RP

[Andrew Fox @Mr_Andrew_Fox]

Note what has happened today. Iran insisted on Israel ceasing fire in Lebanon as part of US ceasefire, then made their proxy in Lebanon keep firing at Israel, then used Israel’s response as a pretext to break off negotiations.

They know Washington is desperate for a deal before the world economy drops off a cliff and Americans pay a fortune at the gas pump. Tehran is running rings around Trump. The Iranians have a strategy and Washington does not. This is an absolute tragedy.

[Julian Jessop @julianHjessop]

Obviously I don't want to pick a fight with Al Carns, but this is nonsense... 🙄

The train operating companies made tiny profits (2% margins), rail infrastructure is already publicly owned (Network Rail), and the more profitable firms that own the trains are still private.

[Andrew Neil @afneil]

The Mandy Files — 7
Perhaps a succinct précis of what ails this government, with Keir Starmer the heart of the problem:
Mandelson: ‘They [10 Downing Street] don’t work as a team, they are not led and none of them really know what Keir [Starmer] thinks or wants.
‘In fact most of them don’t think Keir knows what he wants.’
In these 33 words Mandelson sums up why this government , despite its landslide majority, has gone off the rails so quickly and so completely.

[PiQ @PiQSuite]

Absolutely nails the stupidity of the UK’s economic suicide via Labour’s Net Zero Policy

👇

[Robert Colvile @rcolvile]

The irony of Burnham's bollocks about Right to Buy and council housing is that the secret of Manchester's housing success was literally the exact opposite - prioritising maximum private building over number of subsidised units. Here's (Labour) council leader Richard Leese.

[winkle. @w1nklerr]

https://t.co/KSiSKYBQpf

[Christopher Lupine @LupineLives]

Why are we poorer?

Because every year the Trillionaire Government confiscates more and more of our wealth to spend as they see fit

Big government, means big tax, means poorer taxpayers

[Charles Archer @that_stocks_guy]

Just one more tax bro, I swear bro, just one more and everything will be fine

[Cristo @cristo_radio]

It’s just amazing to me that when Labour are doing so badly they default to the safety of killing aspiration, taxing into oblivion and making the same mistakes again and again.

[Anthony O'Neill @AnthonyAinsdale]

How the bloody hell can reservoirs be running dry after one nice week of weather? It hadn't stopped raining for 8 months before that.

[Peter 🇬🇧🇺🇸 🇮🇱Defund the BBC @Peternoyes4]

@wesstreeting Read this please

[David Turver @7Kiwi]

Nice try Bob, but the evidence shows those countries that reduce emissions most grow more slowly and virtually stagnate. Net Zero is killing the economy.

[David Shaw @David90shaw]

🚨 Keir Starmer’s excuse for banning North Sea oil drilling is a masterclass in political stupidity!
He literally argued that producing our own energy does not protect us because "prices are set by the international market" anyway.
So his genius solution to protect us from global price spikes is to completely kill off British energy jobs, ban domestic drilling, and instead quietly import dirty Russian oil! You cannot make this up. He is actively sabotaging our national security to appease his eco activist friends while everyday families are forced to pay the price. Absolute madness. 🇬🇧📉

[Josh Hunt @iAmJoshHunt]

This is what happens when Victorian infrastructure runs decades past its design life.

This is what happens when you don't build a reservoir for thirty years.

This is what happens when depreciation is treated as an accounting abstraction rather than physical decay.

There's a lot more of this coming. The accumulated wear on every form of national capital, water, power, roads, housing, is reaching critical levels at the same time.

The basics we took for granted are about to get less reliable and a lot more expensive.

[David Turver @7Kiwi]

If renewables were cheaper, they wouldn't need subsidies or massive spending on grid integration costs.

[Taz @ItsTaz1989]

I’m tired of hearing about inequality. It’s not a problem. I don’t care if rich people are much richer than poor people as long as poorer people are also getting wealthier. Concentrating on the gap between the top & bottom does nothing to raise the bottom. https://t.co/kqwsLRKLxV

[Bear @BearJFK]

Decades telling British people that having kids is low status. Telling girls that to get pregnant is the worst thing that can happen. Social pressure to get half of all young people to go to university to then become heavily indebted, with it being a total waste of 3-5 years of their prime years.
Decades terrifying people that the world is going to burn up. Decades telling people the world is overpopulated and therefore immoral to have children—but this doesn’t apply to non Western countries. Decades of an economic system that prioritises putting people in work over family formation.

Yeah. Guess what? People stop having babies.

[Despotic Inroad @DespoticInroad]

One of the mistakes the Left always makes is assuming EVERYTHING can be paid for by "the billionaires" or a "wealth tax" (mechanics unspecified). They don't recognise the constraints of a £40k per capita economy, & want "the rich" to pay for:
👉far higher wages
👉world-class services/infrastructure
👉v. expensive energy transition/grid upgrades
👉infinity welfare, pensions, Universal Basic Income, 4-day week with no loss of pay etc.

It's why MMT becomes an attractive prospect, once they calculate that somehow expropriating 100% of the paper wealth of all ~150 billionaires in the UK would get you a couple years of NHS spending + a HS2 (and you can only do that ONCE, and it obviously wouldn't work the 1st time, because billionaire net worth isn't £££ sitting in UK accounts but is based on illiquid asset values). Many Green types (inc. Polanski) are also pro-EU, which assumes a default stance of allowing maximum capital mobility, i.e. capital flight WILL happen. They'll literally just go to Monaco and pay £0. Hence we witnessed a flirtation with "oh we don't actually owe much money – it's all debt owed to ourselves through the BoE".

Corbyn's manifestoes stuck to fiscal rules (balanced day-to-day spending + borrowing to invest) at a time when capital expenditure needed to produce a ROI>0 to be sustainable in a period of 0% base rates. James was partly responsible for this Corbynite fiscal realism (acting as a drag on some of the madder ambitions), & as he says here, even this moderated, non-MMT, social-democratic Corbynism "can't work now", in the high interest %, high-inflation era.

[Andrew Lilico @andrew_lilico]

People like @wesstreeting are more than clever & well-informed enough to know that inequality hasn't risen in the UK for decades. It's depressing to see such blatant attempts by senior political figures to mislead the public by feeding urban myths & popular misconceptions.

[Simon French @Frencheconomics]

Unit Labour Costs in the UK have gone from some of the most competitive in the G7, to the worst since the introduction of the National Living Wage in 2016 (and amplified by employer NICs, and the recent ERA). Yet politicians trumpet it as one of their signature achievements. The overall package has made employing young people increasingly unattractive for employers.