Mailwatch(ed) Forum

As Lewis Baston points out, it's not just votes for 16-year-olds, it's other measures as well



Like Lewis, I would scrap voter ID, but at least it's being widened.

The only other thing I’d like to see (other than a prportional system), would be mandatory voting.

Big majorities support photo ID, so I think accepting bank cards are a fairly brave thing.

There are some reforms on corporate donations in there. I haven't read much commentary on them, but we were told recently that Lord Ali had vetoed anything like this.

I see Richard Murphy has already predicted a crash before Reeves has published detailed proposals. He’ll have a lot more engagement than Nils Pratley. There’s really no incentive to do any proper work if you’re a commentator these days

For a nice example of the Left chucking any old shit at the Government, here's Mike Sivier (remember him?). He popped up on Bluesky.

https://voxpoliticalonline.com

Among the things it criticizes Reeves for is- get this- raising the minimum wage by too much. He's also become some sort of inflation hawk.

Also outright rubbish like Reeves "has all but ruled out borrowing for investment, preferring instead to stick to "fiscal rules"". How can you not know that the fiscal rules were changed to allow for a lot more investment? And some rubbish about "austerity", when borrowing went up a lot. The result is "paralysis", whatever that means, rather than the economy slowing for a bit, which isn't exactly unknown in the last few years. The economy hasn't grown since the last quarter, we're not exactly in the Great Depression. I thought people had learned from the Osborne era where many made silly predictions that the economy was stuck forever. But I guess if it's Starmer in charge, that's what everybody does.

He's also said that wages are down, when they aren't. Hard to tell the difference sometimes between the left and Kemi Badenoch.

More of that "same as Reform" business. Worth reading the rest of the thread, says that it's only really in financial services and AI that the UK is that divergent.

I'm not really sure this is alignment by stealth, as another poster calls it. The Government's been fairly open that this is what it's doing, and that it sees economic advantages in it. I think the issue is that there are so many people who aren't interested in anything short of "just rEJOIN nOW".