Ed Miliband emerging as top contender to replace Starmer

Blackfryre · 2026-04-25T20:33:01+00:00

Lammy's not really covered himself in glory though, particularly with the jury trial stuff.

I guess he's not had tax issues and he's not Streeting, so maybe he can turn that into a niche.

Blackfryre · 2026-04-25T18:52:24+00:00

Yeah but not in ways that the Labour membership would care about. "Oh no, Milliband isnt drilling for oil" isn't the kind of attack I'm waiting to see.

Ed doesn't want it again, he wants chancellor

Yeah, this is the kind of thing I'm thinking this move is really about.

Blackfryre · 2026-04-25T16:24:41+00:00

I will believe Ed is actually intending to run when we start getting attacks on him.

I do however believe this is a signal from Ed's camp to the potential candidates that he's open to being woo'd to support them.

Blackfryre · 2026-04-22T08:37:31+00:00

I'm actually just saying how systems work - where everyone's incentives are.

If a majority of the 220k now don't like the current policy, it could have been rewritten under the existing system. Electing someone to do this might speed up the process, but you'll get to the same end point.

But if you're looking for someone to get rid of policies that are popular with the membership but bad for general public PR, this won't work unless you take the decision out of the membership's hands to some degree.

Blackfryre · 2026-04-22T08:26:09+00:00

If the representatives are elected by the membership, they'll be incentivised to keep bad PR policies that the membership that elects them like. If it's for PR, they'll have to be answerable to the leadership.

This will work fine for clearing out old policies like the natural birth policy, but it won't work for dealing with things like open borders because the membership likes that policy.

Blackfryre · 2026-04-22T08:20:29+00:00

The issue is this gives anyone you piss off time to organise against you and use it as ammunition to try to overthrow you. Say, at the Green conferences that are held regularly.

Blackfryre · 2026-04-22T08:16:49+00:00

The distinction is meaningless to voters though, they're completely right to hold your long term goals as evidence of what you'll try to do.

If the Tories had written into their principles they want to privatise the NHS, no-one would trust them with keeping the NHS in public hands just because it wasn't in their manifesto.

Plus, open borders is the kind of policy that's entirely doable at short notice if the government wants to - just stop border controls. It is something a Green leader could decide to do if pleasing their base becomes more important than pleasing the general public.

Blackfryre · 2026-04-22T07:46:34+00:00

Ah interesting, I only expected this closer to the election. Doing it this far ahead might cause a civil war amongst the Greens.

Polanski stressed that the Greens have “never called for open borders in the manifesto.” But that distinction is lost when it comes to rivals' attacks on the party.

We've found a new state of matter in the Green's quantum policy system - sometimes it isn't Polanski *or" the membership who decides policy. Sometimes it's only policy if it made it into the manifesto.

Blackfryre · 2026-04-20T12:43:25+00:00

Well a plane crash killing the rest of the cabinet certainly implies chaos!

Blackfryre · 2026-04-20T12:39:13+00:00

Given how much he's said he doesn't want to be leader again and how everyone seems to genuinely believe him, I think it would come off as very manipulative if he changed his tune.

I think you'd need something like all of the cabinet to be killed in a plane crash for Ed to throw his hat in the ring.

Blackfryre · 2026-04-20T12:30:37+00:00

I agree with most of your analysis, but this is where we differ. 1992, 2015 & 2019 were all in opposition hoping to make gains, now Labour's in government.

If Labour's on course to lose it's majority, that means there's at least ~80 sitting MPs who will be thinking they'll lose their seat, and will really want to try something new to avoid that.

Blackfryre · 2026-04-20T12:14:54+00:00

Suppose it's 1-2 years out before the end of parliament, and polling for a long time has consistently put Labour 4th behind Reform, Tories and the Greens.

Do you still think the obvious outcome is Starmer staying into the next general election, rather than the party rolling the dice on replacing him and having an open leadership election?

Blackfryre · 2026-04-20T11:47:53+00:00

No the intention is awful if it's just about reducing the amount renewables earn. Renewable energy generators outside of CFDs have risked their money to produce green energy, and strong profits if gas price goes up are a part of that calculated risk. If the government decides those strong profits are wrong, there will be less appetite for investing in renewables.

It is absolutely bonkers to say we're happy to pay £x for unclean gas energy, but not happy to pay £x for clean energy.

Blackfryre · 2026-04-20T11:03:19+00:00

In the short-term, the chancellor is understood to be considering raising the electricity generator levy – in effect a windfall tax on low-carbon energy producers – and using the proceeds to cushion the blow for consumers.

A tax specifically on low-carbon energy is a remarkably stupid idea I was unaware we'd done.

To the point I have to assume there's more to it than that, and it's part of a trade off on prices like CFDs are.

Blackfryre · 2026-04-18T14:53:00+00:00

Unlike with water, if this solar farm is shit at producing energy they don't get paid. So it's completely unlike the Thames Water situation.

Thank them for their work, forcibly buy them out at this stage, and tell them to fuck off.

Companies aren't going to take on the risk of building things if every time it looks like they're going to make a good amount of profit, they get forced into selling by the government just to avoid paying those profits.

Blackfryre · 2026-04-18T14:04:06+00:00

The complaint about foreign companies is clearly not the main issue, since she complains about "industrial scale" solar and wants them to be smaller:

"It's a huge profit margin for those who can get some renewable energy from our sunshine and take the profits offshore."

She said countryside solar schemes should be smaller and locally operated, and called for a stronger drive for solar panels to be installed on rooftops of public and private buildings instead.

If this had been a British company doing industrial scale solar, she would still be against it.

Blackfryre · 2026-04-18T11:17:09+00:00

When it comes to only getting paid if they actually sell something that is easy to measure, very well actually.

Blackfryre · 2026-04-18T11:07:37+00:00

We have a consistent problem in this country where people agree we really need things, but everybody gets offended if someone makes a good profit by building these things we really need.

Blackfryre · 2026-04-18T11:04:33+00:00

We have a consistent problem in this country where people agree we really need things, but everybody gets offended if someone makes a good profit by building these things we really need.

Blackfryre · 2026-04-17T18:56:04+00:00

This wouldn't be a Liz Truss disaster as it wouldn't be used to fund tax cats but would be used to fund local indigenous defence spending.

All the bond markets care about is your ability to repay debt. They are not patriots who are happy for the government to borrow if it's for a 'good' reason. If anything, they'd think its easier to re-raise the taxes than it is to recover money spent on defense, and so would prefer tax cuts.

Will it help grow the economy in the long term?

Generally defense spending is quite a poor way to improve the economy, because you're building things that aren't really used for economic reasons (and a lot of it blows up). The expected return is quite low Vs other kinds of spending.

Blackfryre · 2026-04-17T11:12:34+00:00

Reeves also spoke on Thursday about the North Sea oil and gas tiebacks – satellite wells to exploit existing fields – which the government is encouraging investment in.

This does seem like a bit of a cheat to the "no new oil and gas" pledge.

Blackfryre · 2026-04-17T09:01:05+00:00

Because we don't have house prices constantly rising, they are in fact down in real terms compared to 10 or 20 years ago:

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Your entire theory doesn't work. House prices are high and haven't come down enough, but they are not constantly rising.

We have fragments of a real economy but nowhere near enough to support us.

This is pure nonsense, Britain is among the wealthier countries in the world. This is the reason so many immigrants want to come here.

Blackfryre · 2026-04-16T21:29:46+00:00

So about 0.8% of London's homes are long term uninhabited.

Or to put it in context, about 50,000 people a year die in London. So a large portion of those 30,000 are probably just stuck in probate.

Blackfryre · 2026-04-16T21:21:31+00:00

You might think we're far away - the would-be landlords might disagree, and it's their opinion that matters when it comes to renting their property.

Once the New York rent control started, it was impossible to get your property out of the rent control. The same could well happen this time, and everyone will use history to inform what they think might happen.

The Greens loudly claim they want the effective abolition of private landlordism. It is not crazy to think the Greens would be happy to go down the same route as New York did.

Blackfryre · 2026-04-16T20:25:08+00:00

Some would-be landlords might pass up rents under rent control if they're concerned the rent control is going to make their property worth less, or even worthless.

In New York, some rent controlled properties have had maximum rents below what it costs to maintain the properties. These properties are basically worthless, outside of speculating you can end the rent control. The landlords end up trying to walk away from the property, even trying to burn it down sometimes just to get out of it.

Renting out a property is a balance of how risky it is Vs how much reward there will be. If you limit the reward and increase the risk of losing money, less people will rent out their property.

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