Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy confirmed on Sky News that all disposable vapes will be banned from 1st June 2025. Thank Sunak for that idea…
Nandy said that the ban was being pursued to prevent the take-up of vaping in children. It’s already illegal for kids to buy vapes, the same goes for cigarettes…
She then went on about how they weren’t “pleasant“:
“Single use vapes in particular are causing a lot of problems for the environment. You know I walk through my local park and the council is very good job of dealing with it but you see them discarded all over the place and, um, it’s not pleasant at all for people to have to deal with. So for those reasons we’ve taken the decision to ban single use vapes from next year.”
Guido didn’t realise pleasantness was the metric by which the government decides if something should be outlawed or not. Even the British public isn’t behind Starmer on some of his extreme nannying policies…
Guido was scrolling on the internet and wanted to see how Miliband’s much-vaunted GB Energy is getting along after its founding hiring run flopped with almost zero interest from applicants. No luck – Labour has taken down the GB Energy website…
Now the public can’t admire the stock image logo any more – the link http://great-british-energy.org.uk/redirects to boring updates on the project over at the gov.uk website. Gone are testimonials from members of the public and a postcode search feature to see: “How will it help in my area?” Could Labour not think of any answers to that one now the election’s over?
Thankfully the old website is still available on the internet archive. Now Labour has given up on saying energy bills will fall by £300 GB Energy is increasingly looking like just another stunt…
Starmer continues to peddle the line that Trump trying to sue the Labour party won’t affect his relationship with the former President, though his cabinet’s past (and very public) disdain for Trump doesn’t exactly bode well for the special relationship if Trump does get in to the White House. Nor will having Labour MP Stephen Doughty as the Minister for North America…
Doughty has never hidden his feelings on Trump. In an interview with the BBC, he labelled Trump as “racist, incompetent or both” and in 2019, branded him a “racist, sexist, divisive and a liar”, “offensive to civilised values” and that Trump “represents the very worst of the world”. Tell us how you really feel…
The Minister for North America also sponsored not one, but two Early Day Motions against Trump when he was President. First in 2017, sponsoring an EDM to stop Trump from speaking in Westminster Hall, and in 2019, he sponsored an EDM to rescind the offer of a state visit to Trump. If Trump does win as many polls suggest, it may make for awkward small talk if Doughty is shipped out to American soil in this role…
The first laugh line in an amiable PMQs came as soon as Labour’s indomitable deputy stood up. Explaining why she was at the despatch box, Angela Rayner slipped a sly, almost imperceptible shiv between her leader’s ribs saying he was in Samoa, looking for ideas about economic growth.
There are many reasons to visit the far-flung tropical paradise but “ideas for economic growth” is not one of them.
Having said that, their ancestral traditions of headhunting, spear-fighting and feasting on the organs of enemies will serve us all well when Labour’s net zero requirements meet their industrial strategy – but that’s for another time.
Questioners asked Angela about her signature dishes – Renters Reform and Day One Rights – and her answers provoked short, dense shouts of approval from behind her. For all her policies’ morbid effects on the economy and society, on renters and workers, on jobs and health and workplace relations and prosperity – she brings joy to Labour hearts. She is Labour’s throbbing socialist soul and her party loves her for it.
What was Keir thinking, giving her his slot to go to Samoa? Free trip, of course, first class cabin, nice hotel, nodding palms. But the more his party sees of his deputy the more they yearn towards her. She is why they joined Labour. To champion the vulnerable, bring comfort to the weary, minister to the dying, forgive us our sins, make the world a better place.
That it means feasting on the organs of the working class by taking their jobs, bankrupting their companies and closing their factories need not be faced.
Thus, Angela was able to answer Oliver Dowden’s unanswerable question with insuperable ideological confidence. He asked, “What is her definition of working people?” and she cried, “All those people let down by 14 years of Tory failure!”
It’s not the OED definition but it worked in the space.
Dowden asked if she agreed with the IFS who said that working people would suffer from an increase in employer NICs. He got ‘black hole’ back from that and so asked whether she agreed with herself when she described such an increase as an attack on working people?
She replied with Tory chaos, a 70-year high in taxes, and the mess they left behind.
Relations crossed a tipping point abruptly, as they can in the House, when Dowden mentioned this was to be their last exchange “Awwww!” And Angela referred to the Battle of the Gingers, and one or the other of them in the context of the Commonwealth talked about the shared “historical and cultural ties – much like the pair of us”. More “Awwwww!”
It was a glimpse of good nature and a life outside, below politics.
But she had to close on Tory chaos and “rebuilding Britain” and it was impossible not to reflect on our national ills. The 70-year tax high, the 100 per cent public debt, the sick bill, the economic stagnation – it all goes back to lockdown and the £400 billion debt (as Paul Hogan said, “No. THIS is a black hole.”).
The single greatest public policy error in anyone’s lifetime, it was mandated by the Tories and whooped on by Labour. Both parties implicated in and responsible for the fastest public spending since World War Two, and neither side now able to acknowledge the error
As the Tories go into their Corbyn years, the argument in this form won’t win for either party. They are two fighting crocodiles in a death roll with each other. It will end in tears, obviously, and two very sorry crocodiles.
No wonder Nigel Farage is looking so cheerful.
PS: A late questioner gave us a nice example of political overreach. She wanted her Government “to do everything to keep menopausal women happy, healthy and wonderful”.
Of the many things beyond the power of government – even more than bringing peace to the Middle East – that is almost certainly the first.
Those who are sated of Labour’s gift-aid scandals may look forward to a few sex-based novelties. The Labour couple said to have been at it in the Reasons Room (not the Reasons Room!) have been relocated to the Aye Lobby lavatory. This is an anonymous revelation even when the couple is named as no one has ever heard of them. They are new intake, as Frankie Howerd would be pleased to note. On the other hand, a more prominent name is said to be running amok on the estate with a libido the size of a small pig – knocking down fences, rooting in the soil, and truffling in public. That name can’t be suppressed forever, can it? It’s in no one’s interests.
Labour’s line on its Head of Operations organising for one hundred staffers to fly to the US to campaign against Trump is that it’s just politics nerds doing politics nerd things – nothing to do with the Party, let alone the government. Must be why the original post was deleted, then…
The government is meant to stay neutral: “Whoever the American people elect, the United Kingdom government will work with them very closely.” Starmer and Lammy have made pains to keep the line impartial…
One minister didn’t get the memo. Kirsty McNeill is hosting an election night “Come on Kamala” Rally on November 5th with the Labour Women’s Network. “Labour For Kamala” badges have been produced to distribute to staffers. The event’s advert says:
“Before the results start to come in and the chaos begins, join LWN and special guests including Kirsty McNeill, MP for Midlothian and the Parliamentary Under Secretary of State for Scotland and Amy Lamé, broadcaster, performer and outgoing London Night Czar, for an evening of analysis, predictions, taking in the moment and cheering on Kamala.”
Failed London Night Tsar Lamé is jumping back into politics after leaving her politically restricted post in City Hall at the end of October. That must be why only 18 people have bothered to RSVP…
Rayner couldn’t explain what Labour meant by “working people” at Deputy Prime Minister’s Questions today. Helpfully, Science Minister Chris Bryant has just come up with a new line on what it means: those badly affected during the cost of living crisis. Bryant clarified on Politics Live just now:
“[Working people] has become a shorthand in political circles for the people who were particularly disadvantaged in the cost of living crisis…that suddenly meant that people had to find an extra £300 a month for their mortgages so those are the people that we didn’t want to hit, so we wanted to say in the general election we don’t want to take more tax from you and that’s what we said.”
Last week, Labour MP Dan Tomlinson claimed that a rise in employer NICs would constitute a new tax on “working people” because someone who owns and runs a business is obviously a “working person.” On Monday, Care Minister Stephen Kinnock was asked whether six-figure earners were working people, to which he refused to answer six times, then conceding that Labour hadn’t worked out what a “working person” was yet. Labour continue to waffle and contradict each other over what “working people” means. Opening the door to tax hikes for all..
