Losing Their Long Time Allies...

Migrant workers and the UK’s largest union will carry out a mass leafleting campaign in Shabana Mahmood’s Birmingham constituency to protest against a planned change in immigration policy. The Labour-affiliated Unison union says the changes will adversely affect migrant care workers. About one-third of all care workers and one-fifth of all NHS workers are migrants.

Real migrants, I'd hope, not the modern use of that term. 

Union members hope to leaflet about one-third of the home secretary’s approximately 55,000 constituents in the Ladywood area of the city. Union sources say it is the first time such a large Labour-affiliated union is lobbying en masse against a key party policy.

When even the unions are fed up with you, you know it's all over... 

Although the earned settlement proposals, which have been outlined in a white paper, call for a doubling of settlement time to 10 years, in some cases migrants may have to wait longer than that if they entered the UK illegally or have claimed benefits here.

If they entered the coutry illegally, they should be deported!  

The union is also calling for a change to sponsorship rules for these visas. At the moment, these workers must be sponsored by their employer, which officials say can lead to exploitation. There are calls for this to be replaced with a sponsorship scheme managed by a public-sector body.

Ah, that's the union's real goal - jobs for the public sector boys. 

It’s Not Housing So Much As Who You’re Putting In That Housing

 

Over the week to come, journalists will repeat three things until they, and you, are sick: that local elections fall next Thursday; that the results will decide the fate of Keir Starmer; and that he is set to do badly. But just how badly, and where? Last week, Starmer’s own party dropped a big clue. The most popular politician in Britain came down from Manchester to spend the whole day campaigning in London.

In case you wondered, Reader, they were talking about Andy Burnham. 

As Andy Burnham went from Haringey to Brixton, he rallied Labour’s footsoldiers. “Don’t go into the last two weeks with your shoulders down,” he told them. “Get your shoulders up.” “Ah,” wrote lobby reporters, “now the King of the North is making incursions down south, such is his ambition.” But his visit is more telling than that, and more profound in its implications.

Oh? Do tell! 

...consider Burnham’s itinerary. Lambeth, Haringey, Southwark: these rank among the reddest patches of the UK’s entire electoral map. The country’s last bastion of Labour support, London, is starting to collapse.

I wonder why? I look at the demographics of those area and they aren't falling to Reform any time soon. But the Islam Green Party is in with a chance.

Even as they knock on doors and post leaflets ahead of next Thursday, Labour people have already written off whole swathes of the country. They know they’ll get smashed in Scotland and Wales, where in the assembly elections the governing party will be battling simply not to lose too badly. But London is a different story; even in the wipeout of 2019 it remained deep red.

The Greens look set to bloody Labour Southwark and Lambeth: the training ground of Morgan McSweeney, Steve Reed, Ali McGovern and much of the rest of the faction that runs the Westminster party.

Depends how many of them are in the cells ahead of May 7, doesn't it?  

There is one more bruise the Greens in London keep punching, especially intriguing because it is about policy. Front and centre of their campaign is the need for a fair housing system.

And who for?  That's more the point.

The 'Complex Reasons Why People Might Have Larger Families'....

... aren't always actually very complex, but may be rather sinister. And something the progressives don’t want to acknowledge.

Clearly, more needs to be done to reduce inequality and deprivation in Britain. Even once the effects of this change have been felt, an estimated 4 million children will remain in poverty.

That’s the Guardian, welcoming the end to the two child benefit cap, the only sensible policy the Tories managed to get through.

But this week’s win should not be taken for granted. Benefits Street-type hostility is still all too widespread in Britain. When Labour was voted in, six in 10 Britons favoured keeping the cap in place – which may have added to the hesitancy around reversing it. That has reduced slightly, but research for More in Common last year found that 49% believed that removing the limit would be a “very” or “somewhat” bad idea, compared with 36% in favour.

That 49% have realised who we are paying to breed.

When ending it was framed as giving every child a good start, support surged.

Proof that you can fool all of the people all of the time. 

Sometimes, huge wins can be short‑lived. Labour must talk proudly about this moment, then build on it.

Yes, please do keep on talking about the disastrous decisions you have been making since you came into office, what’s the worst that can happen?

Assuming He Has That Long...

 

Well, Matt's hopeful, at least...

And Yet, They Can’t Do The Same To Dinghies In The English Channel

British forces are now "ready to act" to board and detain ships in Russia's so-called shadow fleet in UK waters, the defence secretary has said.Ministers identified a legal basis in January that would allow forces to board sanctioned vessels, but approval for the military measure was not given by the prime minister until Thursday.

Sounds about right for the current incumbent of Number 10! 

Questioned on why that decision had not come sooner, John Healey told BBC Radio 4's Today programme "what operations like this require is training, preparation, understanding discussion with allies [and] a clear legal basis".

Aren't they all things one would expect the navy to already possess, and if not, to be able to practice in peacetime on the hordes invading our country via the Channel?  

Sir Keir Starmer said the move would starve "Putin's war machine of the dirty profits that fund his barbaric campaign".

While Two-tier Kier's sabotaging his own campaign... roll on May!