It's fiscally and monetarily conservative. This is usually an indication of the economic right. Cutting govt expenditure - Tory - and raising taxes - Labour - are just two sides of a discredited approach that damages growth.

It may affect individual depts differently, but in aggregate it's money out and money back in. The proportion of civil servants on the NLW is probably a single figure percentage but probably higher in local govt and the NHS. For the private sector organisations it's just money out.

I know nothing about Dodds, so why do you say that?

The hike in the NLW was exactly the sort of thing Osborne did as Chancellor. It costs the Treasury nothing (at least in the short term), and allows govt minister to claim wages are going.

They are steadily recreating the insider/outsider divide of continental labour markets that has been one of their worst structural features and massively inhibited young people for decades. Spain eventually fixed theirs in the EZ debt crisis reforms and this happened

Even if Trump were to succeed in the Florida court it's extremely unlikely the court would be able to enforce the decision in the UK. Moreover,Trump usually loses or withdraws his defamation suits. It's all political posturing, but being lapped up by the right wing media.

It takes an obscene amount of hubris to lecture the BBC when you have The Telegraph’s record on truth-telling.

Some of the paper’s errors this year are so bad they’re almost laughable 👇🏻

I had asked ChatGBT about this, and it had already confirmed what you're saying. As anyone can have access to this AI tool it seems the financial threat to the BBC has been blown up out of all proportion.

I gather even in the US Trump has either lost or withdrawn nearly all defamation lawsuits.

BBC assets in the US are held in subsidiaries that have few tangible assets.

There's a good exhibition at the National Army Museum in Chelsea about the "forgotten" armies that served in Burma. The exhibition focuses on the remarkable mix of British, Indian, Burmese and African troops who served there.

Given the collapse in support for the Danish Social Democrats according to the latest opinion polls, I wonder if Starmer’s behind the curve on this issue.

This is a Brexit benefit - to asylum seekers if not to the UK govt..

The latest opinion polls suggest this strategy is coming unstuck, as the Social Democrats lose support and the Socialists gain support. The Liberal Alliance (libertarian) is also on the up.

The big losers were Venstre, economically centre right, socially moderately conservative, losing 10pp. The big winners were the Liberal Alliance (libertarian) up 5.7pp, and the Moderates, a new centrist party that scored 9.3%. 2/

Let's get the so-called success of the Danish Social Democtrats into perspective.Their vote in 2022 was 27.5%, so they only put on 1.9pp compared to the previous election. Populist, anti-immigration parties between them also put on 1.9pp. 1/