After managing to get 2% of his targeted affordable housebuilding projects started, Sadiq Khan is giving up. The mayor is pushing Labour for permission to impose rent controls on the capital – requests Labour is minded to accept. A long-running campaign of his…
An act of parliament would be needed to hand over the keys to the rental market. Rent controls fail wherever they are implemented, most recently in Scotland, where rents rose higher than anywhere in the UK by a large margin after their imposition. They went so badly in Berlin that the courts declared them unconstitutional. Caving to socialist impulses at the first sign of pressure is standard…
According to Labour sources a new SpAd is about to enter Downing Street – John Stevens, the current Mirror political editor, is leaving the Lobby to spin for the government. Stevens is going to work for Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster and Labour heavyweight Pat McFadden…
No stranger to a scoop, Stevens will have to fend off his Lobby colleagues from inside government. From memory the last Mirror political editor to make the jump to Downing Street was Bad Al Campbell, the jury is out on how well that went. Guido has approached Stevens for comment…
UPDATE: Move confirmed.
Alastair Campbell left the internet’s town square on tenterhooks last night as he revealed he was thinking of leaving Twitter because “Toytown Trumpy Fashboy” Elon Musk is running it. Displaying the level of analysis Alastair is known well for…
Like a lot of people, am thinking about leaving Xitter (copyright @LeightonAndrews ) given how truly awful it has become since Toytown Trumpy Fashboy @elonmusk took over. Staying for now on the grounds you should fight the far right wherever they are. But meanwhile have set up…
— ALASTAIR CAMPBELL (@campbellclaret) August 14, 2024
Campbell was encouraged by former Change UK candidate Jessica Simor to join the alternative Bluesky platform. A great decision for Bad Al as his potential audience will be 1% the size of Twitter’s…
Other fans of Campbell said: “No one is forcing you to stay,” “No, just go, you won’t be missed by anyone,” and “Good riddance moron.” As usual Campbell says he’ll stay on the platform to “fight the far right wherever they are“. Dominic Cummings’ “SW1 NPCs” are best known for their insistence that they will leave Twitter without ever actually doing so. Despite Twitter apparently being like “Paris under Nazi occupation” the Musk-hating loons just can’t keep away…
New figures from the Office for National Statistics show GDP rose 0.6% in the second quarter, following a 0.7% uptick in the first. Growth was led by services which outstripped shrinkage in construction and production…
Rachel Reeves issues the same tired line: “We are under no illusion as to the scale of the challenge we have inherited from the Conservatives after more than a decade of low growth and a £22 billion black hole in the public finances.” Unconditional pay hikes for the unproductive public sector seems a strange way to fix that black hole…
Hunt says the figures “are yet further proof that Labour have inherited a growing and resilient economy“. Crickets from Sunak as usual…
Parliamentary watchdog the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority (IPSA) doubled the taxpayer cash losing MPs would receive last year. Golden goodbyes shot up as losing MPs are now paid for four months after departing the Commons, as opposed to two. IPSA claimed this was to ensure the payouts were “fair and provide the appropriate support to MPs and their offices when leaving Parliament”. That’s something in the region of £21,180 per MP…
MPs already have redundancy packages at twice the amount enjoyed by regular workers. Seeing as 175 incumbent Tory MPs got the boot in July, the taxpayer is in the process of forking out £3,706,500 in golden goodbyes. Cheers, Rishi…
Much was made during the last government of the need to reduce civil service headcount. Jeremy Hunt specifically targeted useless diversity roles plaguing Whitehall. Guido thought he would see how much progress has been made on that front this year…
Guido fired Freedom of Information requests to all major departments to inquire about the headcounts of their central Equality, Diversity and Inclusion teams. It will surprise no one that far from cutting their diversity staff the civil service is actually increasing their numbers. One agency is now offering pay rises to those who ‘champion diversity‘…
DSIT, the Cabinet Office, DBT, MoJ, HMRC, and the Home Office have all expanded their diversity teams since the start of the year. More staff are of course needed to organise further George Floyd struggle sessions and meetings with witches...
The Home Office takes the inglorious first prize with a whopping 37 staff in its central DEI team. Only the DWP has honourably cut more than one DEI staff member since the start of the year, getting rid of about ten Higher Executive Officers. The rest have maintained their numbers. The woke blob marches on…
Speaking at his speech on how to achieve “progressive capitalism” Wes Streeting fired a dig and Andy Burnham:
“Bond markets are not bond villains and fiscal rules matter.”