Starmer

[albie]

It is not the source of the funding that is problematic, it is the terms under which such funds are provided.

Labour are choosing to use a source of funding that requires a return far higher than equivalent funding from a government source.
Bonds, or preferential borrowing by a state actor, are far lower in cost over time than a PFI type deal looking at 7% per annum rising to the later repayment years.

The predatory lenders courted by Labour will not settle for a return on capital lower than that expected from other alternative investment options.
You reckon it is OK, "as long as the price is right".....I know of no examples of any such deal being a better investment than conventional state procurement, do you?

Brown was obsessed with moving Capex off balance sheet, and the cost of capital from those deals was a very poor decision in terms of overall system costs.
It should not be repeated in any form.

[BillyStubbsTears]

I'll repeat. It depends on the precise terms. Nothing of that is set in stone.

The 7% returns you talk about are from a different age. One where growth and therefore returns were much higher, before the GFC and the depressionary response to it.

We haven't had a strategic policy towards attracting investment into public infrastructure since the GFC, so you talking about there being no examples is a moot point.

As I say, Government borrowing then spending itself is essentially tapping into the same funding byna different mechanism. The key difference is who owns the risk.

Both Govt and Finance know that in PFI, the management of risk was skewed unfairly in favour of Finance, by giving them unreasonably high returns that more than covered their risk. That won't happen again.

[BillyStubbsTears]

NB.
Note that Govt borrowing (from private Finance) then spending itself isn't a magic bullet. The risk (that overall costs are higher than planned and therefore require more funding than originally anticipated) don't vanish. They are simply owned by the Govt (i.e. us). If higher costs occur, we have to pay them.

There is no evidence that Govt spending directly automatically and inevitably results in lower overall risk and lower additional costs.

The core issue is what premium Govt pays to have someone else own the risk. Get that right and there is no inevitable reason why private Finance spending directly should automatically be more costly.

[BillyStubbsTears]

PS.
You love wading into Brown so much that you regularly ignore the context.

Brown didn't ideologically "love" keeping CapEx off the balance sheet.

He did it because there was literally no alternative to that which could have both
a) Provided desperately needed infrastructure investment and
b) Kept our deficit below the 3% of GDP that we were obliged to maintain without risking losing access to the Single Market, with all the economic costs that would have entailed.

Yes, the terms of PFI were wrong and led to us paying far too much. But the alternative would have been another decade of insufficient investment in public infrastructure.

As ever, you highlight the problem and ignore the context.

[SydneyRover]

It is not the source of the funding that is problematic, it is the terms under which such funds are provided.

Labour are choosing to use a source of funding that requires a return far higher than equivalent funding from a government source.
Bonds, or preferential borrowing by a state actor, are far lower in cost over time than a PFI type deal looking at 7% per annum rising to the later repayment years.

The predatory lenders courted by Labour will not settle for a return on capital lower than that expected from other alternative investment options.
You reckon it is OK, "as long as the price is right".....I know of no examples of any such deal being a better investment than conventional state procurement, do you?

Brown was obsessed with moving Capex off balance sheet, and the cost of capital from those deals was a very poor decision in terms of overall system costs.
It should not be repeated in any form.

Labour has been described as 'hostile to business' in the past and this is part of the move to capture the centre ground Albie, which I'm almost sure you understand. I would think that finance for infrastructure will be provided by the org that can do the best deal. Gov debt is already is already at record levels (since gfc) and the tories have made a total b*llocks of trying to reduce it and drive growth. I guess this is part of the reason Starmer has the labour party in such a good position to take government next week. This is the bit I'm almost sure you understand but know you refuse to accept.

As I previously mentioned if you use all the posts where you have offered criticism of Starmer/Labour to make a jigsaw of a political party you end up with corbyn running the labour party ...................... into a third defeat.

[Sprotyrover]

They clearly didn't get the balance right last time, but with that experience there's no excuse for getting it wrong again.

There should be no ideological block to involving the private sector in providing infrastructure. As long as the price is right.

The point is that private financial companies the world over are awash with funds that we need to tap into one way or another.

Ideologically, I'd prefer Government to issue bonds that were bought by that finance, then use those funds for the investment spending. That's how Govt borrowing works. But at the end of the day, it's the same source of funding.

I can’t believe what I have just read, the price WILL
Be right for the Private investors, if Labour want their money they the Investors will be pulling the Strings
Not Labour, that was another financial Catastrophe of the Last Labour Government and remember they had their complete NANNY STATE set up in place GO London and 6 Local Area GO’s and it was allowed to happen, because all of the Twits who were staffing
The GO’s had been plucked out of thin air, they didn’t have a clue! They were just happy to take their massively over inflated salaries and do bugger all! Eg the Doncaster Town Centre Manager, did naff all couldn’t even sort Piss Alley out and was on £124 k a year!
If that’s the best they can come up with then God help us!

[SydneyRover]

Notes from Geoffrey Robertson (to Australia):

''I mentored Britain's next PM. Here's how he'll do it''

''It is a racing certainty that Britain’s prime minister for the next five years – probably 10, given the wipeouts predicted for the Tories – will be Sir Keir Starmer KC. He is hardly known here, but as the Australian most closely connected with his career, I offer some thoughts about his likely governance.

It will be based on principles that Australian conservatives vehemently reject, namely those that would be enshrined in a charter of human rights. Were Starmer ever to meet Peter Dutton, the mutual incomprehension would be palpable.

Starmer came from humble Labour stock (named after Keir Hardie, a socialist founder of the party) and from a redbrick university, and was clever enough to obtain a recondite Oxford degree – a bachelor of civil law – much valued by legal intellectuals. He then applied to join chambers, not the kind sought by aspiring Labour politicians which acted for trade unions, but one headed by a liberal MP and John “Rumpole” Mortimer and myself, author of the civil liberties textbook Freedom, the Individual and the Law.

Starmer did not interview well, and he did not look the part of the traditional English barrister. “How can we possibly take a man who wears a cardigan?” one colleague remarked. But we could because I too had a bachelor of civil law and was in need of a bright junior. We both look back on this first meeting as proof that appointments should never be made on perceptions from a face-to-face interview.

Our first case was against the government of Denmark, and I took Starmer to Strasbourg to help argue it, in the European Court of Human Rights, where Denmark had never lost. Starmer forgot his passport and was held in custody by the gendarmes until, with the help of the British consul, we secured his release in time for his debut in court.

The Danes were so confident they had offered free trips to law students to watch them win again, but we showed that their court system, in which judges who denied bail to defendants would then sit as their trial judge and find them guilty, breached the rule that defendants must have impartial judges. Starmer gave the students a seminar about their government’s mistakes, and went on to write several important textbooks on human rights law in Europe.

He joined me to establish Doughty Street Chambers, now Europe’s largest human rights practice, and acted in many of our leading cases. He was not, like a typical “QC MP”, a red-faced jury tub-thumper; his style was to write erudite but precise submissions and speak to them softly but persuasively, often prompting appeal judges to make decisions they would not, initially, have thought likely. This was the way to win cases we brought when the Blair government legislated a British Bill of Rights in 1998.

His style was most effective in conferences and consultations: he is a good listener, and is quick to find acceptable compromises. Typically, when he became director of public prosecutions and was left by a pole-axed parliament to sort out the vexed question of euthanasia, he issued “guidelines” for his prosecutors which removed much of the cruelty of the common law.

As head of his chambers for 20 years, I can attest that Starmer’s integrity was beyond reproach. Prime Minister Rishi Sunak accused him in their first TV debate of acting for terrorists, which of course he did, arguing their points of law on appeal. Under the “cab rank” ethical rule, barristers are bound to take anyone who wants to hire them. Sunak was taken to task by The Times, which pointed out that I was a stickler for the rule and would not have allowed him to flout it by refusing to act for the demonised.

Sunak is a desperate man: even his ministers (most of whom are likely to lose their seats) are accepting defeat. But wait: he has one champion who has ridden to his rescue. None other than Tony Abbott, who writes in The Times that Britain, under Starmer, will have “the worst government in its history” (has he ever never heard of Liz Truss?) based on Starmer’s “emissions obsession” (that is, he wants to tackle climate change), his “compassion for the poor” (only Abbott could think that a bad thing) and that he might “slink back into the EU”. Since Brexit has been the source of so many British woes, most voters would welcome some slinking.

In reality, 14 years of Conservative governance have left the country unimpressed and depressed. An obsession with appointing “people like us” to all public bodies has left the nation run by amateurs, incompetents and some who are visibly corrupt (for example, with the COVID  contracts). Tory ministers, now jostling to succeed Sunak when he resigns after “Starmaggedon” next month, are all second rate while that genial racist Nigel Farage is doing his best to destroy the party by standing for its right-wing rival.

How will Starmer’s government begin to repair the damage? It will have much more respect for expertise and professionalism, and for a civil service free from political preferment. Starmer will continue to be cautious on foreign policy – he alienated many in his own party by supporting Joe Biden over Gaza, but he is likely to follow other European countries (and infuriate Israel) by accepting Palestinian statehood. And he will certainly not criticise the International Criminal Court prosecutor for seeking an arrest warrant against Israel’s Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu. He might even agree to the return of the Parthenon marbles, in a deal offered by the Greek prime minister whom Sunak stupidly refused to meet.

At every level, Starmer’s decision-making will be informed by a fidelity to human rights principles, which he believes to be “capable of contributing to the realisation of progressive change”. Indeed, he credits the Human Rights Act as leading him into politics – “it gave me a method, a structure and a framework by which I would test propositions”. Perhaps he would explain these and other advantages to Australian conservatives who virulently opposed Australians having their own human rights charter.

Starmer does not have the charisma of Boris Johnson or Tony Blair, but charisma in politicians is much overrated. He has something of the workaholism of former Labour PM Harold Wilson and the intense seriousness of another ex-PM, Clement Attlee, but dare I suggest that he has some of the qualities of that greatest of all liberal reformers, William Gladstone. That possibility should terrify the Tories. Gladstone was elected as prime minister four times''

Geoffrey Robertson is author of The Statute of Liberty: How Australians Can Take Back Their Rights.

https://www.smh.com.au/world/europe/i-mentored-the-next-british-pm-here-s-what-australians-need-to-know-about-him-20240621-p5jnl3.html

[TonySoprano]

Leaving aside his politics, which of course is backwards, starmer is just not PM material at all.
He's a spineless jellyfish who can't even say what a woman is.

We're going to be an international laughing stock with that idiot at number 10.

He'll be the most unpopular person in the country by Christmas, and won't even serve 1 term. Mark my words

[drfchound]

Keir Starmer says his dad was a toolmaker but has never denied publicly that his dad owned the factory:

By
SKWAWKBOX (SW)
01/09/2022

Starmer’s latest attempt to reinvent himself is an even more shameless regurgitation of the ‘my dad was a toolmaker’ Keir Starmer has attempted to divert from his continued refusal to commit Labour to the most obvious and only truly workable solution to the cost-of-corporate-greed crisis – renationalising the energy sector (at least) – by pushing even harder the mythology of his working-class childhood.

Telling the BBC yet again that ‘My dad worked in a factory and my mum worked as a nurse’, he went even further, claiming poverty as a child – not ‘great poverty’, he says, but the kind that means the family went, supposedly for months, with power and phone lines cut off because of an inability to pay the bills:
“ I actually do know what it is like to sit around the kitchen table not being able to pay your bills.
He(KS) said:
“I remember our utilities, our phone being cut off because we couldn’t pay the bill, so I know what is going through people’s minds.”

But the myth is exploded by the reports from multiple sources, which Starmer has never challenged or corrected, that his father owned the factory in which he worked – and even if not, in those days a family with two earners would have been able to afford bills, even in Surrey.

[albie]

Keith is pushing the envelope in terms of freebies;
https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/keir-starmer-freebies-junkets-tottenham-hotspur-chelsea-coldplay-adele-google/

The junketeer will be dunking his biscuit in the hospitality on offer once in office.
This must be how he is planning to grow the economy, tickets for the privileged for all big events.

[Colemans Left Hook]

POOR SCAWSBY DOESN'T CLICK ON LINKS SO I HAVE PRINTED THE FULL TEXT SOLEY FOR HIS BENEFIT SO BB DOESN'T HAVE TO READ IT TO HIM AS A BEDTIME STORY

QUESTION HAS STARMER DENIED EVER BEING A FORMER MARXIST ??

starmer speaking on Desert Island Discs

https://www.inyourarea.co.uk/news/oxteds-keir-starmer-on-childhood-anguish-and-being-a-radical-teen-socialist/

"Oxted's Sir Keir Starmer on childhood anguish and being a radical teen socialist
The Labour leader's early campaigning was received "pretty negatively" in Tory East Surrey"

 Keir Starmer swapped law for politics in 2015 (Photo:Leon Neal/Getty Images)

LABOUR leader Sir Keir Starmer has opened up about his earliest experience of political campaigning - to a tough East Surrey crowd - and his childhood in Oxted, Surrey.

Sir Keir appeared on BBC Radio 4’s Desert Island Discs, choosing music ranging from Beethoven to Euro '96 anthem Three Lions as he spoke about his relationship with his parents, career, determination to unite his party, Brexit and love of football.

The second of four children, Sir Keir grew up in Oxted and went to Reigate Grammar School. His parents were Labour “through and through”.

“I got interested in politics at a very early age and joined the East Surrey Young Socialists when I was 16, which was the youth section if you like of the local Labour Party,” he said.

“I have to say in East Surrey there weren’t very many of us; I think it numbered about four people in total.”

Asked by presenter Lauren Laverne how his campaigning was received, he said: “Pretty negatively as we sort of marched round East Surrey up long drives telling people that we thought nationalisation was the answer. After we’d explained our views and asked ‘well, how will you be voting?, there weren’t so many that were persuaded with what we were putting... but, you know, we passed resolutions and took it all very seriously but it was hard work back then.”

As a child, Sir Keir was not close with his dad, Rodney, and his mother Josephine was “very very ill”.

One abiding memory is of his mum giving he and his siblings jam sandwiches when they came in from school.

He talked of his regret that his relationship with his father, a toolmaker, was not better.

"I don't often talk about my dad," he said.

"He was a difficult man, a complicated man, he kept himself to himself, he didn't particularly like to socialise, so wouldn't really go out very much. But he was incredibly hard-working."

Rodney, who died in 2018, had worked on the factory floor all day, came home “for his tea” at 5pm, before going back to work at 6pm for another four hours.

"I wouldn't say we were close,” said Sir Keir. “I understood who he was and what he was but we weren't close and I regret that. Like many parents I suppose I am determined my own relationship with my children [a daughter aged nine and 12-year-old son] will be different.”

He commended, however, his father’s “utter devotion and commitment” to his mum, who was diagnosed with autoimmune condition Still’s Disease aged 11.

“My mum was very, very ill all of her life and my dad knew exactly the symptoms of everything that might possibly go wrong with my mum, he knew exactly what drugs or combination of drugs or injection would be needed,” he said.

"He stopped drinking completely just in case he ever needed to get to the hospital with her. On the many occasions she was in hospital he would stay with her the whole time, he wouldn't leave the hospital, he would sleep on any chair or whatever was available."

His voice cracked as he recalled how ill his mother was.

“She couldn’t use her limbs she was very prone to infections and as young children we spent a lot of time in and out of high dependency units with my mum thinking we were going to lose her.

“I remember on one occasion when I was about 13 or 14, my dad phoning me from the hospital saying ‘I don’t think your mum’s going to make it, will you tell the others?’ That was tough, that was really tough.”

Josephine died shortly before Sir Keir became an MP in 2015.

STOPPED DRINKING COMPLETELY --  SUMMAT NOT RIGHT HERE STILL MANAGED TO PRODUCE 4 HEALTHY CHILDREN DESPITE HIS WIFE'S CONDITION !!  SUMMAT DEFINITELY WRONG HERE ME THINX


MOVING ON TO HIS WIKIPEDIA PAGE IT IS STRANGE THERE IS NO MENTION OF HIM BEING A MARXIST -- STRANG E THAT INNIT   OBVOIUSLY THE TIMES IN 2020 PRINTED LIES

[SydneyRover]

Leaving aside his politics, which of course is backwards, starmer is just not PM material at all.
He's a spineless jellyfish who can't even say what a woman is.

We're going to be an international laughing stock with that idiot at number 10.

He'll be the most unpopular person in the country by Christmas, and won't even serve 1 term. Mark my words

POOR SCAWSBY DOESN'T CLICK ON LINKS SO I HAVE PRINTED THE FULL TEXT SOLEY FOR HIS BENEFIT SO BB DOESN'T HAVE TO READ IT TO HIM AS A BEDTIME STORY

QUESTION HAS STARMER DENIED EVER BEING A FORMER MARXIST ??

starmer speaking on Desert Island Discs

https://www.inyourarea.co.uk/news/oxteds-keir-starmer-on-childhood-anguish-and-being-a-radical-teen-socialist/

"Oxted's Sir Keir Starmer on childhood anguish and being a radical teen socialist
The Labour leader's early campaigning was received "pretty negatively" in Tory East Surrey"

 Keir Starmer swapped law for politics in 2015 (Photo:Leon Neal/Getty Images)

LABOUR leader Sir Keir Starmer has opened up about his earliest experience of political campaigning - to a tough East Surrey crowd - and his childhood in Oxted, Surrey.

Sir Keir appeared on BBC Radio 4’s Desert Island Discs, choosing music ranging from Beethoven to Euro '96 anthem Three Lions as he spoke about his relationship with his parents, career, determination to unite his party, Brexit and love of football.

The second of four children, Sir Keir grew up in Oxted and went to Reigate Grammar School. His parents were Labour “through and through”.

“I got interested in politics at a very early age and joined the East Surrey Young Socialists when I was 16, which was the youth section if you like of the local Labour Party,” he said.

“I have to say in East Surrey there weren’t very many of us; I think it numbered about four people in total.”

Asked by presenter Lauren Laverne how his campaigning was received, he said: “Pretty negatively as we sort of marched round East Surrey up long drives telling people that we thought nationalisation was the answer. After we’d explained our views and asked ‘well, how will you be voting?, there weren’t so many that were persuaded with what we were putting... but, you know, we passed resolutions and took it all very seriously but it was hard work back then.”

As a child, Sir Keir was not close with his dad, Rodney, and his mother Josephine was “very very ill”.

One abiding memory is of his mum giving he and his siblings jam sandwiches when they came in from school.

He talked of his regret that his relationship with his father, a toolmaker, was not better.

"I don't often talk about my dad," he said.

"He was a difficult man, a complicated man, he kept himself to himself, he didn't particularly like to socialise, so wouldn't really go out very much. But he was incredibly hard-working."

Rodney, who died in 2018, had worked on the factory floor all day, came home “for his tea” at 5pm, before going back to work at 6pm for another four hours.

"I wouldn't say we were close,” said Sir Keir. “I understood who he was and what he was but we weren't close and I regret that. Like many parents I suppose I am determined my own relationship with my children [a daughter aged nine and 12-year-old son] will be different.”

He commended, however, his father’s “utter devotion and commitment” to his mum, who was diagnosed with autoimmune condition Still’s Disease aged 11.

“My mum was very, very ill all of her life and my dad knew exactly the symptoms of everything that might possibly go wrong with my mum, he knew exactly what drugs or combination of drugs or injection would be needed,” he said.

"He stopped drinking completely just in case he ever needed to get to the hospital with her. On the many occasions she was in hospital he would stay with her the whole time, he wouldn't leave the hospital, he would sleep on any chair or whatever was available."

His voice cracked as he recalled how ill his mother was.

“She couldn’t use her limbs she was very prone to infections and as young children we spent a lot of time in and out of high dependency units with my mum thinking we were going to lose her.

“I remember on one occasion when I was about 13 or 14, my dad phoning me from the hospital saying ‘I don’t think your mum’s going to make it, will you tell the others?’ That was tough, that was really tough.”

Josephine died shortly before Sir Keir became an MP in 2015.

STOPPED DRINKING COMPLETELY --  SUMMAT NOT RIGHT HERE STILL MANAGED TO PRODUCE 4 HEALTHY CHILDREN DESPITE HIS WIFE'S CONDITION !!  SUMMAT DEFINITELY WRONG HERE ME THINX


MOVING ON TO HIS WIKIPEDIA PAGE IT IS STRANGE THERE IS NO MENTION OF HIM BEING A MARXIST -- STRANG E THAT INNIT   OBVOIUSLY THE TIMES IN 2020 PRINTED LIES

Keith is pushing the envelope in terms of freebies;
https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/keir-starmer-freebies-junkets-tottenham-hotspur-chelsea-coldplay-adele-google/

The junketeer will be dunking his biscuit in the hospitality on offer once in office.
This must be how he is planning to grow the economy, tickets for the privileged for all big events.

It's like an episode of corrie with Ena, Minnie and Ted.

[Bristol Red Rover]

Nowt wrong with a Marxist. It's the self interested, arse licking types I have a problem with. That and the ignorant who don't have the first clue what a Marxist is and rant in CAPITALS.

[BillyStubbsTears]

I wonder at what point we call Prevent?