Saturday, November 22, 2025
An unlikely connection
The plaque is located on the promenade wall near the Hole in the Wall Café — a spot the philosopher is believed to have walked past many times during his visits to the area.
Born in Vienna in 1889, Wittgenstein is widely regarded as one of the greatest philosophers of the modern era.
During these years, Wittgenstein often stayed at guest houses in Langland and Uplands, spending time walking the Gower coastline and developing ideas that would shape his later work.
It’s believed these summers spent in Swansea had a profound influence on Wittgenstein’s thinking.
Wittgenstein is best-known for his work in logic, the philosophy of mathematics, the philosophy of the mind, and the philosophy of language.
Sometimes, we come across the most unlikely connections.
Update: Wiigenstein was of course immortalised in Monty Python's Bruces' Philosophers Song, sung by The Bruces, stereotypical "ocker" Australians of the period. The Bruces are kitted out in khakis, slouch hats and a cork hat, and are faculty members of the Philosophy Department at the fictional University of Woolamaloo (Woolloomooloo is an inner suburb of Sydney, although there is no university there):
Immanuel Kant was a real pissant
Who was very rarely stable
Heidegger, Heidegger was a boozy beggar
Who could think you under the table
David Hume could out-consume
Wilhelm Freidrich Hegel
And Wittgenstein was a beery swine
Who was just as schloshed as Schlegel
There's nothing Nietzsche couldn't teach ya
'bout the raising of the wrist
Socrates, himself, was permanently pissed
John Stuart Mill, of his own free will
On half a pint of shandy was particularly ill
Plato, they say, could stick it away
Half a crate of whiskey every day
Aristotle, Aristotle was a bugger for the bottle
Hobbes was fond of his dram
And Rene Descartes was a drunken fart
"I drink, therefore I am."
Yes, Socrates himself is particularly missed
A lovely little thinker, but a bugger when he's pissed
Friday, November 21, 2025
Trial by jury should remain a fundamental right
The Guardian reports that the courts minister has promised to enact radical changes to limit jury trials by the next election, because, she says that criminals are“gaming the system” by choosing trial by jury in order to increase the chances of proceedings collapsing.
According to the paper, Sarah Sackman claims that drug dealers and career criminals are “laughing in the dock” knowing cases can take years to come to trial. She believes that that inaction will be a road to “chaos and ruin”:
Ministers will legislate to remove the right to trial by jury for thousands of cases in one of the biggest and most controversial overhauls of the justice system in England and Wales in generations – promising the changes will significantly shrink the court backlog by 2029.
The Ministry of Justice is braced for a backlash from barristers and the judiciary as it presses ahead with the measures to tackle a backlog of nearly 80,000 cases, which will create a proposed new judge-only division of the crown court to hear some cases.
Sackman said the “stakes are incredibly high” as she prepared to announce early next month that vast numbers of cases will now be heard by judges and magistrates rather than juries, a response to recommendations in a review by Sir Brian Leveson.
Speaking at Wood Green crown court, Sackman said victims of severe sexual assault were routinely told it could take four years for their cases to come to court.
However, the paper adds that changes to jury trials are opposed by 90% of the Criminal Bar Association, which has warned that ending the right would be an unacceptable price to pay and undermine what is a fundamental principle for British justice. They argue that the British public have a deep faith in the jury system and that changes risk a loss of trust.
Racial equality groups have also expressed concern at the reforms, and at the unrepresentative nature of the judiciary against juries:
Judicial diversity statistics show that ethnic minorities make up 12% of judges in England and Wales, while the representation of black judges has remained unchanged at 1% for a decade. Criminal justice charities have said they expect a reduction in jury trials to lead to more convictions and potential miscarriages of justice.
The Institute for Government’s Cassia Rowland said in a recent report the government and Leveson’s report had thus far failed to make the case for the changes and that many of the issues identified by Leveson would be solved by increased court productivity – fewer trials are being scheduled, but more are being cancelled at the last minute.
Labour's authoritarian tendencies are once more in evidence in these proposals. They would rather remove fundamental rights than put in place the investment that is needed to try and fix the system.
According to the paper, Sarah Sackman claims that drug dealers and career criminals are “laughing in the dock” knowing cases can take years to come to trial. She believes that that inaction will be a road to “chaos and ruin”:
Ministers will legislate to remove the right to trial by jury for thousands of cases in one of the biggest and most controversial overhauls of the justice system in England and Wales in generations – promising the changes will significantly shrink the court backlog by 2029.
The Ministry of Justice is braced for a backlash from barristers and the judiciary as it presses ahead with the measures to tackle a backlog of nearly 80,000 cases, which will create a proposed new judge-only division of the crown court to hear some cases.
Sackman said the “stakes are incredibly high” as she prepared to announce early next month that vast numbers of cases will now be heard by judges and magistrates rather than juries, a response to recommendations in a review by Sir Brian Leveson.
Speaking at Wood Green crown court, Sackman said victims of severe sexual assault were routinely told it could take four years for their cases to come to court.
However, the paper adds that changes to jury trials are opposed by 90% of the Criminal Bar Association, which has warned that ending the right would be an unacceptable price to pay and undermine what is a fundamental principle for British justice. They argue that the British public have a deep faith in the jury system and that changes risk a loss of trust.
Racial equality groups have also expressed concern at the reforms, and at the unrepresentative nature of the judiciary against juries:
Judicial diversity statistics show that ethnic minorities make up 12% of judges in England and Wales, while the representation of black judges has remained unchanged at 1% for a decade. Criminal justice charities have said they expect a reduction in jury trials to lead to more convictions and potential miscarriages of justice.
The Institute for Government’s Cassia Rowland said in a recent report the government and Leveson’s report had thus far failed to make the case for the changes and that many of the issues identified by Leveson would be solved by increased court productivity – fewer trials are being scheduled, but more are being cancelled at the last minute.
Labour's authoritarian tendencies are once more in evidence in these proposals. They would rather remove fundamental rights than put in place the investment that is needed to try and fix the system.
Thursday, November 20, 2025
Is digital ID in trouble?
The paper says that MPs were told that the Government's the policy has been so badly botched that it is now "irrecoverable, warning that "no one really believes" the controversial roll-out is designed to tackle illegal working:
Supporters claim this will be essential in tackling small boats - and say Britain has fallen behind other nations. But Silki Carlo, director of pressure group Big Brother Watch, told the cross-party Home Affairs Select Committee: "I don't think anyone in this room genuinely believes that the mandatory digital ID is about illegal working. Which begs the question, what is it really about, and what will the other uses be?"
And she continued: "I think that, it's likely that the way that this announcement has been managed makes it irrecoverable for this government and potentially for the next five to 10 years."
A petition calling for the proposal to be scrapped has been signed by over 2.9million people. Ms Carlo told the committee: "Your constituents are up in arms about it and I think it is because of the way that it's been introduced, the fact that no one really believes it's about immigration, that it might be about something else."
Keir Starmer has vowed to plough ahead with the proposals, saying it will make the UK's borders more secure and make it easier to prove your identity. MPs were told system - which would be free for users - would "put citizens in control of their own data".
But critics warned about the possibility of abuse and data leaks. James Baker, program manager at Open Rights Group, said: "Imagine the person you disagree with most in politics...
"Imagine what they could do with this type of system if you didn't have the right safeguards in place." And he continued: "This is what worries me about introducing this in a country like the UK is we we don't have a written constitution that has privacy protections."
This policy is going to be hard to sell and it is unlikely that Starmer has the political capital to see it through.
Wednesday, November 19, 2025
Labour are seeking “to use children as a weapon”
The paper says that Dubbs, who arrived in the UK aged six in 1939 fleeing the persecution of Jews in Nazi-occupied Czechoslovakia, described Shabana Mahmood’s proposals as “a shabby thing”:
Mahmood faced a backlash from Labour MPs and refugee charities on Monday as she set out plans for the biggest shake-up of asylum laws in 40 years.
The Home Office said it would consult on measures to allow the removal of financial support from families with children under the age of 18 if they had been refused asylum. Ministers argue that the current system incentivises asylum seekers to subject their children to dangerous crossings.
A policy document published by the department on Monday said: “Our hesitancy around returning families creates particularly perverse incentives. To some the personal benefit of placing a child on a dangerous small boat outweighs the considerable risks of doing so.
“Once in the UK, asylum seekers are able to exploit the fact that they have had children and put down roots in order to thwart removal, even if their claim has been legally refused.”
In response, Lord Dubs told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: “There is a proper case for children, there is a proper case for family reunion when there are children who are on their own,” and he said that “to use children as a weapon as the home secretary is doing I think is a shabby thing”.
Mahmood’s proposals include scrapping permanent refugee status and requiring those arriving in the UK as asylum seekers to stay for 20 years – up from five – before they are eligible to settle permanently.
Dubs said he was “depressed” by the government’s “hard line” and said: “On the whole I think we’re going in the wrong direction.”
He said: “What it will do is to increase tensions in local communities and will make this country less welcome than we have traditionally been to welcome people who come here fleeing for safety. What we need is a bit of compassion in our politics.”
Dubs argued that the changes would cause bigger problems with community cohesion because there would be no incentive for communities to welcome asylum seekers who were here only temporarily. He also said it was wrong to remove children who were born and raised in the UK.
“My particular fear is integration in local communities: if people are here temporarily, and people know they’re here temporarily, then the danger is that local people say, well, you’re only here for a bit, why should we help you to integrate? Why should your kids go to local schools? And so on,” he said, adding that refugees “want to make a contribution to our country, that’s their overwhelming wish”.
The more I see of these proposals the more they appear badly thought through and unworkable.
Tuesday, November 18, 2025
The futile attempt to out-Farage Farage
The paper says that the home secretary’s flurry of proposals are designed to signal purpose, but constitute a wishlist of demands that her department can’t deliver:
Currently, those fleeing persecution are given a five-year right to stay in the country and can apply for settled status after that. Ms Mahmood wants refugees to stay in the country initially only for a 30-month period, and then review their status to see whether they will be allowed to remain in the country for another 30 months. After two decades in Britain, they could apply to stay here permanently.
Denmark is held up as the model. A decade ago a centre-left government there was under pressure, with a surging populist right and immigration dominating voters’ concerns. Danish Social Democrats claimed that getting tough on refugees helped them win the election. However, the reality was messier. Copenhagen stripped Syrians of protection, yet could not remove them, leaving people stuck in “deportation centres”, unable to work or live normally. The result was a permanently marginalised population in enforced limbo.
The British government now proposes to repeat this error, only at vastly greater scale. Ms Mahmood’s Home Office aims to reassess tens of thousands of refugees every two and a half years. With around 100,000 asylum claims annually – and many from countries that have a high grant rate – the system would soon need to conduct around 70,000 reviews each year. The Refugee Council says that the Home Office would need to review the status of 1.4 million people by 2035 at a cost of £872m. Yet this is the same state that cannot currently process the 50,000 appeals already in the queue, where waits hover around a year and tribunal judges are in short supply. Building a new bureaucracy to adjudicate applicants’ status is not bold politics, but magical thinking.
Ms Mahmood indicates that she wants to change the European convention on human rights, not abandon it. It is the Conservatives and Reform UK that talk of going it alone. But meaningful change cannot be made unilaterally. Any solo attempt would be self-defeating, risking Northern Ireland’s peace and undermining the post-Brexit deal with the EU.
Labour could achieve something substantial that voters care about and close the asylum hotels. Not by 2029, but by next year. The Refugee Council says the maths is simple: 40% of hotel residents come from five countries – Sudan, Eritrea, Iran, Afghanistan and Syria – from where between 60% and 98% are granted asylum. A one-off scheme to give permission to stay for a limited period, subject to security checks, would empty hotels rapidly. Rishi Sunak did just this 2023. There would be no need to engage with a damaging arms race with the far right, which would see Labour lose progressive support. It would, however, solve the single asylum-related issue that the public cares most about.
The Labour government is attempting to out-Farage Farage. As the paper says, copying Reform UK’s cruelty on asylum lets their leader own the issue, outbid Labour and drive the debate rightward at no cost. Worse, It gifts rightwingers the advantage, while setting itself up to look cruel and incompetent.
Monday, November 17, 2025
Labour's lazy narrative
Their rationale apparently, is that protecting animals such as dormice, badgers, hedgehogs, otters and nightingales, and rare habitats such as wetlands and ancient woodlands from developers is harming growth.
However, one House of Commons committee has carried out an inquiry that has come to a contrary conclusion.
The Guardian reports that the inquiry has conccluded that nature is not a blocker to housing growth, a view in direct conflict with claims made by ministers:
Toby Perkins, the Labour chair of the environmental audit committee, said nature was being scapegoated, and that rather than being a block to growth, it was necessary for building resilient towns and neighbourhoods.
In its report on environmental sustainability and housing growth, the cross-party committee challenged the “lazy narrative”, which has been promoted by UK government ministers, that nature was a blocker or an inconvenience to delivering housing.
The report said severe skills shortages in ecology, planning and construction would be what made it impossible for the government to deliver on its housebuilding ambitions.
Perkins said: “The government’s target to build 1.5m homes by the end of this parliament is incredibly ambitious. Achieving it alongside our existing targets on climate and sustainability – which are set in law – will require effort on a scale not seen before.
“That certainly will not be achieved by scapegoating nature, claiming that it is a ‘blocker’ to housing delivery. We are clear in our report: a healthy environment is essential to building resilient towns and cities. It must not be sidelined.”
Experts say the planning and infrastructure bill – in its final stages before being passed into law – rolls back environmental law to allow developers to sidestep the need for surveys and mitigation on the site of any environmental damage by paying into a central nature recovery fund for improvements to be made elsewhere.
The paper adds that the committee had concerns that the legislation as drafted would mean the government would miss its legally defined target to halt the decline of nature by 2030 and reverse it by 2042:
The report found that local planning authorities were severely underresourced in ecological skills. It heard evidence that staff at Natural England were “stretched to their limits”, that the skills needed to deliver the ecological aspects of planning reforms “simply do not exist at the scale, quality or capacity that is needed”.
Labour's commitment to the environment has never been weaker.
Sunday, November 16, 2025
Has Rachel Reeves budget turned into an omnishambles?
The Independent reports that Downing Street has been blamed for forcing Rachel Reeves to reverse Budget plans to raise income tax in what was described as “a panic move” to save Sir Keir Starmer’s premiership.
The paper says that Labour MPs, ministers and the markets were left stunned by a Financial Times report that the chancellor has now abandoned the measure despite two weeks of clear hints in public speeches that she was poised to break the party’s manifesto pledge:
Downing Street was blamed on Friday for forcing Rachel Reeves to reverse Budget plans to raise income tax in what was described as “a panic move” to save Sir Keir Starmer’s premiership.
Labour MPs, ministers and the markets were left stunned by a Financial Times report that the chancellor has now abandoned the measure despite two weeks of clear hints in public speeches that she was poised to break the party’s manifesto pledge.
With markets spooked by the sudden U-turn, the cost of borrowing for the government spiked, with 10-year gilts up 12 basis points at 4.56 per cent.
Treasury sources insisted the decision had been taken because of better-than-expected economic data, but others blamed interference from Downing Street in a bid to protect the prime minister from a potential leadership challenge.
One minister told The Independent that No 10 is “gripped by a state of panic”.
The drama unfolded after the chancellor laid the groundwork for tax hikes, including several hints that she would need to break Labour’s election pledge not to raise income taxes.
But the reversal came after the prime minister was under siege following a briefing to journalists – reportedly by Downing Street officials – that health secretary Wes Streeting was planning a leadership bid.
The chancellor is now expected to increase a handful of smaller taxes in an attempt to balance the books, despite warnings from economists that such a move could make the system “more complicated and inefficient”.
Possible measures include a gambling tax, a bank levy tax, various wealth taxes, or a mansion tax on properties valued at £2m and over.
Jim O’Neill, the former Treasury minister and Goldman Sachs boss who was brought in by the chancellor to be her economic adviser in opposition, described the developments as “bothersome”.
He said: “I’m surprised. If it means their defaulting to accumulated fringe, possibly growth-damaging taxes again, it will be bothersome.”
Stephen Millard, deputy director of the National Institute of Economic and Social Research (NIESR), warned: “There are two dangers here. First, by resorting to smaller changes to lots of marginal taxes, the chancellor risks making the overall tax system ever more complicated and inefficient (in the sense of creating more distortions in the economy).
“Second, this would make it harder for the chancellor to build a large buffer against her fiscal rules. As we’ve seen over the past year, having a small buffer creates uncertainty and endless speculation about further tax rises, given it would only take a small downgrade in the UK’s growth prospects to wipe the buffer out.”
Tax expert Dan Neidle told The Independent that seeking to raise money from a “grab bag” of lots of different tax measures instead would be “very damaging”.
Isaac Delestre, senior tax analyst at the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS), said: “We obviously don’t know how much she’s looking to raise, but the risks of doing something unnecessarily economically damaging increase if she is going to look to raise large amounts from smaller taxes.”
He suggested: “One other obvious option that could raise a lot of money is looking at income tax thresholds (the Labour manifesto pledge on IT, NICs and VAT only talks about rates of income tax). Although worth noting that in real terms, thresholds have already come down a lot since 2021 because they’ve been frozen in real terms.”
In normal times a chancellor ruling out income tax rise would receive acclamation, but the way tax increases have been floated and then pulled back just appears shambolic. Furthermore, the prospect of income tax thresholds being frozen until 2030 means that we will all be paying more tax anyway.
This Labour government is giving the impression of being made up of headless chickens. They have no direction and no leadership. Can Rachel Reeves rescue them on budget day? It is looking increasingly unlikely.
The paper says that Labour MPs, ministers and the markets were left stunned by a Financial Times report that the chancellor has now abandoned the measure despite two weeks of clear hints in public speeches that she was poised to break the party’s manifesto pledge:
Downing Street was blamed on Friday for forcing Rachel Reeves to reverse Budget plans to raise income tax in what was described as “a panic move” to save Sir Keir Starmer’s premiership.
Labour MPs, ministers and the markets were left stunned by a Financial Times report that the chancellor has now abandoned the measure despite two weeks of clear hints in public speeches that she was poised to break the party’s manifesto pledge.
With markets spooked by the sudden U-turn, the cost of borrowing for the government spiked, with 10-year gilts up 12 basis points at 4.56 per cent.
Treasury sources insisted the decision had been taken because of better-than-expected economic data, but others blamed interference from Downing Street in a bid to protect the prime minister from a potential leadership challenge.
One minister told The Independent that No 10 is “gripped by a state of panic”.
The drama unfolded after the chancellor laid the groundwork for tax hikes, including several hints that she would need to break Labour’s election pledge not to raise income taxes.
But the reversal came after the prime minister was under siege following a briefing to journalists – reportedly by Downing Street officials – that health secretary Wes Streeting was planning a leadership bid.
The chancellor is now expected to increase a handful of smaller taxes in an attempt to balance the books, despite warnings from economists that such a move could make the system “more complicated and inefficient”.
Possible measures include a gambling tax, a bank levy tax, various wealth taxes, or a mansion tax on properties valued at £2m and over.
Jim O’Neill, the former Treasury minister and Goldman Sachs boss who was brought in by the chancellor to be her economic adviser in opposition, described the developments as “bothersome”.
He said: “I’m surprised. If it means their defaulting to accumulated fringe, possibly growth-damaging taxes again, it will be bothersome.”
Stephen Millard, deputy director of the National Institute of Economic and Social Research (NIESR), warned: “There are two dangers here. First, by resorting to smaller changes to lots of marginal taxes, the chancellor risks making the overall tax system ever more complicated and inefficient (in the sense of creating more distortions in the economy).
“Second, this would make it harder for the chancellor to build a large buffer against her fiscal rules. As we’ve seen over the past year, having a small buffer creates uncertainty and endless speculation about further tax rises, given it would only take a small downgrade in the UK’s growth prospects to wipe the buffer out.”
Tax expert Dan Neidle told The Independent that seeking to raise money from a “grab bag” of lots of different tax measures instead would be “very damaging”.
Isaac Delestre, senior tax analyst at the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS), said: “We obviously don’t know how much she’s looking to raise, but the risks of doing something unnecessarily economically damaging increase if she is going to look to raise large amounts from smaller taxes.”
He suggested: “One other obvious option that could raise a lot of money is looking at income tax thresholds (the Labour manifesto pledge on IT, NICs and VAT only talks about rates of income tax). Although worth noting that in real terms, thresholds have already come down a lot since 2021 because they’ve been frozen in real terms.”
In normal times a chancellor ruling out income tax rise would receive acclamation, but the way tax increases have been floated and then pulled back just appears shambolic. Furthermore, the prospect of income tax thresholds being frozen until 2030 means that we will all be paying more tax anyway.
This Labour government is giving the impression of being made up of headless chickens. They have no direction and no leadership. Can Rachel Reeves rescue them on budget day? It is looking increasingly unlikely.
Saturday, November 15, 2025
A Tudor farm and a Roman fort
As the Llys Nini site records, the branch was established by animal-loving volunteers in the Swansea and Neath areas nearly 200 years ago, with its first animal centre being situated in Singleton Park, leased from Swansea Corporation in 1935, with the capacity to house 31 dogs and 18 cats.
When the lease of the old Swansea Dogs’ Home expired in the early 1990s, the branch raised enough money to buy its own premises and in 1994 bought the old Llys Nini farm in Penllergaer:
Llys Nini was special, as unlike other Welsh long houses which had the fire place in the end wall, Llys Nini had a large fire place in the centre of the building with stairs to the hay loft behind.
Llys Nini Farm is recorded as being ancient in the 1507 Quit Claim. Whether Llys Nini was in existence before that is unknown but at least one local person says that he remembers a Roman Fort on the site and if true that could have formed the basis of the later Llys or Court.
The Llys Nini RSPCA Administration Block is built on the foot print of the old house. It is possible that a Roman practice fort existed there and that it was used by Prince Einon ap Owain ap Hywel Dda, in the 10th Century’ He was the Penteulu (translated as head of the family but was probably the leader of his father’s war band) of Owain of Dinefwr, King of Deheubarth in the 960/70s. It is probable that he established a Llys (court) on the site and that it was called Llys Einon or Llys Enniaun in the Latinised form and that in the interim the name has become Llys Nini.
The quit claim of 1507 says the deceased owner was Gwilym Thuy ( probably Ddu) who was a direct descendent Gryffydd Gwyr, Lord of Gower in the 13th Century who was a a descendent of the House of Deheubarth.
There is more information on the farm here.
Friday, November 14, 2025
Labour to reject amendments to planning bill that protect nature
The paper says that the amendment, which was passed with a large majority in the House of Lords, restricts the most controversial part of the draft bill by removing protected animals such as dormice, badgers, hedgehogs, otters and nightingales, and rare habitats such as wetlands and ancient woodlands, from new rules which allow developers to sidestep environmental laws to speed up house building:
Under the draft legislation proposed by Labour, developers will be able to pay into a national “nature recovery fund” and go ahead with their project straight away, instead of having to carry out an environmental survey and to first avoid, then mitigate damage, before putting spades into the ground.
Experts say this is a regression on decades-old environmental law and it has been criticised as “cash to trash” by ecologists and environmental groups.
The Lords’ amendment would mean the nature recovery fund is restricted to impacts from water and air pollution, meaning developers would still have to take the usual measures to mitigate damage to wildlife and habitats.
Reed has recommended rejecting the amendment when the bill returns to the Commons on Thursday for the final stages before being passed into law.
In a letter to MPs some of the UK’s biggest nature charities, including the Wildlife Trusts and RSPB, say the government rollback of environmental law “lacks any rigorous scientific or ecological justification.
“There is no credible, published, or well established evidence that this model can simply be scaled or replicated for multiple species nationwide without risking serious ecological harm, legal uncertainty, and increased costs for both developers and land managers,” the letter reads.
The Guardian revealed this week how the chancellor, Rachel Reeves, and housing minister Matthew Pennycook have met scores of developers in the past year over the planning bill. Reeves has not met a single environmental organisation or the body for professional ecologists, while Pennycook has had just four meetings with such groups, compared with 16 with leading developers.
Who would have guessed that a Labour government could out-Tory the Tories on destroying our environment?
Thursday, November 13, 2025
Labour pile one crisis onto another
The Guardian reports that there is growing pressure over the future of Morgan McSweeney after the prime minister’s chief of staff was blamed for No 10’s pushback against a possible leadership challenge.
The paper adds that a series of ministers and Labour MPs are pointing the finger at McSweeney for the pre-emptive operation that particularly targeted Wes Streeting, the health secretary, who has responded with undisguised fury:
The Guardian reported on Tuesday that Downing Street had launched an operation to protect Starmer against a leadership challenge his allies believe could come from Streeting after this month’s budget or the May local elections.
Starmer’s closest allies said he would fight any “reckless” attempt to oust him, which they warned would affect the markets and the UK’s international relationships.
On Wednesday morning, Streeting vehemently denied such plotting and said the “self-defeating” attacks on him were indicative of a toxic culture inside No 10.
Badenoch began prime minister’s questions by asking: “This morning on the BBC, the health secretary said there is a toxic culture in Downing Street that needs to change. He’s right, isn’t he?”
Starmer replied: “My focus, each and every day, is on rebuilding and renewing our country. Let me be absolutely clear: any attack on any member of my cabinet is completely unacceptable.”
He praised Streeting’s record as health secretary, adding: “He is doing a great job, as is all of my cabinet.”
Starmer went on: “Let me be clear, I have never authorised attacks on cabinet members. I appointed them to their posts because they’re the best people to carry out their jobs.”
Badenoch later lambasted Starmer over his record on unemployment and the economy more widely, before returning to the No 10 infighting. She ended her questions by saying: “Isn’t it the case that this prime minister has lost control of his government, he has lost the confidence of his party and lost the trust of the British people.”
Starmer responded: “They [the Conservatives] broke the economy and now they’ve got this unserious idea that they can find £47bn of cuts, without saying where they’re going to come from. Meanwhile, we’re rebuilding the country.”
Speaking to the BBC earlier on Wednesday, Streeting said the attacks on him showed that Lucy Powell, the newly elected Labour deputy leader, “was right about the culture of No 10”.
Powell has called for a culture change inside No 10 and said she has been a target of negative briefings from the prime minister’s team, singling out McSweeney for criticism.
Streeting said: “I can tell you without having even spoken to the prime minister what he thinks of briefing, what his reaction will be to the front pages and the broadcast bulletins overnight, and the words I’m sure he would use are not suitable for a family show.”
If anything Starmer's advisors have made things worse. The government are now not just unpopular, but also perceived as in disarray.
