Starmer cooked?
Endless scandals, Rayner going, then Mandelson and reshuffled his cabinet and closest advisors (shifted people from HM Treasury to directly reporting to him). Budget been delayed to end of November (unprecedented) which will certainly see £40bn+ worth of tax rises. 170+ majority yet can't seem to scale back on the smallest of spending cuts (£5bn is small in government terms). On top of that, not sure how you can really credibly sell the UK as an investment market with gilt-yields near 27-year highs, sluggish capital markets and no willingness for deregulation.
Imo, his saving grace is that a) the Labour party are historically bad at regicide and b) he needs a crazy black swan event (potential expansion of war in Eastern Europe) to shift focus away from day-to-day government delivery
Not sure who his base is anymore. Seems both the right and the left are pissed at him.
Yeah both the Tories and increasingly Labour have lost their core voting base
Labour: working class, socially/culturally conservative voters flocking to Reform. Socially liberal left-leaning graduates are going towards the LibDems, Greens (becoming increasingly populist) or Your Party
Tories: working class, socially/culturally conservative voters (who they won in 2019) flocking to Reform. Fiscal conservatives and the One Nation Cameron types heading to the Lib Dems. But a lot of True Blue seats in the Cotswolds, Kent etc are facing a migration battle between the Lib Dems and Reform on the centre-right
As an American it makes me laugh how crazy the UK news papers are about the redistricting going on in the US. When the UK's parliment is one of the most gerrymandered governmental organizations in the world. I read somewhere that the parliment is made up by almost 60% by districts that fall in the London area, while the London population only makes up less than 15% of the total population
Good observation - both Labour and the Conservatives are guilty of gerrymandering, they do it effectively and have boundary reviews every 3-4 years before elections
It's just commical to me that a bunch of media in one of the most gerrymandered countries on earth is chastising another country for doing a redistricting process in places that for the most part are overly represented by Democrats now. There was some independent analysis done by some think tank that, if I recall correctly, focuses on interstate trade of all things that said the current districting based on popular vote gives the democrats something like a 17 seat over representation based on 2024. If we look at 2020 it was still 8 seats. So this idea that the redistricting is being done solely to disadvantage Democrats is a bit laughable.
Yes completely cooked, fam
My HF has been doing a lot of work in the macro space around the pound and the UK recently. It's a place with a ton of opportunity specifically because of how fucked the country's finances are.
The nations GDP has been flat since 2007, and everyone is reliant on finance and a few smaller industries core to London to keep things afloat. Labour was basically voted in with a mandate, and yet they haven't done anything to suggest they actually know this. It's incredible, how you can win such a majority with the 3rd largest party in the libdems also being close allies, and still fail to get anything of note done. People in the UK resoundingly voted against the Tories, specifically because the Tories weren't doing anything to improve people's lives. Labour hasn't done anything either. So now people are turning to Reform UK to try to get anything done, and when that backfires who knows where tf the country will end up.
It's a sad sight to see, a nation slowly falling apart due to their own governmental incompetence and inability to overhaul the nation. Both the Tories and Labour are weak parties unable to do anything past minor adjustments. It's status quo till the end for both.
What do you think can be realistically be done to overhaul a nation that has fallen behind in almost all industries? Sieze wealth from every russian in mayfair and use it to fund AI investments?
The Russians have left. And even if they're still in London, they have at least 1-2 other citizenships. They're all in the South of France, Israel, Dubai and Turkey. The EU have been talking about seizing EUR300bn of oligarch assets since 2022, yet nothing has materialised
A lot of the ailments of the UK are caused by their inability to build in the London area and their refusal to support areas outside of London. If people have higher housing costs, they demand higher wages, shooting up inflation, causing further housing price demand. Honestly, you could probably fix around 1/3rd of the issues by making housing cheaper, which would instantly give so many people more disposable income and boost spending. Problem is, that requires the UK to piss off NIMBYs, which is why it hasn't happened yet.
There is nothing they can do. They don't have the funds, the VC scene is degrading in the UK, the talent is leaving, the wealth is leaving, and the last thing UK folks want right now is more immigration (even if you are bringing skilled Indians and Chinese for AI talent). It's game over, but going to be a long decline. Grab some popcorn and enjoy, hopefully it'll serve as an example for America on what not to do. And create more allies globally for Republicans
The majority is a bit misleading, it has more to do with how the parliment seats are allocated than anything else. ~70% of the UK population votes for about 35-40% of the parliment seats. London is massively over represented in the parliment.
Haha brits down bad. Silly redcoats.
lots of Europeans complain about immigration, more notably UK and France, but then I can't stop wondering who will pay for their pensions
at least UK has control over its currency and can inflate its currency to lower pensions, but reading about France on FT feels like reading Lehman's last days
Problem is that immigration is an economic drain. The question Europeans are asking is who will pay for pensions AND for the migrants. If migrants are so good for the economy, why isn't it growing? Plus, some things are more important to a nation and quality of life than "GDP number go up".
Only two European countries have been willing to study the effects and publish their findings. Denmark and the Netherlands. Both found the same thing: Migrants from certain countries on average do not at any point in their lives make a positive economic contribution. Here from article in the Economist (https://archive.vn/POvAs)
Interesting graph. Do they also discuss 2nd generation immigrants in those countries? I believe 1st generations will have a harder time contributing at the same level as locals, since they are more likely to work lower-end jobs + face some unemployment due to language barriers/lack of education + not have careers with higher compensation that place them in higher tax brackets to contribute more
so I believe it would be short-sighted to base any conclusion on this and instead it should be viewed as an immigration J-curve, where we take some losses on the 1st generation, but the 2nd/3rd one stabilize and become net contributors
I was honestly surprised the economist was willing to publish this given their leanings. It's unfortunate this doesn't get featured more frequently and more government's aren't forced to do the same analysis. The entire concept of open migration and free flowing peoples from anywhere in the world would die overnight if it were more widely published and highlighted.
"It's complicated"?
Doesn't look complicated at all. The standards of entry from MENAPT appear to be far too low.
Nobody is going to pay for their pensions. Something like 40% of the migrants the UK takes are on unemployment (similar #s in FR but across the board the UK is just egregious) and soaking up so much in benefits that the minute their feet touch the land they're better off than the bottom 10% of the UK's native population. These people do not work or earn in any meaningful capacity buy and large and thus won't be able to fund those pension liabilities. And those "high birth rates" they're importing don't stick, within 1-2 generations they fall below replacement and the problem perpetuates. For god's sake, in FR pensioners have a higher fixed income than the average wage workers - that just isn't sustainable in any universe. The old pension model of the 20th century is a failed experiment for social welfare and needs to be thrown out. The old people whose poor financial planning & management that brought us to this point need to be the ones who suffer for it, not the entire country.
Some politician is going to have to communicate that fact, pensioners will of course lose their damn minds and end that person's career, and the country will have to be dragged kicking & screaming to adjust to that reality accordingly. Or they can just keep the current trajectory, eliminate their own culture as the birth rates of natives get decimated and they're replaced with 3rd world cultures that frankly hate their history, and they'll become another forgotten relic of the past bound to fade from global relevancy.
As it stands, I unfortunately see the latter as the more likely outcome. It's a sad state to see Europe in.
saw this graph, and it's an interesting case because France is now the first European country that faces the same US boomer phenomenon on having the wealthiest generation also be the one extracting the most from the system
it's the same in the UK actually, just scroll to comments: https://www.ft.com/content/bdf3b3f6-b1aa-43b1-bb5c-e5e89809075f
UK going down the tube is poetic justice honestly, given what they did to the rest of the world for centuries. The hilarious thing is that this is a problem of their own making too, what an ultimate own-goal
The most viable strategy is to cherry pick immigrants from 1st/2nd world countries. It's not tough. Let in 150k/yr on pure merit. Zero low skill immigration.
Easy win. English speaking countries have a massive leg up on immigration relative to others.
They complain about immigration because the immigrants get more benefits than the citizens. That is the fundamental problem. The west has governments predominately filled with people that have suicidal levels of "empahty". In reality they are all just a bunch of greedy fucks who want to line the pockets of their family through graft.
Suicidal empathy is such a wonderfully accurate term to summarize what's going on.
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