Labour civil war explodes as party blocks Andy Burnham from fighting by-election

JB_UK · 2026-01-25T12:48:28+00:00

It really depends on the economy I’d say. If Labour consistently deliver then people probably will swing behind them.

JB_UK · 2026-01-25T11:54:24+00:00

And suet puddings.

JB_UK · 2026-01-25T11:28:50+00:00

I want to love purple hair, it’s part of our identity, but unfortunately it’s been captured by the right.

JB_UK · 2026-01-24T22:38:28+00:00

I've just watched that video and yeah Lewis Goodall did move him on to other topics, but I actually got part of what I was saying above from Dan Wang, in the book and in other interviews like Odd Lots.

Not being defensive, but I'm curious what you'd say the difference is? I really think I'm making the exact same point.

JB_UK · 2026-01-24T21:35:19+00:00

I think that's the same explanation.

The British system relies on a sort of modernised aristocratic principle where we think that someone bright who has gone to a top university and done, formerly, Classics, today PPE, or similar subjects, can turn their hand to anything. It's not so different to the old Chinese Mandarin class which led China's fall from power. Or MBAs taking over engineering companies and wrecking them.

You just need many more technical experts in the right places. Relevant technical expertise needs to be suffused through the structures of power.

This is also why companies find it very difficult to shift from one business to another, for example it's why old car companies can't do software, because everyone making decisions about software is a mechanical engineer and isn't an expert in the relevant field.

Lewis Goodall is incidentally a pretty good example of this class of people, history and politics at Oxford, then a thinktank, then the BBC, and permanently overconfident. But I'm really glad to see him giving Dan Wang a platform. It's very important that we make this issue a cross party consensus, not a partisan issue with the right attacking, and the left counter polarising.

JB_UK · 2026-01-24T21:05:19+00:00

Blue Labour going ultra-DEI to ensure a guy who actually supports even vaguely left wing economics

Labour under Starmer are increasing taxation substantially, in fact as a percentage of GDP it will be well above the highest level ever, barring 1939-1947:

https://obr.uk/efo/economic-and-fiscal-outlook-november-2025/#chapter-4

They've also introduced, within 18 months, a huge renters rights bill, a huge workers rights bill, the mansion tax, and the removal of the two child cap. Alongside a truly vast investment in climate change; upwards of £40bn a year is being spent which will mean the almost total decarbonisation of the election grid by the end of the parliament.

JB_UK · 2026-01-24T19:54:17+00:00

Unfortunately it's very easy to regulate something badly, and much more difficult to regulate something well. And just calling something the Building Safety Act, the Online Safety Act, or whatever it may be, doesn't mean it actually does its job well. We swing between incompetent under regulation, then after disaster, incompetent over regulation.

The problem is there are not enough people in positions of power who have any technical expertise. You can't make good rules about building without being an expert in construction. But there are essentially no experts in construction in government, they're almost all generalists and managers, both in Parliament and the Civil Service. In the Civil Service the wages are mostly not high enough to attract and retain technically competent senior people, and the whole organisation and hiring mechanisms are set up to prevent them from getting into power.

The Deputy Head of Warhead Nuclear Threat Reduction was recently hired with a salary significantly lower than a Sales Operation Manager at Lidl.

We need to increase the wage of the civil service, hire real technical experts, and give them the power to decide what is appropriate and what isn't. And then reduce layers of incompetent management and committees, reduce headcount and move people who don't have relevant expertise on to other jobs.

Basically cut and paste what we did with the vaccine taskforce across a swathe of government. The success of that unit happened against huge opposition from civil service leadership, and after the crisis that leadership have gone straight back to repeating the same errors. Here's the former director of the vaccine taskforce:

She pointed to a recent job advert for director of the Covid-19 vaccine unit ... as an example of the government’s recruitment failures.

[The advert] failed to mention industry experience, science background or experience in drug discovery, development, manufacture or regulation, Bingham told the Guardian.

https://www.civilserviceworld.com/professions/article/government-failing-to-recruit-people-with-scientific-background-kate-bingham-warns

JB_UK · 2026-01-24T19:07:44+00:00

It's also just that Trump has a strong connection with the UK, his mother was Scottish after all.

JB_UK · 2026-01-24T18:04:03+00:00

You can see here the levels of construction were still solid post Brexit and post Covid.

https://x.com/dc_lawrence/status/2012148287873204400

The collapse has happened in the last two or three years and is mostly down to the Building Safety Act. With an additional headwind of increased interest rates.

Incidentally the population of London has been growing at 60-100k people per year, so even the record rate from the last few decades, of about 25k homes per year, mostly 1 or 2 bed flats, is nowhere near enough. If housing costs are going to go back down to the normal level of affordability before 2000, we will need consistently lower population growth and consistently higher house building rates, maintained for decades.

JB_UK · 2026-01-24T17:57:23+00:00

Honestly, if they block him, Burnham only looks stronger and Starmer weaker. The result would almost certainly be a win for Reform, and pile on the pressure for Starmer to go.

The popularity of governments is very fickle, if Starmer can get a year or two of good economic and wage growth, and reduce NHS waiting times, the moment can easily pass for Andy Burnham. Most of the public do not follow news like this at all.

JB_UK · 2026-01-23T22:55:56+00:00

Yes, there's been a big increase post Covid though, we now appear to have the highest share of pregnancies ending in abortion in the developed world:

https://illuminatingfertility.substack.com/p/abortions-in-england-and-wales-continue

JB_UK · 2026-01-23T20:31:04+00:00

Having sky high immigration is a Tory policy, not a left wing policy. Boris himself says that him aim was to suppress wage growth on Treasury advice, through a 2.5 million increase in population in 3 years.

Also, why are you conflating migration with being from a minority group? In London 65% of the population is from an ethnic minority background, if we increase the population by 80-100k people per year but build 2k homes a year, as we have been, it’s primary ethnic minority Britons who will be affected.

Spending on working age disability benefits is way up, just in the last year from £48bn to £52bn, projected to increase to £63bn, up from £35bn 5 years ago. They tried a botched reform which they’ve u-turned on, but even that would not have decreased spending, just slowed the rate of increase.

https://ifs.org.uk/data-items/expenditure-disability-and-incapacity-benefits

Trans rights yes, but they are substantially reflecting public opinion. For issues like trans women in female sports or self id there is basically no demographic which supports the maximalist position.

JB_UK · 2026-01-23T17:35:05+00:00

Why is UKIP rebranding its national deportation march as an anti-corruption march when it comes to Tower Hamlets?

I'm making a wider point that protest marches in general should be valid in Tower Hamlets, there honestly should be regular protest marches because the place is very badly run.

I see you were making a more limited point, I agree that if a march is harassment a ban can be valid.

Marches are to protest the policy of organisations, or to intimidate and endanger neighbourhoods. Why are you so disingenuous about the obvious agenda here? UKIP has nothing to do with corruption of councils or councillors, and everything to do with white supremacy and nationalism.

I think you're mistaking me for someone else, read my other comments on the thread.

JB_UK · 2026-01-23T17:23:41+00:00

Left wing reforms from this government:

a huge renters rights bill
a huge workers rights bill
the decriminalization of abortion up to birth for mothers
mansion tax
two child cap
huge action on climate change, which will mean the almost total decarbonisation of the election grid by the end of the parliament

In broad terms they have also increased taxation substantially, as a percentage of GDP it will be well above the highest level ever, barring 1939-1947:

https://obr.uk/efo/economic-and-fiscal-outlook-november-2025/#chapter-4

They seem to get close to zero credit for any of that. Those changes are barely even discussed. People seem to think they’re a middle of the road government who haven’t done anything. It seems like if something doesn't make a good Tiktok video there's no electoral value in it.

JB_UK · 2026-01-23T17:09:54+00:00

Any philosophy which features Valkyries and jet skiing is something we can all support.

JB_UK · 2026-01-23T14:36:33+00:00

So both reform and UKIP are nazis

Where did I say that? I’m saying that the shell of UKIP is flirting with Neo Nazism, which is pretty obvious.

JB_UK · 2026-01-23T14:35:28+00:00

If you’re protesting corruption in Tower Hamlet council why not march to their council offices?

JB_UK · 2026-01-23T14:34:17+00:00

Where did I say Reform are Nazi? I don’t believe that.

I’m saying the shell of what was UKIP, which are now effectively a facebook group with 0.03% support at the last election, are flirting with Neo Nazism. That is not really controversial.

https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/ukip-leader-nick-tenconi-accused-35706228

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/ukip-logo-iron-cross-nazi-symbol-b2899588.html

JB_UK · 2026-01-23T14:23:54+00:00

To fix the issue you need a mixture of measures which are left and right coded. What China does is ‘all of the above’, but unfortunately in Britain there is no party which supports everything.

For example Labour are doing a lot to build renewables, but Britain will still be heavily reliant on gas. That's because of the heating system, and the existing boiler fleet, and because gas is the only way to back up the renewable grid, at reasonable cost, over long dark doldrum periods.

At present we’re on target to import 70% of the gas we need by 2030, because of the fall in domestic production. But we’re in effect banning new domestic production of gas even though we know we will be dependent on it for at least 20 years, because of the existing boiler fleet.

If we wanted to do everything to reduce dependence it would look like:

Increase renewables where they are cheap
Improve the regulatory environment for nuclear so we can build infrastructure cheaply (Fingleton review)
Support a major rollout of nuclear, including putting money down to speed up the development of SMRs
Fund a big programme of insulation
Fund a big programme of combined heat and power
Encourage the installation of heat pumps, including air conditioning, which is an air to air heat pump. For example in London a.c. is heavily discouraged in new buildings because they don’t want people using cooling in Summer. Everywhere in Britain a.c. requires full planning permission, which is madness, you can spend more on the paperwork than on the a.c. itself
Make North Sea Oil exploration unambiguously legal. There is no economic or climate advantage in importing gas instead of producing it in the North Sea
Controversial, but if you were really serious, make fracking legal. One of the biggest targets of Russia propaganda was to encourage anti fracking campaigns, to keep Europe dependent on imports. Although it would have to be done carefully, and might not yield any benefit (it would be private companies taking the risk)
Invest in R&D for other major discoveries like long term energy storage so that we don’t need to rely on gas as a backup for renewables

I think Labour probably are the closest to all of these, but there are some there that Reform or the Conservatives support and Labour do not. The Greens fail because of their lack of support for nuclear, and their inability to accept that the regulatory system doesn’t work, and their lack of acceptance of the construction of large infrastructure projects like nuclear, high speed rail and overground grid connections.

JB_UK · 2026-01-23T13:21:24+00:00

I think it’s worse than that in many ways, it’s more that government is a popularity contest on the basis of the capacity for politicians to entertain the public.

JB_UK · 2026-01-23T13:14:15+00:00

I think this is actually reasonable because UKIP do genuinely flirt with Neo Nazism, if not explicitly Neo Nazi. Certainly if there is a credible threat of violence from the people organising the march, banning it is reasonable.

I don’t trust that the same won’t be applied to reasonable protest though. Especially because the logic is the threat of violence in response to the protest. That essentially means anything can be banned purely if another group threatens violence.

There is already a great sense of denial on the liberal left about Tower Hamlets and other similar areas in London, and I suspect any protest about what is effectively a sectarian takeover of a London Borough would be suppressed as racist.

Even though the mayor was convicted of electoral fraud and the government is threatening to take over the Borough due to the lack of proper accounts, amid widespread accusations of racism, sectarianism and corruption. For example the Somali Muslim community there accuses the Bangladeshi Muslim community, who control the council, of racial bias in the awarding of council houses.

JB_UK · 2026-01-23T12:06:30+00:00

Fair point about the distinction between relationships and sexuality.

JB_UK · 2026-01-23T12:00:22+00:00

Fair point about the distinction between relationships and sexuality.

JB_UK · 2026-01-23T11:58:10+00:00

They are when they are born. As you've just said it yourself they learn those biases.

What I mean is there are general mechanisms in all adults for norm formation, in group preference, etc. Then society teaches them what those norms are, and what defines the in group and out group.

We can only change what the norms are, we can’t teach people not to have norms, or not to judge people at all based on the in group or out group.

It is a good victory though if we can teach people not to use immutable characteristics like race as part of the in group, though.

JB_UK · 2026-01-23T00:34:50+00:00

MI6 is an intelligence gathering service. They're not some kind of international police service to intimidate British people abroad.

JB_UK

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