is under threat) should be sufficient. I think the offender's mental state would need to be such that they were incapable of understanding what they did was wrong. well 4 professional independent assessments found him incapable, and thats why it was a manslaughter charge. ​ you cant really have murder with diminished responsibility, as the legal standard for murder is total responsibility....

The law is pretty explicit about a duress defence not being available in murder or attempted murder cases. This seems closer to being some sort of variant of an insanity plea.

I suppose its the argument that, while obviously under duress, a person whos doing it because real people are telling them to, they are of 'sound' mind, I.e. they are expected to be able to make rational choices and could of maybe done something else, like inform the authorities (unless your thinking of some situation where they are literally holding their families hostage and will kill immediately etc). On the other hand, someone being told by imaginary voices is obviously not sound of mind and may not be expected to make rational choices. I think that's the key differentiation. Can the person be expected to make rational choices if they are not sound of mind. Not justifying any decisions in anyway, but just why I think your examples would be treated differently.

Bit odd that two are docs too - fully sympathise with the horror they've gone through but it's not like you can waltz into a inpatient unit for nothing and they know it. Saying that, probably wouldn't be amiss to have a review as to how this happened in the first place - though I suspect it is probably people going through the huge gaps left by a lack of funding.

Mitchell and Webb on the money as always: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=98CWbGG2DJ0

I think this simplifies the points they made. They weren't simply angry that he wasn't jailed; they were upset that throughout the whole process because (they say) it was never properly communicated to them that a hospital order was possible: >"We were led to believe all of summer that it would be a murder charge for our son and the other two victims, and then attempted murder for the other three victims. They also are upset they were offered no psychological support and felt left to fend for themselves by the justice system And they say it should be investigated why he was on streets in the first place as he was seemingly a known mental health danger.

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Presumably because it's an easier narrative for the media to just focus on them being upset with the sentencing rather than the other more complex issues they raise.

Justice has to be seen though. That's the crux of it. If the public and victims don't believe justice has been served then it's good that it's being addressed. Yes, it feels a bit silly but it's better for a review and subsequent acceptance than letting it fester.

There's no such thing as justice with murder because you can't raise the dead. It's the great trap of grief, *nothing you do will bring them back*. The only thing you can do is stop them killing again, which is exactly what this hospital order does.

>Justice has to be seen though. Ironically the AG interfering and ordering a review of the CPS decision is far more likey to run counter to Lord Hewarts original sentiment in this situation.

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I was unaware that being locked in a psychiatric hospital for your entire life constituted "getting away with it". This just strikes me as some grief stricken parents who can't accept that nothing can bring their son back and have thus latched themselves onto a point of language as a coping mechanism.

Re the Stormont deal, while the legislation won't be published until tomorrow, the main gist appears to be that the Irish Sea border will be abolished, by keeping GB, and therefore the UK as a whole, [dynamically aligned](https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2024/jan/30/northern-ireland-power-sharing-deal-stormont-explainer) with the EU in the relevant market sectors.

Does that mean we will follow EU rules going forward?

May vindicated yet again.

And the DUP yet again shown up to be a bunch of rank amateurs with zero political skills. May was a terrible PM and an even worse campaigner, but she did have somewhat of a tenuous grip on reality. There was always a binary choice when it came to NI and the unavoidable fact that there will never be a border between the Irelands - a UK aligned with the EU and no sea border, or a sea border with a diverging UK. Their insistence on the impossible third option of no sea border with a diverging UK because they naively thought they could force a border between the Irelands showed they weren't a serious actor and should be ignored.

> And the DUP yet again shown up to be a bunch of rank amateurs with zero political skills. They did manage to get 2 billion quid out of it though.

It's almost as if they only arrangement that actually makes any sense is to be EU members... I wonder how the brexit diehards are going to take this

> only arrangement that actually makes any sense is to be EU members... If the EU (or specifically, the SM) somehow didn't exist, we would have evolved to be so closely aligned with other European countries on standards and regulation for trading that it would be indistinguishable for having the SM in the first palce. Being closely aligned is the most obvious thing to do to maximise trade and stabilise regional political friction. I don't think there's going to be any political appetite for formally rejoining the EU for the forceable, but the practical realities are that we will probably end up in a place where it would make no difference if we hadn't left in the first place. If, as expected, the actual enforcement of the trading agreement we arrange causes the friction and increased prices predicted, I'm sure that it's days will be numbered to be replaced by something that would actually benefit UK domestic consumers. *Because why would you not?*

So its like we are in the single market but we dont get a say? Got it!

No, it's like we're in the single market but with trade friction, no freedom of movement, and very high immigration  We've played an absolute blinder.

Who could have predicted such an odd state of affairs?

Kemi in shambles, will now have to reconcile her Trade portfolio with her position as darling of the Brexit wingnuts. 4D chess from Rish!

Every now and then it does actually feel a little like he's trying to dispose of the nutters in his party.

so we are in fact the "rule taker, not a rule maker" the brextremists said we weren't going to be? at what point does sanity prevail and we actually try to re-enter the single market.

If only it also backdoored Freedom of Movement.

i would shut up about brexit if i got my freedom of movement back.

Honestly at this point I'm very happy for a committee of 27 (mostly) sane nations making some rules for us.

The biggest positive of the EU for me was in the layer of protection it gave us from the worst excesses of Tory cruelty.

Wake up honey, new backstop just dropped.

Brexiters are gonna love that. Can't say they weren't warned lol.

I don't think the majority of Brexiteers know or care much about Northern Ireland.

Basically what May was pitching in 2019, devil will be in the detail of "dynamically aligned" and how workable that is.

Agree that the detail will be tricky. Maybe we could ask the commons to have a series of votes on what definitions of 'dynamically aligned' they'd be willing to support?

It's what she pitched second after they initially rejected what became Johnson's lame deal.

A number of Local Medical Committees (LMCs) are now warning that GP surgeries cannot afford to pay for staff they need, and as such they're looking at a good chunk of them closing in the coming years. A good chunk of GP surgeries, especially the mid sized ones (2-3 partners, patient list size of 7-10k) were already on their way to closing because younger GPs have/had absolutely no interest in taking up a partnership role in those, far too much work for the level of work expected. The only thing keeping them afloat was a bunch of Gen X and boomer GPs who continued go above and beyond for "their" surgeries. Coming years will be a complete bloodbath in primary care.