Jeez pass me the sick bag . He really is a moron .
The luxury of being at the start of a period of opposition is you can propose all manner of fun things with no prospect of them actually happening. Unqualified support for Netanyahu seems to have become a new virility test for the right.
Expect a flurry of similar virtue signalling by the two finalists over the next month.
'British Anglican Catholic priest and conservative commentator Calvin Robinson issued a stark warning to Americans about the direction he sees the U.S. could be heading.
"Please don't do what we did," he warned Americans in an interview with The Christian Post. "Please don't just sit back and let the liberals deteriorate the rest of everything that you know and love."
Robinson, who recently moved to the U.S. to run a full-time parish ministry in Michigan, argued that spiritual and political forces had undermined British and Christian values in his home country, and he sees the same trends happening in the United States as well.
"Be careful. American culture is a fantastic culture. Hold on to it, promote it, encourage it. If you want to become multicultural and let other cultures in, that's something you have to consider. But do not give it up to the detriment of your own," he pleaded while talking to The Christian Post. ' In an interview with Fox News Digital last year, Robinson said that liberalism was "the greatest threat to [Christianity]" currently....Robinson also believes far-left ideologies infiltrating The Church of England have worked to undermine the influence of Christianity in England.
"The Church of England has become very liberal in terms of divorce, sex outside marriage, same-sex relationships, transgenderism," Robinson told the outlet. "And every time the Church tries to be more inclusive, it actually becomes more exclusive to Christianity and to Christian values, and more inclusive to worldly values and just further plummets that downward trajectory."
"It's a great shame," he said.
Robinson told The Christian Post he thinks America is on the same path in following these trends, but no matter what happens, he rests in trusting God is in control. "[L]iberalism is even more warped [than Islam]," he said, "in terms of taking something that sounds compassionate, sounds empathetic, but isn't actually fully true in order to get people to believe in it, such as, you know, trans queer theory, gender theory, critical race theory."
Each of these radical liberal ideas "come from one place," he continued. "And it's really, I mean, we call it ‘neo–Marxism,’ but it's really communism, which we know is incompatible with the Christian faith because it is the work of the enemy… And so, we shouldn't let our guard down for communism. We certainly shouldn't let it for neo-Marxism, and therefore we should not let our guard down for liberalism."' https://www.foxnews.com/media/uk-priest-warns-americans-not-let-left-deteriorate-us-values
Personally, I think his political and cultural judgements are way off, but I'm interested to hear his explanation of his position on these particular questions.
Robinson is one of the many Christians who preach the bible whilst ignoring Christ.
TBH I'd dispute that, and say that he preaches one particular heavily culture-bound interpretation of the bible, which is in a lot of ways modernist; in particular that he has a set of politico-cultural values and views from the late 20th century that he has imposed on it and read into it.
For an example of a culture bound interpretation (I am not sure whether Robinson embraces this one), I'd point to the modern evangelical movements who try to treat the Bible as some sort of document of literal historical evidence, which is not what it is, and end up with all sorts of resulting strange assessments.
One interesting observation on this from an Anglican Bishop I once heard was that all three of the main recognised traditions in the CofE, ie anglo-catholic, anglican evangelical and liberal, were formed partly as responses to the enlightenment, and so it was to be expected that they would evolve and change in significant ways, as the basis of our society's culture moved from modernism to post-modernism to "whatever comes after that". This was Bishop Graham Cray in 1991 (then he was a vicar), and speaking of a period of cultural change from ~1975 to ~2025. He was always interesting in that he did much of his reflection on culture though the medium of rock music.
But I don't think many of us are up for too much theology on a Monday morning .
Jeez pass me the sick bag . He really is a moron .
They'll elected Jenrick this month and he'll be out in two years.
I guess they have to go through this stage before neo-Cameron arrives in early 2030s to lead them back to the centre ground and to office.
Maybe it will be the actual Cameron?
That depends what happens to Reform. If they continue to gain votes, and pick up some decent council wins or a Westminster byelection, then the next leader after Jenrick might be further to the right.
I think Jenrick will make it to the next election. He might be a thoroughly lightweight, faux culture warrior type with a few shadows hanging over his past conduct, but he speaks fluently and doesn't seem as incompetent at the political game as everyone seems to assume.
I think the biggest crime is that over all those months all I still have is soundbites and platitudes from all the candidates.
Still precious little evidence that many (any) have done any deep thinking or have a plan.
I'm not hearing deep thinking or a plan from anyone - team Labour are exactly the same. The country is so spectacularly broken and the political class so captivated by the Treasury idiots that they can't see a way through other than "break it some more and blame the other side".
What I want to hear from the Tory candidates is who can restore the Conservative Party, removing the batshit English Revolutionary Party we've had this last decade or so. A Tory party focused on business investment and value for money in public services would be a very welcome thing, regardless of political affiliation.
You'll probably make some trite insult about me as always, but we do need the Tories back. You may disagree...
Good morning
We can dream and every conservative should have the same objective
On Elon Musk, here's a video of him being interviewed with a colleague and their himself getting investment whilst being illegal immigrants. He declared his illegal immigration to be a "grey area".
Jeez pass me the sick bag . He really is a moron .
The luxury of being at the start of a period of opposition is you can propose all manner of fun things with no prospect of them actually happening. Unqualified support for Netanyahu seems to have become a new virility test for the right.
Expect a flurry of similar virtue signalling by the two finalists over the next month.
A more interesting virility test would be telling Starmer to ignore Biden and give Ukraine permission to use our long-range missiles against Russia.
Jeez pass me the sick bag . He really is a moron .
The luxury of being at the start of a period of opposition is you can propose all manner of fun things with no prospect of them actually happening. Unqualified support for Netanyahu seems to have become a new virility test for the right.
Expect a flurry of similar virtue signalling by the two finalists over the next month.
I agree. In some ways it might be good for the Tories to get it out of their system, particularly if they are prepared to switch leader before the next election. But probably bad for the country to have a weak opposition.
Jeez pass me the sick bag . He really is a moron .
The luxury of being at the start of a period of opposition is you can propose all manner of fun things with no prospect of them actually happening. Unqualified support for Netanyahu seems to have become a new virility test for the right.
Expect a flurry of similar virtue signalling by the two finalists over the next month.
A more interesting virility test would be telling Starmer to ignore Biden and give Ukraine permission to use our long-range missiles against Russia.
That might risk upsetting his lodestar in Mar a Largo.
I think the biggest crime is that over all those months all I still have is soundbites and platitudes from all the candidates.
Still precious little evidence that many (any) have done any deep thinking or have a plan.
I'm not hearing deep thinking or a plan from anyone - team Labour are exactly the same. The country is so spectacularly broken and the political class so captivated by the Treasury idiots that they can't see a way through other than "break it some more and blame the other side".
What I want to hear from the Tory candidates is who can restore the Conservative Party, removing the batshit English Revolutionary Party we've had this last decade or so. A Tory party focused on business investment and value for money in public services would be a very welcome thing, regardless of political affiliation.
You'll probably make some trite insult about me as always, but we do need the Tories back. You may disagree...
In the interests of balance, the breakout star of July 4 didn't do it by deep policy thinking, but by cheerful photo ops.
We all know what needs to be done (less consumption, more investment) but nobody knows how to be thanked for saying it.
I would say he did it by bringing joy (and hope) into the election.
The truth is that theUK (sans London) is one of the poorest regions in the Western World and investment needs to be focussed on it to get things going.
What that investment looks like is the impossible question but it's why in the North Labour's opponents in the next election are going to be Reform rather than the Tories.
Doesn’t especially feel like the joyful stunts achieved much, more the ruthless efficiency of the LD operation under FPTP, combined with the Tory vote being split.
Getting the LibDems into the news has been quite a challenge. Lots of non-political people don't hear or see anything related to them for weeks at a time.
They should find it easier now they are back to being the third-largest party in the Commons. They’ve had the SNP stealing their thunder since 2015.
The danger is that our political coverage tends to give prominence to those loudly opposing the government. That's easy for the Tories - they are the official opposition and will oppose everything. Easy for Reform because they will reflexively oppose everything from the right, and do so loudly. Relatively easy even for the Greens and the lefty independents who will happily oppose everything from the left.
For the Lib Dems it's tricky. Brexit is done so banging on about Europe isn't going to pay dividends, especially while the EU goes through an economic downturn. So they could end up opposing things they know will chime with local voters, and that risks plunging them down the NIMBY rabbit hole which will lose them even staunch loyalists like me.
Jeez pass me the sick bag . He really is a moron .
They'll elected Jenrick this month and he'll be out in two years.
I guess they have to go through this stage before neo-Cameron arrives in early 2030s to lead them back to the centre ground and to office.
Maybe it will be the actual Cameron?
That depends what happens to Reform. If they continue to gain votes, and pick up some decent council wins or a Westminster byelection, then the next leader after Jenrick might be further to the right.
I think Jenrick will make it to the next election. He might be a thoroughly lightweight, faux culture warrior type with a few shadows hanging over his past conduct, but he speaks fluently and doesn't seem as incompetent at the political game as everyone seems to assume.
If I am right and Jenrick goes in two years (and incidentally Seldon wrote a piece yesterday saying he would only last two years) then they may well pick someone more to the radical right in order to take on Reform. Still likely to lose in 2028 and then they might start thinking about the centre ground again.
But I may well be wrong and @Leon right - England, like rest of europe, about to embrace the radical right and anti-migration populism. Certainly if Labour continue to make a total horlicks of everything they touch then that may well be on the cards.
I think the biggest crime is that over all those months all I still have is soundbites and platitudes from all the candidates.
Still precious little evidence that many (any) have done any deep thinking or have a plan.
I'm not hearing deep thinking or a plan from anyone - team Labour are exactly the same. The country is so spectacularly broken and the political class so captivated by the Treasury idiots that they can't see a way through other than "break it some more and blame the other side".
What I want to hear from the Tory candidates is who can restore the Conservative Party, removing the batshit English Revolutionary Party we've had this last decade or so. A Tory party focused on business investment and value for money in public services would be a very welcome thing, regardless of political affiliation.
You'll probably make some trite insult about me as always, but we do need the Tories back. You may disagree...
In the interests of balance, the breakout star of July 4 didn't do it by deep policy thinking, but by cheerful photo ops.
We all know what needs to be done (less consumption, more investment) but nobody knows how to be thanked for saying it.
I would say he did it by bringing joy (and hope) into the election.
The truth is that theUK (sans London) is one of the poorest regions in the Western World and investment needs to be focussed on it to get things going.
What that investment looks like is the impossible question but it's why in the North Labour's opponents in the next election are going to be Reform rather than the Tories.
Doesn’t especially feel like the joyful stunts achieved much, more the ruthless efficiency of the LD operation under FPTP, combined with the Tory vote being split.
Getting the LibDems into the news has been quite a challenge. Lots of non-political people don't hear or see anything related to them for weeks at a time.
They should find it easier now they are back to being the third-largest party in the Commons. They’ve had the SNP stealing their thunder since 2015.
The danger is that our political coverage tends to give prominence to those loudly opposing the government. That's easy for the Tories - they are the official opposition and will oppose everything. Easy for Reform because they will reflexively oppose everything from the right, and do so loudly. Relatively easy even for the Greens and the lefty independents who will happily oppose everything from the left.
For the Lib Dems it's tricky. Brexit is done so banging on about Europe isn't going to pay dividends, especially while the EU goes through an economic downturn. So they could end up opposing things they know will chime with local voters, and that risks plunging them down the NIMBY rabbit hole which will lose them even staunch loyalists like me.
NIMBY and WASPI.
And the betrayal of students.
The LibDems really are a disgrace.
If it weren't for their about-turn in office, they could have made hay with the tuition fees issue. But they've basically now ceded that ground to the greens for a generation.
'British Anglican Catholic priest and conservative commentator Calvin Robinson issued a stark warning to Americans about the direction he sees the U.S. could be heading.
"Please don't do what we did," he warned Americans in an interview with The Christian Post. "Please don't just sit back and let the liberals deteriorate the rest of everything that you know and love."
Robinson, who recently moved to the U.S. to run a full-time parish ministry in Michigan, argued that spiritual and political forces had undermined British and Christian values in his home country, and he sees the same trends happening in the United States as well.
"Be careful. American culture is a fantastic culture. Hold on to it, promote it, encourage it. If you want to become multicultural and let other cultures in, that's something you have to consider. But do not give it up to the detriment of your own," he pleaded while talking to The Christian Post. ' In an interview with Fox News Digital last year, Robinson said that liberalism was "the greatest threat to [Christianity]" currently....Robinson also believes far-left ideologies infiltrating The Church of England have worked to undermine the influence of Christianity in England.
"The Church of England has become very liberal in terms of divorce, sex outside marriage, same-sex relationships, transgenderism," Robinson told the outlet. "And every time the Church tries to be more inclusive, it actually becomes more exclusive to Christianity and to Christian values, and more inclusive to worldly values and just further plummets that downward trajectory."
"It's a great shame," he said.
Robinson told The Christian Post he thinks America is on the same path in following these trends, but no matter what happens, he rests in trusting God is in control. "[L]iberalism is even more warped [than Islam]," he said, "in terms of taking something that sounds compassionate, sounds empathetic, but isn't actually fully true in order to get people to believe in it, such as, you know, trans queer theory, gender theory, critical race theory."
Each of these radical liberal ideas "come from one place," he continued. "And it's really, I mean, we call it ‘neo–Marxism,’ but it's really communism, which we know is incompatible with the Christian faith because it is the work of the enemy… And so, we shouldn't let our guard down for communism. We certainly shouldn't let it for neo-Marxism, and therefore we should not let our guard down for liberalism."' https://www.foxnews.com/media/uk-priest-warns-americans-not-let-left-deteriorate-us-values
Personally, I think his political and cultural judgements are way off, but I'm interested to hear his explanation of his position on these particular questions.
Robinson is one of the many Christians who preach the bible whilst ignoring Christ.
TBH I'd dispute that, and say that he preaches one particular heavily culture-bound interpretation of the bible, which is in a lot of ways modernist; in particular that he has a set of politico-cultural values and views from the late 20th century that he has imposed on it and read into it.
For an example of a culture bound interpretation (I am not sure whether Robinson embraces this one), I'd point to the modern evangelical movements who try to treat the Bible as some sort of document of literal historical evidence, which is not what it is, and end up with all sorts of resulting strange assessments.
One interesting observation on this from an Anglican Bishop I once heard was that all three of the main recognised traditions in the CofE, ie anglo-catholic, anglican evangelical and liberal, were formed partly as responses to the enlightenment, and so it was to be expected that they would evolve and change in significant ways, as the basis of our society's culture moved from modernism to post-modernism to "whatever comes after that". This was Bishop Graham Cray in 1991 (then he was a vicar), and speaking of a period of cultural change from ~1975 to ~2025. He was always interesting in that he did much of his reflection on culture though the medium of rock music.
But I don't think many of us are up for too much theology on a Monday morning .
Alcohol prices up in Scotland today due to MUP up to 65p
Well done SNP, a winning policy. Even though alcohol related deaths increased when they promised the introduction of MUP would see them fall the policy is a winner as its advocates have said.
Jeez pass me the sick bag . He really is a moron .
They'll elected Jenrick this month and he'll be out in two years.
I guess they have to go through this stage before neo-Cameron arrives in early 2030s to lead them back to the centre ground and to office.
Maybe it will be the actual Cameron?
That depends what happens to Reform. If they continue to gain votes, and pick up some decent council wins or a Westminster byelection, then the next leader after Jenrick might be further to the right.
I think Jenrick will make it to the next election. He might be a thoroughly lightweight, faux culture warrior type with a few shadows hanging over his past conduct, but he speaks fluently and doesn't seem as incompetent at the political game as everyone seems to assume.
If I am right and Jenrick goes in two years (and incidentally Seldon wrote a piece yesterday saying he would only last two years) then they may well pick someone more to the radical right in order to take on Reform. Still likely to lose in 2028 and then they might start thinking about the centre ground again.
But I may well be wrong and @Leon right - England, like rest of europe, about to embrace the radical right and anti-migration populism. Certainly if Labour continue to make a total horlicks of everything they touch then that may well be on the cards.
It is certainly not impossible the next general election could be a hung parliament with Jenrick forming a coalition government with Farage and Reform. More likely though would be a Labour minority government with LD support
Jeez pass me the sick bag . He really is a moron .
They'll elected Jenrick this month and he'll be out in two years.
I guess they have to go through this stage before neo-Cameron arrives in early 2030s to lead them back to the centre ground and to office.
Maybe it will be the actual Cameron?
That depends what happens to Reform. If they continue to gain votes, and pick up some decent council wins or a Westminster byelection, then the next leader after Jenrick might be further to the right.
I think Jenrick will make it to the next election. He might be a thoroughly lightweight, faux culture warrior type with a few shadows hanging over his past conduct, but he speaks fluently and doesn't seem as incompetent at the political game as everyone seems to assume.
If I am right and Jenrick goes in two years (and incidentally Seldon wrote a piece yesterday saying he would only last two years) then they may well pick someone more to the radical right in order to take on Reform. Still likely to lose in 2028 and then they might start thinking about the centre ground again.
But I may well be wrong and @Leon right - England, like rest of europe, about to embrace the radical right and anti-migration populism. Certainly if Labour continue to make a total horlicks of everything they touch then that may well be on the cards.
The helpful political news for them is that at least in numbers terms absolute net migration is inevitably going to come down over the next couple of years, purely as a function of maths.
Possible that small boat crossings decline too, as it doesn't seem to have a particularly big summer in the Med this year so the pipeline for next summer might be down. Certainly the numbers in the latter part of this season have been substantially down on earlier in the year. I doubt that has anything to do with the change of government, but it's optically convenient.
Question is whether anti-elite populism keeps surging regardless. It's not all about immigration after all. Partly that is in Labour's gift: they need to give people hope and a bit of optimism.
I’ve felt a warm glow over the last two years whenever I’ve seen the blue and yellow Ukrainian flag flying from village green flag posts, tower block windows and various places in Westminster.
Are those in Britain who display the Ukrainian flag performative twats? Or does that only apply if you have somewhat more equivocal feelings to a given alliance.
Jeez pass me the sick bag . He really is a moron .
They'll elected Jenrick this month and he'll be out in two years.
I guess they have to go through this stage before neo-Cameron arrives in early 2030s to lead them back to the centre ground and to office.
Maybe it will be the actual Cameron?
That depends what happens to Reform. If they continue to gain votes, and pick up some decent council wins or a Westminster byelection, then the next leader after Jenrick might be further to the right.
I think Jenrick will make it to the next election. He might be a thoroughly lightweight, faux culture warrior type with a few shadows hanging over his past conduct, but he speaks fluently and doesn't seem as incompetent at the political game as everyone seems to assume.
If I am right and Jenrick goes in two years (and incidentally Seldon wrote a piece yesterday saying he would only last two years) then they may well pick someone more to the radical right in order to take on Reform. Still likely to lose in 2028 and then they might start thinking about the centre ground again.
But I may well be wrong and @Leon right - England, like rest of europe, about to embrace the radical right and anti-migration populism. Certainly if Labour continue to make a total horlicks of everything they touch then that may well be on the cards.
It is certainly not impossible the next general election could be a hung parliament with Jenrick forming a coalition government with Farage and Reform. More likely though would be a Labour minority government with LD support
Forget any ideas of a coalition with Reform.
A rabble of malcontents is incapable of doing any form of governing.
Any attempt would fall apart quicker that the Truss government.
I sense Strides MPs may divide quite evenly between Cleverly and Tugendhat and some will probably go to Jenrick too (weird patterns) so unless there's a big event or a miracle it does look like Kemi v Jenrick
Highly unlikely. Stride's votes will mainly go to Cleverly and Tugendhat.
Then whichever of Cleverly or Tugendhat is knocked out will send their votes to the other.
So it will almost certainly be Jenrick and Tugendhat or Cleverly Tory MPs send to the members.
Badenoch lost this race when she lost most of the ERG right to Jenrick. Much as Portillo lost in 2001 when he lost the Thatcherite right to IDS while the One Nation candidate remained Clarke and Mordaunt lost in 2022 when she lost the ERG right to Truss who ended up in the last two with Sunak
My view is that there are two route to the leadership for Kemi:
1) Jenrick's vote among MPs collapses for some reason (myserious-donation-gate) - final two then becomes Kemi+ one other, and she wins the membership. 2) Cleverly/Tugendhat MP supporters really, really want to stop a Jenrick leadership and move to her to create a Kemi-Jenrick final two in the expectation that the membership will vote for her over Jenrick.
I would place both in the category of 'possible but not likely'.
I think the biggest crime is that over all those months all I still have is soundbites and platitudes from all the candidates.
Still precious little evidence that many (any) have done any deep thinking or have a plan.
I'm not hearing deep thinking or a plan from anyone - team Labour are exactly the same. The country is so spectacularly broken and the political class so captivated by the Treasury idiots that they can't see a way through other than "break it some more and blame the other side".
What I want to hear from the Tory candidates is who can restore the Conservative Party, removing the batshit English Revolutionary Party we've had this last decade or so. A Tory party focused on business investment and value for money in public services would be a very welcome thing, regardless of political affiliation.
You'll probably make some trite insult about me as always, but we do need the Tories back. You may disagree...
In the interests of balance, the breakout star of July 4 didn't do it by deep policy thinking, but by cheerful photo ops.
We all know what needs to be done (less consumption, more investment) but nobody knows how to be thanked for saying it.
I would say he did it by bringing joy (and hope) into the election.
The truth is that theUK (sans London) is one of the poorest regions in the Western World and investment needs to be focussed on it to get things going.
What that investment looks like is the impossible question but it's why in the North Labour's opponents in the next election are going to be Reform rather than the Tories.
Doesn’t especially feel like the joyful stunts achieved much, more the ruthless efficiency of the LD operation under FPTP, combined with the Tory vote being split.
Getting the LibDems into the news has been quite a challenge. Lots of non-political people don't hear or see anything related to them for weeks at a time.
Perhaps I am being unfair and without his antics they’d have slipped even further.
I'm not a Lib dem and I think that without his "antics", they would have been in the news, much less.
Jeez pass me the sick bag . He really is a moron .
They'll elected Jenrick this month and he'll be out in two years.
I guess they have to go through this stage before neo-Cameron arrives in early 2030s to lead them back to the centre ground and to office.
Maybe it will be the actual Cameron?
That depends what happens to Reform. If they continue to gain votes, and pick up some decent council wins or a Westminster byelection, then the next leader after Jenrick might be further to the right.
I think Jenrick will make it to the next election. He might be a thoroughly lightweight, faux culture warrior type with a few shadows hanging over his past conduct, but he speaks fluently and doesn't seem as incompetent at the political game as everyone seems to assume.
If I am right and Jenrick goes in two years (and incidentally Seldon wrote a piece yesterday saying he would only last two years) then they may well pick someone more to the radical right in order to take on Reform. Still likely to lose in 2028 and then they might start thinking about the centre ground again.
But I may well be wrong and @Leon right - England, like rest of europe, about to embrace the radical right and anti-migration populism. Certainly if Labour continue to make a total horlicks of everything they touch then that may well be on the cards.
The helpful political news for them is that at least in numbers terms absolute net migration is inevitably going to come down over the next couple of years, purely as a function of maths.
Possible that small boat crossings decline too, as it doesn't seem to have a particularly big summer in the Med this year so the pipeline for next summer might be down. Certainly the numbers in the latter part of this season have been substantially down on earlier in the year. I doubt that has anything to do with the change of government, but it's optically convenient.
Question is whether anti-elite populism keeps surging regardless. It's not all about immigration after all. Partly that is in Labour's gift: they need to give people hope and a bit of optimism.
Alcohol prices up in Scotland today due to MUP up to 65p
Well done SNP, a winning policy. Even though alcohol related deaths increased when they promised the introduction of MUP would see them fall the policy is a winner as its advocates have said.
Doesn't higher supermarket alcohol prices in Scotland mean that the supermarkets can keep their prices lower in England.
IIRC wine prices haven't increased for over a decade (if you use the regular 25% discount for six) and its not difficult to buy 500ml beer for £1.
The minimum alcohol price increase won’t affect the price of a decent bottle of wine, or a pint of beer in the pub, which, hopefully, will encourage people to go to the pub instead of drinking at home. I’m not bothered if it makes multipacks of piss like Tennents or Bud Lite dearer. The initial minimum price law practically wiped out sales of stuff like White Lightning in Scotland. I don’t see that as a bad thing. Where I disagree with the policy is that the supermarkets benefit from the higher margins, not the Government.
Feels to me like Tory MPs still haven’t learnt their lesson. Members (and then the electorate) decisively chose Johnson, and utterly rejected Jeremy Hunt. Johnson casually defenestrated by MPs. Members decisively choose Truss, utterly rejecting Sunak. Tory MPs think it a good idea to instead fight the election with a duo of Sunak and Hunt.
If this most “sophisticated” electorate think it wise to keep her name off the ballot, they deserve everything coming to them.
If they have learned anything, it is that they should never have put BoZo or Truss to the members
Yes what did Boris ever do for the Conservative Party except win a large majority for the first time in three decades and implement the largest popular vote for anything in UK history?
And it is a distinct possibility the party will never recover as a result
'British Anglican Catholic priest and conservative commentator Calvin Robinson issued a stark warning to Americans about the direction he sees the U.S. could be heading.
"Please don't do what we did," he warned Americans in an interview with The Christian Post. "Please don't just sit back and let the liberals deteriorate the rest of everything that you know and love."
Robinson, who recently moved to the U.S. to run a full-time parish ministry in Michigan, argued that spiritual and political forces had undermined British and Christian values in his home country, and he sees the same trends happening in the United States as well.
"Be careful. American culture is a fantastic culture. Hold on to it, promote it, encourage it. If you want to become multicultural and let other cultures in, that's something you have to consider. But do not give it up to the detriment of your own," he pleaded while talking to The Christian Post. ' In an interview with Fox News Digital last year, Robinson said that liberalism was "the greatest threat to [Christianity]" currently....Robinson also believes far-left ideologies infiltrating The Church of England have worked to undermine the influence of Christianity in England.
"The Church of England has become very liberal in terms of divorce, sex outside marriage, same-sex relationships, transgenderism," Robinson told the outlet. "And every time the Church tries to be more inclusive, it actually becomes more exclusive to Christianity and to Christian values, and more inclusive to worldly values and just further plummets that downward trajectory."
"It's a great shame," he said.
Robinson told The Christian Post he thinks America is on the same path in following these trends, but no matter what happens, he rests in trusting God is in control. "[L]iberalism is even more warped [than Islam]," he said, "in terms of taking something that sounds compassionate, sounds empathetic, but isn't actually fully true in order to get people to believe in it, such as, you know, trans queer theory, gender theory, critical race theory."
Each of these radical liberal ideas "come from one place," he continued. "And it's really, I mean, we call it ‘neo–Marxism,’ but it's really communism, which we know is incompatible with the Christian faith because it is the work of the enemy… And so, we shouldn't let our guard down for communism. We certainly shouldn't let it for neo-Marxism, and therefore we should not let our guard down for liberalism."' https://www.foxnews.com/media/uk-priest-warns-americans-not-let-left-deteriorate-us-values
Personally, I think his political and cultural judgements are way off, but I'm interested to hear his explanation of his position on these particular questions.
Robinson is one of the many Christians who preach the bible whilst ignoring Christ.
TBH I'd dispute that, and say that he preaches one particular heavily culture-bound interpretation of the bible, which is in a lot of ways modernist; in particular that he has a set of politico-cultural values and views from the late 20th century that he has imposed on it and read into it.
For an example of a culture bound interpretation (I am not sure whether Robinson embraces this one), I'd point to the modern evangelical movements who try to treat the Bible as some sort of document of literal historical evidence, which is not what it is, and end up with all sorts of resulting strange assessments.
One interesting observation on this from an Anglican Bishop I once heard was that all three of the main recognised traditions in the CofE, ie anglo-catholic, anglican evangelical and liberal, were formed partly as responses to the enlightenment, and so it was to be expected that they would evolve and change in significant ways, as the basis of our society's culture moved from modernism to post-modernism to "whatever comes after that". This was Bishop Graham Cray in 1991 (then he was a vicar), and speaking of a period of cultural change from ~1975 to ~2025. He was always interesting in that he did much of his reflection on culture though the medium of rock music.
But I don't think many of us are up for too much theology on a Monday morning .
I'm unsure that negates what I said...
Of course not - I'm just elucidating !
Boiling it down to 2 or 3 (edit: or 4) sentences, imo the phrase "preaching the bible" is malformed. Anyone only ever preaches their opinions about the bible, and their conclusions from their preparation, which are a result of experience, study, personal history and reflection in a particular context. It then goes to the audience to reflect on that for themselves.
"Preaching the bible" is an over-assertion of ownership and personal authority, which is not how it is.
Jeez pass me the sick bag . He really is a moron .
They'll elected Jenrick this month and he'll be out in two years.
I guess they have to go through this stage before neo-Cameron arrives in early 2030s to lead them back to the centre ground and to office.
Maybe it will be the actual Cameron?
That depends what happens to Reform. If they continue to gain votes, and pick up some decent council wins or a Westminster byelection, then the next leader after Jenrick might be further to the right.
I think Jenrick will make it to the next election. He might be a thoroughly lightweight, faux culture warrior type with a few shadows hanging over his past conduct, but he speaks fluently and doesn't seem as incompetent at the political game as everyone seems to assume.
If I am right and Jenrick goes in two years (and incidentally Seldon wrote a piece yesterday saying he would only last two years) then they may well pick someone more to the radical right in order to take on Reform. Still likely to lose in 2028 and then they might start thinking about the centre ground again.
But I may well be wrong and @Leon right - England, like rest of europe, about to embrace the radical right and anti-migration populism. Certainly if Labour continue to make a total horlicks of everything they touch then that may well be on the cards.
It is certainly not impossible the next general election could be a hung parliament with Jenrick forming a coalition government with Farage and Reform. More likely though would be a Labour minority government with LD support
The Lib Dems opportunity is to be the sensible, honest, centre party. It is vital for them that they avoid all sleaze. If Labour prove to be as easily bought as the Tories, moderate voters may well vote Lib Dem.
I’ve felt a warm glow over the last two years whenever I’ve seen the blue and yellow Ukrainian flag flying from village green flag posts, tower block windows and various places in Westminster.
Are those in Britain who display the Ukrainian flag performative twats? Or does that only apply if you have somewhat more equivocal feelings to a given alliance.
A house near me had a Ukrainian flag and a Palestinian flag hanging out of different windows.
'British Anglican Catholic priest and conservative commentator Calvin Robinson issued a stark warning to Americans about the direction he sees the U.S. could be heading.
"Please don't do what we did," he warned Americans in an interview with The Christian Post. "Please don't just sit back and let the liberals deteriorate the rest of everything that you know and love."
Robinson, who recently moved to the U.S. to run a full-time parish ministry in Michigan, argued that spiritual and political forces had undermined British and Christian values in his home country, and he sees the same trends happening in the United States as well.
"Be careful. American culture is a fantastic culture. Hold on to it, promote it, encourage it. If you want to become multicultural and let other cultures in, that's something you have to consider. But do not give it up to the detriment of your own," he pleaded while talking to The Christian Post. ' In an interview with Fox News Digital last year, Robinson said that liberalism was "the greatest threat to [Christianity]" currently....Robinson also believes far-left ideologies infiltrating The Church of England have worked to undermine the influence of Christianity in England.
"The Church of England has become very liberal in terms of divorce, sex outside marriage, same-sex relationships, transgenderism," Robinson told the outlet. "And every time the Church tries to be more inclusive, it actually becomes more exclusive to Christianity and to Christian values, and more inclusive to worldly values and just further plummets that downward trajectory."
"It's a great shame," he said.
Robinson told The Christian Post he thinks America is on the same path in following these trends, but no matter what happens, he rests in trusting God is in control. "[L]iberalism is even more warped [than Islam]," he said, "in terms of taking something that sounds compassionate, sounds empathetic, but isn't actually fully true in order to get people to believe in it, such as, you know, trans queer theory, gender theory, critical race theory."
Each of these radical liberal ideas "come from one place," he continued. "And it's really, I mean, we call it ‘neo–Marxism,’ but it's really communism, which we know is incompatible with the Christian faith because it is the work of the enemy… And so, we shouldn't let our guard down for communism. We certainly shouldn't let it for neo-Marxism, and therefore we should not let our guard down for liberalism."' https://www.foxnews.com/media/uk-priest-warns-americans-not-let-left-deteriorate-us-values
Personally, I think his political and cultural judgements are way off, but I'm interested to hear his explanation of his position on these particular questions.
Robinson is one of the many Christians who preach the bible whilst ignoring Christ.
TBH I'd dispute that, and say that he preaches one particular heavily culture-bound interpretation of the bible, which is in a lot of ways modernist; in particular that he has a set of politico-cultural values and views from the late 20th century that he has imposed on it and read into it.
For an example of a culture bound interpretation (I am not sure whether Robinson embraces this one), I'd point to the modern evangelical movements who try to treat the Bible as some sort of document of literal historical evidence, which is not what it is, and end up with all sorts of resulting strange assessments.
One interesting observation on this from an Anglican Bishop I once heard was that all three of the main recognised traditions in the CofE, ie anglo-catholic, anglican evangelical and liberal, were formed partly as responses to the enlightenment, and so it was to be expected that they would evolve and change in significant ways, as the basis of our society's culture moved from modernism to post-modernism to "whatever comes after that". This was Bishop Graham Cray in 1991 (then he was a vicar), and speaking of a period of cultural change from ~1975 to ~2025. He was always interesting in that he did much of his reflection on culture though the medium of rock music.
But I don't think many of us are up for too much theology on a Monday morning .
I'm unsure that negates what I said...
Of course not - I'm just elucidating !
Boiling it down to 2 or 3 (edit: or 4) sentences, imo the phrase "preaching the bible" is malformed. Anyone only ever preaches their opinions about the bible, and their conclusions from their preparation, which are a result of experience, study, personal history and reflection in a particular context. It then goes to the audience to reflect on that for themselves.
"Preaching the bible" is an over-assertion of ownership and personal authority, which is not how it is.
Jeez pass me the sick bag . He really is a moron .
They'll elected Jenrick this month and he'll be out in two years.
I guess they have to go through this stage before neo-Cameron arrives in early 2030s to lead them back to the centre ground and to office.
Maybe it will be the actual Cameron?
That depends what happens to Reform. If they continue to gain votes, and pick up some decent council wins or a Westminster byelection, then the next leader after Jenrick might be further to the right.
I think Jenrick will make it to the next election. He might be a thoroughly lightweight, faux culture warrior type with a few shadows hanging over his past conduct, but he speaks fluently and doesn't seem as incompetent at the political game as everyone seems to assume.
If I am right and Jenrick goes in two years (and incidentally Seldon wrote a piece yesterday saying he would only last two years) then they may well pick someone more to the radical right in order to take on Reform. Still likely to lose in 2028 and then they might start thinking about the centre ground again.
But I may well be wrong and @Leon right - England, like rest of europe, about to embrace the radical right and anti-migration populism. Certainly if Labour continue to make a total horlicks of everything they touch then that may well be on the cards.
It is certainly not impossible the next general election could be a hung parliament with Jenrick forming a coalition government with Farage and Reform. More likely though would be a Labour minority government with LD support
There is absolutely no way of predicting the next GE especially with the talentless individuals seeking election to conservative leader
I very much doubt Farage will be around in 5 years but even if he is we are likely to remain a deeply divided and divisive country
Badenoch car crash maternity comments, followed by the equally absurd comments by Jenrick about the Star of David should make every decent conservative recoil at the thought of either leading the party
Feels to me like Tory MPs still haven’t learnt their lesson. Members (and then the electorate) decisively chose Johnson, and utterly rejected Jeremy Hunt. Johnson casually defenestrated by MPs. Members decisively choose Truss, utterly rejecting Sunak. Tory MPs think it a good idea to instead fight the election with a duo of Sunak and Hunt.
If this most “sophisticated” electorate think it wise to keep her name off the ballot, they deserve everything coming to them.
If they have learned anything, it is that they should never have put BoZo or Truss to the members
Yes what did Boris ever do for the Conservative Party except win a large majority for the first time in three decades and implement the largest popular vote for anything in UK history?
And it is a distinct possibility the party will never recover as a result
Do you define recovery based on whether or not you would vote for them again?
'British Anglican Catholic priest and conservative commentator Calvin Robinson issued a stark warning to Americans about the direction he sees the U.S. could be heading.
"Please don't do what we did," he warned Americans in an interview with The Christian Post. "Please don't just sit back and let the liberals deteriorate the rest of everything that you know and love."
Robinson, who recently moved to the U.S. to run a full-time parish ministry in Michigan, argued that spiritual and political forces had undermined British and Christian values in his home country, and he sees the same trends happening in the United States as well.
"Be careful. American culture is a fantastic culture. Hold on to it, promote it, encourage it. If you want to become multicultural and let other cultures in, that's something you have to consider. But do not give it up to the detriment of your own," he pleaded while talking to The Christian Post. ' In an interview with Fox News Digital last year, Robinson said that liberalism was "the greatest threat to [Christianity]" currently....Robinson also believes far-left ideologies infiltrating The Church of England have worked to undermine the influence of Christianity in England.
"The Church of England has become very liberal in terms of divorce, sex outside marriage, same-sex relationships, transgenderism," Robinson told the outlet. "And every time the Church tries to be more inclusive, it actually becomes more exclusive to Christianity and to Christian values, and more inclusive to worldly values and just further plummets that downward trajectory."
"It's a great shame," he said.
Robinson told The Christian Post he thinks America is on the same path in following these trends, but no matter what happens, he rests in trusting God is in control. "[L]iberalism is even more warped [than Islam]," he said, "in terms of taking something that sounds compassionate, sounds empathetic, but isn't actually fully true in order to get people to believe in it, such as, you know, trans queer theory, gender theory, critical race theory."
Each of these radical liberal ideas "come from one place," he continued. "And it's really, I mean, we call it ‘neo–Marxism,’ but it's really communism, which we know is incompatible with the Christian faith because it is the work of the enemy… And so, we shouldn't let our guard down for communism. We certainly shouldn't let it for neo-Marxism, and therefore we should not let our guard down for liberalism."' https://www.foxnews.com/media/uk-priest-warns-americans-not-let-left-deteriorate-us-values
Personally, I think his political and cultural judgements are way off, but I'm interested to hear his explanation of his position on these particular questions.
Robinson is one of the many Christians who preach the bible whilst ignoring Christ.
TBH I'd dispute that, and say that he preaches one particular heavily culture-bound interpretation of the bible, which is in a lot of ways modernist; in particular that he has a set of politico-cultural values and views from the late 20th century that he has imposed on it and read into it.
For an example of a culture bound interpretation (I am not sure whether Robinson embraces this one), I'd point to the modern evangelical movements who try to treat the Bible as some sort of document of literal historical evidence, which is not what it is, and end up with all sorts of resulting strange assessments.
One interesting observation on this from an Anglican Bishop I once heard was that all three of the main recognised traditions in the CofE, ie anglo-catholic, anglican evangelical and liberal, were formed partly as responses to the enlightenment, and so it was to be expected that they would evolve and change in significant ways, as the basis of our society's culture moved from modernism to post-modernism to "whatever comes after that". This was Bishop Graham Cray in 1991 (then he was a vicar), and speaking of a period of cultural change from ~1975 to ~2025. He was always interesting in that he did much of his reflection on culture though the medium of rock music.
But I don't think many of us are up for too much theology on a Monday morning .
I'm unsure that negates what I said...
Of course not - I'm just elucidating !
Boiling it down to 2 or 3 (edit: or 4) sentences, imo the phrase "preaching the bible" is malformed. Anyone only ever preaches their opinions about the bible, and their conclusions from their preparation, which are a result of experience, study, personal history and reflection in a particular context. It then goes to the audience to reflect on that for themselves.
"Preaching the bible" is an over-assertion of ownership and personal authority, which is not how it is.
Who would Jesus vote for?
Votes are a personal decision. You'd have to ask Jesus .
I don't know who Robert Jenrick thinks the "we" is there with that Israel thing. But regardless, it's such an infantile suggestion it makes me start to doubt he'll win. I've long thought he's nailed on but maybe not?
I don't know who Robert Jenrick thinks the "we" is there with that Israel thing. But regardless, it's such an infantile suggestion it makes me start to doubt he'll win. I've long thought he's nailed on but maybe not?
Jeez pass me the sick bag . He really is a moron .
They'll elected Jenrick this month and he'll be out in two years.
I guess they have to go through this stage before neo-Cameron arrives in early 2030s to lead them back to the centre ground and to office.
Maybe it will be the actual Cameron?
That depends what happens to Reform. If they continue to gain votes, and pick up some decent council wins or a Westminster byelection, then the next leader after Jenrick might be further to the right.
I think Jenrick will make it to the next election. He might be a thoroughly lightweight, faux culture warrior type with a few shadows hanging over his past conduct, but he speaks fluently and doesn't seem as incompetent at the political game as everyone seems to assume.
If I am right and Jenrick goes in two years (and incidentally Seldon wrote a piece yesterday saying he would only last two years) then they may well pick someone more to the radical right in order to take on Reform. Still likely to lose in 2028 and then they might start thinking about the centre ground again.
But I may well be wrong and @Leon right - England, like rest of europe, about to embrace the radical right and anti-migration populism. Certainly if Labour continue to make a total horlicks of everything they touch then that may well be on the cards.
It is certainly not impossible the next general election could be a hung parliament with Jenrick forming a coalition government with Farage and Reform. More likely though would be a Labour minority government with LD support
There is absolutely no way of predicting the next GE especially with the talentless individuals seeking election to conservative leader
I very much doubt Farage will be around in 5 years but even if he is we are likely to remain a deeply divided and divisive country
Badenoch car crash maternity comments, followed by the equally absurd comments by Jenrick about the Star of David should make every decent conservative recoil at the thought of either leading the party
My money would be on a LD-Con-Reform-DUP coalition as has become popular across Europe. Right of centre parties preferring the fallacy that they can control the far right element rather than compromise across the centre. It looks like being a tightly fought contest between Jenrick and Badenoch as to which can self-sabotage their support among the MPs and lose the nomination.
Jeez pass me the sick bag . He really is a moron .
They'll elected Jenrick this month and he'll be out in two years.
I guess they have to go through this stage before neo-Cameron arrives in early 2030s to lead them back to the centre ground and to office.
Maybe it will be the actual Cameron?
That depends what happens to Reform. If they continue to gain votes, and pick up some decent council wins or a Westminster byelection, then the next leader after Jenrick might be further to the right.
I think Jenrick will make it to the next election. He might be a thoroughly lightweight, faux culture warrior type with a few shadows hanging over his past conduct, but he speaks fluently and doesn't seem as incompetent at the political game as everyone seems to assume.
If I am right and Jenrick goes in two years (and incidentally Seldon wrote a piece yesterday saying he would only last two years) then they may well pick someone more to the radical right in order to take on Reform. Still likely to lose in 2028 and then they might start thinking about the centre ground again.
But I may well be wrong and @Leon right - England, like rest of europe, about to embrace the radical right and anti-migration populism. Certainly if Labour continue to make a total horlicks of everything they touch then that may well be on the cards.
It is certainly not impossible the next general election could be a hung parliament with Jenrick forming a coalition government with Farage and Reform. More likely though would be a Labour minority government with LD support
There is absolutely no way of predicting the next GE especially with the talentless individuals seeking election to conservative leader
I very much doubt Farage will be around in 5 years but even if he is we are likely to remain a deeply divided and divisive country
Badenoch car crash maternity comments, followed by the equally absurd comments by Jenrick about the Star of David should make every decent conservative recoil at the thought of either leading the party
I honestly just don't see what was wrong with her thoughts on maternity pay. Are we saying this is a policy area where no one can question the costs or the length of time or the regulations on business?
Her comment that basically women had more babies before maternity pay was crass and shows she's not ready for LOTO but I don't think it was that utterly bad.
It might have been unwise in the middle of a contest but given the profile of the membership I doubt it.
Jeez pass me the sick bag . He really is a moron .
They'll elected Jenrick this month and he'll be out in two years.
I guess they have to go through this stage before neo-Cameron arrives in early 2030s to lead them back to the centre ground and to office.
Maybe it will be the actual Cameron?
That depends what happens to Reform. If they continue to gain votes, and pick up some decent council wins or a Westminster byelection, then the next leader after Jenrick might be further to the right.
I think Jenrick will make it to the next election. He might be a thoroughly lightweight, faux culture warrior type with a few shadows hanging over his past conduct, but he speaks fluently and doesn't seem as incompetent at the political game as everyone seems to assume.
If I am right and Jenrick goes in two years (and incidentally Seldon wrote a piece yesterday saying he would only last two years) then they may well pick someone more to the radical right in order to take on Reform. Still likely to lose in 2028 and then they might start thinking about the centre ground again.
But I may well be wrong and @Leon right - England, like rest of europe, about to embrace the radical right and anti-migration populism. Certainly if Labour continue to make a total horlicks of everything they touch then that may well be on the cards.
It is certainly not impossible the next general election could be a hung parliament with Jenrick forming a coalition government with Farage and Reform. More likely though would be a Labour minority government with LD support
There is absolutely no way of predicting the next GE especially with the talentless individuals seeking election to conservative leader
I very much doubt Farage will be around in 5 years but even if he is we are likely to remain a deeply divided and divisive country
Badenoch car crash maternity comments, followed by the equally absurd comments by Jenrick about the Star of David should make every decent conservative recoil at the thought of either leading the party
I honestly just don't see what was wrong with her thoughts on maternity pay. Are we saying this is a policy area where no one can question the costs or the length of time or the regulations on business?
Her comment that basically women had more babies before maternity pay was crass and shows she's not ready for LOTO but I don't think it was that utterly bad.
It might have been unwise in the middle of a contest but given the profile of the membership I doubt it.
She’s not totally wrong, but as ever the bigger issue is the cost of housing that makes it impossible for many couples to live on one salary while they have pre-school children.
Jeez pass me the sick bag . He really is a moron .
They'll elected Jenrick this month and he'll be out in two years.
I guess they have to go through this stage before neo-Cameron arrives in early 2030s to lead them back to the centre ground and to office.
Maybe it will be the actual Cameron?
That depends what happens to Reform. If they continue to gain votes, and pick up some decent council wins or a Westminster byelection, then the next leader after Jenrick might be further to the right.
I think Jenrick will make it to the next election. He might be a thoroughly lightweight, faux culture warrior type with a few shadows hanging over his past conduct, but he speaks fluently and doesn't seem as incompetent at the political game as everyone seems to assume.
If I am right and Jenrick goes in two years (and incidentally Seldon wrote a piece yesterday saying he would only last two years) then they may well pick someone more to the radical right in order to take on Reform. Still likely to lose in 2028 and then they might start thinking about the centre ground again.
But I may well be wrong and @Leon right - England, like rest of europe, about to embrace the radical right and anti-migration populism. Certainly if Labour continue to make a total horlicks of everything they touch then that may well be on the cards.
The helpful political news for them is that at least in numbers terms absolute net migration is inevitably going to come down over the next couple of years, purely as a function of maths.
Possible that small boat crossings decline too, as it doesn't seem to have a particularly big summer in the Med this year so the pipeline for next summer might be down. Certainly the numbers in the latter part of this season have been substantially down on earlier in the year. I doubt that has anything to do with the change of government, but it's optically convenient.
Question is whether anti-elite populism keeps surging regardless. It's not all about immigration after all. Partly that is in Labour's gift: they need to give people hope and a bit of optimism.
The real objection of the far right is not only to immigration present and future, it is to migration that has already happened. Once migration slows down (if it does) then the question of whether the far right turns its attention to migration past is important.
Jeez pass me the sick bag . He really is a moron .
They'll elected Jenrick this month and he'll be out in two years.
I guess they have to go through this stage before neo-Cameron arrives in early 2030s to lead them back to the centre ground and to office.
Maybe it will be the actual Cameron?
That depends what happens to Reform. If they continue to gain votes, and pick up some decent council wins or a Westminster byelection, then the next leader after Jenrick might be further to the right.
I think Jenrick will make it to the next election. He might be a thoroughly lightweight, faux culture warrior type with a few shadows hanging over his past conduct, but he speaks fluently and doesn't seem as incompetent at the political game as everyone seems to assume.
If I am right and Jenrick goes in two years (and incidentally Seldon wrote a piece yesterday saying he would only last two years) then they may well pick someone more to the radical right in order to take on Reform. Still likely to lose in 2028 and then they might start thinking about the centre ground again.
But I may well be wrong and @Leon right - England, like rest of europe, about to embrace the radical right and anti-migration populism. Certainly if Labour continue to make a total horlicks of everything they touch then that may well be on the cards.
It is certainly not impossible the next general election could be a hung parliament with Jenrick forming a coalition government with Farage and Reform. More likely though would be a Labour minority government with LD support
There is absolutely no way of predicting the next GE especially with the talentless individuals seeking election to conservative leader
I very much doubt Farage will be around in 5 years but even if he is we are likely to remain a deeply divided and divisive country
Badenoch car crash maternity comments, followed by the equally absurd comments by Jenrick about the Star of David should make every decent conservative recoil at the thought of either leading the party
My money would be on a LD-Con-Reform-DUP coalition as has become popular across Europe. Right of centre parties preferring the fallacy that they can control the far right element rather than compromise across the centre. It looks like being a tightly fought contest between Jenrick and Badenoch as to which can self-sabotage their support among the MPs and lose the nomination.
I don't see the Lib Dems doing a coalition where they were not the largest party, and I don't see them in bed with Reform or the DUP.
I sense Strides MPs may divide quite evenly between Cleverly and Tugendhat and some will probably go to Jenrick too (weird patterns) so unless there's a big event or a miracle it does look like Kemi v Jenrick
Highly unlikely. Stride's votes will mainly go to Cleverly and Tugendhat.
Then whichever of Cleverly or Tugendhat is knocked out will send their votes to the other.
So it will almost certainly be Jenrick and Tugendhat or Cleverly Tory MPs send to the members.
Badenoch lost this race when she lost most of the ERG right to Jenrick. Much as Portillo lost in 2001 when he lost the Thatcherite right to IDS while the One Nation candidate remained Clarke and Mordaunt lost in 2022 when she lost the ERG right to Truss who ended up in the last two with Sunak
My view is that there are two route to the leadership for Kemi:
1) Jenrick's vote among MPs collapses for some reason (myserious-donation-gate) - final two then becomes Kemi+ one other, and she wins the membership. 2) Cleverly/Tugendhat MP supporters really, really want to stop a Jenrick leadership and move to her to create a Kemi-Jenrick final two in the expectation that the membership will vote for her over Jenrick.
I would place both in the category of 'possible but not likely'.
I might depend on who gets offered what top shadow jobs by which camp perhaps?
I’ve felt a warm glow over the last two years whenever I’ve seen the blue and yellow Ukrainian flag flying from village green flag posts, tower block windows and various places in Westminster.
Are those in Britain who display the Ukrainian flag performative twats? Or does that only apply if you have somewhat more equivocal feelings to a given alliance.
I'm not a great flag flier at the best of times but I think there's a difference between punters and a front line pol, in this case one putting himself up for the leadership of this (sic) country.
Good luck with that warm glow. Let's hope you're as tolerant of those who get a buzz from the Palestinian flag being flown.
Alcohol prices up in Scotland today due to MUP up to 65p
Well done SNP, a winning policy. Even though alcohol related deaths increased when they promised the introduction of MUP would see them fall the policy is a winner as its advocates have said.
Doesn't higher supermarket alcohol prices in Scotland mean that the supermarkets can keep their prices lower in England.
IIRC wine prices haven't increased for over a decade (if you use the regular 25% discount for six) and its not difficult to buy 500ml beer for £1.
The minimum alcohol price increase won’t affect the price of a decent bottle of wine, or a pint of beer in the pub, which, hopefully, will encourage people to go to the pub instead of drinking at home. I’m not bothered if it makes multipacks of piss like Tennents or Bud Lite dearer. The initial minimum price law practically wiped out sales of stuff like White Lightning in Scotland. I don’t see that as a bad thing. Where I disagree with the policy is that the supermarkets benefit from the higher margins, not the Government.
Look at how benzo (valium and related drugs) use - and deaths from said drugs - rocketed in Scotland in the aftermath of minimum unit pricing.
A £2.50 can of spesh, or a 20p knock off pill.
Plus, as they both affect the same receptors in the brain, they potentiate each other, i.e. you can have one 20p pill and it will make the effects of a single can £2.50 can much stronger.
'British Anglican Catholic priest and conservative commentator Calvin Robinson issued a stark warning to Americans about the direction he sees the U.S. could be heading.
"Please don't do what we did," he warned Americans in an interview with The Christian Post. "Please don't just sit back and let the liberals deteriorate the rest of everything that you know and love."
Robinson, who recently moved to the U.S. to run a full-time parish ministry in Michigan, argued that spiritual and political forces had undermined British and Christian values in his home country, and he sees the same trends happening in the United States as well.
"Be careful. American culture is a fantastic culture. Hold on to it, promote it, encourage it. If you want to become multicultural and let other cultures in, that's something you have to consider. But do not give it up to the detriment of your own," he pleaded while talking to The Christian Post. ' In an interview with Fox News Digital last year, Robinson said that liberalism was "the greatest threat to [Christianity]" currently....Robinson also believes far-left ideologies infiltrating The Church of England have worked to undermine the influence of Christianity in England.
"The Church of England has become very liberal in terms of divorce, sex outside marriage, same-sex relationships, transgenderism," Robinson told the outlet. "And every time the Church tries to be more inclusive, it actually becomes more exclusive to Christianity and to Christian values, and more inclusive to worldly values and just further plummets that downward trajectory."
"It's a great shame," he said.
Robinson told The Christian Post he thinks America is on the same path in following these trends, but no matter what happens, he rests in trusting God is in control. "[L]iberalism is even more warped [than Islam]," he said, "in terms of taking something that sounds compassionate, sounds empathetic, but isn't actually fully true in order to get people to believe in it, such as, you know, trans queer theory, gender theory, critical race theory."
Each of these radical liberal ideas "come from one place," he continued. "And it's really, I mean, we call it ‘neo–Marxism,’ but it's really communism, which we know is incompatible with the Christian faith because it is the work of the enemy… And so, we shouldn't let our guard down for communism. We certainly shouldn't let it for neo-Marxism, and therefore we should not let our guard down for liberalism."' https://www.foxnews.com/media/uk-priest-warns-americans-not-let-left-deteriorate-us-values
Personally, I think his political and cultural judgements are way off, but I'm interested to hear his explanation of his position on these particular questions.
Robinson is one of the many Christians who preach the bible whilst ignoring Christ.
TBH I'd dispute that, and say that he preaches one particular heavily culture-bound interpretation of the bible, which is in a lot of ways modernist; in particular that he has a set of politico-cultural values and views from the late 20th century that he has imposed on it and read into it.
For an example of a culture bound interpretation (I am not sure whether Robinson embraces this one), I'd point to the modern evangelical movements who try to treat the Bible as some sort of document of literal historical evidence, which is not what it is, and end up with all sorts of resulting strange assessments.
One interesting observation on this from an Anglican Bishop I once heard was that all three of the main recognised traditions in the CofE, ie anglo-catholic, anglican evangelical and liberal, were formed partly as responses to the enlightenment, and so it was to be expected that they would evolve and change in significant ways, as the basis of our society's culture moved from modernism to post-modernism to "whatever comes after that". This was Bishop Graham Cray in 1991 (then he was a vicar), and speaking of a period of cultural change from ~1975 to ~2025. He was always interesting in that he did much of his reflection on culture though the medium of rock music.
But I don't think many of us are up for too much theology on a Monday morning .
I'm unsure that negates what I said...
Of course not - I'm just elucidating !
Boiling it down to 2 or 3 (edit: or 4) sentences, imo the phrase "preaching the bible" is malformed. Anyone only ever preaches their opinions about the bible, and their conclusions from their preparation, which are a result of experience, study, personal history and reflection in a particular context. It then goes to the audience to reflect on that for themselves.
"Preaching the bible" is an over-assertion of ownership and personal authority, which is not how it is.
Who would Jesus vote for?
Jesus would be serving three years for terrorising merchants and bankers and smashing up their tables, and thus unable to vote.
'British Anglican Catholic priest and conservative commentator Calvin Robinson issued a stark warning to Americans about the direction he sees the U.S. could be heading.
"Please don't do what we did," he warned Americans in an interview with The Christian Post. "Please don't just sit back and let the liberals deteriorate the rest of everything that you know and love."
Robinson, who recently moved to the U.S. to run a full-time parish ministry in Michigan, argued that spiritual and political forces had undermined British and Christian values in his home country, and he sees the same trends happening in the United States as well.
"Be careful. American culture is a fantastic culture. Hold on to it, promote it, encourage it. If you want to become multicultural and let other cultures in, that's something you have to consider. But do not give it up to the detriment of your own," he pleaded while talking to The Christian Post. ' In an interview with Fox News Digital last year, Robinson said that liberalism was "the greatest threat to [Christianity]" currently....Robinson also believes far-left ideologies infiltrating The Church of England have worked to undermine the influence of Christianity in England.
"The Church of England has become very liberal in terms of divorce, sex outside marriage, same-sex relationships, transgenderism," Robinson told the outlet. "And every time the Church tries to be more inclusive, it actually becomes more exclusive to Christianity and to Christian values, and more inclusive to worldly values and just further plummets that downward trajectory."
"It's a great shame," he said.
Robinson told The Christian Post he thinks America is on the same path in following these trends, but no matter what happens, he rests in trusting God is in control. "[L]iberalism is even more warped [than Islam]," he said, "in terms of taking something that sounds compassionate, sounds empathetic, but isn't actually fully true in order to get people to believe in it, such as, you know, trans queer theory, gender theory, critical race theory."
Each of these radical liberal ideas "come from one place," he continued. "And it's really, I mean, we call it ‘neo–Marxism,’ but it's really communism, which we know is incompatible with the Christian faith because it is the work of the enemy… And so, we shouldn't let our guard down for communism. We certainly shouldn't let it for neo-Marxism, and therefore we should not let our guard down for liberalism."' https://www.foxnews.com/media/uk-priest-warns-americans-not-let-left-deteriorate-us-values
Personally, I think his political and cultural judgements are way off, but I'm interested to hear his explanation of his position on these particular questions.
Robinson is one of the many Christians who preach the bible whilst ignoring Christ.
TBH I'd dispute that, and say that he preaches one particular heavily culture-bound interpretation of the bible, which is in a lot of ways modernist; in particular that he has a set of politico-cultural values and views from the late 20th century that he has imposed on it and read into it.
For an example of a culture bound interpretation (I am not sure whether Robinson embraces this one), I'd point to the modern evangelical movements who try to treat the Bible as some sort of document of literal historical evidence, which is not what it is, and end up with all sorts of resulting strange assessments.
One interesting observation on this from an Anglican Bishop I once heard was that all three of the main recognised traditions in the CofE, ie anglo-catholic, anglican evangelical and liberal, were formed partly as responses to the enlightenment, and so it was to be expected that they would evolve and change in significant ways, as the basis of our society's culture moved from modernism to post-modernism to "whatever comes after that". This was Bishop Graham Cray in 1991 (then he was a vicar), and speaking of a period of cultural change from ~1975 to ~2025. He was always interesting in that he did much of his reflection on culture though the medium of rock music.
But I don't think many of us are up for too much theology on a Monday morning .
I'm unsure that negates what I said...
Of course not - I'm just elucidating !
Boiling it down to 2 or 3 (edit: or 4) sentences, imo the phrase "preaching the bible" is malformed. Anyone only ever preaches their opinions about the bible, and their conclusions from their preparation, which are a result of experience, study, personal history and reflection in a particular context. It then goes to the audience to reflect on that for themselves.
"Preaching the bible" is an over-assertion of ownership and personal authority, which is not how it is.
Who would Jesus vote for?
Jesus would be serving three years for terrorising merchants and bankers and smashing up their tables, and thus unable to vote.
If we're to fly flags at airports then it should be the Union flag and the flags of the four home nations. Nothing else.
(narrator: whether Northern Ireland has a flag, and if so which one, is hotly disputed, as Republicans consider the hand flag to denote the NI Government of 1921-72 only. According to the UK Government IIRC, it doesn't have one)
'British Anglican Catholic priest and conservative commentator Calvin Robinson issued a stark warning to Americans about the direction he sees the U.S. could be heading.
"Please don't do what we did," he warned Americans in an interview with The Christian Post. "Please don't just sit back and let the liberals deteriorate the rest of everything that you know and love."
Robinson, who recently moved to the U.S. to run a full-time parish ministry in Michigan, argued that spiritual and political forces had undermined British and Christian values in his home country, and he sees the same trends happening in the United States as well.
"Be careful. American culture is a fantastic culture. Hold on to it, promote it, encourage it. If you want to become multicultural and let other cultures in, that's something you have to consider. But do not give it up to the detriment of your own," he pleaded while talking to The Christian Post. ' In an interview with Fox News Digital last year, Robinson said that liberalism was "the greatest threat to [Christianity]" currently....Robinson also believes far-left ideologies infiltrating The Church of England have worked to undermine the influence of Christianity in England.
"The Church of England has become very liberal in terms of divorce, sex outside marriage, same-sex relationships, transgenderism," Robinson told the outlet. "And every time the Church tries to be more inclusive, it actually becomes more exclusive to Christianity and to Christian values, and more inclusive to worldly values and just further plummets that downward trajectory."
"It's a great shame," he said.
Robinson told The Christian Post he thinks America is on the same path in following these trends, but no matter what happens, he rests in trusting God is in control. "[L]iberalism is even more warped [than Islam]," he said, "in terms of taking something that sounds compassionate, sounds empathetic, but isn't actually fully true in order to get people to believe in it, such as, you know, trans queer theory, gender theory, critical race theory."
Each of these radical liberal ideas "come from one place," he continued. "And it's really, I mean, we call it ‘neo–Marxism,’ but it's really communism, which we know is incompatible with the Christian faith because it is the work of the enemy… And so, we shouldn't let our guard down for communism. We certainly shouldn't let it for neo-Marxism, and therefore we should not let our guard down for liberalism."' https://www.foxnews.com/media/uk-priest-warns-americans-not-let-left-deteriorate-us-values
Personally, I think his political and cultural judgements are way off, but I'm interested to hear his explanation of his position on these particular questions.
Robinson is one of the many Christians who preach the bible whilst ignoring Christ.
TBH I'd dispute that, and say that he preaches one particular heavily culture-bound interpretation of the bible, which is in a lot of ways modernist; in particular that he has a set of politico-cultural values and views from the late 20th century that he has imposed on it and read into it.
For an example of a culture bound interpretation (I am not sure whether Robinson embraces this one), I'd point to the modern evangelical movements who try to treat the Bible as some sort of document of literal historical evidence, which is not what it is, and end up with all sorts of resulting strange assessments.
One interesting observation on this from an Anglican Bishop I once heard was that all three of the main recognised traditions in the CofE, ie anglo-catholic, anglican evangelical and liberal, were formed partly as responses to the enlightenment, and so it was to be expected that they would evolve and change in significant ways, as the basis of our society's culture moved from modernism to post-modernism to "whatever comes after that". This was Bishop Graham Cray in 1991 (then he was a vicar), and speaking of a period of cultural change from ~1975 to ~2025. He was always interesting in that he did much of his reflection on culture though the medium of rock music.
But I don't think many of us are up for too much theology on a Monday morning .
I'm unsure that negates what I said...
Of course not - I'm just elucidating !
Boiling it down to 2 or 3 (edit: or 4) sentences, imo the phrase "preaching the bible" is malformed. Anyone only ever preaches their opinions about the bible, and their conclusions from their preparation, which are a result of experience, study, personal history and reflection in a particular context. It then goes to the audience to reflect on that for themselves.
"Preaching the bible" is an over-assertion of ownership and personal authority, which is not how it is.
Who would Jesus vote for?
Votes are a personal decision. You'd have to ask Jesus .
'Render under to Caesar what is Caesar's and to God the things that are God's'
I’ve felt a warm glow over the last two years whenever I’ve seen the blue and yellow Ukrainian flag flying from village green flag posts, tower block windows and various places in Westminster.
Are those in Britain who display the Ukrainian flag performative twats? Or does that only apply if you have somewhat more equivocal feelings to a given alliance.
I'm not a great flag flier at the best of times but I think there's a difference between punters and a front line pol, in this case one putting himself up for the leadership of this (sic) country.
Good luck with that warm glow. Let's hope you're as tolerant of those who get a buzz from the Palestinian flag being flown.
When in New Zealand earlier this year was quite surprised at how many houses had NZ Flags in their gardens. Certainly a lot more than the equivalent over here
Jeez pass me the sick bag . He really is a moron .
They'll elected Jenrick this month and he'll be out in two years.
I guess they have to go through this stage before neo-Cameron arrives in early 2030s to lead them back to the centre ground and to office.
Maybe it will be the actual Cameron?
That depends what happens to Reform. If they continue to gain votes, and pick up some decent council wins or a Westminster byelection, then the next leader after Jenrick might be further to the right.
I think Jenrick will make it to the next election. He might be a thoroughly lightweight, faux culture warrior type with a few shadows hanging over his past conduct, but he speaks fluently and doesn't seem as incompetent at the political game as everyone seems to assume.
If I am right and Jenrick goes in two years (and incidentally Seldon wrote a piece yesterday saying he would only last two years) then they may well pick someone more to the radical right in order to take on Reform. Still likely to lose in 2028 and then they might start thinking about the centre ground again.
But I may well be wrong and @Leon right - England, like rest of europe, about to embrace the radical right and anti-migration populism. Certainly if Labour continue to make a total horlicks of everything they touch then that may well be on the cards.
It is certainly not impossible the next general election could be a hung parliament with Jenrick forming a coalition government with Farage and Reform. More likely though would be a Labour minority government with LD support
There is absolutely no way of predicting the next GE especially with the talentless individuals seeking election to conservative leader
I very much doubt Farage will be around in 5 years but even if he is we are likely to remain a deeply divided and divisive country
Badenoch car crash maternity comments, followed by the equally absurd comments by Jenrick about the Star of David should make every decent conservative recoil at the thought of either leading the party
I honestly just don't see what was wrong with her thoughts on maternity pay. Are we saying this is a policy area where no one can question the costs or the length of time or the regulations on business?
Her comment that basically women had more babies before maternity pay was crass and shows she's not ready for LOTO but I don't think it was that utterly bad.
It might have been unwise in the middle of a contest but given the profile of the membership I doubt it.
She’s not totally wrong, but as ever the bigger issue is the cost of housing that makes it impossible for many couples to live on one salary while they have pre-school children.
Or alternatively it is both couples doing paid work that has had an impact on increasing house prices so much
Jeez pass me the sick bag . He really is a moron .
They'll elected Jenrick this month and he'll be out in two years.
I guess they have to go through this stage before neo-Cameron arrives in early 2030s to lead them back to the centre ground and to office.
Maybe it will be the actual Cameron?
That depends what happens to Reform. If they continue to gain votes, and pick up some decent council wins or a Westminster byelection, then the next leader after Jenrick might be further to the right.
I think Jenrick will make it to the next election. He might be a thoroughly lightweight, faux culture warrior type with a few shadows hanging over his past conduct, but he speaks fluently and doesn't seem as incompetent at the political game as everyone seems to assume.
If I am right and Jenrick goes in two years (and incidentally Seldon wrote a piece yesterday saying he would only last two years) then they may well pick someone more to the radical right in order to take on Reform. Still likely to lose in 2028 and then they might start thinking about the centre ground again.
But I may well be wrong and @Leon right - England, like rest of europe, about to embrace the radical right and anti-migration populism. Certainly if Labour continue to make a total horlicks of everything they touch then that may well be on the cards.
It is certainly not impossible the next general election could be a hung parliament with Jenrick forming a coalition government with Farage and Reform. More likely though would be a Labour minority government with LD support
There is absolutely no way of predicting the next GE especially with the talentless individuals seeking election to conservative leader
I very much doubt Farage will be around in 5 years but even if he is we are likely to remain a deeply divided and divisive country
Badenoch car crash maternity comments, followed by the equally absurd comments by Jenrick about the Star of David should make every decent conservative recoil at the thought of either leading the party
I honestly just don't see what was wrong with her thoughts on maternity pay. Are we saying this is a policy area where no one can question the costs or the length of time or the regulations on business?
Her comment that basically women had more babies before maternity pay was crass and shows she's not ready for LOTO but I don't think it was that utterly bad.
It might have been unwise in the middle of a contest but given the profile of the membership I doubt it.
No-one is saying it can't be thought about, but to do so is to engage with much wider elements of social change than maternity pay.
In my lifetime the middle class has both got much larger, along with its expectations, and also has shifted from relying on one (male) income to two. Maternity pay + maternity employment rights is essential to that new structure.
A deeply held conservatism may want to shift the middle class back to the 1950s/1960s single income approach. A remarkable number of families would rather like it. It isn't going to happen. Which means that Kemi's intervention is superficial nonsense, compounded by saying it and then denying it had been said.
'British Anglican Catholic priest and conservative commentator Calvin Robinson issued a stark warning to Americans about the direction he sees the U.S. could be heading.
"Please don't do what we did," he warned Americans in an interview with The Christian Post. "Please don't just sit back and let the liberals deteriorate the rest of everything that you know and love."
Robinson, who recently moved to the U.S. to run a full-time parish ministry in Michigan, argued that spiritual and political forces had undermined British and Christian values in his home country, and he sees the same trends happening in the United States as well.
"Be careful. American culture is a fantastic culture. Hold on to it, promote it, encourage it. If you want to become multicultural and let other cultures in, that's something you have to consider. But do not give it up to the detriment of your own," he pleaded while talking to The Christian Post. ' In an interview with Fox News Digital last year, Robinson said that liberalism was "the greatest threat to [Christianity]" currently....Robinson also believes far-left ideologies infiltrating The Church of England have worked to undermine the influence of Christianity in England.
"The Church of England has become very liberal in terms of divorce, sex outside marriage, same-sex relationships, transgenderism," Robinson told the outlet. "And every time the Church tries to be more inclusive, it actually becomes more exclusive to Christianity and to Christian values, and more inclusive to worldly values and just further plummets that downward trajectory."
"It's a great shame," he said.
Robinson told The Christian Post he thinks America is on the same path in following these trends, but no matter what happens, he rests in trusting God is in control. "[L]iberalism is even more warped [than Islam]," he said, "in terms of taking something that sounds compassionate, sounds empathetic, but isn't actually fully true in order to get people to believe in it, such as, you know, trans queer theory, gender theory, critical race theory."
Each of these radical liberal ideas "come from one place," he continued. "And it's really, I mean, we call it ‘neo–Marxism,’ but it's really communism, which we know is incompatible with the Christian faith because it is the work of the enemy… And so, we shouldn't let our guard down for communism. We certainly shouldn't let it for neo-Marxism, and therefore we should not let our guard down for liberalism."' https://www.foxnews.com/media/uk-priest-warns-americans-not-let-left-deteriorate-us-values
Personally, I think his political and cultural judgements are way off, but I'm interested to hear his explanation of his position on these particular questions.
Robinson is one of the many Christians who preach the bible whilst ignoring Christ.
TBH I'd dispute that, and say that he preaches one particular heavily culture-bound interpretation of the bible, which is in a lot of ways modernist; in particular that he has a set of politico-cultural values and views from the late 20th century that he has imposed on it and read into it.
For an example of a culture bound interpretation (I am not sure whether Robinson embraces this one), I'd point to the modern evangelical movements who try to treat the Bible as some sort of document of literal historical evidence, which is not what it is, and end up with all sorts of resulting strange assessments.
One interesting observation on this from an Anglican Bishop I once heard was that all three of the main recognised traditions in the CofE, ie anglo-catholic, anglican evangelical and liberal, were formed partly as responses to the enlightenment, and so it was to be expected that they would evolve and change in significant ways, as the basis of our society's culture moved from modernism to post-modernism to "whatever comes after that". This was Bishop Graham Cray in 1991 (then he was a vicar), and speaking of a period of cultural change from ~1975 to ~2025. He was always interesting in that he did much of his reflection on culture though the medium of rock music.
But I don't think many of us are up for too much theology on a Monday morning .
I'm unsure that negates what I said...
Of course not - I'm just elucidating !
Boiling it down to 2 or 3 (edit: or 4) sentences, imo the phrase "preaching the bible" is malformed. Anyone only ever preaches their opinions about the bible, and their conclusions from their preparation, which are a result of experience, study, personal history and reflection in a particular context. It then goes to the audience to reflect on that for themselves.
"Preaching the bible" is an over-assertion of ownership and personal authority, which is not how it is.
Who would Jesus vote for?
Jesus would be serving three years for terrorising merchants and bankers and smashing up their tables, and thus unable to vote.
In Barlinnie for turning water into wine, thereby breaking minimum pricing legislation.
I don't know who Robert Jenrick thinks the "we" is there with that Israel thing. But regardless, it's such an infantile suggestion it makes me start to doubt he'll win. I've long thought he's nailed on but maybe not?
The whole Conservative Party is infantile in its current form. You wouldn't be taking part in this selection unless you were OK with infantile. Or you're biding your time until Jenrick, Badenoch et al are no longer a feature.
Jeez pass me the sick bag . He really is a moron .
They'll elected Jenrick this month and he'll be out in two years.
I guess they have to go through this stage before neo-Cameron arrives in early 2030s to lead them back to the centre ground and to office.
Maybe it will be the actual Cameron?
That depends what happens to Reform. If they continue to gain votes, and pick up some decent council wins or a Westminster byelection, then the next leader after Jenrick might be further to the right.
I think Jenrick will make it to the next election. He might be a thoroughly lightweight, faux culture warrior type with a few shadows hanging over his past conduct, but he speaks fluently and doesn't seem as incompetent at the political game as everyone seems to assume.
If I am right and Jenrick goes in two years (and incidentally Seldon wrote a piece yesterday saying he would only last two years) then they may well pick someone more to the radical right in order to take on Reform. Still likely to lose in 2028 and then they might start thinking about the centre ground again.
But I may well be wrong and @Leon right - England, like rest of europe, about to embrace the radical right and anti-migration populism. Certainly if Labour continue to make a total horlicks of everything they touch then that may well be on the cards.
The helpful political news for them is that at least in numbers terms absolute net migration is inevitably going to come down over the next couple of years, purely as a function of maths.
Possible that small boat crossings decline too, as it doesn't seem to have a particularly big summer in the Med this year so the pipeline for next summer might be down. Certainly the numbers in the latter part of this season have been substantially down on earlier in the year. I doubt that has anything to do with the change of government, but it's optically convenient.
Question is whether anti-elite populism keeps surging regardless. It's not all about immigration after all. Partly that is in Labour's gift: they need to give people hope and a bit of optimism.
The real objection of the far right is not only to immigration present and future, it is to migration that has already happened. Once migration slows down (if it does) then the question of whether the far right turns its attention to migration past is important.
For it to have salience beyond the far right I think you need the perception that things are changing - that life is not the same as it used to be and places don't look or sound the same as they used to. Part of that is what people see on the news about current migration: over-crowded hostels or hotels being commandeered (one reason getting the asylum backlog down has to be a priority), people arriving on the beach in boats. Part of it is what happens locally, or in the neighbouring towns, and gets reported on: shortages of housing or school places for example - that kind of thing can also be blamed on past migration.
The government has the ability to influence all of those. Actually influencing the number of irregular arrivals is the hardest bit, but everything else - legal migration, backlog, housing provision etc - is within the gift of national or local government.
Alcohol prices up in Scotland today due to MUP up to 65p
Well done SNP, a winning policy. Even though alcohol related deaths increased when they promised the introduction of MUP would see them fall the policy is a winner as its advocates have said.
Doesn't higher supermarket alcohol prices in Scotland mean that the supermarkets can keep their prices lower in England.
IIRC wine prices haven't increased for over a decade (if you use the regular 25% discount for six) and its not difficult to buy 500ml beer for £1.
The minimum alcohol price increase won’t affect the price of a decent bottle of wine, or a pint of beer in the pub, which, hopefully, will encourage people to go to the pub instead of drinking at home. I’m not bothered if it makes multipacks of piss like Tennents or Bud Lite dearer. The initial minimum price law practically wiped out sales of stuff like White Lightning in Scotland. I don’t see that as a bad thing. Where I disagree with the policy is that the supermarkets benefit from the higher margins, not the Government.
Look at how benzo (valium and related drugs) use - and deaths from said drugs - rocketed in Scotland in the aftermath of minimum unit pricing.
A £2.50 can of spesh, or a 20p knock off pill.
Plus, as they both affect the same receptors in the brain, they potentiate each other, i.e. you can have one 20p pill and it will make the effects of a single can £2.50 can much stronger.
If we're to fly flags at airports then it should be the Union flag and the flags of the four home nations. Nothing else.
Personally I would think the safety flags are a tad more important but maybe it is all health & safety gone mad, after all what harm can 30,000 gallons and 450,000kg of metal really do?
Jeez pass me the sick bag . He really is a moron .
They'll elected Jenrick this month and he'll be out in two years.
I guess they have to go through this stage before neo-Cameron arrives in early 2030s to lead them back to the centre ground and to office.
Maybe it will be the actual Cameron?
That depends what happens to Reform. If they continue to gain votes, and pick up some decent council wins or a Westminster byelection, then the next leader after Jenrick might be further to the right.
I think Jenrick will make it to the next election. He might be a thoroughly lightweight, faux culture warrior type with a few shadows hanging over his past conduct, but he speaks fluently and doesn't seem as incompetent at the political game as everyone seems to assume.
If I am right and Jenrick goes in two years (and incidentally Seldon wrote a piece yesterday saying he would only last two years) then they may well pick someone more to the radical right in order to take on Reform. Still likely to lose in 2028 and then they might start thinking about the centre ground again.
But I may well be wrong and @Leon right - England, like rest of europe, about to embrace the radical right and anti-migration populism. Certainly if Labour continue to make a total horlicks of everything they touch then that may well be on the cards.
It is certainly not impossible the next general election could be a hung parliament with Jenrick forming a coalition government with Farage and Reform. More likely though would be a Labour minority government with LD support
There is absolutely no way of predicting the next GE especially with the talentless individuals seeking election to conservative leader
I very much doubt Farage will be around in 5 years but even if he is we are likely to remain a deeply divided and divisive country
Badenoch car crash maternity comments, followed by the equally absurd comments by Jenrick about the Star of David should make every decent conservative recoil at the thought of either leading the party
I honestly just don't see what was wrong with her thoughts on maternity pay. Are we saying this is a policy area where no one can question the costs or the length of time or the regulations on business?
Her comment that basically women had more babies before maternity pay was crass and shows she's not ready for LOTO but I don't think it was that utterly bad.
It might have been unwise in the middle of a contest but given the profile of the membership I doubt it.
No-one is saying it can't be thought about, but to do so is to engage with much wider elements of social change than maternity pay.
In my lifetime the middle class has both got much larger, along with its expectations, and also has shifted from relying on one (male) income to two. Maternity pay + maternity employment rights is essential to that new structure.
A deeply held conservatism may want to shift the middle class back to the 1950s/1960s single income approach. A remarkable number of families would rather like it. It isn't going to happen. Which means that Kemi's intervention is superficial nonsense, compounded by saying it and then denying it had been said.
I hope Kemi wins the contest. She can win the next election too in my opinion.
Jeez pass me the sick bag . He really is a moron .
They'll elected Jenrick this month and he'll be out in two years.
I guess they have to go through this stage before neo-Cameron arrives in early 2030s to lead them back to the centre ground and to office.
Maybe it will be the actual Cameron?
That depends what happens to Reform. If they continue to gain votes, and pick up some decent council wins or a Westminster byelection, then the next leader after Jenrick might be further to the right.
I think Jenrick will make it to the next election. He might be a thoroughly lightweight, faux culture warrior type with a few shadows hanging over his past conduct, but he speaks fluently and doesn't seem as incompetent at the political game as everyone seems to assume.
If I am right and Jenrick goes in two years (and incidentally Seldon wrote a piece yesterday saying he would only last two years) then they may well pick someone more to the radical right in order to take on Reform. Still likely to lose in 2028 and then they might start thinking about the centre ground again.
But I may well be wrong and @Leon right - England, like rest of europe, about to embrace the radical right and anti-migration populism. Certainly if Labour continue to make a total horlicks of everything they touch then that may well be on the cards.
It is certainly not impossible the next general election could be a hung parliament with Jenrick forming a coalition government with Farage and Reform. More likely though would be a Labour minority government with LD support
There is absolutely no way of predicting the next GE especially with the talentless individuals seeking election to conservative leader
I very much doubt Farage will be around in 5 years but even if he is we are likely to remain a deeply divided and divisive country
Badenoch car crash maternity comments, followed by the equally absurd comments by Jenrick about the Star of David should make every decent conservative recoil at the thought of either leading the party
My money would be on a LD-Con-Reform-DUP coalition as has become popular across Europe. Right of centre parties preferring the fallacy that they can control the far right element rather than compromise across the centre. It looks like being a tightly fought contest between Jenrick and Badenoch as to which can self-sabotage their support among the MPs and lose the nomination.
The LDs wouldn't touch Reform. The closest parallel would be the Spanish coalition of PP and Vox and Citizens when they were still around or the Liberals and Nationals in Australia or Nationals, ACT and NZ First in NZ or the Swedish and Dutch governments which contain or are supported by centre right, liberal and far right parties now. In all those nations though the Liberals are right of where the LDs want to be, certainly most of them weren't keen on being in governnment with Cameron let alone Farage.
In France by contrast Macron's liberal party has now formed a government with Barnier and the Conservatives, in Austria it looks like the centre right and social democrats and greens and liberals will do a deal to keep out the far right Freedom party. In Canada Trudeau's Liberals and the social democratic NDP are in government to keep out Poilievre's populist right Conservatives (though Polievre is more centre right than far right, emphasising new homes and economic growth more than immigration cuts).
I sense Strides MPs may divide quite evenly between Cleverly and Tugendhat and some will probably go to Jenrick too (weird patterns) so unless there's a big event or a miracle it does look like Kemi v Jenrick
Highly unlikely. Stride's votes will mainly go to Cleverly and Tugendhat.
Then whichever of Cleverly or Tugendhat is knocked out will send their votes to the other.
So it will almost certainly be Jenrick and Tugendhat or Cleverly Tory MPs send to the members.
Badenoch lost this race when she lost most of the ERG right to Jenrick. Much as Portillo lost in 2001 when he lost the Thatcherite right to IDS while the One Nation candidate remained Clarke and Mordaunt lost in 2022 when she lost the ERG right to Truss who ended up in the last two with Sunak
My view is that there are two route to the leadership for Kemi:
1) Jenrick's vote among MPs collapses for some reason (myserious-donation-gate) - final two then becomes Kemi+ one other, and she wins the membership. 2) Cleverly/Tugendhat MP supporters really, really want to stop a Jenrick leadership and move to her to create a Kemi-Jenrick final two in the expectation that the membership will vote for her over Jenrick.
I would place both in the category of 'possible but not likely'.
1 Is possible if she has a fantastic performance this week but unlikely.
2 Is not happening, the One Nation wing see Jenrick and Badenoch as 2 cheeks of the same arse
Jeez pass me the sick bag . He really is a moron .
They'll elected Jenrick this month and he'll be out in two years.
I guess they have to go through this stage before neo-Cameron arrives in early 2030s to lead them back to the centre ground and to office.
Maybe it will be the actual Cameron?
That depends what happens to Reform. If they continue to gain votes, and pick up some decent council wins or a Westminster byelection, then the next leader after Jenrick might be further to the right.
I think Jenrick will make it to the next election. He might be a thoroughly lightweight, faux culture warrior type with a few shadows hanging over his past conduct, but he speaks fluently and doesn't seem as incompetent at the political game as everyone seems to assume.
If I am right and Jenrick goes in two years (and incidentally Seldon wrote a piece yesterday saying he would only last two years) then they may well pick someone more to the radical right in order to take on Reform. Still likely to lose in 2028 and then they might start thinking about the centre ground again.
But I may well be wrong and @Leon right - England, like rest of europe, about to embrace the radical right and anti-migration populism. Certainly if Labour continue to make a total horlicks of everything they touch then that may well be on the cards.
The helpful political news for them is that at least in numbers terms absolute net migration is inevitably going to come down over the next couple of years, purely as a function of maths.
Possible that small boat crossings decline too, as it doesn't seem to have a particularly big summer in the Med this year so the pipeline for next summer might be down. Certainly the numbers in the latter part of this season have been substantially down on earlier in the year. I doubt that has anything to do with the change of government, but it's optically convenient.
Question is whether anti-elite populism keeps surging regardless. It's not all about immigration after all. Partly that is in Labour's gift: they need to give people hope and a bit of optimism.
The real objection of the far right is not only to immigration present and future, it is to migration that has already happened. Once migration slows down (if it does) then the question of whether the far right turns its attention to migration past is important.
For it to have salience beyond the far right I think you need the perception that things are changing - that life is not the same as it used to be and places don't look or sound the same as they used to. Part of that is what people see on the news about current migration: over-crowded hostels or hotels being commandeered (one reason getting the asylum backlog down has to be a priority), people arriving on the beach in boats. Part of it is what happens locally, or in the neighbouring towns, and gets reported on: shortages of housing or school places for example - that kind of thing can also be blamed on past migration.
The government has the ability to influence all of those. Actually influencing the number of irregular arrivals is the hardest bit, but everything else - legal migration, backlog, housing provision etc - is within the gift of national or local government.
ETA: I've been keeping an eye on small boat numbers both YTD and in the months since the election. YTD 2024 remains ahead of 2023 but the huge lead earlier in the summer has been coming down. And for 5 July to date it's now below the equivalent period in 2023 (recall that was a period when the government was heralding a significant fall in numbers due to their Albania deal).
A few calmer less stormy days coming up in the channel though, so we'll see how the end of the season plays out. It will be helpful statistically for them if they can show numbers are down year on year since the election.
Jeez pass me the sick bag . He really is a moron .
They'll elected Jenrick this month and he'll be out in two years.
I guess they have to go through this stage before neo-Cameron arrives in early 2030s to lead them back to the centre ground and to office.
Maybe it will be the actual Cameron?
That depends what happens to Reform. If they continue to gain votes, and pick up some decent council wins or a Westminster byelection, then the next leader after Jenrick might be further to the right.
I think Jenrick will make it to the next election. He might be a thoroughly lightweight, faux culture warrior type with a few shadows hanging over his past conduct, but he speaks fluently and doesn't seem as incompetent at the political game as everyone seems to assume.
If I am right and Jenrick goes in two years (and incidentally Seldon wrote a piece yesterday saying he would only last two years) then they may well pick someone more to the radical right in order to take on Reform. Still likely to lose in 2028 and then they might start thinking about the centre ground again.
But I may well be wrong and @Leon right - England, like rest of europe, about to embrace the radical right and anti-migration populism. Certainly if Labour continue to make a total horlicks of everything they touch then that may well be on the cards.
It is certainly not impossible the next general election could be a hung parliament with Jenrick forming a coalition government with Farage and Reform. More likely though would be a Labour minority government with LD support
Forget any ideas of a coalition with Reform.
A rabble of malcontents is incapable of doing any form of governing.
Any attempt would fall apart quicker that the Truss government.
If Badenoch or Jenrick are elected Tory leader a Reform and Tory deal is very likely, if Tugendhat or Cleverly are elected it isn't. Regardless of what such a government may look like
Mr. Divvie, in your avatar is the 'AFD' a reference to the German party, or something else?
It is indeed AfD; the sticker and similar t-shirts quite prevalent in Berlin during my recent visit. In best libtard fashion I consider my choice of avatar to be a vital part in the struggle against fashiness. I might even start a letter writing campaign.
On flags, drastic reduction in Ukranian flags displayed around Berlin from 2 years ago, I think I only spotted a couple this time.
Why did Kemi even get involved in the maternity pay thing?
Seems an odd and random subject to raise in the middle of a leadership campaign? Perhaps she doesn't really want to become LOTO?
Kemi was Minister for Women and LibDem policy is to double maternity pay (and this was in their July manifesto) which is probably why Kemi had it on her mind.
I’ve felt a warm glow over the last two years whenever I’ve seen the blue and yellow Ukrainian flag flying from village green flag posts, tower block windows and various places in Westminster.
Are those in Britain who display the Ukrainian flag performative twats? Or does that only apply if you have somewhat more equivocal feelings to a given alliance.
I'm not a great flag flier at the best of times but I think there's a difference between punters and a front line pol, in this case one putting himself up for the leadership of this (sic) country.
Good luck with that warm glow. Let's hope you're as tolerant of those who get a buzz from the Palestinian flag being flown.
When in New Zealand earlier this year was quite surprised at how many houses had NZ Flags in their gardens. Certainly a lot more than the equivalent over here
The proportion of dwellings with gardens is probably smaller, tbh.
'British Anglican Catholic priest and conservative commentator Calvin Robinson issued a stark warning to Americans about the direction he sees the U.S. could be heading.
"Please don't do what we did," he warned Americans in an interview with The Christian Post. "Please don't just sit back and let the liberals deteriorate the rest of everything that you know and love."
Robinson, who recently moved to the U.S. to run a full-time parish ministry in Michigan, argued that spiritual and political forces had undermined British and Christian values in his home country, and he sees the same trends happening in the United States as well.
"Be careful. American culture is a fantastic culture. Hold on to it, promote it, encourage it. If you want to become multicultural and let other cultures in, that's something you have to consider. But do not give it up to the detriment of your own," he pleaded while talking to The Christian Post. ' In an interview with Fox News Digital last year, Robinson said that liberalism was "the greatest threat to [Christianity]" currently....Robinson also believes far-left ideologies infiltrating The Church of England have worked to undermine the influence of Christianity in England.
"The Church of England has become very liberal in terms of divorce, sex outside marriage, same-sex relationships, transgenderism," Robinson told the outlet. "And every time the Church tries to be more inclusive, it actually becomes more exclusive to Christianity and to Christian values, and more inclusive to worldly values and just further plummets that downward trajectory."
"It's a great shame," he said.
Robinson told The Christian Post he thinks America is on the same path in following these trends, but no matter what happens, he rests in trusting God is in control. "[L]iberalism is even more warped [than Islam]," he said, "in terms of taking something that sounds compassionate, sounds empathetic, but isn't actually fully true in order to get people to believe in it, such as, you know, trans queer theory, gender theory, critical race theory."
Each of these radical liberal ideas "come from one place," he continued. "And it's really, I mean, we call it ‘neo–Marxism,’ but it's really communism, which we know is incompatible with the Christian faith because it is the work of the enemy… And so, we shouldn't let our guard down for communism. We certainly shouldn't let it for neo-Marxism, and therefore we should not let our guard down for liberalism."' https://www.foxnews.com/media/uk-priest-warns-americans-not-let-left-deteriorate-us-values
Personally, I think his political and cultural judgements are way off, but I'm interested to hear his explanation of his position on these particular questions.
Robinson is one of the many Christians who preach the bible whilst ignoring Christ.
TBH I'd dispute that, and say that he preaches one particular heavily culture-bound interpretation of the bible, which is in a lot of ways modernist; in particular that he has a set of politico-cultural values and views from the late 20th century that he has imposed on it and read into it.
For an example of a culture bound interpretation (I am not sure whether Robinson embraces this one), I'd point to the modern evangelical movements who try to treat the Bible as some sort of document of literal historical evidence, which is not what it is, and end up with all sorts of resulting strange assessments.
One interesting observation on this from an Anglican Bishop I once heard was that all three of the main recognised traditions in the CofE, ie anglo-catholic, anglican evangelical and liberal, were formed partly as responses to the enlightenment, and so it was to be expected that they would evolve and change in significant ways, as the basis of our society's culture moved from modernism to post-modernism to "whatever comes after that". This was Bishop Graham Cray in 1991 (then he was a vicar), and speaking of a period of cultural change from ~1975 to ~2025. He was always interesting in that he did much of his reflection on culture though the medium of rock music.
But I don't think many of us are up for too much theology on a Monday morning .
I'm unsure that negates what I said...
Of course not - I'm just elucidating !
Boiling it down to 2 or 3 (edit: or 4) sentences, imo the phrase "preaching the bible" is malformed. Anyone only ever preaches their opinions about the bible, and their conclusions from their preparation, which are a result of experience, study, personal history and reflection in a particular context. It then goes to the audience to reflect on that for themselves.
"Preaching the bible" is an over-assertion of ownership and personal authority, which is not how it is.
All expressions like 'preaching the Bible', 'biblical Christianity', 'orthodox biblical Christianity', 'following the Bible' are simplistic beyond belief. As 2000 years of often bitter debate between those saying such things have shown. They function mostly as 'identity religion' markers and for people who are fond of dictating to sheep what they should think.
Most (not all) using these expressions identify as evangelical. Modern evangelicalism, when analysed, is a remarkable coalition between at least three incompatible theologies.
"Pensioner turned away from GP surgery by staff who told him he was ‘deceased’ Alan Rocket, who is in remission from bowel cancer and was trying to register at his doctor’s, said being told he was ‘dead’ was upsetting"
Jeez pass me the sick bag . He really is a moron .
They'll elected Jenrick this month and he'll be out in two years.
I guess they have to go through this stage before neo-Cameron arrives in early 2030s to lead them back to the centre ground and to office.
Maybe it will be the actual Cameron?
That depends what happens to Reform. If they continue to gain votes, and pick up some decent council wins or a Westminster byelection, then the next leader after Jenrick might be further to the right.
I think Jenrick will make it to the next election. He might be a thoroughly lightweight, faux culture warrior type with a few shadows hanging over his past conduct, but he speaks fluently and doesn't seem as incompetent at the political game as everyone seems to assume.
If I am right and Jenrick goes in two years (and incidentally Seldon wrote a piece yesterday saying he would only last two years) then they may well pick someone more to the radical right in order to take on Reform. Still likely to lose in 2028 and then they might start thinking about the centre ground again.
But I may well be wrong and @Leon right - England, like rest of europe, about to embrace the radical right and anti-migration populism. Certainly if Labour continue to make a total horlicks of everything they touch then that may well be on the cards.
It is certainly not impossible the next general election could be a hung parliament with Jenrick forming a coalition government with Farage and Reform. More likely though would be a Labour minority government with LD support
There is absolutely no way of predicting the next GE especially with the talentless individuals seeking election to conservative leader
I very much doubt Farage will be around in 5 years but even if he is we are likely to remain a deeply divided and divisive country
Badenoch car crash maternity comments, followed by the equally absurd comments by Jenrick about the Star of David should make every decent conservative recoil at the thought of either leading the party
I honestly just don't see what was wrong with her thoughts on maternity pay. Are we saying this is a policy area where no one can question the costs or the length of time or the regulations on business?
Her comment that basically women had more babies before maternity pay was crass and shows she's not ready for LOTO but I don't think it was that utterly bad.
It might have been unwise in the middle of a contest but given the profile of the membership I doubt it.
No-one is saying it can't be thought about, but to do so is to engage with much wider elements of social change than maternity pay.
In my lifetime the middle class has both got much larger, along with its expectations, and also has shifted from relying on one (male) income to two. Maternity pay + maternity employment rights is essential to that new structure.
A deeply held conservatism may want to shift the middle class back to the 1950s/1960s single income approach. A remarkable number of families would rather like it. It isn't going to happen. Which means that Kemi's intervention is superficial nonsense, compounded by saying it and then denying it had been said.
Female lawyers, doctors, company directors, MPs etc may certainly want to continue working full time after they have children.
Female warehouse workers, Tesco till manners and cleaners probably don't
Why did Kemi even get involved in the maternity pay thing?
Seems an odd and random subject to raise in the middle of a leadership campaign? Perhaps she doesn't really want to become LOTO?
Her first words are maternity pay varies for who you work for. I suspect for those in and around her circle, company policies are pretty generous and flexible. She doesn't care about Jane Average let alone Mary Minimum-Wage.
"Pensioner turned away from GP surgery by staff who told him he was ‘deceased’ Alan Rocket, who is in remission from bowel cancer and was trying to register at his doctor’s, said being told he was ‘dead’ was upsetting"
Same thing happened to me a year or two back. I might have posted about it at the time. Overenthusiastic pruning of patients under some government wheeze or other.
Jeez pass me the sick bag . He really is a moron .
They'll elected Jenrick this month and he'll be out in two years.
I guess they have to go through this stage before neo-Cameron arrives in early 2030s to lead them back to the centre ground and to office.
Maybe it will be the actual Cameron?
That depends what happens to Reform. If they continue to gain votes, and pick up some decent council wins or a Westminster byelection, then the next leader after Jenrick might be further to the right.
I think Jenrick will make it to the next election. He might be a thoroughly lightweight, faux culture warrior type with a few shadows hanging over his past conduct, but he speaks fluently and doesn't seem as incompetent at the political game as everyone seems to assume.
If I am right and Jenrick goes in two years (and incidentally Seldon wrote a piece yesterday saying he would only last two years) then they may well pick someone more to the radical right in order to take on Reform. Still likely to lose in 2028 and then they might start thinking about the centre ground again.
But I may well be wrong and @Leon right - England, like rest of europe, about to embrace the radical right and anti-migration populism. Certainly if Labour continue to make a total horlicks of everything they touch then that may well be on the cards.
The helpful political news for them is that at least in numbers terms absolute net migration is inevitably going to come down over the next couple of years, purely as a function of maths.
Possible that small boat crossings decline too, as it doesn't seem to have a particularly big summer in the Med this year so the pipeline for next summer might be down. Certainly the numbers in the latter part of this season have been substantially down on earlier in the year. I doubt that has anything to do with the change of government, but it's optically convenient.
Question is whether anti-elite populism keeps surging regardless. It's not all about immigration after all. Partly that is in Labour's gift: they need to give people hope and a bit of optimism.
The real objection of the far right is not only to immigration present and future, it is to migration that has already happened. Once migration slows down (if it does) then the question of whether the far right turns its attention to migration past is important.
“Remigration” is the term the Far Right uses, for this
I reckon this ugly idea is going to enter the mainstream of politics, via the rise of the Far Right parties across Europe. eg Austria yesterday. Once these parties start actually winning elections, the dam breaks
Jeez pass me the sick bag . He really is a moron .
They'll elected Jenrick this month and he'll be out in two years.
I guess they have to go through this stage before neo-Cameron arrives in early 2030s to lead them back to the centre ground and to office.
Maybe it will be the actual Cameron?
That depends what happens to Reform. If they continue to gain votes, and pick up some decent council wins or a Westminster byelection, then the next leader after Jenrick might be further to the right.
I think Jenrick will make it to the next election. He might be a thoroughly lightweight, faux culture warrior type with a few shadows hanging over his past conduct, but he speaks fluently and doesn't seem as incompetent at the political game as everyone seems to assume.
If I am right and Jenrick goes in two years (and incidentally Seldon wrote a piece yesterday saying he would only last two years) then they may well pick someone more to the radical right in order to take on Reform. Still likely to lose in 2028 and then they might start thinking about the centre ground again.
But I may well be wrong and @Leon right - England, like rest of europe, about to embrace the radical right and anti-migration populism. Certainly if Labour continue to make a total horlicks of everything they touch then that may well be on the cards.
It is certainly not impossible the next general election could be a hung parliament with Jenrick forming a coalition government with Farage and Reform. More likely though would be a Labour minority government with LD support
There is absolutely no way of predicting the next GE especially with the talentless individuals seeking election to conservative leader
I very much doubt Farage will be around in 5 years but even if he is we are likely to remain a deeply divided and divisive country
Badenoch car crash maternity comments, followed by the equally absurd comments by Jenrick about the Star of David should make every decent conservative recoil at the thought of either leading the party
I honestly just don't see what was wrong with her thoughts on maternity pay. Are we saying this is a policy area where no one can question the costs or the length of time or the regulations on business?
Her comment that basically women had more babies before maternity pay was crass and shows she's not ready for LOTO but I don't think it was that utterly bad.
It might have been unwise in the middle of a contest but given the profile of the membership I doubt it.
She’s not totally wrong, but as ever the bigger issue is the cost of housing that makes it impossible for many couples to live on one salary while they have pre-school children.
Or alternatively it is both couples doing paid work that has had an impact on increasing house prices so much
That’s a factor, but the largest factors are a shortage of housing and the willingness of banks to lend ever-higher salary multiples.
There was a discussion here last week about a bank lending 6x joint salary, which with current interest rates would result in mortgage payments of half their combined take-home pay.
Jeez pass me the sick bag . He really is a moron .
They'll elected Jenrick this month and he'll be out in two years.
I guess they have to go through this stage before neo-Cameron arrives in early 2030s to lead them back to the centre ground and to office.
Maybe it will be the actual Cameron?
That depends what happens to Reform. If they continue to gain votes, and pick up some decent council wins or a Westminster byelection, then the next leader after Jenrick might be further to the right.
I think Jenrick will make it to the next election. He might be a thoroughly lightweight, faux culture warrior type with a few shadows hanging over his past conduct, but he speaks fluently and doesn't seem as incompetent at the political game as everyone seems to assume.
If I am right and Jenrick goes in two years (and incidentally Seldon wrote a piece yesterday saying he would only last two years) then they may well pick someone more to the radical right in order to take on Reform. Still likely to lose in 2028 and then they might start thinking about the centre ground again.
But I may well be wrong and @Leon right - England, like rest of europe, about to embrace the radical right and anti-migration populism. Certainly if Labour continue to make a total horlicks of everything they touch then that may well be on the cards.
It is certainly not impossible the next general election could be a hung parliament with Jenrick forming a coalition government with Farage and Reform. More likely though would be a Labour minority government with LD support
Forget any ideas of a coalition with Reform.
A rabble of malcontents is incapable of doing any form of governing.
Any attempt would fall apart quicker that the Truss government.
If Badenoch or Jenrick are elected Tory leader a Reform and Tory deal is very likely, if Tugendhat or Cleverly are elected it isn't. Regardless of what such a government may look like
So Badenoch Jenrick = chance of getting back in to government Cleverly Tugendhat = hello wilderness
Jeez pass me the sick bag . He really is a moron .
They'll elected Jenrick this month and he'll be out in two years.
I guess they have to go through this stage before neo-Cameron arrives in early 2030s to lead them back to the centre ground and to office.
Maybe it will be the actual Cameron?
That depends what happens to Reform. If they continue to gain votes, and pick up some decent council wins or a Westminster byelection, then the next leader after Jenrick might be further to the right.
I think Jenrick will make it to the next election. He might be a thoroughly lightweight, faux culture warrior type with a few shadows hanging over his past conduct, but he speaks fluently and doesn't seem as incompetent at the political game as everyone seems to assume.
If I am right and Jenrick goes in two years (and incidentally Seldon wrote a piece yesterday saying he would only last two years) then they may well pick someone more to the radical right in order to take on Reform. Still likely to lose in 2028 and then they might start thinking about the centre ground again.
But I may well be wrong and @Leon right - England, like rest of europe, about to embrace the radical right and anti-migration populism. Certainly if Labour continue to make a total horlicks of everything they touch then that may well be on the cards.
It is certainly not impossible the next general election could be a hung parliament with Jenrick forming a coalition government with Farage and Reform. More likely though would be a Labour minority government with LD support
There is absolutely no way of predicting the next GE especially with the talentless individuals seeking election to conservative leader
I very much doubt Farage will be around in 5 years but even if he is we are likely to remain a deeply divided and divisive country
Badenoch car crash maternity comments, followed by the equally absurd comments by Jenrick about the Star of David should make every decent conservative recoil at the thought of either leading the party
I honestly just don't see what was wrong with her thoughts on maternity pay. Are we saying this is a policy area where no one can question the costs or the length of time or the regulations on business?
Her comment that basically women had more babies before maternity pay was crass and shows she's not ready for LOTO but I don't think it was that utterly bad.
It might have been unwise in the middle of a contest but given the profile of the membership I doubt it.
She’s not totally wrong, but as ever the bigger issue is the cost of housing that makes it impossible for many couples to live on one salary while they have pre-school children.
Or alternatively it is both couples doing paid work that has had an impact on increasing house prices so much
That’s a factor, but the largest factors are a shortage of housing and the willingness of banks to lend ever-higher salary multiples.
There was a discussion here last week about a bank lending 6x joint salary, which with current interest rates would result in mortgage payments of half their combined take-home pay.
I did like the suggestion that a couple spending half their take home pay on housing was just fine.
If anything goes slightly wrong, they can live on fresh air, I presume.
I suspect that Badenoch has -probably- missed out on the final two now. Slight chance she squeezes in at the expense of Cleverly / Tugendhat.
This one might be a good contest to lose though.
I have posted before that imho she's not yet ready for prime time. Maybe yesterday confirm this.
Lose gracefully now and be available in two years when Jenrick is ousted.
FWIW I think she'd be an interesting LOTO but she wont lead them back to office.
Badenoch is 44 years old and acts like a not particularly mature teenager. When do you think she will be ready for prime time?
I do agree assumptions behind policies should be challenged and changed when they don't deliver the best balance of outcomes. There's a good example of that with Winter Fuel Payment. Maternity pay needs to balance costs for business against making childcare and employment work for mothers.
Jeez pass me the sick bag . He really is a moron .
They'll elected Jenrick this month and he'll be out in two years.
I guess they have to go through this stage before neo-Cameron arrives in early 2030s to lead them back to the centre ground and to office.
Maybe it will be the actual Cameron?
That depends what happens to Reform. If they continue to gain votes, and pick up some decent council wins or a Westminster byelection, then the next leader after Jenrick might be further to the right.
I think Jenrick will make it to the next election. He might be a thoroughly lightweight, faux culture warrior type with a few shadows hanging over his past conduct, but he speaks fluently and doesn't seem as incompetent at the political game as everyone seems to assume.
If I am right and Jenrick goes in two years (and incidentally Seldon wrote a piece yesterday saying he would only last two years) then they may well pick someone more to the radical right in order to take on Reform. Still likely to lose in 2028 and then they might start thinking about the centre ground again.
But I may well be wrong and @Leon right - England, like rest of europe, about to embrace the radical right and anti-migration populism. Certainly if Labour continue to make a total horlicks of everything they touch then that may well be on the cards.
It is certainly not impossible the next general election could be a hung parliament with Jenrick forming a coalition government with Farage and Reform. More likely though would be a Labour minority government with LD support
Forget any ideas of a coalition with Reform.
A rabble of malcontents is incapable of doing any form of governing.
Any attempt would fall apart quicker that the Truss government.
If Badenoch or Jenrick are elected Tory leader a Reform and Tory deal is very likely, if Tugendhat or Cleverly are elected it isn't. Regardless of what such a government may look like
Then you should be praying for Ms Enoch or Jenrique
Hampshire have signed a deal with Delhi Capitals co-owners the GMR Group to finalise a takeover of the County Championship club.
The agreement - which has been ratified by the England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB) - makes Hampshire the first county to be owned by an overseas franchise. GMR - which has wholly or jointly-owned Indian Premier League side Capitals since the IPL's inception in 2008 - initially agreed the deal for the Southampton-based club a year ago.
The parties have agreed a "phased acquisition" which will see GMR take an immediate majority stake and aim to complete a 100% takeover in the next two years.
Alcohol prices up in Scotland today due to MUP up to 65p
Well done SNP, a winning policy. Even though alcohol related deaths increased when they promised the introduction of MUP would see them fall the policy is a winner as its advocates have said.
Doesn't higher supermarket alcohol prices in Scotland mean that the supermarkets can keep their prices lower in England.
IIRC wine prices haven't increased for over a decade (if you use the regular 25% discount for six) and its not difficult to buy 500ml beer for £1.
The minimum alcohol price increase won’t affect the price of a decent bottle of wine, or a pint of beer in the pub, which, hopefully, will encourage people to go to the pub instead of drinking at home. I’m not bothered if it makes multipacks of piss like Tennents or Bud Lite dearer. The initial minimum price law practically wiped out sales of stuff like White Lightning in Scotland. I don’t see that as a bad thing. Where I disagree with the policy is that the supermarkets benefit from the higher margins, not the Government.
Look at how benzo (valium and related drugs) use - and deaths from said drugs - rocketed in Scotland in the aftermath of minimum unit pricing.
A £2.50 can of spesh, or a 20p knock off pill.
Plus, as they both affect the same receptors in the brain, they potentiate each other, i.e. you can have one 20p pill and it will make the effects of a single can £2.50 can much stronger.
Comments
I guess they have to go through this stage before neo-Cameron arrives in early 2030s to lead them back to the centre ground and to office.
Maybe it will be the actual Cameron?
Expect a flurry of similar virtue signalling by the two finalists over the next month.
For an example of a culture bound interpretation (I am not sure whether Robinson embraces this one), I'd point to the modern evangelical movements who try to treat the Bible as some sort of document of literal historical evidence, which is not what it is, and end up with all sorts of resulting strange assessments.
One interesting observation on this from an Anglican Bishop I once heard was that all three of the main recognised traditions in the CofE, ie anglo-catholic, anglican evangelical and liberal, were formed partly as responses to the enlightenment, and so it was to be expected that they would evolve and change in significant ways, as the basis of our society's culture moved from modernism to post-modernism to "whatever comes after that". This was Bishop Graham Cray in 1991 (then he was a vicar), and speaking of a period of cultural change from ~1975 to ~2025. He was always interesting in that he did much of his reflection on culture though the medium of rock music.
But I don't think many of us are up for too much theology on a Monday morning
https://x.com/peston/status/1840481467517788371?s=61&t=LYVEHh2mqFy1oUJAdCfe-Q
Lose gracefully now and be available in two years when Jenrick is ousted.
FWIW I think she'd be an interesting LOTO but she wont lead them back to office.
I think Jenrick will make it to the next election. He might be a thoroughly lightweight, faux culture warrior type with a few shadows hanging over his past conduct, but he speaks fluently and doesn't seem as incompetent at the political game as everyone seems to assume.
We can dream and every conservative should have the same objective
Good post
Picked up from the Twitter thread posted earlier.
https://x.com/photoframd/status/1840422575387611322
And the betrayal of students.
The LibDems really are a disgrace.
I'm probably more sympathetic to Israel than many. But that's just stupid.
But I may well be wrong and @Leon right - England, like rest of europe, about to embrace the radical right and anti-migration populism. Certainly if Labour continue to make a total horlicks of everything they touch then that may well be on the cards.
IIRC wine prices haven't increased for over a decade (if you use the regular 25% discount for six) and its not difficult to buy 500ml beer for £1.
Possible that small boat crossings decline too, as it doesn't seem to have a particularly big summer in the Med this year so the pipeline for next summer might be down. Certainly the numbers in the latter part of this season have been substantially down on earlier in the year. I doubt that has anything to do with the change of government, but it's optically convenient.
Question is whether anti-elite populism keeps surging regardless. It's not all about immigration after all. Partly that is in Labour's gift: they need to give people hope and a bit of optimism.
Are those in Britain who display the Ukrainian flag performative twats? Or does that only apply if you have somewhat more equivocal feelings to a given alliance.
A rabble of malcontents is incapable of doing any form of governing.
Any attempt would fall apart quicker that the Truss government.
1) Jenrick's vote among MPs collapses for some reason (myserious-donation-gate) - final two then becomes Kemi+ one other, and she wins the membership.
2) Cleverly/Tugendhat MP supporters really, really want to stop a Jenrick leadership and move to her to create a Kemi-Jenrick final two in the expectation that the membership will vote for her over Jenrick.
I would place both in the category of 'possible but not likely'.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pg4Z1M_GjhQ
You clearly know which side they’re on, but they do a reasonable job of parodying everyone.
Boiling it down to 2 or 3 (edit: or 4) sentences, imo the phrase "preaching the bible" is malformed. Anyone only ever preaches their opinions about the bible, and their conclusions from their preparation, which are a result of experience, study, personal history and reflection in a particular context. It then goes to the audience to reflect on that for themselves.
"Preaching the bible" is an over-assertion of ownership and personal authority, which is not how it is.
I very much doubt Farage will be around in 5 years but even if he is we are likely to remain a deeply divided and divisive country
Badenoch car crash maternity comments, followed by the equally absurd comments by Jenrick about the Star of David should make every decent conservative recoil at the thought of either leading the party
NigelB is not the twat here. It's you.
(Apologies for the long link)
But honestly what a set of lightweights.
It looks like being a tightly fought contest between Jenrick and Badenoch as to which can self-sabotage their support among the MPs and lose the nomination.
Her comment that basically women had more babies before maternity pay was crass and shows she's not ready for LOTO but I don't think it was that utterly bad.
It might have been unwise in the middle of a contest but given the profile of the membership I doubt it.
Good luck with that warm glow. Let's hope you're as tolerant of those who get a buzz from the Palestinian flag being flown.
A £2.50 can of spesh, or a 20p knock off pill.
Plus, as they both affect the same receptors in the brain, they potentiate each other, i.e. you can have one 20p pill and it will make the effects of a single can £2.50 can much stronger.
Source: https://www.thetimes.com/uk/scotland/article/minimum-alcohol-pricing-has-driven-people-to-street-drugs-say-experts-8t5z8tsf9
In my lifetime the middle class has both got much larger, along with its expectations, and also has shifted from relying on one (male) income to two. Maternity pay + maternity employment rights is essential to that new structure.
A deeply held conservatism may want to shift the middle class back to the 1950s/1960s single income approach. A remarkable number of families would rather like it. It isn't going to happen. Which means that Kemi's intervention is superficial nonsense, compounded by saying it and then denying it had been said.
The government has the ability to influence all of those. Actually influencing the number of irregular arrivals is the hardest bit, but everything else - legal migration, backlog, housing provision etc - is within the gift of national or local government.
In all those nations though the Liberals are right of where the LDs want to be, certainly most of them weren't keen on being in governnment with Cameron let alone Farage.
In France by contrast Macron's liberal party has now formed a government with Barnier and the Conservatives, in Austria it looks like the centre right and social democrats and greens and liberals will do a deal to keep out the far right Freedom party. In Canada Trudeau's Liberals and the social democratic NDP are in government to keep out Poilievre's populist right Conservatives (though Polievre is more centre right than far right, emphasising new homes and economic growth more than immigration cuts).
2 Is not happening, the One Nation wing see Jenrick and Badenoch as 2 cheeks of the same arse
A few calmer less stormy days coming up in the channel though, so we'll see how the end of the season plays out. It will be helpful statistically for them if they can show numbers are down year on year since the election.
On flags, drastic reduction in Ukranian flags displayed around Berlin from 2 years ago, I think I only spotted a couple this time.
Seems an odd and random subject to raise in the middle of a leadership campaign? Perhaps she doesn't really want to become LOTO?
It was a funny and weird presentation of the "Most Read" but you and Nige are having some kind of special moment about it. Good luck to you both.
Kemi was Minister for Women and LibDem policy is to double maternity pay (and this was in their July manifesto) which is probably why Kemi had it on her mind.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pg4Z1M_GjhQ
Most (not all) using these expressions identify as evangelical. Modern evangelicalism, when analysed, is a remarkable coalition between at least three incompatible theologies.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/09/30/pensioner-turned-away-gp-surgery-told-already-dead/
"Pensioner turned away from GP surgery by staff who told him he was ‘deceased’
Alan Rocket, who is in remission from bowel cancer and was trying to register at his doctor’s, said being told he was ‘dead’ was upsetting"
Female warehouse workers, Tesco till manners and cleaners probably don't
I reckon this ugly idea is going to enter the mainstream of politics, via the rise of the Far Right parties across Europe. eg Austria yesterday. Once these parties start actually winning elections, the dam breaks
There was a discussion here last week about a bank lending 6x joint salary, which with current interest rates would result in mortgage payments of half their combined take-home pay.
Cleverly Tugendhat = hello wilderness
Nice one.
Question for Tories is: would she grow in the job, gain some wisdom, or be a cute black William Hague (elevated far too young)
I suspect the latter, unfortunately. But if the Tories fancy a gamble, that might just pay off: she’s the one
If anything goes slightly wrong, they can live on fresh air, I presume.
I do agree assumptions behind policies should be challenged and changed when they don't deliver the best balance of outcomes. There's a good example of that with Winter Fuel Payment. Maternity pay needs to balance costs for business against making childcare and employment work for mothers.
Neutralising Reform is essential for the Tories
2025 witll be a bloodbath because they were last contested in 2021 at peak Boris.
But 2026 is where the new Tory leader needs to show promise.
Labour will be unpopular then and if Reform, the Lib Dems, and Greens profit rather than the Tories then questions will be asked.
Everyone focuses on the Reform surge but not the Lib Dem problem the Tories face.
The agreement - which has been ratified by the England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB) - makes Hampshire the first county to be owned by an overseas franchise.
GMR - which has wholly or jointly-owned Indian Premier League side Capitals since the IPL's inception in 2008 - initially agreed the deal for the Southampton-based club a year ago.
The parties have agreed a "phased acquisition" which will see GMR take an immediate majority stake and aim to complete a 100% takeover in the next two years.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/cricket/articles/cqjrypy1e2ko
Street benzo is taken alongside opiods (Heroin) which is a significant cause of deaths.
No doubt minimum pricing has an effect but its a simplistic argument.
Drug deaths in Scotland have been decades in the making.
Poverty, homelessness, trauma, culture.
The biggest cohorts for deaths are 50-59 and 60 and above.
More than 1/2 of problem drug users are over 35.
People who started using in the 80's & 90's and haven't stopped. No surprise their life expectancy isn't like mine or yours
Until now, I have refrained from intervening in the upcoming leadership election — but the time has come.
[THREAD]
Kemi Badenoch has spent weeks positioning herself as tough on immigration.
But in 2018 she campaigned in Parliament to increase legal migration, and was the biggest champion for students bringing in dependents.
I don't believe a word that she says on anything.
Formerly a man that believed in nothing, Robert Jenrick now pitches himself as the great hardliner.
This is almost certainly done for political gain and not out of conviction. He will divide the party.
I doubt that Jenrick will last long if he wins.'
https://x.com/Nigel_Farage/status/1840432712332554701
https://x.com/Nigel_Farage/status/1840432714727543232
https://x.com/Nigel_Farage/status/1840432717147578636
https://x.com/Nigel_Farage/status/1840432720037732617