[Youngian]

The prime minister was hoping to use the US president’s state visit, which begins on Tuesday, as a platform to refocus attention on his economic and foreign policy agenda.

After last week's violation of NATO air space in Poland, Trump going to be talking tough towards Putin on his visit. Just kidding.
If Starmer's ambition is really to deepen the UK's military and economic ties with the US maybe he should walk the plank.

[The Weeping Angel]

Er. Not sure about this. As prices are regulated, the VAT cut shouldn't be passed on to bill payers. But what's going to be taxed instead, if you can't raise any of the big taxes? Or are they belatedly giving up on that?

BTL comments are as spectacularly gobshite Bluesky as you'd expect.

James Murray of Business Green has thoughts on this.

[The Weeping Angel]

On a similar note.

[Tubby Isaacs]

The energy cap seems to be about the same in real terms as last year.

[Tubby Isaacs]

James Murray of Business Green has thoughts on this.

Thanks. Happy to defer to him. He may be overestimating the support for incentivising heat pumps though.

[The Weeping Angel]

https://labourlist.org/2025/09/exclusiv ... well-lead/

The poll, which had 1,112 respondents also shows a devastating unfavourability rate among Labour members for Keir Starmer of -33 points. Just over a quarter of Labour members, 26 per cent, had a favourable view with 59 per cent unfavourable.

Overall, when asked if the Labour Party was going in the right direction just 25 per cent of members said yes, with 67 saying no.

Those who believe the party is going in the right direction back Phillipson 58 per cent to 19 percent for Powell. However, those who disagree back Powell 63 per cent to 15 per cent.

Phillipson previously topped our poll of members which shows that she had strong name recognition going into this contest. However, this correlation shows this contest is likely being seen as a referendum on the Party and its leadership – with Phillipson seen by members as Starmer’s favoured candidate.

One member summed up this sentim

ent when given the opportunity to comment. He had voted for Starmer in the 2020 contest but now feels:

[The Weeping Angel]

The idea that the Government was going to do anything but announce some business investment and usher Trump on his way seems very fanciful. Guess what? They can still announce all these extra high tech jobs in a deprived region.

The prime minister was hoping to use the US president’s state visit, which begins on Tuesday, as a platform to refocus attention on his economic and foreign policy agenda.

Instead Trump will arrive to meet a beleaguered prime minister who is under criticism from both the right and the left of the party. Allies of alternative leaders are talking up their candidates’ prospects of rescuing the government’s standing.

I'm sure Starmer wants to do better in the polls but this constant "PM was hoping to turn everything around this week, but now can't because of someone nobody's heard of" is pure journo narrative as news. Same thing happened with Brown who couldn't announce anything without it being a "failed relaunch" (as it happened there was some improvement in polls by the election). And with Sunak too, in fairness.

The bigger problem by far is the feeling that Starmer isn't up to the challenge from Yaxley-Lennon.

I'm reminded of Brown a lot in recent weeks; he's being bled by the media, and they've already made their mind up and want him gone.

[Youngian]

Brown and Starmer maybe too stiff and technocratic for many voters tastes but vitriol and rage towards them is just weird. Left leaning voters may feel the same Theresa May or John Major but can't imagine an angry maelstrom against them.

[Tubby Isaacs]

John Major was just seen as boring and an ineffectual (which was unfair). His own side pissed him about, with Tony Marlow playing the Clive Lewis role of being first to call for his resignation, and a wider group of goons for whom nothing will be good enough. Major was grim in terms of poverty and lack of investment, but he stuck to his guns fairly well and achieved decent growth in the last few years.

[Tubby Isaacs]

Google has said it will invest £5bn in the UK in the next two years to help meet growing demand for artificial intelligence services, in a boost for the government.

The investment, which comes as Google opens its new datacentre in Waltham Cross in Hertfordshire, is expected to contribute to the creation of thousands of jobs, the US tech company said.

The chancellor, Rachel Reeves – who is attempting to drive growth amid pressure over the lacklustre state of the UK economy - said the investment into research and development, capital expenditure and engineering was a “vote of confidence” in the UK economy.

The US president, Donald Trump, begins his official state visit to the UK on Tuesday, and the ChatGPT parent firm, OpenAI, and the chip designer Nvidia will this week also reportedly announce billions of dollars’ worth of investment into British datacentres.

All good news, you'd think. What's the "eco-populist" view, I wonder?

There'll be tax deductions for all this investment (quite properly). I can almost hear the "tax populist" takes from here.

[davidjay]

The media decided from the start that Starmer and his government had to be destroyed. Everything stems from that.

[Tubby Isaacs]

I think it's clear now that the Employers NI rise was a (small) economic mistake, but things aren't all disastrous. Here are Nat West reporting decent improvement in August from their survey

https://www.natwestgroup.com/news-and-i ... -2025.html

Commenting on the Tracker’s findings, Sebastian Burnside, NatWest Chief Economist, said:

“Businesses in most parts of the UK enjoyed a better month in August. London continued to lead the way, though the East of England, South West and North East are also worthy of special mentions having seen solid rates of growth.

"Encouragingly, the Tracker's forward-looking indicators have generally improved. Alongside an increase in new business in most areas, we saw stronger business expectations in the majority of cases.

"Efforts to mitigate rising costs continue to be reflected in adjustments to workforce numbers. However, taking a glass half full perspective, most regions did see employment fall more slowly than the month before.

"Price pressures remain stubbornly highly across the UK, with costs rising more quickly than the long-run average in all areas.”

We've had surveys and GDP not matching up before, so we'll have to see.

Or we could stop worrying about one month's figures altogether?

[Killer Whale]

Or we could stop worrying about one month's figures altogether?

Maybe. But how many 'one months' does it take before we all scream "why didn't we see this coming?"

[Tubby Isaacs]

Quarterly figures are fine for that.

[Tubby Isaacs]

I'm putting this here because it's all part of the "everything's shit" narrative

Strange article about an apparent injustice I'd never noticed before- that it's hard to travel to Birmingham from.... Ludlow.

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/202 ... end-ludlow

Ludlow's population is 11,000, which is hardly enough to sustain a frequent bus service to Birmingham. It makes Kidderminster look like Las Vegas. Talking of Kidderminster, there is a surprisingly good bus service from Ludlow, and that would be sufficient to do a lot of the errands you might not be able to do in Ludlow. Similarly, there are good train services to Shrewsbury and Hereford. If you want a day out in Birmingham, it's 1h 33m on the train, change at Shrewsbury. Bit annoying, but manageable.

Privatisation is of questionable value, but it isn't the reason there are no buses running from Ludlow to Birmingham. A bloke in the article recalls buses in 1981, which is quite a long time ago. Towns like Ludlow have become much more affluent in that time. Even with free bus passes, pensioners drive nearly everywhere. Compare Ludlow to somewhere on the same size in France. It's not impossible that the UK trains and buses will actually be more frequent, if more expensive.

[Killer Whale]

If I lived in Ludlow (it has a Welsh name - Llwydlo - trivia fans) I'd be happy with the rail service - Birmingham, Manchester and Cardiff all within day trip range. I'm pretty sure it must have used to take an hour and a half for buses to wind their way to Brum in the golden days of public road transport, anyway.

[Malcolm Armsteen]

The media decided from the start that Starmer and his government had to be destroyed. Everything stems from that.

This.

[Tubby Isaacs]

Yeah, Ludlow is pretty well connected. Leominster is a bit bigger than Ludlow, and the train takes longer to Birmingham, if that's the metric. Places like Ludlow are very expensive nowadays. I'm not sure who'd pay out to live there and be dependent on public transport to get to work in Birmingham. I suppose there are people who commute a couple of days a week and work at home, but that's manageable with the current train service.

I find Guardian transport articles a bit annoying for the implication that the UK is some sort of outlier, with nowhere else in Europe building new roads because everyone zips about on state of the art trains and buses. There's something in that in the context of cities, with the UK being miles behind on trams. And fares are expensive here, no doubt about that. But they never give the other side of it, that taxpayers pay more cost in other places. I'd be delighted with that, but it's not an obvious vote winner. Germany is often quoted as being brilliant and cheap, but the deteriorating network suggests they'd have been better off with some higher fares and more investment.

I love seeing Welsh names for places just over the border in England. Nice that they thought enough of us to translate/transliterate.