The scariest thing about this election is that Jonathan Gullies may go back to teaching when he's voted out!!!
An attempt at a counter view, despite having a reasonable amount of sympathy with what you've written: A lot of the disasters in the last 10 years have been a result of the Tories needing to manage internal party politics. Brexit, the Truss mini budget, the opportunity cost of wasting time and £ on crazy policies like the Rwanda one when we could have spent that time fixing real issues like social care. All driven by internal Tory politics. That's why having a really strong grip on your own party is critical. Thatcher could only transform the country (like it or not) because she controlled her party. Ditto Blair. May, Truss, Boris and Sunak haven't had a real grip on their party at any point (bar maybe Boris for ~12 months) which has led to chaos, decline and us all being comparatively poorer. As such I think there is huge intrinsic value in simply being in control of your party - hence Starmer's strong focus on this. It leads to stability, and it's the only place that good governance can start from. If you're also a bit of a determinist about govt decision making (ie irrespective of the party in power most govts will make similar decisions - see how similar the Darling Plan in 2010 was to what Osborne did) then the impact of stable govt is even higher. I'm sure I've seen academic evidence out there on the intrinsic value of stable governance too. The famous case often cited is when Belgium had no govt for ages and the economy did extremely well. Appreciate this is not exactly an exciting reason to look forward to a new govt. But a little bit of boring might be exactly what we need after the last few years.
Do you reckon Starmer will have a full grip on a super majority, or even a huge majority? I somehow think that relatively quickly the demand that they use the majority to make serious change will grow. But he will resist it because he is vision free. The stability argument stands though. Oddly Blair regretted not using his 400 plus seats in 1997 and the election after to do more. Have to say that both Sunak and Starmer are getting **** advice, or can’t think on their feet. Sunak’s D-day stuff and the bizarre idea of lack of Sky being deprivation (surely that would be a Miliband bacon sandwich moment if he wasn’t toast already) and Starmer’s monotonous parroting of ‘my dad was a toolmaker’, even when he gets laughed at because of it, is now a negative. Also his continual ‘I’m worried about the impact on my kids’ of winning is pathetic. If he puts his family above his political ambition, which he should, what the **** is he doing trying to be PM?
The risk for Starmer is that the Tories have proven how easy it is to chop and change the PM without any input from the wider electorate. …
Interesting it's so low vs the 25% who invest in stocks and shares. I'm guessing those with higher numbers of shares (but not hyper rich) use ISAs so much more than 5% of the potential capital gains are sheltered, but that is admittedly pure guess work.
If the degree of control by Starmer was reflected in the Diane Abbott fiasco, when Rayner contradicted him and he U-turned, then we're in for a rocky ride.
With the way that he has controlled the candidate selection process and the number of allies he has planted in seats, yes, I think he'll have as close to full grip as a leader can realistically have. Certainly more than any leader since Blair. And the hard left are well beaten. Sure there will be some natural tension on how centre vs centre left they should be, but I don't think they have the inherent division the Tories have had on Europe, and then what type of Brexit, in recent year. Agree he's not exactly a visionary. I suppose I'm hoping a boring technocrat is what we need for a bit. Merkel style.
One example cherry picked from when they were caught off guard by the election. I'd say the bigger picture points towards him having quite strong control over the party.
Share platforms like Hargreaves Lansdown and A.J.Bell make share trading so much easier for the public than use of s stockbroker. I agree, one would think anyone opening an account would start with a share ISA. But interest rates having been negligible, it seems many people now build sizeable portfolios of shares
He's certainly kicked out a good proportion of the antisemites along with Corbyn. His front bench are weak and will defer to him. But I suspect Rayner will have support from the unions and hard left, and so she may become a threat in time.
A lot of people might be given shares as part of their remuneration, including buying and selling them tax efficiently through employee share ownership schemes, or simply as part of their pay package. Others might have shares that they have just been given - I discovered that I had a few shares in Lloyds and Aviva simply because at some time in the deep past they had given customers shares for some reason. Easy to forget about. Plus anyone with a pension pot will have some, or most of it invested in stocks. Hopefully globally. It’s really fun monitoring the ebbs and flows of your pension pot on a daily basis. Not. Other than these buying shares on a small scale not through an ISA seems nuts to me. In the last 18 months the return you can get on fixed term cash savings has been so good it would put me off the riskier share dealing and even buy to let options to play with savings. Of course, if you have a mortgage, some of these arguments might seem rather heartless.
