It also uses the American term, BIPOC - it says we must defend Black and Indigenous and People of Colour
So, er, who are these indigenous to be defended? The Anglo-Celts like me?? Cool! Or is it the Beaker People? Who are these British indigenes being defended even as we "drive the Zios" out of Finchley?
This is such dreck I wonder if it is designed to discredit the movement
I imagine it is 100% sincere, people just cannot help but adopt americanisms even when it make zero sense. Maybe people can send them free copies of 'This is Not America' by Tomiwa Owolade.
If I see 'anti-racist' in someone's twitter bio I would give it at least a 50/50 chance they are an open and proud racist. We've seen before how people can say very racist things and then protest they cannot be racist because they say they are anti-racism.
Yes, on investigation it turns out to be horribly real. These "Finchley anti-racists" are outright anti-Semites, they don't even try to hide it. They are so extreme they despise Jewish "two state solutionists" (??!!) and even Fatah (???!!!!)
Only Hamas are OK, it seems. Literally: Hamas
Grotesque nutters
Hopefully they’re Russian trolls.
Nope. Real, it seems. People on TwiX know them
This is also bleakly depressing
The DPP is now saying it will come after people who simply share images or videos of riots. They are so keen to control the narrative they will criminalise people discussing these riots. Or at least that is what this sounds like to me
"DPP warns sharing online images of riots could be an offence"
It also uses the American term, BIPOC - it says we must defend Black and Indigenous and People of Colour
So, er, who are these indigenous to be defended? The Anglo-Celts like me?? Cool! Or is it the Beaker People? Who are these British indigenes being defended even as we "drive the Zios" out of Finchley?
This is such dreck I wonder if it is designed to discredit the movement
I imagine it is 100% sincere, people just cannot help but adopt americanisms even when it make zero sense. Maybe people can send them free copies of 'This is Not America' by Tomiwa Owolade.
If I see 'anti-racist' in someone's twitter bio I would give it at least a 50/50 chance they are an open and proud racist. We've seen before how people can say very racist things and then protest they cannot be racist because they say they are anti-racism.
Thanks for book recommendation btw - from a quick glance looks rather interesting, have bought.
We have gone from 0 to 11...000...in a week. We are now banning twitter, curtailing their ability to tweets showing criminality and people shouting God is the Greatest....
Let’s face it, none of the candidates is Augustus Caesar, they all have grave flaws. Badenoch is flimsy, Patel is widely disliked, Tugendhat is Who?
This guy probably has the fewest flaws. He’s young, articulate, not posh - self made. He looks vaguely prime ministerial and he’s quite right wing without being Suella, voters may like that
Also, it will drive the Corbynite anti-Semites mad if both the PM and the LOTO have “Zio” wives. So it’s worth doing for that alone
Unfortunately he's also an unelectable careerist dud who's very obviously manoeuvring himself to gain the votes of the remaining hard-line factionalists in the PCP in order to get into the final two.
Chasing Farage is a mug's game. The threat from the LibDems hoovering up the remaining Home Counties seats (backbone of the Tory party since Lord Salisbury) is far more existential.
I disagree: the next leader of the Conservative Party has two tasks. The first is neutralize Reform, to get them into the mid single digits opinion poll-wise, and ensuring they don't get a foothold in local government. Now, sure, this won't win them the next election, but before anything else, the Conservatives must make Reform irrelevant.
Once Reform has been vanquished and the Conservatives have become the only credible party of the right, then they can tack back again towards the centre.
What's all this tacking to the centre stuff? Mushy compromises and splitting the difference?
Voters want pragmatism and solutions. Real leaders define and shape exactly where that is themselves.
The liberals at large really don't get this (not at all) because they protect core aspects of their theology as sacrosanct and are simply incapable of seeing it in any other way. This happened with free movement and I can see it happening with migration and asylum rights more broadly, and the HRA on top.
That's the opportunity for the Conservatives and to be seen as the new redefined centre ground, if they can get the tone and pitch right.
When I say "tack to the centre", what I mean is that the Conservatives need to win the voters who went Reform first. And once they've won those guys back and eliminated Reform, then they can look to win back voters who went LibDem or Labour.
But they do need to win back both sets of voters.
And, importantly, they need to do it in the order you prescribe. Because if they tack to the centre FIRST then Reform will surge and potentially devour them
Neutralising Reform is the initial task
Agree 100%
And what are people like me to do? Hang around and hope that at some point the Tories come back to some form of sanity and electability?
Sod that.
Do you approve of the political consensus that says close Grangemouth, stop drilling for oil or tax producers out of existence, outsource making everything to China, keep the tax burden at a historic high etc.? Because you seem pretty against it, so why are you so desparate for the Tories to avoid any departure from it?
The politicians are not closing Grangemouth, Ineos are. They are doing so because the feedstock is drying up and they are struggling to be price competitive, especially with all the incredibly short sighted and stupid "windfall" taxes dumped on North Sea oil.
I find the argument that we should import our oil from the likes of Saudi or Russia than drilling our our own utterly bizarre. Obviously our policies should be looking to reduce our oil consumption but that is an entirely different question than where that oil comes from.
Outsourcing our manufacturing to China was another huge mistake made when Ed f****** Miliband was last in charge of our energy policies. The man is almost criminally stupid.
The tax burden I am more ambivalent about. We absolutely must reduce or even eliminate the deficit. That requires both higher taxes and lower spending. We should not go to either end of the see saw.
So I am not content that we have a Labour government but I also recognise that the last government was utterly exhausted and frankly making ever more stupid decisions. But I don't agree that the answer to stupid is even more stupid. Going after Reform is not the answer. They are a bunch of twats and the Tories need to aim for more centre right policies.
Was Ed really responsible for outsourcing the UK's industrial capacity? I think you should be looking closer to the 80's than the mid 2000's for the largest declines at least in terms of employment and energy consumption.
His attitude seemed to be that we had to meet our CO2 targets and if that meant importing mountains of tat from someone generating Co2 somewhere else on the planet that was fine because we were doing our bit. Ignorant, parochial, mind numbingly stupid, ecologically illiterate. Take your pick. And now he wants to do it again with oil.
Let’s face it, none of the candidates is Augustus Caesar, they all have grave flaws. Badenoch is flimsy, Patel is widely disliked, Tugendhat is Who?
This guy probably has the fewest flaws. He’s young, articulate, not posh - self made. He looks vaguely prime ministerial and he’s quite right wing without being Suella, voters may like that
Also, it will drive the Corbynite anti-Semites mad if both the PM and the LOTO have “Zio” wives. So it’s worth doing for that alone
Unfortunately he's also an unelectable careerist dud who's very obviously manoeuvring himself to gain the votes of the remaining hard-line factionalists in the PCP in order to get into the final two.
Chasing Farage is a mug's game. The threat from the LibDems hoovering up the remaining Home Counties seats (backbone of the Tory party since Lord Salisbury) is far more existential.
I disagree: the next leader of the Conservative Party has two tasks. The first is neutralize Reform, to get them into the mid single digits opinion poll-wise, and ensuring they don't get a foothold in local government. Now, sure, this won't win them the next election, but before anything else, the Conservatives must make Reform irrelevant.
Once Reform has been vanquished and the Conservatives have become the only credible party of the right, then they can tack back again towards the centre.
What's all this tacking to the centre stuff? Mushy compromises and splitting the difference?
Voters want pragmatism and solutions. Real leaders define and shape exactly where that is themselves.
The liberals at large really don't get this (not at all) because they protect core aspects of their theology as sacrosanct and are simply incapable of seeing it in any other way. This happened with free movement and I can see it happening with migration and asylum rights more broadly, and the HRA on top.
That's the opportunity for the Conservatives and to be seen as the new redefined centre ground, if they can get the tone and pitch right.
When I say "tack to the centre", what I mean is that the Conservatives need to win the voters who went Reform first. And once they've won those guys back and eliminated Reform, then they can look to win back voters who went LibDem or Labour.
But they do need to win back both sets of voters.
For a majority yes but the Reform party rose 12% on what the BXP got in 2019 on 4th July, while Labour and the LDs each rose a mere 1% on 2019. So clearly as you say winning back the former is the pressing concern for the Tories
Account from an acquaintance who went to two demonstrations the weekend:
Spent Saturday at the Stand Up to Racism counter protest in Nottingham, where both sides of the debate were allowed the opportunity to air their views under the watchful eye of Nottinghamshire Constabulary. Bar a couple of scuffles, nothing untoward happened. Certainly no riots, that's for sure.
Even with the relatively fresh memories of the murders of 3 people going about their business last summer, by a man the far-right were keen to class as a newly arrived immigrant, Nottingham did itself proud, as a multi-cultural society and generally ignored those trying to cause division and hatred.
That was the good stuff.
Sunday, been to Wath-upon-Dearne between Rotherham and Barnsley, ex-mining country in South Yorkshire where even I was targeted for physical abuse, even though I was in a wheelchair following a recent replacement knee operation. The level of violence being meted out by the far-right and the local, feral youth was extremely intimidating, meaning a hasty retreat was required before our likely lynching took place.
Their target, a hotel partially housing asylum seekers. I pity anybody caught up in their onslaught today. As ever, South Yorkshire Police did as little as possible, ensuring the yobs could let rip. SYP still haven't changed, whether it's the miners strike, Hillsborough or the grooming gangs in Rotherham a decade ago. Utterly incompetent.
Overall, it's good to see that the average man/woman in the street is apathetic to their cause, but I still think this has a long way to run and will be very interested to see the new governments response.
On one level it brings me great joy to see Jenrick saying these things. It makes it all the more certain that, even if the party were stupid eough to make him Leader, his chances of becoming PM are, to all intents and purposes, zero. Lets have lots more rope for him to hang himself with.
(1) I think Jenrick is probably the candidate to beat at the moment and (2) I could easily see circumstances where he's pilloried constantly by the elites but still wins in 2028/2029 against a desperately unpopular Labour government
Yes he could end up the Tony Abbott to Starmer's Kevin Rudd and Rayner's Gillard, you never know
We have gone from 0 to 11...000...in a week. We are now banning twitter, curtailing their ability to tweets showing criminality and people shouting God is the Greatest....
And even worse only a few people seem to be noticing this!
We have gone from 0 to 11...000...in a week. We are now banning twitter, curtailing their ability to tweets showing criminality and people shouting God is the Greatest....
And even worse only a few people seem to be noticing this!
Are they really going to arrest people simply for sharing videos? I guess it is one way to suppress any narrative they don't like
We wouldn't have learned of Birmingham without people sharing videos on Twitter. This way the government gets to knobble Twitter, and it gets to tell us exactly what happened, whether it happened or not. We will have to sit there and take it, passively accepting the official story
Who knew this government could be this awful this quickly
Honest Bob will share the same ground with Farage.
Maybe Honest and Farage could merge their respective parties.
Where do one nation Tories go?
That's what the likes of @HYUFD seem to want - those who, like him, think you can add all the Reform votes to the Conservative votes and there's your election winning coalition.
That will be the foundation of the second Starmer Government.
Personally I will likely vote for Tugendhat but I think Leon makes a sensible case for Jenrick who will probably win
Taoiseach Simon Harris says the era of self regulation by social media companies is over
He’s prepared to meet Elon Musk and other social media company execs to discuss Irish government plans for financial sanctions and personal liabilities for failing to remove harmful content
I wonder how the Irish people will feel if Meta and Twitter simply shut down their services in Ireland? I see a surge in VPN usage coming soon.
If governments, including ours, shut down services that didn't voluntarily comply with national laws, norms and customs about libel, conspiracy, organising crime, abuse, harmful content, racial slurs etc then services would arise, funded by advertisers who would have confidence in them, which did so.
At the moment Gresham's law applies. Only government intervention can change that.
Nah. It would take decades for that to happen and all that would happen is that people would access the existing services via VPNs. Just look at China's attempts to shut down access to social media. It doesn't work.
And I do love the fact that people attack the chinese and other dictatorships for trying to stop people accessing social media because of their national laws and then support our own country doing the same thing.
And similarly - the people who don't want "foreign donors" affecting our elections, but decry the closing down of foreign NGOs in other countries.
I'm confused as you seem to be saying that the St John's, Cambridge educated lawyer isn't that bright as he doesn't seem to think through the consequences of his ideas..
Although electing him will confirm to many people that the Tory party are the nasty party.
Being seen as nasty didn't stop Thatcher winning 3 elections, voters don't expect a conservative party to always be nice and fluffy
We have gone from 0 to 11...000...in a week. We are now banning twitter, curtailing their ability to tweets showing criminality and people shouting God is the Greatest....
And even worse only a few people seem to be noticing this!
Are they really going to arrest people simply for sharing videos? I guess it is one way to suppress any narrative they don't like
We wouldn't have learned of Birmingham without people sharing videos on Twitter. This way the government gets to knobble Twitter, and it gets to tells us exactly what happened, whether it happened or not. We will have to sit there and take it, passively accepting the official story
Who knew this government could be this awful this quickly
What could be a worst way to tackle claims of two tier policing and cover ups. Authoritian censorship.
Cameron had the right outlook, sunlight is the best disinfectant.
On one level it brings me great joy to see Jenrick saying these things. It makes it all the more certain that, even if the party were stupid eough to make him Leader, his chances of becoming PM are, to all intents and purposes, zero. Lets have lots more rope for him to hang himself with.
(1) I think Jenrick is probably the candidate to beat at the moment and (2) I could easily see circumstances where he's pilloried constantly by the elites but still wins in 2028/2029 against a desperately unpopular Labour government
Yes he could end up the Tony Abbott to Starmer's Kevin Rudd and Rayner's Gillard, you never know
Let’s face it, none of the candidates is Augustus Caesar, they all have grave flaws. Badenoch is flimsy, Patel is widely disliked, Tugendhat is Who?
This guy probably has the fewest flaws. He’s young, articulate, not posh - self made. He looks vaguely prime ministerial and he’s quite right wing without being Suella, voters may like that
Also, it will drive the Corbynite anti-Semites mad if both the PM and the LOTO have “Zio” wives. So it’s worth doing for that alone
Unfortunately he's also an unelectable careerist dud who's very obviously manoeuvring himself to gain the votes of the remaining hard-line factionalists in the PCP in order to get into the final two.
Chasing Farage is a mug's game. The threat from the LibDems hoovering up the remaining Home Counties seats (backbone of the Tory party since Lord Salisbury) is far more existential.
I disagree: the next leader of the Conservative Party has two tasks. The first is neutralize Reform, to get them into the mid single digits opinion poll-wise, and ensuring they don't get a foothold in local government. Now, sure, this won't win them the next election, but before anything else, the Conservatives must make Reform irrelevant.
Once Reform has been vanquished and the Conservatives have become the only credible party of the right, then they can tack back again towards the centre.
What's all this tacking to the centre stuff? Mushy compromises and splitting the difference?
Voters want pragmatism and solutions. Real leaders define and shape exactly where that is themselves.
The liberals at large really don't get this (not at all) because they protect core aspects of their theology as sacrosanct and are simply incapable of seeing it in any other way. This happened with free movement and I can see it happening with migration and asylum rights more broadly, and the HRA on top.
That's the opportunity for the Conservatives and to be seen as the new redefined centre ground, if they can get the tone and pitch right.
When I say "tack to the centre", what I mean is that the Conservatives need to win the voters who went Reform first. And once they've won those guys back and eliminated Reform, then they can look to win back voters who went LibDem or Labour.
But they do need to win back both sets of voters.
And, importantly, they need to do it in the order you prescribe. Because if they tack to the centre FIRST then Reform will surge and potentially devour them
Neutralising Reform is the initial task
Agree 100%
And what are people like me to do? Hang around and hope that at some point the Tories come back to some form of sanity and electability?
Sod that.
Do you approve of the political consensus that says close Grangemouth, stop drilling for oil or tax producers out of existence, outsource making everything to China, keep the tax burden at a historic high etc.? Because you seem pretty against it, so why are you so desparate for the Tories to avoid any departure from it?
The politicians are not closing Grangemouth, Ineos are. They are doing so because the feedstock is drying up and they are struggling to be price competitive, especially with all the incredibly short sighted and stupid "windfall" taxes dumped on North Sea oil.
I find the argument that we should import our oil from the likes of Saudi or Russia than drilling our our own utterly bizarre. Obviously our policies should be looking to reduce our oil consumption but that is an entirely different question than where that oil comes from.
Outsourcing our manufacturing to China was another huge mistake made when Ed f****** Miliband was last in charge of our energy policies. The man is almost criminally stupid.
The tax burden I am more ambivalent about. We absolutely must reduce or even eliminate the deficit. That requires both higher taxes and lower spending. We should not go to either end of the see saw.
So I am not content that we have a Labour government but I also recognise that the last government was utterly exhausted and frankly making ever more stupid decisions. But I don't agree that the answer to stupid is even more stupid. Going after Reform is not the answer. They are a bunch of twats and the Tories need to aim for more centre right policies.
Was Ed really responsible for outsourcing the UK's industrial capacity? I think you should be looking closer to the 80's than the mid 2000's for the largest declines at least in terms of employment and energy consumption.
His attitude seemed to be that we had to meet our CO2 targets and if that meant importing mountains of tat from someone generating Co2 somewhere else on the planet that was fine because we were doing our bit. Ignorant, parochial, mind numbingly stupid, ecologically illiterate. Take your pick. And now he wants to do it again with oil.
I remember that we were consuming the tat with or without Ed. Globalisation was the economic meme and our captains of industry were happy to become middlemen between outsourced factories and Argos.
I do agree that if we need oil its is best to not need the world's bastards nor give them any more claim to our assets.
Let’s face it, none of the candidates is Augustus Caesar, they all have grave flaws. Badenoch is flimsy, Patel is widely disliked, Tugendhat is Who?
This guy probably has the fewest flaws. He’s young, articulate, not posh - self made. He looks vaguely prime ministerial and he’s quite right wing without being Suella, voters may like that
Also, it will drive the Corbynite anti-Semites mad if both the PM and the LOTO have “Zio” wives. So it’s worth doing for that alone
Unfortunately he's also an unelectable careerist dud who's very obviously manoeuvring himself to gain the votes of the remaining hard-line factionalists in the PCP in order to get into the final two.
Chasing Farage is a mug's game. The threat from the LibDems hoovering up the remaining Home Counties seats (backbone of the Tory party since Lord Salisbury) is far more existential.
No it isn't, the LDs have pretty much hit their ceiling in the Home Counties, taking almost all the Remain seats and some of the soft Leave seats there on 4th July. They are unlikely to get many if any more and in any case in some of those LD seats the Tory and Reform vote combined was bigger than the LD vote
The other day I mentioned that proper regulation of unsafe lithium batteries for micro mobility vehicles had been mentioned.
Tracked it down - there was a Bill in the King's speech briefing notes, which I skimmed on the day: "The Product Safety and Metrology Bill".
There is an urgent need to legislate to respond to emerging threats to consumer safety, for example to address issues such as incidents from ingesting button batteries, and e-bike fires where there was a 78 per cent increase in e-bike fires in 2023 compared to 2022 in London according to the London Fire Brigade.
£47 000 raised in 12 hours to replace care worker Brendon's car burnt by arsonist yobs while he was on duty, with left over funds to support other care workers affected and repair other damage done by the far right.
Far be it from me to give the poor old Conservatives some advice though they clearly need all the help they can get.
You need a leader like Pierre Poilievre in Canada who is a grumpy sod but ruthlessly attacks Trudeau's policy - Trudeau of course has been in Government a lot longer then Starmer.
As an aside, he rarely mentions what he would do were he to be Canada's next Prime Minister but that worked well for Starmer in all fairness.
On one level it brings me great joy to see Jenrick saying these things. It makes it all the more certain that, even if the party were stupid eough to make him Leader, his chances of becoming PM are, to all intents and purposes, zero. Lets have lots more rope for him to hang himself with.
(1) I think Jenrick is probably the candidate to beat at the moment and (2) I could easily see circumstances where he's pilloried constantly by the elites but still wins in 2028/2029 against a desperately unpopular Labour government
I can see what flying pigs would look like.
That doesn't mean they will come to pass.
Another keeper.
I've heard a lot of it - as I did the first time, before the election, when people laughed at my suggestion Starmer could be a one-term PM - and it's all stuff that people forget they said when it actually happens.
You'll be the same too.
Yep - given the result in 2019 and the subsequent result in 2024 - it's possible that the same may happen in reverse and the Tories win a majority.
The problem for the Tories though is that they are currently subject to a pincer movement attacked by Labour in urban areas, Reform in the poorest areas and the Lib Dems in the richest areas.
And you can't create a manifesto of ideas that will please all 3 sets of potential voters.
Hence I don't see 2028 being a repeat of 2019 or even 2017 because I don't see them picking off all 3 sets of voters especially if they target reform rather than Labour switchers.
Reform will also be attacking Labour in Northern and Midlands working class seats they were 2nd in last time and the Greens will likely take from Labour in urban areas
Let’s face it, none of the candidates is Augustus Caesar, they all have grave flaws. Badenoch is flimsy, Patel is widely disliked, Tugendhat is Who?
This guy probably has the fewest flaws. He’s young, articulate, not posh - self made. He looks vaguely prime ministerial and he’s quite right wing without being Suella, voters may like that
Also, it will drive the Corbynite anti-Semites mad if both the PM and the LOTO have “Zio” wives. So it’s worth doing for that alone
Unfortunately he's also an unelectable careerist dud who's very obviously manoeuvring himself to gain the votes of the remaining hard-line factionalists in the PCP in order to get into the final two.
Chasing Farage is a mug's game. The threat from the LibDems hoovering up the remaining Home Counties seats (backbone of the Tory party since Lord Salisbury) is far more existential.
I disagree: the next leader of the Conservative Party has two tasks. The first is neutralize Reform, to get them into the mid single digits opinion poll-wise, and ensuring they don't get a foothold in local government. Now, sure, this won't win them the next election, but before anything else, the Conservatives must make Reform irrelevant.
Once Reform has been vanquished and the Conservatives have become the only credible party of the right, then they can tack back again towards the centre.
The Conservatives lost about 60 seats to the Lib Dems in the south - the heartiest of their heartlands. They look to be difficult to dislodge. There may be 30 or 40 other seats with very small margins that could go next time. Against that the Conservatives lost 5 seats to Reform. So the suggestion is to potentially sacrifice 100 or seats to the Lib Dems and allow them to embed while they concentrate on Reform.
Now I get the real prize is Labour seats where Tories and Reform split a right wing vote. It depends on Reform disappearing of their own accord and Labour, LD and Greens not voting tactically. Even then the numbers may not add up.
Not an obviously smart strategy.
You appear to be suggesting that the Tories lost to the Lib Dems via a straight transfer of votes from 2019 Boris Tory to 2024 Lib Dem. That's a ludicrous suggestion.
Of course. Where else do you think the Lib Dems got their winning vote shares from? (Plus some help from squeezing a Labour vote)
You have this "I can't believe I'm talking to someone so stupid' schtick. And yet ....
£47 000 raised in 12 hours to replace care worker Brendon's car burnt by arsonist yobs while he was on duty, with left over funds to support other care workers affected and repair other damage done by the far right.
It makes you proud to be British.
Until a few years down the road when things turns out to be a Captain Tom's Daughter situation.
Jenrick turned up for a very quickly arranged Chinese dinner last night. Fluent presentation but the usual hard-right shtick to entice the membership. Hey that worked so well in 1997-2005. I berated him for his open support for Trump (well, what a surprise) to which he replied that the GOP is our "sister party".
No chance of his getting my vote but I fear he'll win. What then after almost 50 years party membership?
Next week it's drinkkies with Mel.
So not only does he support Trump, but he does so for a facile reason. If he is the best the Conservatives can come up with they really might be toast.
More to the point, when you go through the CVs of the new Lib Dem MPs, Lots of ex military, lots of really impressive academic, business, community and local credentials... these are the kinds of MPs who could easily have been conservative. Then you think well, it the Tories go down the Reform/Populist rabbit hole there is an actual conservative party to vote for- moderate decent, pragmatic, hard working, reasonable and sensible. Everything that the Tories used to claim to be.
At this point the Lib Dems only need to take 26 MPs in order to push the Tories into third place or 29 if you took the Tories and Reform together, and yes I know this is a mildly specious argument but under FPTP but there are 72 Lib Dem MPs and only 5 RefUK. However, Truss and now Jenrick saying they support Trump is absolutely lethal, totally lines them up with Farage in the Petin camp and could actually trigger a hard core of the Tories to defect since they completely loathe both Trump and Farage. Local Tories often get on well with local Lib Dems, and we could certainly see emergence of the Lib Dems as the centre right party that many Tories say they are or want to be (but are actually not and definitely would not be as allies of Trump).
Most LDs neither want nor would accept being a centre right party, the social democratic wing of the party would defect en masse to Labour if it tried as effectively happened in 2015 when Clegg's centre right LDs in Cameron's coalition govt got just 8% of the vote
On one level it brings me great joy to see Jenrick saying these things. It makes it all the more certain that, even if the party were stupid eough to make him Leader, his chances of becoming PM are, to all intents and purposes, zero. Lets have lots more rope for him to hang himself with.
(1) I think Jenrick is probably the candidate to beat at the moment and (2) I could easily see circumstances where he's pilloried constantly by the elites but still wins in 2028/2029 against a desperately unpopular Labour government
I can see what flying pigs would look like.
That doesn't mean they will come to pass.
Another keeper.
I've heard a lot of it - as I did the first time, before the election, when people laughed at my suggestion Starmer could be a one-term PM - and it's all stuff that people forget they said when it actually happens.
You'll be the same too.
Yep - given the result in 2019 and the subsequent result in 2024 - it's possible that the same may happen in reverse and the Tories win a majority.
The problem for the Tories though is that they are currently subject to a pincer movement attacked by Labour in urban areas, Reform in the poorest areas and the Lib Dems in the richest areas.
And you can't create a manifesto of ideas that will please all 3 sets of potential voters.
Hence I don't see 2028 being a repeat of 2019 or even 2017 because I don't see them picking off all 3 sets of voters especially if they target reform rather than Labour switchers.
Reform will also be attacking Labour in Northern and Midlands working class seats they were 2nd in last time and the Greens will likely take from Labour in urban areas
That doesn't really help the Conservatives though.
What you need in many of those constituencies is for the Conservatives to gain votes from both Labour and Reform.
£47 000 raised in 12 hours to replace care worker Brendon's car burnt by arsonist yobs while he was on duty, with left over funds to support other care workers affected and repair other damage done by the far right.
It makes you proud to be British.
I hate to be a downer, but is this not what car insurance is for? And why it's mandatory that everyone has it?
£47 000 raised in 12 hours to replace care worker Brendon's car burnt by arsonist yobs while he was on duty, with left over funds to support other care workers affected and repair other damage done by the far right.
It makes you proud to be British.
I hate that I have to post this, but..
I fear that this is not necessarily in the guys interests. The dickheads will make a target of his new car.
The other day I mentioned that proper regulation of unsafe lithium batteries for micro mobility vehicles had been mentioned.
Tracked it down - there was a Bill in the King's speech briefing notes, which I skimmed on the day: "The Product Safety and Metrology Bill".
There is an urgent need to legislate to respond to emerging threats to consumer safety, for example to address issues such as incidents from ingesting button batteries, and e-bike fires where there was a 78 per cent increase in e-bike fires in 2023 compared to 2022 in London according to the London Fire Brigade.
Perhaps one of the funniest things about the pandemic causing delays at the courts, is all of these idiots who have been disrupting life for the last couple of years now seeing their partners in crime getting significant sentences, knowing their own day in court is coming up some day in the future.
Honest Bob will share the same ground with Farage.
Maybe Honest and Farage could merge their respective parties.
Where do one nation Tories go?
That's what the likes of @HYUFD seem to want - those who, like him, think you can add all the Reform votes to the Conservative votes and there's your election winning coalition.
That will be the foundation of the second Starmer Government.
Personally I will likely vote for Tugendhat but I think Leon makes a sensible case for Jenrick who will probably win
I thought the idea was to have four of the candidates go to the Party Conference next month and set out their stall before further MP voting gets it down to two..
As we found out in the Cameron vs Davis contest in 2005, a strong Conference performance will go a long way.
Far too early to be certain Jenrick will even make it to the members' ballot if he disappoints at Birmingham.
I suspect Badenoch will get to the membership ballot - you could well be right about Tugendhat but he too has to shine at Birmingham to get more MP support.
£47 000 raised in 12 hours to replace care worker Brendon's car burnt by arsonist yobs while he was on duty, with left over funds to support other care workers affected and repair other damage done by the far right.
£47 000 raised in 12 hours to replace care worker Brendon's car burnt by arsonist yobs while he was on duty, with left over funds to support other care workers affected and repair other damage done by the far right.
It makes you proud to be British.
I hate to be a downer, but is this not what car insurance is for? And why it's mandatory that everyone has it?
Whilst I do always wonder about such fundraising schemes, some car insurance may exclude riots.
Jenrick turned up for a very quickly arranged Chinese dinner last night. Fluent presentation but the usual hard-right shtick to entice the membership. Hey that worked so well in 1997-2005. I berated him for his open support for Trump (well, what a surprise) to which he replied that the GOP is our "sister party".
No chance of his getting my vote but I fear he'll win. What then after almost 50 years party membership?
Next week it's drinkkies with Mel.
1997-2005 was different, Blair got a high voteshare as well as lots of seats in 1997 winning 43% of the vote, Starmer has got just 33%.
Blair was also charismatic, Starmer is dull as ditchwater, Blair was also genuinely centrist and ideologically New Labour, Starmer is a Brownite social democrat using Blairism at the last election for electoral convenience.
Blair was unbeatable whoever led the Tories in 1997 and 2001 (certainly pre Iraq), even Portillo and Ken Clarke wouldn't have beaten him. Starmer however is much more vulnerable
Let’s face it, none of the candidates is Augustus Caesar, they all have grave flaws. Badenoch is flimsy, Patel is widely disliked, Tugendhat is Who?
This guy probably has the fewest flaws. He’s young, articulate, not posh - self made. He looks vaguely prime ministerial and he’s quite right wing without being Suella, voters may like that
Also, it will drive the Corbynite anti-Semites mad if both the PM and the LOTO have “Zio” wives. So it’s worth doing for that alone
Unfortunately he's also an unelectable careerist dud who's very obviously manoeuvring himself to gain the votes of the remaining hard-line factionalists in the PCP in order to get into the final two.
Chasing Farage is a mug's game. The threat from the LibDems hoovering up the remaining Home Counties seats (backbone of the Tory party since Lord Salisbury) is far more existential.
No it isn't, the LDs have pretty much hit their ceiling in the Home Counties, taking almost all the Remain seats and some of the soft Leave seats there on 4th July. They are unlikely to get many if any more and in any case in some of those LD seats the Tory and Reform vote combined was bigger than the LD vote
The LDs will be building up their support in seats they haven’t yet won, as we speak.
£47 000 raised in 12 hours to replace care worker Brendon's car burnt by arsonist yobs while he was on duty, with left over funds to support other care workers affected and repair other damage done by the far right.
It makes you proud to be British.
I hate to be a downer, but is this not what car insurance is for? And why it's mandatory that everyone has it?
Whilst I do always wonder about such fundraising schemes, some car insurance may exclude riots.
3rd party, fire and theft, i presume has very strict conditions.
Although weirdly in todays market rarely cheaper to go this route, even can be more expensive.
WaPo got Vance’s texts to white supremacist Charles Johnson. “Dude I won’t even take calls from Ukraine,” he told Johnson in October, about three weeks after House Republicans blocked additional aid to help Kyiv repel the Russian invasion. “Two very senior guys reached out to me. The head of their intel. The head of the Air Force. Bitching about F16s.”
£47 000 raised in 12 hours to replace care worker Brendon's car burnt by arsonist yobs while he was on duty, with left over funds to support other care workers affected and repair other damage done by the far right.
It makes you proud to be British.
I hate to be a downer, but is this not what car insurance is for? And why it's mandatory that everyone has it?
Whilst I do always wonder about such fundraising schemes, some car insurance may exclude riots.
3rd party, fire and theft...although these days rarely cheaper to go for this option compared to fully comp. In fact can weirdly be more expensive.
I can see why you might be a higher risk if you a) think you can't afford fully comprehensive, or b) have enough money not to need it.
Fire cover might still exclude a riot, even if it includes arson.
During the Brixton riots, a friend of my dad's had a niche car that he was struggling to sell. So he drove it up to Brixton, parked it, and left it. Sure enough, it got burnt out. Insurance paid out, but it was a pretty risky strategy.
NASA just stated officially on a public call (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DYPL6bx87yM) that they are planning, as a contingency, the return of the Boeing Starliner Crew on SpaceX Dragon (Crew 9).
They've also announced that a contingency for a 5th seat on Dragon has been officially designed and tested. And even a contingency for 7 passengers total (4 + 3) on Dragon - that's complete Apollo Rescue CSM stuff! All designed and ready for flight.
States that automated undock for Starliner just requires software parameter changes, not software changes.
This is very serious now, for Boeing. They are really considering abandoning Starliner and sending the astronauts home on Dragon.
AFAICR Crew Dragon was always designed to carry seven max; they just chose to routinely carry fewer and a little more cargo and space inside. I *think* there were pictures of NASA reps examining a Crew Dragon setup for seven.
Another minor issue: Boeing's crew suits are incompatible with SpaceX's (or you can say the other way around...), so they may have to send a couple of specially made SpaceX suits up to to the crew.
I'd love to be the tailor sent up to ensure the fit is just perfect!
(Just before Apollo 11, Collins damaged both pairs of his EVA gloves. NASA flew a seamstress who made the gloves across the country to personally make a new pair. It was her first time out of her ?home town? / state.)
The configuration of 7 was reduced to 4, for Dragon, because NASA had some concerns about a hard landing causing an "excursion" of the seats in the top row into the bottom row. Interestingly, the Apollo rescue CSM had exactly the same issue - on a harder landing (than had ever occurred in Apollo) the top seats might impact the people below.
The incompatibility is to do with the connections from the suit to the spacecraft. In both cases, the suits are really an extension of the spacecraft. They have different electrical, cooling and air connectors. Well, SpaceX create a single, multi function connector - which Boeing declined to standardise on.
It appears that SpaceX didn't delete the extra suit connections or reduce the capability of the environmental systems when they reduced from 7 to 4.
They would send up suits with the Dragon capsule for the Starliner crew. Because of the hardware rich approach at SpaceX, they have numbers of suits on hand and identified some that would fit well enough.
Yes to all of that; but it was just NASA that insisted the capacity go from 7 to 4. SpaceX kept the capability in theory for private customers.
I don't think they've been offering it as an option to private customers. Sounds like they just read the history of Skylab.
Not yet; as there's nowhere to take them to aside from the ISS, and that's NASA's territory. But a private space station?
Honest Bob will share the same ground with Farage.
Maybe Honest and Farage could merge their respective parties.
Where do one nation Tories go?
That's what the likes of @HYUFD seem to want - those who, like him, think you can add all the Reform votes to the Conservative votes and there's your election winning coalition.
That will be the foundation of the second Starmer Government.
Personally I will likely vote for Tugendhat but I think Leon makes a sensible case for Jenrick who will probably win
I thought the idea was to have four of the candidates go to the Party Conference next month and set out their stall before further MP voting gets it down to two..
As we found out in the Cameron vs Davis contest in 2005, a strong Conference performance will go a long way.
Far too early to be certain Jenrick will even make it to the members' ballot if he disappoints at Birmingham.
I suspect Badenoch will get to the membership ballot - you could well be right about Tugendhat but he too has to shine at Birmingham to get more MP support.
I think it's starting to look like Patel and Jenrick are the two serious candidates, so maybe Badenoch won't make it and her career will fade away after that.
WaPo got Vance’s texts to white supremacist Charles Johnson. “Dude I won’t even take calls from Ukraine,” he told Johnson in October, about three weeks after House Republicans blocked additional aid to help Kyiv repel the Russian invasion. “Two very senior guys reached out to me. The head of their intel. The head of the Air Force. Bitching about F16s.”
Honest Bob will share the same ground with Farage.
Maybe Honest and Farage could merge their respective parties.
Where do one nation Tories go?
That's what the likes of @HYUFD seem to want - those who, like him, think you can add all the Reform votes to the Conservative votes and there's your election winning coalition.
That will be the foundation of the second Starmer Government.
Personally I will likely vote for Tugendhat but I think Leon makes a sensible case for Jenrick who will probably win
I thought the idea was to have four of the candidates go to the Party Conference next month and set out their stall before further MP voting gets it down to two..
As we found out in the Cameron vs Davis contest in 2005, a strong Conference performance will go a long way.
Far too early to be certain Jenrick will even make it to the members' ballot if he disappoints at Birmingham.
I suspect Badenoch will get to the membership ballot - you could well be right about Tugendhat but he too has to shine at Birmingham to get more MP support.
I think it's starting to look like Patel and Jenrick are the two serious candidates, so maybe Badenoch won't make it and her career will fade away after that.
I think Badenoch has more MP voters behind her than Patel, Tugendhat will get to the last 2 by virtue of being lead candidate of the left of the Tory parliamentary party and One Nation wing, taking the role filled by Sunak, Hunt, May and Cameron and Clarke in the last 5 Tory leadership elections
Taoiseach Simon Harris says the era of self regulation by social media companies is over
He’s prepared to meet Elon Musk and other social media company execs to discuss Irish government plans for financial sanctions and personal liabilities for failing to remove harmful content
I wonder how the Irish people will feel if Meta and Twitter simply shut down their services in Ireland? I see a surge in VPN usage coming soon.
If governments, including ours, shut down services that didn't voluntarily comply with national laws, norms and customs about libel, conspiracy, organising crime, abuse, harmful content, racial slurs etc then services would arise, funded by advertisers who would have confidence in them, which did so.
At the moment Gresham's law applies. Only government intervention can change that.
Nah. It would take decades for that to happen and all that would happen is that people would access the existing services via VPNs. Just look at China's attempts to shut down access to social media. It doesn't work.
And I do love the fact that people attack the chinese and other dictatorships for trying to stop people accessing social media because of their national laws and then support our own country doing the same thing.
And similarly - the people who don't want "foreign donors" affecting our elections, but decry the closing down of foreign NGOs in other countries.
That's a bit of a false equivalence, isn't it ? Theee are plenty of foreign funded NGOs in the UK.
The other day I mentioned that proper regulation of unsafe lithium batteries for micro mobility vehicles had been mentioned.
Tracked it down - there was a Bill in the King's speech briefing notes, which I skimmed on the day: "The Product Safety and Metrology Bill".
There is an urgent need to legislate to respond to emerging threats to consumer safety, for example to address issues such as incidents from ingesting button batteries, and e-bike fires where there was a 78 per cent increase in e-bike fires in 2023 compared to 2022 in London according to the London Fire Brigade.
It's nice to have a Govt which is not committed, at almost genetic level, to sitting on its arse in the face of threats to public safety.
I would like someone to write a book. The story of such a bill, the push back, the "but we can't enforce this" etc etc...
The e-bikes issue will shortly become an e-cars issue. The exiting manufacturers of electric cars in the West took their lead from Tesla and designed elaborate safety systems around the batteries. These mean that EV fires are far less common than ICE fires.
Noticeably, quite a few older hybrid vehicles don't have such protections. Guess what - hybrid fires are higher.
Some of the Chinese cars have the same level of protection as the original Fisker - none - which had the charming feature of busting into flames, when it got wet.
Let’s face it, none of the candidates is Augustus Caesar, they all have grave flaws. Badenoch is flimsy, Patel is widely disliked, Tugendhat is Who?
This guy probably has the fewest flaws. He’s young, articulate, not posh - self made. He looks vaguely prime ministerial and he’s quite right wing without being Suella, voters may like that
Also, it will drive the Corbynite anti-Semites mad if both the PM and the LOTO have “Zio” wives. So it’s worth doing for that alone
Unfortunately he's also an unelectable careerist dud who's very obviously manoeuvring himself to gain the votes of the remaining hard-line factionalists in the PCP in order to get into the final two.
Chasing Farage is a mug's game. The threat from the LibDems hoovering up the remaining Home Counties seats (backbone of the Tory party since Lord Salisbury) is far more existential.
No it isn't, the LDs have pretty much hit their ceiling in the Home Counties, taking almost all the Remain seats and some of the soft Leave seats there on 4th July. They are unlikely to get many if any more and in any case in some of those LD seats the Tory and Reform vote combined was bigger than the LD vote
The LDs will be building up their support in seats they haven’t yet won, as we speak.
Of the next 50 LD targets, 38 are currently Conservative-held seats and in many of them there are significant Labour and Reform votes to squeeze so if the Conservatives are still in the low 20s in four years time, who knows?
Let’s face it, none of the candidates is Augustus Caesar, they all have grave flaws. Badenoch is flimsy, Patel is widely disliked, Tugendhat is Who?
This guy probably has the fewest flaws. He’s young, articulate, not posh - self made. He looks vaguely prime ministerial and he’s quite right wing without being Suella, voters may like that
Also, it will drive the Corbynite anti-Semites mad if both the PM and the LOTO have “Zio” wives. So it’s worth doing for that alone
Unfortunately he's also an unelectable careerist dud who's very obviously manoeuvring himself to gain the votes of the remaining hard-line factionalists in the PCP in order to get into the final two.
Chasing Farage is a mug's game. The threat from the LibDems hoovering up the remaining Home Counties seats (backbone of the Tory party since Lord Salisbury) is far more existential.
No it isn't, the LDs have pretty much hit their ceiling in the Home Counties, taking almost all the Remain seats and some of the soft Leave seats there on 4th July. They are unlikely to get many if any more and in any case in some of those LD seats the Tory and Reform vote combined was bigger than the LD vote
The LDs will be building up their support in seats they haven’t yet won, as we speak.
From where? If they couldn't win Tory voters this time they are unlikely to win many more next time and they have already squeezed Labour tactical votes in their target seats as far as they can go
NASA just stated officially on a public call (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DYPL6bx87yM) that they are planning, as a contingency, the return of the Boeing Starliner Crew on SpaceX Dragon (Crew 9).
They've also announced that a contingency for a 5th seat on Dragon has been officially designed and tested. And even a contingency for 7 passengers total (4 + 3) on Dragon - that's complete Apollo Rescue CSM stuff! All designed and ready for flight.
States that automated undock for Starliner just requires software parameter changes, not software changes.
This is very serious now, for Boeing. They are really considering abandoning Starliner and sending the astronauts home on Dragon.
AFAICR Crew Dragon was always designed to carry seven max; they just chose to routinely carry fewer and a little more cargo and space inside. I *think* there were pictures of NASA reps examining a Crew Dragon setup for seven.
Another minor issue: Boeing's crew suits are incompatible with SpaceX's (or you can say the other way around...), so they may have to send a couple of specially made SpaceX suits up to to the crew.
I'd love to be the tailor sent up to ensure the fit is just perfect!
(Just before Apollo 11, Collins damaged both pairs of his EVA gloves. NASA flew a seamstress who made the gloves across the country to personally make a new pair. It was her first time out of her ?home town? / state.)
The configuration of 7 was reduced to 4, for Dragon, because NASA had some concerns about a hard landing causing an "excursion" of the seats in the top row into the bottom row. Interestingly, the Apollo rescue CSM had exactly the same issue - on a harder landing (than had ever occurred in Apollo) the top seats might impact the people below.
The incompatibility is to do with the connections from the suit to the spacecraft. In both cases, the suits are really an extension of the spacecraft. They have different electrical, cooling and air connectors. Well, SpaceX create a single, multi function connector - which Boeing declined to standardise on.
It appears that SpaceX didn't delete the extra suit connections or reduce the capability of the environmental systems when they reduced from 7 to 4.
They would send up suits with the Dragon capsule for the Starliner crew. Because of the hardware rich approach at SpaceX, they have numbers of suits on hand and identified some that would fit well enough.
Yes to all of that; but it was just NASA that insisted the capacity go from 7 to 4. SpaceX kept the capability in theory for private customers.
I don't think they've been offering it as an option to private customers. Sounds like they just read the history of Skylab.
Not yet; as there's nowhere to take them to aside from the ISS, and that's NASA's territory. But a private space station?
EDIT: The only control NASA would have over more than 4 on a private mission to ISS would be not allowing more than 4 to board ISS. But since such missions seem to pay NASA with supplies for the station (last one actually delivered so much that NASA paid *them*)....
Jenrick feels somewhere between IDS and William Hague in terms of electoral appeal.
Yes but even IDS was polling 34% in late 2003 post Iraq invasion and even Hague would have beaten Brown in 2010.
Blair in 2001 was unbeatable as Hague discovered but Starmer is personality wise and ideologically more Brown than Blair and events like Iraq can shift the environment
Let’s face it, none of the candidates is Augustus Caesar, they all have grave flaws. Badenoch is flimsy, Patel is widely disliked, Tugendhat is Who?
This guy probably has the fewest flaws. He’s young, articulate, not posh - self made. He looks vaguely prime ministerial and he’s quite right wing without being Suella, voters may like that
Also, it will drive the Corbynite anti-Semites mad if both the PM and the LOTO have “Zio” wives. So it’s worth doing for that alone
Unfortunately he's also an unelectable careerist dud who's very obviously manoeuvring himself to gain the votes of the remaining hard-line factionalists in the PCP in order to get into the final two.
Chasing Farage is a mug's game. The threat from the LibDems hoovering up the remaining Home Counties seats (backbone of the Tory party since Lord Salisbury) is far more existential.
No it isn't, the LDs have pretty much hit their ceiling in the Home Counties, taking almost all the Remain seats and some of the soft Leave seats there on 4th July. They are unlikely to get many if any more and in any case in some of those LD seats the Tory and Reform vote combined was bigger than the LD vote
The LDs will be building up their support in seats they haven’t yet won, as we speak.
...and the Tories current support is - literally- dying, and the current leadership contest isn´t exactly setting the heather on fire.
On one level it brings me great joy to see Jenrick saying these things. It makes it all the more certain that, even if the party were stupid eough to make him Leader, his chances of becoming PM are, to all intents and purposes, zero. Lets have lots more rope for him to hang himself with.
(1) I think Jenrick is probably the candidate to beat at the moment and (2) I could easily see circumstances where he's pilloried constantly by the elites but still wins in 2028/2029 against a desperately unpopular Labour government
I can see what flying pigs would look like.
That doesn't mean they will come to pass.
Another keeper.
I've heard a lot of it - as I did the first time, before the election, when people laughed at my suggestion Starmer could be a one-term PM - and it's all stuff that people forget they said when it actually happens.
You'll be the same too.
Yep - given the result in 2019 and the subsequent result in 2024 - it's possible that the same may happen in reverse and the Tories win a majority.
The problem for the Tories though is that they are currently subject to a pincer movement attacked by Labour in urban areas, Reform in the poorest areas and the Lib Dems in the richest areas.
And you can't create a manifesto of ideas that will please all 3 sets of potential voters.
Hence I don't see 2028 being a repeat of 2019 or even 2017 because I don't see them picking off all 3 sets of voters especially if they target reform rather than Labour switchers.
Reform will also be attacking Labour in Northern and Midlands working class seats they were 2nd in last time and the Greens will likely take from Labour in urban areas
That doesn't really help the Conservatives though.
What you need in many of those constituencies is for the Conservatives to gain votes from both Labour and Reform.
Ideally but Reform taking Labour votes still helps the Tories under FPTP
Jenrick seems most likely to bring back Reform voters? And will he really drive off that many still voting for the Tories, the core voters?
So he probably will do well in the contest despite or even because of his remarks.
He looks like a nice safe Cameroon, I don't believe he will frighten anyone. It's bollocks
There is more to the allegations that he is greedy and the like, but then he's a Tory, greed is to Tories as canting hypocrisy is to Labour. Also, crucially, his greed has made him a rich man, through his own hard work. He is NOT an Old Etonian, he is NOT Rishi the Billionaire
Also, and finally, the Tories need to be thinking about how to fight the next war, not the last one. They really DO need those Reform voters to return, who is likely to do that, without alienating the centre right?
It will HAVE to be someone firm on immigration, because - sadly - this pivotal issue is going to dominate from now on, along with the economy
The Tories have no great choices, Jenrick seems the least bad. Tories should ignore lefties advising them to become like the Lib Dems, that advice is either disingenuous or clueless
I get that the PB consensus don’t want someone like Jenrick to lead the Tories because of a lot of us centrists would really quite like a Tory Party back that we feel comfortable voting for. But I agree that given the current political situation and the lie of the land, from a strategic perspective in the here and now, the Tories probably do need someone “of the right”.
There’s a lot of shock and horror on here that the Tories would dream to do it, but the party has changed, and the political environment has changed, and the Tories being centrist and incompetent (because they cannot demonstrate competence after the last term of office) isn’t going to do anything but drive more voters to the fringes.
This isn't aimed at you and your comment has driven me to just underline how much I fucking hate this false centrists versus right dichotomy.
It's so stupidity reductive, and wrong. The Conservatives need to win over floating voters and build an election winning coalition: that will involve both Reform and LD/Labour defectors. They are both required to get back into power.
They are not mutually exclusive and there is no path to power that conveniently ignores one but not the other.
I'd essentially rule out voting for any Conservative leadership candidate who talks in this way.
I didn’t take it as such. These are good points well made. I agree the Tory coalition needs to build broad appeal. The challenge though is one of emphasis. I don’t think the Tory Party gains much from being a weak shadow of Labour. Or Labour with a bit less tax. It’s not going to be able to challenge in that space, because I think the key issue there is one of competence, and as noted I think given their previous it will take a while to rebuild that.
Let’s face it, none of the candidates is Augustus Caesar, they all have grave flaws. Badenoch is flimsy, Patel is widely disliked, Tugendhat is Who?
This guy probably has the fewest flaws. He’s young, articulate, not posh - self made. He looks vaguely prime ministerial and he’s quite right wing without being Suella, voters may like that
Also, it will drive the Corbynite anti-Semites mad if both the PM and the LOTO have “Zio” wives. So it’s worth doing for that alone
Unfortunately he's also an unelectable careerist dud who's very obviously manoeuvring himself to gain the votes of the remaining hard-line factionalists in the PCP in order to get into the final two.
Chasing Farage is a mug's game. The threat from the LibDems hoovering up the remaining Home Counties seats (backbone of the Tory party since Lord Salisbury) is far more existential.
No it isn't, the LDs have pretty much hit their ceiling in the Home Counties, taking almost all the Remain seats and some of the soft Leave seats there on 4th July. They are unlikely to get many if any more and in any case in some of those LD seats the Tory and Reform vote combined was bigger than the LD vote
The LDs will be building up their support in seats they haven’t yet won, as we speak.
From where? If they couldn't win Tory voters this time they are unlikely to win many more next time and they have already squeezed Labour tactical votes in their target seats as far as they can go
Their modus operandi is to win councillors, then councils, in areas previously thought unwinnable. They won’t care whether those areas are currently Tory, Labour or anyone else. They will want to convert potential voters from being tactical voters only, to people voting Lib Dem as a positive choice.
Jenrick turned up for a very quickly arranged Chinese dinner last night. Fluent presentation but the usual hard-right shtick to entice the membership. Hey that worked so well in 1997-2005. I berated him for his open support for Trump (well, what a surprise) to which he replied that the GOP is our "sister party".
No chance of his getting my vote but I fear he'll win. What then after almost 50 years party membership?
Next week it's drinkkies with Mel.
So not only does he support Trump, but he does so for a facile reason. If he is the best the Conservatives can come up with they really might be toast.
More to the point, when you go through the CVs of the new Lib Dem MPs, Lots of ex military, lots of really impressive academic, business, community and local credentials... these are the kinds of MPs who could easily have been conservative. Then you think well, it the Tories go down the Reform/Populist rabbit hole there is an actual conservative party to vote for- moderate decent, pragmatic, hard working, reasonable and sensible. Everything that the Tories used to claim to be.
At this point the Lib Dems only need to take 26 MPs in order to push the Tories into third place or 29 if you took the Tories and Reform together, and yes I know this is a mildly specious argument but under FPTP but there are 72 Lib Dem MPs and only 5 RefUK. However, Truss and now Jenrick saying they support Trump is absolutely lethal, totally lines them up with Farage in the Petin camp and could actually trigger a hard core of the Tories to defect since they completely loathe both Trump and Farage. Local Tories often get on well with local Lib Dems, and we could certainly see emergence of the Lib Dems as the centre right party that many Tories say they are or want to be (but are actually not and definitely would not be as allies of Trump).
Most LDs neither want nor would accept being a centre right party, the social democratic wing of the party would defect en masse to Labour if it tried as effectively happened in 2015 when Clegg's centre right LDs in Cameron's coalition govt got just 8% of the vote
It really takes a special kind of person to lecture someone who has been a member of the Liberals and Liberal Democrats for over 45 years, and who has been pretty active over much of that time, as a candidate, both Parliamentary and local, as an organiser and as a very regular conference attender about what the membership of the party is and what it is not.
£47 000 raised in 12 hours to replace care worker Brendon's car burnt by arsonist yobs while he was on duty, with left over funds to support other care workers affected and repair other damage done by the far right.
It makes you proud to be British.
I hate to be a downer, but is this not what car insurance is for? And why it's mandatory that everyone has it?
it's only mandatory for risks while you're driving it
Jenrick turned up for a very quickly arranged Chinese dinner last night. Fluent presentation but the usual hard-right shtick to entice the membership. Hey that worked so well in 1997-2005. I berated him for his open support for Trump (well, what a surprise) to which he replied that the GOP is our "sister party".
No chance of his getting my vote but I fear he'll win. What then after almost 50 years party membership?
Next week it's drinkkies with Mel.
So not only does he support Trump, but he does so for a facile reason. If he is the best the Conservatives can come up with they really might be toast.
More to the point, when you go through the CVs of the new Lib Dem MPs, Lots of ex military, lots of really impressive academic, business, community and local credentials... these are the kinds of MPs who could easily have been conservative. Then you think well, it the Tories go down the Reform/Populist rabbit hole there is an actual conservative party to vote for- moderate decent, pragmatic, hard working, reasonable and sensible. Everything that the Tories used to claim to be.
At this point the Lib Dems only need to take 26 MPs in order to push the Tories into third place or 29 if you took the Tories and Reform together, and yes I know this is a mildly specious argument but under FPTP but there are 72 Lib Dem MPs and only 5 RefUK. However, Truss and now Jenrick saying they support Trump is absolutely lethal, totally lines them up with Farage in the Petin camp and could actually trigger a hard core of the Tories to defect since they completely loathe both Trump and Farage. Local Tories often get on well with local Lib Dems, and we could certainly see emergence of the Lib Dems as the centre right party that many Tories say they are or want to be (but are actually not and definitely would not be as allies of Trump).
Most LDs neither want nor would accept being a centre right party, the social democratic wing of the party would defect en masse to Labour if it tried as effectively happened in 2015 when Clegg's centre right LDs in Cameron's coalition govt got just 8% of the vote
It really takes a special kind of person to lecture someone who has been a member of the Liberals and Liberal Democrats for over 45 years, and who has been pretty active over much of that time, as a candidate, both Parliamentary and local, as an organiser and as a very regular conference attender about what the membership of the party is and what it is not.
I know my party and you, sir, do not.
Have you not followed the storied career in this respect? From explaining North Sea oil to Richard Tindall to telling me what the Oxford Union is he’s a storied career in explaining stuff to people…
UK riot yobs 'don't fear CCTV but they should be terrified of Super-Recognisers' EXCLUSIVE: Super-Recognisers 'never forget a face' and are used by police to nail down the identities of troublemaking suspects, by studying even the grainiest CCTV images https://www.dailystar.co.uk/news/latest-news/uk-riot-yobs-dont-fear-33412915
PB psychology nerds will remember the hype around super-recognisers a few years back. The Daily Star might have a genuine scoop in updating the story.
Jenrick feels somewhere between IDS and William Hague in terms of electoral appeal.
That's quite generous, the Tories will have recovered a lot if they get to dizzying heights of the appeal of William Hague.
I'd say he feels somewhere between IDS and Rishi Sunak in terms of electoral appeal.
I would place him between IDS and Dracula.
Rather unfair on Dracula.
One of the most popular literary and cinematic characters of all time, with a reputation of being charismatic and able to create devoted thrall followers.
I doubt many people will be talking about Jenrick within a few years of his losing office, let alone centuries from now like Dracula is still going strong.
This is surely one of the most surreal moments of the war yet
Scott Ritter has turned up in Chechnya and spoken in broken Russian (some of which I couldn’t make out) to thousands of Kadyrov’s fighters about his efforts to strengthen the "friendship between Chechnya and America" https://x.com/francis_scarr/status/1743627014433587410
Jenrick feels somewhere between IDS and William Hague in terms of electoral appeal.
That's quite generous, the Tories will have recovered a lot if they get to dizzying heights of the appeal of William Hague.
I'd say he feels somewhere between IDS and Rishi Sunak in terms of electoral appeal.
I would place him between IDS and Dracula.
Rather unfair on Dracula.
One of the most popular literary and cinematic characters of all time, with a reputation of being charismatic and able to create devoted thrall followers.
I doubt many people will be talking about Jenrick within a few years of his losing office, let alone centuries from now like Dracula is still going strong.
I should qualify my previous post re Canadian government warning Canadians not to travel to the UK, that their actual advise is 'visitors should exercise a high degree of caution in the country'
"UK"
Outside England and Belfast (bits of), where's the problem?
£47 000 raised in 12 hours to replace care worker Brendon's car burnt by arsonist yobs while he was on duty, with left over funds to support other care workers affected and repair other damage done by the far right.
It makes you proud to be British.
I hate to be a downer, but is this not what car insurance is for? And why it's mandatory that everyone has it?
it's only mandatory for risks while you're driving it
I always assumed even the basic cover, "third party, fire and theft" would cover you if, er, your car was set on fire.
Jenrick feels somewhere between IDS and William Hague in terms of electoral appeal.
That's quite generous, the Tories will have recovered a lot if they get to dizzying heights of the appeal of William Hague.
I'd say he feels somewhere between IDS and Rishi Sunak in terms of electoral appeal.
I would place him between IDS and Dracula.
Rather unfair on Dracula.
One of the most popular literary and cinematic characters of all time, with a reputation of being charismatic and able to create devoted thrall followers.
I doubt many people will be talking about Jenrick within a few years of his losing office, let alone centuries from now like Dracula is still going strong.
Of course, the Count's contemporaries had a much greater stake in his activities than the likes of Mr Jenrick's.
£47 000 raised in 12 hours to replace care worker Brendon's car burnt by arsonist yobs while he was on duty, with left over funds to support other care workers affected and repair other damage done by the far right.
It makes you proud to be British.
I hate to be a downer, but is this not what car insurance is for? And why it's mandatory that everyone has it?
it's only mandatory for risks while you're driving it
I always assumed even the basic cover, "third party, fire and theft" would cover you if, er, your car was set on fire.
"For example, major car insurer Admiral will not pay out for damage from rioting, as well as from other violence such as terrorism and war."
Bit of a shocker, really. But typical of insurance companies to worm their way out of paying for anything.
Same if it gets hopelessly contaminated if someone plays noughts and crosses on the control board of the nearest nuke power station. Even more so if it is evaporated in the ground burst of a 1-MT warhead.
Did I imagine a video of cops telling an armed mob to turn their weapons in at the mosque?
I can barely imagine a same tier church video
I'm barely imagining churches being attacked by the mob in the same way that mosques are.
It has happened at some points in history, Spain in the 30s and the Jim Crow US South spring to mind, but not very recently, and not in this country since the 17th century.
Comments
A few hundred counters in Hackney with nowt to counter.
Spent Saturday at the Stand Up to Racism counter protest in Nottingham, where both sides of the debate were allowed the opportunity to air their views under the watchful eye of Nottinghamshire Constabulary. Bar a couple of scuffles, nothing untoward happened. Certainly no riots, that's for sure.
Even with the relatively fresh memories of the murders of 3 people going about their business last summer, by a man the far-right were keen to class as a newly arrived immigrant, Nottingham did itself proud, as a multi-cultural society and generally ignored those trying to cause division and hatred.
That was the good stuff.
Sunday, been to Wath-upon-Dearne between Rotherham and Barnsley, ex-mining country in South Yorkshire where even I was targeted for physical abuse, even though I was in a wheelchair following a recent replacement knee operation. The level of violence being meted out by the far-right and the local, feral youth was extremely intimidating, meaning a hasty retreat was required before our likely lynching took place.
Their target, a hotel partially housing asylum seekers. I pity anybody caught up in their onslaught today. As ever, South Yorkshire Police did as little as possible, ensuring the yobs could let rip. SYP still haven't changed, whether it's the miners strike, Hillsborough or the grooming gangs in Rotherham a decade ago. Utterly incompetent.
Overall, it's good to see that the average man/woman in the street is apathetic to their cause, but I still think this has a long way to run and will be very interested to see the new governments response.
We wouldn't have learned of Birmingham without people sharing videos on Twitter. This way the government gets to knobble Twitter, and it gets to tell us exactly what happened, whether it happened or not. We will have to sit there and take it, passively accepting the official story
Who knew this government could be this awful this quickly
Cameron had the right outlook, sunlight is the best disinfectant.
I do agree that if we need oil its is best to not need the world's bastards nor give them any more claim to our assets.
Tracked it down - there was a Bill in the King's speech briefing notes, which I skimmed on the day: "The Product Safety and Metrology Bill".
There is an urgent need to legislate to respond to emerging threats to consumer safety, for example to address issues such as incidents from ingesting button batteries, and e-bike fires where there was a 78 per cent increase in e-bike fires in 2023 compared to 2022 in London according to the London Fire Brigade.
https://ebiketips.road.cc/content/news/e-bike-batteries-government-to-tackle-unscrupulous-overseas-suppliers-who-sell-unsafe
https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/6697f5c10808eaf43b50d18e/The_King_s_Speech_2024_background_briefing_notes.pdf
It's nice to have a Govt which is not committed, at almost genetic level, to sitting on its arse in the face of threats to public safety.
https://gofund.me/ad6dc2f3
£47 000 raised in 12 hours to replace care worker Brendon's car burnt by arsonist yobs while he was on duty, with left over funds to support other care workers affected and repair other damage done by the far right.
It makes you proud to be British.
https://x.com/JAHeale/status/1792995468382806249
BREAKING: FIVE MORE JUST STOP OIL SUPPORTERS IMPRISONED.
🚔 Ella, Daniel, Margaret, Indigo and Noah have been charged with Conspiracy to Commit a Public Nuisance.
⛓️ There are now 26 people imprisoned in the UK for nonviolent climate action.
https://nitter.poast.org/JustStop_Oil/status/1820828181361832043#m
You have this "I can't believe I'm talking to someone so stupid' schtick. And yet ....
GB in silver position, race stopped and then rerun, GB finishes sixth.
I believe the original count was 12.
What you need in many of those constituencies is for the Conservatives to gain votes from both Labour and Reform.
I fear that this is not necessarily in the guys interests. The dickheads will make a target of his new car.
This is how the thugs win.
https://x.com/SaintMichael293/status/1821195090385055933/photo/1
As we found out in the Cameron vs Davis contest in 2005, a strong Conference performance will go a long way.
Far too early to be certain Jenrick will even make it to the members' ballot if he disappoints at Birmingham.
I suspect Badenoch will get to the membership ballot - you could well be right about Tugendhat but he too has to shine at Birmingham to get more MP support.
Blair was also charismatic, Starmer is dull as ditchwater, Blair was also genuinely centrist and ideologically New Labour, Starmer is a Brownite social democrat using Blairism at the last election for electoral convenience.
Blair was unbeatable whoever led the Tories in 1997 and 2001 (certainly pre Iraq), even Portillo and Ken Clarke wouldn't have beaten him. Starmer however is much more vulnerable
Although weirdly in todays market rarely cheaper to go this route, even can be more expensive.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2024/08/07/jd-vance-charles-johnson-texts/
Fire cover might still exclude a riot, even if it includes arson.
Went out to look and it turns out it is a 'specsavers' representatives car but in very similar colours to a police car
My dear lady commented that 'maybe you need to ask them to call' !!!!
Theee are plenty of foreign funded NGOs in the UK.
The e-bikes issue will shortly become an e-cars issue. The exiting manufacturers of electric cars in the West took their lead from Tesla and designed elaborate safety systems around the batteries. These mean that EV fires are far less common than ICE fires.
Noticeably, quite a few older hybrid vehicles don't have such protections. Guess what - hybrid fires are higher.
Some of the Chinese cars have the same level of protection as the original Fisker - none - which had the charming feature of busting into flames, when it got wet.
https://x.com/michaeldweiss/status/1821243253011968386
EDIT: The only control NASA would have over more than 4 on a private mission to ISS would be not allowing more than 4 to board ISS. But since such missions seem to pay NASA with supplies for the station (last one actually delivered so much that NASA paid *them*)....
Blair in 2001 was unbeatable as Hague discovered but Starmer is personality wise and ideologically more Brown than Blair and events like Iraq can shift the environment
Now this.
The FBI is searching Scott Ritter's home as of an hour ago:
https://x.com/michaeldweiss/status/1821243253011968386
I'd say he feels somewhere between IDS and Rishi Sunak in terms of electoral appeal.
I know my party and you, sir, do not.
EXCLUSIVE: Paramilitaries refuse to use influence to end racially-motivated Belfast riots
UDA and UVF sources say trouble ‘nothing to do with them’ and insist it is a policing matter
EXCLUSIVE: Super-Recognisers 'never forget a face' and are used by police to nail down the identities of troublemaking suspects, by studying even the grainiest CCTV images
https://www.dailystar.co.uk/news/latest-news/uk-riot-yobs-dont-fear-33412915
PB psychology nerds will remember the hype around super-recognisers a few years back. The Daily Star might have a genuine scoop in updating the story.
I can barely imagine a same tier church video
One of the most popular literary and cinematic characters of all time, with a reputation of being charismatic and able to create devoted thrall followers.
I doubt many people will be talking about Jenrick within a few years of his losing office, let alone centuries from now like Dracula is still going strong.
This is surely one of the most surreal moments of the war yet
Scott Ritter has turned up in Chechnya and spoken in broken Russian (some of which I couldn’t make out) to thousands of Kadyrov’s fighters about his efforts to strengthen the "friendship between Chechnya and America"
https://x.com/francis_scarr/status/1743627014433587410
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B8KMQT3bC_Q
The thugs have been scared off.
However there is a whole article published yesterday about this not being the case - https://www.thisismoney.co.uk/money/bills/article-13714039/Riot-damage-home-car-insurance-pay-out.html
"For example, major car insurer Admiral will not pay out for damage from rioting, as well as from other violence such as terrorism and war."
Bit of a shocker, really. But typical of insurance companies to worm their way out of paying for anything.
Which is of course as it should be.
What's the point of premiums?