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PART 1. INTRODUCTION This is the latest in the Ideas series, following Solarpunk and Transhumanism. It deals with the “Blob”, the concept of an administrative state, a bureaucracy refractory to democratic control by governments. Such states result in state inertia as policies are added slowly but rarely removed. The citations will be given in the comments section. PART 2. DOES IT EXIST? Let’s get one thing straight at the beginning. Of course the Blob exists. The idea of a bureaucratic…

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Thanks to Audible I am listening to Lord Brady’s autobiography and it is a fascinating read by the man who oversaw four Tory leadership elections in six years and told Theresa May, Boris Johnson, and Liz Truss their time was up as PM. This interview is worth a watch. TSE

One thing I am now betting heavily on is Harris to the win the popular, She is currenly 1.28 on Betfair so that is a 28% return in just over five weeks. TSE

It’s not going terribly well for Sir Keir Starmer KC as Prime Minister and whilst I think the recent revelations about Lord Alli’s donations by the next general election will cost Labour as much the Ecclestone scandal did at the 2001 general election it is worth pondering who might succeed Sir Keir if he were to fall under the metaphorical bus or stand down quicker than anticipated. I think the value might be Ed Miliband at 100/1 as next Labour…

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With the new Labour government led by Starmer proving to be the biggest disappointment since the Rings of Power there is time for Labour to recover by the time of the next UK general election there may not be enough for Labour to recover in Scotland by the time of the Holyrood election in 2026. I was expecting the SNP lose power at Holyrood in 2026 because of their general performance in the eyes of voters (plus they’d have been…

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If I were on Team Harris this polling would worry me greatly as the healthy lead she had after becoming the nominee has been wiped out. My expectation has been if Harris wins then she gets her voters out to vote but if her party is less enthusiastic about voting than the Republican then this is unalloyed good news for Trump. TSE

The one positive for Labour is that we’re not even three months in to a sixty month parliament. I said recently I think Starmer is following the Thatcher/Cameron playbook of getting the difficult decisions out of the way early in the parliament and reaping the rewards later. I wonder if we will end up seeing the changes to the winter fuel allowance the same we do with Thatcher/Cameron governments increase of VAT, the former’s received real vitriol at the time…

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As gaffes go this is pretty funny and will see the urine extracted from Starmer (like the Tories have done with their Tweet) but it won’t shift any votes like the gaffe the Tory Party made when they made Liz Truss Prime Minister. TSE