Best Of

Worth repeating again 43% of Tory Voters disagree with Tory leader stance.

There are 3 campos here

Support - REFORM and half Tories and a few others

Oppose - Green and vast majority of LD and Lab

Middle ground Starmer...its reassuring for him that almost as many LD (12 % ) and Labour (14%) support action but he won't the "do fuck all to support Trump and tell him to f off) votes that Greens / LD will get.

However, most commentators on Centre Left and who aren;t told what to write by rabid right press are broadly supportive of his stance.

Any vote slippage and more so the longer it drages on with be One Nation Tories slipping to LD most likely in South, tactically more likely to Labour to keep Reform out in Midlands and north and a big possible drain for Tories as Kemi seems hell bent on out nigeling Nigel on this issue and many others.

May be another week or so before Gorton loses momentum in all Polls and Iran takes precedence...Starmer will be looking at any Polls from 7th onwards for boost!

FPT

https://x.com/hoffman_noa/status/2031128674737479765

EXCL: One in four settled status migrants from outside the EU are claiming benefits, analysis reveals. 

It has led Tories to warn that Britain must not remain a “cash machine for the world”.

A wrinkle with the EU's Freedom Of Movement was that an EU national in the UK could only claim benefits if the were a worker and searching for work. The Boris Wave has no such restrictions.

Funny that.

No, "settled status" is the immigration status of settled EU citizens. The rest of the world has ILR. Both can claim benefits.

Mum has Settled Status.

Not Indefinite Leave to Remain? OK, I might be wrong then.

We tried sorting our her new eVisa last year after a glitch in their system (starting an online application with a non-biometric Indian passport and all that). The resulting eVisa definitely says she has "Settled Status".

The US polls are pretty similar.....

https://edition.cnn.com/2026/03/02/politics/cnn-poll-59-of-americans-disapprove-of-iran-strikes-and-most-think-a-long-term-conflict-is-likely

The same amount of opposition in the US to the strikes as the UK, 59%, on that poll but more clearly in favour, 41%, Republicans Trump will be pleased to see still strongly in favour, 77% of GOP voters back the strikes still even if most Democrats and Independents are opposed.

Although 'MAGA Republicans are 30 points more likely than non-MAGA Republicans to say they strongly approve of the decision to take military action'. So a similar divide as here with more 'MAGA' rightwing Reform voters more in favour of the strikes than traditional conservative Tories

With the Afghan war, it was well planned and long prepared.

It was a fucking disaster.

With the Iraq war, it was well planned and long prepared.

It was a fucking disaster.

With this one, it's been done on the spur of the moment because Netanyahu's popularity was tanking and Trump urgently needed a distraction from the Epstein files and the references to forcing a 13-year-old girl to perform oral sex on him. It has not been planned, and it has not been prepared.

It has been a much bigger fucking disaster, and we're only a week in.

The amazing thing is that anyone supports it. It just shows how little attention most people pay to the news.

I support it. At present, the Iranian navy, air force and missile capability is effectively gone - good - but that's not enough.

My view is the existing Iranian regime must go. And the nuclear stockpiles must be secured.

And how do you do that without actually putting troops on the ground in Iran?

A reminder that Iran is fucking enormous. 1% of the Earth's landmass.

With the Afghan war, it was well planned and long prepared.

It was a fucking disaster.

With the Iraq war, it was well planned and long prepared.

It was a fucking disaster.

With this one, it's been done on the spur of the moment because Netanyahu's popularity was tanking and Trump urgently needed a distraction from the Epstein files and the references to forcing a 13-year-old girl to perform oral sex on him. It has not been planned, and it has not been prepared.

It has been a much bigger fucking disaster, and we're only a week in.

The amazing thing is that anyone supports it. It just shows how little attention most people pay to the news.

To be honest it’s done a really good job of hiding those Trump child sex abuse stories. Carefully released last Monday and no one noticed them

Not called Operation Epstein Fury for nothing.

This Labour government is the worst ever, imagine a world without solicitors.

Law Society chief: Lammy risks triggering collapse of high street firms

Justice Secretary warned that ‘once the solicitors have left town, they won’t go back’

David Lammy’s planned £100m tax raid on the legal industry risks forcing swathes of high street solicitors out of business, the head of the Law Society has warned.

Mark Evans, the new president of the Law Society, which represents more than 200,000 solicitors, said that the Justice Secretary’s proposals to start taxing interest payments earned on money in client accounts threatened to prove the final nail in the coffin for local law firms.

He said they risked having a permanent effect on Britain’s high streets at a time when many town and city centres are already grappling with rising vacancy rates.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2026/03/10/lammy-risks-triggering-collapse-of-high-street/

So to be blunt the only money keeping high street solicitors going is the interest on their client accounts that probably should be being paid to their clients

Yes, the alternative is to increase billing rates.

Or pay cuts.