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A section of older people are a danger to the country . Having screwed their grandkids with the Brexit vote they now seem intent on finishing the country off by voting for the Traitor party .

Which is the Traitor party? ..... Just so I know who I should be voting for.

Very funny ! Reform !

If people voted for Brexit but won’t vote for Reform then they’ll avoid internment ! The double whammy of Brexit and Reform passes the threshold otherwise !

A soft open prison though. The Maximum Security facility is reserved for MAGA voters in swing states.

MAGA voters really are on another planet !

Thankfully the UK remains relatively sane for the timebeing . We have neither an obsession with guns or religion or telling women what to do with their bodies .

The telling women what to do with their bodies has already entered Reform’s offering: https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2026/feb/13/reform-matt-goodwin-fertility-comments-outcry-handmaids-tale

He has some point there in that women are more fertile in their twenties and early 30s than their late 30s and early 40s though he could have phrased it a bit more diplomatically

I think women know that and don’t need Matt Goodwin to tell them, but maybe he has more experience of discussing fertility with young women than I do.

Rather than telling women to have children earlier, it would be more useful to think about why they rationally choose not to.

Then we might be able to change society so that women can more easily choose to have children at a younger age if they want to.

One thing that does come up when you listen to women is that men of a similar age aren't ready to settle down and have kids. Often a woman will have a long-term relationship in which the man is delaying having children for years.

And, of course, single mothers are a notorious target for the ire of the right, should a woman decide to have a baby when they can't find a man who is ready to do so with them.

So why isn't Matt Goodwin giving a reality check to men about their duty to be a father and have children? Why is it always the fault of women in his eyes?

I'd say a bigger factor is the utter unaffordability of it all. There may be a bit of rose-tinted glass here, but for the twenty- somethings of the 1970s it was possible to buy a house and luve as a family of three or four on one income.
Breeding has become almost unaffordable.

Idea to make everyone (left and right) scream -

Have a child and get a 4 bed house. Free.

There's a certain kind of old-school Conservative who is convinced that's been the policy for decades.

Well well Chagos gets even worse ...

"EU plot to seize Chagos fishing rights after Starmer’s surrender
One of world’s largest protected marine areas at risk of ‘catastrophic’ exploitation by French and Spanish vessels"

"The European Union has been accused of seeking to exploit Sir Keir Starmer’s Chagos Islands surrender by securing fishing rights in the waters of the British territory.

Brussels believes the Prime Minister’s plan to transfer sovereignty “could further increase the relevance” of its existing fishing agreement with Mauritius by opening swathes of ocean around the Chagos Islands to French and Spanish vessels.

A report from the European Commission, seen by The Telegraph, reveals it is watching Britain’s Chagos deal with great interest.

The document, published this month, says the deal could open the door to fishing licences in a major boost to European-owned trawlers."

etc, more here:
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/gift/61124e980439f9c7

I see that the far-left takeover of the (no longer) Green Party means that they are now infested with antisemites.

Since the pitiful 'Greens are anti NATO' tactic has proved entirely fruitless, obviously the media is now going full on Maoist bicycle on the road to Auschwitz. Possibly won't work as well as it did with Jezza because as far as I know the Greens don't have an active section of the party plotting to bring down Zack.

The sense of entitlement from Labour is extreme.

The exodus to the Greens is not being driven by anti-semitism, it is being driven by the Reform-adjacent policies of the Labour Party.

As a committed pro-semite (I'm technically Jewish and I was brought up on accounts of the horrors of 30s Germany and the necessity of Israel), I've really had enough of Netanyahu and current Israeli policy, and that doesn't make me an anti-semite. Obviously burning Jewish ambulances is both wrong and stupid, but I don't think that being critical of Israeli policy qualifies at all.

Netanyahu has done more for anti-semitism than anyone could have expected.

"the necessity of Israel" - maybe it's because I'm not Jewish, but I've never understood how a genocide on one continent, however appalling, legitimises subsequent ethnic cleansing of a group of people completely innocent of that crime in another. Nor how moving to a country surrounded by enemies who are committed to destroying you makes you much safer.

It reminds me a little of the logic of a white South African family friend who told me in Cape Town a few years ago that he had fled from Britain in 1970 (then 1% black) to South Africa (80% black) to avoid the Rivers of Blood and the black man's whip hand that Enoch Powell had forecast. He could clearly only find the safety he craved with systematic oppression of the indigenous majority, and, anyway, it probably wouldn't work in the long run.

"Necessity" or "Manifest Destiny" or "Gathering of the Russian Lands" or similar slogans are usually covers for ethnic cleansing or genocide of one type or another, and should be regarded as such.

From early on, the leadership of the Zionist movement had the idea of "transferring" (a euphemism for ethnic cleansing) the Arab Palestinian population out of the land for the purpose of establishing a Jewish demographic majority.[58][59][60][61][62] According to the Israeli historian Benny Morris the idea of transfer was "inevitable and inbuilt into Zionism".[63]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israeli–Palestinian_conflict

New French run off polling:

https://x.com/clement_mci/status/2037998217212609025

▪️Bardella : 71,5%
▪️Mélenchon : 28,5%

▪️Bardella : 58,5%
▪️Glucksmann : 41,5%

▪️Philippe : 51,5%
▪️Bardella : 48,5%

▪️Bardella : 58%
▪️Retailleau : 42%

Didn't you post this yesterday too?

No this is different. Bardella was ahead of Philippe in the other poll by 52 to 48.

In that case to make your point did you need to repeat Bardella beating all comers? It seems to me you were repeating what you posted yesterday that Bardella is almost invincible. If the point was Bardella's dominance is no longer universal shouldn't you have pointed that out?

The significant thing about this one is that they polled Bardella vs Melenchon which was missing from the other pollster, and it looks like it would be a landslide for Bardella.

Haven't we been warned before that this sort of polling technique is inherently inaccurate?

It's valid for the French system because it does come down to a forced choice between two candidates in the run off.

Well well Chagos gets even worse ...

"EU plot to seize Chagos fishing rights after Starmer’s surrender
One of world’s largest protected marine areas at risk of ‘catastrophic’ exploitation by French and Spanish vessels"

"The European Union has been accused of seeking to exploit Sir Keir Starmer’s Chagos Islands surrender by securing fishing rights in the waters of the British territory.

Brussels believes the Prime Minister’s plan to transfer sovereignty “could further increase the relevance” of its existing fishing agreement with Mauritius by opening swathes of ocean around the Chagos Islands to French and Spanish vessels.

A report from the European Commission, seen by The Telegraph, reveals it is watching Britain’s Chagos deal with great interest.

The document, published this month, says the deal could open the door to fishing licences in a major boost to European-owned trawlers."

etc, more here:
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/gift/61124e980439f9c7

IT'S THE TELEGRAPH!

So?

There is plenty of material that justifies criticism of Starmer's tenure as Prime Minister, but the Telegraph in particular create false or misleading narratives to kick him further.

The Chagos arrangement is a case in point. It would seem to me that those who are triggered by Starmer are triggered by Chagos. These players also create a narrative that Starmer has had a chaotic war which they initially compared to Farage and Badenoch's righteous resolution to support Trump and Netanyahu at all costs. I remember a post on here claiming Starmer was "weak, weak, weak" yet when their narrative faltered they went after Starmer by crusing his approval of US defensive action in the Gulf. So to the Telegraph and PB's Telegraph groupies, Starmer was wrong to decline Trump's request to launch the illegal Iran War from Chagos yet now he is wrong to let the USAF defend the Gulf states from Fairford.

Starmer is a poor Prime Minister in lots of ways, so why do the Telegraph etc. have to make up shite?

Except it isn't made up, I linked the report from the EU earlier in the thread.

New French run off polling:

https://x.com/clement_mci/status/2037998217212609025

▪️Bardella : 71,5%
▪️Mélenchon : 28,5%

▪️Bardella : 58,5%
▪️Glucksmann : 41,5%

▪️Philippe : 51,5%
▪️Bardella : 48,5%

▪️Bardella : 58%
▪️Retailleau : 42%

Macron's former PM Philippe after he was re elected as Mayor of Le Havre is Bardella's likely run off opponent and on those polls the only candidate who has a chance to beat him.

Either way it will be a shift right, Philippe has his own centre right party now, Horizons, Bardella is obviously nationalist right, and even Retailleau who does next best after Phillippe v Bardella leads Les Republicains. Whereas Glucksmann is leader of the Socialists in the European Parliament and Melenchon leads the hard left LFI.

The right has not won a French presidential election since Sarkozy won in 2007 19 years ago. Hollande winning in 2012 for the Socialists and Macron winning in 2017 and 2022 for the liberal centre with Socialists and Macron's party also winning the French legislative elections in that time

A section of older people are a danger to the country . Having screwed their grandkids with the Brexit vote they now seem intent on finishing the country off by voting for the Traitor party .

Which is the Traitor party? ..... Just so I know who I should be voting for.

Very funny ! Reform !

If people voted for Brexit but won’t vote for Reform then they’ll avoid internment ! The double whammy of Brexit and Reform passes the threshold otherwise !

A soft open prison though. The Maximum Security facility is reserved for MAGA voters in swing states.

MAGA voters really are on another planet !

Thankfully the UK remains relatively sane for the timebeing . We have neither an obsession with guns or religion or telling women what to do with their bodies .

The telling women what to do with their bodies has already entered Reform’s offering: https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2026/feb/13/reform-matt-goodwin-fertility-comments-outcry-handmaids-tale

He has some point there in that women are more fertile in their twenties and early 30s than their late 30s and early 40s though he could have phrased it a bit more diplomatically

I think women know that and don’t need Matt Goodwin to tell them, but maybe he has more experience of discussing fertility with young women than I do.

Rather than telling women to have children earlier, it would be more useful to think about why they rationally choose not to.

Then we might be able to change society so that women can more easily choose to have children at a younger age if they want to.

One thing that does come up when you listen to women is that men of a similar age aren't ready to settle down and have kids. Often a woman will have a long-term relationship in which the man is delaying having children for years.

And, of course, single mothers are a notorious target for the ire of the right, should a woman decide to have a baby when they can't find a man who is ready to do so with them.

So why isn't Matt Goodwin giving a reality check to men about their duty to be a father and have children? Why is it always the fault of women in his eyes?

I'd say a bigger factor is the utter unaffordability of it all. There may be a bit of rose-tinted glass here, but for the twenty- somethings of the 1970s it was possible to buy a house and luve as a family of three or four on one income.
Breeding has become almost unaffordable.

Matt Goodwin strikes me as being a piece of work and I don't support his politics. What is however intriguing is the extent to which a sentence he writes, itself the sort of subject millions think and think about and is significant to millions of lives, gives rise to a million expansions, interpretations and distortions, all aimed at saying he is a bad person.

This is what he wrote that has caused all the fuss:

"Many women in Britain are having children much too late in life. We need to also explain to young girls and women the biological reality of this crisis. Many women in Britain are having children much too late in life and they would prefer to have children much earlier on.”

These words put in softer tones, a querying and kindly expression and as an into to a discussion could have been said by Jenni Murray or Emma Barnett on Women's Hour on R4.

Nearly all the crits of Goodwin about this are completely ad hominem. There is a vast amount of more sinister material to attack him with.

I do find it sinister. It's dripping with patriarchal condescension. Is some of this because of who it's coming from rather than the bare words? Yes. But that's integral to understanding something. The message PLUS the medium. Both are relevant. Not (btw) that I'd be a fan of this sort of socio-natal stuff from any politician. Just put forward some policies to encourage men to participate more equally in the rearing of children please. Don't worry about 'explaining' women's fertility cycles to women.

To be blunt, if women don't start having children earlier, we're all going to die out in this country. That's what Goodwin is saying.

It isn't quite that bad, age of mother at first birth is now 32 in the UK but it would be good to reduce that down closer towards 25

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/02/01/most-british-women-wait-until-32-to-have-first-child/

How would that work with people not entering the job market to 21/22 and wanting to get somewhere before taking a break

https://x.com/timespolitics/status/2038001030890131759

Tony Blair: We must end left’s unholy alliance with the Islamists

I think we have to end Tony's unholy alliance with neoliberal interventionism.

What a way to completely trash one's reputation as one of Britain's most impressive post war Prime Ministers.

First launch an illegitimate war with Iraq and then spend every day thereafter justifying it with reprehensible Islamaphobic narratives.

C***!

Iraq is now a democracy and Saddam free and Blair is right, the left's blind support for Hamas, Hezbollah, Iran etc as they are anti Israel and anti US is inexcusable