Labour Euphoria

Andy Burnham gives Labour post-landslide euphoria absent under Sir Keir Starmer, says peer

Andy Burnham has given Labour the "post-electoral euphoria" that they did not have after Sir Keir Starmer's landslide 2024 general election victory, Harriet Harman has said...

The Labour peer went on to say that she was "hoping" that the Starmer project would succeed, but "a lot of [Labour MPs] were saying, 'look, it's not going to. Face up to the reality. The reality is that it's not going to'...

"Because although on paper he had a majority of over 100, he couldn't actually deliver anything with that majority.

"And I think now it's absolutely evident that we've got what we thought we got at the general election, which is a stable government with a huge majority which will get on and deliver a programme."

This is the euphoric programme Andrew Burnham laid out when he wangled the role of Prime Minister.

• Building one united Labour team
• A ‘less toxic’ problem solving approach
• Setting a ‘distinctively Labour’ direction
• Governing equally for every UK region and nation
• Taking back control from Westminster

It must have caused a level of euphoria comparable to drinking half a dozen pints of dandelion and burdock. 

More Laws, Less Rule of Law

Augusto Zimmermann & Gabriël Moens have a very interesting Quadrant piece on a pernicious Australian problem which is also a British problem - too many laws and regulations are destroying respect for the law. In some areas of UK law, that should read have destroyed respect for the law.

Hence the Two Tier Keir jibe which was far more than a mere jibe. It is exceedingly unlikely that Three Tier Burnham will even acknowledge the problem. 

More Laws, Less Rule of Law

On February 3, 1949, Winston Churchill, the UK’s wartime prime minister warned in a House of Commons speech that “If you make 10,000 regulations you destroy all respect for the law.”[1] He argued that the proliferation of laws, which defined the post-war Labour governments, undermines free markets and erodes the public’s trust in the nation’s institutions.

Churchill’s warning is timely, considering the explosion of legislative activity in Australia which has made compliance with the law difficult at best and impossible at worst. For example, it is estimated that the Australian tax law is contained in over 14,000 pages – clearly an impossible task for even the most disciplined tax lawyer to know or understand.

The whole piece is well worth reading. Here in the UK, uninformed voters effectively vote for even more laws with no prospect whatever of understanding even the gist of those we have already.


One former Prime Minister, Julia Gillard, even boasted on one occasion that no other Government in this nation had passed as many laws as her government had,[5] as though this were something to celebrate rather than viewed as a potentially serious problem for the realisation of the rule of law in Australia.

Of course, matters have become considerably worse since Gillard made that notorious statement. If it were not bad enough that Australians have since enacted an enormous number of additional legislative measures, many of such measures also have undermined an important element of our Western legal tradition: the legal protection of inalienable rights – that is, our fundamental human rights to life, liberty and property.

Taking Us for Fools

A Climate Depot piece by Roger Pielke on a familiar problem, the success of climate propaganda. Familiar but worth reading because of Pielke's stress on what he calls the use of symbols, authority, and institutions of expertise to build the propaganda.


Taking Us for Fools: How a turnkey method attributes any trend to climate change

By ROGER PIELKE JR.

Excerpt: One of the most brazen — and successful — propaganda campaigns sits out in plain sight. I am referring to the concerted effort by climate advocates to create a belief that “climate change” causes bad weather and disasters, and that we can prevent those bad things from happening with climate policies.

At the center of the propaganda campaign are scientists who perform political alchemy by turning the symbols, authority, and institutions of expertise into public and policy maker (mis)understandings of climate science. These scientists all well know that “climate policy” — however construed — cannot reduce the number or intensity of extreme weather events in any meaningful or detectable way in my lifetime, or even my future grandkids’ lifetimes.

I am using the term propaganda here as a technical term, which Harold Lasswell defined almost a century ago as, “the management of collective attitudes by the manipulation of significant symbols.”