More rain in Manchester it seems

Poor Theresa May, now defined as a female personification of Gordon Brown, even down to the policies.


During her speech today the set she was speaking in front of fell to pieces, a nerdy protestor handed her a P45 and she had a cough and cold so she could barely speak.


Truly, this is Brownian motion of the fist order!


To make matters worse, he big non-Brexit ideas were both neither capitalist nor conservative. She wants more council house building - why? Because this has been such a success? Why not just relax planning laws? Why not set an overall target and offer incentives to get there? Why no mention of the plan to reduce immigration and therefore bring future balance to supply and demand in housing?


I can't even begin with the craziness of capping energy prices and will wait for Nick Drew of this parish to respond fully in due course; in short, first the Government rig the markets to reduce supply of energy to increase prices for consumers and now they want to rig the prices companies can charge. This can only lead to dis-investment and corporate collapses in the medium term.


On a human level I am left having some sympathy for Mrs May; a terrible hand of cards is unplayable and you lose the game whatever you do, she had the worst hand of cards given to a Prime Minister in my lifetime so no wonder she is struggling, it is a Kobyashi Maru scenario.


However, there is a greater need for the Country to get on with Brexit and then seek new leadership or else PM Corbyn it will be at the next election.

Brown/Balls/Osborne...and now May/Hammond

I don wonder sometimes, how the economic centre of UK politics has been dragged so far to the left.


Ever since Ken Clarke, a acknowledged lefty Tory, left office in 1997 we have not had a decent Chancellor or Prime Minister who believes in capitalism.


Yet we have had a few changes of Government and people during this time, getting on for 20 years now. If anything, the speech by Teresa May today is even more left -wing that one that Ed Milliband would have dared to give. In fact, perhaps she is intent on seeing off Corbyn by out-flanking him on the Marxist left.


Massive state intervention has never been a good idea, never. I give you the Soviet Union as a lesson, I also give you China in about 5 years time too. I give you 1970's UK.


But this is what May wants, already we can see in the horrific scarcity of talent on her front bench from the simply dreadful Amber Rudd to the gaffe-prone Brexiteers, they sing in unison an anti-business and anti-capitalist dirge.


Of course we want to limit immigration, but blaming companies is not the right answer nor is trying to turn them into a police state.


Of course, we want stable utility prices, but not by Government decree; this is how they try to do it in Venezuela and Zimbabwe and we have seen the end of the film already. We want steady prices because there is a balance between supply and demand.


Market and capital based solutions are often the best answer we have ever developed, not perfect, not without downsides, but better than nanny-knows-best Government dictat.


It is a disgrace that 20 years of Government have seen frankly no real development of thought or innovation and instead politicians decree the same statist nonsense whatever side of the floor they are from. Perhaps they think they are clever as this is big tent politics. maybe it is, but it is terrible for our living standards.


What a shower they are, Labour of course are even worse, led by genuine communists. I fear a frightful few years ahead of constant backtracking and obvious policy errors.

Farage maybe annoyed President Hollande a just little bit

"We've been going through this for years. If we don't want to strengthen Europe, then there's only one road."

"I heard what Mr Farage say that the only road is for those who are not convinced of Europe is to leave Europe," Mr Hollande said.

“There is no other way. It's a horrible path, but it's a logical path. Leave Europe, leave Schengen and leave democracy. Do you really want to participate in a common state? That's the question."

After all the smugness of the Tory conference after the shambolic Labour affair, perhaps the above exchange (provoked by Mr Farage on particularly garrulous form), serves as a reminder that come the EU Referendum (should there be one, manifesto commitments and events have a interesting history...) the Leave side has all the tanks on its side currently.

As always, events can change and 'cling to nurse for fear of worse' is often a winner on its own merit, but currently the poor leadership in Europe, Ukraine, Syria and refugee crisis shows Europe at its most ineffective and threatening making the case for Leave is easy right now.

However, pushing the referendum to 2017 means it clashes with a French election that will make it headline news as Le Pen promises to ape the British and Hollande the opposite.

Interesting times indeed.