It's a bit like some ghastly Dutch barge is privateering in the Caribbean. Whilst I applaud the Dutch for their win It'd leave cricket a much poorer place if the Windies drifted away.
@DeltapollUK 🚨🚨New Voting Intention🚨🚨 Labour lead is twenty-three percentage points in the latest results from Deltapoll. Con 24% (-3) Lab 47% (+1) Lib Dem 12% (+2) Other 16% (-) Fieldwork: 23rd - 26th June 2023 Sample: 1,089 GB adults (Changes from 16th - 19th June 2023)
There probably will be another Tory leadership challenge if these types of figures are continually repeated. The whole point of Sunak was to get the Tories up to at least 30%-33%.
Which would be utterly pointless given the only Tory who could now get the Tories back to 30-33% would be Boris who is no longer an MP and ineligible.
Sunak wanted to be PM, he got rid of Boris with Hunt and has made his bed and must now lie in it.
The right and ERG have also decided to wait and let Sunak and Hunt lose the next general election as far as I can see, blame them for defeat, then the right will start to take the party over again in opposition when Starmer's Labour government will have to deal with the economy
If a Labour win looks inevitable will the current Government salt the earth for a swift return?
They already have - the problem is the current "mortgage" crisis and the subsequent issues have the Tory Party's name all over it...
Talking about lorryloads of salt, the GRaun feed reports that the HO has just announced that each incomer deported to Rwanda costs £169K. And then done some handwaving to show that that will save £106K, which they can make with further handwaving a suspiciously close £165K. Sounds like the economics dept of the Dept for Transport have been involved.
I look at the figures being quoted and employing 10,000 workers at £40,000 each to quickly process the backlog of migrant cases looks like a bargain.
But there is a problem with reducing the backlog, the Graun has spotted:
"The document includes a chart showing that, if the average time asylum claimants spend in accommodation waiting for their claim to be processed were to go up from four years to five years, the “break-even” deterrence rate would go down to 23% (because asylum seekers not deterred would become more expensive).
But if the government were to get the average time spent waiting in accommodation down to just three years, the deterrence rate needed for the overall policy to be cost-effective would be 52%.
Rishi Sunak is committed to reducing the asylum backlog. This analysis suggests that, in doing so, the government would make it harder for the Rwanda policy to be cost effective."
The statement from Prigozhin isn't too easy for Putin.
He's careful to position himself as not to be publicly disloyal, but virtually the whole message is about positioning himself as an alternative power centre to Putin. We would have done it all better, we showed up problems in security in patchworks, etc.
Priogozhin alternative power center to Mad Vlad?
Perhaps. But he's really more along the lines of another Russian (sorta) sociopath and war criminal:
I think I subscribe to the view that the man is just a loose cannon rather than a master manipulator with designs on the Kremlin. However, the unanswered question is whether he has exposed cracks in the apparatus of the Russian state that will start pulling apart, and whether there may be someone who is in the background supporting all this.
The weird thing is that he is still alive
It suggests to me that Putin has either lost control or there are other powerful players here who choose to keep him alive. And the idea that Luko is one of these seems to be stretching fantasy to the limit.
My guess, FWIW, is that Putin has been shoved to one side and keeping P alive is just another means of humiliating him; that a group of power brokers in the Kremlin have decided that the Ukraine war is a disaster on an epic scale and that they need to find a way out of it that does not bring the whole house down and that, whilst they haven't quite worked out how to do this yet, P might be a useful tool in bringing about some resolution that keeps the Russian state intact.
But its only a guess, looking for rationality in a swirl of chaos.
My view - quite a simple one - is that Prigozhin is a mercenary. His interest in in keeping the money flowing to fund his army. If the Russian government keep paying him, it's because they fear him not being paid more than paying him to keep going.
And Lukashenko could do with a private army given the unreliability of the Belarus military and the Russian support. He is willing to support Prigozhin and his army, in this way providing an insurance for Prigozhin
AP (via Seattle Times) - Biden says the US and NATO had no involvement in the insurrection in Russia by a mercenary force
President Joe Biden on Monday said the United States and NATO had no involvement in the short-lived insurrection in Russia by the Wagner Group mercenary force. He said it’s “too early” to assess the impact on the war in Ukraine.
Biden said he held a video call with allies over the weekend and they are all in sync in working to ensure that they give Russian President Vladimir Putin “no excuse to blame this on the West” or NATO.
“We made clear that we were not involved. We had nothing to do with it,” Biden said. “This was part of a struggle within Russian system.”
Biden also spoke with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy over the weekend about the situation and said he intended to speak with him again later Monday or early Tuesday.
SSI - Look forward to last para above being reported, here & elsewhere, as "Biden doesn't know what day it is!"
@DeltapollUK 🚨🚨New Voting Intention🚨🚨 Labour lead is twenty-three percentage points in the latest results from Deltapoll. Con 24% (-3) Lab 47% (+1) Lib Dem 12% (+2) Other 16% (-) Fieldwork: 23rd - 26th June 2023 Sample: 1,089 GB adults (Changes from 16th - 19th June 2023)
There probably will be another Tory leadership challenge if these types of figures are continually repeated. The whole point of Sunak was to get the Tories up to at least 30%-33%.
Which would be utterly pointless given the only Tory who could now get the Tories back to 30-33% would be Boris who is no longer an MP and ineligible.
Sunak wanted to be PM, he got rid of Boris with Hunt and has made his bed and must now lie in it.
The right and ERG have also decided to wait and let Sunak and Hunt lose the next general election as far as I can see, blame them for defeat, then the right will start to take the party over again in opposition when Starmer's Labour government will have to deal with the economy
You are still in the world of delusion, thinking your beloved Liar King would somehow improve things! He is the person that has caused this disaster for the Conservative Party. It is what people like me said from the very beginning of his "leadership". His celebrity status was a Faustian pact that fools like you bought into, and astonishingly in spite of all the evidence, still believe in.
If it was down to 'people like you' Hunt would have been Tory leader from summer 2019, still failed to win a majority at the next election, Corbyn would still be Labour leader not Starmer and Brexit would still not have got done
While we're at it, I've also been a bit puzzled by the disappearance of 'thrice'. It's a perfectly useful word, but no one would ever now think of using it in a serious context. Why did it die off and when?
I blame Lionel Ritchie.
I rather like 'thrice'. I'm not averse to using it, though I might demur from using it in a document I'm writing for work. But I hate the Americanism 'threepeat'.
That's not because it wouldn't be useful to have a word meaning 'do somthing three times'. It just feels linguistically wrong. It would only work if the word for repeat was 'twopeat'.
Eugh threepeat is not something I have heard before. Thanks for putting that monstrosity in my mind.
You need to listen to more US sports commentary for similar gems like 'winningest'.
'Medal' as a verb is a bit irritating.
That's old hat. People don't medal any more. They podium.
That's gross, but marginally preferable. At least it doesn't sound like an existing verb like medal does.
I don't see the problem with people verbing nouns. Everyone understands what is meant and it's succinct.
Within my mouth you have enjailed my tongue, Doubly portcullised with my teeth and lips
From "Richard II"
Shakespeare was an American, bent on polluting the purity of the English language? Who'd've thunk it?!?
I remember reading that if you wanted to hear Shakespearean English, the best place to go would be rural coastal Virginia. For a long time, this part of the world was small and unchanging and relatively isolated and retained the tongue of its settlers; indeed, it was fast paced metropolitan Britain where language moved on. Much of what fusty Brits lament as American neologisms are actually American paleologisms.
Maybe. However, load of dubious claims along these lines, which interesting have tended to cite denizens of Appalachia (including West Virginia and western VA but NOT eastern VA) as speaking something very akin to Elizabethan English.
Take such claims with large grains of salt. Which is NOT to say there's not (perhaps) a wee bit of there there.
Pinch of salt noted - but my understanding of Appalachia is that it was settled rather later, and by settlers from the lawless borderlands of England/Scotland (sometimes via a generation or two in Northern Ireland). Hence the tradition of the feud in this neck of the woods! And linguistically, a slightly different base to the cocktail.
ISTR you are from West Virginia? So please treat this as suitably speculative rather than me trying to tell you your own local history!
Zero offense taken! Yes, Appalachian heritage heavily Scots Irish, however with significant German element; for example, typical hillybilly usage "youngin" is pronounced virtually identically to "Jugend".
All of which rather undermines the old Appalachian English = Elizabethan English theory.
BTW, in Appalachia, the locals pronounce it "Ap-a-LACH-ah" and NOT "Ap-a-LAY-cha" which is how the rest of USA says it, as in "Appalachian Spring" by Aaron Copland.
I might be wrong but doesn’t the word “hillbilly” itself come from the Scots/Irish Protestant settlers there in reference to King Billy of Protestant god status?
Am guessing, no. Instead, simple appeal of alliteration.
Rather maddeningly "The American Language" by H.L. Mencken mentions "hillbilly" (in "Supplement Two") but only in passing, and does NOT discuss origin/derivation of word itself.
The term "hillbilly" is Scottish in origin but is not derived from its dialect. In Scotland, the term "hill-folk" referred to people who preferred isolation from the greater society, and "billy" meant "comrade" or "companion". The words "hill-folk" and "Billie" were combined and applied to the Cameronians who followed the teachings of a militant Presbyterian named Richard Cameron. These Scottish Covenanters fled to the hills of southern Scotland in the late 17th century to avoid persecution of their religious beliefs.[5]
Many of the early settlers of the Thirteen Colonies were from Scotland and Northern Ireland and were followers of William of Orange, the Protestant king of England. In 17th century Ireland, during the Williamite War, protestant supporters of William III ("King Billy") were referred to as "Billy's Boys" because 'Billy' is a diminutive of 'William' (common across both Britain and Ireland). In time the term hillbilly became synonymous with the Williamites who settled in the hills of North America.[6]
Some scholars disagree with this theory. Michael Montgomery's From Ulster to America: The Scotch-Irish Heritage of American English states, "In Ulster in recent years it has sometimes been supposed that [hillbilly] was coined to refer to followers of King William III and brought to America by early Ulster emigrants, but this derivation is almost certainly incorrect. ... In America hillbilly was first attested only in 1898, which suggests a later, independent development."[7]
SSI - certainly in Appalachia today, and for a LONG time now, zero identification with Orange Order or similar manifestations of Ulster Protestantism. Even among practicing Masons, at least in my own experience.
Instead, the descendants of Scots Irish in the hills and hollers of the Upland South, are FAR more likely to identify as Irish heritage, and be into "Celtic" music & etc., without differentiating much, if at all, between Irish and Scottish.
Note there is a theory, that what came to be called Scots Irish in America, in addition to the Real McCoys, also in early USA included plenty of Irish Catholics, who ended up in areas where their church had zero presence, among overwhelmingly Protestant neighbors. AND that these folk ended up assimilating into this prevailing woodwork.
Addendum - "Hillbilly" could be less folk etymology and more journalistic usage. Certainly catchy!
The statement from Prigozhin isn't too easy for Putin.
He's careful to position himself as not to be publicly disloyal, but virtually the whole message is about positioning himself as an alternative power centre to Putin. We would have done it all better, we showed up problems in security in patchworks, etc.
Priogozhin alternative power center to Mad Vlad?
Perhaps. But he's really more along the lines of another Russian (sorta) sociopath and war criminal:
I think I subscribe to the view that the man is just a loose cannon rather than a master manipulator with designs on the Kremlin. However, the unanswered question is whether he has exposed cracks in the apparatus of the Russian state that will start pulling apart, and whether there may be someone who is in the background supporting all this.
The weird thing is that he is still alive
It suggests to me that Putin has either lost control or there are other powerful players here who choose to keep him alive. And the idea that Luko is one of these seems to be stretching fantasy to the limit.
My guess, FWIW, is that Putin has been shoved to one side and keeping P alive is just another means of humiliating him; that a group of power brokers in the Kremlin have decided that the Ukraine war is a disaster on an epic scale and that they need to find a way out of it that does not bring the whole house down and that, whilst they haven't quite worked out how to do this yet, P might be a useful tool in bringing about some resolution that keeps the Russian state intact.
But its only a guess, looking for rationality in a swirl of chaos.
How do you know Prigozhin is still alive?
It's certainly possible that Putin has been pushed aside.
On the other hand, some are assuming that Putin not making a solemn address to the nation every few hours, visiting barracks in the meantime, is a sign of weakness. If this was an actual coup attempt, that may have been so. But it wasn't, or at least it didn't get that far. If there has been a coup, or a ~coup, Prigozhin isn't at the heart of it and it didn't take the form of the Wagner march towards Moscow.
There's certainly a huge swirl of shifting disinformation about Shoigu: he doesn't appear, he does appear and on the front lines, but was it old footage, rumour says Dyumin will replace him, he's been detained, etc. etc.
I doubt the FSB are being given the runaround. That'll be the day. They are the bedrock of the Russian state.
Last - perhaps we should all take a guess at what kind of business Wagner is running in Syria.
I won't be surprised if the FSB reveals some information about Prigozhin...
AP (via Seattle Times) - Biden says the US and NATO had no involvement in the insurrection in Russia by a mercenary force
President Joe Biden on Monday said the United States and NATO had no involvement in the short-lived insurrection in Russia by the Wagner Group mercenary force. He said it’s “too early” to assess the impact on the war in Ukraine.
Biden said he held a video call with allies over the weekend and they are all in sync in working to ensure that they give Russian President Vladimir Putin “no excuse to blame this on the West” or NATO.
“We made clear that we were not involved. We had nothing to do with it,” Biden said. “This was part of a struggle within Russian system.”
Did Germany or France or Britain or some other US satellite state suspect the US was involved then?
You would have thought if Biden wanted to make a call and say he wasn't involved the person he'd call would be Putin. (But perhaps he did. Not being reported doesn't mean it didn't happen.)
What about words that have gone missing? Some on here get very disgruntled, but never gruntled? If we get too far down that route, we may wish for our opponent to be disemboweled. But what about emboweled, which means the same thing?
Whilst politics in the UK might appear to be going sternforemost, if we look out to larboard you might see some fuzzled cockalorums lunting merrily away.
I know you can be overwhelmed, and I know you can be underwhelmed, but can you ever just be whelmed?
"Whelmed" was a word. It meant "overwhelmed".
I use whelmed all the time. But I use it to mean 'I reacted emotionally in a way commensurate with my expectations being exactly met, but not exceeded.'
So, you’re saying it’s useful that a word has changed its meaning?
Less than an hour ago, the Washington Post put up this story: https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2023/06/26/putin-prigozhin-russia-rebellion-wagner/ "RIGA, Latvia — Wagner mercenary chief Yevgeniy Prigozhin resurfaced Monday for the first time since his Saturday mutiny, and declared that his motive was to save the private militia from being subsumed into the Russian military — not to topple President Vladimir Putin.
Prigozhin, who did not disclose his whereabouts, said he ordered the rebellion after Russia’s military killed 30 Wagner fighters in a missile strike on one of the militia’s camps, and he said he accepted a deal to avoid prosecution and move to Belarus because it would allow Wagner to continue its operations there."
OK, what's in it for Lukashenko? And is Putin still planning to send him some nukes?
How many nukes have Wagner "nicked" whilst on their little spree?
In my conspiracy it was all staged so they could have some plausible deniability when he fires a couple "accidentally".
Though you'd have thought they'd have chosen cheaper helicopters to crash.
The loss of that Il-18 reconnaissance plane, says that this wasn’t a planned event. The Russians had only a handful of them, and they’re irreplaceable.
I enjoyed reading about events whilst lounging about in a hot tub for most of the weekend.
My view: it's powerful people chaotically reacting to events, and not following any strategy.
1) The Russian MOD was short of resources, and slightly jealous of Wagner's PR and 'advances' in Bakhmut. They therefore hold back resources from Wagner.
2) Wagner dislikes this, and starts arguing against the MOD, direct with Putin.
3) The MOD persuade Putin to roll Wagner into the MOD. The MOD 'wins'.
4) Wagner obviously dislike this, and Prig decides on a last-gasp 'attack' on Russia.
5) But not enough MOD units go over to his side; perhaps because Prig and Wagner are disliked with the MOD's soldiers. In addition, the Russian government directly threaten his family and friends.
6) A 'deal' is done, which involved Prig backing down and the dismemberment of much of Wagner (not all).
7) ... to be seen. But it seems a rather unstable situation. The question is whether Prig sees himself as safe and with the power he obviously craves.
Sound reasonable?
Yes, I think chaos rather than conspiracy, but in such a volatile situation anything can happen. The Bolsheveiks stormed the Winter Palace with a few dozen men and little resistance from the guards. On such twists history is made.
AP (via Seattle Times) - Biden says the US and NATO had no involvement in the insurrection in Russia by a mercenary force
President Joe Biden on Monday said the United States and NATO had no involvement in the short-lived insurrection in Russia by the Wagner Group mercenary force. He said it’s “too early” to assess the impact on the war in Ukraine.
Biden said he held a video call with allies over the weekend and they are all in sync in working to ensure that they give Russian President Vladimir Putin “no excuse to blame this on the West” or NATO.
“We made clear that we were not involved. We had nothing to do with it,” Biden said. “This was part of a struggle within Russian system.”
Did Germany or France or Britain or some other US satellite state suspect the US was involved then?
You would have thought if Biden wanted to make a call and say he wasn't involved the person he'd call would be Putin. (But perhaps he did. Not being reported doesn't mean it didn't happen.)
Er, Biden said United States AND NATO . . . of which Germany, France and Britain are members?
The statement from Prigozhin isn't too easy for Putin.
He's careful to position himself as not to be publicly disloyal, but virtually the whole message is about positioning himself as an alternative power centre to Putin. We would have done it all better, we showed up problems in security in patchworks, etc.
Priogozhin alternative power center to Mad Vlad?
Perhaps. But he's really more along the lines of another Russian (sorta) sociopath and war criminal:
I think I subscribe to the view that the man is just a loose cannon rather than a master manipulator with designs on the Kremlin. However, the unanswered question is whether he has exposed cracks in the apparatus of the Russian state that will start pulling apart, and whether there may be someone who is in the background supporting all this.
The weird thing is that he is still alive
It suggests to me that Putin has either lost control or there are other powerful players here who choose to keep him alive. And the idea that Luko is one of these seems to be stretching fantasy to the limit.
My guess, FWIW, is that Putin has been shoved to one side and keeping P alive is just another means of humiliating him; that a group of power brokers in the Kremlin have decided that the Ukraine war is a disaster on an epic scale and that they need to find a way out of it that does not bring the whole house down and that, whilst they haven't quite worked out how to do this yet, P might be a useful tool in bringing about some resolution that keeps the Russian state intact.
But its only a guess, looking for rationality in a swirl of chaos.
How do you know Prigozhin is still alive?
It's certainly possible that Putin has been pushed aside.
On the other hand, some are assuming that Putin not making a solemn address to the nation every few hours, visiting barracks in the meantime, is a sign of weakness. If this was an actual coup attempt, that may have been so. But it wasn't, or at least it didn't get that far. If there has been a coup, or a ~coup, Prigozhin isn't at the heart of it and it didn't take the form of the Wagner march towards Moscow.
There's certainly a huge swirl of shifting disinformation about Shoigu: he doesn't appear, he does appear and on the front lines, but was it old footage, rumour says Dyumin will replace him, he's been detained, etc. etc.
I doubt the FSB are being given the runaround. That'll be the day. They are the bedrock of the Russian state.
Last - perhaps we should all take a guess at what kind of business Wagner is running in Syria.
I won't be surprised if the FSB reveals some information about Prigozhin...
Well he did an 11 minute speech/broadcast this afternoon. Of course a couple of hours is a long time in modern Russia.
News report earlier that multiple camps are being established in Belarus ready for Wagner. One big enough for 8,000 troops.
Pundits think this means there is a threat from them crossing the border.
I agree, but while they say the Ukraine border, I'm thinking Russian border.
If they attack Ukraine from Belarus, that’s bad. But they’re currently attacking Ukraine from the south-east anyway, and those 8000 men can’t be in two places at once, so…
The statement from Prigozhin isn't too easy for Putin.
He's careful to position himself as not to be publicly disloyal, but virtually the whole message is about positioning himself as an alternative power centre to Putin. We would have done it all better, we showed up problems in security in patchworks, etc.
Priogozhin alternative power center to Mad Vlad?
Perhaps. But he's really more along the lines of another Russian (sorta) sociopath and war criminal:
I think I subscribe to the view that the man is just a loose cannon rather than a master manipulator with designs on the Kremlin. However, the unanswered question is whether he has exposed cracks in the apparatus of the Russian state that will start pulling apart, and whether there may be someone who is in the background supporting all this.
The weird thing is that he is still alive
It suggests to me that Putin has either lost control or there are other powerful players here who choose to keep him alive. And the idea that Luko is one of these seems to be stretching fantasy to the limit.
My guess, FWIW, is that Putin has been shoved to one side and keeping P alive is just another means of humiliating him; that a group of power brokers in the Kremlin have decided that the Ukraine war is a disaster on an epic scale and that they need to find a way out of it that does not bring the whole house down and that, whilst they haven't quite worked out how to do this yet, P might be a useful tool in bringing about some resolution that keeps the Russian state intact.
But its only a guess, looking for rationality in a swirl of chaos.
An interesting suggestion. We wait and see.
The 2024 Presidential Election presents an opportunity for a bloodless coup if there really is something afoot. Easy to get out a “Putin really wants to run again but for personal/health reasons he won’t be a candidate” statement in the next couple of months or so.
With his retirement then “brought forward” as necessary.
All fantasy/speculation at this stage though.
Another possibility for motives.
Grant Mitchell isn’t happy about the war in Ukraine. He’s having his sell swords slaughtered for not much financial gain. Replacing them must be getting harder with the Russian Army wanting the replacement manpower.
What does Wagner do in.. er.. normal times? Prop up third world nutters and steal resources from the locals.
In Belarus, there’s a nutter who really would like a bunch of armed men personally beholden to him. Wagner and Grant Boy get a safe haven. Relax and recuperate, protect their new bestest buddy.
They claim to be threatening Kyiv, while actually not doing any fighting.
Build up their cash there and from operations in Africa. Deserters from the Russian Army will be welcomed as recruits to bolster the ranks.
All nice and cosy.
And when the end comes for Poo Tin, Grant and the lads with be nicely ready, with a pile of cash, and a base from which to chick their hand into the game. Again.
Personally think that events that transpired over the weekend MIGHT somewhat curb speculative tendency . . . seeing as how nobody I can recall (certainly on PB) speculated that Wagnerians would mutiny?
OR after seizing Rostov-on-Don, would start marching on Moscow?
OR when they were approaching the Third Rome, suddenly turn on a kopek and make a 180?
News report earlier that multiple camps are being established in Belarus ready for Wagner. One big enough for 8,000 troops.
Pundits think this means there is a threat from them crossing the border.
I agree, but while they say the Ukraine border, I'm thinking Russian border.
If they attack Ukraine from Belarus, that’s bad. But they’re currently attacking Ukraine from the south-east anyway, and those 8000 men can’t be in two places at once, so…
I think the Belarus border is well fortified with only a limited number of entry roads because of the swamps, so not a great threat.
Personally think that events that transpired over the weekend MIGHT somewhat curb speculative tendency . . . seeing as how nobody I can recall (certainly on PB) speculated that Wagnerians would mutiny?
OR after seizing Rostov-on-Don, would start marching on Moscow?
OR when they were approaching the Third Rome, suddenly turn on a kopek and make a 180?
A general Russian Army mutiny has been a topic of discussion since day one.
What about words that have gone missing? Some on here get very disgruntled, but never gruntled? If we get too far down that route, we may wish for our opponent to be disemboweled. But what about emboweled, which means the same thing?
Whilst politics in the UK might appear to be going sternforemost, if we look out to larboard you might see some fuzzled cockalorums lunting merrily away.
I know you can be overwhelmed, and I know you can be underwhelmed, but can you ever just be whelmed?
"Whelmed" was a word. It meant "overwhelmed".
I use whelmed all the time. But I use it to mean 'I reacted emotionally in a way commensurate with my expectations being exactly met, but not exceeded.'
So, you’re saying it’s useful that a word has changed its meaning?
I am indeed! Though if I was around when whelmed meant overwhelmed, I would have wanted very much to hang on to the meaning it has. But this isn't like disinterested, which is changing its meaning - through stupidity - to a word we already have a word for. There wasn't a word for whelmed before whelmed changed its meaning to meam whelmed.
News report earlier that multiple camps are being established in Belarus ready for Wagner. One big enough for 8,000 troops.
Pundits think this means there is a threat from them crossing the border.
I agree, but while they say the Ukraine border, I'm thinking Russian border.
If they attack Ukraine from Belarus, that’s bad. But they’re currently attacking Ukraine from the south-east anyway, and those 8000 men can’t be in two places at once, so…
I think the Belarus border is well fortified with only a limited number of entry roads because of the swamps, so not a great threat.
Belarus can't afford the risk, and they are also creating an increasing risk that the Nato stick will come and end them.
So Prigozhin posted something to Telegram this afternoon. He's got quite a nerve. He reckons the operation was so well run that had something like that been done against Ukraine in the early days, the war would have been over in 24 hours. He also reckons he's done Russia a service by showing its crap level of security.
EITHER this guy is really asking for it
OR there's actually something in the testing of security notion, or to look at it from another angle this may have been a move with the aim of tightening security in Russia...and we all know who's responsible for security in Russia and it's not the army.
He also says he wasn't trying to remove Putin, which is strange because what he actually said while he was on the march was there's going to be a new president soon.
Gotta wonder what friends he had, thought he had, or perhaps still has, among the siloviks. But that's unlikely to become clear any time soon.
What about words that have gone missing? Some on here get very disgruntled, but never gruntled? If we get too far down that route, we may wish for our opponent to be disemboweled. But what about emboweled, which means the same thing?
Whilst politics in the UK might appear to be going sternforemost, if we look out to larboard you might see some fuzzled cockalorums lunting merrily away.
I know you can be overwhelmed, and I know you can be underwhelmed, but can you ever just be whelmed?
"Whelmed" was a word. It meant "overwhelmed".
I use whelmed all the time. But I use it to mean 'I reacted emotionally in a way commensurate with my expectations being exactly met, but not exceeded.'
So, you’re saying it’s useful that a word has changed its meaning?
I am indeed! Though if I was around when whelmed meant overwhelmed, I would have wanted very much to hang on to the meaning it has. But this isn't like disinterested, which is changing its meaning - through stupidity - to a word we already have a word for. There wasn't a word for whelmed before whelmed changed its meaning to meam whelmed.
There was a word for “overwhelmed” before “overwhelmed” came along. You’d’ve been arguing “overwhelmed” was pointless and unnecessary as we already had “whelmed”. Why waste time on 4 extra letters? But it’s only by that earlier ‘unnecessary’ change that “whelmed” was then freed up to become a useful new word.
In other words, swings and roundabouts. Change happens. Sometimes it seems useful, sometimes it doesn’t, sometimes its usefulness only becomes apparent much later.
The statement from Prigozhin isn't too easy for Putin.
He's careful to position himself as not to be publicly disloyal, but virtually the whole message is about positioning himself as an alternative power centre to Putin. We would have done it all better, we showed up problems in security in patchworks, etc.
Priogozhin alternative power center to Mad Vlad?
Perhaps. But he's really more along the lines of another Russian (sorta) sociopath and war criminal:
I think I subscribe to the view that the man is just a loose cannon rather than a master manipulator with designs on the Kremlin. However, the unanswered question is whether he has exposed cracks in the apparatus of the Russian state that will start pulling apart, and whether there may be someone who is in the background supporting all this.
The weird thing is that he is still alive
It suggests to me that Putin has either lost control or there are other powerful players here who choose to keep him alive. And the idea that Luko is one of these seems to be stretching fantasy to the limit.
My guess, FWIW, is that Putin has been shoved to one side and keeping P alive is just another means of humiliating him; that a group of power brokers in the Kremlin have decided that the Ukraine war is a disaster on an epic scale and that they need to find a way out of it that does not bring the whole house down and that, whilst they haven't quite worked out how to do this yet, P might be a useful tool in bringing about some resolution that keeps the Russian state intact.
But its only a guess, looking for rationality in a swirl of chaos.
How do you know Prigozhin is still alive?
It's certainly possible that Putin has been pushed aside.
On the other hand, some are assuming that Putin not making a solemn address to the nation every few hours, visiting barracks in the meantime, is a sign of weakness. If this was an actual coup attempt, that may have been so. But it wasn't, or at least it didn't get that far. If there has been a coup, or a ~coup, Prigozhin isn't at the heart of it and it didn't take the form of the Wagner march towards Moscow.
There's certainly a huge swirl of shifting disinformation about Shoigu: he doesn't appear, he does appear and on the front lines, but was it old footage, rumour says Dyumin will replace him, he's been detained, etc. etc.
I doubt the FSB are being given the runaround. That'll be the day. They are the bedrock of the Russian state.
Last - perhaps we should all take a guess at what kind of business Wagner is running in Syria.
I won't be surprised if the FSB reveals some information about Prigozhin...
Well he did an 11 minute speech/broadcast this afternoon. Of course a couple of hours is a long time in modern Russia.
Yes - sorry - I wasn't aware of that speech when I posted.
Some finding from Suffolk University - Seattle Times poll of 500 Seattle residents (by phone, June 12-16, moa 4.4%)
> When asked how they would rate Seattle as a place to live, 40.8% of respondents said “good” and 25.8% said “excellent,” while 23% described it as “fair.” Only 9.2% felt it was “poor,” and just over 1% said they were undecided or refused to answer.
> A majority of poll respondents, 85%, said they generally feel safe in their neighborhood, and 56% felt that crime in their neighborhood had stayed about the same over the past year, while a third said it had increased. Less than 8% of respondents said crime had decreased in the past year.
> Meanwhile, nearly half of respondents (48%) identified drug use as their biggest public safety concern, while 33% were most concerned about gun violence. The third and fourth choices — car thefts and shoplifting — barely ranked, with 7% and 6% of respondents, respectively, identifying those crimes as top safety concerns. Another 5% of respondents were undecided.
> There’s a significant age split in how people answered the question: 58% of respondents 18 to 24 said drug use was their top public safety concern, while 44% of respondents 65 and older picked that answer. Of the respondents who identified gun violence as a top safety concern, 36% were people 65 and older compared with 15% of 18- to 24-year-olds.
> . . . women were likelier than men to say crime has increased in their neighborhood — 38% to 30% — while men were likelier to say it decreased or stayed about the same.
> People who identified as Democrats leaned heavily toward crime staying about the same (63%), with 27% saying it had increased and 8% saying it decreased. Independents, the next largest group, were far likelier to say crime increased in their neighborhood, 42%, while 4% said it decreased and 53% said it stayed the same.
> Fourteen of the 19 [!] respondents who identified as Republicans said crime had increased in their neighborhood, four said it stayed the same and one said it decreased.
@DeltapollUK 🚨🚨New Voting Intention🚨🚨 Labour lead is twenty-three percentage points in the latest results from Deltapoll. Con 24% (-3) Lab 47% (+1) Lib Dem 12% (+2) Other 16% (-) Fieldwork: 23rd - 26th June 2023 Sample: 1,089 GB adults (Changes from 16th - 19th June 2023)
There probably will be another Tory leadership challenge if these types of figures are continually repeated. The whole point of Sunak was to get the Tories up to at least 30%-33%.
Which would be utterly pointless given the only Tory who could now get the Tories back to 30-33% would be Boris who is no longer an MP and ineligible.
Sunak wanted to be PM, he got rid of Boris with Hunt and has made his bed and must now lie in it.
The right and ERG have also decided to wait and let Sunak and Hunt lose the next general election as far as I can see, blame them for defeat, then the right will start to take the party over again in opposition when Starmer's Labour government will have to deal with the economy
You are still in the world of delusion, thinking your beloved Liar King would somehow improve things! He is the person that has caused this disaster for the Conservative Party. It is what people like me said from the very beginning of his "leadership". His celebrity status was a Faustian pact that fools like you bought into, and astonishingly in spite of all the evidence, still believe in.
If it was down to 'people like you' Hunt would have been Tory leader from summer 2019, still failed to win a majority at the next election, Corbyn would still be Labour leader not Starmer and Brexit would still not have got done
What's not to like about that scenario? OK, I'll grant you Corbyn was a rum ******.
@DeltapollUK 🚨🚨New Voting Intention🚨🚨 Labour lead is twenty-three percentage points in the latest results from Deltapoll. Con 24% (-3) Lab 47% (+1) Lib Dem 12% (+2) Other 16% (-) Fieldwork: 23rd - 26th June 2023 Sample: 1,089 GB adults (Changes from 16th - 19th June 2023)
There probably will be another Tory leadership challenge if these types of figures are continually repeated. The whole point of Sunak was to get the Tories up to at least 30%-33%.
Which would be utterly pointless given the only Tory who could now get the Tories back to 30-33% would be Boris who is no longer an MP and ineligible.
Sunak wanted to be PM, he got rid of Boris with Hunt and has made his bed and must now lie in it.
The right and ERG have also decided to wait and let Sunak and Hunt lose the next general election as far as I can see, blame them for defeat, then the right will start to take the party over again in opposition when Starmer's Labour government will have to deal with the economy
If a Labour win looks inevitable will the current Government salt the earth for a swift return?
They’ve been salting the earth since 2019.
The great tragic theme of the Tories (or at least the dominant factions therein) from Boris onwards has been their obsession with obtaining and retaining power, with no real idea of why or what to do with it*, i.e. running the country for the benefit of its people. Hence I have no doubt they would absolutely salt the earth.
*As a completely separate aside, a small number of people close to the Conservatives have become extremely rich over this time.
Personally think that events that transpired over the weekend MIGHT somewhat curb speculative tendency . . . seeing as how nobody I can recall (certainly on PB) speculated that Wagnerians would mutiny?
OR after seizing Rostov-on-Don, would start marching on Moscow?
OR when they were approaching the Third Rome, suddenly turn on a kopek and make a 180?
A general Russian Army mutiny has been a topic of discussion since day one.
Citations? And was this latest kerfuffle "a general Russian Army mutiny"?
@DeltapollUK 🚨🚨New Voting Intention🚨🚨 Labour lead is twenty-three percentage points in the latest results from Deltapoll. Con 24% (-3) Lab 47% (+1) Lib Dem 12% (+2) Other 16% (-) Fieldwork: 23rd - 26th June 2023 Sample: 1,089 GB adults (Changes from 16th - 19th June 2023)
There probably will be another Tory leadership challenge if these types of figures are continually repeated. The whole point of Sunak was to get the Tories up to at least 30%-33%.
Which would be utterly pointless given the only Tory who could now get the Tories back to 30-33% would be Boris who is no longer an MP and ineligible.
Sunak wanted to be PM, he got rid of Boris with Hunt and has made his bed and must now lie in it.
The right and ERG have also decided to wait and let Sunak and Hunt lose the next general election as far as I can see, blame them for defeat, then the right will start to take the party over again in opposition when Starmer's Labour government will have to deal with the economy
You are still in the world of delusion, thinking your beloved Liar King would somehow improve things! He is the person that has caused this disaster for the Conservative Party. It is what people like me said from the very beginning of his "leadership". His celebrity status was a Faustian pact that fools like you bought into, and astonishingly in spite of all the evidence, still believe in.
If it was down to 'people like you' Hunt would have been Tory leader from summer 2019, still failed to win a majority at the next election, Corbyn would still be Labour leader not Starmer and Brexit would still not have got done
In the "Boris Lives!" scenario, the Conservative reputation would have been saved the Truss debacle, but most of the things that have hit the government's ratings over the last year would still have happened.
Oh, and the PartyLiesgate report would have been into a sitting Prime Minister rather than a hasbeen that the Conservatives had dumped. What do you think that would have done to the polls, or to the chances of anyone taking the Conservatives seriously before about 2050?
Nigel's right. If the Conservatives didn't make a pact with the Devil in 2019, the deal they made had many similar properties. A temporary triumph that was engineered to go sour and leave them worse off than before.
Or was it all an episode of "Sex in the City" gone wrong?
"‘Later that day I started to wonder..are all men like Prigozhin..making big spectacular gestures but then refusing to commit at the pivotal moment? Was I, like Putin, running scared from true love? Was Miranda my Lukashenka, trying to pick up the pieces of my bad choices in men?’"
Personally think that events that transpired over the weekend MIGHT somewhat curb speculative tendency . . . seeing as how nobody I can recall (certainly on PB) speculated that Wagnerians would mutiny?
OR after seizing Rostov-on-Don, would start marching on Moscow?
OR when they were approaching the Third Rome, suddenly turn on a kopek and make a 180?
A general Russian Army mutiny has been a topic of discussion since day one.
Citations? And was this latest kerfuffle "a general Russian Army mutiny"?
Meanwhile the Ukrainians seem to be about 120km from Mariupol. And still advancing.
At what point do the “Realists” start demanding that Western aid be made conditional on “protecting Mariupol”?
@DeltapollUK 🚨🚨New Voting Intention🚨🚨 Labour lead is twenty-three percentage points in the latest results from Deltapoll. Con 24% (-3) Lab 47% (+1) Lib Dem 12% (+2) Other 16% (-) Fieldwork: 23rd - 26th June 2023 Sample: 1,089 GB adults (Changes from 16th - 19th June 2023)
Sunak fans please explain.
Recent polls suggest the Tories are heading towards Truss territory now.
Which is why they should have stuck with Truss in the first place.
She resigned.
I think, whatever your views of her policies, that she found being at the top enormously stressful. The top job aged het five years in about five weeks.
A stronger (probably older and with grown up children) character would have dared the Conservative Parliamentary Party to put forward the signatures for a VoNC.
And I suspect that they would have shied from it.
But it didn't come to that. Ms Truss resigned, because the pressure was unbearable for her. I doubt she was sleeping. And I'm sure she wasn't enjoying it.
I think you're right. And politically, she behaved naively.
But that is not to say that she wasn't treated very badly by certain Sunak attack dogs in the PCP (the same ones now likely to be calling for party unity), who were happy to trash her and the party to get their man in place. He may now lose his Premiership the way he gained it.
Crunching the England sub sample numbers, Labour 45%, Conservative 27%, Liberal Democrats 14%, Reform 6%, Green 5%. so a 16.5% swing from Conservative to Labour and an 11% swing from Conservative to Liberal Democrat.
Deltapoll is just awful for the Conservatives and the hope has to be it's an outlier (which it could well be). Among those aged 65+, the Conservatives still lead 43-29 (swing of 16.5%) with Deltapoll while with R&W it's only a 40-34 lead (a 20.5% swing).
The hope for the Conservatives is they can hold at least one of the three upcoming by-elections and not lose the other two that badly so they can go into the summer break at least still in the game. Three heavy losses on July 20th and it's not entirely fanciful to see the knives coming out for Sunak and Hunt.
@DeltapollUK 🚨🚨New Voting Intention🚨🚨 Labour lead is twenty-three percentage points in the latest results from Deltapoll. Con 24% (-3) Lab 47% (+1) Lib Dem 12% (+2) Other 16% (-) Fieldwork: 23rd - 26th June 2023 Sample: 1,089 GB adults (Changes from 16th - 19th June 2023)
There probably will be another Tory leadership challenge if these types of figures are continually repeated. The whole point of Sunak was to get the Tories up to at least 30%-33%.
Which would be utterly pointless given the only Tory who could now get the Tories back to 30-33% would be Boris who is no longer an MP and ineligible.
Sunak wanted to be PM, he got rid of Boris with Hunt and has made his bed and must now lie in it.
The right and ERG have also decided to wait and let Sunak and Hunt lose the next general election as far as I can see, blame them for defeat, then the right will start to take the party over again in opposition when Starmer's Labour government will have to deal with the economy
You are still in the world of delusion, thinking your beloved Liar King would somehow improve things! He is the person that has caused this disaster for the Conservative Party. It is what people like me said from the very beginning of his "leadership". His celebrity status was a Faustian pact that fools like you bought into, and astonishingly in spite of all the evidence, still believe in.
If it was down to 'people like you' Hunt would have been Tory leader from summer 2019, still failed to win a majority at the next election, Corbyn would still be Labour leader not Starmer and Brexit would still not have got done
In the "Boris Lives!" scenario, the Conservative reputation would have been saved the Truss debacle, but most of the things that have hit the government's ratings over the last year would still have happened.
Oh, and the PartyLiesgate report would have been into a sitting Prime Minister rather than a hasbeen that the Conservatives had dumped. What do you think that would have done to the polls, or to the chances of anyone taking the Conservatives seriously before about 2050?
Nigel's right. If the Conservatives didn't make a pact with the Devil in 2019, the deal they made had many similar properties. A temporary triumph that was engineered to go sour and leave them worse off than before.
As we are now seeing.
No PM Truss, no disaster budget and then market crash with the sky high interest rates we have now hitting mortgage holders and likely lower inflation too.
Partygate people made their mind up about last summer and the Tories have lost voters since Boris went to RefUK but gained zero from Starmer Labour or the LDs who mostly always hated him anyway. Sod all gratitude from them for the party removing Boris and replacing him with Rishi, indeed removing Boris has just seen more Red wall and Leave voters go to Labour.
Removing Boris probably cost an extra 50-100 Tory MPs their seats next year, their own fault
Comments
"The document includes a chart showing that, if the average time asylum claimants spend in accommodation waiting for their claim to be processed were to go up from four years to five years, the “break-even” deterrence rate would go down to 23% (because asylum seekers not deterred would become more expensive).
But if the government were to get the average time spent waiting in accommodation down to just three years, the deterrence rate needed for the overall policy to be cost-effective would be 52%.
Rishi Sunak is committed to reducing the asylum backlog. This analysis suggests that, in doing so, the government would make it harder for the Rwanda policy to be cost effective."
And Lukashenko could do with a private army given the unreliability of the Belarus military and the Russian support. He is willing to support Prigozhin and his army, in this way providing an insurance for Prigozhin
President Joe Biden on Monday said the United States and NATO had no involvement in the short-lived insurrection in Russia by the Wagner Group mercenary force. He said it’s “too early” to assess the impact on the war in Ukraine.
Biden said he held a video call with allies over the weekend and they are all in sync in working to ensure that they give Russian President Vladimir Putin “no excuse to blame this on the West” or NATO.
“We made clear that we were not involved. We had nothing to do with it,” Biden said. “This was part of a struggle within Russian system.”
Biden also spoke with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy over the weekend about the situation and said he intended to speak with him again later Monday or early Tuesday.
SSI - Look forward to last para above being reported, here & elsewhere, as "Biden doesn't know what day it is!"
SNP 5%
https://yougov.co.uk/topics/politics/articles-reports/2022/06/17/voting-intention-con-32-lab-39-8-9-june
Latest Yougov poll under Rishi has it Conservatives 22% Labour 47% LDs 11% Greens 8% RefUK 7% SNP 3%
https://docs.cdn.yougov.com/5wuhxdx0xb/TheTimes_VI_230621_W.pdf.
If it was down to 'people like you' Hunt would have been Tory leader from summer 2019, still failed to win a majority at the next election, Corbyn would still be Labour leader not Starmer and Brexit would still not have got done
Many of the early settlers of the Thirteen Colonies were from Scotland and Northern Ireland and were followers of William of Orange, the Protestant king of England. In 17th century Ireland, during the Williamite War, protestant supporters of William III ("King Billy") were referred to as "Billy's Boys" because 'Billy' is a diminutive of 'William' (common across both Britain and Ireland). In time the term hillbilly became synonymous with the Williamites who settled in the hills of North America.[6]
Some scholars disagree with this theory. Michael Montgomery's From Ulster to America: The Scotch-Irish Heritage of American English states, "In Ulster in recent years it has sometimes been supposed that [hillbilly] was coined to refer to followers of King William III and brought to America by early Ulster emigrants, but this derivation is almost certainly incorrect. ... In America hillbilly was first attested only in 1898, which suggests a later, independent development."[7]
SSI - certainly in Appalachia today, and for a LONG time now, zero identification with Orange Order or similar manifestations of Ulster Protestantism. Even among practicing Masons, at least in my own experience.
Instead, the descendants of Scots Irish in the hills and hollers of the Upland South, are FAR more likely to identify as Irish heritage, and be into "Celtic" music & etc., without differentiating much, if at all, between Irish and Scottish.
Note there is a theory, that what came to be called Scots Irish in America, in addition to the Real McCoys, also in early USA included plenty of Irish Catholics, who ended up in areas where their church had zero presence, among overwhelmingly Protestant neighbors. AND that these folk ended up assimilating into this prevailing woodwork.
Addendum - "Hillbilly" could be less folk etymology and more journalistic usage. Certainly catchy!
It's certainly possible that Putin has been pushed aside.
On the other hand, some are assuming that Putin not making a solemn address to the nation every few hours, visiting barracks in the meantime, is a sign of weakness. If this was an actual coup attempt, that may have been so. But it wasn't, or at least it didn't get that far. If there has been a coup, or a ~coup, Prigozhin isn't at the heart of it and it didn't take the form of the Wagner march towards Moscow.
There's certainly a huge swirl of shifting disinformation about Shoigu: he doesn't appear, he does appear and on the front lines, but was it old footage, rumour says Dyumin will replace him, he's been detained, etc. etc.
I doubt the FSB are being given the runaround. That'll be the day. They are the bedrock of the Russian state.
Last - perhaps we should all take a guess at what kind of business Wagner is running in Syria.
I won't be surprised if the FSB reveals some information about Prigozhin...
You would have thought if Biden wanted to make a call and say he wasn't involved the person he'd call would be Putin. (But perhaps he did. Not being reported doesn't mean it didn't happen.)
Grant Mitchell isn’t happy about the war in Ukraine. He’s having his sell swords slaughtered for not much financial gain. Replacing them must be getting harder with the Russian Army wanting the replacement manpower.
What does Wagner do in.. er.. normal times? Prop up third world nutters and steal resources from the locals.
In Belarus, there’s a nutter who really would like a bunch of armed men personally beholden to him. Wagner and Grant Boy get a safe haven. Relax and recuperate, protect their new bestest buddy.
They claim to be threatening Kyiv, while actually not doing any fighting.
Build up their cash there and from operations in Africa. Deserters from the Russian Army will be welcomed as recruits to bolster the ranks.
All nice and cosy.
And when the end comes for Poo Tin, Grant and the lads with be nicely ready, with a pile of cash, and a base from which to chick their hand into the game. Again.
OR after seizing Rostov-on-Don, would start marching on Moscow?
OR when they were approaching the Third Rome, suddenly turn on a kopek and make a 180?
Though if I was around when whelmed meant overwhelmed, I would have wanted very much to hang on to the meaning it has.
But this isn't like disinterested, which is changing its meaning - through stupidity - to a word we already have a word for. There wasn't a word for whelmed before whelmed changed its meaning to meam whelmed.
EITHER this guy is really asking for it
OR there's actually something in the testing of security notion, or to look at it from another angle this may have been a move with the aim of tightening security in Russia...and we all know who's responsible for security in Russia and it's not the army.
He also says he wasn't trying to remove Putin, which is strange because what he actually said while he was on the march was there's going to be a new president soon.
Gotta wonder what friends he had, thought he had, or perhaps still has, among the siloviks. But that's unlikely to become clear any time soon.
In other words, swings and roundabouts. Change happens. Sometimes it seems useful, sometimes it doesn’t, sometimes its usefulness only becomes apparent much later.
> When asked how they would rate Seattle as a place to live, 40.8% of respondents said “good” and 25.8% said “excellent,” while 23% described it as “fair.” Only 9.2% felt it was “poor,” and just over 1% said they were undecided or refused to answer.
> A majority of poll respondents, 85%, said they generally feel safe in their neighborhood, and 56% felt that crime in their neighborhood had stayed about the same over the past year, while a third said it had increased. Less than 8% of respondents said crime had decreased in the past year.
> Meanwhile, nearly half of respondents (48%) identified drug use as their biggest public safety concern, while 33% were most concerned about gun violence. The third and fourth choices — car thefts and shoplifting — barely ranked, with 7% and 6% of respondents, respectively, identifying those crimes as top safety concerns. Another 5% of respondents were undecided.
> There’s a significant age split in how people answered the question: 58% of respondents 18 to 24 said drug use was their top public safety concern, while 44% of respondents 65 and older picked that answer. Of the respondents who identified gun violence as a top safety concern, 36% were people 65 and older compared with 15% of 18- to 24-year-olds.
> . . . women were likelier than men to say crime has increased in their neighborhood — 38% to 30% — while men were likelier to say it decreased or stayed about the same.
> People who identified as Democrats leaned heavily toward crime staying about the same (63%), with 27% saying it had increased and 8% saying it decreased. Independents, the next largest group, were far likelier to say crime increased in their neighborhood, 42%, while 4% said it decreased and 53% said it stayed the same.
> Fourteen of the 19 [!] respondents who identified as Republicans said crime had increased in their neighborhood, four said it stayed the same and one said it decreased.
@BritainElects
Westminster voting intention:
LAB: 44% (-2)
CON: 26% (-)
LDEM: 13% (+1)
REF: 6% (-1)
GRN: 5% (-1)
via @RedfieldWilton, 25 Jun"
https://twitter.com/BritainElects/status/1673362655837396995
*As a completely separate aside, a small number of people close to the Conservatives have become extremely rich over this time.
Oh, and the PartyLiesgate report would have been into a sitting Prime Minister rather than a hasbeen that the Conservatives had dumped. What do you think that would have done to the polls, or to the chances of anyone taking the Conservatives seriously before about 2050?
Nigel's right. If the Conservatives didn't make a pact with the Devil in 2019, the deal they made had many similar properties. A temporary triumph that was engineered to go sour and leave them worse off than before.
As we are now seeing.
"‘Later that day I started to wonder..are all men like Prigozhin..making big spectacular gestures but then refusing to commit at the pivotal moment? Was I, like Putin, running scared from true love? Was Miranda my Lukashenka, trying to pick up the pieces of my bad choices in men?’"
https://twitter.com/johnpaul_newman/status/1672880381622616064?t=Uazx1PnO4MXsbK91U4_DZg&s=19
At what point do the “Realists” start demanding that Western aid be made conditional on “protecting Mariupol”?
But that is not to say that she wasn't treated very badly by certain Sunak attack dogs in the PCP (the same ones now likely to be calling for party unity), who were happy to trash her and the party to get their man in place. He may now lose his Premiership the way he gained it.
Deltapoll is just awful for the Conservatives and the hope has to be it's an outlier (which it could well be). Among those aged 65+, the Conservatives still lead 43-29 (swing of 16.5%) with Deltapoll while with R&W it's only a 40-34 lead (a 20.5% swing).
The hope for the Conservatives is they can hold at least one of the three upcoming by-elections and not lose the other two that badly so they can go into the summer break at least still in the game. Three heavy losses on July 20th and it's not entirely fanciful to see the knives coming out for Sunak and Hunt.
Partygate people made their mind up about last summer and the Tories have lost voters since Boris went to RefUK but gained zero from Starmer Labour or the LDs who mostly always hated him anyway. Sod all gratitude from them for the party removing Boris and replacing him with Rishi, indeed removing Boris has just seen more Red wall and Leave voters go to Labour.
Removing Boris probably cost an extra 50-100 Tory MPs their seats next year, their own fault