If this were to happen, Labour should tie this to other forms of government corruption: lies; broken manifesto pledges; cash for access; cash for honours; contracts for mates; and so on.
More likely Starmer and Mandelson are more concerned with bringing down Jeremy Corbyn than Boris Johnson.
Starmer and co need to publicly remove Corbyn as there are a lot of former Labour voters who claim they need Corbyn to be gone before they will return to the fold.
Basically for every @bigjohnowls there are 3+ centre of the road voters who need to know the more extreme left won't get control before they can safely return to voting Labour.
And at the moment keeping Bozo in power is better for Labour than a competent Tory leader
I don't agree with this at all. Starmer has been strongest when he's been seen as a non-partisan, uncorrupt alternative to Johnsonism, uniting the centre and left over the last few months. During this period , in which he's also made no explicit attacks on the left, his national poll ratings have claimed as high as 44%.
If he returns to the tactics that kept dividing his supporters last year, up to and including the party conference, I predict a returning press narrative of "Labour Splits", and quite possibly defeat at the next general election.
Starmers unequivocal stance yesterday that labour will not rejoin the EU must have upset many who hoped he would move in that direction and may just encourage some to support the lib dems
So will Starmer now admit his efforts to frustrate Brexit demonstrated poor judgment?
Based on what BREXIT now is - our inability to trade properly and our castration as a regional power? No. What the 2017 parliament should have done was pushed the Norway+ route over St Theresa's head. They failed to agree a single option so we went with no option.
(puts tin hat on)
The speaker should have forced the commons to vote via STV in the meaningful votes, thereby discovering which outcome the Commons disliked the least & allowing things to move forward with a full vote in the Commons for that option afterwards.
However, we had a "Bollocks to Brexit" Speaker.....
If this were to happen, Labour should tie this to other forms of government corruption: lies; broken manifesto pledges; cash for access; cash for honours; contracts for mates; and so on.
More likely Starmer and Mandelson are more concerned with bringing down Jeremy Corbyn than Boris Johnson.
Starmer and co need to publicly remove Corbyn as there are a lot of former Labour voters who claim they need Corbyn to be gone before they will return to the fold.
Basically for every @bigjohnowls there are 3+ centre of the road voters who need to know the more extreme left won't get control before they can safely return to voting Labour.
And at the moment keeping Bozo in power is better for Labour than a competent Tory leader
I don't agree with this at all. Starmer has been strongest when he's been seen as a non-partisan, uncorrupt alternative to Johnsonism, uniting the centre and left over the last few months. During this period , in which he's also made no explicit attacks on the left, his national poll ratings have claimed as high as 44%.
If he returns to the tactics that kept dividing his supporters last year, up to and including the party conference, I predict a returning press narrative of "Labour Splits", and quite possibly defeat at the next general election.
Starmers unequivocal stance yesterday that labour will not rejoin the EU must have upset many who hoped he would move in that direction and may just encourage some to support the lib dems
So will Starmer now admit his efforts to frustrate Brexit demonstrated poor judgment?
Based on what BREXIT now is - our inability to trade properly and our castration as a regional power? No. What the 2017 parliament should have done was pushed the Norway+ route over St Theresa's head. They failed to agree a single option so we went with no option.
You're right, of course, and so should the 2015 parliament from day 1 after the referendum. But that would have required the Eurozealots to admit defeat.
Labour voted for Norway+ but it was defeated by the Tory whipping operation. How that was the fault of eurozealots I will leave to those smarter than me to fathom.
Neither Labour nor the Tory whipping operation held a majority.
If the Eurozealots had backed Norway+ it could have passed, but they didn't. They went for double or nothing and they ended up with nothing.
This conversation started as an effort to criticise Starmer and Labour for trying to "frustrate Brexit". I can't speak for the behaviour of other parties that I don't support and over whom Labour had no influence. But Labour consistently sought to find a compromise solution and the principal block to that happening was the Tories' insistence on a hard Brexit.
No, the principal block is that the Eurozealots had fought so hard for so long (and were still fighting) to overturn the referendum result that anything they put forward as a "compromise" looked like a trap.
The time for EEA/Norway+ was immediately after the referendum.
Which the Europhobes wanting Singapore-on-Thames saw as an absolute betrayal.
You keep trying to highlight Labour's divisions whilst pretending there were no Tory divisions. Why is that? St Theresa denied the Norway+ option to placate her mouth-foaming backbenchers. That wasn't Labour was it?
Plenty of Labour MPs in Leave seats also opposed Norway+ as it meant continued free movement which their constituents had just voted against.
For example Lisa Nandy backed Brexit plus a Customs Union but opposed Norway+
Norway+ was the best outcome because it was almost certainly the preference of the median voter in the referendum. Since we are always being told that the referendum was not about immigration, I would assume that at least 2pp of the 52% were OK with free movement and just wanted us out of the political structures and the risk of ever closer union.
Leave only won with voters concerned about immigration AND sovereignty.
Without both Remain would have won, so Leave had to deliver promises to address both when it won the referendum
The correct position is in the second tweet. I hate this trend. Like Politics For All. Just say any old crap, then immediately clarify it. Get 2000 likes on the first, and 43 on the second.
Someone posted this on site a couple of days ago “Whilst Putin doesn’t appear to have goals easily achievable through military action, he will clearly gain a lot if he moves EU and Ukraine towards those Minsk Protocol’s so far not implemented. We have no choice but to consider this, because if he doesn’t initiate military conflict, and we hail ourselves on the triumph of thwarting his invasion - we may actually overlook what Putin’s plan actually has been all along, and crucially still ongoing in the years to come. I suggest we monitor the media carefully not just for signs of invasion or false flag operations, but listen to what EU capitals, and the Ukrainian government, are saying about Nord and Minsk Protocols.”
If the EU start to say things about considering Russia’s security concerns in all this negotiating, Russia dismantles its build up with a big 😝 in direction of Washington, then not to underestimate what a Gas pipeline or two can actually win you?
So with war over and negotiations that consider Russian security in all this being given a chance, does the media narrative shift back now to vaccination status of tennis players and the other big Moscow story - Boris Moscow?
Someone on PB has started a countdown to Big Dog’s neutering and it stands today at just Snip minus 7 days 😲
I think there is no agreement as to what the Minsk protocol actually means.
The current Russian Government position is that they are not a party to Minsk. Or, I think, to Minsk II.
And what they want is a further move to give them control over what happens in other sovereign countries, whilst denying that to others in their own country.
If EuCo starts making noises as you suggest, then it will encourage Russia to try the same in Poland and the Baltics and Finland, and imo put themselves in the same place as France and the UK in 1938.
Your entitled to your view. For some “negotiations that also consider Russian security concerns in all this” is yet another reason to hate and bash the EU.
Ukraine position is to have both NATO membership AND to retake parts of its own sovereign territory held by the Russians. Do you support the UK and Washington fast tracking Ukraine NATO membership? In your opinion why don’t they have it yet? Can they have it by the end of the year? Up until then “standing shoulder to shoulder with democratic sovereign nation” is just hollow words or even lies isn’t it?
Tragically, on this occasion Farage is nearly correct. Unfortunately, he also sees Putin as an "anti-woke" standard-bearer, for traditional values.
Putin is quite popular amongst the European nationalist hard right and amongst many Trump voters in the US for those reasons (indeed Trump himself was much less hostile to Putin than Biden now is).
I agree there is some truth in what Farage says, expanding NATO to the Ukraine was always too risky an option, it should focus on defending the states already within NATO
Anyone who likes Putin, or even just thinks "he has a point" isn't fit for any office in any democratic country. Putin is a murderous, lying, thieving head of a mafia-state.
Someone posted this on site a couple of days ago “Whilst Putin doesn’t appear to have goals easily achievable through military action, he will clearly gain a lot if he moves EU and Ukraine towards those Minsk Protocol’s so far not implemented. We have no choice but to consider this, because if he doesn’t initiate military conflict, and we hail ourselves on the triumph of thwarting his invasion - we may actually overlook what Putin’s plan actually has been all along, and crucially still ongoing in the years to come. I suggest we monitor the media carefully not just for signs of invasion or false flag operations, but listen to what EU capitals, and the Ukrainian government, are saying about Nord and Minsk Protocols.”
If the EU start to say things about considering Russia’s security concerns in all this negotiating, Russia dismantles its build up with a big 😝 in direction of Washington, then not to underestimate what a Gas pipeline or two can actually win you?
So with war over and negotiations that consider Russian security in all this being given a chance, does the media narrative shift back now to vaccination status of tennis players and the other big Moscow story - Boris Moscow?
Someone on PB has started a countdown to Big Dog’s neutering and it stands today at just Snip minus 7 days 😲
The feeling here is that much of the build up was for domestic consumption and it failed to impress. Please note that on the day he is supposedly descalating, he has also slapped another 10 years on Navalny´s sentence on trumped up charges. The Kremlin did not expect NATO to tell him to go to hell, and Putin is in trouble and the West needs to makes sure he stays in trouble (and out of Ukraine (or Georgia, Moldova, Kazakhstan, the Arctic etc etc etc). Now Putin is looking to learn how he can cause trouble, especially in Germany, "for next time". No compromises and no substantive deals can be made with Putin that he will not break, and that is the key take away from this.
I'm thinking that 'European' leaders in the EU need to learn the lesson of just how casually Putin used the Budapest Memorandum to wipe his bottom with.
If this were to happen, Labour should tie this to other forms of government corruption: lies; broken manifesto pledges; cash for access; cash for honours; contracts for mates; and so on.
More likely Starmer and Mandelson are more concerned with bringing down Jeremy Corbyn than Boris Johnson.
Starmer and co need to publicly remove Corbyn as there are a lot of former Labour voters who claim they need Corbyn to be gone before they will return to the fold.
Basically for every @bigjohnowls there are 3+ centre of the road voters who need to know the more extreme left won't get control before they can safely return to voting Labour.
And at the moment keeping Bozo in power is better for Labour than a competent Tory leader
I don't agree with this at all. Starmer has been strongest when he's been seen as a non-partisan, uncorrupt alternative to Johnsonism, uniting the centre and left over the last few months. During this period , in which he's also made no explicit attacks on the left, his national poll ratings have claimed as high as 44%.
If he returns to the tactics that kept dividing his supporters last year, up to and including the party conference, I predict a returning press narrative of "Labour Splits", and quite possibly defeat at the next general election.
Starmers unequivocal stance yesterday that labour will not rejoin the EU must have upset many who hoped he would move in that direction and may just encourage some to support the lib dems
So will Starmer now admit his efforts to frustrate Brexit demonstrated poor judgment?
Based on what BREXIT now is - our inability to trade properly and our castration as a regional power? No. What the 2017 parliament should have done was pushed the Norway+ route over St Theresa's head. They failed to agree a single option so we went with no option.
You're right, of course, and so should the 2015 parliament from day 1 after the referendum. But that would have required the Eurozealots to admit defeat.
It would also have required the Europhobes to admit defeat. Norway+ is BRINO remember, and completely frustrates the Singapore-on-Thames Brexiteer group.
If the Eurozealots(*) had reacted to the result by saying "yes we lost, but only by a narrow margin, we should go for EEA" they would have had a comfortable majority amongst the public and the "all out"ers would have been marginalised.
(*) And yes, I include Cameron in this - his flounce was deeply damaging.
What about Free Movement though? You think retaining that would have been acceptable to most who voted Leave? I'm not sure of that myself. Immigration was a big driver of the vote. A totemic issue. Not so much amongst Leavers on here but as I think we all recognize it's not a good sample. We lack posters who represent the large number of people who voted Leave with immigration foremost in their minds. There's Isam and then maybe Isam. And not even him now since he's banned.
Time for people to move on from partygate, it's been done to death.
It's unfortunate the Met is wasting so much money on this.
Laughable
I don’t know why Dale’s post appeared flagged. It was accurate and put more politely than many on this forum.
In Dales defence I’ll post “Boris sacked in dogminus 7 days.
Can Admins see who does the false flag’s and banish the naughty ones?
PS Gary, in my opinion its still rumbling in background like a volcano about to erupt wiping out all life in Boris Citadel. Whatever MET are paying for this, it’s cheap price for honesty and probity in government and rules of the land that treat everyone equally and fairly
The correct position is in the second tweet. I hate this trend. Like Politics For All. Just say any old crap, then immediately clarify it. Get 2000 likes on the first, and 43 on the second.
Apart from ignoring the lack of standing of The (not even remotely) Good (sic) Law Project they’re remarkably coy about WHY the process was in breach - of the public sector equality duty - not the appointments themselves:
We have already held that the individual appointment decisions themselves are not amenable to judicial review and the Runnymede Trust has no standing to challenge them as such. It is the process leading up to the two decisions which has been found by this Court to be in breach of the public sector equality duty. 138. For those reasons we will grant a declaration to the Runnymede Trust that the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care did not comply with the public sector equality duty in relation to the decisions how to appoint Baroness Harding as Interim Executive Chair of the NIHP in August 2020 and Mr Coupe as Director of Testing for NHSTT in
Someone posted this on site a couple of days ago “Whilst Putin doesn’t appear to have goals easily achievable through military action, he will clearly gain a lot if he moves EU and Ukraine towards those Minsk Protocol’s so far not implemented. We have no choice but to consider this, because if he doesn’t initiate military conflict, and we hail ourselves on the triumph of thwarting his invasion - we may actually overlook what Putin’s plan actually has been all along, and crucially still ongoing in the years to come. I suggest we monitor the media carefully not just for signs of invasion or false flag operations, but listen to what EU capitals, and the Ukrainian government, are saying about Nord and Minsk Protocols.”
If the EU start to say things about considering Russia’s security concerns in all this negotiating, Russia dismantles its build up with a big 😝 in direction of Washington, then not to underestimate what a Gas pipeline or two can actually win you?
So with war over and negotiations that consider Russian security in all this being given a chance, does the media narrative shift back now to vaccination status of tennis players and the other big Moscow story - Boris Moscow?
Someone on PB has started a countdown to Big Dog’s neutering and it stands today at just Snip minus 7 days 😲
I think there is no agreement as to what the Minsk protocol actually means.
The current Russian Government position is that they are not a party to Minsk. Or, I think, to Minsk II.
And what they want is a further move to give them control over what happens in other sovereign countries, whilst denying that to others in their own country.
If EuCo starts making noises as you suggest, then it will encourage Russia to try the same in Poland and the Baltics and Finland, and imo put themselves in the same place as France and the UK in 1938.
Your entitled to your view. For some “negotiations that also consider Russian security concerns in all this” is yet another reason to hate and bash the EU.
Ukraine position is to have both NATO membership AND to retake parts of its own sovereign territory held by the Russians. Do you support the UK and Washington fast tracking Ukraine NATO membership? In your opinion why don’t they have it yet? Can they have it by the end of the year? Up until then “standing shoulder to shoulder with democratic sovereign nation” is just hollow words or even lies isn’t it?
They haven't fast tracked it. No-one in NATO is really talking about Ukraine joining. It is a permanent aspiration much like Turkey joining the EU.
This is for the same reason that Finland isn't a member - because it would be seen as too much of a provocation to Russia.
The "standing shoulder to shoulder with democratic sovereign nation" is not a lie, because it is possible to stand shoulder to shoulder with a nation without them joining NATO. Neither Sweden or Finland are in NATO - but no-one doubts that if they were attacked, that NATO would come to their aid.
What Putin has achieved with his build up etc is that Ukraine is now moved up the ranks of Friends Of NATO. Not quote to the level of Finland, which is so nearly in NATO that if someone sneezes.... But massively higher than it was.
If this were to happen, Labour should tie this to other forms of government corruption: lies; broken manifesto pledges; cash for access; cash for honours; contracts for mates; and so on.
More likely Starmer and Mandelson are more concerned with bringing down Jeremy Corbyn than Boris Johnson.
Starmer and co need to publicly remove Corbyn as there are a lot of former Labour voters who claim they need Corbyn to be gone before they will return to the fold.
Basically for every @bigjohnowls there are 3+ centre of the road voters who need to know the more extreme left won't get control before they can safely return to voting Labour.
And at the moment keeping Bozo in power is better for Labour than a competent Tory leader
I don't agree with this at all. Starmer has been strongest when he's been seen as a non-partisan, uncorrupt alternative to Johnsonism, uniting the centre and left over the last few months. During this period , in which he's also made no explicit attacks on the left, his national poll ratings have claimed as high as 44%.
If he returns to the tactics that kept dividing his supporters last year, up to and including the party conference, I predict a returning press narrative of "Labour Splits", and quite possibly defeat at the next general election.
Starmers unequivocal stance yesterday that labour will not rejoin the EU must have upset many who hoped he would move in that direction and may just encourage some to support the lib dems
So will Starmer now admit his efforts to frustrate Brexit demonstrated poor judgment?
Based on what BREXIT now is - our inability to trade properly and our castration as a regional power? No. What the 2017 parliament should have done was pushed the Norway+ route over St Theresa's head. They failed to agree a single option so we went with no option.
You're right, of course, and so should the 2015 parliament from day 1 after the referendum. But that would have required the Eurozealots to admit defeat.
Labour voted for Norway+ but it was defeated by the Tory whipping operation. How that was the fault of eurozealots I will leave to those smarter than me to fathom.
Neither Labour nor the Tory whipping operation held a majority.
If the Eurozealots had backed Norway+ it could have passed, but they didn't. They went for double or nothing and they ended up with nothing.
This conversation started as an effort to criticise Starmer and Labour for trying to "frustrate Brexit". I can't speak for the behaviour of other parties that I don't support and over whom Labour had no influence. But Labour consistently sought to find a compromise solution and the principal block to that happening was the Tories' insistence on a hard Brexit.
No, the principal block is that the Eurozealots had fought so hard for so long (and were still fighting) to overturn the referendum result that anything they put forward as a "compromise" looked like a trap.
The time for EEA/Norway+ was immediately after the referendum.
Which the Europhobes wanting Singapore-on-Thames saw as an absolute betrayal.
You keep trying to highlight Labour's divisions whilst pretending there were no Tory divisions. Why is that? St Theresa denied the Norway+ option to placate her mouth-foaming backbenchers. That wasn't Labour was it?
Plenty of Labour MPs in Leave seats also opposed Norway+ as it meant continued free movement which their constituents had just voted against.
For example Lisa Nandy backed Brexit plus a Customs Union but opposed Norway+
Norway+ was the best outcome because it was almost certainly the preference of the median voter in the referendum. Since we are always being told that the referendum was not about immigration, I would assume that at least 2pp of the 52% were OK with free movement and just wanted us out of the political structures and the risk of ever closer union.
Leave only won with voters concerned about immigration AND sovereignty.
Without both Remain would have won, so Leave had to deliver promises to address both when it won the referendum
Only because the way Cameron rigged the referendum.
Had it been a two-question ballot: (a) Leave/Remain, (b) if Leave, EEA/no EEA - then EEA would have won by 70/30 and probably 80/20.
The reason Cameron didn't allow this, of course, is that Leave would have won by 60/40.
If this were to happen, Labour should tie this to other forms of government corruption: lies; broken manifesto pledges; cash for access; cash for honours; contracts for mates; and so on.
More likely Starmer and Mandelson are more concerned with bringing down Jeremy Corbyn than Boris Johnson.
Starmer and co need to publicly remove Corbyn as there are a lot of former Labour voters who claim they need Corbyn to be gone before they will return to the fold.
Basically for every @bigjohnowls there are 3+ centre of the road voters who need to know the more extreme left won't get control before they can safely return to voting Labour.
And at the moment keeping Bozo in power is better for Labour than a competent Tory leader
I don't agree with this at all. Starmer has been strongest when he's been seen as a non-partisan, uncorrupt alternative to Johnsonism, uniting the centre and left over the last few months. During this period , in which he's also made no explicit attacks on the left, his national poll ratings have claimed as high as 44%.
If he returns to the tactics that kept dividing his supporters last year, up to and including the party conference, I predict a returning press narrative of "Labour Splits", and quite possibly defeat at the next general election.
Starmers unequivocal stance yesterday that labour will not rejoin the EU must have upset many who hoped he would move in that direction and may just encourage some to support the lib dems
So will Starmer now admit his efforts to frustrate Brexit demonstrated poor judgment?
Based on what BREXIT now is - our inability to trade properly and our castration as a regional power? No. What the 2017 parliament should have done was pushed the Norway+ route over St Theresa's head. They failed to agree a single option so we went with no option.
You're right, of course, and so should the 2015 parliament from day 1 after the referendum. But that would have required the Eurozealots to admit defeat.
It would also have required the Europhobes to admit defeat. Norway+ is BRINO remember, and completely frustrates the Singapore-on-Thames Brexiteer group.
If the Eurozealots(*) had reacted to the result by saying "yes we lost, but only by a narrow margin, we should go for EEA" they would have had a comfortable majority amongst the public and the "all out"ers would have been marginalised.
(*) And yes, I include Cameron in this - his flounce was deeply damaging.
What about Free Movement though? You think retaining that would have been acceptable to most who voted Leave? I'm not sure of that myself. Immigration was a big driver of the vote. A totemic issue. Not so much amongst Leavers on here but as I think we all recognize it's not a good sample. We lack posters who represent the large number of people who voted Leave with immigration foremost in their minds. There's Isam and then maybe Isam. And not even him now since he's banned.
Oh, I think there's a fair bit of 'legitimate concerns about immigration' stuff on here. These high minded folk don't hold those views themselves you understand, they just can sympathise with those who feel uncomfortable hearing Romanian spoken on the Tube.
If this were to happen, Labour should tie this to other forms of government corruption: lies; broken manifesto pledges; cash for access; cash for honours; contracts for mates; and so on.
More likely Starmer and Mandelson are more concerned with bringing down Jeremy Corbyn than Boris Johnson.
Starmer and co need to publicly remove Corbyn as there are a lot of former Labour voters who claim they need Corbyn to be gone before they will return to the fold.
Basically for every @bigjohnowls there are 3+ centre of the road voters who need to know the more extreme left won't get control before they can safely return to voting Labour.
And at the moment keeping Bozo in power is better for Labour than a competent Tory leader
I don't agree with this at all. Starmer has been strongest when he's been seen as a non-partisan, uncorrupt alternative to Johnsonism, uniting the centre and left over the last few months. During this period , in which he's also made no explicit attacks on the left, his national poll ratings have claimed as high as 44%.
If he returns to the tactics that kept dividing his supporters last year, up to and including the party conference, I predict a returning press narrative of "Labour Splits", and quite possibly defeat at the next general election.
Starmers unequivocal stance yesterday that labour will not rejoin the EU must have upset many who hoped he would move in that direction and may just encourage some to support the lib dems
So will Starmer now admit his efforts to frustrate Brexit demonstrated poor judgment?
Based on what BREXIT now is - our inability to trade properly and our castration as a regional power? No. What the 2017 parliament should have done was pushed the Norway+ route over St Theresa's head. They failed to agree a single option so we went with no option.
You're right, of course, and so should the 2015 parliament from day 1 after the referendum. But that would have required the Eurozealots to admit defeat.
Labour voted for Norway+ but it was defeated by the Tory whipping operation. How that was the fault of eurozealots I will leave to those smarter than me to fathom.
Neither Labour nor the Tory whipping operation held a majority.
If the Eurozealots had backed Norway+ it could have passed, but they didn't. They went for double or nothing and they ended up with nothing.
This conversation started as an effort to criticise Starmer and Labour for trying to "frustrate Brexit". I can't speak for the behaviour of other parties that I don't support and over whom Labour had no influence. But Labour consistently sought to find a compromise solution and the principal block to that happening was the Tories' insistence on a hard Brexit.
No, the principal block is that the Eurozealots had fought so hard for so long (and were still fighting) to overturn the referendum result that anything they put forward as a "compromise" looked like a trap.
The time for EEA/Norway+ was immediately after the referendum.
Which the Europhobes wanting Singapore-on-Thames saw as an absolute betrayal.
You keep trying to highlight Labour's divisions whilst pretending there were no Tory divisions. Why is that? St Theresa denied the Norway+ option to placate her mouth-foaming backbenchers. That wasn't Labour was it?
Plenty of Labour MPs in Leave seats also opposed Norway+ as it meant continued free movement which their constituents had just voted against.
For example Lisa Nandy backed Brexit plus a Customs Union but opposed Norway+
Norway+ was the best outcome because it was almost certainly the preference of the median voter in the referendum. Since we are always being told that the referendum was not about immigration, I would assume that at least 2pp of the 52% were OK with free movement and just wanted us out of the political structures and the risk of ever closer union.
Leave only won with voters concerned about immigration AND sovereignty.
Without both Remain would have won, so Leave had to deliver promises to address both when it won the referendum
Only because the way Cameron rigged the referendum.
Had it been a two-question ballot: (a) Leave/Remain, (b) if Leave, EEA/no EEA - then EEA would have won by 70/30 and probably 80/20.
The reason Cameron didn't allow this, of course, is that Leave would have won by 60/40.
If this were to happen, Labour should tie this to other forms of government corruption: lies; broken manifesto pledges; cash for access; cash for honours; contracts for mates; and so on.
More likely Starmer and Mandelson are more concerned with bringing down Jeremy Corbyn than Boris Johnson.
Starmer and co need to publicly remove Corbyn as there are a lot of former Labour voters who claim they need Corbyn to be gone before they will return to the fold.
Basically for every @bigjohnowls there are 3+ centre of the road voters who need to know the more extreme left won't get control before they can safely return to voting Labour.
And at the moment keeping Bozo in power is better for Labour than a competent Tory leader
I don't agree with this at all. Starmer has been strongest when he's been seen as a non-partisan, uncorrupt alternative to Johnsonism, uniting the centre and left over the last few months. During this period , in which he's also made no explicit attacks on the left, his national poll ratings have claimed as high as 44%.
If he returns to the tactics that kept dividing his supporters last year, up to and including the party conference, I predict a returning press narrative of "Labour Splits", and quite possibly defeat at the next general election.
Starmers unequivocal stance yesterday that labour will not rejoin the EU must have upset many who hoped he would move in that direction and may just encourage some to support the lib dems
So will Starmer now admit his efforts to frustrate Brexit demonstrated poor judgment?
Based on what BREXIT now is - our inability to trade properly and our castration as a regional power? No. What the 2017 parliament should have done was pushed the Norway+ route over St Theresa's head. They failed to agree a single option so we went with no option.
You're right, of course, and so should the 2015 parliament from day 1 after the referendum. But that would have required the Eurozealots to admit defeat.
Labour voted for Norway+ but it was defeated by the Tory whipping operation. How that was the fault of eurozealots I will leave to those smarter than me to fathom.
Neither Labour nor the Tory whipping operation held a majority.
If the Eurozealots had backed Norway+ it could have passed, but they didn't. They went for double or nothing and they ended up with nothing.
This conversation started as an effort to criticise Starmer and Labour for trying to "frustrate Brexit". I can't speak for the behaviour of other parties that I don't support and over whom Labour had no influence. But Labour consistently sought to find a compromise solution and the principal block to that happening was the Tories' insistence on a hard Brexit.
No, the principal block is that the Eurozealots had fought so hard for so long (and were still fighting) to overturn the referendum result that anything they put forward as a "compromise" looked like a trap.
The time for EEA/Norway+ was immediately after the referendum.
Which the Europhobes wanting Singapore-on-Thames saw as an absolute betrayal.
You keep trying to highlight Labour's divisions whilst pretending there were no Tory divisions. Why is that? St Theresa denied the Norway+ option to placate her mouth-foaming backbenchers. That wasn't Labour was it?
Plenty of Labour MPs in Leave seats also opposed Norway+ as it meant continued free movement which their constituents had just voted against.
For example Lisa Nandy backed Brexit plus a Customs Union but opposed Norway+
Norway+ was the best outcome because it was almost certainly the preference of the median voter in the referendum. Since we are always being told that the referendum was not about immigration, I would assume that at least 2pp of the 52% were OK with free movement and just wanted us out of the political structures and the risk of ever closer union.
Leave only won with voters concerned about immigration AND sovereignty.
Without both Remain would have won, so Leave had to deliver promises to address both when it won the referendum
Under some not very stringent assumptions you can demonstrate that the median voter's preference is the optimal one from a social welfare point of view. If you think that the optimal solution is to satisfy the median voter within the 52% who voted for the winning side while putting zero weight on the views of the 48%, perhaps you shouldn't be too surprised if some of those 48% don't have much faith in the process and engage in other tactics to get their views heard.
Poor dome head Scholz head must be freezing 🥶 has he not been paying any attention to how to do the big Kremlin photo op!
The thing to look for is where he sits. Everyone else has been the length of a cricket pitch away from Putin at the other end of that huge table. If this is the case here too we can probably conclude the final diplomatic push by Germany has failed and it's war. But - and let's hope this is what we do see - if the two men sit cheek by jowl, all cosy, at one end of the table, maybe even with Putin's arm draped casually around the back of Scholz's chair, then it could be that a compromise has been reached.
If this were to happen, Labour should tie this to other forms of government corruption: lies; broken manifesto pledges; cash for access; cash for honours; contracts for mates; and so on.
More likely Starmer and Mandelson are more concerned with bringing down Jeremy Corbyn than Boris Johnson.
Starmer and co need to publicly remove Corbyn as there are a lot of former Labour voters who claim they need Corbyn to be gone before they will return to the fold.
Basically for every @bigjohnowls there are 3+ centre of the road voters who need to know the more extreme left won't get control before they can safely return to voting Labour.
And at the moment keeping Bozo in power is better for Labour than a competent Tory leader
I don't agree with this at all. Starmer has been strongest when he's been seen as a non-partisan, uncorrupt alternative to Johnsonism, uniting the centre and left over the last few months. During this period , in which he's also made no explicit attacks on the left, his national poll ratings have claimed as high as 44%.
If he returns to the tactics that kept dividing his supporters last year, up to and including the party conference, I predict a returning press narrative of "Labour Splits", and quite possibly defeat at the next general election.
Starmers unequivocal stance yesterday that labour will not rejoin the EU must have upset many who hoped he would move in that direction and may just encourage some to support the lib dems
So will Starmer now admit his efforts to frustrate Brexit demonstrated poor judgment?
Based on what BREXIT now is - our inability to trade properly and our castration as a regional power? No. What the 2017 parliament should have done was pushed the Norway+ route over St Theresa's head. They failed to agree a single option so we went with no option.
You're right, of course, and so should the 2015 parliament from day 1 after the referendum. But that would have required the Eurozealots to admit defeat.
Labour voted for Norway+ but it was defeated by the Tory whipping operation. How that was the fault of eurozealots I will leave to those smarter than me to fathom.
Neither Labour nor the Tory whipping operation held a majority.
If the Eurozealots had backed Norway+ it could have passed, but they didn't. They went for double or nothing and they ended up with nothing.
This conversation started as an effort to criticise Starmer and Labour for trying to "frustrate Brexit". I can't speak for the behaviour of other parties that I don't support and over whom Labour had no influence. But Labour consistently sought to find a compromise solution and the principal block to that happening was the Tories' insistence on a hard Brexit.
No, the principal block is that the Eurozealots had fought so hard for so long (and were still fighting) to overturn the referendum result that anything they put forward as a "compromise" looked like a trap.
The time for EEA/Norway+ was immediately after the referendum.
Which the Europhobes wanting Singapore-on-Thames saw as an absolute betrayal.
You keep trying to highlight Labour's divisions whilst pretending there were no Tory divisions. Why is that? St Theresa denied the Norway+ option to placate her mouth-foaming backbenchers. That wasn't Labour was it?
Plenty of Labour MPs in Leave seats also opposed Norway+ as it meant continued free movement which their constituents had just voted against.
For example Lisa Nandy backed Brexit plus a Customs Union but opposed Norway+
Norway+ was the best outcome because it was almost certainly the preference of the median voter in the referendum. Since we are always being told that the referendum was not about immigration, I would assume that at least 2pp of the 52% were OK with free movement and just wanted us out of the political structures and the risk of ever closer union.
Leave only won with voters concerned about immigration AND sovereignty.
Without both Remain would have won, so Leave had to deliver promises to address both when it won the referendum
Only because the way Cameron rigged the referendum.
Had it been a two-question ballot: (a) Leave/Remain, (b) if Leave, EEA/no EEA - then EEA would have won by 70/30 and probably 80/20.
The reason Cameron didn't allow this, of course, is that Leave would have won by 60/40.
Given EEA required free movement, I think it would have been more like Leave 60% Remain 40% on the first question, Leave to EEA only 55% Leave the EEA too 45% on the second question.
Most of that 45% would have been 2015 Tory voters who would have gone to UKIP had Leave won but only to stay in the EEA, though plenty of redwall Labour voters would have been in the group as well.
Time for people to move on from partygate, it's been done to death.
It's unfortunate the Met is wasting so much money on this.
Laughable
I don’t know why Dale’s post appeared flagged. It was accurate and put more politely than many on this forum.
In Dales defence I’ll post “Boris sacked in dogminus 7 days.
Can Admins see who does the false flag’s and banish the naughty ones?
PS Gary, in my opinion its still rumbling in background like a volcano about to erupt wiping out all life in Boris Citadel. Whatever MET are paying for this, it’s cheap price for honesty and probity in government and rules of the land that treat everyone equally and fairly
Some very odd flagging going on. My reply to Gary (which was unusually ON topic) also flagged for some reason.
Tragically, on this occasion Farage is nearly correct. Unfortunately, he also sees Putin as an "anti-woke" standard-bearer, for traditional values.
Putin is quite popular amongst the European nationalist hard right and amongst many Trump voters in the US for those reasons (indeed Trump himself was much less hostile to Putin than Biden now is).
I agree there is some truth in what Farage says, expanding NATO to the Ukraine was always too risky an option, it should focus on defending the states already within NATO
Anyone who likes Putin, or even just thinks "he has a point" isn't fit for any office in any democratic country. Putin is a murderous, lying, thieving head of a mafia-state.
If this were to happen, Labour should tie this to other forms of government corruption: lies; broken manifesto pledges; cash for access; cash for honours; contracts for mates; and so on.
More likely Starmer and Mandelson are more concerned with bringing down Jeremy Corbyn than Boris Johnson.
Starmer and co need to publicly remove Corbyn as there are a lot of former Labour voters who claim they need Corbyn to be gone before they will return to the fold.
Basically for every @bigjohnowls there are 3+ centre of the road voters who need to know the more extreme left won't get control before they can safely return to voting Labour.
And at the moment keeping Bozo in power is better for Labour than a competent Tory leader
I don't agree with this at all. Starmer has been strongest when he's been seen as a non-partisan, uncorrupt alternative to Johnsonism, uniting the centre and left over the last few months. During this period , in which he's also made no explicit attacks on the left, his national poll ratings have claimed as high as 44%.
If he returns to the tactics that kept dividing his supporters last year, up to and including the party conference, I predict a returning press narrative of "Labour Splits", and quite possibly defeat at the next general election.
Starmers unequivocal stance yesterday that labour will not rejoin the EU must have upset many who hoped he would move in that direction and may just encourage some to support the lib dems
So will Starmer now admit his efforts to frustrate Brexit demonstrated poor judgment?
Based on what BREXIT now is - our inability to trade properly and our castration as a regional power? No. What the 2017 parliament should have done was pushed the Norway+ route over St Theresa's head. They failed to agree a single option so we went with no option.
You're right, of course, and so should the 2015 parliament from day 1 after the referendum. But that would have required the Eurozealots to admit defeat.
Labour voted for Norway+ but it was defeated by the Tory whipping operation. How that was the fault of eurozealots I will leave to those smarter than me to fathom.
Neither Labour nor the Tory whipping operation held a majority.
If the Eurozealots had backed Norway+ it could have passed, but they didn't. They went for double or nothing and they ended up with nothing.
This conversation started as an effort to criticise Starmer and Labour for trying to "frustrate Brexit". I can't speak for the behaviour of other parties that I don't support and over whom Labour had no influence. But Labour consistently sought to find a compromise solution and the principal block to that happening was the Tories' insistence on a hard Brexit.
No, the principal block is that the Eurozealots had fought so hard for so long (and were still fighting) to overturn the referendum result that anything they put forward as a "compromise" looked like a trap.
The time for EEA/Norway+ was immediately after the referendum.
Which the Europhobes wanting Singapore-on-Thames saw as an absolute betrayal.
You keep trying to highlight Labour's divisions whilst pretending there were no Tory divisions. Why is that? St Theresa denied the Norway+ option to placate her mouth-foaming backbenchers. That wasn't Labour was it?
Plenty of Labour MPs in Leave seats also opposed Norway+ as it meant continued free movement which their constituents had just voted against.
For example Lisa Nandy backed Brexit plus a Customs Union but opposed Norway+
Norway+ was the best outcome because it was almost certainly the preference of the median voter in the referendum. Since we are always being told that the referendum was not about immigration, I would assume that at least 2pp of the 52% were OK with free movement and just wanted us out of the political structures and the risk of ever closer union.
Leave only won with voters concerned about immigration AND sovereignty.
Without both Remain would have won, so Leave had to deliver promises to address both when it won the referendum
Only because the way Cameron rigged the referendum.
Had it been a two-question ballot: (a) Leave/Remain, (b) if Leave, EEA/no EEA - then EEA would have won by 70/30 and probably 80/20.
The reason Cameron didn't allow this, of course, is that Leave would have won by 60/40.
"rigged"
Well, it's an emotive term, I admit that.
But, really, was his intention to settle the issue - or was it to win the referendum?
Someone posted this on site a couple of days ago “Whilst Putin doesn’t appear to have goals easily achievable through military action, he will clearly gain a lot if he moves EU and Ukraine towards those Minsk Protocol’s so far not implemented. We have no choice but to consider this, because if he doesn’t initiate military conflict, and we hail ourselves on the triumph of thwarting his invasion - we may actually overlook what Putin’s plan actually has been all along, and crucially still ongoing in the years to come. I suggest we monitor the media carefully not just for signs of invasion or false flag operations, but listen to what EU capitals, and the Ukrainian government, are saying about Nord and Minsk Protocols.”
If the EU start to say things about considering Russia’s security concerns in all this negotiating, Russia dismantles its build up with a big 😝 in direction of Washington, then not to underestimate what a Gas pipeline or two can actually win you?
So with war over and negotiations that consider Russian security in all this being given a chance, does the media narrative shift back now to vaccination status of tennis players and the other big Moscow story - Boris Moscow?
Someone on PB has started a countdown to Big Dog’s neutering and it stands today at just Snip minus 7 days 😲
I think there is no agreement as to what the Minsk protocol actually means.
The current Russian Government position is that they are not a party to Minsk. Or, I think, to Minsk II.
And what they want is a further move to give them control over what happens in other sovereign countries, whilst denying that to others in their own country.
If EuCo starts making noises as you suggest, then it will encourage Russia to try the same in Poland and the Baltics and Finland, and imo put themselves in the same place as France and the UK in 1938.
Your entitled to your view. For some “negotiations that also consider Russian security concerns in all this” is yet another reason to hate and bash the EU.
Ukraine position is to have both NATO membership AND to retake parts of its own sovereign territory held by the Russians. Do you support the UK and Washington fast tracking Ukraine NATO membership? In your opinion why don’t they have it yet? Can they have it by the end of the year? Up until then “standing shoulder to shoulder with democratic sovereign nation” is just hollow words or even lies isn’t it?
They haven't fast tracked it. No-one in NATO is really talking about Ukraine joining. It is a permanent aspiration much like Turkey joining the EU.
This is for the same reason that Finland isn't a member - because it would be seen as too much of a provocation to Russia.
The "standing shoulder to shoulder with democratic sovereign nation" is not a lie, because it is possible to stand shoulder to shoulder with a nation without them joining NATO. Neither Sweden or Finland are in NATO - but no-one doubts that if they were attacked, that NATO would come to their aid.
What Putin has achieved with his build up etc is that Ukraine is now moved up the ranks of Friends Of NATO. Not quote to the level of Finland, which is so nearly in NATO that if someone sneezes.... But massively higher than it was.
Finland hasn't applied to join NATO, and spent the cold war (like Austria) being pretty close to the USSR.
I don't follow this thread header. The worst thing surely is Boris being fined, but then not being VONCed? Having a confirmed law breaker in post is surely the worst scenario.
If he's not fined, because he's not broken the law, then that would be strange given all the reporting that has happened - but if he's not actually broken the law then he's not broken the rules. But I expect he will be and surely being fined and then kept on is the worst case scenario?
Yes, if he isn't fined, it becomes tricky for Starmer to have ago at him without also appearing to criticize the police.
Bollox, he is an open goal, liying , cheating , four faced rat.
Someone posted this on site a couple of days ago “Whilst Putin doesn’t appear to have goals easily achievable through military action, he will clearly gain a lot if he moves EU and Ukraine towards those Minsk Protocol’s so far not implemented. We have no choice but to consider this, because if he doesn’t initiate military conflict, and we hail ourselves on the triumph of thwarting his invasion - we may actually overlook what Putin’s plan actually has been all along, and crucially still ongoing in the years to come. I suggest we monitor the media carefully not just for signs of invasion or false flag operations, but listen to what EU capitals, and the Ukrainian government, are saying about Nord and Minsk Protocols.”
If the EU start to say things about considering Russia’s security concerns in all this negotiating, Russia dismantles its build up with a big 😝 in direction of Washington, then not to underestimate what a Gas pipeline or two can actually win you?
So with war over and negotiations that consider Russian security in all this being given a chance, does the media narrative shift back now to vaccination status of tennis players and the other big Moscow story - Boris Moscow?
Someone on PB has started a countdown to Big Dog’s neutering and it stands today at just Snip minus 7 days 😲
I think there is no agreement as to what the Minsk protocol actually means.
The current Russian Government position is that they are not a party to Minsk. Or, I think, to Minsk II.
And what they want is a further move to give them control over what happens in other sovereign countries, whilst denying that to others in their own country.
If EuCo starts making noises as you suggest, then it will encourage Russia to try the same in Poland and the Baltics and Finland, and imo put themselves in the same place as France and the UK in 1938.
Your entitled to your view. For some “negotiations that also consider Russian security concerns in all this” is yet another reason to hate and bash the EU.
Ukraine position is to have both NATO membership AND to retake parts of its own sovereign territory held by the Russians. Do you support the UK and Washington fast tracking Ukraine NATO membership? In your opinion why don’t they have it yet? Can they have it by the end of the year? Up until then “standing shoulder to shoulder with democratic sovereign nation” is just hollow words or even lies isn’t it?
They haven't fast tracked it. No-one in NATO is really talking about Ukraine joining. It is a permanent aspiration much like Turkey joining the EU.
This is for the same reason that Finland isn't a member - because it would be seen as too much of a provocation to Russia.
The "standing shoulder to shoulder with democratic sovereign nation" is not a lie, because it is possible to stand shoulder to shoulder with a nation without them joining NATO. Neither Sweden or Finland are in NATO - but no-one doubts that if they were attacked, that NATO would come to their aid.
What Putin has achieved with his build up etc is that Ukraine is now moved up the ranks of Friends Of NATO. Not quote to the level of Finland, which is so nearly in NATO that if someone sneezes.... But massively higher than it was.
Finland hasn't applied to join NATO, and spent the cold war (like Austria) being pretty close to the USSR.
Their closeness to the USSR was an interesting one - while they superficially claimed to be some version of neutral, everyone knew that invading Finland was a Day One move for the USSR, when/if the Big Mistake happened.
It was quite noticeable how fast that turned into practically-a-memeber-of-NATO at the end of the Cold War.
If this were to happen, Labour should tie this to other forms of government corruption: lies; broken manifesto pledges; cash for access; cash for honours; contracts for mates; and so on.
More likely Starmer and Mandelson are more concerned with bringing down Jeremy Corbyn than Boris Johnson.
Starmer and co need to publicly remove Corbyn as there are a lot of former Labour voters who claim they need Corbyn to be gone before they will return to the fold.
Basically for every @bigjohnowls there are 3+ centre of the road voters who need to know the more extreme left won't get control before they can safely return to voting Labour.
And at the moment keeping Bozo in power is better for Labour than a competent Tory leader
I don't agree with this at all. Starmer has been strongest when he's been seen as a non-partisan, uncorrupt alternative to Johnsonism, uniting the centre and left over the last few months. During this period , in which he's also made no explicit attacks on the left, his national poll ratings have claimed as high as 44%.
If he returns to the tactics that kept dividing his supporters last year, up to and including the party conference, I predict a returning press narrative of "Labour Splits", and quite possibly defeat at the next general election.
Starmers unequivocal stance yesterday that labour will not rejoin the EU must have upset many who hoped he would move in that direction and may just encourage some to support the lib dems
So will Starmer now admit his efforts to frustrate Brexit demonstrated poor judgment?
Based on what BREXIT now is - our inability to trade properly and our castration as a regional power? No. What the 2017 parliament should have done was pushed the Norway+ route over St Theresa's head. They failed to agree a single option so we went with no option.
You're right, of course, and so should the 2015 parliament from day 1 after the referendum. But that would have required the Eurozealots to admit defeat.
Labour voted for Norway+ but it was defeated by the Tory whipping operation. How that was the fault of eurozealots I will leave to those smarter than me to fathom.
Neither Labour nor the Tory whipping operation held a majority.
If the Eurozealots had backed Norway+ it could have passed, but they didn't. They went for double or nothing and they ended up with nothing.
This conversation started as an effort to criticise Starmer and Labour for trying to "frustrate Brexit". I can't speak for the behaviour of other parties that I don't support and over whom Labour had no influence. But Labour consistently sought to find a compromise solution and the principal block to that happening was the Tories' insistence on a hard Brexit.
No, the principal block is that the Eurozealots had fought so hard for so long (and were still fighting) to overturn the referendum result that anything they put forward as a "compromise" looked like a trap.
The time for EEA/Norway+ was immediately after the referendum.
Which the Europhobes wanting Singapore-on-Thames saw as an absolute betrayal.
You keep trying to highlight Labour's divisions whilst pretending there were no Tory divisions. Why is that? St Theresa denied the Norway+ option to placate her mouth-foaming backbenchers. That wasn't Labour was it?
Plenty of Labour MPs in Leave seats also opposed Norway+ as it meant continued free movement which their constituents had just voted against.
For example Lisa Nandy backed Brexit plus a Customs Union but opposed Norway+
Norway+ was the best outcome because it was almost certainly the preference of the median voter in the referendum. Since we are always being told that the referendum was not about immigration, I would assume that at least 2pp of the 52% were OK with free movement and just wanted us out of the political structures and the risk of ever closer union.
Leave only won with voters concerned about immigration AND sovereignty.
Without both Remain would have won, so Leave had to deliver promises to address both when it won the referendum
Only because the way Cameron rigged the referendum.
Had it been a two-question ballot: (a) Leave/Remain, (b) if Leave, EEA/no EEA - then EEA would have won by 70/30 and probably 80/20.
The reason Cameron didn't allow this, of course, is that Leave would have won by 60/40.
"rigged"
Well, it's an emotive term, I admit that.
But, really, was his intention to settle the issue - or was it to win the referendum?
To win the referendum. If you're looking for people on either side of the referendum who were acting in a good an honourable way, I wish you the best of luck. The strategic failures of both sides have been gone over so much as to no longer be novel or interesting. Which is why I guess you have to up the ante to saying things like "rigged" to still land any kind of blow. But seeing as that's plainly false, all you're really doing is a continuation of the bad and dishonourable behaviour I mentioned in sentence 2.
Tragically, on this occasion Farage is nearly correct. Unfortunately, he also sees Putin as an "anti-woke" standard-bearer, for traditional values.
Putin is quite popular amongst the European nationalist hard right and amongst many Trump voters in the US for those reasons (indeed Trump himself was much less hostile to Putin than Biden now is).
I agree there is some truth in what Farage says, expanding NATO to the Ukraine was always too risky an option, it should focus on defending the states already within NATO
Anyone who likes Putin, or even just thinks "he has a point" isn't fit for any office in any democratic country. Putin is a murderous, lying, thieving head of a mafia-state.
Tbf Leon isn't running for office. Yet.
Putin has an extremely good point about Wokeness, just as Hitler was spot-on about motorways
It’s actually quite hard to find a serious world leader who was or is terribly wrong about everything. Stalin was a highly effective if terrifically brutal war leader
RT’s Simonyan “We showed everyone what we wanted. Previously, they didn’t even want to talk to us about security, but now there is a line of people wanting admire the views of Moscow in Feb” Says West should remember tanks can go back to border at any time
Someone posted this on site a couple of days ago “Whilst Putin doesn’t appear to have goals easily achievable through military action, he will clearly gain a lot if he moves EU and Ukraine towards those Minsk Protocol’s so far not implemented. We have no choice but to consider this, because if he doesn’t initiate military conflict, and we hail ourselves on the triumph of thwarting his invasion - we may actually overlook what Putin’s plan actually has been all along, and crucially still ongoing in the years to come. I suggest we monitor the media carefully not just for signs of invasion or false flag operations, but listen to what EU capitals, and the Ukrainian government, are saying about Nord and Minsk Protocols.”
If the EU start to say things about considering Russia’s security concerns in all this negotiating, Russia dismantles its build up with a big 😝 in direction of Washington, then not to underestimate what a Gas pipeline or two can actually win you?
So with war over and negotiations that consider Russian security in all this being given a chance, does the media narrative shift back now to vaccination status of tennis players and the other big Moscow story - Boris Moscow?
Someone on PB has started a countdown to Big Dog’s neutering and it stands today at just Snip minus 7 days 😲
I think there is no agreement as to what the Minsk protocol actually means.
The current Russian Government position is that they are not a party to Minsk. Or, I think, to Minsk II.
And what they want is a further move to give them control over what happens in other sovereign countries, whilst denying that to others in their own country.
If EuCo starts making noises as you suggest, then it will encourage Russia to try the same in Poland and the Baltics and Finland, and imo put themselves in the same place as France and the UK in 1938.
Your entitled to your view. For some “negotiations that also consider Russian security concerns in all this” is yet another reason to hate and bash the EU.
Ukraine position is to have both NATO membership AND to retake parts of its own sovereign territory held by the Russians. Do you support the UK and Washington fast tracking Ukraine NATO membership? In your opinion why don’t they have it yet? Can they have it by the end of the year? Up until then “standing shoulder to shoulder with democratic sovereign nation” is just hollow words or even lies isn’t it?
They haven't fast tracked it. No-one in NATO is really talking about Ukraine joining. It is a permanent aspiration much like Turkey joining the EU.
This is for the same reason that Finland isn't a member - because it would be seen as too much of a provocation to Russia.
The "standing shoulder to shoulder with democratic sovereign nation" is not a lie, because it is possible to stand shoulder to shoulder with a nation without them joining NATO. Neither Sweden or Finland are in NATO - but no-one doubts that if they were attacked, that NATO would come to their aid.
What Putin has achieved with his build up etc is that Ukraine is now moved up the ranks of Friends Of NATO. Not quote to the level of Finland, which is so nearly in NATO that if someone sneezes.... But massively higher than it was.
Finland hasn't applied to join NATO, and spent the cold war (like Austria) being pretty close to the USSR.
Their closeness to the USSR was an interesting one - while they superficially claimed to be some version of neutral, everyone knew that invading Finland was a Day One move for the USSR, when/if the Big Mistake happened.
It was quite noticeable how fast that turned into practically-a-memeber-of-NATO at the end of the Cold War.
About that closeness to Russia thing...
No 10 pressured me to drop anti-money laundering measures, says ex-minister https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2022/feb/15/no-10-pressure-money-laundering-measures-lord-faulks ...He recalls that in return for dropping his amendments he was assured in May 2018 by the Foreign Office minister Lord Ahmad that the legislation on a property register would be passed in 2019 in time for it to be functioning no later than early 2021. He was asked to chair a joint committee of both houses to scrutinise the government draft overseas entities bill, the measure that would bring in the register.
The Foreign Office has been approached for comment.
His joint committee duly reported in May 2019, stressing that time was of the essence, and proposed improvements including verification checks to ensure that trusts could not be used to disguise the ultimate owners of property. On publication of his report he was assured by ministers that they understood the urgency.
Faulks, who has just completed a government commissioned report on judicial review, said “over a period of five years successive ministers have offered me emollient promises that the issue was in hand. What has happened? Absolutely nothing. In the meantime, frankly, we look like a laughing stock. We are not responding to the threat of economic crime. Instead, we are giving away golden visas and the rest of the world must think we simply do not care”.
He branded unexplained wealth orders as pathetic, pointing out only four had been issued and said the issue of the resourcing of the National Crime Agency was critical. He pointed out that the idea of a register of overseas property owner had first been aired by David Cameron in 2015 and in a speech to an anti-corruption summit he had convened in 2016. He said perhaps “the climate is now changing because we all hate the Russians now”.
A growing number of Conservative MPs are seeking unequivocal assurances that an economic crime bill containing the register will be in the next Queen’s speech, regardless of whether Russia invades Ukraine.
Tom Tugendhat, the chair of the foreign affairs committee, said the government had done “nothing” to stem the flow of illicit funds entering Britain from Russia and urged ministers to act in order to stand up to the Kremlin...
Someone posted this on site a couple of days ago “Whilst Putin doesn’t appear to have goals easily achievable through military action, he will clearly gain a lot if he moves EU and Ukraine towards those Minsk Protocol’s so far not implemented. We have no choice but to consider this, because if he doesn’t initiate military conflict, and we hail ourselves on the triumph of thwarting his invasion - we may actually overlook what Putin’s plan actually has been all along, and crucially still ongoing in the years to come. I suggest we monitor the media carefully not just for signs of invasion or false flag operations, but listen to what EU capitals, and the Ukrainian government, are saying about Nord and Minsk Protocols.”
If the EU start to say things about considering Russia’s security concerns in all this negotiating, Russia dismantles its build up with a big 😝 in direction of Washington, then not to underestimate what a Gas pipeline or two can actually win you?
So with war over and negotiations that consider Russian security in all this being given a chance, does the media narrative shift back now to vaccination status of tennis players and the other big Moscow story - Boris Moscow?
Someone on PB has started a countdown to Big Dog’s neutering and it stands today at just Snip minus 7 days 😲
I think there is no agreement as to what the Minsk protocol actually means.
The current Russian Government position is that they are not a party to Minsk. Or, I think, to Minsk II.
And what they want is a further move to give them control over what happens in other sovereign countries, whilst denying that to others in their own country.
If EuCo starts making noises as you suggest, then it will encourage Russia to try the same in Poland and the Baltics and Finland, and imo put themselves in the same place as France and the UK in 1938.
Your entitled to your view. For some “negotiations that also consider Russian security concerns in all this” is yet another reason to hate and bash the EU.
Ukraine position is to have both NATO membership AND to retake parts of its own sovereign territory held by the Russians. Do you support the UK and Washington fast tracking Ukraine NATO membership? In your opinion why don’t they have it yet? Can they have it by the end of the year? Up until then “standing shoulder to shoulder with democratic sovereign nation” is just hollow words or even lies isn’t it?
They haven't fast tracked it. No-one in NATO is really talking about Ukraine joining. It is a permanent aspiration much like Turkey joining the EU.
This is for the same reason that Finland isn't a member - because it would be seen as too much of a provocation to Russia.
The "standing shoulder to shoulder with democratic sovereign nation" is not a lie, because it is possible to stand shoulder to shoulder with a nation without them joining NATO. Neither Sweden or Finland are in NATO - but no-one doubts that if they were attacked, that NATO would come to their aid.
What Putin has achieved with his build up etc is that Ukraine is now moved up the ranks of Friends Of NATO. Not quote to the level of Finland, which is so nearly in NATO that if someone sneezes.... But massively higher than it was.
Finland hasn't applied to join NATO, and spent the cold war (like Austria) being pretty close to the USSR.
Their closeness to the USSR was an interesting one - while they superficially claimed to be some version of neutral, everyone knew that invading Finland was a Day One move for the USSR, when/if the Big Mistake happened.
It was quite noticeable how fast that turned into practically-a-memeber-of-NATO at the end of the Cold War.
It’s not often I disagree with one of your knowledgable posts Malmsy, but
“ The "standing shoulder to shoulder with democratic sovereign nation" is not a lie, because it is possible to stand shoulder to shoulder with a nation without them joining NATO. Neither Sweden or Finland are in NATO - but no-one doubts that if they were attacked, that NATO would come to their aid. ”
That’s not a true comparison - we were just about to stand by and let Putin hang draw quarter and boil the head of Ukraines democracy, sovereignty, and right to political self determination weren’t we - allowing Russia to do this with military air superiority over the Ukraine nation.
Tragically, on this occasion Farage is nearly correct. Unfortunately, he also sees Putin as an "anti-woke" standard-bearer, for traditional values.
Putin is quite popular amongst the European nationalist hard right and amongst many Trump voters in the US for those reasons (indeed Trump himself was much less hostile to Putin than Biden now is).
I agree there is some truth in what Farage says, expanding NATO to the Ukraine was always too risky an option, it should focus on defending the states already within NATO
Anyone who likes Putin, or even just thinks "he has a point" isn't fit for any office in any democratic country. Putin is a murderous, lying, thieving head of a mafia-state.
Tbf Leon isn't running for office. Yet.
Putin has an extremely good point about Wokeness, just as Hitler was spot-on about motorways
It’s actually quite hard to find a serious world leader who was or is terribly wrong about everything. Stalin was a highly effective if terrifically brutal war leader
If this were to happen, Labour should tie this to other forms of government corruption: lies; broken manifesto pledges; cash for access; cash for honours; contracts for mates; and so on.
More likely Starmer and Mandelson are more concerned with bringing down Jeremy Corbyn than Boris Johnson.
Starmer and co need to publicly remove Corbyn as there are a lot of former Labour voters who claim they need Corbyn to be gone before they will return to the fold.
Basically for every @bigjohnowls there are 3+ centre of the road voters who need to know the more extreme left won't get control before they can safely return to voting Labour.
And at the moment keeping Bozo in power is better for Labour than a competent Tory leader
I don't agree with this at all. Starmer has been strongest when he's been seen as a non-partisan, uncorrupt alternative to Johnsonism, uniting the centre and left over the last few months. During this period , in which he's also made no explicit attacks on the left, his national poll ratings have claimed as high as 44%.
If he returns to the tactics that kept dividing his supporters last year, up to and including the party conference, I predict a returning press narrative of "Labour Splits", and quite possibly defeat at the next general election.
Starmers unequivocal stance yesterday that labour will not rejoin the EU must have upset many who hoped he would move in that direction and may just encourage some to support the lib dems
So will Starmer now admit his efforts to frustrate Brexit demonstrated poor judgment?
Based on what BREXIT now is - our inability to trade properly and our castration as a regional power? No. What the 2017 parliament should have done was pushed the Norway+ route over St Theresa's head. They failed to agree a single option so we went with no option.
You're right, of course, and so should the 2015 parliament from day 1 after the referendum. But that would have required the Eurozealots to admit defeat.
There is, naturally, plenty of blame to go around & the pro-Euro / anti-government factions’ refusal to vote for any of the saner options in the meaningful votes is absolutely on them.
Equally, Brexiteer intransigence & unwillingness to understand EU red lines is /also/ what got us where we are today. Euro die hards and mad Brexiteers holding hands across the aisle: a love song for the ages.
Ah the old perennial! When the world stops revolving and spins slowly down to die we'll still be doing this one - Who is to blame for the worst case Brexit we got? (with Tory landslide and worst PM in history thrown in for luck).
My view on it is the same as 'TimS' posted a few days ago. Essentially nobody. The 2017 Parliament was fiendishly distributed into its various factions and each one played their hand logically (as they saw it) according to their different agendas and priorities and objectives.
Fwiw (and I did say this at the time) imo the biggest error by the Forces of Light was the Benn Act aka Surrender Bill. This allowed Dick Dom Dastardly and his sidekick Muscly Muttley to frame the People v Parliament narrative which powered the GE result on Dec 12th (and therefore the Brexit outcome).
It's the key "what if?", that's for sure.
Given the opportunity, would Boris'n'Dom have crashed out with no deal? Without the cover of the Benn Act, how would they have swerved?
(I think the answer to the first is "no"; when push has come to shove, the UK has always blinked because not blinking is insane, but I don't see what the answer to the second is.)
Yep. exactly my analysis. They wouldn't have done No Deal and - my answer to the 2nd - would have asked for an extension. An extension that, without the cover of being forced to do it by the Benn Act, would not have been such a political boon, in fact would have been the opposite. They were in a hole, the Benn Act was the rope ladder thrown down (and then some).
Tragically, on this occasion Farage is nearly correct. Unfortunately, he also sees Putin as an "anti-woke" standard-bearer, for traditional values.
Putin is quite popular amongst the European nationalist hard right and amongst many Trump voters in the US for those reasons (indeed Trump himself was much less hostile to Putin than Biden now is).
I agree there is some truth in what Farage says, expanding NATO to the Ukraine was always too risky an option, it should focus on defending the states already within NATO
Anyone who likes Putin, or even just thinks "he has a point" isn't fit for any office in any democratic country. Putin is a murderous, lying, thieving head of a mafia-state.
Tbf Leon isn't running for office. Yet.
Putin has an extremely good point about Wokeness, just as Hitler was spot-on about motorways
It’s actually quite hard to find a serious world leader who was or is terribly wrong about everything. Stalin was a highly effective if terrifically brutal war leader
Trump was right about lab leak. And so forth
I had missed that. Where was Hitler on gyratory systems.
Tragically, on this occasion Farage is nearly correct. Unfortunately, he also sees Putin as an "anti-woke" standard-bearer, for traditional values.
Putin is quite popular amongst the European nationalist hard right and amongst many Trump voters in the US for those reasons (indeed Trump himself was much less hostile to Putin than Biden now is).
I agree there is some truth in what Farage says, expanding NATO to the Ukraine was always too risky an option, it should focus on defending the states already within NATO
Anyone who likes Putin, or even just thinks "he has a point" isn't fit for any office in any democratic country. Putin is a murderous, lying, thieving head of a mafia-state.
Tbf Leon isn't running for office. Yet.
Putin has an extremely good point about Wokeness, just as Hitler was spot-on about motorways
It’s actually quite hard to find a serious world leader who was or is terribly wrong about everything. Stalin was a highly effective if terrifically brutal war leader
Trump was right about lab leak. And so forth
I had missed that. Where was Hitler on gyratory systems.
Whoever designed the Hanger Lane Gyratory deserves to be in the same place as Adolf, in my opinion.
If this were to happen, Labour should tie this to other forms of government corruption: lies; broken manifesto pledges; cash for access; cash for honours; contracts for mates; and so on.
More likely Starmer and Mandelson are more concerned with bringing down Jeremy Corbyn than Boris Johnson.
Starmer and co need to publicly remove Corbyn as there are a lot of former Labour voters who claim they need Corbyn to be gone before they will return to the fold.
Basically for every @bigjohnowls there are 3+ centre of the road voters who need to know the more extreme left won't get control before they can safely return to voting Labour.
And at the moment keeping Bozo in power is better for Labour than a competent Tory leader
I don't agree with this at all. Starmer has been strongest when he's been seen as a non-partisan, uncorrupt alternative to Johnsonism, uniting the centre and left over the last few months. During this period , in which he's also made no explicit attacks on the left, his national poll ratings have claimed as high as 44%.
If he returns to the tactics that kept dividing his supporters last year, up to and including the party conference, I predict a returning press narrative of "Labour Splits", and quite possibly defeat at the next general election.
Starmers unequivocal stance yesterday that labour will not rejoin the EU must have upset many who hoped he would move in that direction and may just encourage some to support the lib dems
So will Starmer now admit his efforts to frustrate Brexit demonstrated poor judgment?
Based on what BREXIT now is - our inability to trade properly and our castration as a regional power? No. What the 2017 parliament should have done was pushed the Norway+ route over St Theresa's head. They failed to agree a single option so we went with no option.
You're right, of course, and so should the 2015 parliament from day 1 after the referendum. But that would have required the Eurozealots to admit defeat.
Labour voted for Norway+ but it was defeated by the Tory whipping operation. How that was the fault of eurozealots I will leave to those smarter than me to fathom.
Neither Labour nor the Tory whipping operation held a majority.
If the Eurozealots had backed Norway+ it could have passed, but they didn't. They went for double or nothing and they ended up with nothing.
This conversation started as an effort to criticise Starmer and Labour for trying to "frustrate Brexit". I can't speak for the behaviour of other parties that I don't support and over whom Labour had no influence. But Labour consistently sought to find a compromise solution and the principal block to that happening was the Tories' insistence on a hard Brexit.
No, the principal block is that the Eurozealots had fought so hard for so long (and were still fighting) to overturn the referendum result that anything they put forward as a "compromise" looked like a trap.
The time for EEA/Norway+ was immediately after the referendum.
Which the Europhobes wanting Singapore-on-Thames saw as an absolute betrayal.
You keep trying to highlight Labour's divisions whilst pretending there were no Tory divisions. Why is that? St Theresa denied the Norway+ option to placate her mouth-foaming backbenchers. That wasn't Labour was it?
Plenty of Labour MPs in Leave seats also opposed Norway+ as it meant continued free movement which their constituents had just voted against.
For example Lisa Nandy backed Brexit plus a Customs Union but opposed Norway+
Norway+ was the best outcome because it was almost certainly the preference of the median voter in the referendum. Since we are always being told that the referendum was not about immigration, I would assume that at least 2pp of the 52% were OK with free movement and just wanted us out of the political structures and the risk of ever closer union.
Leave only won with voters concerned about immigration AND sovereignty.
Without both Remain would have won, so Leave had to deliver promises to address both when it won the referendum
Only because the way Cameron rigged the referendum.
Had it been a two-question ballot: (a) Leave/Remain, (b) if Leave, EEA/no EEA - then EEA would have won by 70/30 and probably 80/20.
The reason Cameron didn't allow this, of course, is that Leave would have won by 60/40.
"rigged"
Well, it's an emotive term, I admit that.
But, really, was his intention to settle the issue - or was it to win the referendum?
To win the referendum. If you're looking for people on either side of the referendum who were acting in a good an honourable way, I wish you the best of luck. The strategic failures of both sides have been gone over so much as to no longer be novel or interesting. Which is why I guess you have to up the ante to saying things like "rigged" to still land any kind of blow. But seeing as that's plainly false, all you're really doing is a continuation of the bad and dishonourable behaviour I mentioned in sentence 2.
Does "deliberately chose the rules of the referendum that maximised the chance of his side winning" suit you better?
No I'm afraid Nico and HY miss the point, and overstate the importance of the boneheads on the far right.
We joined the EU because of a coalition of moderates in both the Conservative Party and Labour. The extremists in both parties were just that. The consensus was in the middle.
We would have stayed in the EU if the Labour Party had not become so utterly toxic under Corbyn.
We might have narrowly voted to stay in the EU if Blair had imposed transition controls on free movement from the new Eastern European accession nations in 2004 like Germany did for 7 years for example. It was Labour's failure to do that that got Leave from about 45% to 52%
If Corbyn had been balls out for Remain rather than the lukewarm 7/10 he gave it then I'm pretty sure you and I would have been on the winning side and Remain would have won.
What if he'd campaigned 10/20 for Leave? Might that have had the same effect of boosting Remain?
Poor dome head Scholz head must be freezing 🥶 has he not been paying any attention to how to do the big Kremlin photo op!
The thing to look for is where he sits. Everyone else has been the length of a cricket pitch away from Putin at the other end of that huge table. If this is the case here too we can probably conclude the final diplomatic push by Germany has failed and it's war. But - and let's hope this is what we do see - if the two men sit cheek by jowl, all cosy, at one end of the table, maybe even with Putin's arm draped casually around the back of Scholz's chair, then it could be that a compromise has been reached.
The problem with that post Kin, he appears to use even longer tables with his own cabinet?
If this were to happen, Labour should tie this to other forms of government corruption: lies; broken manifesto pledges; cash for access; cash for honours; contracts for mates; and so on.
More likely Starmer and Mandelson are more concerned with bringing down Jeremy Corbyn than Boris Johnson.
Starmer and co need to publicly remove Corbyn as there are a lot of former Labour voters who claim they need Corbyn to be gone before they will return to the fold.
Basically for every @bigjohnowls there are 3+ centre of the road voters who need to know the more extreme left won't get control before they can safely return to voting Labour.
And at the moment keeping Bozo in power is better for Labour than a competent Tory leader
I don't agree with this at all. Starmer has been strongest when he's been seen as a non-partisan, uncorrupt alternative to Johnsonism, uniting the centre and left over the last few months. During this period , in which he's also made no explicit attacks on the left, his national poll ratings have claimed as high as 44%.
If he returns to the tactics that kept dividing his supporters last year, up to and including the party conference, I predict a returning press narrative of "Labour Splits", and quite possibly defeat at the next general election.
Starmers unequivocal stance yesterday that labour will not rejoin the EU must have upset many who hoped he would move in that direction and may just encourage some to support the lib dems
So will Starmer now admit his efforts to frustrate Brexit demonstrated poor judgment?
Based on what BREXIT now is - our inability to trade properly and our castration as a regional power? No. What the 2017 parliament should have done was pushed the Norway+ route over St Theresa's head. They failed to agree a single option so we went with no option.
You're right, of course, and so should the 2015 parliament from day 1 after the referendum. But that would have required the Eurozealots to admit defeat.
Labour voted for Norway+ but it was defeated by the Tory whipping operation. How that was the fault of eurozealots I will leave to those smarter than me to fathom.
Neither Labour nor the Tory whipping operation held a majority.
If the Eurozealots had backed Norway+ it could have passed, but they didn't. They went for double or nothing and they ended up with nothing.
This conversation started as an effort to criticise Starmer and Labour for trying to "frustrate Brexit". I can't speak for the behaviour of other parties that I don't support and over whom Labour had no influence. But Labour consistently sought to find a compromise solution and the principal block to that happening was the Tories' insistence on a hard Brexit.
No, the principal block is that the Eurozealots had fought so hard for so long (and were still fighting) to overturn the referendum result that anything they put forward as a "compromise" looked like a trap.
The time for EEA/Norway+ was immediately after the referendum.
Which the Europhobes wanting Singapore-on-Thames saw as an absolute betrayal.
You keep trying to highlight Labour's divisions whilst pretending there were no Tory divisions. Why is that? St Theresa denied the Norway+ option to placate her mouth-foaming backbenchers. That wasn't Labour was it?
Plenty of Labour MPs in Leave seats also opposed Norway+ as it meant continued free movement which their constituents had just voted against.
For example Lisa Nandy backed Brexit plus a Customs Union but opposed Norway+
Norway+ was the best outcome because it was almost certainly the preference of the median voter in the referendum. Since we are always being told that the referendum was not about immigration, I would assume that at least 2pp of the 52% were OK with free movement and just wanted us out of the political structures and the risk of ever closer union.
Leave only won with voters concerned about immigration AND sovereignty.
Without both Remain would have won, so Leave had to deliver promises to address both when it won the referendum
Only because the way Cameron rigged the referendum.
Had it been a two-question ballot: (a) Leave/Remain, (b) if Leave, EEA/no EEA - then EEA would have won by 70/30 and probably 80/20.
The reason Cameron didn't allow this, of course, is that Leave would have won by 60/40.
"rigged"
Well, it's an emotive term, I admit that.
But, really, was his intention to settle the issue - or was it to win the referendum?
To win the referendum. If you're looking for people on either side of the referendum who were acting in a good an honourable way, I wish you the best of luck. The strategic failures of both sides have been gone over so much as to no longer be novel or interesting. Which is why I guess you have to up the ante to saying things like "rigged" to still land any kind of blow. But seeing as that's plainly false, all you're really doing is a continuation of the bad and dishonourable behaviour I mentioned in sentence 2.
Does "deliberately chose the rules of the referendum that maximised the chance of his side winning" suit you better?
Not really, no. I think it's ludicrous to suggest that your two-question ballot should have been used, let alone the idea that without the two questions the referendum was somehow unfair.
Tragically, on this occasion Farage is nearly correct. Unfortunately, he also sees Putin as an "anti-woke" standard-bearer, for traditional values.
Putin is quite popular amongst the European nationalist hard right and amongst many Trump voters in the US for those reasons (indeed Trump himself was much less hostile to Putin than Biden now is).
I agree there is some truth in what Farage says, expanding NATO to the Ukraine was always too risky an option, it should focus on defending the states already within NATO
Anyone who likes Putin, or even just thinks "he has a point" isn't fit for any office in any democratic country. Putin is a murderous, lying, thieving head of a mafia-state.
Tbf Leon isn't running for office. Yet.
Putin has an extremely good point about Wokeness, just as Hitler was spot-on about motorways
It’s actually quite hard to find a serious world leader who was or is terribly wrong about everything. Stalin was a highly effective if terrifically brutal war leader
Trump was right about lab leak. And so forth
I had missed that. Where was Hitler on gyratory systems.
Doubtless, Germans have a 17-syllable word for his take on them....
Weather conditions in Ukraine could be effecting decisions . Quite an early warm up with temps well above freezing so if the thaw comes early it suggests Russia would need to move quickly or any invasion is unlikely to happen in the immediate future as it could hinder their tank movements .
If he’s missed his window this winter, presumably NATO is going to throw military resources at Ukraine for the remainder of this year. In an organised and serious way rather than hasty deliveries that we’ve seen in recent weeks.
Bit early for this. Russian Duma is debating a policy this afternoon about Donetsk People's Republic (DNR). Could be trouble flaring just as we hope that Putin has backed away a little.
Tragically, on this occasion Farage is nearly correct. Unfortunately, he also sees Putin as an "anti-woke" standard-bearer, for traditional values.
Putin is quite popular amongst the European nationalist hard right and amongst many Trump voters in the US for those reasons (indeed Trump himself was much less hostile to Putin than Biden now is).
I agree there is some truth in what Farage says, expanding NATO to the Ukraine was always too risky an option, it should focus on defending the states already within NATO
Anyone who likes Putin, or even just thinks "he has a point" isn't fit for any office in any democratic country. Putin is a murderous, lying, thieving head of a mafia-state.
Tbf Leon isn't running for office. Yet.
Putin has an extremely good point about Wokeness, just as Hitler was spot-on about motorways
It’s actually quite hard to find a serious world leader who was or is terribly wrong about everything. Stalin was a highly effective if terrifically brutal war leader
Trump was right about lab leak. And so forth
I had missed that. Where was Hitler on gyratory systems.
He was a fan of anything that got people to turn to the right.
If this were to happen, Labour should tie this to other forms of government corruption: lies; broken manifesto pledges; cash for access; cash for honours; contracts for mates; and so on.
More likely Starmer and Mandelson are more concerned with bringing down Jeremy Corbyn than Boris Johnson.
Starmer and co need to publicly remove Corbyn as there are a lot of former Labour voters who claim they need Corbyn to be gone before they will return to the fold.
Basically for every @bigjohnowls there are 3+ centre of the road voters who need to know the more extreme left won't get control before they can safely return to voting Labour.
And at the moment keeping Bozo in power is better for Labour than a competent Tory leader
I don't agree with this at all. Starmer has been strongest when he's been seen as a non-partisan, uncorrupt alternative to Johnsonism, uniting the centre and left over the last few months. During this period , in which he's also made no explicit attacks on the left, his national poll ratings have claimed as high as 44%.
If he returns to the tactics that kept dividing his supporters last year, up to and including the party conference, I predict a returning press narrative of "Labour Splits", and quite possibly defeat at the next general election.
Starmers unequivocal stance yesterday that labour will not rejoin the EU must have upset many who hoped he would move in that direction and may just encourage some to support the lib dems
So will Starmer now admit his efforts to frustrate Brexit demonstrated poor judgment?
Based on what BREXIT now is - our inability to trade properly and our castration as a regional power? No. What the 2017 parliament should have done was pushed the Norway+ route over St Theresa's head. They failed to agree a single option so we went with no option.
You're right, of course, and so should the 2015 parliament from day 1 after the referendum. But that would have required the Eurozealots to admit defeat.
It would also have required the Europhobes to admit defeat. Norway+ is BRINO remember, and completely frustrates the Singapore-on-Thames Brexiteer group.
If the Eurozealots(*) had reacted to the result by saying "yes we lost, but only by a narrow margin, we should go for EEA" they would have had a comfortable majority amongst the public and the "all out"ers would have been marginalised.
(*) And yes, I include Cameron in this - his flounce was deeply damaging.
What about Free Movement though? You think retaining that would have been acceptable to most who voted Leave? I'm not sure of that myself. Immigration was a big driver of the vote. A totemic issue. Not so much amongst Leavers on here but as I think we all recognize it's not a good sample. We lack posters who represent the large number of people who voted Leave with immigration foremost in their minds. There's Isam and then maybe Isam. And not even him now since he's banned.
Oh, I think there's a fair bit of 'legitimate concerns about immigration' stuff on here. These high minded folk don't hold those views themselves you understand, they just can sympathise with those who feel uncomfortable hearing Romanian spoken on the Tube.
Harsh but fair. And of course "Sovereignty" is for many the PC way to say Immigration.
Tragically, on this occasion Farage is nearly correct. Unfortunately, he also sees Putin as an "anti-woke" standard-bearer, for traditional values.
Putin is quite popular amongst the European nationalist hard right and amongst many Trump voters in the US for those reasons (indeed Trump himself was much less hostile to Putin than Biden now is).
I agree there is some truth in what Farage says, expanding NATO to the Ukraine was always too risky an option, it should focus on defending the states already within NATO
Anyone who likes Putin, or even just thinks "he has a point" isn't fit for any office in any democratic country. Putin is a murderous, lying, thieving head of a mafia-state.
Tbf Leon isn't running for office. Yet.
Putin has an extremely good point about Wokeness, just as Hitler was spot-on about motorways
It’s actually quite hard to find a serious world leader who was or is terribly wrong about everything. Stalin was a highly effective if terrifically brutal war leader
Trump was right about lab leak. And so forth
Have you seen the rather excellent Superbowl half time show featuring Dre, Snoop Dogg, Eminem et al? It has mostly been praised as an all-time classic but got criticism from a few quarters for perceived elements of Wokeness (Eminem taking the knee, Dre's reference to "still not loving police" etc). It got me thinking about this whole debate. It's striking that strongmen, cultural conservatives and nationalists, like Putin, Trump and elements of the Tory party, don't like Woke. They see culture as immutable, change as weakness, diversity as division. But the great strength of a free society like the US is that ideas are challenged, history is reinterpreted, culture changes. That is the source of both its cultural vitality and its soft power. It's why nobody tunes in to watch Putin's military parades. Wokeness isn't a sign of weakness. It's a sign of cultural confidence, a signal of strength. That's why Putin finds it so frightening.
* I'm using 2016 to 2020. The ONS are using 2016 to 2019 and 2021, which seems silly to me. I guess they don't want to switch at the end of March, which is what I will do, and think it's best to have the five-year average inflated by COVID now but then not so much after March.
Time for people to move on from partygate, it's been done to death.
It's unfortunate the Met is wasting so much money on this.
Laughable
I don’t know why Dale’s post appeared flagged. It was accurate and put more politely than many on this forum.
In Dales defence I’ll post “Boris sacked in dogminus 7 days.
Can Admins see who does the false flag’s and banish the naughty ones?
PS Gary, in my opinion its still rumbling in background like a volcano about to erupt wiping out all life in Boris Citadel. Whatever MET are paying for this, it’s cheap price for honesty and probity in government and rules of the land that treat everyone equally and fairly
Some very odd flagging going on. My reply to Gary (which was unusually ON topic) also flagged for some reason.
With the shake up in No 10, the newbie spads have got confused with the request to see less of parties and more flags.
Tragically, on this occasion Farage is nearly correct. Unfortunately, he also sees Putin as an "anti-woke" standard-bearer, for traditional values.
Putin is quite popular amongst the European nationalist hard right and amongst many Trump voters in the US for those reasons (indeed Trump himself was much less hostile to Putin than Biden now is).
I agree there is some truth in what Farage says, expanding NATO to the Ukraine was always too risky an option, it should focus on defending the states already within NATO
Anyone who likes Putin, or even just thinks "he has a point" isn't fit for any office in any democratic country. Putin is a murderous, lying, thieving head of a mafia-state.
Tbf Leon isn't running for office. Yet.
Putin has an extremely good point about Wokeness, just as Hitler was spot-on about motorways
It’s actually quite hard to find a serious world leader who was or is terribly wrong about everything. Stalin was a highly effective if terrifically brutal war leader
Trump was right about lab leak. And so forth
Merkel had a pretty poor scorecard
With English rightwingers without a vote for Merkel or her successors certainly. I'm sure that will have cast a bit of a pall over her retirement.
In the absence of global war, we are left to stare, uncomprehendingly, at the British weather
Back then?
I’ve been out to Holland Park this morning. All you need to do is wear boots, put your hood down and just stand there under the tree to know what it is to be alive 🙂
Time for people to move on from partygate, it's been done to death.
It's unfortunate the Met is wasting so much money on this.
Laughable
I don’t know why Dale’s post appeared flagged. It was accurate and put more politely than many on this forum.
In Dales defence I’ll post “Boris sacked in dogminus 7 days.
Can Admins see who does the false flag’s and banish the naughty ones?
PS Gary, in my opinion its still rumbling in background like a volcano about to erupt wiping out all life in Boris Citadel. Whatever MET are paying for this, it’s cheap price for honesty and probity in government and rules of the land that treat everyone equally and fairly
I do believe the flag is there to be used as clients wish and is not in the preogative of any single user stating how and when it should be used. Why would admin decide who is using and why or not? Surely freedom of speech applies on PB, within the law (OGH). PS: Even if implausible. Just look at the amount of Flags I have and each one of them undeserved, yet I suffer in silence.
Tragically, on this occasion Farage is nearly correct. Unfortunately, he also sees Putin as an "anti-woke" standard-bearer, for traditional values.
Putin is quite popular amongst the European nationalist hard right and amongst many Trump voters in the US for those reasons (indeed Trump himself was much less hostile to Putin than Biden now is).
I agree there is some truth in what Farage says, expanding NATO to the Ukraine was always too risky an option, it should focus on defending the states already within NATO
Anyone who likes Putin, or even just thinks "he has a point" isn't fit for any office in any democratic country. Putin is a murderous, lying, thieving head of a mafia-state.
Tbf Leon isn't running for office. Yet.
Putin has an extremely good point about Wokeness, just as Hitler was spot-on about motorways
It’s actually quite hard to find a serious world leader who was or is terribly wrong about everything. Stalin was a highly effective if terrifically brutal war leader
Trump was right about lab leak. And so forth
I had missed that. Where was Hitler on gyratory systems.
Doubtless, Germans have a 17-syllable word for his take on them....
Not quite 17 syllables, but my favourite German word is backpfeifengesicht, which as you were all originally talking about Farage it is extremely apt. I would also say that Jacob Rees Mogg has a backpfeifengesicht and so does Novax Jokervic.
Tragically, on this occasion Farage is nearly correct. Unfortunately, he also sees Putin as an "anti-woke" standard-bearer, for traditional values.
Putin is quite popular amongst the European nationalist hard right and amongst many Trump voters in the US for those reasons (indeed Trump himself was much less hostile to Putin than Biden now is).
I agree there is some truth in what Farage says, expanding NATO to the Ukraine was always too risky an option, it should focus on defending the states already within NATO
Anyone who likes Putin, or even just thinks "he has a point" isn't fit for any office in any democratic country. Putin is a murderous, lying, thieving head of a mafia-state.
Tbf Leon isn't running for office. Yet.
Putin has an extremely good point about Wokeness, just as Hitler was spot-on about motorways
It’s actually quite hard to find a serious world leader who was or is terribly wrong about everything. Stalin was a highly effective if terrifically brutal war leader
Trump was right about lab leak. And so forth
Have you seen the rather excellent Superbowl half time show featuring Dre, Snoop Dogg, Eminem et al? It has mostly been praised as an all-time classic but got criticism from a few quarters for perceived elements of Wokeness (Eminem taking the knee, Dre's reference to "still not loving police" etc). It got me thinking about this whole debate. It's striking that strongmen, cultural conservatives and nationalists, like Putin, Trump and elements of the Tory party, don't like Woke. They see culture as immutable, change as weakness, diversity as division. But the great strength of a free society like the US is that ideas are challenged, history is reinterpreted, culture changes. That is the source of both its cultural vitality and its soft power. It's why nobody tunes in to watch Putin's military parades. Wokeness isn't a sign of weakness. It's a sign of cultural confidence, a signal of strength. That's why Putin finds it so frightening.
Not really anything to do with your point but I laughed.
Someone posted this on site a couple of days ago “Whilst Putin doesn’t appear to have goals easily achievable through military action, he will clearly gain a lot if he moves EU and Ukraine towards those Minsk Protocol’s so far not implemented. We have no choice but to consider this, because if he doesn’t initiate military conflict, and we hail ourselves on the triumph of thwarting his invasion - we may actually overlook what Putin’s plan actually has been all along, and crucially still ongoing in the years to come. I suggest we monitor the media carefully not just for signs of invasion or false flag operations, but listen to what EU capitals, and the Ukrainian government, are saying about Nord and Minsk Protocols.”
If the EU start to say things about considering Russia’s security concerns in all this negotiating, Russia dismantles its build up with a big 😝 in direction of Washington, then not to underestimate what a Gas pipeline or two can actually win you?
So with war over and negotiations that consider Russian security in all this being given a chance, does the media narrative shift back now to vaccination status of tennis players and the other big Moscow story - Boris Moscow?
Someone on PB has started a countdown to Big Dog’s neutering and it stands today at just Snip minus 7 days 😲
I think there is no agreement as to what the Minsk protocol actually means.
The current Russian Government position is that they are not a party to Minsk. Or, I think, to Minsk II.
And what they want is a further move to give them control over what happens in other sovereign countries, whilst denying that to others in their own country.
If EuCo starts making noises as you suggest, then it will encourage Russia to try the same in Poland and the Baltics and Finland, and imo put themselves in the same place as France and the UK in 1938.
Your entitled to your view. For some “negotiations that also consider Russian security concerns in all this” is yet another reason to hate and bash the EU.
Ukraine position is to have both NATO membership AND to retake parts of its own sovereign territory held by the Russians. Do you support the UK and Washington fast tracking Ukraine NATO membership? In your opinion why don’t they have it yet? Can they have it by the end of the year? Up until then “standing shoulder to shoulder with democratic sovereign nation” is just hollow words or even lies isn’t it?
They haven't fast tracked it. No-one in NATO is really talking about Ukraine joining. It is a permanent aspiration much like Turkey joining the EU.
This is for the same reason that Finland isn't a member - because it would be seen as too much of a provocation to Russia.
The "standing shoulder to shoulder with democratic sovereign nation" is not a lie, because it is possible to stand shoulder to shoulder with a nation without them joining NATO. Neither Sweden or Finland are in NATO - but no-one doubts that if they were attacked, that NATO would come to their aid.
What Putin has achieved with his build up etc is that Ukraine is now moved up the ranks of Friends Of NATO. Not quote to the level of Finland, which is so nearly in NATO that if someone sneezes.... But massively higher than it was.
Finland hasn't applied to join NATO, and spent the cold war (like Austria) being pretty close to the USSR.
Their closeness to the USSR was an interesting one - while they superficially claimed to be some version of neutral, everyone knew that invading Finland was a Day One move for the USSR, when/if the Big Mistake happened.
It was quite noticeable how fast that turned into practically-a-memeber-of-NATO at the end of the Cold War.
It’s not often I disagree with one of your knowledgable posts Malmsy, but
“ The "standing shoulder to shoulder with democratic sovereign nation" is not a lie, because it is possible to stand shoulder to shoulder with a nation without them joining NATO. Neither Sweden or Finland are in NATO - but no-one doubts that if they were attacked, that NATO would come to their aid. ”
That’s not a true comparison - we were just about to stand by and let Putin hang draw quarter and boil the head of Ukraines democracy, sovereignty, and right to political self determination weren’t we - allowing Russia to do this with military air superiority over the Ukraine nation.
Aside from military aid and sanctions that would seriously stuff up the Russia economy (more than it is in a mess now). Things like cutting off Nord Stream 2 - permanently.
If Americans had sent armoured divisions to Ukraine, this would have guaranteed war. Because at that point Putin would have been trapped by the Greater Russian Nationalists behind him.
Instead, we guaranteed that Russia would *regret* war. But could climb down.
Instead of "destroying the village to save it" we "guaranteed to fuck up anyone who pokes the village further"
So, hopefully, the Russian soldiers go home. Alive, and with all their limbs. And the Ukrainian soldiers can as well.
In the absence of global war, we are left to stare, uncomprehendingly, at the British weather
Back then?
I’ve been out to Holland Park this morning. All you need to do is wear boots, put your hood down and just stand there under the tree to know what it is to be alive 🙂
Someone posted this on site a couple of days ago “Whilst Putin doesn’t appear to have goals easily achievable through military action, he will clearly gain a lot if he moves EU and Ukraine towards those Minsk Protocol’s so far not implemented. We have no choice but to consider this, because if he doesn’t initiate military conflict, and we hail ourselves on the triumph of thwarting his invasion - we may actually overlook what Putin’s plan actually has been all along, and crucially still ongoing in the years to come. I suggest we monitor the media carefully not just for signs of invasion or false flag operations, but listen to what EU capitals, and the Ukrainian government, are saying about Nord and Minsk Protocols.”
If the EU start to say things about considering Russia’s security concerns in all this negotiating, Russia dismantles its build up with a big 😝 in direction of Washington, then not to underestimate what a Gas pipeline or two can actually win you?
So with war over and negotiations that consider Russian security in all this being given a chance, does the media narrative shift back now to vaccination status of tennis players and the other big Moscow story - Boris Moscow?
Someone on PB has started a countdown to Big Dog’s neutering and it stands today at just Snip minus 7 days 😲
I think there is no agreement as to what the Minsk protocol actually means.
The current Russian Government position is that they are not a party to Minsk. Or, I think, to Minsk II.
And what they want is a further move to give them control over what happens in other sovereign countries, whilst denying that to others in their own country.
If EuCo starts making noises as you suggest, then it will encourage Russia to try the same in Poland and the Baltics and Finland, and imo put themselves in the same place as France and the UK in 1938.
Your entitled to your view. For some “negotiations that also consider Russian security concerns in all this” is yet another reason to hate and bash the EU.
Ukraine position is to have both NATO membership AND to retake parts of its own sovereign territory held by the Russians. Do you support the UK and Washington fast tracking Ukraine NATO membership? In your opinion why don’t they have it yet? Can they have it by the end of the year? Up until then “standing shoulder to shoulder with democratic sovereign nation” is just hollow words or even lies isn’t it?
They haven't fast tracked it. No-one in NATO is really talking about Ukraine joining. It is a permanent aspiration much like Turkey joining the EU.
This is for the same reason that Finland isn't a member - because it would be seen as too much of a provocation to Russia.
The "standing shoulder to shoulder with democratic sovereign nation" is not a lie, because it is possible to stand shoulder to shoulder with a nation without them joining NATO. Neither Sweden or Finland are in NATO - but no-one doubts that if they were attacked, that NATO would come to their aid.
What Putin has achieved with his build up etc is that Ukraine is now moved up the ranks of Friends Of NATO. Not quote to the level of Finland, which is so nearly in NATO that if someone sneezes.... But massively higher than it was.
Surely a big reason the US don't want Ukraine in NATO is they would then have to defend them militarily from a Russian attack - and as we see they are not prepared to do this.
If this were to happen, Labour should tie this to other forms of government corruption: lies; broken manifesto pledges; cash for access; cash for honours; contracts for mates; and so on.
More likely Starmer and Mandelson are more concerned with bringing down Jeremy Corbyn than Boris Johnson.
Starmer and co need to publicly remove Corbyn as there are a lot of former Labour voters who claim they need Corbyn to be gone before they will return to the fold.
Basically for every @bigjohnowls there are 3+ centre of the road voters who need to know the more extreme left won't get control before they can safely return to voting Labour.
And at the moment keeping Bozo in power is better for Labour than a competent Tory leader
I don't agree with this at all. Starmer has been strongest when he's been seen as a non-partisan, uncorrupt alternative to Johnsonism, uniting the centre and left over the last few months. During this period , in which he's also made no explicit attacks on the left, his national poll ratings have claimed as high as 44%.
If he returns to the tactics that kept dividing his supporters last year, up to and including the party conference, I predict a returning press narrative of "Labour Splits", and quite possibly defeat at the next general election.
Starmers unequivocal stance yesterday that labour will not rejoin the EU must have upset many who hoped he would move in that direction and may just encourage some to support the lib dems
So will Starmer now admit his efforts to frustrate Brexit demonstrated poor judgment?
Based on what BREXIT now is - our inability to trade properly and our castration as a regional power? No. What the 2017 parliament should have done was pushed the Norway+ route over St Theresa's head. They failed to agree a single option so we went with no option.
You're right, of course, and so should the 2015 parliament from day 1 after the referendum. But that would have required the Eurozealots to admit defeat.
Labour voted for Norway+ but it was defeated by the Tory whipping operation. How that was the fault of eurozealots I will leave to those smarter than me to fathom.
Neither Labour nor the Tory whipping operation held a majority.
If the Eurozealots had backed Norway+ it could have passed, but they didn't. They went for double or nothing and they ended up with nothing.
This conversation started as an effort to criticise Starmer and Labour for trying to "frustrate Brexit". I can't speak for the behaviour of other parties that I don't support and over whom Labour had no influence. But Labour consistently sought to find a compromise solution and the principal block to that happening was the Tories' insistence on a hard Brexit.
No, the principal block is that the Eurozealots had fought so hard for so long (and were still fighting) to overturn the referendum result that anything they put forward as a "compromise" looked like a trap.
The time for EEA/Norway+ was immediately after the referendum.
Which the Europhobes wanting Singapore-on-Thames saw as an absolute betrayal.
You keep trying to highlight Labour's divisions whilst pretending there were no Tory divisions. Why is that? St Theresa denied the Norway+ option to placate her mouth-foaming backbenchers. That wasn't Labour was it?
Plenty of Labour MPs in Leave seats also opposed Norway+ as it meant continued free movement which their constituents had just voted against.
For example Lisa Nandy backed Brexit plus a Customs Union but opposed Norway+
Norway+ was the best outcome because it was almost certainly the preference of the median voter in the referendum. Since we are always being told that the referendum was not about immigration, I would assume that at least 2pp of the 52% were OK with free movement and just wanted us out of the political structures and the risk of ever closer union.
Leave only won with voters concerned about immigration AND sovereignty.
Without both Remain would have won, so Leave had to deliver promises to address both when it won the referendum
Only because the way Cameron rigged the referendum.
Had it been a two-question ballot: (a) Leave/Remain, (b) if Leave, EEA/no EEA - then EEA would have won by 70/30 and probably 80/20.
The reason Cameron didn't allow this, of course, is that Leave would have won by 60/40.
I really don’t understand the appeal of the EEA compared with our previous relationship which was effectively ‘EEA with voting rights and a Commissioner’.
In the absence of global war, we are left to stare, uncomprehendingly, at the British weather
Back then?
I’ve been out to Holland Park this morning. All you need to do is wear boots, put your hood down and just stand there under the tree to know what it is to be alive 🙂
We know full well Johnson won GE19 on the back of Corbyn's unpopularity, the polling is very clear on this. I remain sceptical this will be repeated but am not making any bets just yet
Someone posted this on site a couple of days ago “Whilst Putin doesn’t appear to have goals easily achievable through military action, he will clearly gain a lot if he moves EU and Ukraine towards those Minsk Protocol’s so far not implemented. We have no choice but to consider this, because if he doesn’t initiate military conflict, and we hail ourselves on the triumph of thwarting his invasion - we may actually overlook what Putin’s plan actually has been all along, and crucially still ongoing in the years to come. I suggest we monitor the media carefully not just for signs of invasion or false flag operations, but listen to what EU capitals, and the Ukrainian government, are saying about Nord and Minsk Protocols.”
If the EU start to say things about considering Russia’s security concerns in all this negotiating, Russia dismantles its build up with a big 😝 in direction of Washington, then not to underestimate what a Gas pipeline or two can actually win you?
So with war over and negotiations that consider Russian security in all this being given a chance, does the media narrative shift back now to vaccination status of tennis players and the other big Moscow story - Boris Moscow?
Someone on PB has started a countdown to Big Dog’s neutering and it stands today at just Snip minus 7 days 😲
I think there is no agreement as to what the Minsk protocol actually means.
The current Russian Government position is that they are not a party to Minsk. Or, I think, to Minsk II.
And what they want is a further move to give them control over what happens in other sovereign countries, whilst denying that to others in their own country.
If EuCo starts making noises as you suggest, then it will encourage Russia to try the same in Poland and the Baltics and Finland, and imo put themselves in the same place as France and the UK in 1938.
Your entitled to your view. For some “negotiations that also consider Russian security concerns in all this” is yet another reason to hate and bash the EU.
Ukraine position is to have both NATO membership AND to retake parts of its own sovereign territory held by the Russians. Do you support the UK and Washington fast tracking Ukraine NATO membership? In your opinion why don’t they have it yet? Can they have it by the end of the year? Up until then “standing shoulder to shoulder with democratic sovereign nation” is just hollow words or even lies isn’t it?
They haven't fast tracked it. No-one in NATO is really talking about Ukraine joining. It is a permanent aspiration much like Turkey joining the EU.
This is for the same reason that Finland isn't a member - because it would be seen as too much of a provocation to Russia.
The "standing shoulder to shoulder with democratic sovereign nation" is not a lie, because it is possible to stand shoulder to shoulder with a nation without them joining NATO. Neither Sweden or Finland are in NATO - but no-one doubts that if they were attacked, that NATO would come to their aid.
What Putin has achieved with his build up etc is that Ukraine is now moved up the ranks of Friends Of NATO. Not quote to the level of Finland, which is so nearly in NATO that if someone sneezes.... But massively higher than it was.
Surely a big reason the US don't want Ukraine in NATO is they would then have to defend them militarily from a Russian attack - and as we see they are not prepared to do this.
The big reason is that actually accepting them for membership would cause the Greater Russian Nationalists to kick off even more than they have. It might even start the war we all don't want.
The main result from all of this is that Ukraine has moved massively up the Friends of NATO list - not quite to Swedish or Finish levels, but close.
If this were to happen, Labour should tie this to other forms of government corruption: lies; broken manifesto pledges; cash for access; cash for honours; contracts for mates; and so on.
More likely Starmer and Mandelson are more concerned with bringing down Jeremy Corbyn than Boris Johnson.
Starmer and co need to publicly remove Corbyn as there are a lot of former Labour voters who claim they need Corbyn to be gone before they will return to the fold.
Basically for every @bigjohnowls there are 3+ centre of the road voters who need to know the more extreme left won't get control before they can safely return to voting Labour.
And at the moment keeping Bozo in power is better for Labour than a competent Tory leader
I don't agree with this at all. Starmer has been strongest when he's been seen as a non-partisan, uncorrupt alternative to Johnsonism, uniting the centre and left over the last few months. During this period , in which he's also made no explicit attacks on the left, his national poll ratings have claimed as high as 44%.
If he returns to the tactics that kept dividing his supporters last year, up to and including the party conference, I predict a returning press narrative of "Labour Splits", and quite possibly defeat at the next general election.
Starmers unequivocal stance yesterday that labour will not rejoin the EU must have upset many who hoped he would move in that direction and may just encourage some to support the lib dems
So will Starmer now admit his efforts to frustrate Brexit demonstrated poor judgment?
Based on what BREXIT now is - our inability to trade properly and our castration as a regional power? No. What the 2017 parliament should have done was pushed the Norway+ route over St Theresa's head. They failed to agree a single option so we went with no option.
You're right, of course, and so should the 2015 parliament from day 1 after the referendum. But that would have required the Eurozealots to admit defeat.
Labour voted for Norway+ but it was defeated by the Tory whipping operation. How that was the fault of eurozealots I will leave to those smarter than me to fathom.
Neither Labour nor the Tory whipping operation held a majority.
If the Eurozealots had backed Norway+ it could have passed, but they didn't. They went for double or nothing and they ended up with nothing.
This conversation started as an effort to criticise Starmer and Labour for trying to "frustrate Brexit". I can't speak for the behaviour of other parties that I don't support and over whom Labour had no influence. But Labour consistently sought to find a compromise solution and the principal block to that happening was the Tories' insistence on a hard Brexit.
No, the principal block is that the Eurozealots had fought so hard for so long (and were still fighting) to overturn the referendum result that anything they put forward as a "compromise" looked like a trap.
The time for EEA/Norway+ was immediately after the referendum.
Which the Europhobes wanting Singapore-on-Thames saw as an absolute betrayal.
You keep trying to highlight Labour's divisions whilst pretending there were no Tory divisions. Why is that? St Theresa denied the Norway+ option to placate her mouth-foaming backbenchers. That wasn't Labour was it?
Plenty of Labour MPs in Leave seats also opposed Norway+ as it meant continued free movement which their constituents had just voted against.
For example Lisa Nandy backed Brexit plus a Customs Union but opposed Norway+
Norway+ was the best outcome because it was almost certainly the preference of the median voter in the referendum. Since we are always being told that the referendum was not about immigration, I would assume that at least 2pp of the 52% were OK with free movement and just wanted us out of the political structures and the risk of ever closer union.
Leave only won with voters concerned about immigration AND sovereignty.
Without both Remain would have won, so Leave had to deliver promises to address both when it won the referendum
Speculation (spoken as though fact) klaxon!!! warp warp warp!
In the absence of global war, we are left to stare, uncomprehendingly, at the British weather
Foiled again. No Omicron lockdown, no flying saucers, no Labour civil war, no 'breaking!' that Covid came from a lab, no statue action to speak of, and now this. At the moment it's MY world and you're just living in it.
We know full well Johnson won GE19 on the back of Corbyn's unpopularity, the polling is very clear on this. I remain sceptical this will be repeated but am not making any bets just yet
Tragically, on this occasion Farage is nearly correct. Unfortunately, he also sees Putin as an "anti-woke" standard-bearer, for traditional values.
Putin is quite popular amongst the European nationalist hard right and amongst many Trump voters in the US for those reasons (indeed Trump himself was much less hostile to Putin than Biden now is).
I agree there is some truth in what Farage says, expanding NATO to the Ukraine was always too risky an option, it should focus on defending the states already within NATO
Anyone who likes Putin, or even just thinks "he has a point" isn't fit for any office in any democratic country. Putin is a murderous, lying, thieving head of a mafia-state.
Tbf Leon isn't running for office. Yet.
Putin has an extremely good point about Wokeness, just as Hitler was spot-on about motorways
It’s actually quite hard to find a serious world leader who was or is terribly wrong about everything. Stalin was a highly effective if terrifically brutal war leader
Trump was right about lab leak. And so forth
Have you seen the rather excellent Superbowl half time show featuring Dre, Snoop Dogg, Eminem et al? It has mostly been praised as an all-time classic but got criticism from a few quarters for perceived elements of Wokeness (Eminem taking the knee, Dre's reference to "still not loving police" etc). It got me thinking about this whole debate. It's striking that strongmen, cultural conservatives and nationalists, like Putin, Trump and elements of the Tory party, don't like Woke. They see culture as immutable, change as weakness, diversity as division. But the great strength of a free society like the US is that ideas are challenged, history is reinterpreted, culture changes. That is the source of both its cultural vitality and its soft power. It's why nobody tunes in to watch Putin's military parades. Wokeness isn't a sign of weakness. It's a sign of cultural confidence, a signal of strength. That's why Putin finds it so frightening.
Not really anything to do with your point but I laughed.
Isn't he the gentlemen who advertised for and employees a chap to roll up for him?
Tragically, on this occasion Farage is nearly correct. Unfortunately, he also sees Putin as an "anti-woke" standard-bearer, for traditional values.
Putin is quite popular amongst the European nationalist hard right and amongst many Trump voters in the US for those reasons (indeed Trump himself was much less hostile to Putin than Biden now is).
I agree there is some truth in what Farage says, expanding NATO to the Ukraine was always too risky an option, it should focus on defending the states already within NATO
Anyone who likes Putin, or even just thinks "he has a point" isn't fit for any office in any democratic country. Putin is a murderous, lying, thieving head of a mafia-state.
Tbf Leon isn't running for office. Yet.
Putin has an extremely good point about Wokeness, just as Hitler was spot-on about motorways
It’s actually quite hard to find a serious world leader who was or is terribly wrong about everything. Stalin was a highly effective if terrifically brutal war leader
Trump was right about lab leak. And so forth
Have you seen the rather excellent Superbowl half time show featuring Dre, Snoop Dogg, Eminem et al? It has mostly been praised as an all-time classic but got criticism from a few quarters for perceived elements of Wokeness (Eminem taking the knee, Dre's reference to "still not loving police" etc). It got me thinking about this whole debate. It's striking that strongmen, cultural conservatives and nationalists, like Putin, Trump and elements of the Tory party, don't like Woke. They see culture as immutable, change as weakness, diversity as division. But the great strength of a free society like the US is that ideas are challenged, history is reinterpreted, culture changes. That is the source of both its cultural vitality and its soft power. It's why nobody tunes in to watch Putin's military parades. Wokeness isn't a sign of weakness. It's a sign of cultural confidence, a signal of strength. That's why Putin finds it so frightening.
Not really anything to do with your point but I laughed.
Snoop Dogg smoking joints? Whatever next, Emimem having half his lyrics blanked out?
Was a great show though, lots of funny comments online about us fortysomethings showing our children that we know the words to all those old rap songs.
Prime Minister Boris Johnson says "we are seeing a Russian openness to conversations", but adds "the intelligence we are seeing today is still not encouraging".
Was a great show though, lots of funny comments online about us fortysomethings showing our children that we know the words to all those old rap songs.
I saw something like the combined age of the performers was 237
In the absence of global war, we are left to stare, uncomprehendingly, at the British weather
Foiled again. No Omicron lockdown, no flying saucers, no Labour civil war, no 'breaking!' that Covid came from a lab, no statue action to speak of, and now this. At the moment it's MY world and you're just living in it.
This is a tragically undeniable truth. Tho it is also true that my world is much more fun
We know full well Johnson won GE19 on the back of Corbyn's unpopularity, the polling is very clear on this. I remain sceptical this will be repeated but am not making any bets just yet
Please report to HY for re-education...
No please don't. Hearing the "speak your weight" repetition of "Get Brexit Done" is not something to be commended
Time for people to move on from partygate, it's been done to death.
It's unfortunate the Met is wasting so much money on this.
Laughable
I don’t know why Dale’s post appeared flagged. It was accurate and put more politely than many on this forum.
In Dales defence I’ll post “Boris sacked in dogminus 7 days.
Can Admins see who does the false flag’s and banish the naughty ones?
PS Gary, in my opinion its still rumbling in background like a volcano about to erupt wiping out all life in Boris Citadel. Whatever MET are paying for this, it’s cheap price for honesty and probity in government and rules of the land that treat everyone equally and fairly
I do believe the flag is there to be used as clients wish and is not in the preogative of any single user stating how and when it should be used. Why would admin decide who is using and why or not? Surely freedom of speech applies on PB, within the law (OGH). PS: Even if implausible. Just look at the amount of Flags I have and each one of them undeserved, yet I suffer in silence.
Moderation DO review Flags and Off Topics. They MAY take action against those who have done the flagging if they consider it unreasonable, as well of course as reviewing whether the Flag/Off Topic is justified and thus whether action should be taken against the poster who made the post which has been flagged. It is of course a matter for Moderator discretion.
Someone posted this on site a couple of days ago “Whilst Putin doesn’t appear to have goals easily achievable through military action, he will clearly gain a lot if he moves EU and Ukraine towards those Minsk Protocol’s so far not implemented. We have no choice but to consider this, because if he doesn’t initiate military conflict, and we hail ourselves on the triumph of thwarting his invasion - we may actually overlook what Putin’s plan actually has been all along, and crucially still ongoing in the years to come. I suggest we monitor the media carefully not just for signs of invasion or false flag operations, but listen to what EU capitals, and the Ukrainian government, are saying about Nord and Minsk Protocols.”
If the EU start to say things about considering Russia’s security concerns in all this negotiating, Russia dismantles its build up with a big 😝 in direction of Washington, then not to underestimate what a Gas pipeline or two can actually win you?
So with war over and negotiations that consider Russian security in all this being given a chance, does the media narrative shift back now to vaccination status of tennis players and the other big Moscow story - Boris Moscow?
Someone on PB has started a countdown to Big Dog’s neutering and it stands today at just Snip minus 7 days 😲
I think there is no agreement as to what the Minsk protocol actually means.
The current Russian Government position is that they are not a party to Minsk. Or, I think, to Minsk II.
And what they want is a further move to give them control over what happens in other sovereign countries, whilst denying that to others in their own country.
If EuCo starts making noises as you suggest, then it will encourage Russia to try the same in Poland and the Baltics and Finland, and imo put themselves in the same place as France and the UK in 1938.
Your entitled to your view. For some “negotiations that also consider Russian security concerns in all this” is yet another reason to hate and bash the EU.
Ukraine position is to have both NATO membership AND to retake parts of its own sovereign territory held by the Russians. Do you support the UK and Washington fast tracking Ukraine NATO membership? In your opinion why don’t they have it yet? Can they have it by the end of the year? Up until then “standing shoulder to shoulder with democratic sovereign nation” is just hollow words or even lies isn’t it?
They haven't fast tracked it. No-one in NATO is really talking about Ukraine joining. It is a permanent aspiration much like Turkey joining the EU.
This is for the same reason that Finland isn't a member - because it would be seen as too much of a provocation to Russia.
The "standing shoulder to shoulder with democratic sovereign nation" is not a lie, because it is possible to stand shoulder to shoulder with a nation without them joining NATO. Neither Sweden or Finland are in NATO - but no-one doubts that if they were attacked, that NATO would come to their aid.
What Putin has achieved with his build up etc is that Ukraine is now moved up the ranks of Friends Of NATO. Not quote to the level of Finland, which is so nearly in NATO that if someone sneezes.... But massively higher than it was.
Surely a big reason the US don't want Ukraine in NATO is they would then have to defend them militarily from a Russian attack - and as we see they are not prepared to do this.
The big reason is that actually accepting them for membership would cause the Greater Russian Nationalists to kick off even more than they have. It might even start the war we all don't want.
The main result from all of this is that Ukraine has moved massively up the Friends of NATO list - not quite to Swedish or Finish levels, but close.
As someone with Ukranian relatives, and not counting chickens before they have hatched, it was very heartening to see the way this has played out, with so many of the international community prepared to get behind Ukraine and stand up to the bear.
Someone posted this on site a couple of days ago “Whilst Putin doesn’t appear to have goals easily achievable through military action, he will clearly gain a lot if he moves EU and Ukraine towards those Minsk Protocol’s so far not implemented. We have no choice but to consider this, because if he doesn’t initiate military conflict, and we hail ourselves on the triumph of thwarting his invasion - we may actually overlook what Putin’s plan actually has been all along, and crucially still ongoing in the years to come. I suggest we monitor the media carefully not just for signs of invasion or false flag operations, but listen to what EU capitals, and the Ukrainian government, are saying about Nord and Minsk Protocols.”
If the EU start to say things about considering Russia’s security concerns in all this negotiating, Russia dismantles its build up with a big 😝 in direction of Washington, then not to underestimate what a Gas pipeline or two can actually win you?
So with war over and negotiations that consider Russian security in all this being given a chance, does the media narrative shift back now to vaccination status of tennis players and the other big Moscow story - Boris Moscow?
Someone on PB has started a countdown to Big Dog’s neutering and it stands today at just Snip minus 7 days 😲
I think there is no agreement as to what the Minsk protocol actually means.
The current Russian Government position is that they are not a party to Minsk. Or, I think, to Minsk II.
And what they want is a further move to give them control over what happens in other sovereign countries, whilst denying that to others in their own country.
If EuCo starts making noises as you suggest, then it will encourage Russia to try the same in Poland and the Baltics and Finland, and imo put themselves in the same place as France and the UK in 1938.
Your entitled to your view. For some “negotiations that also consider Russian security concerns in all this” is yet another reason to hate and bash the EU.
Ukraine position is to have both NATO membership AND to retake parts of its own sovereign territory held by the Russians. Do you support the UK and Washington fast tracking Ukraine NATO membership? In your opinion why don’t they have it yet? Can they have it by the end of the year? Up until then “standing shoulder to shoulder with democratic sovereign nation” is just hollow words or even lies isn’t it?
Hate and bash the EU? Not really. Pointing out the difficulties, yes.
AFAICS the problem EuCo have is that they are Balkanised on this issue, as on several others (limits of the ECJ authority, aspects of Green policy, EU taking a stronger role in Defence policy wrt NATO are three). Fr/De currently think they can set the agenda on this, and they are isolated; I don't see that that will work without a lot of fudge, and I don't think that fudge will work with Russia.
Putin has shown how lightly he sits to Treaties - he signed, then reaffirmed, the Budapest Memorandum to respect Ukraine's territorial integrity. Then when he invaded Ukr, he declared "things have changed, and this no longer applies", and launched his invasion.
The issue in 1938 I refer to was that 'powers' were willing to carve up smaller countries as suited them. If EuCo reassurances to Moscow go into seeking to lay down what Ukraine can do in Ukraine, then imo they are over that line.
And no, I don't trust them, as for example the head of the German Navy declared that 'Crimea is lost'.
In the absence of global war, we are left to stare, uncomprehendingly, at the British weather
Foiled again. No Omicron lockdown, no flying saucers, no Labour civil war, no 'breaking!' that Covid came from a lab, no statue action to speak of, and now this. At the moment it's MY world and you're just living in it.
Sounds like the front page of a British version of the National Enquirer.
I wonder if Putin has inadvertently tied his own noose with his Ukraine madness?
One thing that’s really been forced to the fore-front and will be a stick that the UK is going to be increasingly beaten internationally for is the bad Russian money in London (and this will also shine on Switzerland, Frankfurt - especially a certain bank, and others)
If this has forced the UK gov to act and it causes big problems and inconveniences for certain Russians who Putin needs for support then they are going to be very unhappy with Putin for having forced action that is not in their interests.
Perhaps the result of sabre rattling by Putin will be that he gets deposed by the men with the money not by the sword…
Poor dome head Scholz head must be freezing 🥶 has he not been paying any attention to how to do the big Kremlin photo op!
The thing to look for is where he sits. Everyone else has been the length of a cricket pitch away from Putin at the other end of that huge table. If this is the case here too we can probably conclude the final diplomatic push by Germany has failed and it's war. But - and let's hope this is what we do see - if the two men sit cheek by jowl, all cosy, at one end of the table, maybe even with Putin's arm draped casually around the back of Scholz's chair, then it could be that a compromise has been reached.
The problem with that post Kin, he appears to use even longer tables with his own cabinet?
Ah now that is true. Bizarre really. Tbh, for all the geopolitics that is rightly chewed over, I wonder - as Dura Ace does - how much of what he wanted from all this was on the personal level, ie about feeding Big Important Man syndrome. In which case having sundry Western leaders jetting over to Moscow and sitting there in supplication at that huge long table has probably done the trick. It's a Win.
Time for people to move on from partygate, it's been done to death.
It's unfortunate the Met is wasting so much money on this.
Laughable
I don’t know why Dale’s post appeared flagged. It was accurate and put more politely than many on this forum.
In Dales defence I’ll post “Boris sacked in dogminus 7 days.
Can Admins see who does the false flag’s and banish the naughty ones?
PS Gary, in my opinion its still rumbling in background like a volcano about to erupt wiping out all life in Boris Citadel. Whatever MET are paying for this, it’s cheap price for honesty and probity in government and rules of the land that treat everyone equally and fairly
I do believe the flag is there to be used as clients wish and is not in the preogative of any single user stating how and when it should be used. Why would admin decide who is using and why or not? Surely freedom of speech applies on PB, within the law (OGH). PS: Even if implausible. Just look at the amount of Flags I have and each one of them undeserved, yet I suffer in silence.
Moderation DO review Flags and Off Topics. They MAY take action against those who have done the flagging if they consider it unreasonable, as well of course as reviewing whether the Flag/Off Topic is justified and thus whether action should be taken against the poster who made the post which has been flagged. It is of course a matter for Moderator discretion.
I do wish they would, there is a certain poster (I think we all know who it is) who flags anything he doesn't like the content of.
Interesting that anyone thinks we should look to a proponent of state-sponsored homophobia for "an extremely good point about Wokeness". If it's such a good point, I'm sure it has been better made by less terrible people.
Boris Johnson has attempted to end the feud with Douglas Ross - and insisted that he believes they will both lead the Conservatives into the next general election.
The PM also insists independence is ‘just not going to happen’ - and confirms that taxpayers in the rest of the UK would not contribute towards pensions in an independent Scotland.
Someone posted this on site a couple of days ago “Whilst Putin doesn’t appear to have goals easily achievable through military action, he will clearly gain a lot if he moves EU and Ukraine towards those Minsk Protocol’s so far not implemented. We have no choice but to consider this, because if he doesn’t initiate military conflict, and we hail ourselves on the triumph of thwarting his invasion - we may actually overlook what Putin’s plan actually has been all along, and crucially still ongoing in the years to come. I suggest we monitor the media carefully not just for signs of invasion or false flag operations, but listen to what EU capitals, and the Ukrainian government, are saying about Nord and Minsk Protocols.”
If the EU start to say things about considering Russia’s security concerns in all this negotiating, Russia dismantles its build up with a big 😝 in direction of Washington, then not to underestimate what a Gas pipeline or two can actually win you?
So with war over and negotiations that consider Russian security in all this being given a chance, does the media narrative shift back now to vaccination status of tennis players and the other big Moscow story - Boris Moscow?
Someone on PB has started a countdown to Big Dog’s neutering and it stands today at just Snip minus 7 days 😲
I think there is no agreement as to what the Minsk protocol actually means.
The current Russian Government position is that they are not a party to Minsk. Or, I think, to Minsk II.
And what they want is a further move to give them control over what happens in other sovereign countries, whilst denying that to others in their own country.
If EuCo starts making noises as you suggest, then it will encourage Russia to try the same in Poland and the Baltics and Finland, and imo put themselves in the same place as France and the UK in 1938.
Your entitled to your view. For some “negotiations that also consider Russian security concerns in all this” is yet another reason to hate and bash the EU.
Ukraine position is to have both NATO membership AND to retake parts of its own sovereign territory held by the Russians. Do you support the UK and Washington fast tracking Ukraine NATO membership? In your opinion why don’t they have it yet? Can they have it by the end of the year? Up until then “standing shoulder to shoulder with democratic sovereign nation” is just hollow words or even lies isn’t it?
They haven't fast tracked it. No-one in NATO is really talking about Ukraine joining. It is a permanent aspiration much like Turkey joining the EU.
This is for the same reason that Finland isn't a member - because it would be seen as too much of a provocation to Russia.
The "standing shoulder to shoulder with democratic sovereign nation" is not a lie, because it is possible to stand shoulder to shoulder with a nation without them joining NATO. Neither Sweden or Finland are in NATO - but no-one doubts that if they were attacked, that NATO would come to their aid.
What Putin has achieved with his build up etc is that Ukraine is now moved up the ranks of Friends Of NATO. Not quote to the level of Finland, which is so nearly in NATO that if someone sneezes.... But massively higher than it was.
Finland hasn't applied to join NATO, and spent the cold war (like Austria) being pretty close to the USSR.
Their closeness to the USSR was an interesting one - while they superficially claimed to be some version of neutral, everyone knew that invading Finland was a Day One move for the USSR, when/if the Big Mistake happened.
It was quite noticeable how fast that turned into practically-a-memeber-of-NATO at the end of the Cold War.
It’s not often I disagree with one of your knowledgable posts Malmsy, but
“ The "standing shoulder to shoulder with democratic sovereign nation" is not a lie, because it is possible to stand shoulder to shoulder with a nation without them joining NATO. Neither Sweden or Finland are in NATO - but no-one doubts that if they were attacked, that NATO would come to their aid. ”
That’s not a true comparison - we were just about to stand by and let Putin hang draw quarter and boil the head of Ukraines democracy, sovereignty, and right to political self determination weren’t we - allowing Russia to do this with military air superiority over the Ukraine nation.
Aside from military aid and sanctions that would seriously stuff up the Russia economy (more than it is in a mess now). Things like cutting off Nord Stream 2 - permanently.
If Americans had sent armoured divisions to Ukraine, this would have guaranteed war. Because at that point Putin would have been trapped by the Greater Russian Nationalists behind him.
Instead, we guaranteed that Russia would *regret* war. But could climb down.
Instead of "destroying the village to save it" we "guaranteed to fuck up anyone who pokes the village further"
So, hopefully, the Russian soldiers go home. Alive, and with all their limbs. And the Ukrainian soldiers can as well.
“ So, hopefully, the Russian soldiers go home. Alive, and with all their limbs. And the Ukrainian soldiers can as well.”
Yes that, but also all the everyday people don’t have to live in long time conflict zone or become refugee!
“ Aside from military aid ”. No air support. Russian have this Busty Brenda air support thing parked in Belarus NATO didn’t fancy tackling. 😕
“ and sanctions that would seriously stuff up the Russia economy (more than it is in a mess now). Things like cutting off Nord Stream 2 - permanently. “. Did you believe that spin? UK have had a chat with Jersey., but Was there consensus on that level of sanctions such as no to Nord 2 outside of Biden’s skull? The sanctions war would have hurt the British people too wouldn’t it, which UK government remained silent about so we should feel relieved today too? Maybe Putin pumps cheap gas into Europe as a loss leader for the diplomatic edge is gives him, splitting EU from agreeing to Washington sanction package, so this Ukraine crisis wasn’t spur of moment decision for Putin?
We know full well Johnson won GE19 on the back of Corbyn's unpopularity, the polling is very clear on this. I remain sceptical this will be repeated but am not making any bets just yet
He didn't, the 1.2% increase in the Tory voteshare in 2019 over May in 2017 which got the Tories a majority was mainly in the redwall to get Brexit done.
The shift of Remainers from Labour in 2017 to LD in 2019 because of Corbyn just added to the size of the Tory majority
Time for people to move on from partygate, it's been done to death.
It's unfortunate the Met is wasting so much money on this.
Laughable
I don’t know why Dale’s post appeared flagged. It was accurate and put more politely than many on this forum.
In Dales defence I’ll post “Boris sacked in dogminus 7 days.
Can Admins see who does the false flag’s and banish the naughty ones?
PS Gary, in my opinion its still rumbling in background like a volcano about to erupt wiping out all life in Boris Citadel. Whatever MET are paying for this, it’s cheap price for honesty and probity in government and rules of the land that treat everyone equally and fairly
I do believe the flag is there to be used as clients wish and is not in the preogative of any single user stating how and when it should be used. Why would admin decide who is using and why or not? Surely freedom of speech applies on PB, within the law (OGH). PS: Even if implausible. Just look at the amount of Flags I have and each one of them undeserved, yet I suffer in silence.
Moderation DO review Flags and Off Topics. They MAY take action against those who have done the flagging if they consider it unreasonable, as well of course as reviewing whether the Flag/Off Topic is justified and thus whether action should be taken against the poster who made the post which has been flagged. It is of course a matter for Moderator discretion.
I do wish they would, there is a certain poster (I think we all know who it is) who flags anything he doesn't like the content of.
Do tell? Who is it? How do you know?
On my vanilla UI you can’t tell who has flagged. It does seem quite a petulant gesture
In the absence of global war, we are left to stare, uncomprehendingly, at the British weather
Back then?
I’ve been out to Holland Park this morning. All you need to do is wear boots, put your hood down and just stand there under the tree to know what it is to be alive 🙂
There's only one tree left in Holland Park?
Is the restaurant in Holland Park worth a trip these days?
>Boots
Isn't it supposed to be "barefoot (or bearfoot?) in the park" ?
Boris Johnson has attempted to end the feud with Douglas Ross - and insisted that he believes they will both lead the Conservatives into the next general election.
The PM also insists independence is ‘just not going to happen’ - and confirms that taxpayers in the rest of the UK would not contribute towards pensions in an independent Scotland.
Time for people to move on from partygate, it's been done to death.
It's unfortunate the Met is wasting so much money on this.
Laughable
I don’t know why Dale’s post appeared flagged. It was accurate and put more politely than many on this forum.
In Dales defence I’ll post “Boris sacked in dogminus 7 days.
Can Admins see who does the false flag’s and banish the naughty ones?
PS Gary, in my opinion its still rumbling in background like a volcano about to erupt wiping out all life in Boris Citadel. Whatever MET are paying for this, it’s cheap price for honesty and probity in government and rules of the land that treat everyone equally and fairly
I do believe the flag is there to be used as clients wish and is not in the preogative of any single user stating how and when it should be used. Why would admin decide who is using and why or not? Surely freedom of speech applies on PB, within the law (OGH). PS: Even if implausible. Just look at the amount of Flags I have and each one of them undeserved, yet I suffer in silence.
Moderation DO review Flags and Off Topics. They MAY take action against those who have done the flagging if they consider it unreasonable, as well of course as reviewing whether the Flag/Off Topic is justified and thus whether action should be taken against the poster who made the post which has been flagged. It is of course a matter for Moderator discretion.
I do wish they would, there is a certain poster (I think we all know who it is) who flags anything he doesn't like the content of.
Do tell? Who is it? How do you know?
On my vanilla UI you can’t tell who has flagged. It does seem quite a petulant gesture
I'll give you a clue, it is normally if I ever write anything unfavourable about a small round toadish looking Scottish politician.
Poor dome head Scholz head must be freezing 🥶 has he not been paying any attention to how to do the big Kremlin photo op!
The thing to look for is where he sits. Everyone else has been the length of a cricket pitch away from Putin at the other end of that huge table. If this is the case here too we can probably conclude the final diplomatic push by Germany has failed and it's war. But - and let's hope this is what we do see - if the two men sit cheek by jowl, all cosy, at one end of the table, maybe even with Putin's arm draped casually around the back of Scholz's chair, then it could be that a compromise has been reached.
The problem with that post Kin, he appears to use even longer tables with his own cabinet?
Ah now that is true. Bizarre really. Tbh, for all the geopolitics that is rightly chewed over, I wonder - as Dura Ace does - how much of what he wanted from all this was on the personal level, ie about feeding Big Important Man syndrome. In which case having sundry Western leaders jetting over to Moscow and sitting there in supplication at that huge long table has probably done the trick. It's a Win.
Remember bond films had KGB in big offices, and the Brit big wigs in little cosy ones. It might just be a cultural thing than supplication technique. Lunchtime he probably sits on his own in there eating a burger!
Was a great show though, lots of funny comments online about us fortysomethings showing our children that we know the words to all those old rap songs.
I saw something like the combined age of the performers was 237
Dr Dre (56) Mary J Blige (51) Snoop Dogg (50) Eminem (49) 50 Cent (46) Kendrick Lamar (34)
Someone posted this on site a couple of days ago “Whilst Putin doesn’t appear to have goals easily achievable through military action, he will clearly gain a lot if he moves EU and Ukraine towards those Minsk Protocol’s so far not implemented. We have no choice but to consider this, because if he doesn’t initiate military conflict, and we hail ourselves on the triumph of thwarting his invasion - we may actually overlook what Putin’s plan actually has been all along, and crucially still ongoing in the years to come. I suggest we monitor the media carefully not just for signs of invasion or false flag operations, but listen to what EU capitals, and the Ukrainian government, are saying about Nord and Minsk Protocols.”
If the EU start to say things about considering Russia’s security concerns in all this negotiating, Russia dismantles its build up with a big 😝 in direction of Washington, then not to underestimate what a Gas pipeline or two can actually win you?
So with war over and negotiations that consider Russian security in all this being given a chance, does the media narrative shift back now to vaccination status of tennis players and the other big Moscow story - Boris Moscow?
Someone on PB has started a countdown to Big Dog’s neutering and it stands today at just Snip minus 7 days 😲
I think there is no agreement as to what the Minsk protocol actually means.
The current Russian Government position is that they are not a party to Minsk. Or, I think, to Minsk II.
And what they want is a further move to give them control over what happens in other sovereign countries, whilst denying that to others in their own country.
If EuCo starts making noises as you suggest, then it will encourage Russia to try the same in Poland and the Baltics and Finland, and imo put themselves in the same place as France and the UK in 1938.
Your entitled to your view. For some “negotiations that also consider Russian security concerns in all this” is yet another reason to hate and bash the EU.
Ukraine position is to have both NATO membership AND to retake parts of its own sovereign territory held by the Russians. Do you support the UK and Washington fast tracking Ukraine NATO membership? In your opinion why don’t they have it yet? Can they have it by the end of the year? Up until then “standing shoulder to shoulder with democratic sovereign nation” is just hollow words or even lies isn’t it?
They haven't fast tracked it. No-one in NATO is really talking about Ukraine joining. It is a permanent aspiration much like Turkey joining the EU.
This is for the same reason that Finland isn't a member - because it would be seen as too much of a provocation to Russia.
The "standing shoulder to shoulder with democratic sovereign nation" is not a lie, because it is possible to stand shoulder to shoulder with a nation without them joining NATO. Neither Sweden or Finland are in NATO - but no-one doubts that if they were attacked, that NATO would come to their aid.
What Putin has achieved with his build up etc is that Ukraine is now moved up the ranks of Friends Of NATO. Not quote to the level of Finland, which is so nearly in NATO that if someone sneezes.... But massively higher than it was.
Surely a big reason the US don't want Ukraine in NATO is they would then have to defend them militarily from a Russian attack - and as we see they are not prepared to do this.
The big reason is that actually accepting them for membership would cause the Greater Russian Nationalists to kick off even more than they have. It might even start the war we all don't want.
The main result from all of this is that Ukraine has moved massively up the Friends of NATO list - not quite to Swedish or Finish levels, but close.
Ok. But what about the reason I suggest? Isn't that also a big reason? Seems to me it likely is. I mean, imagine if they were in NATO now. The US would be on the hook to do what they clearly don't want to do.
Poor dome head Scholz head must be freezing 🥶 has he not been paying any attention to how to do the big Kremlin photo op!
The thing to look for is where he sits. Everyone else has been the length of a cricket pitch away from Putin at the other end of that huge table. If this is the case here too we can probably conclude the final diplomatic push by Germany has failed and it's war. But - and let's hope this is what we do see - if the two men sit cheek by jowl, all cosy, at one end of the table, maybe even with Putin's arm draped casually around the back of Scholz's chair, then it could be that a compromise has been reached.
The problem with that post Kin, he appears to use even longer tables with his own cabinet?
Ah now that is true. Bizarre really. Tbh, for all the geopolitics that is rightly chewed over, I wonder - as Dura Ace does - how much of what he wanted from all this was on the personal level, ie about feeding Big Important Man syndrome. In which case having sundry Western leaders jetting over to Moscow and sitting there in supplication at that huge long table has probably done the trick. It's a Win.
Remember bond films had KGB in big offices, and the Brit big wigs in little cosy ones. It might just be a cultural thing than supplication technique. Lunchtime he probably sits on his own in there eating a burger!
Someone posted this on site a couple of days ago “Whilst Putin doesn’t appear to have goals easily achievable through military action, he will clearly gain a lot if he moves EU and Ukraine towards those Minsk Protocol’s so far not implemented. We have no choice but to consider this, because if he doesn’t initiate military conflict, and we hail ourselves on the triumph of thwarting his invasion - we may actually overlook what Putin’s plan actually has been all along, and crucially still ongoing in the years to come. I suggest we monitor the media carefully not just for signs of invasion or false flag operations, but listen to what EU capitals, and the Ukrainian government, are saying about Nord and Minsk Protocols.”
If the EU start to say things about considering Russia’s security concerns in all this negotiating, Russia dismantles its build up with a big 😝 in direction of Washington, then not to underestimate what a Gas pipeline or two can actually win you?
So with war over and negotiations that consider Russian security in all this being given a chance, does the media narrative shift back now to vaccination status of tennis players and the other big Moscow story - Boris Moscow?
Someone on PB has started a countdown to Big Dog’s neutering and it stands today at just Snip minus 7 days 😲
I think there is no agreement as to what the Minsk protocol actually means.
The current Russian Government position is that they are not a party to Minsk. Or, I think, to Minsk II.
And what they want is a further move to give them control over what happens in other sovereign countries, whilst denying that to others in their own country.
If EuCo starts making noises as you suggest, then it will encourage Russia to try the same in Poland and the Baltics and Finland, and imo put themselves in the same place as France and the UK in 1938.
Your entitled to your view. For some “negotiations that also consider Russian security concerns in all this” is yet another reason to hate and bash the EU.
Ukraine position is to have both NATO membership AND to retake parts of its own sovereign territory held by the Russians. Do you support the UK and Washington fast tracking Ukraine NATO membership? In your opinion why don’t they have it yet? Can they have it by the end of the year? Up until then “standing shoulder to shoulder with democratic sovereign nation” is just hollow words or even lies isn’t it?
They haven't fast tracked it. No-one in NATO is really talking about Ukraine joining. It is a permanent aspiration much like Turkey joining the EU.
This is for the same reason that Finland isn't a member - because it would be seen as too much of a provocation to Russia.
The "standing shoulder to shoulder with democratic sovereign nation" is not a lie, because it is possible to stand shoulder to shoulder with a nation without them joining NATO. Neither Sweden or Finland are in NATO - but no-one doubts that if they were attacked, that NATO would come to their aid.
What Putin has achieved with his build up etc is that Ukraine is now moved up the ranks of Friends Of NATO. Not quote to the level of Finland, which is so nearly in NATO that if someone sneezes.... But massively higher than it was.
Surely a big reason the US don't want Ukraine in NATO is they would then have to defend them militarily from a Russian attack - and as we see they are not prepared to do this.
The big reason is that actually accepting them for membership would cause the Greater Russian Nationalists to kick off even more than they have. It might even start the war we all don't want.
The main result from all of this is that Ukraine has moved massively up the Friends of NATO list - not quite to Swedish or Finish levels, but close.
Ok. But what about the reason I suggest? Isn't that also a big reason? Seems to me it likely is. I mean, imagine if they were in NATO now. The US would be on the hook to do what they clearly don't want to do.
I think more that (like adding Finland) it would be a kick off point for the Russians. An escalation.
Comments
Without both Remain would have won, so Leave had to deliver promises to address both when it won the referendum
Despite hopes for de-escalation, @gullivercragg says that the Ukrainian response is, more or less, "We'll believe it when we see it"
https://twitter.com/France24_en/status/1493552682103189513
Ukraine position is to have both NATO membership AND to retake parts of its own sovereign territory held by the Russians. Do you support the UK and Washington fast tracking Ukraine NATO membership? In your opinion why don’t they have it yet? Can they have it by the end of the year? Up until then “standing shoulder to shoulder with democratic sovereign nation” is just hollow words or even lies isn’t it?
In Dales defence I’ll post “Boris sacked in dogminus 7 days.
Can Admins see who does the false flag’s and banish the naughty ones?
PS Gary, in my opinion its still rumbling in background like a volcano about to erupt wiping out all life in Boris Citadel. Whatever MET are paying for this, it’s cheap price for honesty and probity in government and rules of the land that treat everyone equally and fairly
We have already held that the individual appointment decisions themselves are not amenable to judicial review and the Runnymede Trust has no standing to challenge them as such. It is the process leading up to the two decisions which has been found by this Court to be in breach of the public sector equality duty.
138. For those reasons we will grant a declaration to the Runnymede Trust that the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care did not comply with the public sector equality duty in relation to the decisions how to appoint Baroness Harding as Interim Executive Chair of the NIHP in August 2020 and Mr Coupe as Director of Testing for NHSTT in
This is for the same reason that Finland isn't a member - because it would be seen as too much of a provocation to Russia.
The "standing shoulder to shoulder with democratic sovereign nation" is not a lie, because it is possible to stand shoulder to shoulder with a nation without them joining NATO. Neither Sweden or Finland are in NATO - but no-one doubts that if they were attacked, that NATO would come to their aid.
What Putin has achieved with his build up etc is that Ukraine is now moved up the ranks of Friends Of NATO. Not quote to the level of Finland, which is so nearly in NATO that if someone sneezes.... But massively higher than it was.
Had it been a two-question ballot: (a) Leave/Remain, (b) if Leave, EEA/no EEA - then EEA would have won by 70/30 and probably 80/20.
The reason Cameron didn't allow this, of course, is that Leave would have won by 60/40.
Most of that 45% would have been 2015 Tory voters who would have gone to UKIP had Leave won but only to stay in the EEA, though plenty of redwall Labour voters would have been in the group as well.
My reply to Gary (which was unusually ON topic) also flagged for some reason.
Yet.
But, really, was his intention to settle the issue - or was it to win the referendum?
https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/594186-no-mass-exodus-but-gop-sees-trump-grip-loosening
2.5 on Betfair (for the nomination) is quite tempting now.
It was quite noticeable how fast that turned into practically-a-memeber-of-NATO at the end of the Cold War.
If you're looking for people on either side of the referendum who were acting in a good an honourable way, I wish you the best of luck. The strategic failures of both sides have been gone over so much as to no longer be novel or interesting. Which is why I guess you have to up the ante to saying things like "rigged" to still land any kind of blow. But seeing as that's plainly false, all you're really doing is a continuation of the bad and dishonourable behaviour I mentioned in sentence 2.
It’s actually quite hard to find a serious world leader who was or is terribly wrong about everything. Stalin was a highly effective if terrifically brutal war leader
Trump was right about lab leak. And so forth
Pjotr Sauer @PjotrSauer·1h
RT’s Simonyan “We showed everyone what we wanted. Previously, they didn’t even want to talk to us about security, but now there is a line of people wanting admire the views of Moscow in Feb” Says West should remember tanks can go back to border at any time
https://twitter.com/PjotrSauer/status/1493542833478946819
No 10 pressured me to drop anti-money laundering measures, says ex-minister
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2022/feb/15/no-10-pressure-money-laundering-measures-lord-faulks
...He recalls that in return for dropping his amendments he was assured in May 2018 by the Foreign Office minister Lord Ahmad that the legislation on a property register would be passed in 2019 in time for it to be functioning no later than early 2021. He was asked to chair a joint committee of both houses to scrutinise the government draft overseas entities bill, the measure that would bring in the register.
The Foreign Office has been approached for comment.
His joint committee duly reported in May 2019, stressing that time was of the essence, and proposed improvements including verification checks to ensure that trusts could not be used to disguise the ultimate owners of property. On publication of his report he was assured by ministers that they understood the urgency.
Faulks, who has just completed a government commissioned report on judicial review, said “over a period of five years successive ministers have offered me emollient promises that the issue was in hand. What has happened? Absolutely nothing. In the meantime, frankly, we look like a laughing stock. We are not responding to the threat of economic crime. Instead, we are giving away golden visas and the rest of the world must think we simply do not care”.
He branded unexplained wealth orders as pathetic, pointing out only four had been issued and said the issue of the resourcing of the National Crime Agency was critical. He pointed out that the idea of a register of overseas property owner had first been aired by David Cameron in 2015 and in a speech to an anti-corruption summit he had convened in 2016. He said perhaps “the climate is now changing because we all hate the Russians now”.
A growing number of Conservative MPs are seeking unequivocal assurances that an economic crime bill containing the register will be in the next Queen’s speech, regardless of whether Russia invades Ukraine.
Tom Tugendhat, the chair of the foreign affairs committee, said the government had done “nothing” to stem the flow of illicit funds entering Britain from Russia and urged ministers to act in order to stand up to the Kremlin...
@TommyLundn·27m- NATO'S SECRETARY GENERAL SAYS THERE ARE GROUNDS FOR CAUTIOUS OPTIMISM - rtrs
https://twitter.com/TommyLundn
*sobs*
“ The "standing shoulder to shoulder with democratic sovereign nation" is not a lie, because it is possible to stand shoulder to shoulder with a nation without them joining NATO. Neither Sweden or Finland are in NATO - but no-one doubts that if they were attacked, that NATO would come to their aid. ”
That’s not a true comparison - we were just about to stand by and let Putin hang draw quarter and boil the head of Ukraines democracy, sovereignty, and right to political self determination weren’t we - allowing Russia to do this with military air superiority over the Ukraine nation.
Putin: The war is over
BoZo and Truss: NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
It's striking that strongmen, cultural conservatives and nationalists, like Putin, Trump and elements of the Tory party, don't like Woke. They see culture as immutable, change as weakness, diversity as division. But the great strength of a free society like the US is that ideas are challenged, history is reinterpreted, culture changes. That is the source of both its cultural vitality and its soft power. It's why nobody tunes in to watch Putin's military parades.
Wokeness isn't a sign of weakness. It's a sign of cultural confidence, a signal of strength. That's why Putin finds it so frightening.
https://tinyurl.com/rhsrt2t9
It really is steady as she goes all round.
Week-ending | 5-year average | COVID deaths | non-COVID deaths | non-COVID deaths in excess of the 5-year average
24-Sep-21 | 9,264 | 888 | 9,796 | 532
01-Oct-21 | 9,377 | 783 | 9,727 | 350
08-Oct-21 | 9,555 | 666 | 10,141 | 586
15-Oct-21 | 9,811 | 713 | 10,464 | 653
22-Oct-21 | 9,865 | 792 | 10,516 | 651
29-Oct-21 | 9,759 | 859 | 10,128 | 369
05-Nov-21 | 9,891 | 995 | 10,555 | 664
12-Nov-21 | 10,331 | 1,020 | 11,030 | 699
19-Nov-21 | 10,350 | 952 | 11,151 | 801
26-Nov-21 | 10,380 | 817 | 10,650 | 270
03-Dec-21 | 10,357 | 792 | 10,867 | 510
10-Dec-21 | 10,695 | 764 | 11,166 | 471
17-Dec-21 | 10,750 | 755 | 11,645 | 895
24-Dec-21 | 11,548 | 591 | 12,419 | 871
31-Dec-21 | 7,954 | 582 | 7,895 | -59
07-Jan-22 | 12,194* | 922 | 11,340 | -854
14-Jan-22 | 13,387* | 1,382 | 11,929 | -1,458
21-Jan-22 | 12,838* | 1,484 | 11,292 | -1,546
28-Jan-22 | 12,345* | 1,385 | 11,016 | -1,329
04-Feb-22 | 11,946* | 1,242 | 10,690 | -1,326
* I'm using 2016 to 2020. The ONS are using 2016 to 2019 and 2021, which seems silly to me. I guess they don't want to switch at the end of March, which is what I will do, and think it's best to have the five-year average inflated by COVID now but then not so much after March.
There's a long term equilibrium calculus -
Ukraine doesn't join NATO, Russia won't invade.
Surely freedom of speech applies on PB, within the law (OGH).
PS: Even if implausible. Just look at the amount of Flags I have and each one of them undeserved, yet I suffer in silence.
If Americans had sent armoured divisions to Ukraine, this would have guaranteed war. Because at that point Putin would have been trapped by the Greater Russian Nationalists behind him.
Instead, we guaranteed that Russia would *regret* war. But could climb down.
Instead of "destroying the village to save it" we "guaranteed to fuck up anyone who pokes the village further"
So, hopefully, the Russian soldiers go home. Alive, and with all their limbs. And the Ukrainian soldiers can as well.
The main result from all of this is that Ukraine has moved massively up the Friends of NATO list - not quite to Swedish or Finish levels, but close.
Was a great show though, lots of funny comments online about us fortysomethings showing our children that we know the words to all those old rap songs.
https://trib.al/EAuUT8k
📺 Sky 501, Virgin 602, Freeview 233 and YouTube
https://twitter.com/SkyNews/status/1493568714008154112
Hate and bash the EU? Not really. Pointing out the difficulties, yes.
AFAICS the problem EuCo have is that they are Balkanised on this issue, as on several others (limits of the ECJ authority, aspects of Green policy, EU taking a stronger role in Defence policy wrt NATO are three). Fr/De currently think they can set the agenda on this, and they are isolated; I don't see that that will work without a lot of fudge, and I don't think that fudge will work with Russia.
See Guy Verhofstadt's speech asking for greater clarity I linked earlier:
https://www.facebook.com/100044392570724/posts/497892415033840/
Putin has shown how lightly he sits to Treaties - he signed, then reaffirmed, the Budapest Memorandum to respect Ukraine's territorial integrity. Then when he invaded Ukr, he declared "things have changed, and this no longer applies", and launched his invasion.
The issue in 1938 I refer to was that 'powers' were willing to carve up smaller countries as suited them. If EuCo reassurances to Moscow go into seeking to lay down what Ukraine can do in Ukraine, then imo they are over that line.
And no, I don't trust them, as for example the head of the German Navy declared that 'Crimea is lost'.
One thing that’s really been forced to the fore-front and will be a stick that the UK is going to be increasingly beaten internationally for is the bad Russian money in London (and this will also shine on Switzerland, Frankfurt - especially a certain bank, and others)
If this has forced the UK gov to act and it causes big problems and inconveniences for certain Russians who Putin needs for support then they are going to be very unhappy with Putin for having forced action that is not in their interests.
Perhaps the result of sabre rattling by Putin will be that he gets deposed by the men with the money not by the sword…
We seem to have learned nothing, what an utterly distressing time it must be to be an elected MP.
The PM also insists independence is ‘just not going to happen’ - and confirms that taxpayers in the rest of the UK would not contribute towards pensions in an independent Scotland.
https://twitter.com/mike_blackley/status/1493514788432924681?s=21
And the weather’s gone shit as well.
Yes that, but also all the everyday people don’t have to live in long time conflict zone or become refugee!
“ Aside from military aid ”. No air support. Russian have this Busty Brenda air support thing parked in Belarus NATO didn’t fancy tackling. 😕
“ and sanctions that would seriously stuff up the Russia economy (more than it is in a mess now). Things like cutting off Nord Stream 2 - permanently. “. Did you believe that spin? UK have had a chat with Jersey., but Was there consensus on that level of sanctions such as no to Nord 2 outside of Biden’s skull? The sanctions war would have hurt the British people too wouldn’t it, which UK government remained silent about so we should feel relieved today too?
Maybe Putin pumps cheap gas into Europe as a loss leader for the diplomatic edge is gives him, splitting EU from agreeing to Washington sanction package, so this Ukraine crisis wasn’t spur of moment decision for Putin?
The shift of Remainers from Labour in 2017 to LD in 2019 because of Corbyn just added to the size of the Tory majority
On my vanilla UI you can’t tell who has flagged. It does seem quite a petulant gesture
>Boots
Isn't it supposed to be "barefoot (or bearfoot?) in the park" ?
Mary J Blige (51)
Snoop Dogg (50)
Eminem (49)
50 Cent (46)
Kendrick Lamar (34)
I make that 286, average of more than 47.
I swear Eminem still looks about 25.