This particular story warrants further examination. Firstly, the Home Office wouldn't have done an Impact Assessment but for the pressure put on them by one of the select committees.
The impact assessment contains the sentence: "'The Home Office believes that despite these points the changes are justified for a number of policy reasons including reducing net migration and ending reliance on overseas recruitment. '
Of course the lease price is largely related to depreciation over the lease period and the differential between the sticker price and resale value, and not directly to the value of the car, so simply banning certain marques is a question of optics (if the manufacturers had the stones they could probably sue the government under Competition Law).
Depreciation is not unrelated to the purchase price, though. Cars tend to depreciate by percentages...
Politicians are certainly not 'all the same' to me - the SNP, the Scottish Greens, the English and Welsh Greens, Plaid Cymru and even the Lib Dems are not cut from this cloth.
Past evidence is that lib dems will happily cheer on welfare cuts if it gets them a ministerial car. They might not be quite so eager with the racism but I wouldn't count on it. We already know what kind of party they are, it's just a matter of haggling over their price.
The FT link is paywalled - not that I necessarily disagree with the point you’re making. The same issue is covered by The Economic Times though I’ve no idea of the quality of that source.
The FT link is paywalled - not that I necessarily disagree with the point you’re making. The same issue is covered by The Economic Times though I’ve no idea of the quality of that source.
The figures are available on page 60 of the report (table at the bottom of the page). Their best case is buoyed up by a number of dubious assumptions - e.g that the decrease in workforce available to the care sector will lead to an increase in productivity.
The FT link is paywalled - not that I necessarily disagree with the point you’re making. The same issue is covered by The Economic Times though I’ve no idea of the quality of that source.
The figures are available on page 60 of the report (table at the bottom of the page). Their best case is buoyed up by a number of dubious assumptions - e.g that the decrease in workforce available to the care sector will lead to an increase in productivity.
Are they under the impression that care workers are slacking or are they expecting mass robot deployment?
Looks like the end result of Mandelson's latest ousting has been to leave Starmer damaged, but no MP willing to challenge for now - presumably the soft left are having difficulty getting numbers behind a candidate and Streeting is keeping a low profile (he appears to have deleted several tweets).
Looks like the end result of Mandelson's latest ousting has been to leave Starmer damaged, but no MP willing to challenge for now - presumably the soft left are having difficulty getting numbers behind a candidate and Streeting is keeping a low profile (he appears to have deleted several tweets).
Streeting is presumably hoping no-one remembers how pally he was with Mandelson.
In his case it's not much of a virtue as he's still an ablist transphobic far-right appeaser with racist-friendly anti-immigration policies and terrible policy on technology and AI. Streeting would be worse though.
As someone who has to limit their news intake for mental health reasons, are things at Labour HQ really collapsing over Mandelson and the Epstein papers? It seems astonishing to me that this is what it takes - not downplaying the issues with Mandelson's relationship with Epstein or suggesting that it shouldn't be resulting in resignations, it just shocks me that so much else has been treated as "business as usual".
I think the revelations in the US were sufficient that it couldn't be ignored totally, although there's an element of acting to restrict the blast radius and make it an issue of a few individuals.
Starmer is still not out of the woods. He is unpopular with voters. MPs will be weighing up that with loyalty to the leadership. The Mandleson situation has only made the voters like him less.
Labour Together - the grouping behind Starmer - paid for oppo research on reporters after various outlets printed a story about them failing to declare donations of £730K:
Days after the article appeared, Josh Simons, who had by then succeeded McSweeney as head of Labour Together and is now a Cabinet Office minister, commissioned Apco to look into it. McSweeney was aware of the decision. The Sunday Times has a copy of the full report, dated January 2024, codenamed “Operation Cannon” and marked “private and confidential”. It was prepared by Tom Harper, Apco’s senior director and a former Sunday Times employee. Labour Together has admitted hiring the firm but the details of its report — and the scale of Apco’s efforts to discredit the story — have never been told.
Harper wrote that he had examined the “sourcing, funding and origins of The Sunday Times story” using documents and “discreet human source enquiries”.
He then sought to portray Pogrund and Yorke as part of a Russian campaign to damage Starmer.
He alleged, without evidence, that the emails which underpinned the published story were likely to have emerged from a suspected Kremlin hack of the Electoral Commission.
Some wonderful headline weaselling today as what the Guardian calls a £30bn budget surplus is described by the Telegraph as "Reeves handed £30bn borrowing boost" (emphasis mine)...
I wonder if having an actual local working class candidate helped. In which case Andy Burnham will have made little difference. The Lib Dem’s did even worse - so I suspect significant tactical voting.
I wonder if having an actual local working class candidate helped. In which case Andy Burnham will have made little difference.
A local candidate who was obviously locally selected rather than parachuted in vs someone who might felt duty bound to defend Starmer's initial stance on Mandelson.
The Lib Dem’s did even worse - so I suspect significant tactical voting.
Possibly, but turnout was also high for a by election, so maybe it was a case of motivating people to vote over tactical voting.
I wonder if having an actual local working class candidate helped. In which case Andy Burnham will have made little difference.
A local candidate who was obviously locally selected rather than parachuted in vs someone who might felt duty bound to defend Starmer's initial stance on Mandelson.
The Lib Dem’s did even worse - so I suspect significant tactical voting.
Possibly, but turnout was also high for a by election, so maybe it was a case of motivating people to vote over tactical voting.
Yes I agree. There has also been a lot of coverage across v
So, Labour move to the right, hoping to hoover up Reform voters, and vilify the left, in the shape of the Greens, and ... Well, they leave a huge gap where people who want to oppose Farage can charge through, except not to vote Labour. Why would they? I suppose one question is whether the Greens can maintain their momentum, and whether Starmer has destroyed Labour. I can confidently state that nobody knows.
Possibly, but turnout was also high for a by election, so maybe it was a case of motivating people to vote over tactical voting.
It's also fair to say that at the moment, a parliamentary by-election is a zero-cost way to tell the government that you're not happy. A massive vote shift in favour of the party that has a reasonable claim to be the most left-wing mainstream party in English politics is a pretty clear indication of the direction of that unhappiness. I suspect the Greens have an uphill battle to hold this seat at the next election, but ...
Possibly, but turnout was also high for a by election, so maybe it was a case of motivating people to vote over tactical voting.
It's also fair to say that at the moment, a parliamentary by-election is a zero-cost way to tell the government that you're not happy. A massive vote shift in favour of the party that has a reasonable claim to be the most left-wing mainstream party in English politics is a pretty clear indication of the direction of that unhappiness. I suspect the Greens have an uphill battle to hold this seat at the next election, but ...
It's hard to say. There is a good argument that this is classic by-election activity, much like SDP and lib dem victories in the 80s and 90s. The depth of disaster for both Labour and tories does point to the possibility of a bigger realignment. I think if polling stays like this Labour are going to have to decide whether to take an enormous gamble at the next election that may give either them or Reform a majority on ~25% of the vote, or accept that FPTP is not fit for the era of multi-party democracy and implement some form of PR.
It is worth remembering that the Green candidate was endorsed by Corbyn for Your Party. Your Party is allowing dual membership and is clearly not interested in cannibalising the vote on the left. Given its current problems, it wouldn’t surprise me if Your Party starts operating similarly to the Co-operative party - boosting individual candidates who they believe share their values.
It is worth remembering that the Green candidate was endorsed by Corbyn for Your Party. Your Party is allowing dual membership and is clearly not interested in cannibalising the vote on the left. Given its current problems, it wouldn’t surprise me if Your Party starts operating similarly to the Co-operative party - boosting individual candidates who they believe share their values.
That's near impossible. The cooperative party is so close to the labour party that it is essentially a pressure group. Coop candidates that are not also labour party candidates have not happened for nearly 100 years and that isn't going to start now.
It’s perfectly possible for Your Party to make strategic decisions about where it stands candidates, and then to alternately throw its support behind Green, Labour or even Lib Dems as and when it feels that’s the most useful thing to do.
Oh I see what you mean, sorry I misread. I thought you were suggesting joint candidates for YP and coop. Whereas you mean YP actively campaigning for a coop candidate.
That might happen although I wonder how that would go down in the Labour party.
I read yesterday that Labour would have preferred Reform to have won the by-election and Starmer seems to be wanting to paint the Greens as extreme hard-left.
Oh I see what you mean, sorry I misread. I thought you were suggesting joint candidates for YP and coop. Whereas you mean YP actively campaigning for a coop candidate.
That might happen although I wonder how that would go down in the Labour party.
I read yesterday that Labour would have preferred Reform to have won the by-election and Starmer seems to be wanting to paint the Greens as extreme hard-left.
Starmer sees the right as the opposition but the left as the enemy.
I doubt Your Party would campaign for a Coop candidate, because as you say they don’t stand separately. What I mean is that they might be much more willing than a traditional party to work with other parties or candidates as they did in Gorton & Denton.
Possibly, but turnout was also high for a by election, so maybe it was a case of motivating people to vote over tactical voting.
It's also fair to say that at the moment, a parliamentary by-election is a zero-cost way to tell the government that you're not happy. A massive vote shift in favour of the party that has a reasonable claim to be the most left-wing mainstream party in English politics is a pretty clear indication of the direction of that unhappiness. I suspect the Greens have an uphill battle to hold this seat at the next election, but ...
Well, that remark was narrowly about the Lib Dem vote (they got 3% in 2024, so numerically didn't comprise much of the vote).
But picking up on the wider point - yes, it's a zero cost way to tell the government you're not happy, but to lose a 13K majority (and the 38th safest seat) indicates that people are *really* unhappy, and you could equally say that Labour have a huge uphill battle to persuade voters back into the fold at the next election.
Oh I see what you mean, sorry I misread. I thought you were suggesting joint candidates for YP and coop. Whereas you mean YP actively campaigning for a coop candidate.
That might happen although I wonder how that would go down in the Labour party.
I read yesterday that Labour would have preferred Reform to have won the by-election and Starmer seems to be wanting to paint the Greens as extreme hard-left.
Starmer sees the right as the opposition but the left as the enemy.
So do the parliamentary lib-dems, they are just quieter about it.
Possibly, but turnout was also high for a by election, so maybe it was a case of motivating people to vote over tactical voting.
It's also fair to say that at the moment, a parliamentary by-election is a zero-cost way to tell the government that you're not happy. A massive vote shift in favour of the party that has a reasonable claim to be the most left-wing mainstream party in English politics is a pretty clear indication of the direction of that unhappiness. I suspect the Greens have an uphill battle to hold this seat at the next election, but ...
Well, that remark was narrowly about the Lib Dem vote (they got 3% in 2024, so numerically didn't comprise much of the vote).
But picking up on the wider point - yes, it's a zero cost way to tell the government you're not happy, but to lose a 13K majority (and the 38th safest seat) indicates that people are *really* unhappy, and you could equally say that Labour have a huge uphill battle to persuade voters back into the fold at the next election.
I think one can see dissatisfaction with the government policies, I think particularly on migration and cost of living.
I don't think anyone voted Green thinking that the new MP is going to be able to change anything significant, but it is symbolic of an electorate forced to choose between the hard-right and Labour and choosing neither.
So yes, I think it can be characterised as a protest, however I think the difference in the current environment is that the hard-right are (or were?) on a roll.
I have some hope that this is a turning of the page, but there's also the chance it is a battle won early in a war of attrition.
The question is whether places where Reform candidates have a strong vote can be beaten by progressive organising in elections. At very least this week shows that if the community is engaged they can be beaten. 2026 still feels like a dangerous moment to me.
Oh I see what you mean, sorry I misread. I thought you were suggesting joint candidates for YP and coop. Whereas you mean YP actively campaigning for a coop candidate.
That might happen although I wonder how that would go down in the Labour party.
I read yesterday that Labour would have preferred Reform to have won the by-election and Starmer seems to be wanting to paint the Greens as extreme hard-left.
Starmer sees the right as the opposition but the left as the enemy.
So do the parliamentary lib-dems, they are just quieter about it.
True, though I'd say it's more than no-one cares what the lib dems do or say than that they're quieter.
Oh I see what you mean, sorry I misread. I thought you were suggesting joint candidates for YP and coop. Whereas you mean YP actively campaigning for a coop candidate.
That might happen although I wonder how that would go down in the Labour party.
I read yesterday that Labour would have preferred Reform to have won the by-election and Starmer seems to be wanting to paint the Greens as extreme hard-left.
Starmer sees the right as the opposition but the left as the enemy.
So do the parliamentary lib-dems, they are just quieter about it.
True, though I'd say it's more than no-one cares what the lib dems do or say than that they're quieter.
Well, a bunch of their voters/supporters hear what they want to hear.
Leading up to the election Reform and the Greens were pretty much neck and neck in the polls. Yet The Greens won by a mile. I won’t say Reform are not a threat but they are losing there lead in the polls nationally. Ladbrokes and Paddy Power have made Labour favourites for the General Election. Reform have a lot of support but it across a large area, they have very few large pockets of support. That means under the First Past the Post system they may not be able to win many actual seats.
I had two separate people on Thursday mention to me that they were pleased with the improvements Labour policies had brought to their lives. I'm hoping from that things are filtering through. Here, where we have a Reform County Council and a Tory MP who defected to Reform I think the shine is well and truly wearing off. Just mention flags vs potholes and I've not found anyone who thinks the council were wise to splish loads of money putting Union Jacks up everywhere as opposed to working on a strategy to fix the state of the roads.
As for the Greens, I like a lot of their policies, but I'm always suspicious of any party that seems to rely so much on a charismatic leader.
I had two separate people on Thursday mention to me that they were pleased with the improvements Labour policies had brought to their lives. I'm hoping from that things are filtering through. Here, where we have a Reform County Council and a Tory MP who defected to Reform I think the shine is well and truly wearing off. Just mention flags vs potholes and I've not found anyone who thinks the council were wise to splish loads of money putting Union Jacks up everywhere as opposed to working on a strategy to fix the state of the roads.
As for the Greens, I like a lot of their policies, but I'm always suspicious of any party that seems to rely so much on a charismatic leader.
That's interesting because I don't think the leadership of the Greens is charismatic. Polanski is energetic compared to the previous leadership but he is not charismatic in the sense that people stop to listen when he is talking. Hannah Spencer could barely get a sentence out without her voice breaking yesterday.
What they both are is normal. They're not trying to use vocal inflections to make lies sound like truths like Reform candidates. They're not talking word salad like Labour. They're not tub-thumping like the SNP.
I heard Polanski in one of the interviews yesterday talking about Green Party policies. He said that if voters could look at ten Green Party policies and find five they agree with, they should vote for them or even join the party. If voters agreed with all ten, they were probably a bit weird.
It's that mix of refreshing frankness and not taking themselves too seriously that cuts against the ultra serious Reform nonsense.
Have you ever heard John Swinney? He's quite dull and think old fashioned bank manager - he was brought in as a safe pair of hands and nobody in the current SNP could thump a tub to save their lives. They're just a fairly old fashioned centre left party that's playing it safe.
I'm also bemused by the idea of The Greens and dangerous charisma. The Scottish Greens are a separate party, though the two parties are back in harmony with each other. They have two co leaders who are OK but couldn't be accused of charisma. I think the co leader thing holds them back and makes it harder to make breakthroughs though they are steadily doing well.
The Scottish Greens were until recently part of our government through the Bute House agreement and did slavering Bolshevik things like er... free bus fares for young people and a bottle recycling scheme that got sabotaged from Westminster.
They've been steadily gaining counsellors and unlike Reform generally do a good job - I'm very happy with our local Green councillors.
Polanski gives straight answers which aren't mealy mouthed right wing apologia. I'm a listener over decades to a BBC Radio politics show because I like to hear politicians and what they're like. Over the past few years it's become hard going because it's shifted so far to the right. You generally get at least one very right wing politician who lies like a rug with utter conviction - says things that if you've been paying attention you know not to be the case but the Labour politicians now tend to echo them - they accept their underlying premises and just hedge a bit more.
There was an awful episode where they had Anas Sarwar of Scottish Labour on and he started hedging about how the recent strident anti-immigration stuff was all about 'reasonable concerns'. I've seen links to Polanski's performances and he simply doesn't do that. He gives a straightforward positive defence of whoever the right is attacking - not 'yes, we are throwing them under the bus too but wait till you see us do it - the judges will give us 10 on technical merit and artistic execution unlike that lot! We'll do it better!' Polanski just refuses to throw the people under the bus at all- he rejects the premises.
This isn't charisma this is something we used to see more often which has become rare in recent years. I think he has flaws - he hasn't articulated his views on defence in a way which make me think he really gets how dangerous Putin is, but that was a fault I found in Corbyn too - I felt he was rubbish about the Salisbury poisonings but the alternative is delivering us into the hands of the Putinists and far-right because immiserated people become more vulnerable to Reform and their lies plus I dont want people immiserated in the first place.
I think it's worth remembering the Caerphilly by-election where Plaid Cymru pasted Reform. People are organising against them but they rightfully recognise Labour as the same thing - only lite. So there is no point voting Labour to resist a fascist agenda as they share it in its essentials. Once you throw disabled people, trans people and immigrants under the bus and let Palantir into the English NHS I don't give a damn about ' Oh look we did some shiny stuff too'. A spoonful of honey in lamentable horrifying scapegoating shit doesn't make the shit look appealing.
@Sarasa interested to know what policies the people in question were specifically pleased with - genuine question, just because around here the main impact is the new housebuilding targets, which are too new to have made a difference yet.
I had two separate people on Thursday mention to me that they were pleased with the improvements Labour policies had brought to their lives. I'm hoping from that things are filtering through. Here, where we have a Reform County Council and a Tory MP who defected to Reform I think the shine is well and truly wearing off. Just mention flags vs potholes and I've not found anyone who thinks the council were wise to splish loads of money putting Union Jacks up everywhere as opposed to working on a strategy to fix the state of the roads.
As for the Greens, I like a lot of their policies, but I'm always suspicious of any party that seems to rely so much on a charismatic leader.
@Pomona, one person was pleased about extra hours for childcare, the other that there is now an hourly train service between her village and our town. The latter meant she could come to the meeting we'd invited her to by train. Great when active travel is something our council is trying to encourage. Not sure quite how much Labour had to do with it, but at least it beats being moaned at for not fixing potholes which is the responsibility of the council I'm on.
There is a lot about Labour that I think is misguided and I hate them chasing the right wine agenda. Hopefully they will have a re-think given Thursday's result.
Comments
This particular story warrants further examination. Firstly, the Home Office wouldn't have done an Impact Assessment but for the pressure put on them by one of the select committees.
The impact assessment contains the sentence: "'The Home Office believes that despite these points the changes are justified for a number of policy reasons including reducing net migration and ending reliance on overseas recruitment. '
The points are contained in Annex B here:
https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/6937e67eb612700b2cb73679/Spring_2025_Immigration_Rules_Impact_Assessment__Skilled_Worker_and_Care_Worker___003_.pdf
And amount to 'It costs more and is bad for disabled and old people who require care'.
Meanwhile Mike Tapp - the Home Office Minister - was out stirring the pot on 'grooming gangs'
https://x.com/MikeTappTweets/status/1998464759855792218
And to avoid 'what Starmer really said' style arguments, here is the accompanying piece to which he put his name:
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/dec/09/protect-borders-defend-democracies-echr-keir-starmer-mette-frederiksen
And an accompanying article about the Justice Secretary pushing to weaken the provisions on torture:
https://www.theguardian.com/law/2025/dec/08/rights-groups-warn-uk-weaken-torture-protections-echr
Along with the reduction of jury trials, a wonderful set of precedents for Farage should Reform win next time around.
Depreciation is not unrelated to the purchase price, though. Cars tend to depreciate by percentages...
Past evidence is that lib dems will happily cheer on welfare cuts if it gets them a ministerial car. They might not be quite so eager with the racism but I wouldn't count on it. We already know what kind of party they are, it's just a matter of haggling over their price.
The figures are available on page 60 of the report (table at the bottom of the page). Their best case is buoyed up by a number of dubious assumptions - e.g that the decrease in workforce available to the care sector will lead to an increase in productivity.
Are they under the impression that care workers are slacking or are they expecting mass robot deployment?
Streeting is presumably hoping no-one remembers how pally he was with Mandelson.
https://www.thetimes.com/article/e5efccd6-cc25-4e86-8900-f33c304f7188
They then tried to pin the story on Russia:
They must be really regretting not ditching Starmer already.
Regretting blocking Burnham too. Though he might think that losing one seat is a price worth paying to keep a challenger away.
Bit of a gamble - could end up losing both the seat and the mayorality.
A local candidate who was obviously locally selected rather than parachuted in vs someone who might felt duty bound to defend Starmer's initial stance on Mandelson.
Possibly, but turnout was also high for a by election, so maybe it was a case of motivating people to vote over tactical voting.
Yes I agree. There has also been a lot of coverage across v
Agreed. He might have dodged a bullet.
It's also fair to say that at the moment, a parliamentary by-election is a zero-cost way to tell the government that you're not happy. A massive vote shift in favour of the party that has a reasonable claim to be the most left-wing mainstream party in English politics is a pretty clear indication of the direction of that unhappiness. I suspect the Greens have an uphill battle to hold this seat at the next election, but ...
It's hard to say. There is a good argument that this is classic by-election activity, much like SDP and lib dem victories in the 80s and 90s. The depth of disaster for both Labour and tories does point to the possibility of a bigger realignment. I think if polling stays like this Labour are going to have to decide whether to take an enormous gamble at the next election that may give either them or Reform a majority on ~25% of the vote, or accept that FPTP is not fit for the era of multi-party democracy and implement some form of PR.
That's near impossible. The cooperative party is so close to the labour party that it is essentially a pressure group. Coop candidates that are not also labour party candidates have not happened for nearly 100 years and that isn't going to start now.
That might happen although I wonder how that would go down in the Labour party.
I read yesterday that Labour would have preferred Reform to have won the by-election and Starmer seems to be wanting to paint the Greens as extreme hard-left.
Starmer sees the right as the opposition but the left as the enemy.
Well, that remark was narrowly about the Lib Dem vote (they got 3% in 2024, so numerically didn't comprise much of the vote).
But picking up on the wider point - yes, it's a zero cost way to tell the government you're not happy, but to lose a 13K majority (and the 38th safest seat) indicates that people are *really* unhappy, and you could equally say that Labour have a huge uphill battle to persuade voters back into the fold at the next election.
So do the parliamentary lib-dems, they are just quieter about it.
I think one can see dissatisfaction with the government policies, I think particularly on migration and cost of living.
I don't think anyone voted Green thinking that the new MP is going to be able to change anything significant, but it is symbolic of an electorate forced to choose between the hard-right and Labour and choosing neither.
So yes, I think it can be characterised as a protest, however I think the difference in the current environment is that the hard-right are (or were?) on a roll.
I have some hope that this is a turning of the page, but there's also the chance it is a battle won early in a war of attrition.
The question is whether places where Reform candidates have a strong vote can be beaten by progressive organising in elections. At very least this week shows that if the community is engaged they can be beaten. 2026 still feels like a dangerous moment to me.
True, though I'd say it's more than no-one cares what the lib dems do or say than that they're quieter.
Well, a bunch of their voters/supporters hear what they want to hear.
https://leftfootforward.org/2026/02/read-keir-starmers-letter-to-labour-mps-in-full-after-gorton-and-denton-by-election-defeat/
As for the Greens, I like a lot of their policies, but I'm always suspicious of any party that seems to rely so much on a charismatic leader.
That's interesting because I don't think the leadership of the Greens is charismatic. Polanski is energetic compared to the previous leadership but he is not charismatic in the sense that people stop to listen when he is talking. Hannah Spencer could barely get a sentence out without her voice breaking yesterday.
What they both are is normal. They're not trying to use vocal inflections to make lies sound like truths like Reform candidates. They're not talking word salad like Labour. They're not tub-thumping like the SNP.
I heard Polanski in one of the interviews yesterday talking about Green Party policies. He said that if voters could look at ten Green Party policies and find five they agree with, they should vote for them or even join the party. If voters agreed with all ten, they were probably a bit weird.
It's that mix of refreshing frankness and not taking themselves too seriously that cuts against the ultra serious Reform nonsense.
I'm also bemused by the idea of The Greens and dangerous charisma. The Scottish Greens are a separate party, though the two parties are back in harmony with each other. They have two co leaders who are OK but couldn't be accused of charisma. I think the co leader thing holds them back and makes it harder to make breakthroughs though they are steadily doing well.
The Scottish Greens were until recently part of our government through the Bute House agreement and did slavering Bolshevik things like er... free bus fares for young people and a bottle recycling scheme that got sabotaged from Westminster.
They've been steadily gaining counsellors and unlike Reform generally do a good job - I'm very happy with our local Green councillors.
Polanski gives straight answers which aren't mealy mouthed right wing apologia. I'm a listener over decades to a BBC Radio politics show because I like to hear politicians and what they're like. Over the past few years it's become hard going because it's shifted so far to the right. You generally get at least one very right wing politician who lies like a rug with utter conviction - says things that if you've been paying attention you know not to be the case but the Labour politicians now tend to echo them - they accept their underlying premises and just hedge a bit more.
There was an awful episode where they had Anas Sarwar of Scottish Labour on and he started hedging about how the recent strident anti-immigration stuff was all about 'reasonable concerns'. I've seen links to Polanski's performances and he simply doesn't do that. He gives a straightforward positive defence of whoever the right is attacking - not 'yes, we are throwing them under the bus too but wait till you see us do it - the judges will give us 10 on technical merit and artistic execution unlike that lot! We'll do it better!' Polanski just refuses to throw the people under the bus at all- he rejects the premises.
This isn't charisma this is something we used to see more often which has become rare in recent years. I think he has flaws - he hasn't articulated his views on defence in a way which make me think he really gets how dangerous Putin is, but that was a fault I found in Corbyn too - I felt he was rubbish about the Salisbury poisonings but the alternative is delivering us into the hands of the Putinists and far-right because immiserated people become more vulnerable to Reform and their lies plus I dont want people immiserated in the first place.
I think it's worth remembering the Caerphilly by-election where Plaid Cymru pasted Reform. People are organising against them but they rightfully recognise Labour as the same thing - only lite. So there is no point voting Labour to resist a fascist agenda as they share it in its essentials. Once you throw disabled people, trans people and immigrants under the bus and let Palantir into the English NHS I don't give a damn about ' Oh look we did some shiny stuff too'. A spoonful of honey in lamentable horrifying scapegoating shit doesn't make the shit look appealing.
Labour are alright then.
There is a lot about Labour that I think is misguided and I hate them chasing the right wine agenda. Hopefully they will have a re-think given Thursday's result.