UK Politics Thread

It's not like that's a new reason, he's said that's why he has high gifts as he goes to a lot of football, and the security reasons. Feels pretty reasonable to me.

Dianne Abbott teabagging Starmer on TV. At least she may have scuttled the phrase 22 Billion black hole, That PR think tank phrase was more annoying than Daddy toolmaker.

I guess they won't be sending each other Christmas cards.

No that makes you a worker not working class, she's Liz Truss Mk2.

Oh my days, how does she manage that.

Although I think nobody really knows what working class is any more. Working/middle class are not very useful designations any more.

In a weird way, I feel like Badenoch is where she is in the party pretty much entirely because of racism.

Amused by the BBC article on the front page. "Nobody cared about the story we broke over the weekend so now we're telling you why you should care, but can't so we're going to talk about how hard we worked on it, boo hoo"

Feels like media are desperate to find divisions within government. The Guardian the other day were trying to make a big deal out of a residency of Dorneywood mansion being given to Reeves. But Blair gave it to his deputy! Of course, tucked in the article is that other PMs have given it to other positions and that it traditionally goes to foreign secretary, but Rayner is going to be so pissed off!!

Whether these stories of division are true or not, I guess it must be hard for journalists to do anything else. They've had 14 years of a soap opera and there will be many that have had their whole careers being just reporting on childish bickering.

Yes it's Chris Mason trying to drum up interest in a story no-one really gives a shit about, should the Prime Minister get less than a civil servant? *Shrug*

For anyone wondering Chris Mason is also paid a lot more than the Prime Minister, in the region of £230K.

The most interesting part of that story is how Whizzo found out how much he's paid.

From what I gathered for Jack and Sam's podcast, there seemed to be quite aggressive briefing to the media about Sue Gray and some people within the government/No 10 office *really* want to stick the boot in. The suggestion it's quite a disjointed operation, and ministers are left out on a limb without a clear party line to stick to when the get challenged on things like this or the expenses and gifts story.

Not that long ago I remember many people cheering on how great it was to have grown ups in charge. Didn't last long.

I guess the question is where is this coming from. There is a strong suggestion that many of these stories are coming from Simon Case, Head of Civil Service. Case is a figure who really came to prominence during Johnson's tenure and was also at the centre of pretty much every scandal. He also made a lot of noise about the Gray appointment by Labour and her departure was also supposedly proceeded by him making sure she didn't get a promotion (if I remember rightly, Badenoch was looking to recruit her into her team).

Case is leaving at some point in the coming months, so I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of these stories disappear when he has gone.

Regardless though, the communication around them has definitely been abysmal. We all knew the press would be out to dig out any tiny bit of dirt or discontent, so they really should have been much more prepared to handle these kinds of stories.

I saw last year's figures, didn't realise he'd had a 30K rise, must be nice to have an increase like that.

Number 10 is always like that. Too many people trying to climb the ladder etc.

That too.