Those plastic chairs wouldn’t hurt a fly, it’s all for macho showing off, most of them tans are windy fuckers
1 Like
That wasn’t the mensa AGM mate
3 Likes
Looks like Boris has bit off more than he can chew here
If Britain desperately needed one thing, it needed a fearless CENTRIST (NOT FAR RIGHT!!!) COMMON SENSE opinion channel to defend Jeffrey Epstein’s reputation and absolutely sicken the WOKE LIBERAL SNOWFLAKES in the process. And now it finally has it.
2 Likes
Very interesting result. Definitely shows there’s a strong groundswell of anger against the Tories in their traditional heartlands.
2 Likes
Very much an anti HS2 vote which is being built right through their heartlands
2 Likes
There were some weird results in local elections in the south recently though. Stuff like Labour winning Witney in Oxfordshire. I think Folkestone was another one where Labour’s vote went way up against expectations.
And an anti lockdown party also.
I doubt HS2 would provoke that big a swing.
I’m sure there’s weirdos on thefreekick.co.uk anxiously debating the outcome of the Dublin Bay South by election.
7 Likes
It’s an interesting result
Middle clsss NIMBYism ??
I doubt it personally as the UK is a country of 65 million people with immense international caché, we’re a country of 4.9 million people.
People in these bigger countries tend to be far less interested in what happens in the neighbouring smaller country than people in the smaller country are interested in what happens in the bigger country. We consume their media to a huge degree whereas they don’t consume our media.
This would also be the case vis a vis the US/Canada, Australia/New Zealand, Germany/Austria, Russia/Belarus etc.
It’s fairly easy to understand when you think about it for a few seconds.
Well done on getting three clicks
1 Like
Three and counting
Rishi Sunak v the PM who only wants to spend, spend, spend
As the chancellor wrestles with the gargantuan bill for Covid, Boris Johnson has grown addicted to making ever more grandiose spending promises. The snag is that the PM often fails to keep Rishi Sunak in the loop, says Tim Shipman
Tim Shipman
Political Editor
Saturday June 19 2021, 6.15pm BST, The Sunday Times
When Boris Johnson recently pledged to buy a new royal yacht and set up a 21st-century version of the postwar Marshall Plan to fund green growth in the developing world, the ideas were hailed in Downing Street as evidence that post-Brexit Britain is playing a global leadership role again. A picture was painted of a royal flagship touring the world as a visible symbol of Britain’s soft power, drumming up trade.
The only problem? Key people had no idea the announcements were going to be made and no one in government now wants to pay for them. Under the surface, both have instead become high-profile symbols of growing tensions at the top of government over public spending, which now threaten to dominate Whitehall for the next six months.
“No one in the Treasury had a clue about the new Marshall Plan until it appeared in the media,” said a senior Whitehall official. That included the chancellor, Rishi Sunak. Insiders say no spending request has even been received. A No 10 source admitted: “The Treasury seems to be getting increasingly irritated that we keep announcing things without telling them.”
The Conservatives’ loss in the Chesham & Amersham by-election on Thursday, where the Liberal Democrats overturned a Tory majority of 16,000 on a 25-point swing, has rendered the philosophical differences between Johnson and Sunak more acute.
Behind the scenes, tensions are growing over the gargantuan bill looming for Covid recovery. Sunak is among several cabinet ministers who are letting it be known privately that, when the government is facing a year of crunch spending pledges, important decisions need to be made by the cabinet, rather than by a small clique in No 10.
The Treasury is under pressure to find more for Covid education catch-up, to help pupils who have fallen behind during the pandemic; for health catch-up, to fund operations and cancer treatments that have been neglected; and to pay for the huge backlog of court cases that have built up.
It is not only No 11 that does not want to find the £200 million needed for the replacement for the Royal Yacht Britannia, which was decommissioned in 1997. The Cabinet Office, which was originally asked to devise the plans, the Department for International Trade, which was originally expected to benefit from them, and the Ministry of Defence, which has now been saddled with the project, are all in the dark about where the money is coming from, not least because the MoD is fighting to plug a £16 billion black hole in its annual budget.
“There is a huge row going on about the royal yacht and who is going to fund it,” said one senior Tory who is close to several cabinet ministers. “The seeds are being sown for an almighty set-to between Boris and Rishi over spending.”
Another official confirmed: “The royal yacht is a complete and utter shitshow. When it was first floated, the PM wanted it to be built in Britain. It was given to [Cabinet Office minister Michael] Gove to sort out, but it became clear that under procurement rules it could only be built here if it was a navy thing with a bunch of fake weapons on board. So Gove passed it on to the MoD. The Treasury stayed out of it.”
A cabinet source, reflecting on Johnson’s initial plan to get others to pay for the renovation of his Downing Street flat, joked: “Perhaps Boris can get someone to set up a trust to pay for it.”
Plans for the ship were repeatedly leaked but, to make matters worse, when No 10 finally made the formal announcement, “they didn’t tell the MoD”, a source said. “It was news to them.”
The Tories’ triumph in the local elections last month created a wave of political hubris among Tory MPs and the belief that Johnson might fight and win two more elections. But ministers and aides are warning that Johnson and Sunak first have to navigate this autumn what has been called in Whitehall a “spending sandwich”.
“Bread” will be needed for ministerial pledges at the Conservative Party conference at the start of October. A month later Johnson will host the Cop26 climate conference in Glasgow, where he will want to show the world that the UK is leading the world towards its net zero carbon target. A long-delayed review of what is needed to meet the target is likely to come with a heavy price tag in green taxes. The filling between the two is the public spending review, which will determine the budgets of Whitehall departments for up to three years.
“There are lots and lots of spending pressures. Some are Covid-related, like the things that have bubbled up: education catch-up, NHS catch-up and courts catch-up. There will need to be money to push that backlog through,” a senior government source said.
“There are also significant reform issues like net zero and social care. If you add those together it’s a perilous mix for a party that wants, at least in theory, to keep the numbers adding up.”
This will be thrown into sharp relief on Tuesday, when the prime minister, the chancellor and Matt Hancock, the health secretary, meet in Downing Street to discuss plans for social care. Insiders say no final decision will be taken but Sunak will face a “double team” from Johnson and Hancock to dig deep into the coffers.
Johnson is “pretty set” on a plan devised by the economist Sir Andrew Dilnot to cap care costs at £50,000 a person, so families do not have to sell their home to pay for care. The chancellor is pointing out that the plan will disproportionately benefit voters in the south of England, where property is worth more, and that the final bill will run to billions.
Sunak’s message to Johnson, according to those familiar with the conversations, is this: “If that’s what you want to do, that’s fine, but where is the money coming from?”
Several cabinet ministers also have concerns about the suggestion that Sir Simon Stevens, the outgoing boss of NHS England, be put in charge of finding the solution. A former Labour adviser, Stevens would be likely to be “Kevan Collins on crack”, a ministerial aide suggested.
That is a reference to the educationalist hired to devise a scheme to help children who have fallen behind during the pandemic. Collins called for £15 billion to fund personal tutoring after school and in the holidays. Sunak found only £1.5 billion, and Collins resigned.
With social care the Treasury wants buy-in from across government, with a proper discussion about how the scheme will be funded. A senior Whitehall source said: “There has to be cabinet involvement in decisions like this. It can’t just be announced on the hoof or stitched up in a room with Boris and Rishi at loggerheads. Decisions like this are about who we are as a party.”
Until now Johnson has favoured untrammelled spending on “levelling-up” in the so-called red wall seats in the north of England. Sunak, even in the midst of a historic spending spree, has argued that economic restraint is needed to keep the party’s traditional supporters in the south on board. The by-election result suggests this is getting more difficult.
Rob Ford, professor of political science at Manchester University and the author of Brexitland, said: “The challenge for the Tories is that levelling-up means taking money from voters in places like Chesham and Amersham and giving it to places like Hartlepool.”
Senior cabinet ministers are now concerned that the differing needs of the red and blue walls, the institutional divisions between No 10 and the Treasury, and the philosophical differences between Johnson and Sunak are a hairline crack through the government.
In an interview with Andrew Neil last week on the new GB News television channel, Sunak described himself as a “fiscal conservative” and showed he is prepared to take a stand. “It’s not my money, it’s other people’s money, and I take my responsibility to that very seriously,” he said.
There are only three places money can come from: spending cuts elsewhere, more borrowing and higher taxes. The first has been closed off as a source of significant revenue. Johnson and Sunak have pledged there will be no return to austerity. Higher borrowing, which Johnson seems to favour, will become increasingly perilous. Inflation rose last week to 2.1 per cent, “higher than the Treasury was expecting”, a government aide said. That will push up interest rates and the cost of government borrowing. “That’s one of the many risks that it’s my job to worry about,” Sunak told Neil.
Which leaves the rest to be funded from tax rises. The Tory manifesto included a triple tax lock, with a promise not to raise income tax, national insurance or VAT. The chancellor is also telling colleagues he does not want to raise personal taxation. “He is fundamentally of the view that raising taxes on families at a time like this is the wrong thing to do,” a source close to him said.
It can also be revealed that Sunak has ruled out a long-touted move to increase capital gains tax to the same rate as income tax, on the grounds that it does not raise enough for the political pain it would cause.
All this means business taxes are likely to rise further, on top of a promised increase in corporation tax announced in the budget that kicks in next year. At the recent G7 summit Sunak led the way in securing an international agreement for multinational tech giants such as Amazon to pay tax in the countries where they do business rather than where they bank their profits.
At home Treasury officials are still working on plans for an online sales tax, which is expected to be introduced as part of a review of business rates due in autumn. “The G7 agreement doesn’t stop that work going on,” a source said.
Whitehall sources say discussions are also continuing about a new way of taxing the betting giants. Some in government want a tax on turnover. The industry is fighting to limit such a raid to a 2 per cent levy on profits.
But Treasury civil servants are also privately working on less politically palatable options. To Neil, Sunak stressed that the triple lock on pensions — which will put the state handout up by 6 per cent this year, in line with average earnings, at a time when workers are losing their jobs — is still government policy.
Privately Treasury officials are working on a one-year moratorium to limit the rise. “Pensioners are going to be doing extremely well,” one minister said. “It’s also going to be an extra £4 billion that Rishi is going to have to find. It’s not politically that difficult a thing to smooth it out for a year.”
Sunak made clear to Johnson last summer that he thinks pensioners should be asked to share in the sacrifices their children and grandchildren have made in the pandemic, but he was overruled by the prime minister. “Ultimately it’s up to the PM again,” a senior official said.
The criticism of Johnson, even from those close to him, is that he is inclined to delay difficult decisions while embracing those that create yet more spending pressures.
The removal of the overmighty aide Dominic Cummings in November, and his replacement with the new chief of staff Dan Rosenfield, who — witnesses say — Johnson is conspicuously reluctant to consult in meetings, has replaced one problem with another.
“The Vote Leave gang used to tell Boris what to do all the time,” a minister said. “The problem now is that there is hardly anyone who can tell him what to do.”
The future of his government now hangs on whether he heeds the views of his chancellor.
• A No 10 spokesman said: “The prime minister and chancellor work closely together, and have been in lockstep throughout the most challenging period any government has faced since the Second World War.”