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Overwhelming support for the State Pension increase on the BBC news article comments and on Facebook. The government can't touch the triple lock.

The reason being, of course, that those yet to retire have far more to look forward to from the triple lock than anyone already drawing their pension. Whether the economy can afford to keep non-workers comfortably off at the expense of wage slaves is a separate question. When the Coalition introduced the current policy (prompted by Lloyd George's successors, back around the cabinet table at long last) it seemed like a slow, gentle way to catch up with other European countries. 'If they can afford it, why can't we?' was the clarion call.

They can't afford it either. I despair. Nobody is willing to have an honest conversation with the voters about this. The fact is that governments have made unaffordable promises to their citizens about the amount the state will support them in their old age, right across the West. Until that issue is addressed workers will face ever higher taxes, all other public spending will wither away, and voter rage will continue to grow. Right now, government debt is a Ponzi scheme and we will face a financial crisis that will dwarf 2008 if this is not dealt with.

The triple lock has to be dropped in favour of a simple earnings link - pensioners need to understand in their bones that their personal prosperity is ultimately dependent on the prosperity of the nation: Without a thriving economy, there’s no economic output to fund their pensions.

It doesn’t matter what form the savings for those pensions took - the goods and services they rely on in the here and now have to come out of the nation’s collective GDP.

Ukraine’s new “Long-range drone” hitting O&G facilities 1,500km into Russia, is basically a remote-controlled light aircraft, stuffed with fuel and explosives instead of a couple of humans.

It flies low and slow, for several hours at a time, yet the enemy still appears to be incapable of shooting it down.

https://x.com/tatarigami_ua/status/1967574142003417088

I remember reading here that Russian air defence was so good that a SAM battery near Moscow would be able to shoot down any NATO planes over Ukraine.

That PBer also claimed that anti-tank missiles never worked.

Was that the one, currently on sabbatical, who also said they had no significant SEAD/DEAD capacity ?

FPT LDs still OK with their 'best pollster' YouGov but one or two dips below 2024 recently with other pollsters. Are they making any headway? I guess thats the question for Davey Doubters

Morning all
YouGov this week

Ref 29 (+2)
Lab 20 (-2)
Con 17 (=)
LD 15 (=)
Grn 10 (-2)

Havent got SNP or Others figure yet

That’s a grim poll for Labour. YouGov are generally their friendliest pollster IIRC

It is grim but i wouodnt say YG are their best, thats probably Opinium, Focaldata and Survation, although theres not much in it

I bow to your superior knowledge. I don’t follow them that closely so far from a GE

Get that dullard Starmer OUT

Fine but who replaces him?

Yvette Cooper has no charisma and poor judgement
Reeves would be out of her depth as deputy leader of a county council
Miliband is a has-been fanatic who has been killing the economy (though that probably makes him an ideal choice for Labour)
Mahmood is unproven and has a poisoned chalice at the Home Office
Burnham isn't even an MP
Lammy hahaha

etc. etc.

Basically our fifth-rate PM would be replaced by one of a group of tenth-raters.

Can Labour, despite its core vote of ethnic minorities and welfare junkies, poll in the single digits? We may be about to find out.

Good header

It does seem a bit unfair that Mr Davey is being criticised. After all, he led the part to massive election success and unlike the big two, the Lib Dems seem to be a fairly happy and united party that doesn’t shoot at their feet all day long.

But, he has had an open goal - with both main parties falling apart, in theory he has the opportunity to pick up the social and economic liberals from both.

I would estimate that when Labour or the Conseratives were on 40%, in both cases, 15% of their vote was potential Lib Dems.

So a potential 25% (wild guess) of tribal voters who were potential Lib Dem’s.

With the disintegration of tribal voting, the Lib Dems should have been hoovering them up.

He needs to define LibDem’ism to the population at large. The Orange Book was an example of such a thesis. There are others.

The problem is that it is easy to oppose everything - say yes to all the potential voters. Which is how we end up with “build a zillion houses, but not here” NIMYism.

To take a stand is to take a risk. But without a coherent, unifying vision, the Lib Dems will be the party of 12% for the future.

Whilst the GE did represent electoral success I think the LDs settled for far less than they might have achieved then. They seem to be settling for even less now.

Hence the discontent.

In theory, Davey should have got the moderates from both main parties and be looking at 30%+ now.

Perhaps because the LibDems aren't moderate, they're niche.

I find that the LibDems have become too smugly, self-satisfied waitrose belt to like.

They're the other side of the coin to the embittered malcontentism of Reform.

FPT - because, as always, there's a new thread.

I argued last evening those who think two party politics is dead have got it wrong.

The parties may end up with different names but ultimately it will resolve down to a binary choice - the big change is the nature of the faultline. For decades, it was economic - one side favoured lower taxes, less spending and regulation, the other saw the State as the provider, supported taxation and spending.

That line is no longer valid or has the priority it once did - the divide is now socio-cultural. If you are socially conservative, there's a party for you (possibly two) whereas if you have a more liberal mindset, there are three or four parties for you.

This has had two impacts - first, social conservatives and liberals who mixed together happily under the same economic programme in the Labour and Conservative parties have now flocked to Reform gutting both parties and leaving them shadows of the coalitions they once were.

The other question is whether there are enough social conservatives under FPTP to give Reform a majority on perhaps 30% of the vote - probably but if the liberally minded vote tactically, probably not.

It is the change in the faultline which has damaged Labour and the Conservatives - the politics of economics no longer matter, the politics of society and culture do.

This may be true, but can only stay true until the new party on one side of the new faultline has a go at running the country. At that point the old issues rear their heads whether people like it or not. And these old issues are in fact about how to run a national economy really well, and running it taking full account of debt, deficit, tax, spend, employment, global trade, the health of manufacturing and financial services, ag and fish.

Maybe an election can be won on the issue of a tiny % of migrants being boat people, but a country can't be run on it. The old verities return, and it won't take long.

Reform do not wish to talk about it. This is ominous.

Even better is what "no migration" does to the economy.

We have waves of migration when we have significant gaps in the labour force. We have one today. We don't want to work on farms or in factories. We've had 40 years of the right wing saying teachers are idiots and so attainment levels drop especially in the WWC. So we aren't well trained, especially in the things we need like medicine and engineering. And we have a declining birth rate and an ageing population.

So lets say Farage wins and we do move to no migration. What happens? Well there's a load of jobs we can't fill. "Send the scroungers to do it" will only last for a short time until people realise they are up for forced relocation to work on a farm. And we all get sicker as the NHS falls apart. Even better, we have less people working paying less taxes and circulating less money. So a big recession. Sound - what does Farage do then? Who does his movement scapegoat - the gays?

We absolutely need to invest in education skills and training. Invest in making proper jobs sexy again - construction, engineering, food. That will take vision and time and money. And we're prepared to invest none of that. But we want the brown people to go away because they are raping and murdering our women, taking our homes, stealing both the jobs and claiming benefits. So sayeth Musk and Yaxley-Robinson.

.

@stodge the politics of economics no longer matter because people are spoiled and think that they deserve everything for nothing. It will come crashing down eventually.

Perhaps but at the moment the public consciousness is much more about "boats" and "migrants" than it is about the economic challenges in front of us which, if I'm being honest, are so enormous as to a) confound and b) leave anyone trying to consider them reaching for whatever helps.

Yes because people are under the misguided impression that stopping the boats is the remedy to all their perceived problems in a way that requires no sacrifice from their perspective as nobody is willing to sacrifice anything.

They are not going to be disabused of that idea unless and until the boats are stopped, though.

You’re right. But then it will just move onto the next thing.

Politics always does.
But should a Reform government end up disappointing their voters in that manner, it will pull a rug from under a large slice of their support.
And if Labour were to succeed in reducing the wave of small boats to back ground noise, then the terms of debate move back to the ceconomy.

FPT - because, as always, there's a new thread.

I argued last evening those who think two party politics is dead have got it wrong.

The parties may end up with different names but ultimately it will resolve down to a binary choice - the big change is the nature of the faultline. For decades, it was economic - one side favoured lower taxes, less spending and regulation, the other saw the State as the provider, supported taxation and spending.

That line is no longer valid or has the priority it once did - the divide is now socio-cultural. If you are socially conservative, there's a party for you (possibly two) whereas if you have a more liberal mindset, there are three or four parties for you.

This has had two impacts - first, social conservatives and liberals who mixed together happily under the same economic programme in the Labour and Conservative parties have now flocked to Reform gutting both parties and leaving them shadows of the coalitions they once were.

The other question is whether there are enough social conservatives under FPTP to give Reform a majority on perhaps 30% of the vote - probably but if the liberally minded vote tactically, probably not.

It is the change in the faultline which has damaged Labour and the Conservatives - the politics of economics no longer matter, the politics of society and culture do.

This may be true, but can only stay true until the new party on one side of the new faultline has a go at running the country. At that point the old issues rear their heads whether people like it or not. And these old issues are in fact about how to run a national economy really well, and running it taking full account of debt, deficit, tax, spend, employment, global trade, the health of manufacturing and financial services, ag and fish.

Maybe an election can be won on the issue of a tiny % of migrants being boat people, but a country can't be run on it. The old verities return, and it won't take long.

Reform do not wish to talk about it. This is ominous.

The issue is visibility.

LibDems are very visible and successful in about 100 constituencies.
We are invisible in the rest.

If you live in a LibDem area, you know about it. If you don't you don't.

LibDems have very little national visibility.
This partly because the LibDem strategy has been to concentrate on areas of geographic strength and downplay national visibility.
It is also because the media, including the BBC, neglect the Lib Dems, either for partisan reasons or because we are not newsworthy. No scandals or defections.

With the current strategy, Lib Dems will be hard pressed to win 100 seats next time.
But how to get national visibility?
It is not about policies, - we have fistfuls of policies.
Perhaps our more colourful personalities need to step up?
Stunts aren't the answer.
Scandals might be. Where is our Jeremy Thorpe?
It needs to newsworthy. Perhaps the @RochdalePioneers approach nationally?

Are you sure you want Jeremy Thorpe style figure dogged by scandal?

I'm sure we don't!
That was an ironic joke about the only way to get attention.

I don't think it would pull you back from the b-rinka of irrelevance.