The Knob, a caricature of a northerner

After a week of the Andy Burnham show what have we let ourselves in for or to be more precise what has the Labour Party let us in for. True to form Labour has done us no favours. At least he hasn’t turned up in a flat cap with ferrets in tow.

My impression so far is that he is being a professional northerner with little in the way of political nous. His constant harping on about the north, of which he is the Knob not the King, and threats to soak the filthy rich of the south in taxation do nothing but widen an already existing divide.

In the run up to his coronation Starmer was going to fight tooth and nail to hang on to his job and assorted others were going to stand in a leadership campaign. It all fizzled out and the coronation duly followed just in time for parliament to clear off into another of its interminable recesses. The Knob will not face the HoC until early September and nobody can even ask him what his favourite ice cream is. Obviously the Knob is the chosen one.

His first act was to sack all the Starmer loyalists from the Cabinet. Now you could say a Starmerite is not worth hanging onto but to have so many now reduced to the backbenches is a revolt waiting to happen and it is rumoured this is exactly what is happening egged on by our utterly useless former Prime Minister. However much we loathed Rodney Spanner it has to be said that the Knob o’t North appears to be just as bad. The replacement ministers seem to be heavily from ’t north ! Women now outnumber men by 12 to 11 in the Cabinet. It will end in tears.

There was recently a tweet that Andeh as he likes to be known just wants to be loved. There may be some truth in this because he has definitely tried to be all things to all men. His appointment of ministers has been bizarre and none more so than convicted fraudster Louise Haigh. One of her remits was Ethics and within a day this was removed from her and passed on to somebody slightly more trustworthy. He has also appointed tax evader Crayons back to her old job as Housing Minister where she is going to fail spectacularly in her promise to build 1.5 million new homes. Her excuses have begun already.

It is in the field of taxation where the Knob’s desperate desire to be loved shines through the cracks. One of his first acts was to reduce VAT on domestic electric bills from 5% to 0% costing the Treasury £850 million. When asked how the shortfall would be made up, the Chancellor John Healey said it was going to be from cancelling the Digital ID nonsense. Sacked Darren Jones helpfully explained that no funding had been made for Digital ID. The relevant ministers of course just ignored this and their pets in the media immediately bunged it down the memory hole. Allegedly this was going to save consumers 86p a week. A second class stamp is 91p, don’t spend it all at once.

When the Knob was Mayor of skanky manc land he promised to end homelessness in his metropolis. He never succeeded. He has now made the same promise to the entire country and he will fail spectacularly again. It is supposed to cost £340 million over five years and will be funded from money found down the back of the sofa in the housing budget. Come on Crayons, get down on your knees and get looking.

Then he decided he would cap bus fares at £2 down from £3 starting in January. This will cost £500 million. The money will be found by replacing grants for international climate projects by loans. This sounds like a dodgy accountant doing his utmost to deceive.

The following day he announced a cut in business rates of 20% for pubs, clubs and live music venues. This sounds like the kind of places student politicians would frequent though the odd puffin has been known to imbibe in pubs. The estimated cost is £100 million and it has been claimed that it has been funded but they have not said how. Very fishy and it works out at around £20 a week per business, not a lot.

The latest divisive gimmick is the Number 10 o’t North. Now this is allegedly at no cost to us only it will cost won’t it. He will work one day a week there while Lucy Powell, convicted fraudster Louise Haigh and tax evader Crayons herself will be working from there on a regular basis. They say it will be paid for from existing Cabinet Office budgets and up to 300 civil serpents are expected up there by next year. Apart from some airy fairy tales of devolving Westminster no good will come of this other than Manchester feeling that little bit more important. He also flew from London to Manchester in an A321 plane at a cost of thousands, they say 30 of them, mind you the trains are ‘kin awful and full of hoi polloi.

These changes have been costed at about £1.5 billion in total and I am sure nobody in the cabinet has a clue how it is all going to be paid for. They got rid of Liz Truss PDQ for this kind of behaviour but the Knob sails serenely on as though none of it matters.

The Knob also intimated he wanted to increase the income tax Personal Allowance which has been frozen for years. The IFS estimated this could cost £8.5 to £9 billion and they backtracked quicker than the old three card trick.

The Knob has also promised a massive surge in council house building. There are estimates this could cost £13 billion a year. Expect this to bite the dust as well.

There has also been no indication how increasing foreign aid from 0.2% to 0.7% of our GDP will be paid for. This was apparently the price the Militwat demanded for agreeing to move to the Foreign Office. Never fear, his replacement as net zero supremo, Miatta something, is an even bigger zealot than old Edstone was. These people are out to bankrupt us.

In terms of handling the money the Knob has failed on all counts and this is without John Healey wanting to increase defence spending.

The Knob and his merry band have been plotting against Rodney Spanner for well over a year and that is all they did, plot. Rather like the Spanner when he entered Downing Street they have no ideas and no plan of how to achieve what they want to do and is anyone convinced they know what they want to do. You could plan a lot in a year, or 14 of them in Spanner’s case, but why bother when you are only interested in the trappings of power.

The biggest shock to me was when our Andeh agreed to let the Americans use our bases to bomb Iran, those bases being RAF Fairford and Diego Garcia. I guess he does not want to incur the wrath of the Donald or at least not yet because he has already said he wants to get the Chagos deal done.

It is certain that the Knob’s second week at the helm will be just as divisive and expensive as his first week has been.

There are rumours that Rodney forensic Spanner will be off to become a prosecutor at the ICC in The Hague. This will cause a by election and the other Militwat, David, might use this as a way in to the House of Shame. Lots of water needs to flow under lots of bridges before that happens but it would be interesting to see the two brothers squaring up with David looking for revenge after his brother knifed him in the back all those years ago in the leadership election. Speaking ill of the living, it is reputed that brother Ed is bricking it at the prospect of meeting the Donald. Now the Militwat has been rather unkind in the past about the orange one and is trembling at the prospect of having to apologise and grovel in public. It would be difficult to find anyone on the Labour side who hasn’t posted insults about the 47th President of the US, they all piled in when it was their fashion.

Having appointed all his cronies, Satan Blair did similar, the Knob should not be surprised when it all blows up in his face because his cronies are even dimmer than Satan’s.

After all his posturing the Knob has said precisely nothing about the small boat invader crisis. This is one of the big issues facing us and he has completely ignored it. Presumably he is not interested because it is not going away.

Reflecting on this past week it seems the Knob is little more than gimmicks and stunts. Is he channelling his inner Ed Davey and can we expect to see him falling off a surfboard or riding a hobby horse anytime soon. They say imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.
 

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