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@amandaakass

The Prime Minister is set to give a press conference tomorrow morning in Downing Street following the frantic diplomatic activity of the past 24 hours in response to Donald Trump’s extraordinary threats to impose tariffs on the UK and other European allies over Greenland
@SkyNews

Anything less than a Love Actually moment and the nation will be sorely disappointed.

Isn't it a fairly easy one for him?

No nation can be blackmailed like this, and the EU certainly cannot submit to it, so the response has to be eff off Donald and do your worst. The consequences for world trade will be catastrophic, and that obviously impacts the US as much if not more than most countries.

I cannot imagine DT does not blink at that point, but if he doesn't, c'est la vie.

I wonder what Stuartinromford makes of this.

1 Blimey.

2 Apologies to anyone who listened to me saying that Rozzer was a loyal Conservative in a way that Jenrick wasn't.

3 Eagles is right about his people skills; from the point of view of being seen around the place, and available for weddings and bar mitzvahs, he's the best. I doubt there are many public buildings in Romford that don't have a portrait of the monarch, generously presented by the local MP.

4 But despite being an MP since 2001, I don't think he was ever a minister. Admittedly, he was unavailable in the mad bit of summer 2022 when BoJo was desperate for anyone to serve, but it's still indicative of his skillset.

5 The Chagos thing has to be nonsense, doesn't it? Not that he doesn't believe in their cause, but it surely isn't a reason to jump to Reform now.

6 I wonder how his old party will respond.

7 So much for the really careful vetting that el Nige promised us.

8 The council elections for Havering (3.5 months away) will presumably be even more of a shitshow than they were going to be already. (One of our local Conservative councillors, talented and going places but deselected for insufficient loyalty to the Andrissimo, recently changed his social media pic to the Traitors logo.)

9 Did I say blimey?

I'm surprised because his minions were still out and about working hard for him right before Christmas. I'm not surprised because there has been hardly a fag paper of difference between him and Farage's party (under whatever branding).

He definitely fits the liar or crook or both mould of the other Reform MPs (I have heard some interesting stories from recent members of the Romford Conservative Association). He is personally very polite but also crashingly dull with no sense of humour at all. He adds nothing to them except anther failed Tory, except in his case nobody gas ever trusted him to run anything so I suppose you can't really accuse him of failure.

It's a shame the news broke when it did because I was with a Conservative councillor until about 5 minutes before, who clearly didn't know about it either because we were discussing local politics! I imagine the party will be in disarray locally as it was very much his private fiefdom, purged of anyone except Rosindell loyalists. Presumably they will also all now join Reform, and half of the current Reform members will leave.

On the positive side for the Conservatives it does open the possibility that I might vote Tory in a GE for the first time ever, if they select a sensible candidate.

All this does is cement Kemi's position and I expect her now to lead into the next GE

A little counter intuitive!! If she loses many more she she be able to hold her shadow cabinet meetings in a taxi.

She has only lost 1 Shadow Cabinet member so far, Jenrick and he slagged off virtually all his old Shadow Cabinet colleagues in the process especially Stride and even Patel so they will remain loyal to Kemi

Dodgy penalty to decide AFCON.

Senegal players walking off the pitch before the penalty is taken.

This is insane!

What happens if they refuse to play any further

I don't know, but if I had to guess, Morocco will be given the win, and Senegal a massive fine and maybe ban?

If you walk off you should be disqualified anyway, even if you later come back.

Like when Pakistan forfeited a match against England after refusing to come out to play (IIRC the ICC tried to smooth the waters over that, but I hope the decision stands).

It is one of the less well known laws of the game that you can be booked for leaving or re-entering the field of play without the referee's permission. The ref would therefore have been within his rights to caution every Senegal player who left the field, and again every one that sauntered back onto the pitch. This would have led to most of them being dismissed on the second caution. Once four or more had been sent off, the match would have been abandoned because you cannot continue a game where one side has less than eight players on the field.

Now that would have been fun!