HelloThere

Better headline: “Life long benefit claimant hides off the book income”

Ikr, it’s like -22 at McMurdo station, people complaining about the weather are dumb bitches.

Amazes me that his wife supposedly had no idea this was going on.

Warmer, yes, but not over 30, especially in May where that is literally double the mean high temp.

Cards on the table, I’m a labour member who voted for Corbyn as leader twice and then Starmer in 2020.

Solely attributed, no. A factor, sure.

But the fact of the matter is that the left are playing on a rigged pitch. It isn’t fair, it isn’t balanced, the media are hypocrites and will invent controvosies out of thin air. Plus our electoral system is fundamentally broken.

A perfect example is that Boris Johnson was known the ride a bicycle as Mayor of London. Nothing was made of it. When Corbyn became labour leader, suddenly he had a MAOIST BICYCLE.

So while Corbyn’s labour did get more votes cast in 2017 and 2019 than Starmer’s labour did in 2024, it was too concentrated in cities. More people also turned out to vote against him because he was easier to characture as a 1970s throwback.

Again, none of this is fair, or right. But it is the state of play, and you have to be able to overcome it. We rarely manage it, which is why the Tories have been in charge for over 2/3rds of the last 100 years.

As always, simple answers to complex questions are lies.

Literally since day 1.

This has always been the tension between the wider labour movement - which by definition must always be advocating for more than is currently acceptable - and the party, which must present itself as a balance.

Corbyn failed twice, he was not the guy.

No u!

Yeah, that’s not how anything works.

The Met are unbelievably useless and corrupt, that’s completely true, but investigation of potential war crimes is the job of the CTP. For once the Met not getting involved is a good thing because they can’t fuck it up.

This level of journalism from Morning Star is no surprise, but I expected more from Webbe.

That could well be because this is the responsibility of CTP, and not the Met.

https://www.counterterrorism.police.uk/what-we-do/war-crimes/

Fucking media psychodrama. Utterly pointless waste of time. Streeting will never get past the membership, and Burnham literally isn’t an MP and has no route back that isn’t fraught with dumb risks.

The full media briefing document has released earlier

https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/6a046665c0cc74b4523e4d3b/The_King_s_Speech_2026_-_background_briefing_notes.pdf

My thoughts as follows:

• the steel nationalisation bill could be interesting - the public interest test doesn’t seem to be limited to just steel, could be a good mechanism to forcibly nationalising water companies in the future (which can’t come soon enough)
• it astounds me that bringing back legal aid close to what it was before the ConDem coalition gutted it is going to cost less than 200m in todays money. Fuck Osborne.
• the energy section directly calling out how literally half of all recessions the UK has faced since 1970 have been caused by oil price shocks is great, I love Milibae so much.
• while there is no mention of it here, i really hope the votes at 16 bill ends up including PR for English council and Westminster elections. Labour cannot let Reform take advantage of the FPTP spoiler effect at the next GE.
• I really really hate the immigration and asylum changes, I expect these to be softened through backbench pressure

Overall, on the surface this is still all very incremental. Now, that could well be because this would have been finalised weeks ago, and wording agreed with Brian for his little speech. Or, it could well be because that’s all we’re gonna get regardless of what Starmer says to keep his job.

I really hope it’s the former.

While the last session did have a variety of gaffs, mistakes, and certified fuck ups, a lot of very good shit did also get done. It’s taken 800 years to remove the aristocracy from our parliament. Workers rights have been significantly improved. As have renters. Pretty much everything Miliband has done. We are getting closer to the EU and are no longer questioning whether essential allies are friend or foe. The two child limit has been removed.

I won’t pretend its everything I wanted, it barely scratches the surface, but its a fuck load more than I got in the preceeding 14 years, and that is worth something.

Exactly as we saw with Corbyn.

Yes, the media is biased and serving the interests of their owners.

As a political group we bang on and on about material conditions, but we sure do love to pretend that we’re operating on a fair and level playing field, and then feign surprise and outrage.

Is it fair that anyone to the left of Ghenis Khan is pilloried? No, of course it isn’t. But it frustrates me beyond belief that we refuse to learn that lesson.

We need to get past this idea that any individual is bigger than the movement. Like Corbyn before him, Polanski is both being unfairly targeted, and also giving easy hits by having said demonstrably dumb and/or false stuff.

Remember, this is the same media who crucified Ed Miliband, the atheist son of Jewish parents, over looking weird in a single photo while eating a bacon sandwich. And the same media who were beside themselves at Starmer (foolishly) accepting clothes and glasses, and yet are very quiet about Farage’s £5m bung.

The deck is stacked against us. We have to stop pretending it isn’t, and a big part of that is ruthlessly binning prominent people who make dumb mistakes. That’s sure as fuck unreasonable and unfair, but the alternative is continuing to damage progress.

It also means that when we are in power, we resist the urge to claw the fuck out of each other and be divided, which only benefits those with entrenched power and privilege.