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These odds are ludicrous given DeSantis will lose the Florida governorship 49% to 51% in November to likely Democrat candidate Charlie Crist on the latest poll.

If he cannot even get re elected as Florida governor he has zero chance of the GOP nomination and Presidency in 2024.
http://thelistenergroup.com/charlie-crist-leading-ron-desantis-in-very-close-race/

Instead, Trump if he decides to run again, Pence running on a hard pro life platform and Haley would be the likely main candidates for the GOP nomination, perhaps with Ted Cruz

How do you translate a 1% poll lead for Christ, which follows a 1% poll lead for DeSantis (according to 538) into:

...DeSantis will lose the Florida governorship 49% to 51% in November...?

Only a 1% poll lead for Christ is disappointing.

Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.

What makes me think Russia is 'losing' in Ukraine? Speaking as a non-expert:

Well, a mixture of things. Firstly, what were Russia's war aims? We cannot be sure, but the form of the February invasion *looked* as though it was a quick thrust to try to decapitate Ukraine's leadership - hence the airborne bridgehead to Kyiv and the assassination attempts against Pres. Z. Too much effort was put into that entire mess for it to have just been a feint. Therefore Russia's aims were lkely for the entirety of Ukraine to be under their control: probably through absorption of the eastern provinces and a Belarus-or Chechen-style 'strongman' under Putin's control.

That failed, and in late March they retreated from Kyiv and concentrated their forces on the eastern provinces. It's harder to know what Putin's war aims are now: but it is unlikely to be the capture of the entirety of Ukraine within the next year.

Russia are advancing, but at a very slow rate, and at drastic cost. They have much less territory under their control than they held in March. It is hard to spin that into 'winning'.

Their equipment, training and leadership have also been shown to be very poor. Russia's conventional forces - once feared - are strong, but only because of numbers. Strategically and tactically they have been outshone by the Ukrainians (unlike in 2014).

Time is also not in Russia's hands. The sanctions will continue to hurt them, and their major weapon: oil and gas, will become less potent as Europe weans itself off the oil and gas (though that's taking too long), and Russia starts having extraction problems. And Ukraine will get more heavy equipment and weaponry as Russia uses up its own.

Also, Putin's apparent aims for a 'Greater Russia' have been dented. NATO is expanding; something he would have wanted to avoid at all costs. Surrounding countries, from Estonia to Lithuania to Poland, are explicitly saying that they want no part of it. They are preparing for it.

Does this mean Ukraine will 'win'? No. Does this mean Russia will 'lose'? No. But it is hard to find a realistic route whereby anything like Putin's initial aims will be fulfilled. And even harder to find one where Russia will end up richer and more influential than it was before.

So I am happy to say that Russia is 'losing' at the moment. Though I freely admit that might change.

Now 16 dead and 59 wounded, in the Russian missile attack on a shopping mall in Ukraine yesterday.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2022/06/28/ukraine-news-russia-war-invasion-latest-nato-grain-kremenchuk/

NATO calling up an extra 250,000 troops(!) to a state of readiness, as they meet today following the G7. UK defence minister suggesting that 2% military spending target should move up to 2.5%.

Deterrence is cheaper the earlier you do it. We need to get to the point where NATO conventional means are strong enough that there would be no purpose in Russia tanks crossing the Lithuanian border because they’d be turned to scrap within seconds.

As we’re seeing now, it’s far harder to displace an army that’s already mounted an invasion than it is to deter the invasion to begin with.

"Deterrence is cheaper the earlier you do it."

Which is why the west's poor response to previous Russian actions are so notable. We gave Putin the indication that he could do whatever he wanted, and we would just chuck a few sanctions at him, tut, and then get on with the new world he had created.

A worry is that he might still believe that is the case; that we will fold. A big worry is that we will.

I don't think there is any danger whatsoever of us "folding". The biggest danger is that Putin is put in a position in which he sees no alternative to the use of nuclear weapons. That is why, alongside the full military resistance of the West, it is just as important to maintain dialogue exploring ways to end the war. Otherwise it seems pretty much nailed on that the battlefield nukes will come out as the Russian armies are driven back.

I can't see Putin using nuclear weapons over Ukraine: the danger point for that has long past. But if he does use them over Ukraine, then he's a madman who would use them for *any* excuse.

And of course it's important to maintain dialogue: and dialogue has been, and will be, happening - though it's difficult when you've got Putin threatening neighbouring countries in speeches, and Lavrov saying some fairly incredible things.

"Otherwise it seems pretty much nailed on that the battlefield nukes will come out as the Russian armies are driven back"

This just sounds like another "We must give the Russians what they want coz, you know, nukes." argument. Another version of the 'we must allow them to save face' rubbish.

A question for you: if our fear of Russian nukes makes us cede territory to Russia, what makes you think Putin won't think "That worked!" and threaten their use over the rest of Ukraine; Estonia, Lithuania etc?

Your initial premise is a complete non sequitur. It doesn't follow at all all that if someone would use the nuclear option in a particular circumstance that they would use it in any circumstance. I doubt very much that Putin would use nukes in any situation other than one in which he felt there was no alternative, but I think the latter danger is real one. It makes no sense to simply dismiss it. We are not fighting WWII. We are fighting an enemy with a large nuclear arsenal.

I disagree. And I'd appreciate an answer to the question I posed, as it is rather important. To put it another way: if you think Putin will use nukes 'if he felt there was no alternative', why would he not use them over Estonia? Lithuania? Poland?

If he's mad enough to use them over Ukraine, he'd use them over those countries, as he sees large parts of Eastern Europe as 'his' land.

I've never said that the threat from nukes is not real, or that it should be dismissed. I think the danger is largely over for their use in Ukraine (Russia has got used to losing), and there's the point that if we let our fear of his nukes stop us doing what is right now, he'll just use that fear again to get more.

Russia has got used to losing: first it isn't losing and secondly I assume you have lived in the country for decades, speak the language fluently and are monitoring its media 24/7, if you are capable of assessing that it is getting used to it. Because I refuse to entertain for one second the alternative hypothesis that you are a windbag.

Amazing numbers of Russia and Scotland experts on this blog. Must be some statistical freak.

Who is claiming to be an 'expert' ? People are giving their views: just as you give your valued views on England and Scotland from your home in Sweden.

I see Douglas Ross is saying he wouldn't participate in any 'pretend referendum' if Sturgeon organises one. Given his track record on flip flopping I wouldn't be confident in him sticking to that though.

Hmm. If he doesn't change his mind, he, and anyone who behaves like him, can therefore be disregarded completely, given that the SNP and Greens have a mandate. Yes, 'mandate', which his lords and masters in London make a great thing of having.

I wonder what mandate the head of a party sub branch that has fought every single election since 2014 on the promise that voting for them will stop indy ref 2 and lost by a distance every time feels he has?

If wee Dougie & Co follow through on the 'we're no playing' gambit it'll be great entertainment to see them trying to observe omerta while dying to spout Project Fear 347.

The only mandate needed is the Tory majority at Westminster to respect the once in a generation vote.

The UK government will therefore continue to refuse an official indyref2, tell Unionists to boycott any unofficial referendum and completely ignore the result, just as their conservative cousins in Spain did in 2017 with the unofficial Catalan independence referendum.

The future of the Union is reserved to Westminster and the UK government alone

It is not even that as labour and the lib dems are also opposed to indyref2, so even without a conservative government, which is increasingly likely, Westminster is not going to grant a section 30 agreement in years

Indeed, the SNP's only chance is to get a hung parliament in 2024 with the Tories most seats but the SNP having the balance of power.

Another Tory majority or Labour most seats and zero chance of an official indyref2

Even in those circumstances (Tories largest party and SNP holding the balance), Starmer would not concede a referendum. Why should he? The SNP would never countenance a Tory govt through their abstentions. They would always support a minority Labour govt in any confidence vote but wouldn’t get much in return. Then after a few months’ honeymoon, Starmer would contrive a second election. It’s essentially the 1974 playboook, albeit Labour then had 5 more seats than the Conservatives

What's wrong with taking your children to drag shows? That's the Florida panto season fucked. America is such a mess if this guy is being touted as the sane alternative to Trump.

There’s nothing wrong with taking *your* children to a panto.

There’s a lot wrong with schools staging for children what appear to be very adult-themed and sexually provocative drag shows, without asking parents first.

Do you have a reliable news source for that, because it sounds like complete bollocks.
We took our kids to a drag show at the Edinburgh Festival, it was very funny, sweet and had a positive message about letting people be who they want to be. I would have had no problem at all if the kids' school had taken them to see it. The only blatant ideological indoctrination that our daughter's primary school indulged in recently was around the Jubilee.

There have been a few stories in the US: these are not pantomimes, but adult drag shows performed to kids, organised by LGBT…. groups as part of “Pride Month”. The criticism is that the performances are not age-appropriate for the audience. One took place in a 21+ strip club in the afternoon.

Some links from neutral news sources:
https://www.desmoinesregister.com/story/news/local/ankeny/2022/05/25/ankeny-high-school-drag-show-under-investigation-negative-social-media/9926324002/
https://www.westernjournal.com/school-drag-show-sparks-major-investigation-staff-placed-leave/
https://go2tutors.com/iowa-school-drag-show/

There was this one in the UK a couple of months ago.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8038669/Furious-parents-slam-primary-school-drag-queen-Flowjob-read-pupils-young-four.html

I thought the request was for a reliable news source, and you're quoting from the Mail?

Anyway, what's the issue with someone doing a reading who happens to have sexually explicit stuff on their social media platform? I wouldn't let my eight year old on Facebook, let alone a four year old, unless the sexually explicit stuff was brought into the classroom (it wasn't) so frigging what if its elsewhere on the internet?

High school children need to engage with "adult themes". It is called getting an education.
A lot of the reporting on this kind of stuff is click baity nonsense based on half truths, hearsay and prejudice. There was a Sunday Times article at the weekend about BLM themed PSHE lessons at our kids' school, for instance, that was completely incorrect, but of course all good content for the global war on woke being waged by the Murdoch propaganda machine. Who cares if teachers get traduced and schools get damaged in the process, right?

Now is the Summer of our discontent...

Doctors have thrown down the gauntlet to the government by calling for a pay rise of up to 30% over the next five years, in a move that increases the chances of strike action.

Delegates at the British Medical Association’s (BMA) annual conference voted to press ministers to agree to the increase to make up for real-terms cuts to their salaries over the last 14 years.

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2022/jun/27/uk-doctors-demand-pay-rise-of-up-to-30-over-five-years

It's very difficult to see where the space for compromise is in this situation. The medics have effectively had a huge real terms pay cut since the GFC. They want the whole lot back; the Government wants their wages to continue shrinking for the foreseeable.

The imminent prospect of industrial action all over the NHS is awkward for the Government, but this and other disputes are going to leave Keir Starmer's fence sitting arse so full of splinters that he won't be able to sit down for months unless he chooses a side. If Labour makes wishy-washy noises about negotiations and nothing else then it will be assumed by angry unions and watching members of the general public alike that it is either entirely clueless, or that it basically agrees with the pay austerity stance of the Conservatives.

Doubtless the Opposition wants to avoid doing detail before an election campaign in case it finds its ideas being nicked, but public sector pay disputes are happening right now, not in 2024, and it doesn't seem unreasonable to ask what Labour's approach to these demands is. What criteria do they think are reasonable for calculating pay increments - or are they in the "you get fuck all regardless" camp with the current Government?

There is a shortage of doctors so the classic market approach might be to pay more, whether it compensates for inflation and previous cuts or not. In any case, the claim appears to be 30 per cent over five years which leaves plenty of room for fudge.

Given the way that the BoE let the inflation genie loose and how we are all going to be so astonished when it doesn't prove to be a temporary bubble after all but much more persistent throughout next year the odds seem to favour the doctors getting their 30% over the next 5 years without any industrial action at all.

And it is troubling that they want to get back what they have lost in the period of wage restraint since the GFC. The reason that we had such wage restraint is that the country was living well beyond its means in 2008 sustained by what proved to be illusionary profits from financial services. They are not alone in making this point; the barristers are making the same claim in their dispute. But we cannot go back to what we were earning in 2008 without very substantial improvements in productivity to pay for it. And I am seeing little evidence of that, indeed with remaining Covid protocols quite probably the reverse.

It is currently 34 degrees C in Tallinn, and the airless atmosphere spells heavy thunder later on. The political atmosphere is also pretty thundery, with slow progress being made to construct a new coalition. The principle sticking points are education and tax rates, but after the pause for the four day midsummer holiday, it now looks like the Conservative Isamaa party are ready to join the Social Democrats and the Reform (Liberal) Party of PM Kaja Kallas in a solid coalition that will hold at least until the elections due on March 5th.

Estonia now has over 44,000 Ukrainian refugees and still more are set to come. We hear terrible stories of barbaric cruelty. The vermin responsible for these crimes should be sought to the ends of the earth for what they have done. The destruction of the shopping centre has only underlined to Estonian population, Russian and Estonian speaking alike, that there will be no mercy shown if the Putinists unleash their fury on the Baltic. Preparations are still being made. Bomb shelters are being set up in underground carparks, and the signs for these have appeared, even here in the Old Town of Tallinn.

Yet, there is no sense of fear. Rather of cold rage and grim determination. The armed forces are on early warning for alert, but as Kaja said the other day, even a few days of Russian occupation could cause so much death and destruction that Estonia as we know it would not survive. The determination now is not to let the Putinists in at all. NATO preparations need to be accelerated. The point must be to accept that any direct challenge to NATO will be met with overwhelming force from the onset. Ministers of various allied countries come and go, and as with the coalition talks, it seems that solid, if slow, progress is being made.

It is increasingly clear that the breach with Putin´s Russia is irreparable. There is zero chance that any deal he offers or agrees will hold. However, in addition to the poor performance of the Russian armed forces, there is now the growing crisis in the Russian economy. It is not just the collapse in their international trade, it is also the growing question of the internal cohesion of the domestic Russian economy. Russian local governments seem to be trying to avoid their own local markets being plundered by the centre and delays in food shipments and partial trade bans now seem to be occuring.

So, we watch and wait. The storm clouds in Russia are gathering. We only hope that a Russian cloudburst does not inundate us here.

Cicero's 'Letters from Estonia' should definitely be collected and published once all this is over.

Great stuff @Cicero - please keep posting!

It is currently 34 degrees C in Tallinn, and the airless atmosphere spells heavy thunder later on. The political atmosphere is also pretty thundery, with slow progress being made to construct a new coalition. The principle sticking points are education and tax rates, but after the pause for the four day midsummer holiday, it now looks like the Conservative Isamaa party are ready to join the Social Democrats and the Reform (Liberal) Party of PM Kaja Kallas in a solid coalition that will hold at least until the elections due on March 5th.

Estonia now has over 44,000 Ukrainian refugees and still more are set to come. We hear terrible stories of barbaric cruelty. The vermin responsible for these crimes should be sought to the ends of the earth for what they have done. The destruction of the shopping centre has only underlined to Estonian population, Russian and Estonian speaking alike, that there will be no mercy shown if the Putinists unleash their fury on the Baltic. Preparations are still being made. Bomb shelters are being set up in underground carparks, and the signs for these have appeared, even here in the Old Town of Tallinn.

Yet, there is no sense of fear. Rather of cold rage and grim determination. The armed forces are on early warning for alert, but as Kaja said the other day, even a few days of Russian occupation could cause so much death and destruction that Estonia as we know it would not survive. The determination now is not to let the Putinists in at all. NATO preparations need to be accelerated. The point must be to accept that any direct challenge to NATO will be met with overwhelming force from the onset. Ministers of various allied countries come and go, and as with the coalition talks, it seems that solid, if slow, progress is being made.

It is increasingly clear that the breach with Putin´s Russia is irreparable. There is zero chance that any deal he offers or agrees will hold. However, in addition to the poor performance of the Russian armed forces, there is now the growing crisis in the Russian economy. It is not just the collapse in their international trade, it is also the growing question of the internal cohesion of the domestic Russian economy. Russian local governments seem to be trying to avoid their own local markets being plundered by the centre and delays in food shipments and partial trade bans now seem to be occuring.

So, we watch and wait. The storm clouds in Russia are gathering. We only hope that a Russian cloudburst does not inundate us here.

Now is the Summer of our discontent...

Doctors have thrown down the gauntlet to the government by calling for a pay rise of up to 30% over the next five years, in a move that increases the chances of strike action.

Delegates at the British Medical Association’s (BMA) annual conference voted to press ministers to agree to the increase to make up for real-terms cuts to their salaries over the last 14 years.

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2022/jun/27/uk-doctors-demand-pay-rise-of-up-to-30-over-five-years

It's very difficult to see where the space for compromise is in this situation. The medics have effectively had a huge real terms pay cut since the GFC. They want the whole lot back; the Government wants their wages to continue shrinking for the foreseeable.

The imminent prospect of industrial action all over the NHS is awkward for the Government, but this and other disputes are going to leave Keir Starmer's fence sitting arse so full of splinters that he won't be able to sit down for months unless he chooses a side. If Labour makes wishy-washy noises about negotiations and nothing else then it will be assumed by angry unions and watching members of the general public alike that it is either entirely clueless, or that it basically agrees with the pay austerity stance of the Conservatives.

Doubtless the Opposition wants to avoid doing detail before an election campaign in case it finds its ideas being nicked, but public sector pay disputes are happening right now, not in 2024, and it doesn't seem unreasonable to ask what Labour's approach to these demands is. What criteria do they think are reasonable for calculating pay increments - or are they in the "you get fuck all regardless" camp with the current Government?

Neither the medical nor the teaching unions (who are also gearing up for trouble) are affiliated to Labour.

To be quite honest, I doubt if strike action is going to have nearly the impact of people voting with their feet. Schools are suffering from absolutely appalling staff shortages, and the NHS doesn't sound much better. Not surprising given the enormous increases in workload, the appalling mismanagement from Whitehall and the derisory pay increases that show how much we as a nation really admire these professions. Which would you rather be as a doctor - stuck on the wards all day for a if not a pittance certainly not a wage that reflects your ability and the effort you put in, or doing a nice part time job in private practice? Not a hard decision, is it?

Strikes sod things up for a few days. Literally running out of staff has an impact that is ongoing for months or even years.