[Malcolm Armsteen]

Yes.She's been in my thoughts today.

[Timbo]

Those 15 years feel like a century. God how I miss that feeling that our country and the world were all moving broadly in the right direction.

[crabcakes_windermere]

Interesting thread. Makes you wonder what the hell people over 65 (as a broad brush group) think Johnson is ever going to do for them given so far he's more or less literally tried to kill them.

It does show, however, that if that tipping point ever comes (and there must be SOME limit, surely), then Starmer has already taken it to level pegging without regaining lost-to-Tory votes (which makes some sense - these are the people that need winning back after Corbyn decided for years he was only interested in them if they wore flat caps and worked down t'pit).

[davidjay]

As tweets go, the first two sentences of this one are particularly spot on.

[The Red Arrow]

[Malcolm Armsteen]

Starmer starting to ramp up the pressure.

https://www.theguardian.com/education/2 ... rn-at-risk

Plans to get all children back to school in early September are now at “serious risk” because of government incompetence and the chaos caused by the exams fiasco, the Labour leader Keir Starmer has warned.

In one of his strongest interventions to date, which is bound to draw a furious response from Downing Street, Starmer told the Observer that two crucial weeks, which should have been spent preparing for schools to reopen, have been wasted dealing with a self-inflicted “mess” that has destroyed public confidence in government.

“I want to see children back at school next month, and I expect the prime minister to deliver on that commitment. However, the commitment is now at serious risk after a week of chaos, confusion and incompetence from the government,” the Labour leader said.

“Ministers should have spent the summer implementing a national plan to get all children back to school. Instead, the last two weeks have been wasted clearing up a mess of the government’s own making over exam results.”

[Tubby Isaacs]

https://www.theguardian.com/business/20 ... trade-deal

UK drops its £500m digital services tax because the US doesn't like it (Brexit is irrelevant here, the US would fight it if we were still in the EU, as they have France's tax). They wouldn't like it any more under a Biden presidency either.

Why have I put this here?

Labour reckoned it was getting £6-14bn from its version of this tax.

https://labour.org.uk/press/labour-welc ... nationals/

Whatever Starmer does or doesn't do, I hope he ends this "free stuff paid for by other people" stuff that the "proper left" love so much. This would have been a fine start to a Corbyn government, wouldn't it?

[Boiler]

Starmer starting to ramp up the pressure.

Or even increase it

[Malcolm Armsteen]

Starmer starting to ramp up the pressure.

Or even increase it

Whatever.

[Abernathy]

I pre-ordered this book, "Left Out - The Inside Story of Labour Under Corbyn" by Gabriel Pogrund and Patrick Maguire, from Amazon, and it should pop up on my Kindle reader next week.

In the meantime, the extracts from it published in today's Sunday Times are grimly, and I do mean, grimly, compelling.

https://archive.is/CXanW

Team Corbyn learnt that Labour would lose the 2019 general election three months before a voter had gone to the polls. On September 22, the Sunday morning of the party’s annual conference in Brighton, John McDonnell walked with his wife, Cynthia, to a meeting room in the bowels of the Metropole hotel. What the shadow chancellor was about to find out would prove difficult to stomach.

In the last days of August, Niall Sookoo, Labour’s director of elections, and Tim Waters, its head of data, had commissioned a poll from YouGov that turned the optimism of Jeremy Corbyn’s inner circle on its head. According to a poll of 20,000 voters, it would end the campaign with just 138 MPs — its worst result since 1918.

[crabcakes_windermere]

I’ve just read the whole article (it’s “available” online if you do a little Googling) and it’s *dreadful*. Corbyn is exactly as stroppy and childish and you’d expect. McDonnell seems to be the only one with any sense.

I’m amazed it didn’t end worse.

[Abernathy]

The description of the incident involving Corbyn's wife Laura Alvarez was telling. No wonder they nicknamed her Yoko.

[Tubby Isaacs]

August, you say?

I thought they were sitting pretty at this stage before "Starmer" forced Jez to back a referendum.

[Malcolm Armsteen]

Loki in a Land Rover!

[The Red Arrow]