[Crabcakes]

Seems to have gone down like the proverbial heavy metal dirigible even with her own backbenchers.

She can’t be much longer for her position, surely? This isn’t even desperate now. She’s so out of her depth it’s just sad.

https://www.thepoke.com/2025/06/26/kemi ... -comeback/

[Tubby Isaacs]

She also made some "we used to be strong on the world stage" point. This is basically the Chagos Islands deal milked to death, and once Trump accepted it, that point got a lot weaker. And said nobody cares what Britain thinks. Zelenskyy, Carney, Macron and Merz seem to be spending a lot of time with Starmer if that's the case. He'd be a lot more "irrelevant on the world stage" if he skipped NATO and the G7.

Does nobody test these Kemi PMQ lines out? As for the stuff about the welfare rebellion, I seem to recall Bozo and Sunak having a few party management problems. Were they attacked with this silly "that shows how weak he is" stuff when they were making statements on grave foreign affairs? When Zelenskyy came to Parliament, Starmer literally did all 6 questions to Sunak to emphasize that support for Ukraine was bipartisan.

[davidjay]

Seems to have gone down like the proverbial heavy metal dirigible even with her own backbenchers.

She can’t be much longer for her position, surely? This isn’t even desperate now. She’s so out of her depth it’s just sad.

https://www.thepoke.com/2025/06/26/kemi ... -comeback/

I don't think any of them are bothered anymore. Apart from having 'Former leader of the opposition ' on their CV, who would want to be the Admiral Doenitz of the Tory party?

[Crabcakes]

I would be willing to bet she does test the lines out, but is such a fragile ego that she has assembled a bunch of bootlickers who just tell her it sounds great.

[Tubby Isaacs]

Mark Pritchard used to be seen as a bit of a headbanger. Here he is deeply unimpressed with Kemi.

[Tubby Isaacs]

I would be willing to bet she does test the lines out, but is such a fragile ego that she has assembled a bunch of bootlickers who just tell her it sounds great.

You could well be right. It's also possible she simply doesn't do any proper work. Just logs into Twitter to get her narrative and then practices saying it confidently in front of the mirror.

[kreuzberger]

She has a reflection?

[Crabcakes]

Maybe she just shouts her lines at a couple of steaks, and that “cooks” them for her?

[Tubby Isaacs]

She's doing policy now. Workers rights.

I have said we will remove Labour’s red tape.
We will remove the ability to strike with zero warning, something businesses cannot prepare for.
We will remove the trade union ‘right to roam’ in business premises.
We will remove the new ‘Fair Work Agency’, another quango, that is designed to hound British businesses, even when no employee has raised a complaint.
How did we get to a point where a government felt it could impose these measures on business?
We have forgotten a fundamental truth that every pound spent by government, every benefit paid – it all comes from the makers.

We got to this point by Labour putting it in its manifesto and winning the election.

This new "quango" actually replaces quangos that existed when Kemi was in government. And enforcement can be pro-active. A nudge here and there can prompt action and save costs of dragging people through the courts.

Is Farage going to bother too much with this stuff? I'd guess he'll stick to immigrants and tax cuts.

[Tubby Isaacs]

Davey wouldn't have passed anything like this extensive- they abstained- but I'd be surprised if his affluent Southern base was too bothered about this stuff.

Kemi might be on her own here. The MRP from Yougov (which I think overstates Reform's seat numbers because they'd cop a lot of tactical voting) had he Lib Dems with more seats than the Tories. Kemi could easily get in the position where she loses more of the South through making herself into a big target for tactical voting. Cameron understood the importance of that.

[Boiler]

Hang on a minute - "remove the ability to strike with zero warning"? When did that get reinstated, because the last time I could do (and indeed, did) that was in 1989 or thereabouts?

Did Rayner really reintroduce the "lightning" strike?

[Tubby Isaacs]

You still have to give notice of the ballot to the employer. The fact there's a strike ballot happening, you might think, is a warning that one might happen.

[Tubby Isaacs]

I actually meant PMQs should be rescheduled to Thursday, which is why I didn't say that at the time.

I love answering questions. The prime minister does not.
It is perfectly possible to move PMQs to Thursday. There’s no reason why it has to be on Wednesday. You used to be on Tuesdays and Thursdays. But he doesn’t want to have PMQs, and the reason why is because he doesn’t like answering questions.
Anybody who’s ever watched PMQs will see that he doesn’t answer anything. He didn’t answer any of the questions that I asked him in the statement that he had.

I didn't see these questions. I'm assuming "come on, will you come right out and say this thing that you're not saying for obvious diplomatic reasons?" was one of the ones he didn't answer.

[Tubby Isaacs]

And indeed it is exactly that. Here's her genius.

the Government’s aspiration to get spending on national security to 5% is just hope—the reality is that Labour does not have a plan to get to 3%. It is all smoke and mirrors, and we do not know what the Government will spend the extra 1.5% component on. Can the Prime Minister confirm whether this is money we are already spending, or whether there will be any new money? So long as this plan remains unfunded, these are just words.

Wouldn't a plan be "words" too? Defence did at least get raised in the Budget. It'll likely get raised in future budgets too.

The 1.5% component is stuff countries are basically doing now that can be rebadged as relevant to Defence, so that it sounds like a lot more to Trump. I bet he didn't answer this, because the last thing anyone needs is an opportunist moron like you shouting "It's fake, the 1.5% is fake!" and having to go back and do another summit.

[Boiler]

You still have to give notice of the ballot to the employer. The fact there's a strike ballot happening, you might think, is a warning that one might happen.

As I recall, you then have to give notice on what days you plan to take industrial action within a window. What I recall from my days "out the gate" was the reps coming in to our areas and saying "action starts at 1pm" or similar - usually about twenty minutes before, if that. Sometimes I'd pitch up at work in the morning and encounter a picket line (which I invariably joined).

[Tubby Isaacs]

I'm assuming from what she's saying that the strike can start more quickly than it did before. She seems to suggest a case of "We've got the result from the Electoral Reform Society, everybody out now!" That may be an exaggeration.

[Tubby Isaacs]

From the TUC, assuming this was in the final version. Has Kemi misread 10 as O?

notice for strike action will be cut from 14 days currently to ten days. And the mandate for taking strike action after a vote in favour doubled to 12 months.