Brexit and the waning days of the United Kingdom

[Sheilbh]

Oh RIP Roy Hattersley

[garbon]

Social media ban for under 16s.

[Sheilbh]

Social media ban for under 16s.

Politically I think this'll be a test of how unpopular this government/Keir Starmer is. This has huge support across all parties - but 60% of Brits have backed ID cards since the early 2000s until Starmer picked it up when the numbers flipped. So we'll see if he's still got the reverse Midas touch.

I'm a little unsure. I don't have an issue with the idea in principle - though the implementation in Australia has had problems technically and I actually lean more to a smartphone ban for under-16s. I think the proposed social media evening curfews for 16-18 year olds is mad, particularly from a party that has been open to the idea of votes at 16. I find it very weird how they keep pushing the protections of childhood up to 18, while still thinking the right to vote should come down - I don't mind votes at 16 but I think you kind of have to pick a lane.

There's lots of really important technical details on how this actually works (and lots that can be learned from Australia) that is the difference between it being effective and not, but also important on points like privacy, security etc. I really, really hope that the lesson is learned from the Online Safety Act and the last 16 years of legislating and that parliament pays attention to what the law actually does rather than the intentions of its supporters. But I'm not holding my breath. In particular a lot of reporting that basically this is something that's been in the works for a while, but plans hadn't actually been finalised and it was all rushed literally over the weekend so Starmer could announce it with the desperate urgency of a politician looking for a legacy.

I also think the list of social media is interesting and will attract attention. I am seeing a lot of pushback on YouTube from parents and people involved in education (I'd also note that the safeguarding side of that is a lot clearer - e.g. no DMs etc). I found the fact that they're not extending the ban to BlueSky quite funny. I'm not sure if this is revealing its lack of reach or relative popularity as the last redoubt of the Starmtroopers.

Speaking of which there was a story about a kid geting referred to Prevent a couple of weeks ago for printing and sharing and posting fascist imagery at school - but it was actually all the Starmer/Mussolini etc memes so possibly the first Starmer supporter referred to Prevent

[Sheilbh]

By the by, good obituary of Hattersley.

I think he is a slightly fascinating figure for the reason they point out/open with. Very much of the Labour right from the Gaitskellite wing who enormously admired Roy Jenkins (ditto) and encouraged him to launch a leadership challenge against Wilson following devaluation - but then didn't join Jenkins in resigning from shadow cabinet to brea the three-line whip and back Ted Heath's entry into the Common Market (and there were enough Tory rebels that Heath needed to rely on Labour rebels to pass it). That meant he was always slightly distanced from Jenkins and the Labour right that then went on form the SDP (again over Europe). But at the same time while Hattersley was definitely to the right of Tony Blair, Patricia Hewitt or, say, Peter Mandelson in the 80s he ended up being critical of them from the left. I think the kind argument is that he was fundamentally a specific type of social democrat (maybe more Crosland than Jenkins in the end), the ruder one is David Owen's: "the acceptable face of opportunism" (although a little rich from David Owen ).

Also as a total aside I'd never heard the story of his parents and it is extraordinary

Roy Hattersley, Labour deputy leader and writer
Labour grandee, professional Yorkshireman and prolific author and journalist who was a curious mix of pomposity and self-deprecation

Lord Hattersley in 2014
GARY DOAK/ALAMY
The Times
Sunday June 14 2026, 11.56pm, The Times

Roy Hattersley enjoyed one of the stranger odysseys of modern British politics. A pillar of the right of the Labour Party during his active political career, and for nine years its deputy leader, he ended up as a vehement critic of the Blair governments, believing them to be insufficiently left-wing. An irony was that Tony Blair led the party to three election victories while on Hattersley's watch as a senior figure, the party suffered four crushing defeats.

His political career was a casualty of the tides of politics. On the party's front bench, in opposition or government, from 1967 until 1992, the ebb and flow of Labour's electoral fortunes ensured that his fame and reputation were made in opposition rather than in government. He was part of Labour's lost generation — too young for senior office in 1970; too old after 1997.

In later years as a Labour grandee he expressed sour views about the Labour Party and its leaders; the exception was Blair's predecessor, his good friend John Smith, who died in 1994. Like the hero of his youth, Hugh Gaitskell, Hattersley maintained that the party was about redistribution and the promotion of equality rather than public ownership; if not, then there was little reason for its existence. His zeal for equality and comprehensive education effectively isolated him from the outlook and approach of the three successive Blair administrations. He said "this is not the Labour Party I joined". Twenty years later he was making the same complaint of a different leader, Jeremy Corbyn, saying that his policies were "doomed to failure" and calling on MPs to oust him.

Unlike most politicians Hattersley had a second string to his bow as an author and journalist, and his writing brought him recognition and money. When he returned to Sheffield for a book signing (rare at the time) of his Goodbye to Yorkshire (1976) he was so delighted with the reception that he declared: "I felt like Judy Garland in A Star is Born." He was particularly impressed that he received 50p for each book he signed.

His life as a journalist took off when Labour began its long spell in opposition in 1979. He started to write a regular weekly column for the old BBC weekly The Listener under the rubric of "Endpiece" — a title he took with him to The Guardian in 1982, where it ran for 15 years. He was also a columnist for Punch and a frequent contributor to many national newspapers. Yet he spread himself so widely that he risked not being taken seriously as a politician. Denis Healey, borrowing the 18th-century Duke of Gloucester's remark to Edward Gibbon, grabbed him roughly and said: "Always, scribble, scribble, scribble! Eh, Mr Hattersley?"
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Hattersley enjoyed further claims to public notice. He once failed to turn up for the television quiz show Have I Got News For You and was represented by a tub of lard. The programme makers defended his lard substitute because "they possessed the same qualities and were liable to give the same performance". And with his spraying spittle he was acknowledged as one of the early inspirations for another popular TV series, Spitting Image.


Hattersley with his Spitting Image puppet in 1986
REX

Yet the young Hattersley considered himself wholly dedicated to the life of politics and was a full-time professional politician from his early twenties. When first elected to the Commons at the age of 31 in 1964, he had known no other trade. Large, bulky and with a puce-coloured face to match, he looked what he was — a graduate of student and municipal politics. At 25 he had been Sheffield's youngest councillor and before long was chairman, successively, of the city's public works and housing committees. His boast that he was "born and bred in the Labour movement" was well founded. Both parents were Sheffield Labour councillors — his mother serving as lord mayor in 1981-82 — yet Roy, even in his twenties, dominated the council chamber in a way they never did.

Roy Sydney George Hattersley was born in 1932 and raised in a working-class household in Sheffield. By any standards, the circumstances of his birth were eye-bulgingly extraordinary. His father, Frederick, was a Catholic priest in Nottingham who had been preparing a young couple for marriage when he fell in love with the bride, Enid. Two weeks after he officiated at the wedding, he and Enid ran away together to live in Sheffield. Roy was born 11 months later. The couple did not marry until 1956 after the death of Enid's first husband, a miner who never remarried. Roy only uncovered this background when his father died in 1972 and he read a letter of condolence sent to his mother by a priest friend of his father. He dedicated his book The Catholics (2017) to his father's memory.

His original idols — he was not a bad opening bat and a steady goalkeeper — were all sporting ones, and he remained a lifelong supporter of Sheffield Wednesday Football Club and Yorkshire County Cricket Club. It was after he left Sheffield Grammar School, to which he had won a scholarship, and went to University College Hull (now the University of Hull), that the foundations of his political career were laid. He was originally destined to read English literature at Leeds University until he was advised that studying economics would be a better preparation for politics.

The friendships he had formed as a student politician provided him with his start in national politics. Having gained the nomination for what was then the marginal inner-city constituency of Birmingham Sparkbrook, he was returned at the 1964 election. Helped by population movements and an ever-growing ethnic vote, he turned it into one of the safest Labour citadels in the country. His devotion to his constituency contrasted with that of the city's other right-wing Labour "stars", Roy Jenkins and Brian Walden.

Although never formally a member of the right-wing (in Labour terms) Campaign for Democratic Socialism, Hattersley was identified with the revisionist school of Labour politics and a supporter of Gaitskell at the time of the great unilateralist controversy of 1960-61. This did not commend him to Gaitskell's successor as party leader, Harold Wilson, with whom Hattersley was to maintain a mutually suspicious relationship over the next dozen years.

It was Wilson, however, who appointed him in 1967 as a junior minister at the old Ministry of Labour. By now boasting a waistcoat, as well as the white, stiff collars he tended to wear above expensive, striped, coloured shirts, Hattersley was just as much at home holding court with lobby correspondents at the Reform Club as he was at the dispatch box, fending off attacks on government policies. Wilson from early on regularly complained to his aides about Hattersley plotting with "the Reform Club mafia". By the time of the 1970 election he had moved effortlessly up to be a minister of state at defence and was clearly a coming man.

Labour was in opposition between 1970 and 1974. Hattersley missed the trappings of office — the chauffeur, the car and the private office — and also grew increasingly disillusioned with Wilson's leadership, especially over Europe. He did not join Jenkins, Harold Lever and George Thomson, however, in resigning from the front bench in 1972 over the party's support for a European referendum. He did not think it was worth splitting the party on the issue. Instead he sent Wilson a remarkably cool letter outlining the conditions on which he was prepared to continue serving as an opposition spokesman.

This monumental piece of effrontery paid off. The withdrawal of Jenkins, Lever and Thomson left some gaping holes on the opposition front bench and Hattersley promptly filled one of them by succeeding Thomson as shadow minister of defence. Six months later he was further rewarded by being made shadow education secretary (the brief he always claimed to have wanted above any other). Yet his conduct had won him the distrust of many on the right of the party, without winning him friends on the left.

As education spokesman Hattersley soon made a mark with his views on private education and the then still "live" issue of the public schools. His speech promising their abolition at a 1973 prep school conference provoked an educational and religious storm. He correctly believed that it had cost him his chance of becoming secretary of state for education when Wilson formed his third government in March 1974.

He could tell stories at his own expense. When Wilson resigned as prime minister in 1976, Hattersley's good friend Tony Crosland was a candidate to succeed him and was counting on his support. When Hattersley visited him on the 14th floor of his department to say that he was voting for James Callaghan, Crosland replied, "then f*** off", which he did in haste. Crosland then summoned him back from the ground floor and offered him a glass of whisky. Meanwhile, Wilson, who had refused him promotion and was about to retire, told a bemused Hattersley over drinks that it was disgraceful that "you were not offered a cabinet post years ago".

Callaghan succeeded Wilson as prime minister in April 1976 and after a few months appointed Hattersley to the cabinet as secretary of state for prices and consumer protection. It was to prove, though few would have forecast it at the time, the first and last cabinet post he was to hold.

Despite his disillusion with Michael Foot's leadership of the party (1980-83) and the shift to the left, he never contemplated joining those disaffected Labour MPs who formed the short-lived Social Democratic Party (SDP) in March 1981. Although he agreed with many of their policies, he answered those who had hoped he would join them in an article: "I shall live and die a member of the Labour Party."

Tom McNally was one defector and was quoted as saying: "I don't know how I am going to tell my dad." The next day he received a telegram datelined Geneva airport, reading: "Tell your dad you owe everything to the Labour Party — Roy Hattersley."

In turn, SDP critics likened Hattersley to the Vicar of Bray, who kept his post through all vicissitudes: "That whatsoever king may reign, still I'll be the Vicar of Bray, Sir."

David Owen, the future SDP leader, called him "the acceptable face of opportunism" and another of the Gang of Four, Bill Rodgers, spoke of his "Arnold Bennett pomposity". They all knew that had he switched, it would have been a massive boost for the SDP.

He admired principled leaders such as Gaitskell, Attlee and Gladstone and the certainty of the Catholic Church — "its inflexibility and convictions are actually its strength". But he never escaped the reputation of being a trimmer, of wanting to have it both ways. Neither the right (after his 1972 refusal to join pro-Europeans) nor the left (because of his Gaitskellite past) fully trusted him. He attacked the Lords but took a peerage. He defended civil liberties and freedom of speech but, sensitive to the Muslims in his constituency, wanted to halt the paperback publication of Salman Rushdie's The Satanic Verses.

His private life was complicated. In 1956 Hattersley married Molly Loughran, a former fellow student at Hull; she went on to be a distinguished headmistress and later a senior official of the Inner London Education Authority. In the 1980s he allegedly had an affair with Ann Taylor, a fellow Labour MP, and he separated from his wife in 1997, divorcing her in 2013, the same year he married his literary agent Maggie Pearlstine, also his partner for some years. They lived mainly in the Peak District of Derbyshire. Despite his opposition to hunting she was a senior master of a pack of hounds based at nearby Chatsworth House.

The fact that he was married but for many years living with another woman did not escape the attention of the tabloids. He divided his time, it was reported, between the two residences. A coach containing members of the press lobby once paused at a zebra crossing to allow a hesitant Hattersley to cross. With deadpan delivery, the coach driver said over his microphone: "Sorry for the delay, gents, Mr Hattersley can't decide if 'e's off to see the missus or the mistress." The whole coach roared.

The great disappointment of his political career came in 1983 with his crushing defeat at the hands of Neil Kinnock for the Labour leadership. It was the first time that the new electoral college had been used for the actual leadership — and the enhanced role of the trade unions and constituency parties largely determined the result. Hattersley realised that he faced a three-month campaign that he knew was bound to end in humiliation. It was a mark of his professionalism as a politician that he managed to conduct himself with such resilience. It was scant consolation that he was elected deputy leader.


Hattersley and Kinnock in 1987
BRYN COLTON/GETTY IMAGES

Kinnock and Hattersley made an odd couple, by nature and temperament almost polar opposites. The former, at least at the outset of his leadership, was a romantic Welsh left-winger with an emotional commitment to CND, while his deputy, ten years his senior, was a rational son of Yorkshire who believed in a strong defence policy. It reflected well on both men that they should have managed to maintain a political partnership without too much evidence of stress and strain throughout nearly a decade. They were never close friends, each having been in the other's home only once in the time that they worked together, but they developed a good relationship, one based on mutual respect. When Labour lost a third successive general election in 1992, both men resigned their posts.

It was probably just as well that Hattersley found an alternative outlet to politics in writing and journalism. It took him a long time to accept that he would never be a cabinet minister again. He had spoken of the "humiliations" of opposition and the frustration of proposing but not implementing policies. In his later years, though, he became as proud of his life as a writer as he had ever been of his career as politician. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 2003.

He wrote more than 25 books, covering fiction (three novels), biographies, political theory and religion. His autobiographical books (A Yorkshire Boyhood and Who Goes Home?) were favourably reviewed. His biographies of figures such as Nelson, David Lloyd George and John Wesley drew largely on secondary sources. It did not help that some of his books often ran to over 600 pages. The books about his dog, Buster's Diaries (1998) and Buster's Secret Diaries (2007), were commercial successes. When Buster, a Staffordshire bull terrier-German shepherd mix, died in 2009 he compared the death to the loss of a limb. A friend said, only half joking, "he was closer to his dog than to fellow humans".

He was not just prolific but versatile — in a normal week writing his "Endpiece" column for The Guardian, his regular "In Search of England" piece in the Daily Mail (to say nothing of a fortnightly column in The Spectator) but a political article too, as well as producing book reviews for papers such as The Times and New Statesman. It came as no surprise when he emerged in the register of members' interests in 1997 as the MP enjoying the highest non-parliamentary income, with outside literary earnings of £110,000 a year.

Created a life peer on his retirement from the Commons in April 1997, he upset Labour's whips in the Lords by waiting six months to take his seat. Having once called for the chamber's abolition, he excused his membership on the original grounds of his need to have somewhere to work with research facilities at his disposal. He rarely appeared in the upper chamber but did turn up to oppose Brexit.

He would probably have hated a close friend's verdict that he was a better author and journalist than he was a politician, and certainly a more successful one. Shortly before her death, his mother admitted: "I've never thought much of our Roy but he does look after his dog."

Lord Hattersley FRSL, politician and author, was born on December 28, 1932. He died on June 13, 2026, aged 93

Secretary of State for Prices and Consumer Protection sounds like a very plus-ca-change job. Can well imagine that making a comeback. And on slight echoes - Northern sports fan, from the right but seen as a bit of a turncoat, not really trusted by the left because of that origin, "the acceptable face of opportunism" - I can't help but think Burnham.

[mongers]

I think it's just a desperate effort by Starmer to drag the spotlight away from the Healy resignation and the impending lose-lose Makersfield by-election.

[Sheilbh]

Total aside I'm slightly surprised the arson attacks on Starmer-associated properties haven't got more attention. I also think there's been other similar-ish incidents which makes it look like a bit of a trend.

It's been a weird developing story (with a lot of conspiracy theories in the space created by contempt of court and reporting restriction rules). But basically there were a series of arson or attempted arson attacks on properties associated with Starmer. I'm not quite sure on the properties - there was one car and two houses - I think they were basically his family property until he became PM and were now used by his sister-in-law and one might have belonged to a relative. That was odd in itself - then he people who were arrested were three young-ish men, two Ukrainians and one Romanian. None of them had any connection with Starmer or his family, none of them seemed to know the properties were associated with Starmer.

I won't dignify the conspiracy theory. But the trial has finished and what happened, from what I've read, was that they were basically recruited from online ads for easy money for a bit of light criminality. Given instructions over Telegram and warned it was someone powerful in the British state. Once they did the did (and I assume sent evidence) some crypto was transferred and they were advised to get out of London. The attacks were orchestrated by Russia. From my understanding, there's no evidence any of them knew that.

The reason I mention the future is this seems to be a bit of a pattern - in some cases combined with the "gameification" of criminality. So I mentioned in the Iran thread that the IRGC are alleged to have been behind some of the recent attacks on the Jewish community in London - and it seems to have been precisely through this mechanism of online ad offering cash for some random criminal act, Telegram instructions from who knows who. I've read it's also becoming more of a thing with organised crime here and in other countries - there was a really interesting Al-Jazeera piece on this in Sweden where it's been really gameified because Sweden has a quite high age before someone can be judged as an adult, so there are gangs literally targeting ads and very gameified messages at young people to commit quite serious crimes.

[Josquius]

It's surprising to me as the reporting on it at the moment is the first I've heard the silly Yaxley lemon explanation but apparently it was very widespread.

It has got me wondering.
Starmer... He is absolutely detested in some circles.
Not to say he is brilliant or anything, but some of the stuff you see about him is just insane and totally out of touch with reality.
He's crap because he doesn't do much. Not because he's some loony left dictator.
I do wonder.... How much of the strong hate he gets is Russias doing.

[garbon]

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/live/2026/jun/16/andy-burnham-makerfield-labour-reform-keir-starmer-uk-politics-latest-news-updates?CMP=share_btn_url&page=with%3Ablock-6a314a538f084ec9fe8281e1#block-6a314a538f084ec9fe8281e1

Al Carns suggests Labour has let down its core voters in his resignation speech to MPs
Healey was followed in the Commons by Al Carns, who also resigned as armed forces minister on Thursday last week, about eight hours after Healey. Like Healey, Carns also said he was going because he thought the defence investment plan (Dip) was under-funded. But there has been speculation that he only decided to quit after it became clear that he was not being offered Healey's job.

Carns told MPs that resigning as a minister was "an exceptionally difficult decision".

He said that, when he accepted ministerial office, he did so "with a simple purpose to serve those that serve us". He went on:

There comes a point when honesty requires action. And for me, that point came last week.

As honourable members know, I came into politics for one reason. That was to enact change.

But to be able to work out where you're going, we must realise where we have come from. The Labour party I joined is one that was chiselled out of the mines of the north east. It was hammered out of the shipyards of Govan, Liverpool and Belfast. And it was forged in the factories of the industrial revolution.

Calloused hands, sore backs, people who did a hard day's graft and asked for one thing in return – a government that has their back.

That's the tradition I serve in this house, and it's a tradition that shaped that decision I took last week.

And I resigned for several reasons.

I would reckon that it has been quite some time since that has been the core of Labour voters.

[Sheilbh]

It's surprising to me as the reporting on it at the moment is the first I've heard the silly Yaxley lemon explanation but apparently it was very widespread.

It has got me wondering.
Starmer... He is absolutely detested in some circles.
Not to say he is brilliant or anything, but some of the stuff you see about him is just insane and totally out of touch with reality.
He's crap because he doesn't do much. Not because he's some loony left dictator.
I do wonder.... How much of the strong hate he gets is Russias doing.

I don't think so to be honest.

The thing that really strikes me about the Starmer-hate is how much it focuses on his dishonesty. I think I first mentioned it when Starmer was in opposition and it was the attack of the hard left who were rapidly being betrayed. That Starmer ran as Corbynism without Corbyn because that would get him elected - and then did the exact opposite with gusto. I remember Boris Johnson picking it up around going from sitting in Corbyn's Shadow Cabinet to expelling him from the party - and I thought that attack line would work from the Tories and the left because it is fundamentally true. This has been pointed out by David Runciman and Helen Thompson that Starmer's political project has been based on a spectacular level of dishonesty.

I'd add that David Runciman also mentioned picking this up in the summer of 2024 when he went to a Cambridge United game - so not exactly football hooligan territory - and the entire stadium was chanting "Starmer's a liar" within months of him winning. In part it was that the landslide was always loveless and a lot of consequences have flown from that - Labour MPs are less disciplined, the public didn't really have much time for Starmer to begin with and, I think, on the other side Starmer's interpreted that big majority as actually a sweeping personal mandate for him to be in power (given the dishonesty clearly not related to what he said he would do/should do).

I've mentioned before but there was an article in the FT which was an amazing juxtaposition where they had Luke Tryl (who I'll come back to) talking about focus groups saying that people say Starmer's a liar and only said what he thought would get him elected and Reeves is uncaring and targets people who can't fight back. The next paragraph was a pollster (not focus groups) saying how Starmer generates "remarkable levels of hate" for someone rather dull and inoffensive. I think sort of implicit within that is that lying, saying what you need to get elected and picking on the vulnerable have sort of been internalised as just doing politics for a certain class.

On Luke Tryl he's mentioned how two years later people still bring up winter fuel allowance unprompted in focus groups and I think that is a really key moment. I think there was a broader issues of 14 years out of power and none of it spent thinking what they would do if they won an election again. But I also think that first summer was a catastrophe by Starmer and Reeves. They come into office and the immediate message is that everything is worse than they expected and they're going to have to make "tough" decisions - if you look at the business and consumer confidence it falls quite sharply after the election as everyone braces for whatever Reeves is planning. Even now (and there have been other shocks) confidence is below where it was at the point of the election. It's still recovering from them almost talking themselves into a recession.

But also in July 2024, so within weeks of coming to power, the first big policy announcement they make (certainly from Reeves) is to means test winter fuel allowance. I don't think it's all that but I think it was a really, really bad decision - and also a bad indicator. I've mentioned before but Ed Balls and George Osborne have both said the Treasury hate the winter fuel allowance. Literally every single budget if you need to make savings a Treasury mandarin will propose means testing it. It is something that Balls and Osborne said was repeatedly presented to them and that part of the job of being the political leadership is looking at the politics of it and saying that's mad. Reeves did not have that basic skill (I think this goes to the dichotomy people drew of populists v adults).

Luke Tryl goes even stronger - I'm not sure I'd totally agree. I think it hurt them but it hurt in part because it revealed deeper weaknesses but this is interesting from someone who runs focus groups and talks to thousands of people all over the country:

Luke Tryl
@LukeTryl
Jun 11
I am genuinely interested in the counter factual where winter fuel didn't happen. Nearly 2 years on it still comes up more often than not in focus groups (and contrary to what some assume just as often from non pensioners) as the moment people lost faith in Starmer and his Govt
From talking to so many people since the election the consequences of that decision and way it was announced and the amount of good will it eroded I think are outsized - and much more convincing as a narrative of the unravelling of this Government than Britain is ungovernable.
Broadly three reasons it was so potent
1) It wasn't in manifesto and then was announced as first major govt spending decision into a vacuum with no notice
2) It left non-pensioners worried about their parents/grandparents and pensioners like they were being punished.
3)Means testing made people who earned just over £12k really resentful they had 'worked and being punished'
That in turn immediately made scores of people think this govt didn't get it, that they were going to be more of the same. With the Tory brand in the gutter it gave Reform the opening to be something more than just immigration but a wider reservoir for discontent.
That in turn sees their rise in the polls, perception this govt is already tainted and unwillingness to give other decisions benefit of the doubt, Runcorn and Helsby and a sense PM wasn't in control with u-turn
It also answers part of the question I often get asked 'why do people like PM so much' - I think this decision is a big part of it, because it made people think less of PM's character and that he hadn't been honest and that he didn't care about people.
Whatever happens next it should be a cautionary tale about confusing 'being tough with being strong' as @marcusaroberts often says, but also reaching for off the shelf technocratic policy solutions without thinking about how to land them and how to shape them.
Maybe I'm wrong, but I think there is an over 20% chance Starmer's premiership would not be in the current doom spiral with public opinion (and then politically) absent winter fuel.

My slight defence of Starmer on this very much damns with faint praise, because I think it's why he's been doomed pretty much from the start, but it is that there is no there there. There is no Starmerism and he's always rejected that idea - I think he's described it as ridiculous. Because there is no core set of beliefs I don't think Starmer sees it as dishonest. I think he sees the job of political leader is to get past x electoral hurdle. You do/say whatever you need to do that. Then the job is to be an administrator of a large organisation. Then there'll be another election and you say/do whatever you need. There is no core so it's all always situational.

Edit: I'd add on winter fuel allowance that you only get to make a first impression once and that was their first big policy but also it was standalone, not part of a wider package of reform (a theme with Reeves that reoccurs with the current defence row and the benefits cuts) or budget. And they eventually u-turned so (a recurring feature under Johnson too) all the political heat and none of the benefits.

[Sheilbh]

Separately - at this point I can only assume the government is a performance art project in how unpopular they can become

Dartmoor ponies could be put to death under biodiversity plans
Natural England has demanded 75 per cent of livestock grazing on the land must go, forcing farmers to chose between tradition and livelihoods

There are fewer than 1,000 ponies left roaming on Dartmoor
Alamy

Oliver Wright, Policy Editor
Monday June 15 2026, 8.05pm, The Times

For more than four millennia ponies have roamed free on the moors of Dartmoor, a symbol of one of Britain's wildest landscapes.

However, the species could all but disappear from the tors and grasslands of the national park as a result of a controversial ruling by the government's environmental quango.

Natural England has demanded that all livestock grazing on the moor is reduced by about 75 per cent to protect other habitats, plants and species.

The move looks set to result in the culling of up to nine in ten of the semi-wild ponies as farmers prioritise their own cattle and sheep to remain within Natural England's limit to minimise the impact on their own livelihoods.

Joss Hibbs, secretary of the Dartmoor Hill Pony Association, said: "Natural England is putting ponies in direct competition with commercial livestock who pay the farmers' bills.

"Their plans disregard the scientific evidence and could decimate an endangered species that has been a feature of the landscape for over 4,500 years."

Natural England argued that the move was necessary to protect the diversity of Dartmoor, which is a designated site of special scientific interest.

However, the plan goes against a government commissioned review into the future of Dartmoor, published two years ago, which concluded that Natural England "should not take actions likely to result in a reduction in pony numbers", adding they were "invaluable for conservation grazing".

The move has led to claims that the quango is acting as judge, jury and executioner of the ponies — a species which is itself seen as endangered.

"Natural England appeared determined to disregard the scientific evidence and they have all the powers," said Hibbs. "Farmers want to keep their hill pony herds as they are central to their tradition and culture, but are given a Hobson's Choice between cattle and ponies if they are to financially survive."

There are fewer than 1,000 Dartmoor hill ponies, down from around 7,000 in 1999, according to the Dartmoor Hill Pony Association. Uniquely adapted to the moor's marshy terrain, the species was classed as endangered by the United Nations in 2023 and also listed on the government's list of native species at risk.

They are one of England's last semi-wild pony herds. Other wild pony breeds are found in nearby Exmoor and in the New Forest.

A petition to protect the ponies from the plans has gained more than 130,000 signatures and has been taken up by senior political figures.

In a letter to the Department for the Environment and Rural Affairs (Defra), Luke Pollard, the defence minister and the MP for Plymouth Sutton & Devonport, said he was "deeply concerned" about the plan.

"The proposed contracts risks creating a financial incentive to prioritise more commercially viable livestock, such as cattle and sheep, over ponies," he wrote.

"Should this occur, it could cause a cull of up to 90 per cent pushing the population numbers of an already endangered species further down. This would be a devastating loss for Dartmoor's heritage, with historic connections to these ponies lasting thousands of years."

The cull could begin as soon as this autumn during the annual October "drifts" when farmers round ponies up into pens for health checks.

Campaigners argue that the cull would reduce the biodiversity of Dartmoor. They cite the 2023 report, which found much of Dartmoor was undergrazed and covered by dominant and invasive species such as Molinia grass.

The way the ponies graze allows native plant species to recover, bringing a wealth of invertebrate species with them. In contrast, they said sheep, which do not regularly eat Molinia, should be controlled.

This week, Australia enacted a programme to shoot thousands of wild horses from helicopters in the Snowy Mountains of New South Wales. The initiative, which has been described as "barbaric" by campaigners, aims to reduce the numbers of horses, known as brumbies, by more than half to 3,000 by the middle of next year to limit damage to native vegetation.

Natural England defended its position and said it was not trying to remove ponies from Dartmoor. However, it said decisions about which animals were grazed on Dartmoor rested "with individual landowners not with Natural England".

It said: "Our role is to provide evidence-based advice on how to protect and restore designated habitats.

"We are aware of concerns that including ponies in livestock unit calculations could lead some land managers favouring more commercially profitable cattle or sheep. Our advisers work closely with individual agreement holders to provide tailored advice to improve nature and support businesses."

Sarah-Jane Norris, a campaigner who began the petition, wrote: "Natural England is failing Dartmoor. Dartmoor's semi-wild hill ponies are recognised as rare and endangered, and should be protected as such. Reducing pony numbers further means that the population will no longer be genetically viable and will effectively become extinct."

A Defra spokesman said it was taking a close interest in the issue. "In line with the Independent Review of Protected Site Management on Dartmoor, we are working with partners, including the Dartmoor Hill Pony Association, to help ensure that we maintain numbers of semi-wild ponies on the Moor for generations to come," they said.

Again from Luke Tryl - there are three things the British public absolutely love: apprenticeships, banning things and animals. So this would be quite brave, recalling the public opinion polling about TB-ridden alpaca, Geronimo.

I think it points to a slightly wider point around the role and problem of quangoes. I sympathise with them because practically they have been set up by parliament to do one specific thing and they will then do that one specific thing, sometimes to the detrimet of other issues (because that's not their job) - until you get a story like this. It's where I think far too much decision-making and power rests with them.

Natural England come up a lot in planning decisions too and in the latest bit of the new nuclear plants story where they're requiring the flooding of huge areas around the plant to create more salt water marshes as habitats for fish to mitigate the damage caused by nuclear power plant sucking in water (including fish or their eggs - there are other mitigation features such as the experimental "fish disco" costing many millions). I think I've banged on about it for a while but in retrospect it was possibly a mistake for Boris Johnson to appoint a former Green parliamentary candidate and president of Friends of the Earth to Natural England when, at that time, Johnson's agenda (and then Sunak's and then Starmer's) included trying to build things.

[Crazy_Ivan80]

Never appoint greens to anything and keep them away from government.  They're a danger to society and humanity.

[Richard Hakluyt]

In England there really are barely any "natural" landscapes. The landscapes that people here love have been formed by thousands of years of human activity. The Lake District, for example, should be forested not a sheep range. The fens have been drained etc etc. Of course most of the country was covered in ice a few thousand years back so what is "natural" anyway? The neolithic farmers merely cut down an invasive forest.

We are all greens to some extent, even if it is merely opposition to the destruction of a nearby park. The problem with the British Greens is they are far too fundamentalist for the nation's tastes and give the whole caring for the environment business a bad name.

[Josquius]

I don't think so to be honest.

The thing that really strikes me about the Starmer-hate is how much it focuses on his dishonesty. I think I first mentioned it when Starmer was in opposition and it was the attack of the hard left who were rapidly being betrayed. That Starmer ran as Corbynism without Corbyn because that would get him elected - and then did the exact opposite with gusto. I remember Boris Johnson picking it up around going from sitting in Corbyn's Shadow Cabinet to expelling him from the party - and I thought that attack line would work from the Tories and the left because it is fundamentally true. This has been pointed out by David Runciman and Helen Thompson that Starmer's political project has been based on a spectacular level of dishonesty.

I think we're talking about different Starmer hate here.
The stuff I'm seeing absolutely isn't being upset he promised Corbynism without Corbyn (a winning combination) and then did the opposite. More in lines that he is some kind of evil dictatorial socialist. Completely out of wack with reality.

The criticisms from the left I see....generally super obsessed with transexuals. Which is an interesting one. By not taking the easy wins available there he's pissing off people on the left without doing anything for people on the right's impressions of him.

But also in July 2024, so within weeks of coming to power, the first big policy announcement they make (certainly from Reeves) is to means test winter fuel allowance. I don't think it's all that but I think it was a really, really bad decision - and also a bad indicator. I've mentioned before but Ed Balls and George Osborne have both said the Treasury hate the winter fuel allowance. Literally every single budget if you need to make savings a Treasury mandarin will propose means testing it. It is something that Balls and Osborne said was repeatedly presented to them and that part of the job of being the political leadership is looking at the politics of it and saying that's mad. Reeves did not have that basic skill (I think this goes to the dichotomy people drew of populists v adults).

True. They did it so stupidly too with the sudden cliff edge.

The move looks set to result in the culling of up to nine in ten of the semi-wild ponies as farmers prioritise their own cattle and sheep to remain within Natural England's limit to minimise the impact on their own livelihoods.

There's the key. Headlines shouting that the government demanded dead ponies. In actual fact they meant the livestock.

I don't know what the science says but it doesn't seem impossible to me that there could be issues with overgrazing.

As RH says this does seem to be an increasing issue though. Rewilding vs. those wanting to protect the 'natural landscape' which is anything but.
One I'm increasingly against is sport shooting. Mad fact that at peak time of year wild pheasants make up over half the bird biomass in the country. They're an invasive species wrecking bio-diversity so a tiny minority of people, including some who happen to be very rich and powerful, can get their jollies.

[HVC]

But if you stop shooting pheasants the population doesn't go down, it goes up. See deer. Sure you don't get the population bump from releasing them, but the ones out there already will easily make up the difference. Perhaps not to the exact same level, but enough to be a problem. You can't eradicate predator populations and hunting. You need at least one.

Plus they've been around since like Romans, so they're as "natural" as any other uk wildlife at this point

[Richard Hakluyt]

I researched pheasants a little when I lived in rural Suffolk. Ordinary people shot them there and I was given a brace on a couple of occasions. The reality seems to be that pheasants thrive in certain areas of the UK and shooting them is a form of pest control. East Anglia seems to be prime territory for them in this respect. Conversely they struggle in rough moorlands such as those in Northern England and Scotland. In those areas they need to be raised and released for the benefit of the "sportsmen" that Jos disapproves of.