The Prime Minister’s remaining advisers did a good job for him on Monday. They nipped the Scottish rebellion in the bud and got statements of support from the Cabinet and others. This has bought the PM time. The Cabinet felt cornered, decided it was too early for their individual moves against the PM and so they had to come out with supportive statements. The Prime Minister had to face a worried party of MPs, and moved leftwards in his rhetoric to win them over.
Today the PM is the prisoner of the leading members of the Cabinet and Parliamentary party. Ed Miliband has been out and about, defining a leftwards lurch in government which he says is now needed to show the electors Labour is the party of change. Most Labour MPs are glad to see the back of Mandelson and will wish to explain their distaste of his policies as they distance themselves from the unfortunate events of the last year.
The markets had a little wobble on Monday as they briefly contemplated a lurch to the left under a possible new leader. For most of the time including all of the last year since Starmer and Reeves took over it has cost the UK government more to borrow longer term loans than on the one day spike up on the worst day of the Truss/LDI crisis in the bond markets. That is an understandable reaction to two Reeves budgets which put spending and borrowing up by too much. The Reeves re jig of the Treasury rules allowed the state to borrow more in the first half of this government’s term. She hoped for faster growth from extra public spending, but instead growth has slowed.
So now the country and the Labour government are in a bind. The Cabinet will try to enforce higher spending bigger public sector policies on Starmer who is their hostage. The bond markets will start to warn the government more that there are limits to how much they can spend and borrow before the lenders decide they have had enough or impose too high a price for the money needed.
It is particularly bad news if Mr Miliband gains greater influence at the head of the group of Cabinet members who become the left wing enforcers. He will want more and more extreme versions of his net zero policies as people refuse to buy heat pumps and electric cars and as renewable power waits for years to get access to enough new grid. There will be no magic green growth for the UK, with ever increasing dependence on Chinese impots of batteries, cheaper electric cars, turbines, solar panels and all the rest of the items Mr Miliband wants to impose on us.
Meanwhile Starmer will be seeking to woo the Labour audience with bigger and bigger give aways to the EU in another mistaken belief that will generate growth when it will lock us into a low and no growth zone and impose on taxpayers yet bigger bills.
February 11, 2026
So we’ll get the further leftward lurch we’d have got if Starmer had gone, because undoubtedly it would be someone from that camp who took over, but we’ll still have Starmer. He’ll be there clinging on and even more determined to ‘change Britain’ to teach us all a lesson for baying for his head on a stick.
Well, as the saying goes, it never rains.
February 11, 2026
So it’s all going to plan. We continue to march down this blind alley, spending more, taxing more and borrowing more.
The Bond Vigilantes must be getting towards the end of their tether watching as productivity collapses, tax receipts fall and bankruptcy looms.
No doubt the ignorant leftwaffe will want the BoE to print large amounts of money which will be the trigger for a financial meltdown.
The great Reset marches on.
February 11, 2026
The more people that become benefit dependent the better for their purposes. What’s a little financial melt down if it means people run to the arms of the socialists for their bread …forever.
A captive audience.
Blair was a wizard at this, it also helps claim there aren’t enough people in the work force and so the immigration ponzi scheme goes on too.
February 12, 2026
They have lost control completely.
The whole globalist agenda is in meltdown.
They will not be able to ‘charge us for air’ as suggested at the WEF recently.
February 11, 2026
Leftwards with Two-Tier or leftwards with Rayner, Burnham, Miliband …. or anyone else. (Streeting is almost certainly out of the running.)
All they have done is delayed the coup de grace until after the Local/Devolved elections so that Rayner can sort out her tax avoidance problem and Burnham can desperately seek a safe seat. In the meantime, Two-Tier will absorb the blame for the electoral disaster and the incomer can “promise” to revive Labour’s fortunes.
And the country will continue to go to hell in a handcart.
February 11, 2026
the could always stick Burnham in the Lords and make him PM from there if they really wanted, no need to get him elected.
February 11, 2026
Many Congratulations, Baron Redwood of Wokingham.
We now know for sure the temporary occupant of No. 10 will do anything to remain there; it is also clear he has no political sense at all. The next few weeks are going to be painful to watch, but, I think, more unpleasant for him.
Andrew Neil gave a masterclass interview on Times Radio podcast on what is wrong with our present political condition.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G6UPR0AgsQg
February 11, 2026
Good morning.
A good time to bury bad news, methinks.
I am hearing that the Justice Secretary wishes to have deleted all historical justice records deleted. This is being dressed up by the media as just child criminal records, but I believe it goes much, much further.
Who cares who becomes the latest puppet to inhabit Number 10. Our nation is being taken from us and justice for victims is being denied left, right and centre.
February 11, 2026
Good afternoon
Congratulations, JR. Looking forward to hearing from the Red Benches.
February 11, 2026
Does Ed Miliband really believe in his mad agenda? I know he only read PPE Oxon. but surely even he can see his agenda is total lunacy (it does not even save CO2 worldwide not that that is needed) it just wrecks the economy, our defences, jobs, living standards. Or does he have some other evil agenda?
See the Jeremy Clarkson video “you are destroying British Farming” and not just farming! Also the Sceptic with the sensible Kathryn Porter “the Electrification Delusion” or “It is not science it is ideology”.
February 12, 2026
Lifelogic,
At least one Labour MP knows all about the ‘dodgy science’. He has a relevant (i.e. science) degree.
I gather he’s been in touch with Prof. Steve Koonin, the author of ‘Unsettled’ (2022). That book sets out a more balanced account of ‘climate science’ than I’ve ever seen from the Met. Office or UK government.
Given the many cross-party contacts which take place, I expect Baron Redwood knows him and can exchange useful information.
February 11, 2026
Congratulations Baron Redwood of Wokingham. I wish you every success with your work in the House of Lords.
Before the last general election the General Secretary of a very large Trade Union was on television advocating how there is plenty of money to borrow and spend as our debt to GDP ratio is only 100% and Japan’s is 200%. It never occurred to her to consider why Japan’s ratio is so high and to see that it was not through choice but due to 15 years of economic disaster from 1990.
It did not occur to her how the interest rate on every single loan in the country will increase if our state borrowing increases (via upward moves across the yield curve). What price every British person will pay if Labour intensify a borrow and spend policy.
February 11, 2026
Just to point out the Cabinet itself is now owned by backbenchers who have power without responsibility and will not find it in their interest to permit another GE.
February 11, 2026
Perhaps 200 Labour MPs are weighing up their unemployed risk of action to unseat Starmer resulting in a GE later being called by the Party being torn apart as a result? Swallow political rebuff to keep the job?
February 11, 2026
Indeed we will have to suffer at least three more years of this appalling Labour Government under whatever dire leadership they choose. Plus we know that they and many Tories are quite happy to cancel elections at local level when they think they will be heavily defeated for whatever ruse they can find!
February 11, 2026
Just waiting for the day this useless PM is eventually removed from office and his cabinet of spineless jellyfish come out saying they really didn’t back Starmer but we wanted to stay in power at any cost , come the end of the month when the Labour Party get there arses kicked in the by-election and then the total wipe out at the local elections, bring it on have already got the celebrations drinks in ready to watch this bunch of muppets squirm with there weasel words
February 11, 2026
Well apart from running around in circles, shouting “We’re all Doomed” I’m not sure what can be done.
Unfortunately one has to consider that JRM is going to be proved right and that the Debt spiral will hit us sooner than later and force whoever is nominally in charge to make massove cut backs. This is going to happpen anyway, so better under Labour than any successor. This should also kill off the lunatic Greens but I do wonder as so many seem to support them now (in spite of policies that are so clearly unworkable).
I guess today is the day that Sir becomes Lord. Congratulations Lord Redwood of…Wokingham?
Reply I was introduced to the Lords yesterday. My formal title is Rt Hon Lord Redwood, of Wokingham. This site remains John Redwood.
February 11, 2026
Apologies My Lord – having problems keeping track of the days it seems. But (Belated) Congratulations too
February 11, 2026
Right to Reply ;-
Congratulation Rt Hon Lord Redwood, of Wokingham ….an asset to the upper house
February 11, 2026
Good show tonight on GB News
February 11, 2026
Ooooh, that tops God Calls Me God!
February 11, 2026
Can you tell us how you wish to be addressed on your site?
Reply. As you wish
February 11, 2026
John should invite us all to a celebratory event…
February 11, 2026
Will the PM make it to PMQs today? Or will one of his deputies be put in to take the flack on his behalf?
I am a little puzzled by this ‘move further left’ phrase that has been invoked in recent days to help defend Starmer and make out he is somehow centre left.
The facts are clear, under his guiding moderate socialism i.e. not far left, we have had record tax rises record attack on employers via increased rules regulations and NI uplifts. Then we have enforced minimum wage impositions, These effectively shut down casual employment in the legally run enterprises, leaving the field open to cowboy gangs and unscrupulous grey economy activity.
We are forced to pay tax to cover the cost of deindustrialisation, to cover the cost of endless illegal migration via channel boat crossings, to cover the cost of endless policing of demonstrations in support of an area in the middle east every weekend in our capital city. The chant “from the givers to the city” is wearing increasingly thin here in the tax paying provinces.
How much further left is there to go? The destruction of capitalism is all but complete, the regulations and conditions now stopping all entrepreneurial effort is functioning as intended. Marx would be thrilled by Starmer’s achievements.
February 11, 2026
It would have been much better if Starmer had resigned, but no, he clings onto power at a huge cost to us. I don’t see any of his so-called integrity in all of this, merely a man who has tasted power and want to keep it, even if the cost means he is now effectively a puppet for the hard left.
More hard left policies will not help the country at all, but that is what we will be paying for support from the cabinet and others – Every supporter has demanded something and they will get it.
If we thought the UK was in trouble before all of this things can only get a lot worse as we move forward under the control of a Marxist government.
February 11, 2026
I read that the boss of Tesco has warned about the increasing lack of jobs for our young people. With the increasing cost of energy, the collapse of large manufacturing in the UK, diminishing number of apprenticeships, more will depend on benefits. For our young people this is a disaster. It is about time the unions woke up and made their voices heard.
February 11, 2026
All part of the plan surely. A new generation to be totally dependent on the state and brainwashed into believing it’s all the fault of someone richer, and of course the ‘far right’.
It also leaves us with skill shortages, this enables the cry for more immigration.
If we don’t make anything, grow anything (well not enough to keep the ever booming population fed enough surely?)
if we have people that are not educated but dictated as to what their opinion must be, then we will be left weak and at the mercy of just about everyone with bad designs on us.
February 11, 2026
the “plan” from the ruling classes is for the UK to pay its way in the world by selling financial services and rock music to the rest of the planet, nothing else at all. they dont want anything that uses much energy or risks someone getting a splinter in their finger we have delegated all that to India & China from where we import everything else.
February 11, 2026
Congratulations SJR, and Baron, sounds good to the Trump war and you have also been a fine ambassador of Britain over many years!
Today’s news highlights just how our of touch Labour’s defence thinking has been lacking:
“Europe ‘must become military superpower’ to survive without US”.
February 11, 2026
Error should be to the Trump ear!
February 11, 2026
It looks like lame duck Starmer could hang on until the May elections. He could be pushed closer to the exit door if the opposition parties get their act together and force him into a Chagos U-turn.
February 11, 2026
Starmer holds in his hands the ultimate weapon with which to threaten the labour party and MPs, as he alone can call a general election, unless of course he first resigns or loses a vote of confidence in the house. I suspect he may well say to his cabinet and MPs, back off or I will call the general election and take you all down with me. In other words, he’s probably going to just stay in place.
February 11, 2026
It will be interesting to see how the financial markets treat this cabal of globalist woke socialists, who are borrowing and spending much more than was proposed by Truss. The big banks and hedge funds, and the British establishment including the monarchy are lined up with the Reset and UN/WEF/ net zero etc agenda. But eventually they have to stop wasting money.
February 11, 2026
One article I read yesterday seemed to suggest that Liz Truss was responsible for “the pension crisis”.
It’s amazing no one seems to blame The Pension Regulator or Pension Trustees for the scandal. Truss didn’t cause the LDI crisis. LDIs were an unexploded bomb waiting for something (or someone) to trip over them.
Gilt sales cascaded as pension schemes with LDIs scrabbled to reduce leverage by selling liquid assets (£25B in Gilts) which forced prices down & yields up, requiring more collateral to cover leverage and retire debt. It was a disaster waiting to happen and had been predicted by an industry expert 18 months before it actually occured. The BoE most certainly wasn’t without blame either….
February 11, 2026
Well, the Labour government is clearly clueless, lying, not doing what their manifesto said, and introducing a lot of extremist nonsense for which there is negative support in the country. Its days are numbered. It will limp on, get out of control, and turn unpredictable and even more dangerous like a dog dying of rabies.
The Greens are straightforward extremist communist, which giving kids Animal Farm to read would help resolve. Their partnership with extremist violent Islamists would lead to another Iran if they ever got power.
The Conservatives have failed to admit their many and obvious mistakes as the last governments. Unless and until they say they got legal and illegal immigration completely out of control they are completely unelectable.
Reform are making a lot of mistakes that the other parties should be jumping on. The “no benefits for anyone without British passport” line is super vulnerable to being picked apart, even by knowledgeable people who otherwise support them. Eg there are lots of reasons people who have been here decades on ILR have not claimed their British passports, and disenfranchising all of these is a recipe for disaster. In the same way lots of people who have been handed passports should be told to leave, many of these passports were handed over with no support from the public. So passport yes/no is not the right way to determine who the country supports staying here.
Farage was wrong to make a speech saying that working from home is always a bad plan. Shows he is out of touch. Working from home can work, in specific situations. Jacob Rees-Mogg makes the same mistake. It is when it does not work, and does not deliver productive output that it is a problem.
Most of all I am struck by the comments from Laurence Fox yesterday that he has been cancelled again from a great acting gig that he had been all but offered. Just for holding perfectly normal views. I know lots of people in my business who never get hired for holding views which the majority of the country hold, and this needs to stop. But also his sad assessment that elections and voting are not going to fix this country, and we need a more fundamental rethink.
Rupert Lowes sexual abuse inquiry continues to show massive involvement from the police, social services, and the rest of the state, and yet this is getting little mainstream attention airtime. The people are watching and history books will be written about how rotten the state was and how little was done about it.
And little being said about people with primary allegence to other international powers holding senior positions in the government and public sector, no other country would allow this.
And the mass immigration of people raping and killing our children continues, while politicians argue about trivia.
Its not good.
February 11, 2026
The support for the PM is simply that turkeys do not vote for Christmas and since socialism depends upon making and keeping people poor it is all going to plan. They intend to complete their mission that everything is to be made dysfunctional, topsy-turvy and ideology rules to provide a reason to impoverish the nation. They’ve waited 14 years and they’re not going to stop now. Hence the invasion by undocumented, fighting age men is encouraged with free accommodation and housing rather than prison and deportation. The judiciary are to encourage diversity and chaos in preference to homogeneity and social harmony. Our energy is captured by the false ideology that adding CO2 to the atmosphere will cause a climate breakdown so that our electricity is to be produced by expensive, intermittent, low energy density, weather dependent sources which are purchased from a country our security services describe as “hostile”. The Clean Power 2030 plan is designed to not only make our electricity expensive but requires rolling blackouts to prevent a total grid collapse. Our foreign policy, such as exemplified by the Chagos give-away, is defined by Lord Gus O’Donnell who, when Cabinet Secretary, said in 2011: “When I was at the Treasury I argued for the most open door possible to immigration … I think it’s my job to maximise global welfare not national.”
February 11, 2026
PS:
Chris O’Shea, the chief executive of Centrica (parent company of British Gas), has warned that UK electricity prices by 2030 could be as high as, or higher than, the peak levels seen during the energy crisis following the Russia-Ukraine invasion. This is not a surprise. The SoS for the Department of Energy Security & Net Zero is driving forward with his ideological Clean Energy 2030 project saying this will “save the planet” and give us more secure, homegrown electricity by avoiding buying from petrostates. The extra cost of gas to the UK during the Russia-Ukraine invasion for the production of electricity was around £25-£30bn over two years. The cost of his Clean Power 2030 project is £40-£50bn ANNUALLY until 2030 accordcing to NESO. The petrostates that supply our gas are the UK (still around 50% although the SoS for DESNZ is trying to destroy this supply), Norway 30% and the US 10%, the balance from various sources. Instead the SoS intends to make us dependent upon China, a state which our security services describe as “hostile”, for all our electricity production and transmission. So not secure. And he refuses to publish the full text of a “green energy” Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) he signed with China in March 2025. And of course Clean Power 2030 is not going to “save the planet” as adding more CO2 to the atmosphere has a negligible effect, if any, on global temperature according to the real science of Happer & Wijngaarden.
February 11, 2026
If the Left are now in control of this Government’s policies, and l agree with you that it is looking that way, it will be interesting to see whether any of them fond it necessary to go to the trouble of unseating Starmer. After all it would be much better for him to get the blame when it all goes wrong, rather than one of them, and there would always be the risk that if one of them set the wheels in motion for a leadership change, on the day someone else would win it.
My guess is the he will be allowed to stay put, on sufferance.
Incidentally l was very pleased to be able to watch your installation on GB News last night.
February 11, 2026
If only the voters could call a general election. Our constitution needs fixing.
February 11, 2026
I see Miliband has followed his Marxist philosophy by announcing that the “class divide” is the great evil that Labour needs to combat now. That seems a bit old-fashioned, I doubt even Labour MPs believe that. Nevertheless it has induced Starmer to pretend once again that he himself is “working class”.
February 11, 2026
Keir Starmer is not only ignorant of UK history but also totally incompetent as our PM. Yet you look at the possible replacements, and they all seem to be worse.
I can’t believe that we have another government that ignores the voters. Labour should have learnt the lesson from the Conservatives wipe out at the 2024 GE.
No one I know objects to some immigration, but they all object to uncontrolled immigration, whether legal or illegal. Yet the people are ignored. We are overtaxed, overregulated, and the productive economy is supposed to. carry the ever increasing weight of the public sector. Economists will write books on how not to do it, using this atrocious Labour Government as an example.
February 12, 2026
“No one I know objects to some immigration,”
But Keith, we have not in living memory had ‘some immigration’ – we have had far, far too much, exponentially increasing, multilingual, multicultural, religiously alien, and with no political attempts to foster integration other than threatening the indigenous population if they dare to speak against ‘diversity’.
February 11, 2026
sitting in a pub…
multiple tables, multiple lots of people who dont know each other, all talking about the child rape by an afghan immigrant. to say there is fury, and people are close to raising a rebel army to take on the immigrant hotels is an understatement. the journalists and politicians simply dont get the level of anger.
this is going to blow up one way or another.
February 11, 2026
lots of people demanding they wear ankle tags like offenders being monitored as a bare minimum.
I offer this as an alternate view on what the relative priority of news stories are today.
I dont think locking people up for a tweet is going to work for the state now, you cannot lock everyone in that pub up, and they all think the same.
The powers that be need an urgent rethink.
February 11, 2026
They are past that, so are we.
February 11, 2026
Chris O’Shea, the chief executive of Centrica (parent company of British Gas), has warned that UK electricity prices by 2030 could be as high as, or higher than, the peak levels seen during the energy crisis following the Russia-Ukraine invasion. This is not a surprise. The SoS for the Department of Energy Security & Net Zero is driving forward with his ideological Clean Energy 2030 project saying this will “save the planet” and give us more secure, homegrown electricity by avoiding buying from petrostates. The extra cost of gas to the UK during the Russia-Ukraine invasion for the production of electricity was around £25-£30bn over two years. The cost of his Clean Power 2030 project is £40-£50bn ANNUALLY until 2030 according to NESO. The petrostates that supply our gas are the UK (still around 50% although the SoS for DESNZ is trying to destroy this supply), Norway 30% and the US 10%, the balance from various sources. Instead the SoS intends to make us dependent upon China, a state which our security services describe as “hostile”, for all our electricity production and transmission. So not secure. And he refuses to publish the full text of a “green energy” Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) he signed with China in March 2025. And of course Clean Power 2030 is not going to “save the planet” as adding more CO2 to the atmosphere has a negligible effect, if any, on global temperature according to the real science of Happer & Wijngaarden.
February 11, 2026
Starmer is more than left wing enough. A move further left would be absolutely disastrous for Britain.
February 12, 2026
Starmer can’t possibly believe the nonsense he spouts about growth and lower retail prices resulting from joining a customs union. This is an old EEC shibboleth that was much repeated during the early 1970s when eurofanatics were trying to make the British people keener on signing the Treaty of Rome. We soon saw what empty lies lay behind the promise of ‘cheaper food’ – our cheap, affordable, staples – home-caught fish, Aus and NZ lamb, English and NZ butter were all replaced with stuff we neither liked nor could afford.