I have some questions for those tipped to contend the   Labour leadership. My worry is any one of them could make things worse.

Angela Rayner

Why did she fail to pay her tax on time? As she lectures the rest of us to pay more taxes and to refrain from trying to find ways  to reduce tax bills, surely she should have paid up to start with, or as soon as she knew she had made a mistake? Isn’t it one  rule for her and different rules for others?

Why did new housebuilding fall whilst she was responsible for delivering 1.5 m new homes this Parliament? Does she now accept that target is a unattainable? When will she tell us the truth about new homes?

Will she accept that the Employment Rights Act has destroyed many new job opportunities for young people and helped drive unemployment up?

How would she describe Tories?

Ed Miliband

Is he proud of his accelerated closure of the North Sea oil and gas industry? What does he say to all those losing their jobs?

Why does he think we should import Norwegian gas instead of getting our own out of adjacent fields?

Why is it right to burden the world with 3 x as much CO 2 importing LNG than using our own gas?

Does he admit that for the next ten years we will have less nuclear power as he closes old stations and fails to bring any new ones on line apart from Hinkley he inherited?

Why has he been unable to cut our energy bills by £300?
Does he agree the UK will not be generating only carbon free power in 2030 but still needing gas power  stations?

Wes Streeting

Why has he not made it easier for more people to get a GP or hospital  appointment?

Why are Drs still going on strike after the big pay awards he made them to end the strikes?

Where is his alternative King’s Speech programme?

How would he get  the UK back to work?

Andy Burnham

Why would he  give up the big job of Mayor he  said he  wanted? Why should anyone believe his promises, as he promised to serve a full term and offered things he has not delivered?

Where is there a seat you could win in a by election? How does he win Makerfield with its small majority in 2024?

Why should the National  Executive change its mind over telling him to do the job he has  got?

Does he  have so little belief in 403 Labour MPs that he  thinks none of them could be PM?

Conclusion. So far a badly organised coup . None of the front runners have a good alternative programme to get people back to work, to control the cost of living and to smash the gangs. Pity the poor country with months of uncertainty and a badly damaged  PM who might now survive.

 

 

What a mess! The PM agrees to a short meeting on King’s Speech day with his Health Secretary. Someone tells the Times Streeting will call a contest today. We read he did not want to  go public yesterday to overshadow the Speech, yet someone in the know tipped off the papers to ensure the Speech was overshadowed. There was no early or any denial  from Streeting which any loyal Cabinet member would immediately put out.

So the King read out a turgid long list of lifeless Bills, many of them repeats of old  themes whilst Ministers had their minds on questions of whether to run, who to support, how to keep  their jobs.

Many of these Bills if pursued are troubled. What can another Steel nationalisation Bill do to correct the folly of the last one  that failed to agree transfer of the plant from the Chinese owners or agree to who has to pay off  old debts?

What will a new Water Regulator do differently to the current one? Why cant the government just issue better instructions to Ofwat? Why  persist  with widely loathed digital ID, a solution in search of a problem? What will be yet another Criminal Justice Bill?

The worst Bill and the centre of the economic  and constitutional struggle is the EU re set Bill.  Based on the wrong notion that we could boost trade with the EU to boost growth, it will lock us into more bad laws, put  up energy prices and taxes, invite in many more young people in need of jobs and hones we do not have, and put up spending to give them money we cannot afford.

The PM is allowed to use the full dignity of the sovereign to launch his programme for the next session of Parliament. Lords and Commons have to listen without comment, before the PM sets it out in more detail to the Commons at the start of a five day set of  debates in both Houses, when the Opposition can reply.

This year the King has been placed in a difficult position setting out a programme for a PM struggling to keep his job and to keep a majority of votes for his plans. It will be made far worse by having at its heart a dangerous constitutional Bill seeking to give back control over many of our laws and some of our money to the EU against the clear mandate of the referendum.

The PM wants the EU to take much of our fish, to decide on student support to allow more EU students to come to the UK at our expense, and to require us to adopt many of their farming, trade and business laws. He wants us to face higher energy costs  by adopting the EU carbon tax and emissions trading scheme, He wants us to impose an EU like tariff or carbon border tax on non EU imports. He wants us to accept more people under 30 to come here looking for jobs, homes and benefits. He wants us to pay them  for this by sending money to the EU.

No wonder Labour lost so many seats and votes in Brexit favouring parts of England. The PM should not be giving our sovereignty away. This is an abuse of our King in Parliament.

As support for Keir Starmer slips away with public demands he goes from Labour MPs I would be interested in your thoughts.

It is bizarre that the favoured replacement for many Labour MPs would be Andy Burnham who is not  an MP. Who would give up their seat for him? Could he win a by election in these difficult conditions for his party?

The government wrongly says an EU re set will give us more economic growth. They think they can get non tariff barriers to trade in goods eased to promote more activity. Let’s look at the basic arithmetic.

In 2024 the UK imported 1.7 times as much as it exported in goods to the EU, running a large deficit. If they could get barriers eased so that they could expand trade by 10% both ways, our goods exports would go up by £17.7 bn and our goods imports by ££30 bn . GDP figures add in exports as that is activity and value added created in the UK, and subtract imports as that is activity abroad. So with a symmetric 10% increase in goods trade GDP would be reduced . The UK would need to find ways of creating or keeping barriers against imports to help growth from the EU trade route.

To keep GDP constant the UK would need to increase its goods exports by 70% more than its imports, given the much lower base of exports in our trade. So if imports rose 5% we would need to grow exports by 8.5% just to stand still.

In practice it is difficult to see how the UK will get non tariff barriers or  border bureaucracy so reduced that it will achieve a measurable increase in trade. A few easings for meat and dairy helps a tiny sector of our exports. Meanwhile our past leading   exports to the EU  include diesel and petrol cars, about to be banned in UK, oil and gas, put into accelerated rundown by Mr Miliband, and refined oil products where we have just shut one third of our refineries.

Exporting more goods to the EU is not going to be a source of more growth for the economy on current government policies.

If the relatively small admin costs of exports to the EU are such a big worry the government could give every exporting company a subsidy to cover them. The cost  would be less than 10 % of the money the UK is likely to give the EU each year for this alleged benefit.

UK government policies have  put up youth unemployment and made it more difficult to buy a first home. EU re set would make that worse.,

Their Jobs tax and extra employment regulations  have  destroyed job  opportunities for many young people and pushed up Youth unemployment

Their over spending and  over borrowing have put up longer term interest rates hitting housebuying.

Their failure to curb illegal migration and to build more homes makes it difficult for young people to get even a rented home of their own.

Their new Renting laws are reducing rented housing supply more, pushing up rents

Now they want to make this all worse by inviting in many more  young from the EU needing jobs, grants, homes and public services when these are all in short supply . Why? The UK is not short of unemployed young people  looking for a first home they can afford.

They are also taking away the opportunity through Turing for young Brits to study in non EU universities in the US, Australia etc.Going back into Erasmus will land  taxpayers with an extra £700 m of cost mainly to help EU students get places  at UK universities!

The government seems to forget there are six times as many people  in the EU as the UK so any EU/UK scheme is bound to help many more  Europeans than Brits, at our expense.

Doing nothing is not an option. People are angry about the current situation. Doubling down on current policy of higher public spending, higher taxes and a faster drive to net zero will make everything worse and hasten the  demise of the PM to be followed by his party.

Labour needs to try to be the party of the workers again, not the Benefits  party. It needs to reach out to the UK settled population and put  an end to illegal migration and excessive legal  migration. It needs to rebuild our defences instead of running them down.

It should be scandalised by the way net zero policy is rapidly de industrialising the UK. It should lift its bans on domestic oil, gas and car manufacture. It should drastically change energy policy, reducing taxes and high prices of energy  for business and homes.

It should reform welfare to get many more people back into work, cutting the big bill.It should stop giving away money and islands to foreign governments. It should cancel the ill conceived and damaging EU re set.

Those  who debate whether Labour should turn  right to confront Reform or turn left to tackle the Greens do not get it. The public want results on clear problems. They want the promised economic  growth. They want the end to illegal migration.  They want the pledged  lower energy prices. They want more  jobs not more unemployment. They are not asking for more politics, more  spin, a choice between two wrongly categorised other parties. They just want the government to govern well. They want them to solve problems, not make them worse as they have been doing with the wrong changes.

I have just spent a lot of time researching and editing contributions because they were inaccurate. I do not normally have time or inclination to do this, and will delete serious lies . I allow people to use some lies to develop their antagonistic views as long as they are not libels about people.

The first type were submissions alleging fraud or crime in Councils without evidence or based on a mis reading of a news story. You should not make allegations of criminal conduct without evidence, and if you have good evidence you should send it to the prosecuting authorities. I do not have any evidence of crimes, but if I did I would refer the evidence in private and not publish it here.

The second type were spin, hype or lies about Reform Councils cutting spending. I will be delighted by any Council under any political management that does cut spending and taxes without damaging services, which is quite possible. There are no current examples to share. As soon as there are I will write about them, and will be happy to publish comments about them. Conservative Councils have in recent years delivered the lowest average tax rises and I look forward to seeing how Reform does.

Too many people accept Council lies when they say government grants have been cut as they usually go up, and when they say they have to spend all the money under government orders. Councils have wide ranging discretion over spending in many areas, and usually overextend their remits and spending to indulge themselves, employ too many staff and seek to compete with private sector leisure and sport facilities with subsidised offers. They are keen to draw down grants for spending items they do not have to do just because there is a grant available. They are often wanton with capital as they have access to plenty of subsidised borrowing.

If you want to make your Councillor more accountable, ask them a simple question. What is the total spend of your Council this year? Most will confess they have no idea. A few will venture a figure. The figures given are usually well below the true total. They often miss out all the capital spend and borrowing. They often miss out the Education budget as it is usually covered by a full government grant. They sometimes offer a figure that is net of all government grants. They rarely know if you ask a supplementary what the actual definition of the spending figure they have been given is.

The officers often produce extremely complex figures making it difficult for Councillors to see just how much spending they are in practice approving. Years ago when I was a County Councillor I needed to insist on simple total cash spend figures, as the officers in inflationary times always wanted to show us inflation adjusted so called real figures to disguise the large increase in cash outgoings. Looking at  Council websites on finance today there are a variety of ways of netting off grants, trading  income, and borrowings to give the impression of a lower total.

Councils are usually desperate to spend more. They grab any grant going, however undesirable the purpose of the spending as it does not directly bear on the Council tax. They are desperate to get up their trading income by milking motorists with high car park charges.  They ignore the fact that their Council tax payers are also national taxpayers having to pay for the grant, and ignore the way the grant may buy a capital asset or put in a service which then comes to impose costs directly on Council taxpayers in later years.

I did persuade the last government to get some control over wanton buying of commercial property as “investments” just before a likely collapse in shop values from the growth in on line retail. There need to be stronger controls on municipalisation, on buying up property in the Council area, and on “investing” in green technologies which should be done by the private sector under a market test.

NB Government grants, business rates, Council tax and schools grant for English  local government was £77bn in 2019 and £145 bn 2026. What cuts?

The media are not good at local elections. They want to turn them into referendums on the state of the government, and spend most of their time discussing national issues and following national party leaders. Much of this campaign  has been about the chronic unpopularity of this let down government and its leader Keir Starmer.

There are important local issues to discuss which do often dominate the doorstep conversations and some of the candidate literature. Meanwhile national political debate and national media usually infantilises Councils, seeing them as victims of government requirements hindered by “ underfunding”.

The truth is very different. Every  year government grants go up and Council taxes are jacked up more than inflation  in most places. Every year Councils add to their huge debt piles, burdening  future taxpayers. As I drive around the country I see many Councils spending on closing roads, installing  cycle lanes, putting in 20 mph zones, narrowing carriageways and imposing congestion charges, reducing car parking and putting up the charges. Motorists are ripped off and pilloried. People who need vans and cars to get to work and to serve the local community are treated as villains and greatly inconvenienced.

I read about Councils who waste money on buying properties at high prices, then lose money on them. The dire Lib Dem misled Wokingham Borough wants to spend £20 m on a solar farm. It has recently spent £5.5 m on wrecking a local road junction  and painting leaves on the roundabout against local wishes. It leaves Council property empty and draws up an expensive plan  for new offices. Then it claims poverty when it comes to social care provision.

Councils spend huge sums, waste far too much and blame the government.Kent County spends billions yet the Reform Council could not find overall cuts and so it put the tax up by more than inflation. In Worcestershire Reform put the tax up by 9%.

These results did show how unpopular the PM and Labour are. The usual abstention of far more  than half the voters shows many people do not think councillors make a difference. The trouble is when it comes to Lib/ Lab Councillors you know you will get ever higher bills and more potholes.

Government pretends to offer more  devolved power but instead propose a new higher layer of bureaucracy and cost. This government is determined to prevent local people saying No to migrant camps, to building on greenfields or to solar arrays destroying food growing farms.

The first big saving should be to scrap their  costly reorganisation with all the extra bodies and Mayors they want to grandstand over us. Far from devolving power they will thwart our wish to  have less, cheaper and better government.