Tag Archives: Rachel Reeves

The ‘magic money tree’/’maxed-out national credit card’ LIES

Liars: both David Cameron and (now) Keir Starmer have voiced the falsehood that the UK has credit limits imposed elsewhere – it doesn’t. There IS a magic money tree, though – despite their claims to the contrary; it’s called the Bank of England. You won’t find this mentioned by the mainstream media, though – instead you have to come to Vox Political, Another Angry Voice, and Mainly Macro (among others).

Simon Wren-Lewis, over at Mainly Macro, has written a scathing critique of politicians like Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves, who are copying the Tories by saying there is no “magic money tree” and that the government has “maxed-out the national credit cards”.

For clarity: there is a magic money tree. It’s called the Bank of England.

And it is impossible to max-out the national credit cards with the amount of debt the UK currently has.

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Professor Wren-Lewis explains:

Keir Starmer, in commenting on the recent Budget, said “Britain in recession, the national credit card maxed out, and despite the measures today, the highest tax burden for 70 years”. The analogy of maxing out the nation’s credit card has been repeated by other Shadow ministers. Rachel Reeves, Shadow Chancellor, has joined many Conservative ministers in saying there is no ‘magic money tree’.

Anyone who knows any macroeconomics understands that these analogies are false. The nation does not have a credit card with an externally imposed credit limit that it can ‘max out’, and the UK government does have a magic money tree because it can create money.

Imagine, for example, if we forced politicians to be more precise. Rather than claiming that the government had ‘run out of money’ and ‘maxed out its credit card’, they would instead have to say that the government had almost hit their self-imposed borrowing limits.

Rather than saying you couldn’t promise to spend this or reduce that tax because there is no magic money tree, politicians instead would need to say that the government could create more money or borrow more, but that would add to aggregate demand which would risk higher inflation and so force the Bank of England to raise interest rates.

Why do politicians say there is no money tree at their disposal? Because they don’t like telling the truth, which is that they don’t want to break their fiscal rule, or they don’t want the additional spending or tax cut adding to aggregate demand and leading the central bank to raise interest rates. That is a trade-off where many voters might take a different view, so it is much easier for them to say there is no money. It is a way of disguising a political choice, and not being honest about these choices.

So ‘there is no magic money tree’ is normally said by Chancellors or Prime Ministers who want an easy excuse for not spending money or cutting taxes. It is a straightforward deception to give politicians an easier life, and therefore it is difficult to defend its use.

The phrase ‘maxing out the nation’s credit card’ is more often used by politicians attacking the borrowing record of others. Yet it too suggests politicians have less choice than they actually have. In this case it perpetuates the idea that governments can only borrow so much, and that they are currently hitting that limit.

This is nonsense. There is a limit to how much UK governments can borrow, but it is way above levels of debt ever historically recorded. (Debt was 2.7 times GDP after WWII.) [1] But it sounds more dramatic to say a government has maxed out its credit card than to say it is leaving insufficient headroom to meet its own fiscal rules.

The use of these false analogies probably wouldn’t matter too much if we had an informed and informing media that was quick to correct these attempts to mislead. Unfortunately the complete opposite is the case. Because much of the media views macroeconomics as too complex and boring for its viewers, it laps up these incorrect attempts to relate fiscal policy to household budgets.

Sometimes this media environment gives politicians little choice but to follow. But that is not the case with phrases like ‘no magic money tree’ and ‘maxing out the nation’s credit card’. No one is forcing politicians to use these phrases. Instead it is their own choice to do so. If they know they are false analogies that just mislead the public they shouldn’t use them. If they don’t know that they are false, I’m afraid that is even worse.

So, when Keir Starmer said those words in response to Jeremy Hunt’s Budget, somebody in BBC/ITV/Sky News or the newspapers should have immediately called them out as lies.

But they didn’t.

This means the media are misinforming the electorate. This in turn means that most of the voting population, at the next general election, will be basing their decision on false information.

That is inexcusable. There should probably be a law against it. But there isn’t, because the law-makers benefit from the falsehoods.


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Spring Budget: Tory – and Labour – economics are nonsense

Jeremy Hunt: he’s trying to gaslight us into thinking we need to save money. We don’t.

The Conservatives want to cut the civil service again, for no very good reason. But the important part of Jeremy Hunt’s comment on the subject is that he thinks we can have better public services without spending money on them.

Liam Thorp is absolutely right:

Cutting funding for public services has not improved them. In fact, they are considerably inferior – across the board – to their efficiency in 2010.

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And it seems clear that taking the money away from this useful purpose hasn’t stopped the Tories from spending money like it was going out of fashion:

Only £100 billion? Gary Stevenson reckons it’s eight times as much.

And with the Budget coming up, Hunt also made another outrageous claim that should be blown away as soon as possible:

In fact, as the article states:

in the last four years, five different Tory chancellors have pledged to bring taxes down – only for them to rise to a historic level.

In fact, the current tax burden in the UK is the highest since World War 2.

The problem is that the Tories are trying to gaslight us into thinking that national finances are like household budgets – and they aren’t.

Sadly, this thinking appears to have become contagious as Labour’s Shadow Chancellor, Rachel Reeves, is coming out with the same nonsense:

Oh, and the media are keen to echo the lie, too – but some of us are debunking it:

Bear this in mind:

The simple fact is that money never runs short in an economy like that of the UK, where the government can create as much as it needs.

Money is simply a tool – the lubricant that allows the economy to work by making it easy for us to buy and sell the goods and services that we need.

Government creates money to fund projects that it believes the country needs – or at least, it should. In recent years, the Tories have simply given hundreds of billions of pounds to their rich friends for no good reason at all.

As a result, those rich people have bought up the nation’s assets, making everything more expensive for the rest of us – those least able to afford them. The majority of the people of the UK have been priced out of their own market.

So we now live in a country where everything is phenomenally expensive, and we’re being taxed more than in living memory for services that are rubbish.

And neither the Tories nor Labour intend to do anything about it.

You would have to be insane to give your vote to either of them.


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Rachel Reeves has blown her credibility so now she’s trying a new catchphrase. Who’ll care?

Rachel Reeves: she thinks we’re all idiots. This is the look on her face when she finds out we’re not.

This couldn’t have happened to a better person, could it?

It turns out Rachel Reeves took money from climate sceptics, right before Labour ditched its £28 billion-per-year Green Prosperity Plan:

Corruption?

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She has now gone on to float a new catchphrase: “Securonomics”:

According to the Telegraph,

Labour would aim to secure the highest sustained growth in the G7. To do this, it would adopt a new approach it has coined “securonomics”, or “modern supply side economics”.

This would involve bringing in “tough” fiscal rules with a new “enhanced role” for the OBR and establishing a new Office for Value for Money to ensure taxpayer cash is being well spent.

If it seems like nonsense, that’s because it is.

Reeves is still trying to pretend that money is a limited resource in the UK; it isn’t. A Labour government would be able to create as much as it needed, to fund any projects it wanted – as long as it taxed back enough money (from those who could afford it) as would be necessary to prevent large-scale inflation.

The problem there is that – as she has shown by taking a donation and then ditching a policy that would have been extremely useful – Rachel Reeves is in the pocket of the rich.

Still, the idea of an Office for Value for Money is a good one, even if it won’t work in practice because governments will find a way to ignore it if it says they shouldn’t do something they want to.

Ultimately, we can only have one comment on all of this:

Rachel Reeves: what a phoney.


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Why IS Labour backing banker bonuses so the children starve?

Shadow Chancellor Rachel Reeves’s decision that a Labour government will not reinstate a cap on bankers’ bonuses has stirred up a storm of opposition among left-wing organisations – and voters.

The cap limits yearly bonus payouts for bankers to twice their salary; it was introduced by the EU in 2014 when it was intended to prevent excessive risk-taking after the global financial crash of 2008.

Kwasi Kwarteng scrapped it in his 2022 mini-budget – sparking widespread outrage for rewarding bankers during a cost-of-living crisis and growing levels of poverty in Britain.

But Rishi Sunak maintained the policy, bringing it into force in October 2023.

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Talking to the BBC on January 31, Reeves said: “The cap on bankers’ bonuses was brought in in the aftermath of the global financial crisis and that was the right thing to do to rebuild the public finances.

“But that has gone now, and we don’t have any intention of bringing that back. And as chancellor of the exchequer, I would want to be a champion of a successful and thriving financial services industry in the UK.”

“Successful and thriving”? Or “Excessively risk-taking”? The latter seems more likely to This Writer and it seems Reeves and Labour leader Keir Starmer are deliberately planning to repeat New Labour’s worst mistakes.

That certainly seems to be the feeling among left-wing organisations and individuals, according to Left Foot Forward:

Labour’s grassroots left-wing organisation, Momentum, described it as a “terrible decision,” which is “totally out of touch with Labour’s values and public opinion.”

“For over 40 years our economic model has sucked wealth from the country and enriched a few in the City.

“It even crashed the economy in 2008. Yet instead of learning the lessons from New Labour’s failures, Starmer and Reeves seem determined to repeat them.”

The Peace & Justice Project, founded by the former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, said:

“Labour’s latest U-turn, the refusal to reinstate the cap on bankers’ bonuses, shows it is unwilling to challenge the establishment status quo…”

In a post on X, Corbyn asked: “Where is the justification for letting the rich get richer while children starve and people sleep rough on the streets?

“We cannot afford these obscene levels of inequality. It’s our job to offer a real alternative – one that puts human need before corporate greed.”

On the social media, I found this:

And “MrsGee” posted on ‘X’: “What about ‘uncertainty’ in peoples lives, in a profiteer-driven cost of living crisis @LabourSJ? What about millions of children in poverty, families unable to afford to eat & heat their homes? You want them to continue to suffer when you could help with a wealth tax? Poor show.”

Labour’s inconsistency in boosting bankers while pushing families into poverty by keeping the two-child cap on child benefit was also widely pilloried:

Apparently a Labour spokesperson said, “We are not in the business of telling business what to do about pay and conditions.”

But this is nonsense. Telling businesses what to do about pay and conditions is precisely what governments – or in this case, possible governments-in-waiting – should be doing.

Source: Labour to back bankers’ bonuses: How the Left responded – Left Foot Forward: Leading the UK’s progressive debate


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Labour ‘for sale’ as it cosies up to big business

Angela Rayner: she once denounced lobbyists acting as advisers to Tory government ministers; now her own electoral ‘battle bus’ is sponsored by a lobbyist and Labour is riddled with lobbyists advising shadow ministers on behalf of their clients.

Those of you who still think voting for Keir Starmer’s Labour Party is a good idea need to ask yourselves: who will this party be working for – you, or the big businesses that are buying influence over Labour in advance of the general election?

Solomon Hughes has exposed the increasing influence of some of the worst big businesses on Labour, in Tribune magazine, writing:

Keir Starmer says he wants to clean up politics. Instead, he has facilitated a lobbyist takeover of the Labour Party, where predatory gambling firms, big oil and gig economy giants are buying influence at our expense.

In 2020 the Labour Party issued a press release in which its deputy leader, Angela Rayner, ripped into the Conservative government over ‘reports that lobbyists have been secretly serving as advisers to government ministers and departments’ and other revelations of ‘cronyism’ around ‘businesses and individuals with close links to the Conservative Party’. Rayner said it showed there was ‘one rule for lobbyists and their paying clients and another rule for the rest of us’.

This press release has been deleted from Labour’s website, along with all other pre-2022 notices. But Rayner’s own ‘battle bus’ is now ‘sponsored’ and part-funded by a Labour-connected lobbyist.

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According to the Register of Members’ Financial Interests, Pentland Communications, a lobbying firm set up in 2018 by Barrie Cunning, paid Labour HQ £6,000 to fund Rayner’s ‘campaigning’, including ‘the provision of a branded vehicle’, a camper van with the slogan ‘Rayner on the Road’. Since August, Labour’s deputy leader has been using it for campaigning.

Pentland represents big housebuilders like Barratt. Rayner’s responsibilities include Labour housing policy. Pentland says it can help firms achieve ‘commercial objectives’ using its ‘good political relationships’. Paying for Rayner’s battle bus can’t hurt those ‘relationships’.

Pentland says other political events are also business opportunities. It tells clients that each party conference also ‘provides a good opportunity’ to meet politicians ‘in both formal and informal settings and have those important conversations’.

Rayner’s apparent reversal shows how Labour has fully embraced the corporate lobbying it denounced as ‘cronyism’ when it applied to the Conservatives. Concerns about corruption have disappeared as Labour pursues the intense lobbying that has come along with its lead in the polls.

The article goes on to suggest that “‘centrist’ politicians denouncing corporate corruption when in the opposition wallow in it when in government”. And it says:

Cameron highlighted how the ‘revolving door’ of ex-ministers and ex-advisers ‘for hire’ is key to lobbying. Labour has gone further, accepting lobbyists as its current officials. Abdi Duale was elected to Labour’s National Executive last September on the ‘moderate’ slate. The same month Duale became a director at FTI, a lobbying firm. FTI also employs former Labour MP Gemma Doyle, a director of key Labour ‘moderate’ group Progressive Britain. FTI offer clients ‘direct advocacy’ with ‘elected and appointed policymakers’. FTI’s recent clients include Palantir, the American spy-tech firm that is chasing contracts in the NHS.

The list goes on and on:

At the last Labour conference, Alice Perry won a seat on the Conference Arrangements Committee (CAC). Typically for Labour, this dull-sounding body has significant power: it decides what debates Labour conferences hear. Perry, who was backed by both ‘moderate’ and ‘soft left’ factions, is also a public affairs director for the lobbying firm Cicero. The company tells clients she will be ‘advising on Labour Party engagement strategies’. Among Cicero’s clients are financial firms like Barclays and Blackrock, ‘buy-now-pay-later’ outfit Klarna, and privatisers like Serco.

In 2021 Rachel Reeves attacked the government over public services ‘being outsourced to a large private company like Serco, which has a poor track record and known links to the Conservative Party’. Now Serco hires Labour-linked lobbying firms. Serco executives shared platforms with shadow ministers at Labour’s 2023 conference. Perhaps we all misunderstood, and Reeves really objected to Serco’s ‘known links to the Conservative Party’ because she thought they should have known links to the Labour Party instead.

There are others, but we’ll skip those because the article goes on to state:

Corporations want to take big money contracts from the government while reducing any regulation or tax on their businesses. They want to shape the policy agenda and have turned to the consultants — as well as their own in-house lobbyists — to do so. Lobbying firms that spent years relying on their links with the Tories are adapting to a likely Labour government.

But – and this is important:

Something big is happening inside Labour as well. The party is welcoming lobbyists as the proof of, and route to, its ‘business engagement’. Under Starmer, Labour takes corporate support as a vote of confidence. If ‘business’ supports ‘labour’, then the party must be doing the right thing — and can hope for friendlier treatment by the corporate-run press.

And it could lead to scandal (again):

Labour is, in effect, using lobbyists to run much of its ‘business engagement’.

The last Labour government ran into a ‘cash for access’ scandal in 1998, when The Observer exposed lobbyists with New Labour links helping their clients get close to the new government. This was the first big blemish on Blair’s government. We are very likely to see a re-run of this scandal.

Worst of all is the possibility that the firms and lobbyists cosying up to Labour will use the connections (if the party wins the next election) to suck up government contracts, siphon off the cash and produce poor work.

This happened before, under Tony Blair’s New Labour:

We might end up with firms that suck money out of the public sector for poor work, giving another generation of future/former ministers jobs. The current wave of junior Labour officials taking corporate lobbying jobs acts as a kind of human promise, showing future ministers that they too can look forward to corporate jobs with a Labour government. This isn’t a theoretical risk: it is exactly what happened when the last Labour government embraced PFI and outsourcing. The lobbying and the jobs-for-the-boys-and-girls sweetened a bitter pill — although the former ministers got the sweeteners; we just got the bitterness.

Is that really what you want?

This Writer can’t see any difference between Starmer’s plan for a Labour government and what we already have under the Tories – apart from the possibility that the names of some of the ex-ministers taking jobs with big business will be different.

It seems clear that under a Starmer Labour government, public money will still be thrown away at private businesses who’ll provide no useful service to the public but will give jobs to the ministers who helped them.

So – please – do yourself and all the rest of us a favour.

Get yourself a list of all the candidates in your constituency and their manifestos, and educate yourself about what they are offering.

Then choose to vote for the candidate who offers the best deal for you.

I wrote the following in another article but it fits perfectly here, too:

Do not consider how other people will vote, either in your constituency or the other 649 around the UK. That is not your concern.

It is not for you to worry about which party will get enough votes to actually enact its policies. This will lead you down the usual garden path to voting in a government that won’t do anything at all for the good of the country, like the one we’ve had since 2010.

BE SELFISH. Bizarrely, it might be the only way to get the kind of government that all of us need.


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Labour is planning to betray its supporters by cutting taxes for the rich

Taxes are for poor people: under Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves, it seems this is the Labour Party’s attitude.

At a time when everybody with any sense is screaming for governments to tax the rich equitably, Keir Starmer’s Labour is promising to cut taxes for billionaires.

Look:

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Here’s where you can see Shadow Chancellor Rachel Reeves confirming the policy:

This is a Labour Party that has lost its way and may never find it again.


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More Labour hypocrisy – or are these plain lies, exposed? [VIDEO – EXTREME LANGUAGE]

Rachel Reeves and Keir Starmer: like-minded hypocrites – or liars?

Watch this short message from a former Labour supporter (if you can stand the extremely spicy language), explaining why he doesn’t support Labour any more – and why claims that people like him are enabling the Tories to win again are offensive.

He’s right, of course. Nobody is enabling the Tories to win by voting for policies they would prefer to see enacted, rather than Tory or Labour policies.

If Keir Starmer’s Labour wasn’t so desperate to ape Tory politics rather than finding a new way forward, that party would be enjoying significantly higher support; if Blairites had not sabotaged the Corbyn project, we would have had a Labour government for the last six years; it is Starmer’s politics that is the problem, not the voting habits of the electorate.

Case in point:

Firstly, the clip shows Reeves has abandoned the policy she had formerly endorsed in favour of a different way. Was the original stance a lie?

The new plan – to improve the fortunes of the population by improving the economy – would rely on employers passing the profits of improved business on in the form of higher wages.

That is called trickle-down economics.

Oh, but isn’t Keir Starmer against that?

Labour was going to increase taxes on the wealthy – and now it isn’t, having turned in favour of “piss-take” trickle-down economics. Hypocrisy? Or was the original stance a lie?

Moving on, let’s consider Labour’s current stance on Brexit – which is to support it.

This is backtracking on a previous party policy – championed by Keir Starmer during the 2019 general election campaign – to go back to the electorate and check whether a majority of the population still wants to go through with Brexit, after encountering the problems it had triggered already.

Stephen Fry has something to say about that:

Finally, we have Starmer’s own response to a simple question: Westminster or Davos?

Davos is the home of the World Economic Forum – basically, a conference between businesses.

Some have taken Starmer’s words as an admission that he prefers collaborating with businesspeople to negotiating with politicians and campaigners:

In fact, Starmer made his meaning clear – that he would prefer to be around real people, who know what they stand for, than mouthpieces who change position constantly.

But that just reveals the biggest fault in his behaviour: he constantly changes his own position in an effort to create advantages for himself.

So is it not hypocritical of him to say he prefers the company of people who are not like himself?


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George Osborne’s ‘confetti’ incident: what a lot of fuss over such a little thing!

Unbelievable: this innocent sprinkling of confetti at George Osborne’s wedding has been likened by former Shadow Chancellor Ed Balls to the murder of Jo Cox.

The furore stoked by politicians and the mass media over a smiling pensioner throwing confetti over George Osborne at his wedding must defy belief.

Confetti-throwing is a well-loved tradition that one may usually expect to see after any wedding ceremony.

Ah, but this confetti was orange, meaning it – and the lady who threw it – were instantly linked with climate protesters Just Stop Oil. And they’ve continued to be linked to that organisation, even after it denied any connection:

It said: “The lady who threw confetti in Bruton yesterday was upholding a tradition that is common across many cultures. We absolutely defend the right for people to throw confetti (of whatever colour) at weddings and other celebrations.

“If it was a form of protest – which is yet to be established – we applaud it and thank the person concerned. It was peaceful and not especially disruptive, but got massive media attention for Just Stop Oil’s demand.”

But it continued: “However, as much as we applaud the use of orange confetti at this wedding, we were not responsible.”

That seems as straightforward as it gets.

So why is the incident still being linked to the protest group, and why are politicians from the Labour Party getting on the bandwagon to support George Osborne who, together with David Cameron, is the most directly responsible for the austerity policies that have been destroying the British way of life since 2010?

Here’s Rachel Reeves – who, as Shadow Chancellor, should be intimately familiar with Osborne’s economic recklessness – ignoring the fact that if it weren’t for demonstrations of protest at highly-publicised events, she might not have the right to vote today, let alone the right to be a member of Parliament who’s eyeing the second-highest office in the land:

What are the “better ways” that Labour is using to tackle the climate emergency, after party leader Keir Starmer cancelled its environmental policy and told us all that he hates “tree-huggers”? It doesn’t have any – that are visible to This Writer.

How about former Shadow Chancellor Ed Balls who, as a co-presenter of ITV’s Good Morning Britainshouted down guest Owen Jones for daring to point out that Osborne’s austerity policies led to the deaths of many, many people:

Did you notice how Daily Mail columnist and GB News presenter Andrew Pierce tried to stop Jones being heard when he realised what the subject would be? “You’re losing the room, Owen” – he was saying the other people in the TV studio would not be interested in the mass deaths of many people who could have been watching their show today if not for the Tory policy that he (Pierce) supported then and probably supports now.

And then Balls opened his big mouth so Jones could not get a word in edgeways. And Jones – controversial though he may be – was the one in the right. Balls defeated his own aim by overtalking him; clearly the former Shadow Chancellor wanted to defend his former political enemy (leading us to question whether Osborne was ever really Ed Balls’s political enemy) and didn’t want the opposing view to be heard.

And wasn’t Ed Balls invited to George Osborne’s wedding?

Not satisfied with what he had already done, Balls made himself even more ridiculous by equating the practice of throwing confetti at a wedding with the murder of the late Labour MP Jo Cox. “Cremant Communarde”‘s comment is pertinent:

Again, Owen Jones was in the right: “It belittles [the death of Jo Cox at the hands of a far-right-wing extremist] to conflate the two.”

You have to question why Balls tried.

Was it because, as Aaron Bastani of Novara Media tweeted, “We have a political and media elite with no sense of proportion or common sense”?

He continued: “How can you start talking about Jo Cox in the same breath as someone throwing confetti? You can think both are wrong, fine, but this is obscene.”

Valid point.

Over on LBC, Shadow Foreign Secretary David Lammy – in his actual day job (clearly representing his constituents is only for spare change) – bemoaned the fact that some confetti may have fallen on Osborne’s (latest) bride, Thea Rogers.

He considered it “unacceptable” that Ms Rogers (Mrs Osborne?) was subjected to this wedding-day tradition. Go figure.

And Pamela Fitzpatrick makes a much more valid point: Lammy was defending somebody who introduced measures that killed tens of thousands of people – hundreds of thousands, if you go with Owen Jones’s figures.

Those people can’t have weddings, or confetti; they no longer have lives. That is what’s unacceptable, in any matter concerning George Osborne and his ilk.

Why have we been subjected to this display of outrage by some of right-wing Labour’s most prominent flapping mouths? Is it because not only Ed Balls but also his wife, current Shadow Home Secretary Yvette Cooper, was at the wedding?

Knowing this, isn’t the real issue whether any of these right-wing Labour luminaries were ever really opposed to Osborne and his austerity policies?

To This Writer, what’s unacceptable in this situation is a current or former Opposition MP socialising with a person who is responsible for such mass death. As a protest symbol, orange confetti isn’t nearly strong enough.

And there are other controversies that the above has masked. How about this one?

So this One-Rule-For-Us Tory was happy to inflict poverty on millions, while gracing his then-paramour with an enormous pay rise.

And then there’s the so-called “poison pen” email that landed the night before the wedding. I won’t quote it here – look it up yourself – but it suggests that not only was Osborne romancing Ms Rogers while he was still married to someone else but also that he is a serial love cheat who had physical relationship with other women while he was with her.

If it’s true, then coupled with everything else we are presented with the history of a creature who deserves nothing but revulsion and rejection from any right-minded person. One questions the judgement of a Labour Party whose leaders defend him.


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Outcry as Starmer promotes anti-Semite supporter Rachel Reeves into Shadow Cabinet

What a charmer: Rachel Reeves hates people who don’t have a job – and loves a historic anti-Semite.

Keir Starmer seems to be sending mixed messages at the moment.

After practically prostituting himself to the witch-hunters of the Board of Deputies of British Jews, Community Security Trust, Jewish Labour Movement and so on – who are keen to see him expel previous leader Jeremy Corbyn from the Labour Party, he has made Rachel Reeves Shadow Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster.

Ms Reeves is currently infamous for praising Nancy Astor who, besides being the first female MP, was a notorious anti-Semite.

Previously, Ms Reeves was unpopular because she said Labour should be “tougher than the Tories” on people claiming social security benefits. How was she going to manage that – by lining them up against a wall and shooting them?

If this is the quality of Starmer’s ShadCab choices, he can take his new New Labour and shove it where the sun doesn’t shine.

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Theresa May rubs MPs the wrong way while discussing frictionless trade

Foot in Mouth disease: Theresa May is a congenital sufferer.

We’ve seen many sides to Theresa May since she became prime minister – on Thursday she became an unwitting “straight” player in a comedy double act.

It was during her frustrating appearance before the Commons liaison committee, when she was doing her best to avoid providing any solid answers to the questions put to her by committee members.

At one point, this happened:

Cue laughter. Raucous, derisory laughter.

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