Especially in defence - a big issue we've had is that govt procurement seems more interested in creating regional make-work schemes than procuring good kit.
The 'worst of all worlds' theory of the British state: in any given area, there is a very good chance that 50 years of Tory/New Labour rule mean that it will manage to combine the worst aspects of market capitalism and the worst aspects of bureaucratic progressivism
I don't see Reform delivering on Brexit either. I don't see anyone among them who has a solid grasp of just how profound the EU's regulatory influence on the UK is. There is no sign of a coherent fishing or agriculture policy, nor any plan to reboot public procurement rules and planning laws. Not seen anyone mention the waste framework directive either. Their grasp of the EU was minimal during Brexit and nothing has improved since. And that's before we even begin to address the question of Northern Ireland and the Windsor Framework. Reform wouldn't have a clue between them.
RE: The Tapp–Mahmood spat, the only important bit is confirmation that the Home Office are working on a plan to create a carve-out for Boriswave care workers from the retrospective element of the ILR proposals. This will be a disaster and cost £10bn+ in monetary terms alone.
Another reason the rape gang inquiry report is junk is the recommendations it makes - which is another consequence of having a predetermined narrative. As others have pointed out, grooming is, to a very large extent, vertically integrated into crime syndicates. As such, stamping it out requires an NCA permanent task force to look at all aspects of this organised crime, which, no so incidentally, is what it will also require to fix illegal immigration.
The vape shops and Turkish barbers are all part of it, which again brings us back to the requirement to rebuild local authority inspection and enforcement - things local and national government should be doing as a matter of course - which have been badly degraded by cuts over the last twenty years in order to prop up a dysfunctional welfare system.
Restore Britain's paper on mass deportation only made a brief allusion to this, when it is central to the entire strategy of rooting out and deporting illegal immigrants - and the more of this enforcement we do, the more it will expose links to the trafficking of girls.
While some of the report's recommendations should be followed, there's nothing especially new there, but to get to the root of it, we need to focus on criminality as a whole within the respective ethnic cohorts, also examining the money trail back to the countries of origin. Neither paper from Restore Britain goes into any depth on this, because there's no curiosity when you have a preconceived notion of what is happening and what should be done.
Labour left ecstatic but don’t realise that the public hate Starmer not for the reasons they do, but because they’ve laid the blame for structural issues at his feet. Burnham will inherit them & without the will or ability to fix anything will in short order be just as unpopular
.@KemiBadenoch says we have [ethno-religious] separatism happening here because people of different ethnicities are treated differently. I think the causation is in reverse. Ethnic 'separatists' have demanded they be treated differently to compensate for their grievance claims 1/
If Starmer and co were actually worried about CSAM and underage nudes, they would target Snapchat. But they only talk about X, because it’s obviously about being able to attribute X posts to ID’d citizens
“I get down on my knees every night and thank God for making me an Englishman.
It is the greatest honour He could bestow.”
-Lt. Col. Alfred Daniel Wintle MC
The murder of Henry Nowak is intensely political, and it should be. It impacts us all, especially those with children. The only way to achieve change is with politics, so anyone saying we should not politicise it is turning their backs on us all.
Between the kirpan exemption on knife carrying and the police being more concerned about potential racism than "I have been stabbed and cannot breathe", Henry Nowak might be *the* most exemplary victim of woke
Today in Makerfield I found 2 things about Restore.
1) Restore's vote base is largely U50s.
2) This is little appetite for Thatcherism. The economic call is protectionist nationalism.
Rupert is great on the border and immigration, but I think he needs to allow someone else to talk the economic policy as I don't think he's aligned with what the base wants
only foreign aid that makes sense is stuff like our contributions to the World Bank, some public health stuff (stopping diseases from spreading), transactional aid in return for export orders or contracts for British firms
Blair’s head is in the clouds…
It’s well worth reading Blair’s essay - if for no other reason but to illustrate that Tony is still stuck in the past. Littered with generalisms about Britain’s standing in the world, European alignment, our place at the table etc there is no detail whatsoever about how the material needs of the British will be met or improved. All of the important questions remain unanswered:
How will cheap grid energy actually be generated and supplied and by who? How will the housing crisis - unmentioned - be solved? Who will build the houses and how will this be financed? How can we rebuild domestic industries while practicing ‘free’ trade with China? How can we start to correct our present impoverished ‘vassal’ status with the US?
How can the disastrous debt-ridden utilities privatisations be dealt with? In the increasingly Balkanised and divided society that Blair and his progressive friends created - how can we avoid civil conflict?
I would say that the correction of most our these problems requires far greater degrees of autonomy and national independent action than our political class has hitherto been capable of. We need, in other words, the very insularity which Blair decries.
💣Seriously people .... Stop being blinded and distracted by ridiculous infighting. It doesn't matter and it isn't helping. Do this instead.
Ask serious questions.
▪️What is your policy on fighting lawsuits from green companies receiving taxpayer and bill payer subsidies when you try to cancel contracts or Net Zero schemes?
▪️How exactly will you deport large numbers of illegal migrants? Airlines? The military? How many flights would it take to deport 1 million people?
▪️What happens when the country of origin refuses to let planes land or refuses to take people back?
▪️You talk about growth constantly. Growth in what exactly? Which industries?
▪️What is your actual energy plan? Actual baseload power. Gas? Nuclear? Imports? Storage? At what cost? how will it support Data centres or are you not backing those?
▪️What will you do when green investment funds, pension funds and bond markets threaten to pull money or crash investment if you reverse Net Zero policies? and what is the economic impact of that. To the nearest lets say £100 million?
▪️What will you do about unemployment as AI starts replacing huge sections of white collar work?
▪️You say you support AI. Why? What is the benefit to ordinary people? And how will you fund the grid expansion required to run it?
▪️What will you do about import duties? If you remove them, what happens to domestic industry? If you keep them, how do you increase exports and remain competitive?
▪️What will you do about crumbling schools? You say you will cut Net Zero funding to pay for repairs but many of these projects are tied into long contracts which could cost millions in legal battles and take years to unwind.
▪️What will you do about the BBC? Keep the licence fee? Scrap it? Privatise it? Replace it with what?
▪️What will you do about benefits? What exactly will be cut and when? And how do you win the next election when millions are poorer in the short term? and the long term has fewer jobs?
▪️How will councils replace revenue from ULEZ style schemes, parking charges and environmental levies if those policies are scrapped?
▪️What will you do about adult social care? Fully fund it? Means test it? Leave families to carry the burden? How will ordinary people afford it as we all get older and the population declines?
▪️What is your plan for universities? International student numbers are already falling. Will you let universities collapse? Bail them out? Replace £ billions in lost revenue how exactly? accomodation, local industry, loans etc ? have you got a plan?
▪️How will you fill the tax gap as unemployment rises and automation expands? How will you fund an increasing demand for welfare with fewer workers paying tax?
▪️How will you deal with the NHS backlog? And when? reform, targets and KPIs will all trigger strikes, what then?
▪️What is your plan for pensions as the population ages and fewer workers support more retirees?
▪️What happens when people become progressively poorer and angrier during the “transition period” you promise will eventually improve things? What is your public order plan then?
▪️Will you keep facial recognition technology? Digital ID? Online verification systems? If yes, where does it stop?
▪️You say you will repeal CRAG, disband quangos and cut the size of the state. Fine. How many Cabinet Office jobs go? How much will redundancy and legal action cost taxpayers?
▪️What is your plan for prisons? You say you will deport foreign offenders. To where? What happens when countries refuse to take them back? You say “withhold trade.” Fine. What if we need their oil, gas, minerals or supply chains?
▪️What is your plan for NGOs? Will you stop taxpayer funding entirely or only fund NGOs that politically align with your government?
▪️What is your plan for free speech? Will people still be allowed to fundamentally disagree with government policy or will disagreement simply be relabelled “misinformation” in line with international frameworks and consensus bodies?
▪️What is your plan for debt interest and borrowing as Britain edges closer to becoming a permanently indebted low growth economy?
▪️What happens when the civil service, regulators, courts and quangos simply obstruct the policies you were elected to deliver?
I could go on for hours. Seriously, I could and so could you!
My point is this. None of the silly personality politics matter anymore. The long term recovery of this country does.
You can argue all day about migration, culture and climate change. But unless people start asking serious operational questions instead of behaving like football fans, nothing changes.
The road we are on is unstopable unless we stop it! They wont bother confronting the problems if you dont ask the hard questions.
Our election cycle of 5 years means any undertaking will hurt, badly... it will take 15 - 20 years to reverse changes and thats before we factor in the impact of AI.
Not one politician has thought beyond getting into power.
Reject this 🔥
@FUDdaily Many are one issue voters, who are under the false pretense that remigration will solve everything. There exists very few intellectuals who care about the "boring" stuff like fiscal policy.
A good article explaining the short term positive effects of mass immigration.
If you have stagnant growth and a rising set of public spending demands, one of the easiest levers to pull, other than borrowing, is to let in a lot of working age people, if you are only concerned about the economic health of the country for the next financial year or parliamentary term, it makes sense, you mechanically increase income tax, national insurance contributions and VAT receipts while the people who are coming to pay this will not be fiscal burdens within the time period.
The issue is, for anyone with a life expectancy above 5, is that the cohort of migrants we brought over in the time period to increase tax receipts will then become a fiscal burden as they age, and you are back to square one.
What you end up getting is a fiscal illusion since we are not looking at the future fiscal costs as a result of this, and living standards do not grow, hence why people are mad.