Best Of

On a separate note. I always thought it strange that Ben Wallace was so reluctant to throw his hat into the ring for PM post boris, it would I suspect have been approaching a coronation. Perhaps today we finally learned the real reason why.

Yes

On X there is speculation this also explains Sunak’s odd choice of election date. The Tories expected the next hearing to lift the injunction…

It’s odd that the new government persisted with this for a year. Where tf is their political antenna? They should have stood up and talked about a £7bn black hole and then pulled the rip chord and let everyone see where it came from.

But it's not £7 billion. That was an estimate of a possible maximum. The actual cost has been far lower: the BBC article on this says, "The secret scheme - officially called the Afghan Relocation Route - has cost £400m so far, and is expected to cost a further £400m to £450m". So, less than £1 billion.

Not that that isn't a significant amount of money, but any arguments over this would be more convincing if they got their facts right.

But what are the facts ?

How many other people in how many other schemes are there ?

And however many people and however much money it totals up to be, its still not going to be trusted as government has been shown to be covering things up.

Yes quite. The government has lost any claim on our trust (as have the Tories). No one believes a word they say - I certainly don’t. They lie and lie again

Hence, a Reform victory

You keep saying "the government" but it wasn't a single government. It was at least two administrations, possibly three (I can't be arsed to work out whether Boris was just about in charge when this first hit).

Each new PM is asked by the King to form a new government.

Edit: maybe it is FOUR? I had forgotten the Lettuce.

The whole damn system is broken and it needs to be torn to the ground.

Where's our Che though? Not Nigel Farage surely.

On a separate note. I always thought it strange that Ben Wallace was so reluctant to throw his hat into the ring for PM post boris, it would I suspect have been approaching a coronation. Perhaps today we finally learned the real reason why.

Yes

On X there is speculation this also explains Sunak’s odd choice of election date. The Tories expected the next hearing to lift the injunction…

It’s odd that the new government persisted with this for a year. Where tf is their political antenna? They should have stood up and talked about a £7bn black hole and then pulled the rip chord and let everyone see where it came from.

But it's not £7 billion. That was an estimate of a possible maximum. The actual cost has been far lower: the BBC article on this says, "The secret scheme - officially called the Afghan Relocation Route - has cost £400m so far, and is expected to cost a further £400m to £450m". So, less than £1 billion.

Not that that isn't a significant amount of money, but any arguments over this would be more convincing if they got their facts right.

But what are the facts ?

How many other people in how many other schemes are there ?

And however many people and however much money it totals up to be, its still not going to be trusted as government has been shown to be covering things up.

Yes quite. The government has lost any claim on our trust (as have the Tories). No one believes a word they say - I certainly don’t. They lie and lie again

Hence, a Reform victory

Or, ten years later, even a Green one. I know a couple of people who drop them interchangeably into conversation as the only option.

More in Common have identified seven tribes.
I think I can identify which tribe some contributors on here belong to.
https://www.moreincommon.org.uk/seven-segments/quiz/
I'm a progressive activist.

Very interesting, not least in the fact that the only group the Tories lead with now is established Liberals, where they are 1% ahead of Labour and 15% of the LDs and 25% ahead of Reform.

Reform meanwhile are on a massive 58% with dissenting disruptors and Reform lead the Tories by 16% with rooted patriots and by 2% with traditional Conservatives. Reform lead Labour by 8% with sceptical scrollers too.

Labour lead the LDs meanwhile by 14% with the incrementalist Left and Labour lead the Greens by 3% with Progressive activists

https://www.moreincommon.org.uk/seven-segments/

I'm a dissenting disruptor. Which is weird because I'm more left-wing than Labour 😀, at least these days. Although let's be fair, Heseltine was more left-wing than 2025 Labour... ☹️