I mean as far as Starmer's Labour goes it's "Tory defects to Tories"
Humza Yousaf is preparing to quit as Scotland's first minister after coming to the conclusion that his position is no longer tenable.
Senior SNP figures have been told the nationalist leader decided over the weekend that there is no way for him to survive this week's vote of no confidence and he may stand down on Monday.
It comes as Yousaf struggles to put together a coalition of MSPs that would keep him in office after he sacked the Scottish Greens from government.
A close friend said: "Humza knows what's best for the country and the party. He is first party activist and a party man, and that's why he knows it's time for someone else."
Nothing personal against the man but this has been such a huge political miscalculation that I really don't think he is fit to lead the SNP. Trouble is, I don't really know who is fit to lead the SNP now given who he was up against in the leadership contest…
Nothing personal against the man but this has been such a huge political miscalculation that I really don't think he is fit to lead the SNP. Trouble is, I don't really know who is fit to lead the SNP now given who he was up against in the leadership contest…
I'm almost certainly Forbes will wind up leading them now.
I suspect again the older guard will keep away until the financial fraud situation resolves.
Humza Yousaf set to resign as survival hopes fade
SNP figures are told of first minister’s intentionswww.thetimes.co.uk
A low-growth economy creates a doom loop as pessimism begets a blame culture – and the more we blame others, the more pessimistic we become. Once people convince themselves that the state of their economy is so weak that they can only improve their lot at someone else's expense, they vote for parties that specialise in targeting those they think are holding them back – immigrants, foreigners and minorities. These parties offer nothing in terms of economic policies to generate long-term growth. The result is that zero-sum politics exacerbates the downward economic trends, and this, in turn, intensifies and widens the appeal of zero-sum thinking.
The problem Europe now faces is that the very measures it must adopt to escape this doom loop – new investment in technology, clean energy and medical advances – are being rendered impossible by its policy of fiscal retrenchment.
...So, at the very time that investment needs to increase, it is likely to fall. And the European election results are unlikely to make things any better. Essential green investment will fall down the agenda as anti-environmentalist parties gain an upper hand. Protectionism will become the order of the day with trade wars, which hit Europe harder than anywhere else. Unless something gives, a low-growth Europe will remain stuck in its rut – and the populist xenophobes will triumph.
The nationalist timebomb is ticking. Across the continent, Europeans need a plan for better jobs through economic and environmental transformation. When the Polish trade union Solidarity was first formed, its anti-Soviet slogan was "No solidarity without freedom". But soon many realised that free-for-all neoliberal economics would mean rising inequality and low living standards for the mass of people, and so a new slogan soon rang out: "There is no solidarity in freedom."
I get a bit pissed off with the framing that the general public are doing bad because the economy isn't growing enough.
Sales of luxury items have increased year on year since the 2008 crash, which is a sign that a certain portion of society has been making bank since then.
What has really been going on is that whatever wealth that was held by working class people in 2008 has been sucked up by the wealthy.
You can attempt to grow the economy all you want but without addressing the severe inequality at the same time, people will find answers from the far right.
The rising tide, rises all boats analogy is extremely detached from reality, without redistribution, the gains from a growing economy only accumulates with the already wealthy.
Starmer made to look like an absolute fool over Scottish independence.
View: https://twitter.com/firthoforth/status/1784643379701137429?t=XGj8pn082Hx9WsXA0iA5tg&s=19
Yeah, it's a really annoyingly badly edited video.I doubt the full video would be much better but that's a pretty laughable edit. Cuts Starmer mid-sentence almost every time.
Yeah, I wouldn't expect it to be any better which makes all the cuts really weird. Perhaps because nobody would watch it if it was just 10 mins of Starmer waffling.Yeah, it's a really annoyingly badly edited video.
The original isn't really better (Starmer never answers the questions he just keeps repeating his script "Well my priority is the economy blah blah blah") but regardless, it's badly made.
Starmer made to look like an absolute fool over Scottish independence.
View: https://twitter.com/firthoforth/status/1784643379701137429?t=XGj8pn082Hx9WsXA0iA5tg&s=19
Yeah, it's a really annoyingly badly edited video.
The original isn't really better (Starmer never answers the questions he just keeps repeating his script "Well my priority is the economy blah blah blah") but regardless, it's badly made.
That's what Brown was also arguing, all of it is interconnected. A low growth economy -> Inequality -> filthy rich hoard the wealth and the poor gets poorer -> electorate gets angry -> get stupidly irrational and vote for incompetent leaders.
Why has Reform numbers gone up in spite of them/UKIP being a relatively new party? Greens and Lib Dems been in the political game ages and they're not making gains. Slogans, scapegoating, rhetoric are popular. Hate is a very powerful tool.
Seems like desperation to me. No matter how you feel about Starmer, the SNP are in this position due to their own fuck ups, and if they elect Forbes as leader then it's an even bigger fuck up. Forbes is legitimately a worse social conservative than a lot of the Tory party, let alone Labour.
The inequality assumption is what I had from this article as Brown usually writes about them.Brown actually didn't say much in there about inequality at all. I also don't think it's necessarily true that a low-growth economy means rising inequality on its own. You could have low growth and still have policies that redistribute wealth. You can have loads of growth and the wealthy still get more than their fair share if you keep things the same as they are now.
If people are now more prone to zero-sum thinking, surely one solution (if you're scared of the right and aren't a centrist who thinks technology will solve everything), is not to convince them otherwise, but to convince them they'd have way more to gain from sharing some of the ultra-rich's wealth out than the tiny amounts they could scrape back by stopping immigration etc.
Surprise surprise, he's already come out and backed it.NHS England charter to stress biological sex when placing patients in wards
Transgender women should not be put on single-sex female NHS wards, the government is proposing.www.bbc.co.uk
Ugh what a fucking waste of time and energy these bigoted NHS policies are going to be, and they're not going to change under Starmer's Labour either.
I don't see my rights improving under a centrist government.
The one saving grace for them is that John Swinney has said he's thinking about running for the leadership post. As much as "continuity candidate" got in Humza's head, for the SNP that's not an entirely bad think AND he'd ideally ignore all the dog shit bastards that want to turn the party rightwards.
Nice to see Labour MPs taking bold, grown up stances, like arguing in favour of pollution:
View: https://twitter.com/darrenpjones/status/1785302589900226918
Remember during COVID when the FT was briefly the one piece of sanity in the media? I see they fully gave up on that.
The absolute minimum is "Radical policies". Fuck me.
Remember during COVID when the FT was briefly the one piece of sanity in the media? I see they fully gave up on that.
The absolute minimum is "Radical policies". Fuck me.
Get ready after today for inflation to go up a lot, because these dumb ass Tories can't stop kicking themselves and the country to death. Import checks are starting today, although not really the massive import prices are starting but the actual safety checks will never be implemented because the Tories haven't created the infrastructure or employed enough people to do them.
So importers are currently paying huge prices for nothing, and we have a guaranteed food safety disaster in the future, and everyone's going to be wandering what the point of the food safety price hikes were for. Its a shame the Tories won't be in power for the likely blow back from that.