Removed from the ballot paper

Klaus Bastian has an interesting Blackout News piece on political exclusion in Germany.

Exclusion from voting: Political opponents have AfD candidates removed from the ballot paper

Lower Saxony, July 2026: The exclusion of Bundestag member Martin Sichert from the election shows how political competition can be eliminated even before a vote. Reinhild Goes initially did not receive approval despite a recommendation for admission by the local election officer. The AfD district administrator candidate Stephan Bothe is also threatened with exclusion according to a recommendation of the Ministry of the Interior. On the other hand, the election committees admitted Jessica Schülke in Hanover and Robert Preuß in Gifhorn. The red-green local electoral law allows the evaluation of material from the Office for the Protection of the Constitution and political statements. Subsequently, party-political election committees decide on competing candidates. A full judicial review often only follows after the election. At the same time, UN Special Rapporteur Irene Khan criticizes such vague extremism assessments as "incompatible with international standards."

Ludwigshafen provided the blueprint for the exclusion from the election

Joachim Paul was not allowed to run in the mayoral election in Ludwigshafen in 2025. The election committee relied on material from the Office for the Protection of the Constitution. But the administrative courts did not fully examine the allegations before the vote. Instead, they referred Paul to the later election scrutiny procedure. Therefore, the election took place without the candidate of a party that was not banned.

The Politics Cartel

The word ‘Uniparty’ has been around for decades, especially in the US, but it’s a useful word here in the UK too. As any political sceptic knows, there is much to be said for viewing UK politics as a cartel which fixes the financial and political cost of being a supine voter– the Uniparty.

A few UK political parties offer only limited competition within cartel boundaries which are not explicit within their debates, manifestos or policies. Parties promote their particular political brand, but only within Uniparty boundaries and in so doing they fix the cost of being a supine voter - the cartel aspect.

This much is obvious enough, “they are all the same” is far from being an uncommon public comment at election time. Yet only a minority of voters seem to treat their frustration as being due a permanent political cartel where close party alignment is a feature, not a fault. Only a minority of voters seem to view the main political parties as one party and refer to it by a single name such as the Uniparty.

It is also clear, but clearly not clear enough, that the entire Establishment is a social and political cartel called rather vaguely the Elite, the Blob, the Swamp, the Kleptocracy or one of a number of other names. Or just the Establishment.

Unfortunately we are held back by language. The Establishment, the Uniparty, the mainstream media all have a tight grip on popular language, on how we articulate what goes on in the world of politics, how we articulate it to others and even to ourselves.

For example, within the boundaries of the Uniparty cartel, our current UK Prime Minister is described as a member of the Labour Party, which he is in a formal sense, but this means less than is usually assumed. He promotes himself and his party within constrained narratives formulated as typically Labour Party narratives, but always within Uniparty boundaries. What is not allowed is to change the way things are done in any radical way.

In other words, Andrew Burnham is the Uniparty Prime Minister from what we might call the Labour branch, but that is not what we hear from mainstream media. Neither do we usually hear it said that he represents the Establishment, the Blob, Davos, globalism, the Kleptocracy or whatever.

Powerfully useful words such as Uniparty are successfully relegated to the fringes of UK political discourse. The political cartel is successfully disguised because the main political parties do have different agendas, but within ill-defined but quite definite Uniparty and therefore Establishment boundaries.

Hence a major UK political question - where does Reform stand in all this?

 

Who pays for Manchesterism?

Shimeon Lee has a useful Critic piece on some of the ways in which Andrew Burnham's notion of “Manchesterism” is mostly about wasting other people's money. 

The whole piece is well worth reading for any UK citizen who feels unduly cheerful at the moment.


Who pays for Manchesterism?

Burnham spent nine years extracting money from Westminster, now he’ll be reaching directly into taxpayers’ pockets

Andy Burnham is now Prime Minister, and the country soon to discover what “Manchesterism” means when applied to the British state. Burnham’s nine years as mayor, alongside his earlier national record, offer a clear guide to the instincts he is likely to bring to No.10: a willingness to raise taxes, expand the state and prioritise policies that sound good but ultimately deliver poor value for money.

It is revealing that after being elected mayor in 2017, one of Burnham’s first acts was to impose a new charge on households in Greater Manchester. The new mayoral precept was initially set at £8 for the average band D property, funding the mayoral operation, including Burnham’s £110,000 salary. As so often happens with new charges, it did not remain modest for long. The charge more than doubled the following year, rising again in 2020-21, 2022-23, 2025-26 and 2026-27. By the time Burnham resigned to contest the Makerfield by-election, it had risen to £61.75, nearly eight times the original amount in less than a decade.

As residents paid more, the mayor built an increasingly elaborate network of advisers, commissioners and panels funded by taxpayers. These included a young person’s advisor paid £500 per day, a transport commissioner and an active travel commissioner each paid £650 per day, and an LGBTQ+ advisor paid £177 per day. He also established seven equality panels facilitated by “culturally appropriate organisations” which cost £392,435 a year. Taxpayers can only speculate how much larger that ecosystem could become when he takes control of Whitehall.

When 'Harder' means 'Impossible'

Angela Rayner rules out rent controls as she admits 1.5million home pledge getting harder to meet

She told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: “It certainly got more challenging, and we’ve seen things like construction costs go up etc, which has had a real negative impact on that.

“But I’m not dropping it. I’m just saying that it is a really difficult stretched target.”

Pressed again, she said: “Yeah, I’m going to keep the target, but it’s like me saying I’m going to run the London Marathon in under five hours.

“That would be a real challenge for me, but I’d do it… Look, I am straight talking.

As Angela accepted this thoroughly poisoned chalice we may as well assume that she doesn't expect to be the one holding it when the next general election descends on us.  

Maybe she doesn't expect Burnham to be the one dishing out ministerial jobs by then either.

  

Shameless cherry-picking

Nigel Farage is now even less popular than Starmer just before his resignation

Nigel Farage’s popularity among the public has plummeted to its lowest level in the past ten years, a new YouGov survey has found, placing him below Keir Starmer just before the PM resigned.

The pollster found just 22% have a favourable view of the Reform UK leader, while 68% are unfavourable – including 56% who say they are very unfavourable.

That 46% gap between his negative and positive rating is bigger than the 45% recorded by Starmer before he announced he was stepping down.


A chap does not have to support Farage in order to notice that this is shameless cherry-picking. The story is correct if you choose a YouGov poll and ignore polls from Deltapoll, Opinium, More in Common, Survation, Freshwater Strategy and Ipsos.

The variation in results is very large too, that would be worth mentioning, but of course data uncertainties are not what the story is about.

Easily checked too.

Worth a reminder in these milk-livered times

Our brand-new Burnham government is surely a reminder of various Shakespearian insult generators out there on the internet. 

Worth a reminder in these milk-livered times.

Thy manners are borrowed from a goat’s backside!

Thy wits are as sharp as a mashed turnip!

Thy tongue flaps more than a sailor's laundry!

Thou jarring, milk-livered hobbledehoy!

Source - but there are others

It's going to be stunts and buses all the way down

Andy Burnham says £2 bus fare cap 'will put money in people's pockets'

 

Source

Prompted by casual interest, I had a quick gander at the number of photo op images showing Burnham with a bus - there are loads of them. 

I bet he collects them.