Best Of

I'd hope Farage's gushing fandom of Trump would lose him support - but unless I've missed something in the polls we await evidence of that.

It gives him the gushing support of @Leon, and 15% of the electorate. It doesn't harm him with another 15%.

And then there's 65% of the electorate who really aren't big Trump fans at all.

I don't think it affects the headline polling for Reform much, but I do think it impacts the likelihood of people voting tactically against them.

I’d say that would be more like 80% now who hate Trump. Talking of which where is Farage has the so called patriot said anything yet ?

https://x.com/Nigel_Farage/status/2014711550607503525?s=20

Donald Trump is wrong. For 20 years our armed forces fought bravely alongside America's in Afghanistan.

There's also a video clip which is a bit more mealy-mouthed: Farage calls Trump's comments "not quite fair".

I wonder if he means wrong as in 'mistaken' (mild but correct) or wrong as in 'an ignorant morally bankrupt oaf' (stronger and even more correct)?

I think we can be pretty sure it is just the former. Which is still something for him, it must have hurt to do.

Evening all

On topic, the Megafon poll is fascinating on a number of levels.

Context - Denmark is run by a governing coalition of three parties - the Social Democrats, Venstre (meaning "Left" in English, translates to "Liberal" but is actually a Centre-Right Party as distinct from the Danish Conservative Party) and the Moderates. It's not a million miles away from a Lab-Con-LD coalition here.

The coalition parties won about 50% of the vote at the last election which marked a break from the traditional "Red" vs "Blue" blocks of governments - the Social Democrats led the "red" bloc while Venstre led the "blue".

Until Christmas, the coalition parties were running at 30% with the opposition parties at 70% and the blue bloc was leading the red roughly 50-47 so the next election looked like Venstre, the Conservatives and their allies were going to take over.

No longer, if Megafon is correct and to be fair the weekly Voxmeter has shown something similar yet it's not all good news for the coalition - the Social Democrats and Moderates are well up (5 and 4 respectively) but Venstre is down 2.5 points and the Conservatives down 2 so the red bloc now leads the blue 51-42 with the Moderates on 6.

Mette Frederiksen continuing as PM with the Moderates and some other allied centre-left groups now looks much more likely and it's probably down to Trump's antics on Greenland.

I'd hope Farage's gushing fandom of Trump would lose him support - but unless I've missed something in the polls we await evidence of that.

It gives him the gushing support of @Leon, and 15% of the electorate. It doesn't harm him with another 15%.

And then there's 65% of the electorate who really aren't big Trump fans at all.

I don't think it affects the headline polling for Reform much, but I do think it impacts the likelihood of people voting tactically against them.

Not gushing at all. I’d prefer Reform to be significantly more right wing on all counts, but they’re the best we got and the most likely to humiliate the Tories and Labour - and that dual humiliation would certainly make me quite excited

Basically, I’d like a young Lee Kuan Yew to take over the UK

Whatever qualities he may have had, not really a democrat was he?

Is that an actual photo? Farage looks so wooden it kooks photoshopped. That is an awful image of him. It screams 'lackey'. What on earth happened to Farage's political antennae? Whatever you think of his politics, he was shrewd about how he appeared. My guess is that after 2016 he spent so much time in the magasphere that quite a lot of views became normalised which don't really land in the UK, even among Reform voters and the Reform adjacent - such as that association with Trump might look good.

Genuine, from last September

https://x.com/Nigel_Farage/status/1963425300068315392

That image looked dodgy, so I washed it through Quantum AI fourteen times, then through the Interocitor on a R of 13.7 and then through the Krell Cloud.

I got this, when you view it through the sunglasses from They! Live! -

Finding it hard to tell them apart.

A secret source in the White House sent me the original non-AI version.

So many of the issues discussed on here are about to be rendered spectacularly irrelevant by advances in technology - eg robotics

We are 1-3 years from advanced humanoid robots entering the market at scale. Think what that does to, say, defence

Eg look at the latest Unitree robot (from China). Imagine taking on that, on the battlefield. It will be tireless and relentless and be equipped with 100% accurate weapons

https://x.com/wevolverapp/status/2013956331611324883?s=61&t=GGp3Vs1t1kTWDiyA-odnZg

It will also go into factories and the like. Vast wealth will be created

And that is just one example

It's not going to change the issues we talk about.

There will still be arguments over how to distribute wealth - particularly land. There will still be arguments over who gets to be in the club (neighborhood, country, whatever), and who doesn't.

Defence is still going to take a willingness to fight, to invest, to innovate.

Everything will be different (I mean - robots! - how could it not be), but everything will be the same, regardless (I mean - humans! - how could it not be).

No, it won't change what we talk about. We'll still talk about how Leon was wrong about LLMs becoming conscious, about how Leon was wrong about Trump being great, about how Leon was wrong about what3words, about how Leon was wrong about UFOs being revealed to be aliens, about how Leon was wrong about Starmer being great...

And about Covid would be, to quote, "contagious but essentially benign"

COVID was essentially benign for millions considering how many people needed to be tested to see if they even had it..🤨

Yes dear