Best Of

Just walking up to the news of global (not just EU and UK) aluminium and steel tariffs, “including products that contain these metals such as window frames and cooking pots”.

Yes, the UK should retaliate - it’s not personal.
Choose a sector Britain would prefer to encourage domestic production and which is subject to significant U.S. competition.

I think there are reasons for UK not hurrying. Plenty of countries are rightly reacting rapidly. We should take time as to some extent we are playing good cop with a Trump regime when there are gigantic fish to fry including Ukrainian lives, children being killed etc.

We have a massive interest in helping, however unlikely, to keep Trump and Trumpism on a path which is merely deranged and extreme rather than a path to WWIII, invasion of Canada etc. Starmer and the King have parts in this drama. Give them some space.

Which party wouldn't have 33% of its members or voters preferring another leader?

The LibDems, currently, perhaps

Davey should consider it even so though. He took them to what is probably a high point in seats even if they can boost their vote share, hes a party elder and can step back giving his successor a great legacy and keep credit for 2024 even if they go backwards next time.

Not that he's done poorly, not at all, its just probably as far as they can reach MP wise.

I don't think so. Davey enjoys his 2 questions each week and fancies another "Fun Dad" election campaign.

Kemi is surely the value bet. Nobody likes her, even the only Tory in the PB village is shifting to Jenrickism.

There is lots of talent on the Lib Dem benches, but most of them have been there for less than a year.

Give them a chance to show what they are made of....

I'd like to know who was responsible for making American voters so annoyed that they ended up electing someone like Trump as president.

Trump told a lot of lies. Vance and Musk did too. People were told they were lies. They did not care. Trump voters are the only ones responsible for Trump being President. They own the consequences of their decision entirely. No-one else is to blame.

PBers won’t thank me for the analogy, but Trump is Brexit on steroids.

Every feature of Brexit has its Trumpian analogue.
Including this idea that, actually, it’s the Democrats’ fault.

There was a reasonable case (among all the utter nonsense) for Brexit - see, for example, @Richard_Tyndall .

There is no reasonable case for Trump as president.
And Trump re-elected is simply insane - while over here, polls show a load of those who voted for Brexit have a degree of regret over doing so.

I disagree.

There is a “reasonable” case for Trumpism: that long-term policies have perpetuated the US’s status as a debtor nation, and this has deindustrialised the U.S. and left it weaker against geopolitical rivals.

Secondly, that conflict in Europe is a costly distraction from USA’s key challenge in the Asia-Pacific.

Those are both eminently arguable.

I agree with this, broadly speaking. Trumpism and Brexit both result from correctly perceiving some real problems but misdiagnosing both the cause and the solution. Broadly speaking, Brexit seems as dumb to non-Brits as Trumpism does to non-Americans, but both projects have enjoyed excessive support domestically owing to successful disinformation campaigns and the fact that each project successfully latches on to some peculiar flaw in the national psyche. Trumpism seems to be delivering worse outcomes more quickly, because it is being pursued far more aggressively than Brexit was. But let's not pretend that Brexit hasn't harmed this country materially, when everyone knows it has. Equally, we will see apparently sane and intelligent Americans defending Trumpism as some kind of painful but necessary corrective, just as we have otherwise smart and lucid people defending Brexit on here, still.