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Based on this polling I wouldn’t be surprised the Tories ahead of Reform at some point in quarter one of 2026, if present trends hold, not consistently but on an outlier basis.

Word missing there?

On the substantive point, am I right in thinking as well that Farage is at the same time the oldest and the least experienced of the four major party leaders? He's not likely to be improving now as he ages and he's never been in cabinet.

He has considerable political experience, but very little parliamentary experience. The latter is not that much of a barrier anymore, he will have had 4-5 years of it by the time of the next election which is not that far off several modern PMs, though the odds woudl also be that he has extremely few MPs in his ranks with much parliamentary let alone governmental experience, which may be a more significant factor.

I see the government is continuing with it's Grand Old Duke of York approach to policy announcements.

Remind me of winter fuel allowance. A defendable policy that pissed a lot of people off and then a partial U-turn a lot later that won't win back any of the alienated voters.

As it happens my world includes farms, and lawyers and accountants who serve farms and the rural constituency. The thing about IHT is that more or less everyone who may be affected does some planning of their affairs, often very simple, but this relies on fairly long term stability in how systems will operate - rather like the pension industry relies on it.

The IHT changes as first announced had the effect that for a particular group, mostly older, it was possible that for some years planning for IHT would for them be much harder than it is for the Duke of Westminster, and in some cases impossible.

Rural accountants and lawyers for months now have been working day and night, sometimes literally, to sort the issues arising among worried farmers. Today's news renders some of this unnecessary and irrelevant. I know lawyers who have had to refuse work because of the sheer volume coming their way, and real specialists can be thin on the ground.

My excellent MP (Penrith) has lost the whip for voting against the government on this issue, only to see the government immediately change course to something more like what he wanted.

Their management of issues remains dismal. For the first time for 1000 years Labour has loads of rural seats and they have squandered the lot.

Trump-class battleships?

"Trump unveils plans for 'Golden Fleet' battleships named after himself"

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c2084nq2npjo

No expert, but it doesn't look like a battleship to me.

TBF a Great War/WW2 corvette didn't look like the small sailing ship of the mid-C19 ... What is also notable is that it's to be called the Trump Class, which indicates that the first ship of the class will be named after Mr Trump (a class of warships is usually named after the first of the class, pace [edit] UK MoD and its stupid messing around of late).

Usually Presidential names get applied to Nimitz- or Ford-class nuclear aircraft carriers. But it's not cut and dry. Mr Carter got a nuke sub named after him (entirely appropriately and I imagine amicably, as he was a nuke sub engineer by trade).

No serving leader of any nation (with the possible exception of Russia) has ever named a ship after themselves.
It's pretty well the ultimate in imbecilic narcissism.

You Gov are always bad for Reform, but this must be the worst for some time

Westminster Voting Intention:

REF: 25% (-3)
LAB: 20% (+2)
CON: 19% (+2)
LDM: 15% (+1)
GRN: 15% (-2)
SNP: 3% (-1)

Via @YouGov, On 21-22 December,
Changes w/ 14-15 December.

https://x.com/electpoliticsuk/status/2003369188841443503?s=46&t=CW4pL-mMpTqsJXCdjW0Z6Q

YouGov had a Reform 25% in late November. There's a clear sign of a small Tory recovery mirrored by Reform declining in the opinion poll average graph on Wikipedia.

The unknown is whether this trend will be reinforced by campaigning for the May elections, or if that will interrupt it.

Also, given the personal ambitions of many of those involved, what are the chances Kemi gets ditched after losing lots of councillors in May anyway?

Barring immense change during the next few months, the story of election night is almost written already, as significant Reform and Green gains are surely nailed on. The competition is for who gets seen as the biggest loser, and there Labour already has a very good head start.

Part of the question will be timing. The first results often create the story.

I think Wales is still in doubt though. If Reform do come further off the boil then the big story might be a Plaid victory in Wales, rather than Reform doing very well there.

Sunderland voting in a Reform council will be the first news story. Then will come some London boroughs.

In true local elections tradition it’ll be all Reform vs Labour and Tory early in the evening and leading all the bulletins. Then quietly the following morning the amber shift will see Lib Dems picking up vast numbers of seats and ending up second in total, and Greens overtaking either Lab or Con, but no journalists will notice.

This is such utter woke nonsense from Labour, attacking the hospitality sector once more.

What will they ban next? Perhaps they'll ban me from burning £50 notes in front of homeless people.

Boiling live lobsters to be banned in Labour crackdown

Restaurateurs and seafood industry criticise new animal welfare strategy

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2025/12/22/boiling-live-lobsters-to-be-banned-in-labour-crackdown/

I know a few people involved with animal welfare who are quite pleased by Labour ambition in this area. Nick Palmer probably knows a lot more.

I have a feeling I belong to a niche minority here. I am deeply uncomfortable about lobster boiling and have no problem with fox hunting.

On which subject, the plan to ban trail hounds.

In Cumberland and Westmorland there is a long tradition of trail hound racing which has never had any connection with hunting animals, has always used scent trails and doesn't do red jackets and stirrup cups and lives in a world closer to whippets than Anthony Trollope novels. This should not be banned.

Based on this polling I wouldn’t be surprised the Tories ahead of Reform at some point in quarter one of 2026, if present trends hold, not consistently but on an outlier basis.

Word missing there?

On the substantive point, am I right in thinking as well that Farage is at the same time the oldest and the least experienced of the four major party leaders? He's not likely to be improving now as he ages and he's never been in cabinet.

No, Starmer is about 18 months older than Farage.

Blair and Cameron had never been in government before they became PM.

Fair enough on the first point.

Cameron and Blair had both been Leaders of the Opposition. Farage hasn't even done that.

Indeed he quite often skives off Parliament. I think he finds it boring because its not all about him.

This has recently set me wondering if Nigel Farage might bail soon. He is rarely in the Commons or in Clacton, and does not even seem to have much to say about Streeting or Lammy advocating customs unions with the EU, an issue you'd think would be mother's milk to him. Is he still interested in politics? (That said, maybe he is just under the weather as there are some nasty bugs doing the rounds.)

I wonder if the 'I can't really remember what happened 50 years ago but I definitely did not say those racist and antisemitic things' row has put his gas at a peep. The one time I saw Farage address the issue directly he seemed uncharacteristically shifty and evasive.

I’m delighted to have triggered a multi-hour PB thread derailment with my posting of the Paul Johnson article on birth rates.

Now we’ve lost the SeanTs the rest of us need to step up and do more thread derailing.

We've had a few conversations on the topic which have never really got properly going.

My take is its not down to one specific thing, its a multitude, but doesn't have much to do with religion or uni professors. Saying that, the TFR among my friends who went to uni is way lower than those who didn't.

There is no quick fix, some people just don't want kids

My recollection is that the survey evidence shows that women, on average, want one more child than they have.

So we don't have to worry about the people who don't want kids. We have to worry about the people who want kids, and then don't, or don't have as many as they want.

Many years back, an eminent specialist in maternity published an article saying that the medical profession was, in effect, lying to women. That by not making clear the effects of age to the wider public, they were led to believe that having children at… advanced ages was risk free and easy.

He ended up on Newsnight (I think). The lady interviewing him was appalled by his statements - and seemed to think that he (the medico) should keep quiet about it. Because he was damaging hopes and dreams.

Apparently the term "geriatric pregnancy" is now outdated, and "advanced maternal age" is used instead.

I kinda feel like the previous term more accurately conveyed the reality of the situation. And it applies to men too, to an extent.

But the whole way in which careers and employment rights and recruitment, etc, are structured push women into delaying motherhood. We'd need to seriously rethink that if we wanted society to accommodate women having children in their twenties.

I am sceptical...

I did my Obstetrics 40 years ago and I cannot remember it ever being referred to as "geriatric pregnancy," just advanced maternal age, and it always has been clearly taught that fertility drops off fairly quickly from the mid thirties onwards. This is widely known amongst women too, hence the phrase "biological clock". None of this is news to anyone.

Ask any young woman what the problem is and better than evens they will say that they never meet a man who wants to commit to a long term relationship and kids. The problem of extended adolescence is mostly a male one.

I think you're underestimating how strong the propaganda directed at young women is. Every sense of the word 'settling' has negative connotations.

Sure:

But if that was the major cause of declining birth rates, then countries with more traditional values (like, say, Iran) would have much higher birth rates. And they don't.

Afghanistan has very traditional values and a birthrate of 4 per woman

Personally, I'd consider the treatment of women in Afghanistan to be barbaric rather than traditional. I guess alternative opinions are available.