After Left Unity, Breakthrough, Peace and Justice, Social Justice Party, and Transform, I’m sure this one will work out.

More seriously, I’m glad they’re pursuing this. Everyone involved will be happier representing their views more authentically and Labour will be better off while freed from their influence, while the electorate will be presented a wider range of choices — and I suppose it’s possible they won’t make a pig’s ear of it and that the two-ish party rigidity of our system could be broken, serving our democracy for the better.

Looks like a win-win-win-win to me.

I think in isolation I wouldn’t care much about this. It still appears to be vastly less than the declarations made by other PMs and leaders, and much as the Tories want to make an issue of Lords being issued Downing Street passes it seems an entirely normal thing to me.

…but surely he knows how the Tories weaponise even the mildest appearance of nonsense against Labour (while they flaunt it with impunity) and foster the ignorance of, “They’re all the same,” to their advantage. This seems like the easiest bullet imaginable to dodge by simply not accepting gifts, and I’m baffled that he’s imperiling all the effort to restore normalcy to politics by not doing so.

This one mildly surprised me — possibly even more so than NIMBYs blocking solar farms and Green MPs opposing green infrastructure in their constituencies — given the industrial presence in Pembs that locals are pretty enthusiastic about. Our culture of Citizens Against Virtually Everything (CAVE) appears pretty pervasive though, and I really hope it’s something we’ll see tackled through this Parliamentary period.

I hope DARC gets rammed through regardless of such opposition, that we massively revamp the Town and Country Planning Act and Planning and Compulsory Purchase Act, and that we become gradually more comfortable as a country with actually building and doing stuff from time to time.

“No more money without reform,” is the actual line.

Perhaps seeing it distorted as per the headline is to be expected of the Morning Star.

I think it’s a consequence of the weird coalition of competing factions they have to deal with. Among the at least four different ideological groups in the party, ideas are often contradictory between them and lead to the party’s policy positions often being weird and hard to predict.

Here, the climate concerned, net-zero, ‘public transport is good’ crowd lost out until recently to the ecological preservationists and ‘green spaces’ lot. Recently, the former group also lost out to the NIMBYish group on green infrastructure in Ramsey’s constituency, making the party look ridiculous and hypocritical yet again.

I don’t know what the solution is but I hope they figure it out and start treating politics a bit more seriously if they’re going to be a mainstay in Parliament.

I think a case could have been made for it. Borrowing to invest is allowed by the fiscal rules, and it would’ve been popular with a large set of the electorate. Weighing it against the electoral impact to the presentation of the party as being fiscally responsible would’ve been a tough needle to thread though. Many folks point to Corbyn’s WASPI payout policy and nationalisation of BT as being among the key things that killed his campaign back in the day for much the same reason.

The way the lady in the article speaks though, it sounds like there is maybe a case for pursuing private funding as a better option. I’ve read elsewhere that even a modest public investment over the long term can encourage tons of private investment due to the certainty it provides. If the planned ~£15bn public investment ends up attracting enough private money to get up to a similar amount to £28bn and comes with tons of consequent economic activity around the edges then this may end up having been the better approach.

On the other hand, if it attracts hardly any — perhaps due to the Tories pledging to scrap GB Energy and the NWF, thereby removing the long-term certainty around the whole thing — then it may turn out to be a massively consequential and disastrous route to have taken. I think we’ll have an inkling long before 2029 if that’s likely to be the case.

Saving this one for posterity.

The decision to cut the £28bn pledge was very unpopular among members, though seemingly immediately forgiven by an electorate that understood it was too costly given our financial situation.

In 2029 though I wonder how we’ll look back at the decision. The National Wealth Fund certainly holds a lot of promise, but will it have had enough of an impact to alleviate the disappointment of those who’d have preferred much larger direct public funding instead?

It seems Rhian-Mari Thomas may be a name worth remembering whatever the outcome.

Nope, MPs vote down to the final two then it goes to the membership — hence Liz Truss. This didn’t happen with Sunak’s ascension because he faced no opposition.

As Tim Montgomerie often says, as rabidly right wing as some of the '22 is, the membership put them to shame. Leaves them in a really awkward position right now with the soul of their party being fought over, with most sane MPs backing more moderate candidates despite knowing the membership will favour the most rampantly right wing.

I expect Powell to just ignore this, but man it’s going to be a political bloodbath this winter.

I think means testing the payment is sound in principle, but the bar to be eligible for it per that of Pension Credit seems way too high. The news stories and vox pops when the cold starts to bite are going to be devastating — to say nothing of PMQs where I imagine we’ll have months of this in prominence.

Hmmm. I’m broadly supportive of reducing the influence of the membership vote as I think it’s had a disastrous effect on both major parties, but I might need some convincing about removing it entirely.

The leader must be able to effectively lead their Parliamentary party. Thresholds for MP support is one effective gateway toward ensuring they do and it’ll certainly work after such a massive landslide as in June, but longer term it may not be enough given the number of persistent rebels in the Parliamentary party. Perhaps something approaching a veto or easier ousting from the PLP (like the 1922 Committee’s confidence system, perhaps) would do the trick?

Regardless, conference is going to be very fun this year.