I appreciate things time but so far the government have enormously walked back their planning reform proposals, which was one of their few pro-growth policies, and haven't really made any dent in anything else substantive. It's been pretty clear since even before the election that they didn't really have a plan, and they got a fairly light scrutiny through the campaign because the Tories were so appalling. Then since they got in they're just scrambling around looking fairly incompetent and the dearth of talent on the cabinet has been pretty plain to see as well. Largely I want Labour to succeed but they're not making it easy to like them.
I keep recommending r/GoodNewsUK on Reddit. It’s often just a lot of press releases and government announcements, but there seem to be a continual stream of them, and it’s hard to hear about them by any other source.
Farage’s mate - the leader of Reform Wales, was literally thrown in jail for 10 Years after he admitted she was a Russian agent. Barely anything in the media about it.
Due to the way FPTP works though it’s likely Farage will get a majority in 29 off less than 30% of the vote.
They have done a lot. But they haven't even stopped the runaway train yet. And the fundamental mistake they have made is not explaining to people clearly enough, during the election campaign, that it would take the first three years just to stop it.
Then you have the absolutely shameful, racist, nihilistic, fact-free intervention of five MPs that the media thinks will run the country in future so they are getting ten times the airtime of anyone else.
I really don’t agree. Look at the first year of 1997 Labour:
* Good Friday agreement signed and referendum * Introduction of Minimum Wage * Human Rights act introduced and passed * Scottish and Welsh devolution set out, Parliament voted on it, referendums passed * Bank of England independence
A government coming into a mess of a country on a platform of change cannot just fiddle around with minor things, which is what many of the changes they have done, though positive, are. And at the same time, they’ve also wasted so much political capital on some really stupid things that it’s hard to see where they can go from here.
They have neither talents nor a plan. So far it seems that Starmer has picked policies to make him survive and he knows that this means placating power bases in the Labour party, not generally good policies for the country. Opinion polls are scathing.
The freezing of threshold just continued Tory policy.
While I’m annoyed the extra money has been given to those who don’t work, and marginal rates advice 60% still exist, I just see this as lost opportunity. They could have increased income tax and reduced NI, thus raising tax on non working people. But truth is all governments are beholden to the elderly for the next 20 years.
However the attacks on reeves have been vitriolic since the start and there’s a significant amount of misogyny in them.
They have pushed ahead with the Tories Online Safety Act. Legislation I have looked at or that affect things I know about such as the Children's Wellbeing and Schools Act is terrible.
There is a lot of smoke and mirrors. For example, if you assume the justification for the "mansion tax" is that people who own higher value properties should be taxed more, why does someone with a £50m house not pay more than someone with a £5m house? Its designed to hit the moderately wealthy but not the really rich.
A tax on a £5M home is not a tax on the moderately wealthy, it’s a tax on the wealthy.
If they'd targeted the really rich harder, it would have looked more consistent but would have probably raised even less (because, when a tax starts being significant, the really rich have the means to find ways to avoid it). As it is, it looks insignificant enough that the really wealthy will just pay it and move on.
Taxes on property are something they cannot avoid though.
One of the reasons the rich are able to find means to avoid taxes has always been government reluctance to stop them. There are many deliberate tax breaks for the rich - think of how long it took to get rid of non-dom status, so I really do not think the government has ever tried very hard to stop avoidance by the rich.
I realise “it’s the economy, stupid”, but still it feels like outsized outrage.
2019 GE Votes
Labour: 10,269,051 22% R 32% T
Tory: 13,966,454 29% R 44% T
LibDem: 3,696,419 8% R 12% T
Labour: 9,708,716 20% R 34% T
Tory: 6,828,925 14% R 24% T
LibDem: 3,519,143 7% R 12% T
So that he got even more unpopular seemed a given, unless he managed to be competent and actually improve things for the people who elected his party.
It does not take a crystal ball to understand that the British media, which are vitriolic on a good day, will have an absolute free-for-all. It's nothing new.