The Labour Party under Andy Burnham

[YorkshireBear]

Parts of Europe are stagnant.

Spain's GDP grew by over 3% last year. The Spanish prime minister who oversaw all this believes inward migration- and the fact the Spanish government welcome it- is a big part of the reason why their economy is doing well.

Something for Keir to think about as he carries on doing his Karaoke Farage act.

Interestingly also put down to their High Speed Rail Network.

 

[FinsburyPark]

It appears that from what is being said, public services shall be cut to fund war efforts in Ukraine.

If this is true, then its more austerity, just dressed up in a different 'excuse'.

Even though i suspect most people support helping Ukraine, even leftists would be unsatisfied at reductions to public sector budgets domestically to fund this war effort.

While I think that Reform and Farage are a bunch of absolute chancers and snake oil salesman, as someone said 'if Labour are gagging to see Reform win the next election, this is the way to go'.

And that's absolutely right

 

[Yew]

That's a "stagflation" situation, difficult to get out of. One of the few possible solutions is increased alignment with the EU to improve international trade and productivity.

Whilst personally I'm not against that, I feel the problem is deeper rooted. So often in companies in Britain, the default solution to economic difficulties is to squeeze the staff, not to invest in improvements and doing things differently. This old-fashioned, Taylorist approach has been done to death over the last 100 years, and until we get out of this cycle, productivity will not meaningfully increase.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 19 Feb 2025 ==

It appears that from what is being said, public services shall be cut to fund war efforts in Ukraine.

Could you provide a source for this, perhaps a senior minister saying as such?

If this is true, then its more austerity, just dressed up in a different 'excuse'.

I fear that the answer is that, realistically, Starmer is ideologically closer to David Cameron and Margret Thatcher than he is to Clement Atlee or Nye Bevan.

While I think that Reform and Farage are a bunch of absolute chancers and snake oil salesman, as someone said 'if Labour are gagging to see Reform win the next election, this is the way to go'.

I do worry about the same the argument of "you can't get a fag-paper between the Tories and Labour, vote for us because we're different" is one that certainly has appeal to a wide section of the population.

 

[edwin_m]

Whilst personally I'm not against that, I feel the problem is deeper rooted. So often in companies in Britain, the default solution to economic difficulties is to squeeze the staff, not to invest in improvements and doing things differently. This old-fashioned, Taylorist approach has been done to death over the last 100 years, and until we get out of this cycle, productivity will not meaningfully increase.

I tend to agree with that, although investment in improvements may also mean staff reductions. Also a "them and us" approach to industrial relations, caused by attitudes on both sides, doesn't do either any good. Nor does the attitude that everything is about tomorrow's share price rather than the long-term health of business.

 

[Tetchytyke]

I tend to agree with that, although investment in improvements may also mean staff reductions. Also a "them and us" approach to industrial relations, caused by attitudes on both sides, doesn't do either any good. Nor does the attitude that everything is about tomorrow's share price rather than the long-term health of business.

But what we have at the minute is staff reductions without the improvements and investment in new technology or new ways of working.

Sadly in many businesses it is “them and us”, and that attitude comes from the very top. You get CEOs whining in the media about how “nobody wants to work anymore” and basically labelling all their staff lazy and stupid. It’s the same in the public sector, all you ever hear about is “civil service bloat” and “civil service inefficiency”. This from a woman who seemingly has an interesting attitude to things like the accuracy of her employee expenses claims and the accuracy of her CV.

It’s the same here: the recently appointed head of the Manx civil service still lives in Plymouth yet it doesn’t stop him pontificating about how working from home is bad for us.

As for share price, when bonuses are awarded based on short-term share price movement then that’s the objective you’re setting your executives. You’ll notice how share prices always seem to rise when a big company announces a load of redundancies. So no wonder someone like Tesco, making just the three billion quid profit, cuts staff even further.

Trebles all round, as Private Eye would say.

I do worry about the same the argument of "you can't get a fag-paper between the Tories and Labour, vote for us because we're different" is one that certainly has appeal to a wide section of the population.

“We may as well give them a chance, can’t be any worse”.

When you look at Labour’s intellectual titans of Rachel Reeves and Wes Streeting (one of the stupidest and most unpleasant men I’ve ever had the misfortune of working with), it’s hard to argue!

 

[DerekC]

This is the same BofE which snookered Liz Truss.

Truss made a hole in the cloth and potted the black first shot!

 

[ChrisC]

“We may as well give them a chance, can’t be any worse”.

I think that’s one of the reasons why Labour won with such a large majority at the last election. After 14 years of the Conservatives, especially their disastrous last few years, so many people had had enough of them. As a lifelong Conservative voter there was no way I could vote for them in 2019 and 2024. In 2019 I could no longer vote for them because of Boris and Brexit. In 2024, following all the lies, I just wanted them out. Lots of former Tory voters probably voted Labour thinking “Give them a chance, can’t be any worse”. I couldn’t do that as I had a feeling that Labour could actually be as bad or even worse. I hope that I am proved wrong in the next 4 years. Just to add I did not, and will not vote Reform. I voted Lib Dem in 2019 and 2024 mainly because I feel it is important to vote and they were the only party I felt I could still vote for.

 

[FinsburyPark]

@Yew

Here's something that lead toward the fact that Labour are considering cutting public service budgets, possibly to around 11% to divert funding to defence, mostly to be a defence ally to Ukraine.

Nothing is official to say they are 100% going to do it, but its been spoken about enough.

Boosting UK’s Ukraine spend could put Keir Starmer in a tight spot

Donald Trump is set to slash US spending on European security, particularly in Ukraine. That leaves Britain with difficult choices

hyphenonline.com

 

[takno]

@Yew

Here's something that lead toward the fact that Labour are considering cutting public service budgets, possibly to around 11% to divert funding to defence, mostly to be a defence ally to Ukraine.

Nothing is official to say they are 100% going to do it, but its been spoken about enough.

Boosting UK’s Ukraine spend could put Keir Starmer in a tight spot

Donald Trump is set to slash US spending on European security, particularly in Ukraine. That leaves Britain with difficult choices

hyphenonline.com

The only substance in that analysis oiece appears to be the Bloomberg article it links to. The Bloomberg article itself is just spinning an old piece of news about treasury modelling scenarios as new.

As was said the first time the 11% figure came out, you always come in asking for 10% efficiency savings, without the expectation of actually getting them, because if you don't ask for them you definitely won't get them.

 

[Yew]

@Yew

Here's something that lead toward the fact that Labour are considering cutting public service budgets, possibly to around 11% to divert funding to defence, mostly to be a defence ally to Ukraine.

Nothing is official to say they are 100% going to do it, but its been spoken about enough.

Boosting UK’s Ukraine spend could put Keir Starmer in a tight spot

Donald Trump is set to slash US spending on European security, particularly in Ukraine. That leaves Britain with difficult choices

hyphenonline.com

That doesn't seem to be an official statement of government policy?

 

[FinsburyPark]

That doesn't seem to be an official statement of government policy?

There isnt one right now, thats true. But theres a lot talk about it on the internet to suggest that they are at least thinking of doing it.

I know that not the same as actually doing it, but its enough to get some people concerned

 

[Yew]

As was said the first time the 11% figure came out, you always come in asking for 10% efficiency savings, without the expectation of actually getting them, because if you don't ask for them you definitely won't get them.

Quite simply, you don't get efficiency savings without putting in the investment, Taylorist time-and-motion studies have been done to the death over the years, and there is no juice left to squeeze.

 

[Cloud Strife]

Here's something that lead toward the fact that Labour are considering cutting public service budgets, possibly to around 11% to divert funding to defence, mostly to be a defence ally to Ukraine.

Is there really that much left to cut?

 

[takno]

Quite simply, you don't get efficiency savings without putting in the investment, Taylorist time-and-motion studies have been done to the death over the years, and there is no juice left to squeeze.

I don't think there's a great deal of fat to squeeze ether frankly. I'm just reflecting that this discussion was already had in the press last month, and it was clear that the 10 or 11 percent figure was a maximum number to hypothetically modelled rather than a saving that every department would actually be expected to make.

 

[JamesT]

I don't think there's a great deal of fat to squeeze ether frankly. I'm just reflecting that this discussion was already had in the press last month, and it was clear that the 10 or 11 percent figure was a maximum number to hypothetically modelled rather than a saving that every department would actually be expected to make.

Government spending is at near record levels for peacetime. It seems hard to believe there's no waste when it's gone up that much.

 

[takno]

Government spending is at near record levels for peacetime. It seems hard to believe there's no waste when it's gone up that much.

The question is how much of that is in protected departments or areas where we can't cut, and how easy and quick it is to cut the rest.

As mentioned above an increasing proportion of the cost is sticking plasters to cover up the damage of previous clumsy cuts - 3 billion to house aslyum seekers because we wouldn't invest in processing their claims, 4 billion to pay private school fees because we won't invest the time in defining what special needs care is appropriate and funding state schools to provide it, billions on keeping people in prison because there isn't a probation service capable of reintegrating them into society, or because we won't fund the courts to get them off remand.

There are billions of savings to be realised in public spending, and without necessarily losing anything important, but definitely not in year one.

 

[edwin_m]

Government spending is at near record levels for peacetime. It seems hard to believe there's no waste when it's gone up that much.

A lot of it will be debt interest, because both the amount of debt and the rate of interest have gone up in the last few years.

 

[Cloud Strife]

3 billion to house aslyum seekers because we wouldn't invest in processing their claims

The insanity of the entire asylum process is just how long it takes to process their claims. The logical thing to do is to have security detention facilities where they can be quickly processed. It shouldn't need more than 24 hours to make a first decision, and if there's considerable doubt over their story, a week should be enough. With on-site courts, asylum claims could be very quickly processed in such facilities, without requiring them to spend months waiting for a decision.

Some people are waiting up to 2 years for a decision, which is simply bonkers. The first decision should be made within 24 hours by a trained HO official, and if someone appeals against a negative decision, it should be possible to hear their case within a week. The initial appeal could be made on the basis of the evidence provided to the HO official, so there's no need for anything more than a simple "I appeal" request. The appeal from the first tier to the upper tier could be done within a month: two weeks to write the appeal, two weeks for the Upper Tribunal to make their decision. Then if there's a final appeal to the courts, there should be a week to draft the appeal and to present it to a judge of the Court of Appeal / Court of Session who would be responsible for deciding if the appeal is to be allowed.

There is absolutely no excuse to leave people waiting for months and even years for an asylum application to be decided. With such a system above, you've got a final decision within 3 weeks, and a failed applicant can then decide whether they want to stay in a secure detention facility or return.

I would say that a huge part of the problem of asylum seekers is that they simply have nothing to do while waiting for their claims to be processed, and people see that.

 

[MotCO]

There are billions of savings to be realised in public spending, and without necessarily losing anything important, but definitely not in year one.

I can think of several areas where savings can be made.

1. Cancel the £22bn carbon capture project - it is untested and will not make any major contribution to reducing global CO2 emissions.
2. Cancel foreign investment in 'green schemes' and audit foreign aid for Value for Money. There are a number of schemes Britain has invested in which seem to be pointless - e.g. Ethiopian 'Spice Girls', and why are we giving money to India when they can afford to invest in a space programme?
3. The number of people qualifying for Motability cars seems unduly high - there are about 800,000 cars according to motability.co.uk, and they are replaced every three years which seems unduly frequent.
4. The number of Civil Servants in the MOD increased whilst the number of armed services personnel fell. There are now approximately 120,000 armed services personnel in the three services, and around 64,000 Civil Servants in the MOD; there must be some scope to reduce the number of Civil Servants.

 

[m0ffy]

4. The number of Civil Servants in the MOD increased whilst the number of armed services personnel fell. There are now approximately 120,000 armed services personnel in the three services, and around 64,000 Civil Servants in the MOD; there must be some scope to reduce the number of Civil Servants.

How do you come to the conclusion the MoD is over staffed? Yes, the civilian contingent has grown, but what evidence is there that this is inappropriate?

 

[Yew]

The insanity of the entire asylum process is just how long it takes to process their claims. The logical thing to do is to have security detention facilities where they can be quickly processed. It shouldn't need more than 24 hours to make a first decision, and if there's considerable doubt over their story, a week should be enough. With on-site courts, asylum claims could be very quickly processed in such facilities, without requiring them to spend months waiting for a decision.

Some people are waiting up to 2 years for a decision, which is simply bonkers. The first decision should be made within 24 hours by a trained HO official, and if someone appeals against a negative decision, it should be possible to hear their case within a week. The initial appeal could be made on the basis of the evidence provided to the HO official, so there's no need for anything more than a simple "I appeal" request. The appeal from the first tier to the upper tier could be done within a month: two weeks to write the appeal, two weeks for the Upper Tribunal to make their decision. Then if there's a final appeal to the courts, there should be a week to draft the appeal and to present it to a judge of the Court of Appeal / Court of Session who would be responsible for deciding if the appeal is to be allowed.

There is absolutely no excuse to leave people waiting for months and even years for an asylum application to be decided. With such a system above, you've got a final decision within 3 weeks, and a failed applicant can then decide whether they want to stay in a secure detention facility or return.

I would say that a huge part of the problem of asylum seekers is that they simply have nothing to do while waiting for their claims to be processed, and people see that.

Exactly, nobody benefits from the current state of affairs, not the asylum seekers, not the British Public.

 

[MotCO]

How do you come to the conclusion the MoD is over staffed? Yes, the civilian contingent has grown, but what evidence is there that this is inappropriate?

I think you have answered your own question. Why should the number of Civil Servants go up when the armed services personnel goes down?

 

[Peterthegreat]

I think you have answered your own question. Why should the number of Civil Servants go up when the armed services personnel goes down?

Isn't one reason that some roles previously done by military personnel are now done by civilian staff?

 

[m0ffy]

I think you have answered your own question. Why should the number of Civil Servants go up when the armed services personnel goes down?

But I haven’t - the MoD is much more than HM Armed Forces, and a lot of the civilian staff will be engaged in work which isn’t dependant on current force strength.

 

[The Ham]

I can think of several areas where savings can be made.

1. Cancel the £22bn carbon capture project - it is untested and will not make any major contribution to reducing global CO2 emissions.

Trend to agree, it's of limited value, when you could probably get a larger reduction from other investments (for example public transport and walking/cycling infrastructure/support or creating wetlands - which are larger carbon sinks than forests when addresses by area).

Although, even then it's a resurrection of spending rather than cutting.

2. Cancel foreign investment in 'green schemes' and audit foreign aid for Value for Money. There are a number of schemes Britain has invested in which seem to be pointless - e.g. Ethiopian 'Spice Girls', and why are we giving money to India when they can afford to invest in a space programme?

A lot of this is actually useful in projecting the soft power of the UK and therefore creating people who think positively about the UK. That may not sound like a good thing, other than it limits the risk of people having negative reactions to the UK (i.e. it becomes harder to radicalise someone to cause us harm if they've received food and/or education from us).

The other thing it does it boosts the education of girls, which means they are less likely to end up getting married off at a young age. Whilst someone in Ethiopia doing something space related may appear odd, by engaging then in STEM they are more likely to have aspirations to have a good job.

Those aspirations could then result in them going to university, which could mean doing so in the UK. Whilst that's not always going to be the case, if they do, that than results in them spending money in the UK and paying overseas student fees (which is a significant income for UK universities and means UK fees can be frozen), in fact part of the issue in the university sector is the cuts to the number of overseas students which are allowed (even though over the long term they tend to have limited impact on the net migration figures and they tend to leave within 5 years of arriving).

3. The number of people qualifying for Motability cars seems unduly high - there are about 800,000 cars according to motability.co.uk, and they are replaced every three years which seems unduly frequent.

Given that there's 16.1 million people with some form of disability for only 5% of them to qualify for a Mobility car doesn't sound like the numbers are overly high.

Yes there could be some who shouldn't have one, but that's not going to have a significant impact on the overall numbers.

Likewise, the three year period is so there's not the hassle of having to deal with getting the vehicle through an MOT.

4. The number of Civil Servants in the MOD increased whilst the number of armed services personnel fell. There are now approximately 120,000 armed services personnel in the three services, and around 64,000 Civil Servants in the MOD; there must be some scope to reduce the number of Civil Servants.

Given the push towards cyber security defense (and they are likely to be counted as Civil Servants rather than armed service personal) that could at least explain some of that increase.

 

[dgl]

On the Motability cars front changing how quickly the cars are replaced will do nothing as the scheme is separate to the government and all Motability do it take the extra you get for higher rate PIP (though there are a few small cars where they don't take the full amount) plus any advance payment if necessary for the car that has been chosen.
The government do not have any other money in the scheme apart from possibly some for any adaptations that may be needed.
The frequency of renewal is to give the cars the optimum resale value so Motability don't lose money on it, though there are some cars with a 5yr lease (ones with adaptations possibly) instead of the usual 3yr lease.

Plus for most people that are not exactly getting some really expensive premium vehicle, especially if you want an automatic and don't want a large initial payment, some better cars might actually have a lower advance payment but again that simply ties into depreciation, if a more expensive car loses 3k over 3 years but a cheaper one loses 5k the more expensive one is cheaper to Motability in the long run.

 

[The Ham]

TfL could have a funding gap of £23 million funding gap due to the NI rise, typically there's a lot about how bad it is here:

Transport for London faces £23m funding shortfall

TfL needs to find more than £20m in savings due to an increase in employers' NI contributions.

www.bbc.com

However the article also says:

it remains unclear how TfL will plug its own, much larger, £23m funding gap.

The transport authority's overall budget for gross service expenditure in 2024-2025 is £9.4bn.

£23 million is about 0.2% of £9.4 billion (and I suspect it's possible that the £23 million isn't the total extra that is needed to be paid for to the NI change, but given they've not gone with that number it's also possible that they are one and the same) it appears to be a classic example of if we say a big number everyone will be scared by it.

However, for most organisations 0.2% of expenditure is probably well within tolerances of their budgets.

 

[Acfb]

I see Mike Amesbury has been jailed for 10 weeks for assault. I don't know if there will be time for a May by-election if the recall petition is successful.

 

[Gloster]

I see Mike Amesbury has been jailed for 10 weeks for assault. I don't know if there will be time for a May election if the recall petition is successful.

The recall petition process cannot start until the appeals process is completed or he abandons his appeals. The petition is open for six weeks.

 

[jon0844]

Reform must fancy their chances that they can put up a candidate even more violent...