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Taking back control...

Jacinda Ardern: ‘New Zealand will become a republic in my lifetime’

https://www.thetimes.com/world/australasia/article/jacinda-ardern-new-zealand-interview-kkppf03f9

So she says but she never pushed it as PM for a reason nor are the current NZ PM or LOTO

Plenty of New Zealand polls for keeping a constitutional monarch over a politician head of state too

https://newsroom.co.nz/2024/10/22/nz-citizens-keen-to-stay-wedded-to-the-monarchy/

Why anyone would want a professional politician with all the grubbiness and politics that causes (look at burnham and his bothering of an electorate to gain personal power) over a constitutional monarch is beyond me

Yeah, absolutely nothing grubby about the Haus Sachsen-Coburg und Gotha currently degrading the country with their loathsome presence.

In any normal country this kind of shit would get the tumbrils rolling, but here it'll be 'they deserve it!', just like sending their sprog to £60k a year Eton.

It's Trump with an RP accent.

Nina
@ShakeLS
·
18 Jun
The British Royal family using a fleet of very expensive cars to move around from Ascot to Windsor. You keep paying for them and all their gifter associates hahahaha 😂 😜

https://x.com/ShakeLS/status/2067446704215867700?s=20

From an American TwiX account. Who does she think pays for her own Head of State's motorcade?

Qatar?

Reflecting on the Makerfield byelection result, I think (as I said) that Burnham was the favourite going in, and never really looked troubled.

Reform would always have struggled, but I think could have performed better if they had developed an effective counternarrative against Burnham, beyond their charge that he was using Makerfield as a stepping stone. That was clearly believed by a lot of people, but it couldn't really go anywhere. I felt where Burnham was weakest was at the point of WASPI - it was an embarrassing f U-turn in real time. But for whatever reason it didn't seem that this was capitalised on.

They also had a problem with the plumber, who I don't think was a terrible candidate, but was undoubtedly damaged, particularly by the Vorderman letter to the women of Makerfield. The letter was an utterly cynical piece of confected outrage, and I think in response I would have issued an utterly cynical confected apology, and gone the 'bad boy forgiven' route. I also might have been tempted to put Kenyon up for an interrogation with someone like Kuensberg so the public could see him sweat it out. High risk, but I think many women might have seen it and ended up with some sneaking sympathy. His line would have been - 'sorry, regret my comments, however do we want a society where the only people who are allowed to hold office are people who have never said anything regrettable on social media?'.

Even with all that, I think Reform's best result would have been to be 'robbed' by Restore. That would have fit their narrative nicely. Sadly they just missed out.

On your last point - I appreciate the short term benefit of that (consolidate the hard-right vote) - but isn’t that an extremely limited strategy?

Having a big argument with Lowe about split votes and precisely how many pogroms to conduct isn’t going to put Farage into No 10. At least this time they aren’t blaming “family voting”, which suggests they’ve learnt the lesson from last time.

Marina Hyde analyses it rather better than does Lucky.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2026/jun/19/reform-candidates-nigel-farage-makerfield-prime-minister
..everything that went wrong for Reform here flowed directly from his personal character, and is going to keep happening in one way or another because people don’t change. Nigel’s gonna Nigel.

Nobody fetishises plain speaking like Farage, so we owe it to him to honour that and observe that Reform really shat the bed. Makerfield is among the party’s top 10 target seats for a general election, and Reform strategists’ decision to field yet another inadequate liability, whose past social media activity they simply couldn’t be arsed checking, seems to have proved something of a turn-off – for example for women, who strangely didn’t feel minded to vote for someone who had said: “I’m sexist, sorry but I am.” Rob Kenyon will no doubt be back on his plumbing rounds next week. So, Makerfield ladies, make sure your husband’s home to be consulted as to whether you really want your sink unblocked. It’ll honestly be cheaper to replace it.

Meanwhile it would take a heart of stone not to cackle at the fact that Reform is now losing votes to an insurgent party to its right. The thing to remember about Restore is that it is a party that genuinely only exists because Nigel couldn’t handle some light strategic criticism from Rupert Lowe. Why? Because Nigel is, and always has been, a diva who has huge fallouts with colleagues and allies...

Taking back control...

Jacinda Ardern: ‘New Zealand will become a republic in my lifetime’

https://www.thetimes.com/world/australasia/article/jacinda-ardern-new-zealand-interview-kkppf03f9

Yes, probably they will. More surprising is places like Jamaica which seem to have had political unanimity on the question for decades but still haven't gotten round to it.

It doesn't take long to do even where referendums are required so not sure what the hold up is.

Canada will be last, due to generally being unconcerned.

I don't think the monarchist bootlickers will be too arsed about Jamaica (too not white) or New Zealand (too unimportant). It's Australia and/or Canada that will sting.

I don't see why any of them should 'sting'. There are good arguments (IMHO) for a constitutional monarchy, and I can see why nation states with a historical connection to an overseas monarch would prefer to keep that. But it's clearly quite odd to have an overseas head of state, so withdrawing from the arrangement shouldn't cause any hard feelings on either side.

One thing I will say in Andy Burnham's favour.

Tuesday is the tenth anniversary of the United Kingdom voting to put economic sanctions on itself and I had planned to do several threads on Brexit but now I'll be doing lots of threads on Starmer being ousted/the Labour leadership contest instead.

Didn't we recently have a very well written series of guest headers explaining how well Brexit has gone? So I believe therefore, Brexit has probably been more than covered.

Those headers probably need to be countered BBC style with something that represents the wide consensus across economists that it hasn’t, actually, been a brilliant success.

It’s moot though for a betting site. Public opinion continues to move firmly against it, which is what matters in this context. The contrast with SINDY is really interesting, where we are in stasis.

Reflecting on the Makerfield byelection result, I think (as I said) that Burnham was the favourite going in, and never really looked troubled.

Reform would always have struggled, but I think could have performed better if they had developed an effective counternarrative against Burnham, beyond their charge that he was using Makerfield as a stepping stone. That was clearly believed by a lot of people, but it couldn't really go anywhere. I felt where Burnham was weakest was at the point of WASPI - it was an embarrassing f U-turn in real time. But for whatever reason it didn't seem that this was capitalised on.

They also had a problem with the plumber, who I don't think was a terrible candidate, but was undoubtedly damaged, particularly by the Vorderman letter to the women of Makerfield. The letter was an utterly cynical piece of confected outrage, and I think in response I would have issued an utterly cynical confected apology, and gone the 'bad boy forgiven' route. I also might have been tempted to put Kenyon up for an interrogation with someone like Kuensberg so the public could see him sweat it out. High risk, but I think many women might have seen it and ended up with some sneaking sympathy. His line would have been - 'sorry, regret my comments, however do we want a society where the only people who are allowed to hold office are people who have never said anything regrettable on social media?'.

Even with all that, I think Reform's best result would have been to be 'robbed' by Restore. That would have fit their narrative nicely. Sadly they just missed out.

Reform ran a terrible campaign with a poor candidate and took Restore's bait.

There was also an extremely nasty incident in Edinburgh last night, involving someone allegedly mowing down delivery cyclists and running about with a big knife.

Baffled as to why it’s not got into the news yet (other than our local press). I suspect there would be a different reaction if the ethnicities were reversed, and I’ll be keeping a close eye on how the Crown Office approach it.

Just checked the EEN website, bloody hell, I used to live on Duke Street. Even though that part of Leith was less than gentrified then, it was super safe at any time of the day or night.

There’s lots of conjecture and rumour that I won’t trouble PB with, but just to point out that there were a number of incidents across the city, apparently linked according to the police, not just in Leith.

Though tbh while I’ve been living in Edinburgh there have a been a fair few murders and serious assaults at the Foot of the Walk - Spey Lounge etc etc. It’s rapidly gentrifying but the 80s/90s vibe lingers.

I was on Easter Road and Duke St for 5/6 years early to mid 00s, and the most edgy it got was Hibs fans who'd been drinking all day getting lost on their way home.

Although I do remember being told of an incident where a bloke chopped off part of his 'person' in the chippy next to the Spey Lounge by my colleague who lived by the Cats Protection.