I’ll give Laura K some questions for free:

Are you really going to introduce tax on salary sacrifice pension contributions on your own voters months before the election?

Where will the money for special educational needs come from when it’s moved from local government to central?

It’s very hard to determine what the actual strategy is beyond muddling through and hoping planning reform and some increases in capital spending deliver some modest growth in time. All of which makes it harder to push back on the media bullshit that fills the void.

And in one of the few areas it is being bold on energy and clean tech, Reeves doesn’t like to talk about it and even took steps to actively undermine progress. www.businessgreen.com/blog-post/45...

But if Labour was to offer something bolder on undoing the damage of Brexit or raising taxes to fund defending the realm from Putin it surely had to do it now?

And that’s before you consider how so many of the tax rises have bern backloaded to the end of the Parliament.

It would have been mad a year ago to think Starmer and Reeves wouldn’t lead Labour into the next election, but increasingly hard to see how you go to the country with ‘we promised change, didn’t really deliver it, and here’s a manifesto that again promises more of the same’.

We’re in serious danger of another decade of muddling along without any serious attempt to fix underlying problems beyond lots of small tax rises and investing a bit more in infrastructure (both welcome), all of which a Reform-Tory government would undo if it got the chance.

Will it finally place clean energy and climate action at the heart of an economic growth plan? Will it find a credible way to get defence spending up above 3% or GDP?

I know it’s a long way off, but does the next manifesto repeat the no tax rises pledge even when it’s obvious the state desperately needs more investment? Will there be any meaningful attempt to ease Brexit barriers that are causing such damage?

And given that somewhat unbelievably COP30 only finished a week ago, here’s some thoughts on the mix of success and failure that resulted and where it leaves global climate action. www.businessgreen.com/blog-post/45...

A service charge that rose above inflation every year for a truly appalling service that we could never force meaningful improvements to no matter how hard we tried.

And yet they do and they will.

Jesus wept. I genuinely think there should be a concerted effort to try and re-establish stronger social norms on this stuff. Turns out gatekeepers had a purpose after all.

It’s almost time for my ‘make deliberately misleading your readers shameful again’ campaign.

How many epistemic crises do you have to go through to work your way back round to reality?