The tricky bet is ‘year Sunak is replaced as Tory leader’. Which could be 2025 even with a certain 2024 GE.
Agreed. If the bet was that rather than 'Year Sunak leaves as PM' I'd probably still have taken 5/4 but much less confident.
Your tip looks crazily good to me. So good I think I might be missing something.
2 things are needed for it to land. There's a GE in 2024 + the Cons lose it.
How can the probability of that double be less than 50%? I make it more like 65%. So your 5/4 bet should be 4/6 or something.
SkyBet has a 'RequestABet' special on '2024 Election and Labour Most Seats' at 2/7 and that seems only slightly too short tbh, and is basically the same bet...
Great article Quincel. Thanks. But isn't this bet a treble and not a double?
Starsports are laying 11/8 that Rishi ceases to be Tory leader in 2024. So 3 things need to happen. Election in 2024. Very likely. Tories lose and Rishi no longer PM after GE. Likely. Richi is replaced as Tory leader before the end of 2024. I'd have that as lIkely but not as very likely, especially if the election happens in late 2024. Which I think is quite likely.
As you point out in your article, governments and PMs tend to cling on until close to the last minute if they are not expecting to win the GE. Rishi isn't very likely to get to be PM again after the GE. So he will want to max out his time there in my opinion. As will all the Tory MPs expecting to lose their seats.
And if Rishi loses the GE in October 2024 say, I'm not convinced he would be replaced as leader in the same calendar year, even if he wanted to stand aside. I could see him hanging on for a bit in the hope that a successor is chosen in an orderly fashion
So some bookies are 'Year replaced as PM' and some are' Year replaced as Tory leader' and I agree the distinction may matter here.
I think it's a big difference. I can't find any bookies laying "Rishi: Year replaced as PM". Probably wouldn't be able to get a bet on with them anyway!
Ladbrokes is now evens but was 11/10 when this was written. Betfred were the same a couple of days ago.
That looks a cracking bet. But I can't get on with either. Thanks.
Yes, I have that with another bet at the moment. I'm currently trying to work out if I can get on in shops before I press Send on the article...
Probably Oct 2024 with a smaller chance of May 2024 to coincide with the local elections or June 2024 following any reasonable result for CON in those local elections.
Barring unreasonably unforeseen events it will be Rishi, Keir and Ed leading the major parties into the election.
Neither Keir nor Ed are ruling out a coalition with each other, which I find interesting.
I would prefer a LAB/LD coalition - in practice more likely to be LD confidence and supply - to LAB majority government.
After the last Coalition Govt there will never be another LD coalition imho.
I don't agree, although we can be reasonably confident there won't be another Tory one in our lifetimes. The key will be that next time they'll try to do it differently, badge it differently, and settle for a "slice" of the government as happens in Germany rather than becoming just a layer in the whole cake.
After all, what is thrown at LibDems is not that they made a coalition at all, but that they propped up the Tories. Having had a coalition with both major parties in living memory is more solution, than problem redoubled.
In reality the LibDems drove both a lot of good policy (gay marriage, pupil premium, raised income tax threshold) and restrained the more base instincts of the Tory party (as witnessed by what they did from 2015 onwards).
Not that anyone progressive wanted to give them a fair hearing at the time - because they also provided succour to a lot of terrible legislation. LDs voted more loyally for shit Tory bills than Tory MPs did. Steve Webb heavily linking himself to Lansley's terrible NHS Destruction bill.
Clegg especially seemed enamoured with his Dave bromance, unwilling to maintain a suitable distance of break it off until he last minute. More visible and public arguments, having rebellions against shit bills like Tory MPs, making a principled stand here and there - all would have made both an immediate difference to the 2015 near ELE and their reputation afterwards.
I expect any future coalition to be run very differently.
I never had a problem with the LDs going into coalition with the Tories. It made total sense. What surprised me was that initial enthusiasm and glee with which they joined the Tories in attacking Labour. Politically, I think they made a huge mistake in doing that as so many of their votes came from former Labour voters who had rejected the Tories, too. Greg Hands (over)uses that Liam Byrne Treasury note but many now forget that it was LD David Laws who made it public, in defiance of the convention that led Byrne to write it in the first place. They realised too late in the 2013-2015 cycle that the Bromance was a big error and paid a big price as a result. Even now, there are a lot of people inside Labour - across the party, not on just one wing - who are highly suspicious of them, to the extent that I think Starmer would struggle internally to sell any kind of formal deal involving LDs within a Labour-led government. If one is needed, it will be nods and winks, not handshakes.
This isn't true. Laws found the note and mentioned it to Osborne. In his book Laws then said he was taken aback to find the Tories harping on about it.
I don't think that's completely true, according to the Guardian story of 17th May 2010
Byrne's note was discovered by David Laws, the Liberal Democrat MP who was appointed by the coalition government to succeed Byrne as No 2 at the Treasury.
It is a convention for outgoing ministers to leave a note for their successors with advice on how to settle into the job. But Byrne's note – which he later said was intended as a private joke – drew attention to Labour's economic record when it was revealed by Laws at a press conference today.
Laws told reporters: "When I arrived at my desk on the very first day as chief secretary, I found a letter from the previous chief secretary to give me some advice, I assumed, on how I conduct myself over the months ahead.
"Unfortunately, when I opened it, it was a one-sentence letter which simply said: 'Dear chief secretary, I'm afraid to tell you there's no money left,' which was honest but slightly less helpful advice than I had been expecting."
It is likely that Laws didn't expect the Tories to still use it as a weapon 13 years into the future but he was the one to put it out there.
IIRC, the background to this was that Byrne was expecting to leave the note for Philip Hammond, who had been his shadow for several years, and they’d worked closely together on the 2008-9 financial crisis in a bipartisan way.
When Laws picked it up, it wasn’t exactly what he was expecting to find on his desk, and so it ended up in David Cameron’s pocket in the 2015 debate.
Their full blooded support for the GRR bill bearing fruit?
I suspect the Venn diagram overlap between people inclined to vote Lib Dem and bothered about whether a woman can have a penis is fairly thin.
Having said that an activist down here did say the other night that she had been getting the question on the doorsteps. Not so much recently but back in the early spring.
Surely The Goldie Looking Chain's "Your Mother's Got a Penis" settled this question for good?
Now there's a band who clearly understand the Gender Recognition Act of 2004. Impressive.
You knows it.
Goldie looking chain of course referring to their Lib Dem regalia / the string of marginal seats across the Home Counties.
In fact I might use that as a new electoral reference, like blue wall. Lib Dem’s stand to make major progress in the GLC.
Or to misquote Your Mother's Got A Penis, "In internet rooms[1] and computer mainframes, there's loads of emails about your mother's Blue Wall"
Probably Oct 2024 with a smaller chance of May 2024 to coincide with the local elections or June 2024 following any reasonable result for CON in those local elections.
Barring unreasonably unforeseen events it will be Rishi, Keir and Ed leading the major parties into the election.
Neither Keir nor Ed are ruling out a coalition with each other, which I find interesting.
I would prefer a LAB/LD coalition - in practice more likely to be LD confidence and supply - to LAB majority government.
After the last Coalition Govt there will never be another LD coalition imho.
I don't agree, although we can be reasonably confident there won't be another Tory one in our lifetimes. The key will be that next time they'll try to do it differently, badge it differently, and settle for a "slice" of the government as happens in Germany rather than becoming just a layer in the whole cake.
After all, what is thrown at LibDems is not that they made a coalition at all, but that they propped up the Tories. Having had a coalition with both major parties in living memory is more solution, than problem redoubled.
In reality the LibDems drove both a lot of good policy (gay marriage, pupil premium, raised income tax threshold) and restrained the more base instincts of the Tory party (as witnessed by what they did from 2015 onwards).
Not that anyone progressive wanted to give them a fair hearing at the time - because they also provided succour to a lot of terrible legislation. LDs voted more loyally for shit Tory bills than Tory MPs did. Steve Webb heavily linking himself to Lansley's terrible NHS Destruction bill.
Clegg especially seemed enamoured with his Dave bromance, unwilling to maintain a suitable distance of break it off until he last minute. More visible and public arguments, having rebellions against shit bills like Tory MPs, making a principled stand here and there - all would have made both an immediate difference to the 2015 near ELE and their reputation afterwards.
I expect any future coalition to be run very differently.
I never had a problem with the LDs going into coalition with the Tories. It made total sense. What surprised me was that initial enthusiasm and glee with which they joined the Tories in attacking Labour. Politically, I think they made a huge mistake in doing that as so many of their votes came from former Labour voters who had rejected the Tories, too. Greg Hands (over)uses that Liam Byrne Treasury note but many now forget that it was LD David Laws who made it public, in defiance of the convention that led Byrne to write it in the first place. They realised too late in the 2013-2015 cycle that the Bromance was a big error and paid a big price as a result. Even now, there are a lot of people inside Labour - across the party, not on just one wing - who are highly suspicious of them, to the extent that I think Starmer would struggle internally to sell any kind of formal deal involving LDs within a Labour-led government. If one is needed, it will be nods and winks, not handshakes.
This isn't true. Laws found the note and mentioned it to Osborne. In his book Laws then said he was taken aback to find the Tories harping on about it.
I don't think that's completely true, according to the Guardian story of 17th May 2010
Byrne's note was discovered by David Laws, the Liberal Democrat MP who was appointed by the coalition government to succeed Byrne as No 2 at the Treasury.
It is a convention for outgoing ministers to leave a note for their successors with advice on how to settle into the job. But Byrne's note – which he later said was intended as a private joke – drew attention to Labour's economic record when it was revealed by Laws at a press conference today.
Laws told reporters: "When I arrived at my desk on the very first day as chief secretary, I found a letter from the previous chief secretary to give me some advice, I assumed, on how I conduct myself over the months ahead.
"Unfortunately, when I opened it, it was a one-sentence letter which simply said: 'Dear chief secretary, I'm afraid to tell you there's no money left,' which was honest but slightly less helpful advice than I had been expecting."
It is likely that Laws didn't expect the Tories to still use it as a weapon 13 years into the future but he was the one to put it out there.
IIRC, the background to this was that Byrne was expecting to leave the note for Philip Hammond, who had been his shadow for several years, and they’d worked closely together on the 2008-9 financial crisis in a bipartisan way.
When Laws picked it up, it wasn’t exactly what he was expecting to find on his desk, and so it ended up in David Cameron’s pocket in the 2015 debate.
Whatever their faults, I don't think it can be denied that Brown and Byrne worked very hard to try to prevent the crisis of 2008-10 turning into another Great Depression, and if Hammond assisted them, then it reflects a lot of credit on him as well.
Where I think that the Labour government deserves criticism is (a) letting house prices run out of control from 1997-2007 (with borrowing surging on the back of it) and (b) their hubris, believing that they really had abolished boom and bust.
Probably Oct 2024 with a smaller chance of May 2024 to coincide with the local elections or June 2024 following any reasonable result for CON in those local elections.
Barring unreasonably unforeseen events it will be Rishi, Keir and Ed leading the major parties into the election.
Neither Keir nor Ed are ruling out a coalition with each other, which I find interesting.
I would prefer a LAB/LD coalition - in practice more likely to be LD confidence and supply - to LAB majority government.
After the last Coalition Govt there will never be another LD coalition imho.
I don't agree, although we can be reasonably confident there won't be another Tory one in our lifetimes. The key will be that next time they'll try to do it differently, badge it differently, and settle for a "slice" of the government as happens in Germany rather than becoming just a layer in the whole cake.
After all, what is thrown at LibDems is not that they made a coalition at all, but that they propped up the Tories. Having had a coalition with both major parties in living memory is more solution, than problem redoubled.
In reality the LibDems drove both a lot of good policy (gay marriage, pupil premium, raised income tax threshold) and restrained the more base instincts of the Tory party (as witnessed by what they did from 2015 onwards).
Not that anyone progressive wanted to give them a fair hearing at the time - because they also provided succour to a lot of terrible legislation. LDs voted more loyally for shit Tory bills than Tory MPs did. Steve Webb heavily linking himself to Lansley's terrible NHS Destruction bill.
Clegg especially seemed enamoured with his Dave bromance, unwilling to maintain a suitable distance of break it off until he last minute. More visible and public arguments, having rebellions against shit bills like Tory MPs, making a principled stand here and there - all would have made both an immediate difference to the 2015 near ELE and their reputation afterwards.
I expect any future coalition to be run very differently.
Agree; I think Clegg was a little too nice, and a little too naive, for senior level politics. He came to the top pretty quickly, after all.
I was in coalition myself with the Tories on the council for the first four years, and you do have to play hard ball in an arrangement like that. The accusation most commonly thrown at our administation by Labour wasn't that we were propping up the Tories, but that the LibDems were really running the council, which always made me smile, even though it wasn't really true. But being seen to stand up to pressure from the larger party is important, whereas the inexperienced LibDem ministers were a little too keen to be loyal, in public, even though most of them achieved (and blocked) a fair bit in private.
Of course it's more difficult at national level, because of the differences in media focus and attitude, the absence of voters who were really paying much attention, and the differences between parliamentary government (where parliament's ability to direct the executive is actually pretty limited, as we saw during the May era) and the council executive model.
With hindsight I’m amazed that the coalition didn’t engineer more (any?) principled public differences of opinion for public consumption. Didn’t bother the Tories of course but it should have been a prerequisite for the LDs. As you suggest, too much naïveté from nice guy Nick.
Nice ?
Nice enough to do rather well at Facebook
Evil enough to do rather well at Facebook.
Irony doesn’t really come across on the interweb-thingy does it?
Probably Oct 2024 with a smaller chance of May 2024 to coincide with the local elections or June 2024 following any reasonable result for CON in those local elections.
Barring unreasonably unforeseen events it will be Rishi, Keir and Ed leading the major parties into the election.
Neither Keir nor Ed are ruling out a coalition with each other, which I find interesting.
I would prefer a LAB/LD coalition - in practice more likely to be LD confidence and supply - to LAB majority government.
After the last Coalition Govt there will never be another LD coalition imho.
I don't agree, although we can be reasonably confident there won't be another Tory one in our lifetimes. The key will be that next time they'll try to do it differently, badge it differently, and settle for a "slice" of the government as happens in Germany rather than becoming just a layer in the whole cake.
After all, what is thrown at LibDems is not that they made a coalition at all, but that they propped up the Tories. Having had a coalition with both major parties in living memory is more solution, than problem redoubled.
In reality the LibDems drove both a lot of good policy (gay marriage, pupil premium, raised income tax threshold) and restrained the more base instincts of the Tory party (as witnessed by what they did from 2015 onwards).
Not that anyone progressive wanted to give them a fair hearing at the time - because they also provided succour to a lot of terrible legislation. LDs voted more loyally for shit Tory bills than Tory MPs did. Steve Webb heavily linking himself to Lansley's terrible NHS Destruction bill.
Clegg especially seemed enamoured with his Dave bromance, unwilling to maintain a suitable distance of break it off until he last minute. More visible and public arguments, having rebellions against shit bills like Tory MPs, making a principled stand here and there - all would have made both an immediate difference to the 2015 near ELE and their reputation afterwards.
I expect any future coalition to be run very differently.
Agree; I think Clegg was a little too nice, and a little too naive, for senior level politics. He came to the top pretty quickly, after all.
I was in coalition myself with the Tories on the council for the first four years, and you do have to play hard ball in an arrangement like that. The accusation most commonly thrown at our administation by Labour wasn't that we were propping up the Tories, but that the LibDems were really running the council, which always made me smile, even though it wasn't really true. But being seen to stand up to pressure from the larger party is important, whereas the inexperienced LibDem ministers were a little too keen to be loyal, in public, even though most of them achieved (and blocked) a fair bit in private.
Of course it's more difficult at national level, because of the differences in media focus and attitude, the absence of voters who were really paying much attention, and the differences between parliamentary government (where parliament's ability to direct the executive is actually pretty limited, as we saw during the May era) and the council executive model.
With hindsight I’m amazed that the coalition didn’t engineer more (any?) principled public differences of opinion for public consumption. Didn’t bother the Tories of course but it should have been a prerequisite for the LDs. As you suggest, too much naïveté from nice guy Nick.
One important indicator for me is how often people in Russia talk about possible defeat. I must confess that it happens now really often, which is a dramatic turn from the early months of the war 2/23"
It sounds like the idea of defeat is becoming normalised in Russia. This will reduce the shock value of defeat, when it comes, which will make it easier for the regime, or elements of it, to survive, and reduces the risk of a catastrophic escalation in response to that defeat.
I think you can see the outlines of a narrative that argues that the brave sacrifice of Russian soldiers, fighting NATO on the battlefields of Ukraine, prevented the NATO invasion of Russia. A story of glorious defeat that Britain is familiar with from episodes in its own Imperial past.
The Russian plan A is to hang on and hope for Western resolve to fracture, and support for Ukraine to weaken, but it does look like the Russian state is preparing a plan B to reconcile the Russian people to defeat.
Interesting and somewhat optimistic as a potential off-ramp.
However, isn't Putin's problem that the ultra-nationalists are less than keen to let him have that off-ramp? Prigozhin is already openly taunting him with his "happy grandfather" comments, and if he's going to stab ultra-nationalists in the back, Putin needs to make damned sure he gets a clean kill.
So it's possible, but warming up the wider public is a much easier aspect of it for Putin than dealing with angry ultras.
A Tory MP speaks total sense and in agreement with me. Things they be changing
I'm not sure the fuss around the coronation is the best example of the problems with new laws regarding protests. Much had been made of the six who were, in all probability, wrongfully arrested. I hope they sue and win their case.
However the authorities are reacting to new styles of protests and are responding to public concern. Any right to protest also runs into other peoples rights. For example, if you block the roads as part of your protest, what of the right of the member of the public to drive down that road? To drive to the hospice to see their dying parent for the last time? Its always going to be a balancing act. On the whole Saturday went brilliantly for the police - no trouble, people were allowed to protest (also mainly ignored by the TV).
I don't know what the answers are, but a right to protest is not the same as a right to protest in any way you want to.
The Lib Dem’s would have lost out, after 2010, whichever course they chose.
I agree, but I also think (especially with the benefit of hindsight!) they could have played the hand they were dealt better and maybe come out with some more long-term gains and less heavy losses from the period.
They should never have voted for tuition fee increases, and they could have manufactured some rows with the Conservatives, to show they were fighting their corner.
The LibDems should have left the coalition a few months before the election in order to campaign on their own rather than as part of the outgoing, Tory-led government. It would probably have helped the Conservatives too; remember few foresaw the collapse of Labour in Scotland and that David Cameron expected another hung parliament.
The collapse of Labour in Scotland did not lead to a CON overall Majority at all, as almost all of those seats went to the SNP. The overall majority was mostly caused by a collapse in the LD vote in England leading to many Orange constituencies turning Blue.
Probably Oct 2024 with a smaller chance of May 2024 to coincide with the local elections or June 2024 following any reasonable result for CON in those local elections.
Barring unreasonably unforeseen events it will be Rishi, Keir and Ed leading the major parties into the election.
Neither Keir nor Ed are ruling out a coalition with each other, which I find interesting.
I would prefer a LAB/LD coalition - in practice more likely to be LD confidence and supply - to LAB majority government.
After the last Coalition Govt there will never be another LD coalition imho.
I don't agree, although we can be reasonably confident there won't be another Tory one in our lifetimes. The key will be that next time they'll try to do it differently, badge it differently, and settle for a "slice" of the government as happens in Germany rather than becoming just a layer in the whole cake.
After all, what is thrown at LibDems is not that they made a coalition at all, but that they propped up the Tories. Having had a coalition with both major parties in living memory is more solution, than problem redoubled.
In reality the LibDems drove both a lot of good policy (gay marriage, pupil premium, raised income tax threshold) and restrained the more base instincts of the Tory party (as witnessed by what they did from 2015 onwards).
Not that anyone progressive wanted to give them a fair hearing at the time - because they also provided succour to a lot of terrible legislation. LDs voted more loyally for shit Tory bills than Tory MPs did. Steve Webb heavily linking himself to Lansley's terrible NHS Destruction bill.
Clegg especially seemed enamoured with his Dave bromance, unwilling to maintain a suitable distance of break it off until he last minute. More visible and public arguments, having rebellions against shit bills like Tory MPs, making a principled stand here and there - all would have made both an immediate difference to the 2015 near ELE and their reputation afterwards.
I expect any future coalition to be run very differently.
I never had a problem with the LDs going into coalition with the Tories. It made total sense. What surprised me was that initial enthusiasm and glee with which they joined the Tories in attacking Labour. Politically, I think they made a huge mistake in doing that as so many of their votes came from former Labour voters who had rejected the Tories, too. Greg Hands (over)uses that Liam Byrne Treasury note but many now forget that it was LD David Laws who made it public, in defiance of the convention that led Byrne to write it in the first place. They realised too late in the 2013-2015 cycle that the Bromance was a big error and paid a big price as a result. Even now, there are a lot of people inside Labour - across the party, not on just one wing - who are highly suspicious of them, to the extent that I think Starmer would struggle internally to sell any kind of formal deal involving LDs within a Labour-led government. If one is needed, it will be nods and winks, not handshakes.
This isn't true. Laws found the note and mentioned it to Osborne. In his book Laws then said he was taken aback to find the Tories harping on about it.
I don't think that's completely true, according to the Guardian story of 17th May 2010
Byrne's note was discovered by David Laws, the Liberal Democrat MP who was appointed by the coalition government to succeed Byrne as No 2 at the Treasury.
It is a convention for outgoing ministers to leave a note for their successors with advice on how to settle into the job. But Byrne's note – which he later said was intended as a private joke – drew attention to Labour's economic record when it was revealed by Laws at a press conference today.
Laws told reporters: "When I arrived at my desk on the very first day as chief secretary, I found a letter from the previous chief secretary to give me some advice, I assumed, on how I conduct myself over the months ahead.
"Unfortunately, when I opened it, it was a one-sentence letter which simply said: 'Dear chief secretary, I'm afraid to tell you there's no money left,' which was honest but slightly less helpful advice than I had been expecting."
It is likely that Laws didn't expect the Tories to still use it as a weapon 13 years into the future but he was the one to put it out there.
IIRC, the background to this was that Byrne was expecting to leave the note for Philip Hammond, who had been his shadow for several years, and they’d worked closely together on the 2008-9 financial crisis in a bipartisan way.
When Laws picked it up, it wasn’t exactly what he was expecting to find on his desk, and so it ended up in David Cameron’s pocket in the 2015 debate.
Whatever their faults, I don't think it can be denied that Brown and Byrne worked very hard to try to prevent the crisis of 2008-10 turning into another Great Depression, and if Hammond assisted them, then it reflects a lot of credit on him as well.
Where I think that the Labour government deserves criticism is (a) letting house prices run out of control from 1997-2007 (with borrowing surging on the back of it) and (b) their hubris, believing that they really had abolished boom and bust.
Yes, it was Brown as PM, Darling as CotE, and Byrne as CSttT, who worked through the crisis talks, and the measures taken were run past Cameron, Osborne, and Hammond respectively, to enable bipartisan legislation to be brought forward in 2009.
Given that context, Byrne’s note was both funny and expected. Hammond would have had a laugh at the time, and saved it for his memoir still to be written. When someone else picked it up, the problems began.
Agree completely on the Lab failures. Brown really did think he’d abolished the economic cycle, to the point where borrowing was high at the top of the boom - with “investment” in tax credits, which also had to be given to EU immigrants. The other big failure was PFI, which pushed the actual spending on infrastructure well into the future, as we are seeing now with 25-year contracts expiring.
One important indicator for me is how often people in Russia talk about possible defeat. I must confess that it happens now really often, which is a dramatic turn from the early months of the war 2/23"
It sounds like the idea of defeat is becoming normalised in Russia. This will reduce the shock value of defeat, when it comes, which will make it easier for the regime, or elements of it, to survive, and reduces the risk of a catastrophic escalation in response to that defeat.
I think you can see the outlines of a narrative that argues that the brave sacrifice of Russian soldiers, fighting NATO on the battlefields of Ukraine, prevented the NATO invasion of Russia. A story of glorious defeat that Britain is familiar with from episodes in its own Imperial past.
The Russian plan A is to hang on and hope for Western resolve to fracture, and support for Ukraine to weaken, but it does look like the Russian state is preparing a plan B to reconcile the Russian people to defeat.
Interesting and somewhat optimistic as a potential off-ramp.
However, isn't Putin's problem that the ultra-nationalists are less than keen to let him have that off-ramp? Prigozhin is already openly taunting him with his "happy grandfather" comments, and if he's going to stab ultra-nationalists in the back, Putin needs to make damned sure he gets a clean kill.
So it's possible, but warming up the wider public is a much easier aspect of it for Putin than dealing with angry ultras.
I tend to view things more pessimistically (pessimism tends to be the most realistic approach to things Russian).
Not nuclear pessimism (though I wouldn't categorically say that won't happen) but a Russian defeat could have catastrophic ramifications in several ways, potentially including a messy, multifaction civil war (or civil wars plural - there are multiple secessionist movements in Russia). Some sort of vengeance war from Ukrainian irregulars or Azov types is not impossible either.
Then there's the geopolitical overspill, particularly amongst Russia's allies (Iran springs to mind) and sponsored quasi-states, but also the PMC meddling in the Sahel and elsewhere.
As ever, the poor Russian people (and others) will suffer because of their insane and horrible leaders. Putin will fall, perhaps sooner than we think, but I have little hope that whoever succeeds him will be any better.
And we see now why the Tories are finished in Scotland. The pro union party is now Labour
The Conservatives seem likely to win 6 or 7 Scottish seats, which they'll probably be quite content with. That compares with 0-1 from 1997 to 2017.
We’ve moved on from the breathless ‘SCons are back!!’ Ejaculations and #ruthforfm hashtags of 2017 at least.
True, but also broadly agree with @Sean_F that the Cons will win a few seats in Scotland and probably be reasonably happy with it. Scottish Tories may be shrinking in number and confined to a few areas, but they definitely exist. It's a mistake to view Scottish politics entirely through the lens of nationalism, just as it is wrong to look at English politics through the leave/remain lens.
And we see now why the Tories are finished in Scotland. The pro union party is now Labour
The Conservatives seem likely to win 6 or 7 Scottish seats, which they'll probably be quite content with. That compares with 0-1 from 1997 to 2017.
We’ve moved on from the breathless ‘SCons are back!!’ Ejaculations and #ruthforfm hashtags of 2017 at least.
True, but also broadly agree with @Sean_F that the Cons will win a few seats in Scotland and probably be reasonably happy with it. Scottish Tories may be shrinking in number and confined to a few areas, but they definitely exist. It's a mistake to view Scottish politics entirely through the lens of nationalism, just as it is wrong to look at English politics through the leave/remain lens.
The traditional Scottish electorate returns LDs in the highlands, Tories in the lowlands, and Labour in the central belt.
It’s going to be really interesting to see what happens in the next 18 months electorally in Scotland. Yousless does’t exactly inspire the nationalist vote, in the same way as his two predecessors have managed it.
One important indicator for me is how often people in Russia talk about possible defeat. I must confess that it happens now really often, which is a dramatic turn from the early months of the war 2/23"
It sounds like the idea of defeat is becoming normalised in Russia. This will reduce the shock value of defeat, when it comes, which will make it easier for the regime, or elements of it, to survive, and reduces the risk of a catastrophic escalation in response to that defeat.
I think you can see the outlines of a narrative that argues that the brave sacrifice of Russian soldiers, fighting NATO on the battlefields of Ukraine, prevented the NATO invasion of Russia. A story of glorious defeat that Britain is familiar with from episodes in its own Imperial past.
The Russian plan A is to hang on and hope for Western resolve to fracture, and support for Ukraine to weaken, but it does look like the Russian state is preparing a plan B to reconcile the Russian people to defeat.
Interesting and somewhat optimistic as a potential off-ramp.
However, isn't Putin's problem that the ultra-nationalists are less than keen to let him have that off-ramp? Prigozhin is already openly taunting him with his "happy grandfather" comments, and if he's going to stab ultra-nationalists in the back, Putin needs to make damned sure he gets a clean kill.
So it's possible, but warming up the wider public is a much easier aspect of it for Putin than dealing with angry ultras.
I tend to view things more pessimistically (pessimism tends to be the most realistic approach to things Russian).
Not nuclear pessimism (though I wouldn't categorically say that won't happen) but a Russian defeat could have catastrophic ramifications in several ways, potentially including a messy, multifaction civil war (or civil wars plural - there are multiple secessionist movements in Russia). Some sort of vengeance war from Ukrainian irregulars or Azov types is not impossible either.
Then there's the geopolitical overspill, particularly amongst Russia's allies (Iran springs to mind) and sponsored quasi-states, but also the PMC meddling in the Sahel and elsewhere.
As ever, the poor Russian people (and others) will suffer because of their insane and horrible leaders. Putin will fall, perhaps sooner than we think, but I have little hope that whoever succeeds him will be any better.
Which secessionist movements do you think are the strongest?
And we see now why the Tories are finished in Scotland. The pro union party is now Labour
The Conservatives seem likely to win 6 or 7 Scottish seats, which they'll probably be quite content with. That compares with 0-1 from 1997 to 2017.
We’ve moved on from the breathless ‘SCons are back!!’ Ejaculations and #ruthforfm hashtags of 2017 at least.
True, but also broadly agree with @Sean_F that the Cons will win a few seats in Scotland and probably be reasonably happy with it. Scottish Tories may be shrinking in number and confined to a few areas, but they definitely exist. It's a mistake to view Scottish politics entirely through the lens of nationalism, just as it is wrong to look at English politics through the leave/remain lens.
The traditional Scottish electorate returns LDs in the highlands, Tories in the lowlands, and Labour in the central belt.
It’s going to be really interesting to see what happens in the next 18 months electorally in Scotland. Yousless does’t exactly inspire the nationalist vote, in the same way as his two predecessors have managed it.
Yes, but which Labour and which Tory parties? That is also an important issue.
One important indicator for me is how often people in Russia talk about possible defeat. I must confess that it happens now really often, which is a dramatic turn from the early months of the war 2/23"
It sounds like the idea of defeat is becoming normalised in Russia. This will reduce the shock value of defeat, when it comes, which will make it easier for the regime, or elements of it, to survive, and reduces the risk of a catastrophic escalation in response to that defeat.
I think you can see the outlines of a narrative that argues that the brave sacrifice of Russian soldiers, fighting NATO on the battlefields of Ukraine, prevented the NATO invasion of Russia. A story of glorious defeat that Britain is familiar with from episodes in its own Imperial past.
The Russian plan A is to hang on and hope for Western resolve to fracture, and support for Ukraine to weaken, but it does look like the Russian state is preparing a plan B to reconcile the Russian people to defeat.
Interesting and somewhat optimistic as a potential off-ramp.
However, isn't Putin's problem that the ultra-nationalists are less than keen to let him have that off-ramp? Prigozhin is already openly taunting him with his "happy grandfather" comments, and if he's going to stab ultra-nationalists in the back, Putin needs to make damned sure he gets a clean kill.
So it's possible, but warming up the wider public is a much easier aspect of it for Putin than dealing with angry ultras.
I tend to view things more pessimistically (pessimism tends to be the most realistic approach to things Russian).
Not nuclear pessimism (though I wouldn't categorically say that won't happen) but a Russian defeat could have catastrophic ramifications in several ways, potentially including a messy, multifaction civil war (or civil wars plural - there are multiple secessionist movements in Russia). Some sort of vengeance war from Ukrainian irregulars or Azov types is not impossible either.
Then there's the geopolitical overspill, particularly amongst Russia's allies (Iran springs to mind) and sponsored quasi-states, but also the PMC meddling in the Sahel and elsewhere.
As ever, the poor Russian people (and others) will suffer because of their insane and horrible leaders. Putin will fall, perhaps sooner than we think, but I have little hope that whoever succeeds him will be any better.
That's all very fair. However, it's also not our responsibility. What happens in Russia after any potential loss in Ukraine is up to the Russian people; or at least a small subset of them. Whether good or bad, it is in their hands. All we can do is respond to their external aggression.
Probably Oct 2024 with a smaller chance of May 2024 to coincide with the local elections or June 2024 following any reasonable result for CON in those local elections.
Barring unreasonably unforeseen events it will be Rishi, Keir and Ed leading the major parties into the election.
Neither Keir nor Ed are ruling out a coalition with each other, which I find interesting.
I would prefer a LAB/LD coalition - in practice more likely to be LD confidence and supply - to LAB majority government.
After the last Coalition Govt there will never be another LD coalition imho.
I don't agree, although we can be reasonably confident there won't be another Tory one in our lifetimes. The key will be that next time they'll try to do it differently, badge it differently, and settle for a "slice" of the government as happens in Germany rather than becoming just a layer in the whole cake.
After all, what is thrown at LibDems is not that they made a coalition at all, but that they propped up the Tories. Having had a coalition with both major parties in living memory is more solution, than problem redoubled.
In reality the LibDems drove both a lot of good policy (gay marriage, pupil premium, raised income tax threshold) and restrained the more base instincts of the Tory party (as witnessed by what they did from 2015 onwards).
Not that anyone progressive wanted to give them a fair hearing at the time - because they also provided succour to a lot of terrible legislation. LDs voted more loyally for shit Tory bills than Tory MPs did. Steve Webb heavily linking himself to Lansley's terrible NHS Destruction bill.
Clegg especially seemed enamoured with his Dave bromance, unwilling to maintain a suitable distance of break it off until he last minute. More visible and public arguments, having rebellions against shit bills like Tory MPs, making a principled stand here and there - all would have made both an immediate difference to the 2015 near ELE and their reputation afterwards.
I expect any future coalition to be run very differently.
Agree; I think Clegg was a little too nice, and a little too naive, for senior level politics. He came to the top pretty quickly, after all.
I was in coalition myself with the Tories on the council for the first four years, and you do have to play hard ball in an arrangement like that. The accusation most commonly thrown at our administation by Labour wasn't that we were propping up the Tories, but that the LibDems were really running the council, which always made me smile, even though it wasn't really true. But being seen to stand up to pressure from the larger party is important, whereas the inexperienced LibDem ministers were a little too keen to be loyal, in public, even though most of them achieved (and blocked) a fair bit in private.
Of course it's more difficult at national level, because of the differences in media focus and attitude, the absence of voters who were really paying much attention, and the differences between parliamentary government (where parliament's ability to direct the executive is actually pretty limited, as we saw during the May era) and the council executive model.
With hindsight I’m amazed that the coalition didn’t engineer more (any?) principled public differences of opinion for public consumption. Didn’t bother the Tories of course but it should have been a prerequisite for the LDs. As you suggest, too much naïveté from nice guy Nick.
Nice ?
Nice enough to do rather well at Facebook
Evil enough to do rather well at Facebook.
Irony doesn’t really come across on the interweb-thingy does it?
One important indicator for me is how often people in Russia talk about possible defeat. I must confess that it happens now really often, which is a dramatic turn from the early months of the war 2/23"
It sounds like the idea of defeat is becoming normalised in Russia. This will reduce the shock value of defeat, when it comes, which will make it easier for the regime, or elements of it, to survive, and reduces the risk of a catastrophic escalation in response to that defeat.
I think you can see the outlines of a narrative that argues that the brave sacrifice of Russian soldiers, fighting NATO on the battlefields of Ukraine, prevented the NATO invasion of Russia. A story of glorious defeat that Britain is familiar with from episodes in its own Imperial past.
The Russian plan A is to hang on and hope for Western resolve to fracture, and support for Ukraine to weaken, but it does look like the Russian state is preparing a plan B to reconcile the Russian people to defeat.
Interesting and somewhat optimistic as a potential off-ramp.
However, isn't Putin's problem that the ultra-nationalists are less than keen to let him have that off-ramp? Prigozhin is already openly taunting him with his "happy grandfather" comments, and if he's going to stab ultra-nationalists in the back, Putin needs to make damned sure he gets a clean kill.
So it's possible, but warming up the wider public is a much easier aspect of it for Putin than dealing with angry ultras.
I tend to view things more pessimistically (pessimism tends to be the most realistic approach to things Russian).
Not nuclear pessimism (though I wouldn't categorically say that won't happen) but a Russian defeat could have catastrophic ramifications in several ways, potentially including a messy, multifaction civil war (or civil wars plural - there are multiple secessionist movements in Russia). Some sort of vengeance war from Ukrainian irregulars or Azov types is not impossible either.
Then there's the geopolitical overspill, particularly amongst Russia's allies (Iran springs to mind) and sponsored quasi-states, but also the PMC meddling in the Sahel and elsewhere.
As ever, the poor Russian people (and others) will suffer because of their insane and horrible leaders. Putin will fall, perhaps sooner than we think, but I have little hope that whoever succeeds him will be any better.
Which secessionist movements do you think are the strongest?
Chechnya (among the various other patchwork nations of the northern Caucasus. There's also Tatarstan which is more coherent and stable.
Other could awaken though - if I lived in Kaliningrad and saw 'mainland' Russia falling apart, I'd look rather enviously at my Baltic neighbours.
Nice header. Do people think there's much chance of Rishi staying Tory leader even if defeated in next election?
My sense was he doesn't fancy being leader of opposition and so would probably resign in that case...
There is zero chance of him staying if he loses power. The last Tory PM not to be defenestrated on losing power in an election was Churchill in 1945. Even if we widen it to 'losing an election' that still takes us back to Heath in 1966, and he'd only been party leader a year.
Agreed.
What will happen is that all the boiling rage in the party will burst to the surface. There will be a massive internecine civil war.
The roots of that go back several years and people like JRM will be in the firing line.
After the bloodletting, what then? Will the Conservative party split, as it has threatened? Will they continue with their unelectable lurch to the right, as I suspect? Or will they return to one nation toryism, which I hope?
The Conservative party is going to be a very interesting place after the election. My feeling is that they need to lance the right wing boil at some point and the fastest way to do that is to allow the right access to the driving seat for a while, just to demonstrate how poor their motoring skills actually are. The party can then move on as a mainstream vehicle for lower taxes, more moderate regulation and a bit of law n order. The interesting question is how the Tories respond to the UK becoming closer to the EU as is likely in the next decade. If they are smart they will position themselves in the vanguard of that, but the risk is that it energises the right and makes it harder for the party to embrace the mainstream.
They gave Truss the steering wheel and she drove the party, and the country, off the road. Do they need a second lesson?
One important indicator for me is how often people in Russia talk about possible defeat. I must confess that it happens now really often, which is a dramatic turn from the early months of the war 2/23"
It sounds like the idea of defeat is becoming normalised in Russia. This will reduce the shock value of defeat, when it comes, which will make it easier for the regime, or elements of it, to survive, and reduces the risk of a catastrophic escalation in response to that defeat.
I think you can see the outlines of a narrative that argues that the brave sacrifice of Russian soldiers, fighting NATO on the battlefields of Ukraine, prevented the NATO invasion of Russia. A story of glorious defeat that Britain is familiar with from episodes in its own Imperial past.
The Russian plan A is to hang on and hope for Western resolve to fracture, and support for Ukraine to weaken, but it does look like the Russian state is preparing a plan B to reconcile the Russian people to defeat.
Interesting and somewhat optimistic as a potential off-ramp.
However, isn't Putin's problem that the ultra-nationalists are less than keen to let him have that off-ramp? Prigozhin is already openly taunting him with his "happy grandfather" comments, and if he's going to stab ultra-nationalists in the back, Putin needs to make damned sure he gets a clean kill.
So it's possible, but warming up the wider public is a much easier aspect of it for Putin than dealing with angry ultras.
I tend to view things more pessimistically (pessimism tends to be the most realistic approach to things Russian).
Not nuclear pessimism (though I wouldn't categorically say that won't happen) but a Russian defeat could have catastrophic ramifications in several ways, potentially including a messy, multifaction civil war (or civil wars plural - there are multiple secessionist movements in Russia). Some sort of vengeance war from Ukrainian irregulars or Azov types is not impossible either.
Then there's the geopolitical overspill, particularly amongst Russia's allies (Iran springs to mind) and sponsored quasi-states, but also the PMC meddling in the Sahel and elsewhere.
As ever, the poor Russian people (and others) will suffer because of their insane and horrible leaders. Putin will fall, perhaps sooner than we think, but I have little hope that whoever succeeds him will be any better.
Which secessionist movements do you think are the strongest?
Bashkortostan is the only one with any real political momentum as it is enthusiastically stoked by money from ex-pat Bashkirs in the Baltic states. All or most of the rest are the obsessions of a few extravagantly bearded eccentrics in trousers made of bark. If Chechnya can't do it the chances are slim for anyone else as they don't have anything the nationalist identity or cultural predilection to violence of the Chechens.
What are the chances of XR or JSO (or even Republic) disrupting Eurovision this weekend?
Surely a great opportunity to get noticed
I am buzzing for Eurovision. If they want to disrupt it then they can go right ahead!
So you’ll be happy if the stage gets covered in paint, and there’s an hour’s delay on the live feed - as happened to the snooker a couple of weeks ago?
Probably Oct 2024 with a smaller chance of May 2024 to coincide with the local elections or June 2024 following any reasonable result for CON in those local elections.
Barring unreasonably unforeseen events it will be Rishi, Keir and Ed leading the major parties into the election.
Neither Keir nor Ed are ruling out a coalition with each other, which I find interesting.
I would prefer a LAB/LD coalition - in practice more likely to be LD confidence and supply - to LAB majority government.
After the last Coalition Govt there will never be another LD coalition imho.
I don't agree, although we can be reasonably confident there won't be another Tory one in our lifetimes. The key will be that next time they'll try to do it differently, badge it differently, and settle for a "slice" of the government as happens in Germany rather than becoming just a layer in the whole cake.
After all, what is thrown at LibDems is not that they made a coalition at all, but that they propped up the Tories. Having had a coalition with both major parties in living memory is more solution, than problem redoubled.
In reality the LibDems drove both a lot of good policy (gay marriage, pupil premium, raised income tax threshold) and restrained the more base instincts of the Tory party (as witnessed by what they did from 2015 onwards).
Not that anyone progressive wanted to give them a fair hearing at the time - because they also provided succour to a lot of terrible legislation. LDs voted more loyally for shit Tory bills than Tory MPs did. Steve Webb heavily linking himself to Lansley's terrible NHS Destruction bill.
Clegg especially seemed enamoured with his Dave bromance, unwilling to maintain a suitable distance of break it off until he last minute. More visible and public arguments, having rebellions against shit bills like Tory MPs, making a principled stand here and there - all would have made both an immediate difference to the 2015 near ELE and their reputation afterwards.
I expect any future coalition to be run very differently.
I never had a problem with the LDs going into coalition with the Tories. It made total sense. What surprised me was that initial enthusiasm and glee with which they joined the Tories in attacking Labour. Politically, I think they made a huge mistake in doing that as so many of their votes came from former Labour voters who had rejected the Tories, too. Greg Hands (over)uses that Liam Byrne Treasury note but many now forget that it was LD David Laws who made it public, in defiance of the convention that led Byrne to write it in the first place. They realised too late in the 2013-2015 cycle that the Bromance was a big error and paid a big price as a result. Even now, there are a lot of people inside Labour - across the party, not on just one wing - who are highly suspicious of them, to the extent that I think Starmer would struggle internally to sell any kind of formal deal involving LDs within a Labour-led government. If one is needed, it will be nods and winks, not handshakes.
This isn't true. Laws found the note and mentioned it to Osborne. In his book Laws then said he was taken aback to find the Tories harping on about it.
I don't think that's completely true, according to the Guardian story of 17th May 2010
Byrne's note was discovered by David Laws, the Liberal Democrat MP who was appointed by the coalition government to succeed Byrne as No 2 at the Treasury.
It is a convention for outgoing ministers to leave a note for their successors with advice on how to settle into the job. But Byrne's note – which he later said was intended as a private joke – drew attention to Labour's economic record when it was revealed by Laws at a press conference today.
Laws told reporters: "When I arrived at my desk on the very first day as chief secretary, I found a letter from the previous chief secretary to give me some advice, I assumed, on how I conduct myself over the months ahead.
"Unfortunately, when I opened it, it was a one-sentence letter which simply said: 'Dear chief secretary, I'm afraid to tell you there's no money left,' which was honest but slightly less helpful advice than I had been expecting."
It is likely that Laws didn't expect the Tories to still use it as a weapon 13 years into the future but he was the one to put it out there.
IIRC, the background to this was that Byrne was expecting to leave the note for Philip Hammond, who had been his shadow for several years, and they’d worked closely together on the 2008-9 financial crisis in a bipartisan way.
When Laws picked it up, it wasn’t exactly what he was expecting to find on his desk, and so it ended up in David Cameron’s pocket in the 2015 debate.
Whatever their faults, I don't think it can be denied that Brown and Byrne worked very hard to try to prevent the crisis of 2008-10 turning into another Great Depression, and if Hammond assisted them, then it reflects a lot of credit on him as well.
Where I think that the Labour government deserves criticism is (a) letting house prices run out of control from 1997-2007 (with borrowing surging on the back of it) and (b) their hubris, believing that they really had abolished boom and bust.
Whatever they might have done to try and mitigate the worst effects once it had started, it is also the case that Brown had left the UK in a far weakened position to actually deal with the crisis through his actions in the years prior to it starting.
When Brown as Chancellor created the FSA Peter Lilley as Shadow Chancellor warned it would make it far more difficult to deal with a banking or finacial crisis. Likewise the Lib Dems warned of a coming crisis as the result of Britain's financial bubble and were mocked by Angela Eagle. That was only moths before the crisis erupted.
And of course - as you mention - he ignored the basic principle of building a surplus in good times to help deal with the bad times, prefering instead to pretend there would be no more bad tuimes to justify all his spending.
Nice header. Do people think there's much chance of Rishi staying Tory leader even if defeated in next election?
My sense was he doesn't fancy being leader of opposition and so would probably resign in that case...
There is zero chance of him staying if he loses power. The last Tory PM not to be defenestrated on losing power in an election was Churchill in 1945. Even if we widen it to 'losing an election' that still takes us back to Heath in 1966, and he'd only been party leader a year.
Agreed.
What will happen is that all the boiling rage in the party will burst to the surface. There will be a massive internecine civil war.
The roots of that go back several years and people like JRM will be in the firing line.
After the bloodletting, what then? Will the Conservative party split, as it has threatened? Will they continue with their unelectable lurch to the right, as I suspect? Or will they return to one nation toryism, which I hope?
The Conservative party is going to be a very interesting place after the election. My feeling is that they need to lance the right wing boil at some point and the fastest way to do that is to allow the right access to the driving seat for a while, just to demonstrate how poor their motoring skills actually are. The party can then move on as a mainstream vehicle for lower taxes, more moderate regulation and a bit of law n order. The interesting question is how the Tories respond to the UK becoming closer to the EU as is likely in the next decade. If they are smart they will position themselves in the vanguard of that, but the risk is that it energises the right and makes it harder for the party to embrace the mainstream.
They gave Truss the steering wheel and she drove the party, and the country, off the road. Do they need a second lesson?
But Truss was only one version of Tory madness, the supply siders. I suspect they need to give the full fat anti woke nutters the wheel for a bit next.
Nice header. Do people think there's much chance of Rishi staying Tory leader even if defeated in next election?
My sense was he doesn't fancy being leader of opposition and so would probably resign in that case...
There is zero chance of him staying if he loses power. The last Tory PM not to be defenestrated on losing power in an election was Churchill in 1945. Even if we widen it to 'losing an election' that still takes us back to Heath in 1966, and he'd only been party leader a year.
Agreed.
What will happen is that all the boiling rage in the party will burst to the surface. There will be a massive internecine civil war.
The roots of that go back several years and people like JRM will be in the firing line.
After the bloodletting, what then? Will the Conservative party split, as it has threatened? Will they continue with their unelectable lurch to the right, as I suspect? Or will they return to one nation toryism, which I hope?
The Conservative party is going to be a very interesting place after the election. My feeling is that they need to lance the right wing boil at some point and the fastest way to do that is to allow the right access to the driving seat for a while, just to demonstrate how poor their motoring skills actually are. The party can then move on as a mainstream vehicle for lower taxes, more moderate regulation and a bit of law n order. The interesting question is how the Tories respond to the UK becoming closer to the EU as is likely in the next decade. If they are smart they will position themselves in the vanguard of that, but the risk is that it energises the right and makes it harder for the party to embrace the mainstream.
They gave Truss the steering wheel and she drove the party, and the country, off the road. Do they need a second lesson?
Always lovely to see some well-meaning advice for a political party from people who would never support that party in a billion years. Interesting how the advice is always to steer clear of anything a left-leaning EU fan finds objectionable. Pearls of wisdom beyond price being offered here - I do hope the responsible parties within the Tory Party are taking notes.
A Tory MP speaks total sense and in agreement with me. Things they be changing
I'm not sure the fuss around the coronation is the best example of the problems with new laws regarding protests. Much had been made of the six who were, in all probability, wrongfully arrested. I hope they sue and win their case.
However the authorities are reacting to new styles of protests and are responding to public concern. Any right to protest also runs into other peoples rights. For example, if you block the roads as part of your protest, what of the right of the member of the public to drive down that road? To drive to the hospice to see their dying parent for the last time? Its always going to be a balancing act. On the whole Saturday went brilliantly for the police - no trouble, people were allowed to protest (also mainly ignored by the TV).
I don't know what the answers are, but a right to protest is not the same as a right to protest in any way you want to.
“New styles of protest” appears to be the phrase of the day in apologia for what happened. It’s an ahistorical comment. Suffragettes, anarchists and fascists in the first half of the twentieth century used all sorts of different protests.
Suffragettes chained themselves to things: if eco-protesters have used glue instead, it’s still the same approach. Suffragettes scared horses, the accusation laid at republican protesters at the weekend.
What are the chances of XR or JSO (or even Republic) disrupting Eurovision this weekend?
Surely a great opportunity to get noticed
I am buzzing for Eurovision. If they want to disrupt it then they can go right ahead!
What if it’s disrupted by anti-woke protestors?
Maybe if we can get all the woke and anti woke people altogether in one place they will cancel one another out and we can stop talking about all this nonsense once and for all. Shame to say goodbye to Leon an CR, but all advances have their consequences.
A Tory MP speaks total sense and in agreement with me. Things they be changing
I'm not sure the fuss around the coronation is the best example of the problems with new laws regarding protests. Much had been made of the six who were, in all probability, wrongfully arrested. I hope they sue and win their case.
However the authorities are reacting to new styles of protests and are responding to public concern. Any right to protest also runs into other peoples rights. For example, if you block the roads as part of your protest, what of the right of the member of the public to drive down that road? To drive to the hospice to see their dying parent for the last time? Its always going to be a balancing act. On the whole Saturday went brilliantly for the police - no trouble, people were allowed to protest (also mainly ignored by the TV).
I don't know what the answers are, but a right to protest is not the same as a right to protest in any way you want to.
“New styles of protest” appears to be the phrase of the day in apologia for what happened. It’s an ahistorical comment. Suffragettes, anarchists and fascists in the first half of the twentieth century used all sorts of different protests.
Suffragettes chained themselves to things: if eco-protesters have used glue instead, it’s still the same approach. Suffragettes scared horses, the accusation laid at republican protesters at the weekend.
How successfully did the Suffragettes, anarchists and fascists advance their causes?
One important indicator for me is how often people in Russia talk about possible defeat. I must confess that it happens now really often, which is a dramatic turn from the early months of the war 2/23"
It sounds like the idea of defeat is becoming normalised in Russia. This will reduce the shock value of defeat, when it comes, which will make it easier for the regime, or elements of it, to survive, and reduces the risk of a catastrophic escalation in response to that defeat.
I think you can see the outlines of a narrative that argues that the brave sacrifice of Russian soldiers, fighting NATO on the battlefields of Ukraine, prevented the NATO invasion of Russia. A story of glorious defeat that Britain is familiar with from episodes in its own Imperial past.
The Russian plan A is to hang on and hope for Western resolve to fracture, and support for Ukraine to weaken, but it does look like the Russian state is preparing a plan B to reconcile the Russian people to defeat.
Interesting and somewhat optimistic as a potential off-ramp.
However, isn't Putin's problem that the ultra-nationalists are less than keen to let him have that off-ramp? Prigozhin is already openly taunting him with his "happy grandfather" comments, and if he's going to stab ultra-nationalists in the back, Putin needs to make damned sure he gets a clean kill.
So it's possible, but warming up the wider public is a much easier aspect of it for Putin than dealing with angry ultras.
I tend to view things more pessimistically (pessimism tends to be the most realistic approach to things Russian).
Not nuclear pessimism (though I wouldn't categorically say that won't happen) but a Russian defeat could have catastrophic ramifications in several ways, potentially including a messy, multifaction civil war (or civil wars plural - there are multiple secessionist movements in Russia). Some sort of vengeance war from Ukrainian irregulars or Azov types is not impossible either.
Then there's the geopolitical overspill, particularly amongst Russia's allies (Iran springs to mind) and sponsored quasi-states, but also the PMC meddling in the Sahel and elsewhere.
As ever, the poor Russian people (and others) will suffer because of their insane and horrible leaders. Putin will fall, perhaps sooner than we think, but I have little hope that whoever succeeds him will be any better.
Which secessionist movements do you think are the strongest?
Bashkortostan is the only one with any real political momentum as it is enthusiastically stoked by money from ex-pat Bashkirs in the Baltic states. All or most of the rest are the obsessions of a few extravagantly bearded eccentrics in trousers made of bark. If Chechnya can't do it the chances are slim for anyone else as they don't have anything the nationalist identity or cultural predilection to violence of the Chechens.
I've just looked up Bashkortostan - apparently it has a population of 45, and 1 street. I suspect I might be looking at the wrong Bashkortostan.
For all the performative woke-scolding and claims to protect the vulnerable, questions about the legacy of PIE and links to foundational members of Scottish gay rights campaigns remain unanswered. Joanna Cherry KC MP is not about to deliver a Glasgow Kiss to trans-identified kids after a hard night on the Buckfast. Similarly, Kate Forbes is hardly going to pack Scotland’s youth off to Bible camp. Yet both these women have been smeared as posing a threat to vulnerable people for sticking to their principles on the GRR. All the while, trans lobby groups have grown fat on grants from the Scottish government. It is hard to escape the feeling that grievous injustices have been drowned out by cries of well-funded gender activists.
Nice header. Do people think there's much chance of Rishi staying Tory leader even if defeated in next election?
My sense was he doesn't fancy being leader of opposition and so would probably resign in that case...
There is zero chance of him staying if he loses power. The last Tory PM not to be defenestrated on losing power in an election was Churchill in 1945. Even if we widen it to 'losing an election' that still takes us back to Heath in 1966, and he'd only been party leader a year.
Agreed.
What will happen is that all the boiling rage in the party will burst to the surface. There will be a massive internecine civil war.
The roots of that go back several years and people like JRM will be in the firing line.
After the bloodletting, what then? Will the Conservative party split, as it has threatened? Will they continue with their unelectable lurch to the right, as I suspect? Or will they return to one nation toryism, which I hope?
The Conservative party is going to be a very interesting place after the election. My feeling is that they need to lance the right wing boil at some point and the fastest way to do that is to allow the right access to the driving seat for a while, just to demonstrate how poor their motoring skills actually are. The party can then move on as a mainstream vehicle for lower taxes, more moderate regulation and a bit of law n order. The interesting question is how the Tories respond to the UK becoming closer to the EU as is likely in the next decade. If they are smart they will position themselves in the vanguard of that, but the risk is that it energises the right and makes it harder for the party to embrace the mainstream.
They gave Truss the steering wheel and she drove the party, and the country, off the road. Do they need a second lesson?
But Truss was only one version of Tory madness, the supply siders. I suspect they need to give the full fat anti woke nutters the wheel for a bit next.
How many flavours of Tory madness need to take a turn? Will the Conservative car even be drivable after it’s been run off the road so many times?
One important indicator for me is how often people in Russia talk about possible defeat. I must confess that it happens now really often, which is a dramatic turn from the early months of the war 2/23"
It sounds like the idea of defeat is becoming normalised in Russia. This will reduce the shock value of defeat, when it comes, which will make it easier for the regime, or elements of it, to survive, and reduces the risk of a catastrophic escalation in response to that defeat.
I think you can see the outlines of a narrative that argues that the brave sacrifice of Russian soldiers, fighting NATO on the battlefields of Ukraine, prevented the NATO invasion of Russia. A story of glorious defeat that Britain is familiar with from episodes in its own Imperial past.
The Russian plan A is to hang on and hope for Western resolve to fracture, and support for Ukraine to weaken, but it does look like the Russian state is preparing a plan B to reconcile the Russian people to defeat.
Interesting and somewhat optimistic as a potential off-ramp.
However, isn't Putin's problem that the ultra-nationalists are less than keen to let him have that off-ramp? Prigozhin is already openly taunting him with his "happy grandfather" comments, and if he's going to stab ultra-nationalists in the back, Putin needs to make damned sure he gets a clean kill.
So it's possible, but warming up the wider public is a much easier aspect of it for Putin than dealing with angry ultras.
I tend to view things more pessimistically (pessimism tends to be the most realistic approach to things Russian).
Not nuclear pessimism (though I wouldn't categorically say that won't happen) but a Russian defeat could have catastrophic ramifications in several ways, potentially including a messy, multifaction civil war (or civil wars plural - there are multiple secessionist movements in Russia). Some sort of vengeance war from Ukrainian irregulars or Azov types is not impossible either.
Then there's the geopolitical overspill, particularly amongst Russia's allies (Iran springs to mind) and sponsored quasi-states, but also the PMC meddling in the Sahel and elsewhere.
As ever, the poor Russian people (and others) will suffer because of their insane and horrible leaders. Putin will fall, perhaps sooner than we think, but I have little hope that whoever succeeds him will be any better.
Which secessionist movements do you think are the strongest?
Bashkortostan is the only one with any real political momentum as it is enthusiastically stoked by money from ex-pat Bashkirs in the Baltic states. All or most of the rest are the obsessions of a few extravagantly bearded eccentrics in trousers made of bark. If Chechnya can't do it the chances are slim for anyone else as they don't have anything the nationalist identity or cultural predilection to violence of the Chechens.
Do you not see the Chechens having another pop at it?
What are the chances of XR or JSO (or even Republic) disrupting Eurovision this weekend?
Surely a great opportunity to get noticed
I am buzzing for Eurovision. If they want to disrupt it then they can go right ahead!
So you’ll be happy if the stage gets covered in paint, and there’s an hour’s delay on the live feed - as happened to the snooker a couple of weeks ago?
While I do agree with you, it is tempting to joke that a JSO protest might take place at Eurovision without anyone noticing it isn't part of an official performance.
Nice header. Do people think there's much chance of Rishi staying Tory leader even if defeated in next election?
My sense was he doesn't fancy being leader of opposition and so would probably resign in that case...
There is zero chance of him staying if he loses power. The last Tory PM not to be defenestrated on losing power in an election was Churchill in 1945. Even if we widen it to 'losing an election' that still takes us back to Heath in 1966, and he'd only been party leader a year.
Agreed.
What will happen is that all the boiling rage in the party will burst to the surface. There will be a massive internecine civil war.
The roots of that go back several years and people like JRM will be in the firing line.
After the bloodletting, what then? Will the Conservative party split, as it has threatened? Will they continue with their unelectable lurch to the right, as I suspect? Or will they return to one nation toryism, which I hope?
The Conservative party is going to be a very interesting place after the election. My feeling is that they need to lance the right wing boil at some point and the fastest way to do that is to allow the right access to the driving seat for a while, just to demonstrate how poor their motoring skills actually are. The party can then move on as a mainstream vehicle for lower taxes, more moderate regulation and a bit of law n order. The interesting question is how the Tories respond to the UK becoming closer to the EU as is likely in the next decade. If they are smart they will position themselves in the vanguard of that, but the risk is that it energises the right and makes it harder for the party to embrace the mainstream.
They gave Truss the steering wheel and she drove the party, and the country, off the road. Do they need a second lesson?
Always lovely to see some well-meaning advice for a political party from people who would never support that party in a billion years. Interesting how the advice is always to steer clear of anything a left-leaning EU fan finds objectionable. Pearls of wisdom beyond price being offered here - I do hope the responsible parties within the Tory Party are taking notes.
Always lovely to see some well-meaning comments from someone who believes Russian propaganda about Ukrainian bioweapon labs.
A Tory MP speaks total sense and in agreement with me. Things they be changing
I'm not sure the fuss around the coronation is the best example of the problems with new laws regarding protests. Much had been made of the six who were, in all probability, wrongfully arrested. I hope they sue and win their case.
However the authorities are reacting to new styles of protests and are responding to public concern. Any right to protest also runs into other peoples rights. For example, if you block the roads as part of your protest, what of the right of the member of the public to drive down that road? To drive to the hospice to see their dying parent for the last time? Its always going to be a balancing act. On the whole Saturday went brilliantly for the police - no trouble, people were allowed to protest (also mainly ignored by the TV).
I don't know what the answers are, but a right to protest is not the same as a right to protest in any way you want to.
“New styles of protest” appears to be the phrase of the day in apologia for what happened. It’s an ahistorical comment. Suffragettes, anarchists and fascists in the first half of the twentieth century used all sorts of different protests.
Suffragettes chained themselves to things: if eco-protesters have used glue instead, it’s still the same approach. Suffragettes scared horses, the accusation laid at republican protesters at the weekend.
OK, maybe not 'new', but a return to things from 100 years ago. Its definitely a different approach to those of the last 50 years.
A Tory MP speaks total sense and in agreement with me. Things they be changing
I'm not sure the fuss around the coronation is the best example of the problems with new laws regarding protests. Much had been made of the six who were, in all probability, wrongfully arrested. I hope they sue and win their case.
However the authorities are reacting to new styles of protests and are responding to public concern. Any right to protest also runs into other peoples rights. For example, if you block the roads as part of your protest, what of the right of the member of the public to drive down that road? To drive to the hospice to see their dying parent for the last time? Its always going to be a balancing act. On the whole Saturday went brilliantly for the police - no trouble, people were allowed to protest (also mainly ignored by the TV).
I don't know what the answers are, but a right to protest is not the same as a right to protest in any way you want to.
“New styles of protest” appears to be the phrase of the day in apologia for what happened. It’s an ahistorical comment. Suffragettes, anarchists and fascists in the first half of the twentieth century used all sorts of different protests.
Suffragettes chained themselves to things: if eco-protesters have used glue instead, it’s still the same approach. Suffragettes scared horses, the accusation laid at republican protesters at the weekend.
OK, maybe not 'new', but a return to things from 100 years ago. Its definitely a different approach to those of the last 50 years.
I want a return to the Father4Justice approach of dressing up as Superman and climbing things.
A Tory MP speaks total sense and in agreement with me. Things they be changing
I'm not sure the fuss around the coronation is the best example of the problems with new laws regarding protests. Much had been made of the six who were, in all probability, wrongfully arrested. I hope they sue and win their case.
However the authorities are reacting to new styles of protests and are responding to public concern. Any right to protest also runs into other peoples rights. For example, if you block the roads as part of your protest, what of the right of the member of the public to drive down that road? To drive to the hospice to see their dying parent for the last time? Its always going to be a balancing act. On the whole Saturday went brilliantly for the police - no trouble, people were allowed to protest (also mainly ignored by the TV).
I don't know what the answers are, but a right to protest is not the same as a right to protest in any way you want to.
“New styles of protest” appears to be the phrase of the day in apologia for what happened. It’s an ahistorical comment. Suffragettes, anarchists and fascists in the first half of the twentieth century used all sorts of different protests.
Suffragettes chained themselves to things: if eco-protesters have used glue instead, it’s still the same approach. Suffragettes scared horses, the accusation laid at republican protesters at the weekend.
How successfully did the Suffragettes, anarchists and fascists advance their causes?
That’s an interesting question perhaps for another time, but I don’t see how it’s relevant…? I’m not applauding or condemning the protesters. I’m saying we’ve always had disruptive protests. The idea that there’s been some sea change involving new styles of protest is questionable.
If people want to know how to deal with disruptive protests, stop pretending that they’re a novel phenomenon justifying new laws. Instead, look at the history. By looking at the history of the Suffragette protests, we can see what stopped them. It was NOT a rash of new laws targeting them, but instead… er… getting involved in a world war such that a tide of patriotism washed away support for protests. OK, maybe that’s not the best lesson…
The tricky bet is ‘year Sunak is replaced as Tory leader’. Which could be 2025 even with a certain 2024 GE.
Agreed. If the bet was that rather than 'Year Sunak leaves as PM' I'd probably still have taken 5/4 but much less confident.
Your tip looks crazily good to me. So good I think I might be missing something.
2 things are needed for it to land. There's a GE in 2024 + the Cons lose it.
How can the probability of that double be less than 50%? I make it more like 65%. So your 5/4 bet should be 4/6 or something.
SkyBet has a 'RequestABet' special on '2024 Election and Labour Most Seats' at 2/7 and that seems only slightly too short tbh, and is basically the same bet...
Great article Quincel. Thanks. But isn't this bet a treble and not a double?
Starsports are laying 11/8 that Rishi ceases to be Tory leader in 2024. So 3 things need to happen. Election in 2024. Very likely. Tories lose and Rishi no longer PM after GE. Likely. Richi is replaced as Tory leader before the end of 2024. I'd have that as lIkely but not as very likely, especially if the election happens in late 2024. Which I think is quite likely.
As you point out in your article, governments and PMs tend to cling on until close to the last minute if they are not expecting to win the GE. Rishi isn't very likely to get to be PM again after the GE. So he will want to max out his time there in my opinion. As will all the Tory MPs expecting to lose their seats.
And if Rishi loses the GE in October 2024 say, I'm not convinced he would be replaced as leader in the same calendar year, even if he wanted to stand aside. I could see him hanging on for a bit in the hope that a successor is chosen in an orderly fashion
So some bookies are 'Year replaced as PM' and some are' Year replaced as Tory leader' and I agree the distinction may matter here.
Nice header. Do people think there's much chance of Rishi staying Tory leader even if defeated in next election?
My sense was he doesn't fancy being leader of opposition and so would probably resign in that case...
There is zero chance of him staying if he loses power. The last Tory PM not to be defenestrated on losing power in an election was Churchill in 1945. Even if we widen it to 'losing an election' that still takes us back to Heath in 1966, and he'd only been party leader a year.
Agreed.
What will happen is that all the boiling rage in the party will burst to the surface. There will be a massive internecine civil war.
The roots of that go back several years and people like JRM will be in the firing line.
After the bloodletting, what then? Will the Conservative party split, as it has threatened? Will they continue with their unelectable lurch to the right, as I suspect? Or will they return to one nation toryism, which I hope?
The Conservative party is going to be a very interesting place after the election. My feeling is that they need to lance the right wing boil at some point and the fastest way to do that is to allow the right access to the driving seat for a while, just to demonstrate how poor their motoring skills actually are. The party can then move on as a mainstream vehicle for lower taxes, more moderate regulation and a bit of law n order. The interesting question is how the Tories respond to the UK becoming closer to the EU as is likely in the next decade. If they are smart they will position themselves in the vanguard of that, but the risk is that it energises the right and makes it harder for the party to embrace the mainstream.
They gave Truss the steering wheel and she drove the party, and the country, off the road. Do they need a second lesson?
But Truss was only one version of Tory madness, the supply siders. I suspect they need to give the full fat anti woke nutters the wheel for a bit next.
How many flavours of Tory madness need to take a turn? Will the Conservative car even be drivable after it’s been run off the road so many times?
The Tory car will always be patched up and sold as a sparkling new Porsche by the used car salesman of the Tory press.
Nice header. Do people think there's much chance of Rishi staying Tory leader even if defeated in next election?
My sense was he doesn't fancy being leader of opposition and so would probably resign in that case...
There is zero chance of him staying if he loses power. The last Tory PM not to be defenestrated on losing power in an election was Churchill in 1945. Even if we widen it to 'losing an election' that still takes us back to Heath in 1966, and he'd only been party leader a year.
Agreed.
What will happen is that all the boiling rage in the party will burst to the surface. There will be a massive internecine civil war.
The roots of that go back several years and people like JRM will be in the firing line.
After the bloodletting, what then? Will the Conservative party split, as it has threatened? Will they continue with their unelectable lurch to the right, as I suspect? Or will they return to one nation toryism, which I hope?
The Conservative party is going to be a very interesting place after the election. My feeling is that they need to lance the right wing boil at some point and the fastest way to do that is to allow the right access to the driving seat for a while, just to demonstrate how poor their motoring skills actually are. The party can then move on as a mainstream vehicle for lower taxes, more moderate regulation and a bit of law n order. The interesting question is how the Tories respond to the UK becoming closer to the EU as is likely in the next decade. If they are smart they will position themselves in the vanguard of that, but the risk is that it energises the right and makes it harder for the party to embrace the mainstream.
They gave Truss the steering wheel and she drove the party, and the country, off the road. Do they need a second lesson?
But Truss was only one version of Tory madness, the supply siders. I suspect they need to give the full fat anti woke nutters the wheel for a bit next.
How many flavours of Tory madness need to take a turn? Will the Conservative car even be drivable after it’s been run off the road so many times?
The Tory car will always be patched up and sold as a sparkling new Porsche by the used car salesman of the Tory press.
'*slaps car roof* "You can fit so many nutjobs in this bad boy"'
Nice header. Do people think there's much chance of Rishi staying Tory leader even if defeated in next election?
My sense was he doesn't fancy being leader of opposition and so would probably resign in that case...
There is zero chance of him staying if he loses power. The last Tory PM not to be defenestrated on losing power in an election was Churchill in 1945. Even if we widen it to 'losing an election' that still takes us back to Heath in 1966, and he'd only been party leader a year.
Agreed.
What will happen is that all the boiling rage in the party will burst to the surface. There will be a massive internecine civil war.
The roots of that go back several years and people like JRM will be in the firing line.
After the bloodletting, what then? Will the Conservative party split, as it has threatened? Will they continue with their unelectable lurch to the right, as I suspect? Or will they return to one nation toryism, which I hope?
The Conservative party is going to be a very interesting place after the election. My feeling is that they need to lance the right wing boil at some point and the fastest way to do that is to allow the right access to the driving seat for a while, just to demonstrate how poor their motoring skills actually are. The party can then move on as a mainstream vehicle for lower taxes, more moderate regulation and a bit of law n order. The interesting question is how the Tories respond to the UK becoming closer to the EU as is likely in the next decade. If they are smart they will position themselves in the vanguard of that, but the risk is that it energises the right and makes it harder for the party to embrace the mainstream.
They gave Truss the steering wheel and she drove the party, and the country, off the road. Do they need a second lesson?
But Truss was only one version of Tory madness, the supply siders. I suspect they need to give the full fat anti woke nutters the wheel for a bit next.
How many flavours of Tory madness need to take a turn? Will the Conservative car even be drivable after it’s been run off the road so many times?
The Tory car will always be patched up and sold as a sparkling new Porsche by the used car salesman of the Tory press.
A Tory MP speaks total sense and in agreement with me. Things they be changing
I'm not sure the fuss around the coronation is the best example of the problems with new laws regarding protests. Much had been made of the six who were, in all probability, wrongfully arrested. I hope they sue and win their case.
However the authorities are reacting to new styles of protests and are responding to public concern. Any right to protest also runs into other peoples rights. For example, if you block the roads as part of your protest, what of the right of the member of the public to drive down that road? To drive to the hospice to see their dying parent for the last time? Its always going to be a balancing act. On the whole Saturday went brilliantly for the police - no trouble, people were allowed to protest (also mainly ignored by the TV).
I don't know what the answers are, but a right to protest is not the same as a right to protest in any way you want to.
“New styles of protest” appears to be the phrase of the day in apologia for what happened. It’s an ahistorical comment. Suffragettes, anarchists and fascists in the first half of the twentieth century used all sorts of different protests.
Suffragettes chained themselves to things: if eco-protesters have used glue instead, it’s still the same approach. Suffragettes scared horses, the accusation laid at republican protesters at the weekend.
OK, maybe not 'new', but a return to things from 100 years ago. Its definitely a different approach to those of the last 50 years.
I want a return to the Father4Justice approach of dressing up as Superman and climbing things.
Nah, we want the topless protests, my favourite type of protest.
A Tory MP speaks total sense and in agreement with me. Things they be changing
I'm not sure the fuss around the coronation is the best example of the problems with new laws regarding protests. Much had been made of the six who were, in all probability, wrongfully arrested. I hope they sue and win their case.
However the authorities are reacting to new styles of protests and are responding to public concern. Any right to protest also runs into other peoples rights. For example, if you block the roads as part of your protest, what of the right of the member of the public to drive down that road? To drive to the hospice to see their dying parent for the last time? Its always going to be a balancing act. On the whole Saturday went brilliantly for the police - no trouble, people were allowed to protest (also mainly ignored by the TV).
I don't know what the answers are, but a right to protest is not the same as a right to protest in any way you want to.
“New styles of protest” appears to be the phrase of the day in apologia for what happened. It’s an ahistorical comment. Suffragettes, anarchists and fascists in the first half of the twentieth century used all sorts of different protests.
Suffragettes chained themselves to things: if eco-protesters have used glue instead, it’s still the same approach. Suffragettes scared horses, the accusation laid at republican protesters at the weekend.
OK, maybe not 'new', but a return to things from 100 years ago. Its definitely a different approach to those of the last 50 years.
Greenham Common? Plenty of women locking themselves to or in things. CND mass “die-ins”?
Probably Oct 2024 with a smaller chance of May 2024 to coincide with the local elections or June 2024 following any reasonable result for CON in those local elections.
Barring unreasonably unforeseen events it will be Rishi, Keir and Ed leading the major parties into the election.
Neither Keir nor Ed are ruling out a coalition with each other, which I find interesting.
I would prefer a LAB/LD coalition - in practice more likely to be LD confidence and supply - to LAB majority government.
After the last Coalition Govt there will never be another LD coalition imho.
I don't agree, although we can be reasonably confident there won't be another Tory one in our lifetimes. The key will be that next time they'll try to do it differently, badge it differently, and settle for a "slice" of the government as happens in Germany rather than becoming just a layer in the whole cake.
After all, what is thrown at LibDems is not that they made a coalition at all, but that they propped up the Tories. Having had a coalition with both major parties in living memory is more solution, than problem redoubled.
In reality the LibDems drove both a lot of good policy (gay marriage, pupil premium, raised income tax threshold) and restrained the more base instincts of the Tory party (as witnessed by what they did from 2015 onwards).
Not that anyone progressive wanted to give them a fair hearing at the time - because they also provided succour to a lot of terrible legislation. LDs voted more loyally for shit Tory bills than Tory MPs did. Steve Webb heavily linking himself to Lansley's terrible NHS Destruction bill.
Clegg especially seemed enamoured with his Dave bromance, unwilling to maintain a suitable distance of break it off until he last minute. More visible and public arguments, having rebellions against shit bills like Tory MPs, making a principled stand here and there - all would have made both an immediate difference to the 2015 near ELE and their reputation afterwards.
I expect any future coalition to be run very differently.
I never had a problem with the LDs going into coalition with the Tories. It made total sense. What surprised me was that initial enthusiasm and glee with which they joined the Tories in attacking Labour. Politically, I think they made a huge mistake in doing that as so many of their votes came from former Labour voters who had rejected the Tories, too. Greg Hands (over)uses that Liam Byrne Treasury note but many now forget that it was LD David Laws who made it public, in defiance of the convention that led Byrne to write it in the first place. They realised too late in the 2013-2015 cycle that the Bromance was a big error and paid a big price as a result. Even now, there are a lot of people inside Labour - across the party, not on just one wing - who are highly suspicious of them, to the extent that I think Starmer would struggle internally to sell any kind of formal deal involving LDs within a Labour-led government. If one is needed, it will be nods and winks, not handshakes.
This isn't true. Laws found the note and mentioned it to Osborne. In his book Laws then said he was taken aback to find the Tories harping on about it.
I don't think that's completely true, according to the Guardian story of 17th May 2010
Byrne's note was discovered by David Laws, the Liberal Democrat MP who was appointed by the coalition government to succeed Byrne as No 2 at the Treasury.
It is a convention for outgoing ministers to leave a note for their successors with advice on how to settle into the job. But Byrne's note – which he later said was intended as a private joke – drew attention to Labour's economic record when it was revealed by Laws at a press conference today.
Laws told reporters: "When I arrived at my desk on the very first day as chief secretary, I found a letter from the previous chief secretary to give me some advice, I assumed, on how I conduct myself over the months ahead.
"Unfortunately, when I opened it, it was a one-sentence letter which simply said: 'Dear chief secretary, I'm afraid to tell you there's no money left,' which was honest but slightly less helpful advice than I had been expecting."
It is likely that Laws didn't expect the Tories to still use it as a weapon 13 years into the future but he was the one to put it out there.
IIRC, the background to this was that Byrne was expecting to leave the note for Philip Hammond, who had been his shadow for several years, and they’d worked closely together on the 2008-9 financial crisis in a bipartisan way.
When Laws picked it up, it wasn’t exactly what he was expecting to find on his desk, and so it ended up in David Cameron’s pocket in the 2015 debate.
Whatever their faults, I don't think it can be denied that Brown and Byrne worked very hard to try to prevent the crisis of 2008-10 turning into another Great Depression, and if Hammond assisted them, then it reflects a lot of credit on him as well.
Where I think that the Labour government deserves criticism is (a) letting house prices run out of control from 1997-2007 (with borrowing surging on the back of it) and (b) their hubris, believing that they really had abolished boom and bust.
Whatever they might have done to try and mitigate the worst effects once it had started, it is also the case that Brown had left the UK in a far weakened position to actually deal with the crisis through his actions in the years prior to it starting.
When Brown as Chancellor created the FSA Peter Lilley as Shadow Chancellor warned it would make it far more difficult to deal with a banking or finacial crisis. Likewise the Lib Dems warned of a coming crisis as the result of Britain's financial bubble and were mocked by Angela Eagle. That was only moths before the crisis erupted.
And of course - as you mention - he ignored the basic principle of building a surplus in good times to help deal with the bad times, prefering instead to pretend there would be no more bad tuimes to justify all his spending.
Whilst I agree with you that the “abolish boom & bust” stuff was the amongst the worst of Brown’s sins, a large modern economy can’t “save for the future” in the way that an individual person or household can. What form would this saving take exactly? We could pile up cash, but all that means is that when we go to spend that cash inflation promptly goes through the roof as that cash chases the same limited block of available labour & goods. Same for any other commodity.
Also, Brown kept us out of the Euro, which makes up for everything else by a wide margin IMO. (I may have gone on about this here in the past!) Even had we been paragons of virtue in the run up to 2008, the economic effects of what happened to the USA & the rest of Europe would have had a massive effect on our economy. By maintaining control of our currency we were able to ameliorate the effects of the post 2008 recession & prevent them from turning into outright depression. Brown deserves kudos for that, no matter what else he did.
If this had been Biden, I know the Trump fans would have spammed social media and PB saying that Biden has dementia but since it was Trump...
It was Donald Trump's sole appearance in the rape case that could now imperil his White House return, a toe-curling on-camera moment that shattered part of the former president's defence.
Mr Trump was being deposed by lawyers for E Jean Carroll, the magazine writer who has accused him of raping her in a New York City department store during the mid-1990s.
The former president's early denial was a typically Trumpian torrent of vitriol. “I’ll say it with great respect: Number one, she’s not my type. Number two, it never happened,” he said when the allegation first surfaced in 2019.
Yet as he appeared for an on-camera deposition ahead of the two-week trial, Mr Trump appeared unable to distinguish Ms Caroll from one of his ex-wives.
"That's Marla. That's my wife," he said, referencing his second wife, Marla Maples.
In fact, Mr Trump was looking at a photograph of himself with Ms Carroll and his first wife, Ivana.
Asked to confirm that he was referring to his Ms Carroll, Mr Trump readily agreed. It was then that his legal team informed him that he was not looking at his ex-wife, but his accuser.
"Oh, I see," Mr Trump replied.
The slip up, Ms Carroll's lawyers argued to jurors, proved that Mr Trump was lying when he claimed the writer was not his "type".
The publisher of the Mirror has apologised to Prince Harry at the start of a trial over alleged phone hacking.
Mirror Group Newspapers (MGN) admitted there was some evidence of unlawful information gathering, and said it would never be repeated.
Lawyers representing Harry said he was subjected to the "most intrusive methods of obtaining personal information".
Harry is one of several high profile figures bringing claims against MGN.
Lawyers argue that executives at the company knew about widespread phone hacking but failed to act.
MGN - which also publishes the Sunday Mirror and Sunday People - admitted that the legal challenge brought by Prince Harry "warrants compensation".
But the company is set to argue that some of the claims have been brought too late.
A previous hearing was told Harry's case is that 148 articles published between 1996 and 2010 included information that was allegedly obtained through methods including phone hacking.
Prince Harry is expected to give evidence in June - the first time a senior royal will be a witness in court in modern times - with the High Court hearing set to last six or seven weeks.
A Tory MP speaks total sense and in agreement with me. Things they be changing
I'm not sure the fuss around the coronation is the best example of the problems with new laws regarding protests. Much had been made of the six who were, in all probability, wrongfully arrested. I hope they sue and win their case.
However the authorities are reacting to new styles of protests and are responding to public concern. Any right to protest also runs into other peoples rights. For example, if you block the roads as part of your protest, what of the right of the member of the public to drive down that road? To drive to the hospice to see their dying parent for the last time? Its always going to be a balancing act. On the whole Saturday went brilliantly for the police - no trouble, people were allowed to protest (also mainly ignored by the TV).
I don't know what the answers are, but a right to protest is not the same as a right to protest in any way you want to.
“New styles of protest” appears to be the phrase of the day in apologia for what happened. It’s an ahistorical comment. Suffragettes, anarchists and fascists in the first half of the twentieth century used all sorts of different protests.
Suffragettes chained themselves to things: if eco-protesters have used glue instead, it’s still the same approach. Suffragettes scared horses, the accusation laid at republican protesters at the weekend.
How successfully did the Suffragettes, anarchists and fascists advance their causes?
That’s an interesting question perhaps for another time, but I don’t see how it’s relevant…? I’m not applauding or condemning the protesters. I’m saying we’ve always had disruptive protests. The idea that there’s been some sea change involving new styles of protest is questionable.
If people want to know how to deal with disruptive protests, stop pretending that they’re a novel phenomenon justifying new laws. Instead, look at the history. By looking at the history of the Suffragette protests, we can see what stopped them. It was NOT a rash of new laws targeting them, but instead… er… getting involved in a world war such that a tide of patriotism washed away support for protests. OK, maybe that’s not the best lesson…
I wasn’t trying to contradict your point. I was asking a related question
One important indicator for me is how often people in Russia talk about possible defeat. I must confess that it happens now really often, which is a dramatic turn from the early months of the war 2/23"
It sounds like the idea of defeat is becoming normalised in Russia. This will reduce the shock value of defeat, when it comes, which will make it easier for the regime, or elements of it, to survive, and reduces the risk of a catastrophic escalation in response to that defeat.
I think you can see the outlines of a narrative that argues that the brave sacrifice of Russian soldiers, fighting NATO on the battlefields of Ukraine, prevented the NATO invasion of Russia. A story of glorious defeat that Britain is familiar with from episodes in its own Imperial past.
The Russian plan A is to hang on and hope for Western resolve to fracture, and support for Ukraine to weaken, but it does look like the Russian state is preparing a plan B to reconcile the Russian people to defeat.
Interesting and somewhat optimistic as a potential off-ramp.
However, isn't Putin's problem that the ultra-nationalists are less than keen to let him have that off-ramp? Prigozhin is already openly taunting him with his "happy grandfather" comments, and if he's going to stab ultra-nationalists in the back, Putin needs to make damned sure he gets a clean kill.
So it's possible, but warming up the wider public is a much easier aspect of it for Putin than dealing with angry ultras.
I tend to view things more pessimistically (pessimism tends to be the most realistic approach to things Russian).
Not nuclear pessimism (though I wouldn't categorically say that won't happen) but a Russian defeat could have catastrophic ramifications in several ways, potentially including a messy, multifaction civil war (or civil wars plural - there are multiple secessionist movements in Russia). Some sort of vengeance war from Ukrainian irregulars or Azov types is not impossible either.
Then there's the geopolitical overspill, particularly amongst Russia's allies (Iran springs to mind) and sponsored quasi-states, but also the PMC meddling in the Sahel and elsewhere.
As ever, the poor Russian people (and others) will suffer because of their insane and horrible leaders. Putin will fall, perhaps sooner than we think, but I have little hope that whoever succeeds him will be any better.
Which secessionist movements do you think are the strongest?
Bashkortostan is the only one with any real political momentum as it is enthusiastically stoked by money from ex-pat Bashkirs in the Baltic states. All or most of the rest are the obsessions of a few extravagantly bearded eccentrics in trousers made of bark. If Chechnya can't do it the chances are slim for anyone else as they don't have anything the nationalist identity or cultural predilection to violence of the Chechens.
Do you not see the Chechens having another pop at it?
I don't think it's impossible that Kadyrov will turn on VVP but it's more likely to be to swear fealty to somebody else who is likely to be president of the RF. Chechnya has done very well from its semi-autonomous state where it gets hosed down with money from Moscow and from the Saudis/UAE so there isn't quite the same nationalist fervour as there was 25-30 years ago. I don't read any Chechen (social) media or know anybody in Chechnya though so I could be talking out of my arse.
@gabrielmilland If you'd like to know why a very large part of the Remain campaign didn't have a scoobie about why people might vote Leave, then this is an essential text.
A Tory MP speaks total sense and in agreement with me. Things they be changing
I'm not sure the fuss around the coronation is the best example of the problems with new laws regarding protests. Much had been made of the six who were, in all probability, wrongfully arrested. I hope they sue and win their case.
However the authorities are reacting to new styles of protests and are responding to public concern. Any right to protest also runs into other peoples rights. For example, if you block the roads as part of your protest, what of the right of the member of the public to drive down that road? To drive to the hospice to see their dying parent for the last time? Its always going to be a balancing act. On the whole Saturday went brilliantly for the police - no trouble, people were allowed to protest (also mainly ignored by the TV).
I don't know what the answers are, but a right to protest is not the same as a right to protest in any way you want to.
“New styles of protest” appears to be the phrase of the day in apologia for what happened. It’s an ahistorical comment. Suffragettes, anarchists and fascists in the first half of the twentieth century used all sorts of different protests.
Suffragettes chained themselves to things: if eco-protesters have used glue instead, it’s still the same approach. Suffragettes scared horses, the accusation laid at republican protesters at the weekend.
How successfully did the Suffragettes, anarchists and fascists advance their causes?
That’s an interesting question perhaps for another time, but I don’t see how it’s relevant…? I’m not applauding or condemning the protesters. I’m saying we’ve always had disruptive protests. The idea that there’s been some sea change involving new styles of protest is questionable.
If people want to know how to deal with disruptive protests, stop pretending that they’re a novel phenomenon justifying new laws. Instead, look at the history. By looking at the history of the Suffragette protests, we can see what stopped them. It was NOT a rash of new laws targeting them, but instead… er… getting involved in a world war such that a tide of patriotism washed away support for protests. OK, maybe that’s not the best lesson…
I wasn’t trying to contradict your point. I was asking a related question
In answer to your question… The fascists failed. The more militant Suffragettes arguably failed, whereas the Suffragists and the upheavals of WWI are probably who delivered change. The anarchists… while subsequently marginalised, arguably they had a role in the social changes in the late 19th through to mid 20th centuries…?
If this had been Biden, I know the Trump fans would have spammed social media and PB saying that Biden has dementia but since it was Trump...
It was Donald Trump's sole appearance in the rape case that could now imperil his White House return, a toe-curling on-camera moment that shattered part of the former president's defence.
Mr Trump was being deposed by lawyers for E Jean Carroll, the magazine writer who has accused him of raping her in a New York City department store during the mid-1990s.
The former president's early denial was a typically Trumpian torrent of vitriol. “I’ll say it with great respect: Number one, she’s not my type. Number two, it never happened,” he said when the allegation first surfaced in 2019.
Yet as he appeared for an on-camera deposition ahead of the two-week trial, Mr Trump appeared unable to distinguish Ms Caroll from one of his ex-wives.
"That's Marla. That's my wife," he said, referencing his second wife, Marla Maples.
In fact, Mr Trump was looking at a photograph of himself with Ms Carroll and his first wife, Ivana.
Asked to confirm that he was referring to his Ms Carroll, Mr Trump readily agreed. It was then that his legal team informed him that he was not looking at his ex-wife, but his accuser.
"Oh, I see," Mr Trump replied.
The slip up, Ms Carroll's lawyers argued to jurors, proved that Mr Trump was lying when he claimed the writer was not his "type".
Such a blundering buffoon on top of everything else. Unelectable, clearly, but can the Republican Party find a way to uncouple from him and give themselves a chance next year?
Conservative benches pretty subdued today as Starmer mocks Sunak as a serial election loser who first lost to Liz Truss "who then lost to a lettuce" before entering a two horse race in the local elections and "somehow coming third". #pmqs
A Tory MP speaks total sense and in agreement with me. Things they be changing
I'm not sure the fuss around the coronation is the best example of the problems with new laws regarding protests. Much had been made of the six who were, in all probability, wrongfully arrested. I hope they sue and win their case.
However the authorities are reacting to new styles of protests and are responding to public concern. Any right to protest also runs into other peoples rights. For example, if you block the roads as part of your protest, what of the right of the member of the public to drive down that road? To drive to the hospice to see their dying parent for the last time? Its always going to be a balancing act. On the whole Saturday went brilliantly for the police - no trouble, people were allowed to protest (also mainly ignored by the TV).
I don't know what the answers are, but a right to protest is not the same as a right to protest in any way you want to.
“New styles of protest” appears to be the phrase of the day in apologia for what happened. It’s an ahistorical comment. Suffragettes, anarchists and fascists in the first half of the twentieth century used all sorts of different protests.
Suffragettes chained themselves to things: if eco-protesters have used glue instead, it’s still the same approach. Suffragettes scared horses, the accusation laid at republican protesters at the weekend.
How successfully did the Suffragettes, anarchists and fascists advance their causes?
That’s an interesting question perhaps for another time, but I don’t see how it’s relevant…? I’m not applauding or condemning the protesters. I’m saying we’ve always had disruptive protests. The idea that there’s been some sea change involving new styles of protest is questionable.
If people want to know how to deal with disruptive protests, stop pretending that they’re a novel phenomenon justifying new laws. Instead, look at the history. By looking at the history of the Suffragette protests, we can see what stopped them. It was NOT a rash of new laws targeting them, but instead… er… getting involved in a world war such that a tide of patriotism washed away support for protests. OK, maybe that’s not the best lesson…
I wasn’t trying to contradict your point. I was asking a related question
In answer to your question… The fascists failed. The more militant Suffragettes arguably failed, whereas the Suffragists and the upheavals of WWI are probably who delivered change. The anarchists… while subsequently marginalised, arguably they had a role in the social changes in the late 19th through to mid 20th centuries…?
Going back further to the Chartists, Peterloo, even as far as the Peasants revolt, even though disruptive protests failed in the short term, they do tend to eventually cause our establishment to reform.
Protest works, which is why it keeps happening. The people cannot be ignored forever.
Conservative benches pretty subdued today as Starmer mocks Sunak as a serial election loser who first lost to Liz Truss "who then lost to a lettuce" before entering a two horse race in the local elections and "somehow coming third". #pmqs
I'm slightly concerned about his counting ability.
Comments
When Laws picked it up, it wasn’t exactly what he was expecting to find on his desk, and so it ended up in David Cameron’s pocket in the 2015 debate.
[1] PB, obviously
Where I think that the Labour government deserves criticism is (a) letting house prices run out of control from 1997-2007 (with borrowing surging on the back of it) and (b) their hubris, believing that they really had abolished boom and bust.
Defeat. A thread 1/23
https://twitter.com/YudinGreg/status/1656074583559262208
A Tory MP speaks total sense and in agreement with me. Things they be changing
Our new study shows the gains are coming from two groups:
1. No voters
Lab: 39% (+15)
Con: 30% (-12)
2. Yes voters who don't consider independence a top issue atm
Lab: 23% (+12)
SNP: 59% (-12)
https://twitter.com/yougov/status/1656212658796867585
overall results
SNP 40
Lab 28
Con 17
LD 7
fieldwork 23 Jan - 20 Apr
https://twitter.com/morralexand/status/1656215114402394115
However, isn't Putin's problem that the ultra-nationalists are less than keen to let him have that off-ramp? Prigozhin is already openly taunting him with his "happy grandfather" comments, and if he's going to stab ultra-nationalists in the back, Putin needs to make damned sure he gets a clean kill.
So it's possible, but warming up the wider public is a much easier aspect of it for Putin than dealing with angry ultras.
However the authorities are reacting to new styles of protests and are responding to public concern. Any right to protest also runs into other peoples rights. For example, if you block the roads as part of your protest, what of the right of the member of the public to drive down that road? To drive to the hospice to see their dying parent for the last time? Its always going to be a balancing act. On the whole Saturday went brilliantly for the police - no trouble, people were allowed to protest (also mainly ignored by the TV).
I don't know what the answers are, but a right to protest is not the same as a right to protest in any way you want to.
Given that context, Byrne’s note was both funny and expected. Hammond would have had a laugh at the time, and saved it for his memoir still to be written. When someone else picked it up, the problems began.
Agree completely on the Lab failures. Brown really did think he’d abolished the economic cycle, to the point where borrowing was high at the top of the boom - with “investment” in tax credits, which also had to be given to EU immigrants. The other big failure was PFI, which pushed the actual spending on infrastructure well into the future, as we are seeing now with 25-year contracts expiring.
Not nuclear pessimism (though I wouldn't categorically say that won't happen) but a Russian defeat could have catastrophic ramifications in several ways, potentially including a messy, multifaction civil war (or civil wars plural - there are multiple secessionist movements in Russia). Some sort of vengeance war from Ukrainian irregulars or Azov types is not impossible either.
Then there's the geopolitical overspill, particularly amongst Russia's allies (Iran springs to mind) and sponsored quasi-states, but also the PMC meddling in the Sahel and elsewhere.
As ever, the poor Russian people (and others) will suffer because of their insane and horrible leaders. Putin will fall, perhaps sooner than we think, but I have little hope that whoever succeeds him will be any better.
It’s going to be really interesting to see what happens in the next 18 months electorally in Scotland. Yousless does’t exactly inspire the nationalist vote, in the same way as his two predecessors have managed it.
Surely a great opportunity to get noticed
https://www.politicshome.com/thehouse/article/lord-frost-reviews-bringing-goliath
Other could awaken though - if I lived in Kaliningrad and saw 'mainland' Russia falling apart, I'd look rather enviously at my Baltic neighbours.
EDIT: to add in a boilerplate IANAE caveat.
When Brown as Chancellor created the FSA Peter Lilley as Shadow Chancellor warned it would make it far more difficult to deal with a banking or finacial crisis. Likewise the Lib Dems warned of a coming crisis as the result of Britain's financial bubble and were mocked by Angela Eagle. That was only moths before the crisis erupted.
And of course - as you mention - he ignored the basic principle of building a surplus in good times to help deal with the bad times, prefering instead to pretend there would be no more bad tuimes to justify all his spending.
Suffragettes chained themselves to things: if eco-protesters have used glue instead, it’s still the same approach. Suffragettes scared horses, the accusation laid at republican protesters at the weekend.
https://thecritic.co.uk/Whose-guilt-by-what-associations/
I’m going to commit another crime against statistics by extrapolating a Tory/LD crossover off the back of this.
If people want to know how to deal with disruptive protests, stop pretending that they’re a novel phenomenon justifying new laws. Instead, look at the history. By looking at the history of the Suffragette protests, we can see what stopped them. It was NOT a rash of new laws targeting them, but instead… er… getting involved in a world war such that a tide of patriotism washed away support for protests. OK, maybe that’s not the best lesson…
'If Labour don't win the next general election then it would be the biggest choke by a team in red since Arsenal this season.'
The Troubles!?
Student occupations have been going from the 1960s onwards, and there have been more extreme student protests, like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garden_House_riot
Also, Brown kept us out of the Euro, which makes up for everything else by a wide margin IMO. (I may have gone on about this here in the past!) Even had we been paragons of virtue in the run up to 2008, the economic effects of what happened to the USA & the rest of Europe would have had a massive effect on our economy. By maintaining control of our currency we were able to ameliorate the effects of the post 2008 recession & prevent them from turning into outright depression. Brown deserves kudos for that, no matter what else he did.
It was Donald Trump's sole appearance in the rape case that could now imperil his White House return, a toe-curling on-camera moment that shattered part of the former president's defence.
Mr Trump was being deposed by lawyers for E Jean Carroll, the magazine writer who has accused him of raping her in a New York City department store during the mid-1990s.
The former president's early denial was a typically Trumpian torrent of vitriol. “I’ll say it with great respect: Number one, she’s not my type. Number two, it never happened,” he said when the allegation first surfaced in 2019.
Yet as he appeared for an on-camera deposition ahead of the two-week trial, Mr Trump appeared unable to distinguish Ms Caroll from one of his ex-wives.
"That's Marla. That's my wife," he said, referencing his second wife, Marla Maples.
In fact, Mr Trump was looking at a photograph of himself with Ms Carroll and his first wife, Ivana.
Asked to confirm that he was referring to his Ms Carroll, Mr Trump readily agreed. It was then that his legal team informed him that he was not looking at his ex-wife, but his accuser.
"Oh, I see," Mr Trump replied.
The slip up, Ms Carroll's lawyers argued to jurors, proved that Mr Trump was lying when he claimed the writer was not his "type".
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2023/05/09/donald-trump-trial-sexual-abuse-verdict/
Mirror Group Newspapers (MGN) admitted there was some evidence of unlawful information gathering, and said it would never be repeated.
Lawyers representing Harry said he was subjected to the "most intrusive methods of obtaining personal information".
Harry is one of several high profile figures bringing claims against MGN.
Lawyers argue that executives at the company knew about widespread phone hacking but failed to act.
MGN - which also publishes the Sunday Mirror and Sunday People - admitted that the legal challenge brought by Prince Harry "warrants compensation".
But the company is set to argue that some of the claims have been brought too late.
A previous hearing was told Harry's case is that 148 articles published between 1996 and 2010 included information that was allegedly obtained through methods including phone hacking.
Prince Harry is expected to give evidence in June - the first time a senior royal will be a witness in court in modern times - with the High Court hearing set to last six or seven weeks.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/05/10/boris-johnson-king-charles-ugly-truth/?li_source=LI&li_medium=liftigniter-rhr
I assume there must be more, but I can't think of any off the top of my head.
Is South a surname?
Edit - Andrew Western MP for Stretford, then we have the constituency Western Isles.
Edit II - Western Isles is now the ridiculous sounding Na h-Eileanan an Iar.
If you'd like to know why a very large part of the Remain campaign didn't have a scoobie about why people might vote Leave, then this is an essential text.
https://twitter.com/gabrielmilland/status/1656230459225907202
I guess you could have Bridgen for Bridgend, but not Corbyn for Corby.
Speaking of Green, I'm not sure I know all the surnames claimed by The Many Faces Of Shapps.
Andrew Bridgen announces that he'll be taking legal action against @MattHancock in relation to defamatory statements made in the House of Commons."
https://twitter.com/JeffreyPeel/status/1656234476249260032
I thought MPs were protected against this when they speak in the Commons chamber?
Not just because it has Blanche in the name, I’m hungry and actually have time to stop for a proper lunch for once
Apparently the white ermine is a symbol of Breton resistance
A song with the same name was released in 1971 by Gilles Servat calling for an armed uprising against the French
I thought it might be fun!
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=k4t1w7Xqqsw
Shockingly, it appears that Bridgen might be wrong about something.
Conservative benches pretty subdued today as Starmer mocks Sunak as a serial election loser who first lost to Liz Truss "who then lost to a lettuce" before entering a two horse race in the local elections and "somehow coming third". #pmqs
I am happy to contribute to a crowdfunder for Matt's legal fees.
Protest works, which is why it keeps happening. The people cannot be ignored forever.