Andy Burnham, John Healey and Steve Rotheram, Mayor of the Liverpool City Region, took time out from the Labour Party Conference to board the publicly-owned new £26 million Royal Daffodil, the first new Mersey Ferry in more than 60 years. Nice pictures as they say…
Burnham’s nautical nationalisation fantasies will likely hit choppy if he checks how the last state-run ferry adventure went north of the border. The SNP took Ferguson Marine’s Port Glasgow shipyard into full public ownership in December 2019, pitched as the rescue that would finally get Scotland’s ferries built properly. The original 2015 deal was two Clyde and Hebrides ferries for £97 million, delivered in 2018. When the state took over, the minister promised to “progress work on the vessels and achieve the best possible outcome for the yard and its employees.” How’d that turn out?
According to Audit Scotland: “The first vessel, MV Glen Sannox, was delivered six and half years later than planned and the second, the MV Glen Rosa, is due to be delivered in Summer 2026, eight years late. The cost to complete the vessels, since nationalisation, is now expected to be £335 million.” Glen Sannox finally arrived in 2024 and has been plagued by faults ever since, including a hull crack caused by propeller vibration that now needs replacing. Glen Rosa still isn’t carrying passengers. It’s now not expected in service until the end of 2026, and is on course to cost four times its £50 million contract price. Welcome aboard the Labour nationalisation Titanic…
The latest briefings say that Badenoch will announce a cut to IHT or a threshold rise at her 11 a.m. speech today. Alex Burghart told BBC Breakfast:
“People have worked all of their lives, you know, they paid tax on those earnings, you know, when they earned them. And they, you know, they bought things for themselves. And we think that they should be able to give uh that property and those those savings to their their children and their grandchildren if they want to…
It’s just a point of principle. If people have been taxed on money throughout their lives, then you know it’s what they have left is theirs and they should be able to give it to who they want.”
The most hated tax in Britain…
Miatta Fahnbulleh has deleted an X post campaigning for a £45 million accessibility edit to Peckham Rye station after a backlash. Do you want to bring some of the bills down, or?
The energy secretary’s campaign – she is also MP for Peckham – would involve the mandated use of “handheld tools” to build lifts up from the ground floor to Peckham Rye platform level. The accessibility brigade cannot be stopped…
Everyone pointed out the absurdity of the cost and the ridiculousness of the energy secretary campaigning publicly for government funding here. The campaign disappears in a cloud of smoke…
DCMS ministers have admitted following a parliamentary question from Shadow Cabinet Office minister Charlie Dewhirst that the department “recognised” the following diversity and inclusion events in 2025:
About three of those are justifiable and even they don’t need special attention from the Civil Service, which should be focused on dishing out grants to theatres and so on. Scrap the whole thing…
New research has revealed that the net worth to depart Britain in the last two years totals more than £200 billion. Good luck to HMRC!
The Tax Reform Council has produced research showing that, while there is no official measure of wealth taken abroad by leavers, estimates range up to £250 billion. Figures have ranged from £100-£150 billion so far…
27,300 liquid millionaires are estimated to have left already since Labour came to power – adjusting for property, private businesses and other non-liquid assets produces a total of between £200 and £250 billion gone. Around £110 billion is identifiable from public exits, for example:
A spokesman for the Tax Reform Council said:
“The sheer scale of wealth transfer out of Britain in just two years is truly astounding. Unfortunately this is a trend that is not only likely to continue but may well accelerate.
Moreover, the wealth that has departed will be growing elsewhere, just not in Britain. Those who would otherwise have stayed to build their businesses will be doing that in other countries and fewer will arrive to build wealth here. In the long run this is probably the most significant factor.”
A tragedy…
There’s a bit of a glum mood among Labour kremlinologists at the moment after the party’s attack operation on Tory Conference has failed to land. Oh well, never mind…
Labour’s big attack into conference was a tortured ‘dossier‘ in which the party pretended to be the Tory vetting team, writing to Kemi, criticising her Shadow Cabinet for various past wrongdoings and slip-ups. It didn’t help that it’s formatted such that it’s a pain to read…
Party attack teams have a dual role at conferences which is to land an attacking stunt as well as pick up good stories on the ground from spies who record fringes and so on. So far the latter consists of a Tory MP complaining about the effects of mass migration on Luton. Compare that to stories about black labradors and far-right fantasies which landed at Labour Conference…
As far as stunts go Guido hears the Birmingham Tapestry was the invention of Tory attack chief Marcus Natale, who was shrewdly advised by ex-top CCHQ spinner Alex Wild to include those journalists who would tweet themselves approvingly. The stunt has gone down very well, the Conservative Research Department is chipper coming out of this conference season..
Kemi Badenoch at the 1922-ConHome bash last night:
“I did praise [Burnham] for his stamina, it was amazing. All I had to do was sit back and lie there. I didn’t have to do anything at all…”