I would point though that even on this new Yougov poll it would still be the Tories second on seats and slightly up on the general election. As the over 100 Reform MPs would almost entirely be from gains in Labour held seats.
Oh well, that would be alright then. Only their second worst defeat since 1679. Jobs a good ‘un, knight her now.
In response to @Luckyguy1983 from the previous thread:
You said: 'we do not venerate the sacking of Rome or the more recent destruction of the Buddhas by the Taliban, we mourn these things.'
And I completely agree, but we are not comparing like with like here.
You are comparing individual objects to the hundreds of similar objects concentrated in a place to intimidate. Do you think it wrong that statues of Stalin or Hussein were toppled by the dozen? Would you have liked to see a statue of Hitler in every German square to this day? That is what was happening in the Jim Crow era and in that time to deliberately intimidate the black population. To put the fear of god into them by the 'superior' white population who enforced segregation.
I have no problem with statues of Stalin, Hussein, Hitler (although I am not aware there are any then or now) or Confederate memorials as they are important times in history, but the scale is important.
To black people in these towns in the South this is equivalent to statues of Hitler in every German town squares. It is important we remember and learn, but we don't have to ram it down the throats of innocent people daily.
Yeah, sorry, yesterday's link. Can't realistically see the Greens or the SLDs (even in their Cole-Hamilton comedy incarnation) associating themselves witn Reform. SLab otoh seem able to persuade themselves of anything.
It's a time of considerable turmoil and it seems to me that, after such a long time in government, the Conservatives should be focussing on what they truly believe. Sorting themselves out, as @Alanbrooke says.
And what would that be ? You'd get very different answers from (say) TSE, HYUFD, Casino and PtP.
The last decade has fragmented their coalition - and some of those fragments may permanently be lost to them.
Suella was on LBC yesterday doubling down on going full frontal Reform with a view to either a coalition or tacit mutual benefit arrangements. Personally, I would have thought that peels off the left flank to the LDs.
Where do people like Cameron, Osborne or May go on that scenario. A new “Coalition” party would become their natural home.
This is classic 'centrist' establishment thinking.
People want immigration brought under control. End of.
My point was more personal, I am not sure one nation Tories could cohabit comfortably with Farageet alone the followers of folks like Tommy Robinson.
Classic centrist establishment thinking = the platform that made the Conservatives electorally successful.
I find it bizarre that any conservative could disparage what made the party successful. An almost Corbynite point of view.
Neither Thatcher nor Boris were classic centrist establishment thinkers, even if Heath and Cameron and Major were (albeit Major had a non establishment background being neither public school nor Oxbridge educated).
Blair was more classic establishment thinker than Maggie and Johnson were as indeed is Starmer. Yet Johnson and Thatcher won 4/6 of the general election majorities the Conservatives won in the last 50 years while Starmer and Blair won 4/5 of the general election majorities Labour won in the last 50 years, only Wilson in Oct 1974 the exception.
Suggesting that while classic establishment thinking is what the median UK general election winner has, it is more a quality of Labour than Tory general election winners
It's a time of considerable turmoil and it seems to me that, after such a long time in government, the Conservatives should be focussing on what they truly believe. Sorting themselves out, as @Alanbrooke says.
And what would that be ? You'd get very different answers from (say) TSE, HYUFD, Casino and PtP.
The last decade has fragmented their coalition - and some of those fragments may permanently be lost to them.
That's interesting - are Ref UK Ltd more fissiparous than the current Conservative Party, or not?
We know about the Cons - the moderate end are weaker, and there are several different directions being pulled by others: Kemikaze vs BobbyG vs others vs Noises Off (all those ex-MPs have to do something)?
I also see that Liz Truss appeared alongside Nigel Farage at the launch of the Heartland Institute UK - perhaps we are going to see Tory Trumpists linking up with RefUK wannabe Respectables?
From Sunder Katwala's Bluesky Feed, Reform voters less favourable to Elon Musk than in November - good for Nigel probably. The biggest growth is in "unfavourable view of Musk" amongst Con and RefUK. L/LD were already at 80%+. Sunder has a whole Musk / Reform thread:
It's a time of considerable turmoil and it seems to me that, after such a long time in government, the Conservatives should be focussing on what they truly believe. Sorting themselves out, as @Alanbrooke says.
I think people know what the Conservatives believe. It is just they have spent 14 years not doing what they claim to believe, so why should the voters trust them?
2010 - 2015 were spent in coalition with the LibDems. Should they have spent those years doing Conservatve stuff?
Once you get to 2016, you have the political turmoil that dispatched Cameron and Osborne. Then May lingered in an ever weakened state because Parliament was deadlocked.
A deadlock broken by Boris winning in December 2019. But then you get to the start of 2020, and Covid - when the decision was taken by the government to max out the credit card protecting the private sector from destruction (and the massive overtime bill for the NHS).
Then funding lecky bills to mitigate the Cost of Living Crisis.
About the only time in those 14 years there was scope for a proper Conservative agenda was what Sunak and Hunt were trying to implement from 2022 onwards. Albeit, hideously boxed in by what had gone before.
That’s such a load of old cobblers. Cameron won the 2015 election. He was king of all he surveyed, he had it all in front of him and then proceeded to screw it up. An unforced error.
No one forced May to call a GE in 2017 and Boris brought himself down by being Boris. Truss had the opportunity to reset again, but blew it.
Cameron won in 2015 because the Conservative manifesto committed to "a straight in-out referendum on our membership of the European Union by the end of 2017". (Labour, in an echo of its Ming vase strategy of 2024, did not support this, but did commit to an EU membership referendum if any further powers were transferred to the European Union.)
How long would the King of All He Surveys have lasted if he had not delivered the Referendum?
Having a Referendum was voted for by the population in the 2015 General Election.
Leaving the EU was voted for by the population in 2016.
So a load of old cobblers backatcher....
Cameron wrote the manifesto. He could have taken a different route. He chose the timing and terms of the referendum. He could have bought off Boris and run a different campaign. His hubris got in the way.
He was not a passive consumer of events out of his control. This was his priority, enacted by him in the way he saw as most advantageous to him and his party. The fact he screwed up is irrelevant.
He had a huge opportunity to set his form of Conservatism up for years and blew it.
Last week Ukraine bombed Engels airbase in Russia, and it was on fire for a week with much of the fuel storage destroyed.
After six days of trying to contain the fires by the Russians, it got bombed again last night and the fires are once again raging.
The base is home to the long-range bomber fleet that has been devastating Ukraine, and the storage tanks are for the very rare and expensive fuel that these planes require. The base is now pretty much useless to the Russians.
For all intents and purposes, Russia now appears to have run out of air defences protecting military and key industrial sites. Various refineries, fuel storage, and weapons factories have been taken out in recent days, including a chemical factory that makes bombs and an electonics factory that repairs aircraft systems, both key to the war effort.
Still plenty of air defence around Putin's villas though, by all accounts...
It's a time of considerable turmoil and it seems to me that, after such a long time in government, the Conservatives should be focussing on what they truly believe. Sorting themselves out, as @Alanbrooke says.
I think people know what the Conservatives believe. It is just they have spent 14 years not doing what they claim to believe, so why should the voters trust them?
2010 - 2015 were spent in coalition with the LibDems. Should they have spent those years doing Conservatve stuff?
Once you get to 2016, you have the political turmoil that dispatched Cameron and Osborne. Then May lingered in an ever weakened state because Parliament was deadlocked.
A deadlock broken by Boris winning in December 2019. But then you get to the start of 2020, and Covid - when the decision was taken by the government to max out the credit card protecting the private sector from destruction (and the massive overtime bill for the NHS).
Then funding lecky bills to mitigate the Cost of Living Crisis.
About the only time in those 14 years there was scope for a proper Conservative agenda was what Sunak and Hunt were trying to implement from 2022 onwards. Albeit, hideously boxed in by what had gone before.
It was only their disastrous lockdown policy that even threatened the private sector, and showed that fundamentally the Tories were economically just the same as Labour. And if they're going to be that, we might as well have the genuine article.
I think any Tory leader would be struggling given the fundamentals are just so poor for them - the public aren’t listening to them and don’t like or trust them. So I cut Badenoch some slack. But it’s not unreasonable to criticise her either. She has not been incisive enough at PMQs, and she remains poor at message discipline. Maybe in time, if Labour’s unpopularity continues (and/or Reform implodes) she can start making a name for herself, but it hasn’t clicked yet.
I truly believe Reform are in a good position to start leading the polls. The fundamentals favour them. Their own greatest threat comes from themselves and whether Farage and co have the discipline and staying power to keep up momentum for another four years.
The big test is 2026. If Reform beat the Tories in Wales and Scotland and finish ahead of the Tories in vote share in the locals I think that could open the floodgates to a wider collapse in the Tory position, and Reform dominance of the opposition narrative all the way to 2028/9. At that point, the Tories are likely to be relegated to third or fourth party status.
Yet as the Yougov poll shows Kemi has largely held up the 2024 Tory voteshare, it is now Labour leaking more to Reform as well as the LDs and Greens
It's a time of considerable turmoil and it seems to me that, after such a long time in government, the Conservatives should be focussing on what they truly believe. Sorting themselves out, as @Alanbrooke says.
And what would that be ? You'd get very different answers from (say) TSE, HYUFD, Casino and PtP.
The last decade has fragmented their coalition - and some of those fragments may permanently be lost to them.
Shocked by the accusation that PtP is a Tory I always rather liked him. Or do you mean Cameron-era Tory, somewhat homeless since then?
It's a time of considerable turmoil and it seems to me that, after such a long time in government, the Conservatives should be focussing on what they truly believe. Sorting themselves out, as @Alanbrooke says.
And what would that be ? You'd get very different answers from (say) TSE, HYUFD, Casino and PtP.
The last decade has fragmented their coalition - and some of those fragments may permanently be lost to them.
Shocked by the accusation that PtP is a Tory I always rather liked him. Or do you mean Cameron-era Tory, somewhat homeless since then?
Are we confusing PtP with PfP (who is, or at least was, a Tory)?
So more than enough Unionist MSPs for a majority, blocking indyref2. So Swinney and SNP would be in office but Nats would not be in power
So you're saying if there's a pro indyref2 majority in Holyrood it goes ahead?
No but if we move from the current SNP and Green Nat majority to a SLab, Reform, SCon and LD majority poor Mr Swinney can't even ask No 10 and Westminster 'please sir, can we have one more' let alone be refused it
Kemi gets a 3.5 out of 10 so far, mainly earning those points for having the good sense to make an intervention that we shan't discuss.
Everything else - shadow cabinet appointments, sorting out CCHQ (she hasn't), policy (laughs bitterly), PMQs and handling the media (including social media) - has all been preeeetty bad.
On the other hand Reform has risen in the polls by seemingly doing almost nothing. Farage and the other MPs have had about the same amount of airtime since the election as the Lib Dems, ie hardly any. I’d put Farage’s parties’ popularity in the past down to him being an ever-present charismatic feature of the political landscape, but that doesn’t explain the post-election rise. It feels much more like an automatic NOTA vote.
I always found the Greens’ stubbornly high support in the absence of any media coverage or visible activity at all quite remarkable, but I sense Reform is benefiting from the same phenomenon.
These are all reasons I expect the Tories to do better vis a vis Reform in real elections for the foreseeable future. They’ve been outperforming polling in local by-elections.
At some point, the media is going to stop giving Reform an easy time and will start asking questions about what Reform in power looks like. Who's the Chancellor, the Foreign Secretary, the Education Secretary and so on? Farage cannot do it all,. And you would not want Lee Anderson near any of it. So who gets the jobs?
You might not want 30p near anything, but a lot of people would prefer him to the big party choices. He connects with people because he addresses their issues.
You're right and this is something most of the people, especially the posh boy fraternity, here won't get or ever get.
Because they don't like someone or their politics they automatically assume no one should.
Be better to understand the appeal of the likes of Lee Anderson than just scoff but PB is what it is.
Lee Anderson is the middle class, right wing metropolitan's view of the working class everyman.
His political journey is interesting. You can’t pull that off without some talent. It’s going to be interesting to see where he goes next.
If I had to put money on it, retirement.
Failing that, back to the Conservatives.
Back to Labour? Then shock leadership win and a reverse-Blair transformation to 'Old Labour'
I would point though that even on this new Yougov poll it would still be the Tories second on seats and slightly up on the general election. As the over 100 Reform MPs would almost entirely be from gains in Labour held seats.
Oh well, that would be alright then. Only their second worst defeat since 1679. Jobs a good ‘un, knight her now.
Reform have to overtake the Tories on seats at this next GE though. Only then under FPTP is a Tory and Reform merger a likely ultimate outcome and only then does Farage become Leader of the Opposition.
If not even if Kemi loses the next GE the Tories could then pick a leader like Jenrick (or even Rees Mogg if he wins back a North Somerset seat) who would be more likely to squeeze back the Reform vote after the relatively more centrist Sunak and Badenoch both failed to beat Labour and Reform grew at their expense
It's a time of considerable turmoil and it seems to me that, after such a long time in government, the Conservatives should be focussing on what they truly believe. Sorting themselves out, as @Alanbrooke says.
And what would that be ? You'd get very different answers from (say) TSE, HYUFD, Casino and PtP.
The last decade has fragmented their coalition - and some of those fragments may permanently be lost to them.
Shocked by the accusation that PtP is a Tory I always rather liked him. Or do you mean Cameron-era Tory, somewhat homeless since then?
Are we confusing PtP with PfP (who is, or at least was, a Tory)?
Good question. I also like PfP but have much less an idea of his politics than I thought I had of PtP's.
It's a time of considerable turmoil and it seems to me that, after such a long time in government, the Conservatives should be focussing on what they truly believe. Sorting themselves out, as @Alanbrooke says.
And what would that be ? You'd get very different answers from (say) TSE, HYUFD, Casino and PtP.
The last decade has fragmented their coalition - and some of those fragments may permanently be lost to them.
Suella was on LBC yesterday doubling down on going full frontal Reform with a view to either a coalition or tacit mutual benefit arrangements. Personally, I would have thought that peels off the left flank to the LDs.
Where do people like Cameron, Osborne or May go on that scenario. A new “Coalition” party would become their natural home.
This is classic 'centrist' establishment thinking.
People want immigration brought under control. End of.
But it's not end of, is it? They also want functioning public services, more housing, people to look after their elderly relatives and so on. So what does immigration control actually look like in those circumstances?
None of that is incompatible with much lower immigration. It does however imply some redistribution in how various groups in society do. Particularly at the expense of comfortably off over 50s. But in favour of the lowest paid.
It is in the short term at least. Construction, care and health each have job vacancies in the hundreds of thousands. If we want to offer more construction, and better care we need immigration.
Longer term you could encourage more people into those jobs by paying more (in the case of care that would be tax rises) but it is not going to happen overnight and it won't be at all easy. Personally to do a care type job I would want to be paid at least double what I can get elsewhere, I doubt that is unusual for many Brits.
Remember this - the Whitehall machine is broken. Whatever ideas Labour had have been crushed by the Treasury. Though the “Rachael from Accounts” jibe is outrageously misogynistic, she has been captured and broken by economic orthodoxy. Reform offering up people who basically say “this is stupidity, here’s what we should do” is not the negative you may think.
Which brings us back to Danny Fink's column
Voters think the Government is not working for them
They will vote for people promising to smash it
Unfortunately that's mob mentality. The same people who vote for trashing the system are the ones who try and burn down a hotel housing migrants
Of course in the aftermath they also want the fire brigade, ambulances and hospitals...
This is not quite right. People are not moving to Reform in order to smash stuff (though of course it might). The mass of voters have no interest in revolution. People like a quiet life. They neither know nor care how Whitehall works. Nor should they, it isn't their job. They want social democracy delivered with boring competence, and for many years now that has not been achieved. Reform's promise in fact is to do just that.
Note with care Farage distancing himself from trouble makers. Though he needs to go further.
And this is exactly where Labour had the opportunity and are fluffing it.
People are not stupid. They know things aren’t working the way they want or need them to. Some of this is deeply structural and relates to the way we have been governed at least since the 1980s and in some cases far earlier. Attlee, Thatcher and Blair, who are probably the biggest architects of our current system, did much right but a lot of their ideas are now outdated in the circumstances we find ourselves in, 25 years into the 21st Century.
Unfortunately our political classes continue to maintain that a lot of these structures and models are sacred cows and untouchable. The problem is that by delaying reform the eventual solutions to “fix” the problems will become much more extreme.
Last week Ukraine bombed Engels airbase in Russia, and it was on fire for a week with much of the fuel storage destroyed.
After six days of trying to contain the fires by the Russians, it got bombed again last night and the fires are once again raging.
The base is home to the long-range bomber fleet that has been devastating Ukraine, and the storage tanks are for the very rare and expensive fuel that these planes require. The base is now pretty much useless to the Russians.
For all intents and purposes, Russia now appears to have run out of air defences protecting military and key industrial sites. Various refineries, fuel storage, and weapons factories have been taken out in recent days, including a chemical factory that makes bombs and an electonics factory that repairs aircraft systems, both key to the war effort.
Still plenty of air defence around Putin's villas though, by all accounts...
He only has to cling on until 12 noon on Monday.
You mean that Putin is relying on Trump doing what he promised?
Kemi gets a 3.5 out of 10 so far, mainly earning those points for having the good sense to make an intervention that we shan't discuss.
Everything else - shadow cabinet appointments, sorting out CCHQ (she hasn't), policy (laughs bitterly), PMQs and handling the media (including social media) - has all been preeeetty bad.
On the other hand Reform has risen in the polls by seemingly doing almost nothing. Farage and the other MPs have had about the same amount of airtime since the election as the Lib Dems, ie hardly any. I’d put Farage’s parties’ popularity in the past down to him being an ever-present charismatic feature of the political landscape, but that doesn’t explain the post-election rise. It feels much more like an automatic NOTA vote.
I always found the Greens’ stubbornly high support in the absence of any media coverage or visible activity at all quite remarkable, but I sense Reform is benefiting from the same phenomenon.
These are all reasons I expect the Tories to do better vis a vis Reform in real elections for the foreseeable future. They’ve been outperforming polling in local by-elections.
At some point, the media is going to stop giving Reform an easy time and will start asking questions about what Reform in power looks like. Who's the Chancellor, the Foreign Secretary, the Education Secretary and so on? Farage cannot do it all,. And you would not want Lee Anderson near any of it. So who gets the jobs?
You might not want 30p near anything, but a lot of people would prefer him to the big party choices. He connects with people because he addresses their issues.
You're right and this is something most of the people, especially the posh boy fraternity, here won't get or ever get.
Because they don't like someone or their politics they automatically assume no one should.
Be better to understand the appeal of the likes of Lee Anderson than just scoff but PB is what it is.
Lee Anderson is the middle class, right wing metropolitan's view of the working class everyman.
His political journey is interesting. You can’t pull that off without some talent. It’s going to be interesting to see where he goes next.
If I had to put money on it, retirement.
Failing that, back to the Conservatives.
Back to Labour? Then shock leadership win and a reverse-Blair transformation to 'Old Labour'
@bigjohnowls would be conflicted - explode with horror? or explode with joy at being proved right?
I can’t decide whether Trump and his people are just scared of Russia - it’s the only country they never criticise or troll - or actively supportive. I’m starting to incline towards the latter.
Trump is a fan of all brutal dictators. Role models...
If Trump wanna be Putin's lover, he gotta get with his friend (Xi).
Trump has nominated some China hawks to his administration, but has made positive remarks about Xi in recent days.
Trump is about to impose massive extra tariffs on Chinese imports
In response to @Luckyguy1983 from the previous thread:
You said: 'we do not venerate the sacking of Rome or the more recent destruction of the Buddhas by the Taliban, we mourn these things.'
And I completely agree, but we are not comparing like with like here.
You are comparing individual objects to the hundreds of similar objects concentrated in a place to intimidate. Do you think it wrong that statues of Stalin or Hussein were toppled by the dozen? Would you have liked to see a statue of Hitler in every German square to this day? That is what was happening in the Jim Crow era and in that time to deliberately intimidate the black population. To put the fear of god into them by the 'superior' white population who enforced segregation.
I have no problem with statues of Stalin, Hussein, Hitler (although I am not aware there are any then or now) or Confederate memorials as they are important times in history, but the scale is important.
To black people in these towns in the South this is equivalent to statues of Hitler in every German town squares. It is important we remember and learn, but we don't have to ram it down the throats of innocent people daily.
An interesting discussion here. The German approach - a museum of the out-of-favour - is worth noting.
Last week Ukraine bombed Engels airbase in Russia, and it was on fire for a week with much of the fuel storage destroyed.
After six days of trying to contain the fires by the Russians, it got bombed again last night and the fires are once again raging.
The base is home to the long-range bomber fleet that has been devastating Ukraine, and the storage tanks are for the very rare and expensive fuel that these planes require. The base is now pretty much useless to the Russians.
For all intents and purposes, Russia now appears to have run out of air defences protecting military and key industrial sites. Various refineries, fuel storage, and weapons factories have been taken out in recent days, including a chemical factory that makes bombs and an electonics factory that repairs aircraft systems, both key to the war effort.
Still plenty of air defence around Putin's villas though, by all accounts...
He only has to cling on until 12 noon on Monday.
You mean that Putin is relying on Trump doing what he promised?
I can see a small flaw in that plan.
LOL. Indeed. He has already changed 'solved in 24 hours' to 'solved in first 100 days'.
The evidence from abroad is that centre right voters shift towards the insurgent right wing party, once it leads consistently, rather than shifting leftwards.
Never Trump Republicans amounted to very little; Les Republicans now poll one sixth of the vote of RN; those Prog Cons who refused to merge with Reform in Canada got a derisory vote; the once-dominant Dutch CDA are now a fringe party.
So, if Reform become dominant on the Right, most Conservatives in “nice Britain” will back them.
Trump and Putin son may meet I think Trump has said. Presumably that will have to be in Russia or somewhere else like NK Putin wont be arrested on entry?
This is the problem with university free speech. How do universities guarantee it against this sort of mass protest?
Is that a free speech problem or a public order problem? The RAF were going about their lawful business having obtained the necessary consents and should be allowed to do so unimpeded.
Remember this - the Whitehall machine is broken. Whatever ideas Labour had have been crushed by the Treasury. Though the “Rachael from Accounts” jibe is outrageously misogynistic, she has been captured and broken by economic orthodoxy. Reform offering up people who basically say “this is stupidity, here’s what we should do” is not the negative you may think.
Which brings us back to Danny Fink's column
Voters think the Government is not working for them
They will vote for people promising to smash it
Unfortunately that's mob mentality. The same people who vote for trashing the system are the ones who try and burn down a hotel housing migrants
Of course in the aftermath they also want the fire brigade, ambulances and hospitals...
This is not quite right. People are not moving to Reform in order to smash stuff (though of course it might). The mass of voters have no interest in revolution. People like a quiet life. They neither know nor care how Whitehall works. Nor should they, it isn't their job. They want social democracy delivered with boring competence, and for many years now that has not been achieved. Reform's promise in fact is to do just that.
Note with care Farage distancing himself from trouble makers. Though he needs to go further.
And this is exactly where Labour had the opportunity and are fluffing it.
People are not stupid. They know things aren’t working the way they want or need them to. Some of this is deeply structural and relates to the way we have been governed at least since the 1980s and in some cases far earlier. Attlee, Thatcher and Blair, who are probably the biggest architects of our current system, did much right but a lot of their ideas are now outdated in the circumstances we find ourselves in, 25 years into the 21st Century.
Unfortunately our political classes continue to maintain that a lot of these structures and models are sacred cows and untouchable. The problem is that by delaying reform the eventual solutions to “fix” the problems will become much more extreme.
For example, if the EU vote had been held at the start of the Coalition government, it would have been an easy win.
As I keep saying to the NIMBY types I know - accept planning changes and building now. Otherwise the FuckTheGreenBeltAndEspeciallyTheNewts Party will get power. Primary legislation in the Commons for whole cities.
So more than enough Unionist MSPs for a majority, blocking indyref2. So Swinney and SNP would be in office but Nats would not be in power
So you're saying if there's a pro indyref2 majority in Holyrood it goes ahead?
No but if we move from the current SNP and Green Nat majority to a SLab, Reform, SCon and LD majority poor Mr Swinney can't even ask No 10 and Westminster 'please sir, can we have one more' let alone be refused it
Thanks for confirming that Holyrood arithmetic makes precisely zero difference to indyref2. As a Tory you'll be familiar with the concept of (electoral) impotence when it comes to Scotland.
This is the problem with university free speech. How do universities guarantee it against this sort of mass protest?
Is that a free speech problem or a public order problem? The RAF were going about their lawful business having obtained the necessary consents and should be allowed to do so unimpeded.
Surely the protestors were the ones exercising free speech.
It's a time of considerable turmoil and it seems to me that, after such a long time in government, the Conservatives should be focussing on what they truly believe. Sorting themselves out, as @Alanbrooke says.
And what would that be ? You'd get very different answers from (say) TSE, HYUFD, Casino and PtP.
The last decade has fragmented their coalition - and some of those fragments may permanently be lost to them.
Shocked by the accusation that PtP is a Tory I always rather liked him. Or do you mean Cameron-era Tory, somewhat homeless since then?
Are we confusing PtP with PfP (who is, or at least was, a Tory)?
Quite possibly. They were just illustrative examples rather than any kind of pointed barb.
My general point was that all parties - and doubly so under FPTP - are necessarily coalitions. Labour saw off the comparable challenge to their coalition from the (then) SDP back in the 80s.
It was potentially existential to their position as one of the governing duopoly. The same is now true if the Tories and Reform.
So more than enough Unionist MSPs for a majority, blocking indyref2. So Swinney and SNP would be in office but Nats would not be in power
Somebody would have to abstain or support an SNP budget otherwise there would be a second election, where an outright SNP majority would be the best way to break the deadlock.
This is the problem with university free speech. How do universities guarantee it against this sort of mass protest?
Is that a free speech problem or a public order problem? The RAF were going about their lawful business having obtained the necessary consents and should be allowed to do so unimpeded.
Surely the protestors were the ones exercising free speech.
By trying to prevent the RAF from exercising free speech.
It's a time of considerable turmoil and it seems to me that, after such a long time in government, the Conservatives should be focussing on what they truly believe. Sorting themselves out, as @Alanbrooke says.
And what would that be ? You'd get very different answers from (say) TSE, HYUFD, Casino and PtP.
The last decade has fragmented their coalition - and some of those fragments may permanently be lost to them.
Suella was on LBC yesterday doubling down on going full frontal Reform with a view to either a coalition or tacit mutual benefit arrangements. Personally, I would have thought that peels off the left flank to the LDs.
Where do people like Cameron, Osborne or May go on that scenario. A new “Coalition” party would become their natural home.
This is classic 'centrist' establishment thinking.
People want immigration brought under control. End of.
But it's not end of, is it? They also want functioning public services, more housing, people to look after their elderly relatives and so on. So what does immigration control actually look like in those circumstances?
None of that is incompatible with much lower immigration. It does however imply some redistribution in how various groups in society do. Particularly at the expense of comfortably off over 50s. But in favour of the lowest paid.
It is in the short term at least. Construction, care and health each have job vacancies in the hundreds of thousands. If we want to offer more construction, and better care we need immigration.
Longer term you could encourage more people into those jobs by paying more (in the case of care that would be tax rises) but it is not going to happen overnight and it won't be at all easy. Personally to do a care type job I would want to be paid at least double what I can get elsewhere, I doubt that is unusual for many Brits.
80%+ of people working in care homes are native to the UK.
The belief that "Brits are too posh to do the jobs that Proper Immigrants will do" reminds me of Oriental Lassitude. The belief, by pith helmeted men in shorts, sipping G&T, that the locals in Thailand, Malaysia etc were irredeemably lazy.
To be fair, a large part of the belief that Brits Do Not Work comes from opinion formers being in Central London, where the demographics & economics mean that much of the bottom end work *is* done by recent immigrants.
In response to @Luckyguy1983 from the previous thread:
You said: 'we do not venerate the sacking of Rome or the more recent destruction of the Buddhas by the Taliban, we mourn these things.'
And I completely agree, but we are not comparing like with like here.
You are comparing individual objects to the hundreds of similar objects concentrated in a place to intimidate. Do you think it wrong that statues of Stalin or Hussein were toppled by the dozen? Would you have liked to see a statue of Hitler in every German square to this day? That is what was happening in the Jim Crow era and in that time to deliberately intimidate the black population. To put the fear of god into them by the 'superior' white population who enforced segregation.
I have no problem with statues of Stalin, Hussein, Hitler (although I am not aware there are any then or now) or Confederate memorials as they are important times in history, but the scale is important.
To black people in these towns in the South this is equivalent to statues of Hitler in every German town squares. It is important we remember and learn, but we don't have to ram it down the throats of innocent people daily.
An interesting discussion here. The German approach - a museum of the out-of-favour - is worth noting.
This is the problem with university free speech. How do universities guarantee it against this sort of mass protest?
Is that a free speech problem or a public order problem? The RAF were going about their lawful business having obtained the necessary consents and should be allowed to do so unimpeded.
Surely the protestors were the ones exercising free speech.
By trying to prevent the RAF from exercising free speech.
And it looks like the RAF are busy trying to prevent free speech too.
It's a time of considerable turmoil and it seems to me that, after such a long time in government, the Conservatives should be focussing on what they truly believe. Sorting themselves out, as @Alanbrooke says.
And what would that be ? You'd get very different answers from (say) TSE, HYUFD, Casino and PtP.
The last decade has fragmented their coalition - and some of those fragments may permanently be lost to them.
Suella was on LBC yesterday doubling down on going full frontal Reform with a view to either a coalition or tacit mutual benefit arrangements. Personally, I would have thought that peels off the left flank to the LDs.
Where do people like Cameron, Osborne or May go on that scenario. A new “Coalition” party would become their natural home.
It's a time of considerable turmoil and it seems to me that, after such a long time in government, the Conservatives should be focussing on what they truly believe. Sorting themselves out, as @Alanbrooke says.
And what would that be ? You'd get very different answers from (say) TSE, HYUFD, Casino and PtP.
The last decade has fragmented their coalition - and some of those fragments may permanently be lost to them.
Suella was on LBC yesterday doubling down on going full frontal Reform with a view to either a coalition or tacit mutual benefit arrangements. Personally, I would have thought that peels off the left flank to the LDs.
Where do people like Cameron, Osborne or May go on that scenario. A new “Coalition” party would become their natural home.
This is classic 'centrist' establishment thinking.
People want immigration brought under control. End of.
My point was more personal, I am not sure one nation Tories could cohabit comfortably with Farageet alone the followers of folks like Tommy Robinson.
Classic centrist establishment thinking = the platform that made the Conservatives electorally successful.
I find it bizarre that any conservative could disparage what made the party successful. An almost Corbynite point of view.
What made the Conservative Party so unsuccessful at the last election, and dissolved its core coalition, was a failure to control immigration.
This is the problem with university free speech. How do universities guarantee it against this sort of mass protest?
Is that a free speech problem or a public order problem? The RAF were going about their lawful business having obtained the necessary consents and should be allowed to do so unimpeded.
That sounds rather like a restriction on free speech (or protest) for the students.
I'm deeply suspicious of these free speech laws. I think they'll do more to curtail it than to "free" it, and there will be a *surprised Pikachu* moment when it's used against the far right to close down meeting or something.
(See also all the stuff used again JSO, which curiously hasn't been used against the farmer protests - yet).
It's a time of considerable turmoil and it seems to me that, after such a long time in government, the Conservatives should be focussing on what they truly believe. Sorting themselves out, as @Alanbrooke says.
And what would that be ? You'd get very different answers from (say) TSE, HYUFD, Casino and PtP.
The last decade has fragmented their coalition - and some of those fragments may permanently be lost to them.
Suella was on LBC yesterday doubling down on going full frontal Reform with a view to either a coalition or tacit mutual benefit arrangements. Personally, I would have thought that peels off the left flank to the LDs.
Where do people like Cameron, Osborne or May go on that scenario. A new “Coalition” party would become their natural home.
This is classic 'centrist' establishment thinking.
People want immigration brought under control. End of.
But it's not end of, is it? They also want functioning public services, more housing, people to look after their elderly relatives and so on. So what does immigration control actually look like in those circumstances?
None of that is incompatible with much lower immigration. It does however imply some redistribution in how various groups in society do. Particularly at the expense of comfortably off over 50s. But in favour of the lowest paid.
It is in the short term at least. Construction, care and health each have job vacancies in the hundreds of thousands. If we want to offer more construction, and better care we need immigration.
Longer term you could encourage more people into those jobs by paying more (in the case of care that would be tax rises) but it is not going to happen overnight and it won't be at all easy. Personally to do a care type job I would want to be paid at least double what I can get elsewhere, I doubt that is unusual for many Brits.
80%+ of people working in care homes are native to the UK.
The belief that "Brits are too posh to do the jobs that Proper Immigrants will do" reminds me of Oriental Lassitude. The belief, by pith helmeted men in shorts, sipping G&T, that the locals in Thailand, Malaysia etc were irredeemably lazy.
To be fair, a large part of the belief that Brits Do Not Work comes from opinion formers being in Central London, where the demographics & economics mean that much of the bottom end work *is* done by recent immigrants.
So at current rates of pay and vacancies we are about 30% short in attracting enough domestic workers into thos jobs nationally, and that will be higher in London?
This is the problem with university free speech. How do universities guarantee it against this sort of mass protest?
Is that a free speech problem or a public order problem? The RAF were going about their lawful business having obtained the necessary consents and should be allowed to do so unimpeded.
Surely the protestors were the ones exercising free speech.
What would you feel if a bunch of Netanyahu supporters forced pro-palestinians to close their stall?
Would you be suggesting that was free speech?
The classic philosophical boundaries on free speech are the point where it shuts down the speech of others. That goes back to the ancient Greeks. At least in written form...
It's a time of considerable turmoil and it seems to me that, after such a long time in government, the Conservatives should be focussing on what they truly believe. Sorting themselves out, as @Alanbrooke says.
And what would that be ? You'd get very different answers from (say) TSE, HYUFD, Casino and PtP.
The last decade has fragmented their coalition - and some of those fragments may permanently be lost to them.
Suella was on LBC yesterday doubling down on going full frontal Reform with a view to either a coalition or tacit mutual benefit arrangements. Personally, I would have thought that peels off the left flank to the LDs.
Where do people like Cameron, Osborne or May go on that scenario. A new “Coalition” party would become their natural home.
This is classic 'centrist' establishment thinking.
People want immigration brought under control. End of.
But it's not end of, is it? They also want functioning public services, more housing, people to look after their elderly relatives and so on. So what does immigration control actually look like in those circumstances?
I find it bizarre that any conservative could disparage what made the party successful. An almost Corbynite point of view.
Another legacy of Brexit
It could be argued that the Single Market was Margaret Thatcher's greatest success in office, which makes Brexit "unpicking Thatcher's greatest success in office"
I don't know how anyone who claims to be a Conservative supported that
"It could be argued" to "anyone who disagrees can't be a Conservative" in the same post.
Classic.
A fanatic is one who can't change his mind and won't change the subject.
In response to @Luckyguy1983 from the previous thread:
You said: 'we do not venerate the sacking of Rome or the more recent destruction of the Buddhas by the Taliban, we mourn these things.'
And I completely agree, but we are not comparing like with like here.
You are comparing individual objects to the hundreds of similar objects concentrated in a place to intimidate. Do you think it wrong that statues of Stalin or Hussein were toppled by the dozen? Would you have liked to see a statue of Hitler in every German square to this day? That is what was happening in the Jim Crow era and in that time to deliberately intimidate the black population. To put the fear of god into them by the 'superior' white population who enforced segregation.
I have no problem with statues of Stalin, Hussein, Hitler (although I am not aware there are any then or now) or Confederate memorials as they are important times in history, but the scale is important.
To black people in these towns in the South this is equivalent to statues of Hitler in every German town squares. It is important we remember and learn, but we don't have to ram it down the throats of innocent people daily.
An interesting discussion here. The German approach - a museum of the out-of-favour - is worth noting.
I've only skimmed the article, but yep I agree and that building should definitely be kept like most referred to in the article. It is the order of scale. I am not disagreeing with @Luckyguy1983 or @Casino_Royale generally with regard to statues. We shouldn't remove them and it is best to put another plaque up giving context rather than removal. The Berlin border guards one is an excellent example of stuff that should stay, but in a museum.
However every ex Communist square does not and should not contain a statue of Stalin or Lenin to remind people of the horrors and every Southern American town doesn't need an absolutely monumental statue, that was deliberately placed there to intimidate blacks in the Jim Crow era. However examples of all, probably the most prominent, should stay with a plaque giving the context.
It's a time of considerable turmoil and it seems to me that, after such a long time in government, the Conservatives should be focussing on what they truly believe. Sorting themselves out, as @Alanbrooke says.
And what would that be ? You'd get very different answers from (say) TSE, HYUFD, Casino and PtP.
The last decade has fragmented their coalition - and some of those fragments may permanently be lost to them.
Suella was on LBC yesterday doubling down on going full frontal Reform with a view to either a coalition or tacit mutual benefit arrangements. Personally, I would have thought that peels off the left flank to the LDs.
Where do people like Cameron, Osborne or May go on that scenario. A new “Coalition” party would become their natural home.
It's a time of considerable turmoil and it seems to me that, after such a long time in government, the Conservatives should be focussing on what they truly believe. Sorting themselves out, as @Alanbrooke says.
And what would that be ? You'd get very different answers from (say) TSE, HYUFD, Casino and PtP.
The last decade has fragmented their coalition - and some of those fragments may permanently be lost to them.
Suella was on LBC yesterday doubling down on going full frontal Reform with a view to either a coalition or tacit mutual benefit arrangements. Personally, I would have thought that peels off the left flank to the LDs.
Where do people like Cameron, Osborne or May go on that scenario. A new “Coalition” party would become their natural home.
This is classic 'centrist' establishment thinking.
People want immigration brought under control. End of.
My point was more personal, I am not sure one nation Tories could cohabit comfortably with Farageet alone the followers of folks like Tommy Robinson.
Classic centrist establishment thinking = the platform that made the Conservatives electorally successful.
I find it bizarre that any conservative could disparage what made the party successful. An almost Corbynite point of view.
What made the Conservative Party so unsuccessful at the last election, and dissolved its core coalition, was a failure to control immigration.
Definitely part of it, but not all of it. The big moments the polls shifted irreversibly in the last parliament were partygate and Truss. Neither had anything to do with immigration.
This is the problem with university free speech. How do universities guarantee it against this sort of mass protest?
Is that a free speech problem or a public order problem? The RAF were going about their lawful business having obtained the necessary consents and should be allowed to do so unimpeded.
Surely the protestors were the ones exercising free speech.
What would you feel if a bunch of Netanyahu supporters forced pro-palestinians to close their stall?
Would you be suggesting that was free speech?
The classic philosophical boundaries on free speech are the point where it shuts down the speech of others. That goes back to the ancient Greeks. At least in written form...
Yes, it comes down to “free speech for people I like.”
University authorities usually adopt the line of least resistance.
This is the problem with university free speech. How do universities guarantee it against this sort of mass protest?
Is that a free speech problem or a public order problem? The RAF were going about their lawful business having obtained the necessary consents and should be allowed to do so unimpeded.
I think it's a public order problem, and an issue for the police.
It's a time of considerable turmoil and it seems to me that, after such a long time in government, the Conservatives should be focussing on what they truly believe. Sorting themselves out, as @Alanbrooke says.
I think people know what the Conservatives believe. It is just they have spent 14 years not doing what they claim to believe, so why should the voters trust them?
2010 - 2015 were spent in coalition with the LibDems. Should they have spent those years doing Conservatve stuff?
Once you get to 2016, you have the political turmoil that dispatched Cameron and Osborne. Then May lingered in an ever weakened state because Parliament was deadlocked.
A deadlock broken by Boris winning in December 2019. But then you get to the start of 2020, and Covid - when the decision was taken by the government to max out the credit card protecting the private sector from destruction (and the massive overtime bill for the NHS).
Then funding lecky bills to mitigate the Cost of Living Crisis.
About the only time in those 14 years there was scope for a proper Conservative agenda was what Sunak and Hunt were trying to implement from 2022 onwards. Albeit, hideously boxed in by what had gone before.
That’s such a load of old cobblers. Cameron won the 2015 election. He was king of all he surveyed, he had it all in front of him and then proceeded to screw it up. An unforced error.
No one forced May to call a GE in 2017 and Boris brought himself down by being Boris. Truss had the opportunity to reset again, but blew it.
Cameron won in 2015 because the Conservative manifesto committed to "a straight in-out referendum on our membership of the European Union by the end of 2017". (Labour, in an echo of its Ming vase strategy of 2024, did not support this, but did commit to an EU membership referendum if any further powers were transferred to the European Union.)
How long would the King of All He Surveys have lasted if he had not delivered the Referendum?
Having a Referendum was voted for by the population in the 2015 General Election.
Leaving the EU was voted for by the population in 2016.
So a load of old cobblers backatcher....
Cameron wrote the manifesto. He could have taken a different route. He chose the timing and terms of the referendum. He could have bought off Boris and run a different campaign. His hubris got in the way.
He was not a passive consumer of events out of his control. This was his priority, enacted by him in the way he saw as most advantageous to him and his party. The fact he screwed up is irrelevant.
He had a huge opportunity to set his form of Conservatism up for years and blew it.
There wasn't an option to ignore the EU as a political issue. The Overton Window had shifted too far.
If all three mainstream parties had done so then the insurgency would have happened earlier, not later, and it would have dominated our domestic politics anyway.
This is the problem with university free speech. How do universities guarantee it against this sort of mass protest?
Is that a free speech problem or a public order problem? The RAF were going about their lawful business having obtained the necessary consents and should be allowed to do so unimpeded.
Surely the protestors were the ones exercising free speech.
What would you feel if a bunch of Netanyahu supporters forced pro-palestinians to close their stall?
Would you be suggesting that was free speech?
The classic philosophical boundaries on free speech are the point where it shuts down the speech of others. That goes back to the ancient Greeks. At least in written form...
Yes, it comes down to “free speech for people I like.”
University authorities usually adopt the line of least resistance.
Exactly.
People have free speech to support the government and institutions, but are frowned upon when they express contrary opinions.
It's a time of considerable turmoil and it seems to me that, after such a long time in government, the Conservatives should be focussing on what they truly believe. Sorting themselves out, as @Alanbrooke says.
And what would that be ? You'd get very different answers from (say) TSE, HYUFD, Casino and PtP.
The last decade has fragmented their coalition - and some of those fragments may permanently be lost to them.
Suella was on LBC yesterday doubling down on going full frontal Reform with a view to either a coalition or tacit mutual benefit arrangements. Personally, I would have thought that peels off the left flank to the LDs.
Where do people like Cameron, Osborne or May go on that scenario. A new “Coalition” party would become their natural home.
This is classic 'centrist' establishment thinking.
People want immigration brought under control. End of.
But it's not end of, is it? They also want functioning public services, more housing, people to look after their elderly relatives and so on. So what does immigration control actually look like in those circumstances?
None of that is incompatible with much lower immigration. It does however imply some redistribution in how various groups in society do. Particularly at the expense of comfortably off over 50s. But in favour of the lowest paid.
It is in the short term at least. Construction, care and health each have job vacancies in the hundreds of thousands. If we want to offer more construction, and better care we need immigration.
Longer term you could encourage more people into those jobs by paying more (in the case of care that would be tax rises) but it is not going to happen overnight and it won't be at all easy. Personally to do a care type job I would want to be paid at least double what I can get elsewhere, I doubt that is unusual for many Brits.
80%+ of people working in care homes are native to the UK.
The belief that "Brits are too posh to do the jobs that Proper Immigrants will do" reminds me of Oriental Lassitude. The belief, by pith helmeted men in shorts, sipping G&T, that the locals in Thailand, Malaysia etc were irredeemably lazy.
To be fair, a large part of the belief that Brits Do Not Work comes from opinion formers being in Central London, where the demographics & economics mean that much of the bottom end work *is* done by recent immigrants.
So at current rates of pay and vacancies we are about 30% short in attracting enough domestic workers into thos jobs nationally, and that will be higher in London?
Hard to say - because there are other factors in the mix. Such as a belief that cheap labour is a better solution than automation.
The problem there, in London, is that the housing costs are pricing even "the multiple adults living in each room" type accommodation out of existence. So the cheapo workers live further and further out.
Which is why the chain shops are automating ordering and tills, monitored by a couple of staff, for instance.
In small and medium construction, the adamant refusal to automate is beginning to break down.
It's a time of considerable turmoil and it seems to me that, after such a long time in government, the Conservatives should be focussing on what they truly believe. Sorting themselves out, as @Alanbrooke says.
I think people know what the Conservatives believe. It is just they have spent 14 years not doing what they claim to believe, so why should the voters trust them?
2010 - 2015 were spent in coalition with the LibDems. Should they have spent those years doing Conservatve stuff?
Once you get to 2016, you have the political turmoil that dispatched Cameron and Osborne. Then May lingered in an ever weakened state because Parliament was deadlocked.
A deadlock broken by Boris winning in December 2019. But then you get to the start of 2020, and Covid - when the decision was taken by the government to max out the credit card protecting the private sector from destruction (and the massive overtime bill for the NHS).
Then funding lecky bills to mitigate the Cost of Living Crisis.
About the only time in those 14 years there was scope for a proper Conservative agenda was what Sunak and Hunt were trying to implement from 2022 onwards. Albeit, hideously boxed in by what had gone before.
That’s such a load of old cobblers. Cameron won the 2015 election. He was king of all he surveyed, he had it all in front of him and then proceeded to screw it up. An unforced error.
No one forced May to call a GE in 2017 and Boris brought himself down by being Boris. Truss had the opportunity to reset again, but blew it.
Cameron won in 2015 because the Conservative manifesto committed to "a straight in-out referendum on our membership of the European Union by the end of 2017". (Labour, in an echo of its Ming vase strategy of 2024, did not support this, but did commit to an EU membership referendum if any further powers were transferred to the European Union.)
How long would the King of All He Surveys have lasted if he had not delivered the Referendum?
Having a Referendum was voted for by the population in the 2015 General Election.
Leaving the EU was voted for by the population in 2016.
So a load of old cobblers backatcher....
Cameron wrote the manifesto. He could have taken a different route. He chose the timing and terms of the referendum. He could have bought off Boris and run a different campaign. His hubris got in the way.
He was not a passive consumer of events out of his control. This was his priority, enacted by him in the way he saw as most advantageous to him and his party. The fact he screwed up is irrelevant.
He had a huge opportunity to set his form of Conservatism up for years and blew it.
There wasn't an option to ignore the EU as a political issue. The Overton Window had shifted too far.
If all three mainstream parties had done so then the insurgency would have happened earlier, not later, and it would have dominated our domestic politics anyway.
That's pretty much my view. A referendum was inevitable - and the longer it was left, the less likely it was for remain to win. If Blair had held one in 2001 he would have won massively. Perhaps even got Euro membership as well...
(I am not saying I agree with Euro membership; I was against it. Just positing that anti-EU sentiment increased over the years.)
German economy shrinks 0.2% in 2024, after shrinking 0.3% in 2023. IMF reckons on a return to growth - 0.8% - in 2025, but others are less optimistic (Bundesbank 0.2%, Kiel institute 0%).
This is the problem with university free speech. How do universities guarantee it against this sort of mass protest?
Is that a free speech problem or a public order problem? The RAF were going about their lawful business having obtained the necessary consents and should be allowed to do so unimpeded.
Surely the protestors were the ones exercising free speech.
They are indeed excercising free speech by depriving others of it. Great reasoning.
Suggestions this has been given the nod by the incoming Trump team. See how long Putin can refuse to play ball on Trump's "Ukraine deal within 24 hours"...
#RussiaIsCollapsing is trending on my Twitter this morning
Given the Twattosphere's disastrous forecasting record that's probably the best news Putin's had in months. Maybe since Trump's election.
The only thing that could make Russia's prospects any brighter would be if Ambrose Evans-Pritchard and Peter Zeihan start forecasting economic doom there.
It's a time of considerable turmoil and it seems to me that, after such a long time in government, the Conservatives should be focussing on what they truly believe. Sorting themselves out, as @Alanbrooke says.
And what would that be ? You'd get very different answers from (say) TSE, HYUFD, Casino and PtP.
The last decade has fragmented their coalition - and some of those fragments may permanently be lost to them.
That's interesting - are Ref UK Ltd more fissiparous than the current Conservative Party, or not?
We know about the Cons - the moderate end are weaker, and there are several different directions being pulled by others: Kemikaze vs BobbyG vs others vs Noises Off (all those ex-MPs have to do something)?
I also see that Liz Truss appeared alongside Nigel Farage at the launch of the Heartland Institute UK - perhaps we are going to see Tory Trumpists linking up with RefUK wannabe Respectables?
From Sunder Katwala's Bluesky Feed, Reform voters less favourable to Elon Musk than in November - good for Nigel probably. The biggest growth is in "unfavourable view of Musk" amongst Con and RefUK. L/LD were already at 80%+. Sunder has a whole Musk / Reform thread:
Is it a surprise, when Farage is obviously such a draw for Reform supporters, and Musk has been so critical? My surprise, and probably Farage's worry, is that so many still have a favourable view of Musk.
Given the Guardian article you linked to, it's interesting to see that Reform voters are SO much less likely to believe in man-made climate change than any of the other parties.
There's always talk about Reform/Tory pacts and mergers, which tend to ignore the polling suggesting Reform voters would be just as likely to move to Lib/Lab/Green. Is the mistake that people are putting them in a box marked 'right wing', when really they should be in a box marked 'most likely to believe lies on the internet'?
This is the problem with university free speech. How do universities guarantee it against this sort of mass protest?
Is that a free speech problem or a public order problem? The RAF were going about their lawful business having obtained the necessary consents and should be allowed to do so unimpeded.
Surely the protestors were the ones exercising free speech.
What would you feel if a bunch of Netanyahu supporters forced pro-palestinians to close their stall?
Would you be suggesting that was free speech?
The classic philosophical boundaries on free speech are the point where it shuts down the speech of others. That goes back to the ancient Greeks. At least in written form...
Yes, it comes down to “free speech for people I like.”
University authorities usually adopt the line of least resistance.
Exactly.
People have free speech to support the government and institutions, but are frowned upon when they express contrary opinions.
It's a bit like democracy. In that case the test is - If the Other Lot win the election, what happens?
1) Order the removal people round. Leave a note. Democracy 2) Order the army to shoot the Other Lot. Not-democracy.
For free speech - do the people I dislike get to speak?
Establishment centrists and populist insurgents are about equal, in terms of being self-serving and duplicitous, and selling snake oil.
But the former frequently give the impression that they place the interests of foreigners above the interests of their own people.
The default assumption is that Establishment Centrists must be the more pragmatic and moderate option. But, in recent years, they have taken dogmatic and 'extreme' positions against new nuclear power, the need for a strong defence, and put ideological commitments to free movement, hyper social liberalism and human rights over the pragmatic political and social consequences that causes on the ground.
That's why the noises about them being centrist and sensible don't always resonate.
My MP now lives within walking distance of an Observatory - so he can gaze at the stars to his heart's content . The Observatory is one of our local Towns Fund projects.
Not popular with me today - to access their cafe one has to do the show. And nice cafes are thin on the ground hereabouts.
It's a time of considerable turmoil and it seems to me that, after such a long time in government, the Conservatives should be focussing on what they truly believe. Sorting themselves out, as @Alanbrooke says.
I think people know what the Conservatives believe. It is just they have spent 14 years not doing what they claim to believe, so why should the voters trust them?
2010 - 2015 were spent in coalition with the LibDems. Should they have spent those years doing Conservatve stuff?
Once you get to 2016, you have the political turmoil that dispatched Cameron and Osborne. Then May lingered in an ever weakened state because Parliament was deadlocked.
A deadlock broken by Boris winning in December 2019. But then you get to the start of 2020, and Covid - when the decision was taken by the government to max out the credit card protecting the private sector from destruction (and the massive overtime bill for the NHS).
Then funding lecky bills to mitigate the Cost of Living Crisis.
About the only time in those 14 years there was scope for a proper Conservative agenda was what Sunak and Hunt were trying to implement from 2022 onwards. Albeit, hideously boxed in by what had gone before.
That’s such a load of old cobblers. Cameron won the 2015 election. He was king of all he surveyed, he had it all in front of him and then proceeded to screw it up. An unforced error.
No one forced May to call a GE in 2017 and Boris brought himself down by being Boris. Truss had the opportunity to reset again, but blew it.
Cameron won in 2015 because the Conservative manifesto committed to "a straight in-out referendum on our membership of the European Union by the end of 2017". (Labour, in an echo of its Ming vase strategy of 2024, did not support this, but did commit to an EU membership referendum if any further powers were transferred to the European Union.)
How long would the King of All He Surveys have lasted if he had not delivered the Referendum?
Having a Referendum was voted for by the population in the 2015 General Election.
Leaving the EU was voted for by the population in 2016.
So a load of old cobblers backatcher....
Cameron wrote the manifesto. He could have taken a different route. He chose the timing and terms of the referendum. He could have bought off Boris and run a different campaign. His hubris got in the way.
He was not a passive consumer of events out of his control. This was his priority, enacted by him in the way he saw as most advantageous to him and his party. The fact he screwed up is irrelevant.
He had a huge opportunity to set his form of Conservatism up for years and blew it.
There wasn't an option to ignore the EU as a political issue. The Overton Window had shifted too far.
If all three mainstream parties had done so then the insurgency would have happened earlier, not later, and it would have dominated our domestic politics anyway.
I don’t see this as passive. The Overton window shifted in large part because the Conservatives shifted it. They wanted UKIP votes, so brought marginal ideas into the mainstream.
It would be poetic justice that the embers they stocked for tactical gain end up consuming them. However the damage to our country far outweighs the joy of any partisan schadenfreude.
It's a time of considerable turmoil and it seems to me that, after such a long time in government, the Conservatives should be focussing on what they truly believe. Sorting themselves out, as @Alanbrooke says.
And what would that be ? You'd get very different answers from (say) TSE, HYUFD, Casino and PtP.
The last decade has fragmented their coalition - and some of those fragments may permanently be lost to them.
Suella was on LBC yesterday doubling down on going full frontal Reform with a view to either a coalition or tacit mutual benefit arrangements. Personally, I would have thought that peels off the left flank to the LDs.
Where do people like Cameron, Osborne or May go on that scenario. A new “Coalition” party would become their natural home.
This is classic 'centrist' establishment thinking.
People want immigration brought under control. End of.
But it's not end of, is it? They also want functioning public services, more housing, people to look after their elderly relatives and so on. So what does immigration control actually look like in those circumstances?
None of that is incompatible with much lower immigration. It does however imply some redistribution in how various groups in society do. Particularly at the expense of comfortably off over 50s. But in favour of the lowest paid.
It is in the short term at least. Construction, care and health each have job vacancies in the hundreds of thousands. If we want to offer more construction, and better care we need immigration.
Longer term you could encourage more people into those jobs by paying more (in the case of care that would be tax rises) but it is not going to happen overnight and it won't be at all easy. Personally to do a care type job I would want to be paid at least double what I can get elsewhere, I doubt that is unusual for many Brits.
80%+ of people working in care homes are native to the UK.
The belief that "Brits are too posh to do the jobs that Proper Immigrants will do" reminds me of Oriental Lassitude. The belief, by pith helmeted men in shorts, sipping G&T, that the locals in Thailand, Malaysia etc were irredeemably lazy.
To be fair, a large part of the belief that Brits Do Not Work comes from opinion formers being in Central London, where the demographics & economics mean that much of the bottom end work *is* done by recent immigrants.
So at current rates of pay and vacancies we are about 30% short in attracting enough domestic workers into thos jobs nationally, and that will be higher in London?
Hard to say - because there are other factors in the mix. Such as a belief that cheap labour is a better solution than automation.
The problem there, in London, is that the housing costs are pricing even "the multiple adults living in each room" type accommodation out of existence. So the cheapo workers live further and further out.
Which is why the chain shops are automating ordering and tills, monitored by a couple of staff, for instance.
In small and medium construction, the adamant refusal to automate is beginning to break down.
It isn't really hard to say because more jobs are available and domestic workers aren't applying for them.
This is the problem with university free speech. How do universities guarantee it against this sort of mass protest?
Is that a free speech problem or a public order problem? The RAF were going about their lawful business having obtained the necessary consents and should be allowed to do so unimpeded.
Surely the protestors were the ones exercising free speech.
Free speech is the absence of a negative - i.e. it means you are not persecuted for making your point - not that you have the right to do it when and where wherever you like and disrupt others doing the same or going about their lawful business.
Establishment centrists and populist insurgents are about equal, in terms of being self-serving and duplicitous, and selling snake oil.
But the former frequently give the impression that they place the interests of foreigners above the interests of their own people.
The default assumption is that Establishment Centrists must be the more pragmatic and moderate option. But, in recent years, they have taken dogmatic and 'extreme' positions against new nuclear power, the need for a strong defence, and put ideological commitments to free movement, hyper social liberalism and human rights over the pragmatic political and social consequences that causes on the ground.
That's why the noises about them being centrist and sensible don't always resonate.
Yes, in reality, theirs is a different type of extremism. But, they sound moderate.
In response to @Luckyguy1983 from the previous thread:
You said: 'we do not venerate the sacking of Rome or the more recent destruction of the Buddhas by the Taliban, we mourn these things.'
And I completely agree, but we are not comparing like with like here.
You are comparing individual objects to the hundreds of similar objects concentrated in a place to intimidate. Do you think it wrong that statues of Stalin or Hussein were toppled by the dozen? Would you have liked to see a statue of Hitler in every German square to this day? That is what was happening in the Jim Crow era and in that time to deliberately intimidate the black population. To put the fear of god into them by the 'superior' white population who enforced segregation.
I have no problem with statues of Stalin, Hussein, Hitler (although I am not aware there are any then or now) or Confederate memorials as they are important times in history, but the scale is important.
To black people in these towns in the South this is equivalent to statues of Hitler in every German town squares. It is important we remember and learn, but we don't have to ram it down the throats of innocent people daily.
An interesting discussion here. The German approach - a museum of the out-of-favour - is worth noting.
I've only skimmed the article, but yep I agree and that building should definitely be kept like most referred to in the article. It is the order of scale. I am not disagreeing with @Luckyguy1983 or @Casino_Royale generally with regard to statues. We shouldn't remove them and it is best to put another plaque up giving context rather than removal. The Berlin border guards one is an excellent example of stuff that should stay, but in a museum.
However every ex Communist square does not and should not contain a statue of Stalin or Lenin to remind people of the horrors and every Southern American town doesn't need an absolutely monumental statue, that was deliberately placed there to intimidate blacks in the Jim Crow era. However examples of all, probably the most prominent, should stay with a plaque giving the context.
For myself - I'm surprised the Mussolini quote was left on the building. Especially in the modern world, where getting stone cladding cut to match the older stuff is a service the restoration companies provide as a standard.
Not sure what it would cost - there's the working at height, plus specialist construction techniques. But you could definitely get it removed and you'd never know.
In response to @Luckyguy1983 from the previous thread:
You said: 'we do not venerate the sacking of Rome or the more recent destruction of the Buddhas by the Taliban, we mourn these things.'
And I completely agree, but we are not comparing like with like here.
You are comparing individual objects to the hundreds of similar objects concentrated in a place to intimidate. Do you think it wrong that statues of Stalin or Hussein were toppled by the dozen? Would you have liked to see a statue of Hitler in every German square to this day? That is what was happening in the Jim Crow era and in that time to deliberately intimidate the black population. To put the fear of god into them by the 'superior' white population who enforced segregation.
I have no problem with statues of Stalin, Hussein, Hitler (although I am not aware there are any then or now) or Confederate memorials as they are important times in history, but the scale is important.
To black people in these towns in the South this is equivalent to statues of Hitler in every German town squares. It is important we remember and learn, but we don't have to ram it down the throats of innocent people daily.
An interesting discussion here. The German approach - a museum of the out-of-favour - is worth noting.
I've only skimmed the article, but yep I agree and that building should definitely be kept like most referred to in the article. It is the order of scale. I am not disagreeing with @Luckyguy1983 or @Casino_Royale generally with regard to statues. We shouldn't remove them and it is best to put another plaque up giving context rather than removal. The Berlin border guards one is an excellent example of stuff that should stay, but in a museum.
However every ex Communist square does not and should not contain a statue of Stalin or Lenin to remind people of the horrors and every Southern American town doesn't need an absolutely monumental statue, that was deliberately placed there to intimidate blacks in the Jim Crow era. However examples of all, probably the most prominent, should stay with a plaque giving the context.
The original "purpose" of statues was from classical times, of course, contemporary political iconography, and not some neutral part of the historical record, as some here have been arguing. That's obviously true of the ubiquitous Stalin representations, or the post-Reconstruction Civil War hagiography of Confederate generals.
How we should treat with them now is as much a political as historical question.
It's a time of considerable turmoil and it seems to me that, after such a long time in government, the Conservatives should be focussing on what they truly believe. Sorting themselves out, as @Alanbrooke says.
And what would that be ? You'd get very different answers from (say) TSE, HYUFD, Casino and PtP.
The last decade has fragmented their coalition - and some of those fragments may permanently be lost to them.
Suella was on LBC yesterday doubling down on going full frontal Reform with a view to either a coalition or tacit mutual benefit arrangements. Personally, I would have thought that peels off the left flank to the LDs.
Where do people like Cameron, Osborne or May go on that scenario. A new “Coalition” party would become their natural home.
This is classic 'centrist' establishment thinking.
People want immigration brought under control. End of.
But it's not end of, is it? They also want functioning public services, more housing, people to look after their elderly relatives and so on. So what does immigration control actually look like in those circumstances?
None of that is incompatible with much lower immigration. It does however imply some redistribution in how various groups in society do. Particularly at the expense of comfortably off over 50s. But in favour of the lowest paid.
It is in the short term at least. Construction, care and health each have job vacancies in the hundreds of thousands. If we want to offer more construction, and better care we need immigration.
Longer term you could encourage more people into those jobs by paying more (in the case of care that would be tax rises) but it is not going to happen overnight and it won't be at all easy. Personally to do a care type job I would want to be paid at least double what I can get elsewhere, I doubt that is unusual for many Brits.
80%+ of people working in care homes are native to the UK.
The belief that "Brits are too posh to do the jobs that Proper Immigrants will do" reminds me of Oriental Lassitude. The belief, by pith helmeted men in shorts, sipping G&T, that the locals in Thailand, Malaysia etc were irredeemably lazy.
To be fair, a large part of the belief that Brits Do Not Work comes from opinion formers being in Central London, where the demographics & economics mean that much of the bottom end work *is* done by recent immigrants.
So at current rates of pay and vacancies we are about 30% short in attracting enough domestic workers into thos jobs nationally, and that will be higher in London?
Hard to say - because there are other factors in the mix. Such as a belief that cheap labour is a better solution than automation.
The problem there, in London, is that the housing costs are pricing even "the multiple adults living in each room" type accommodation out of existence. So the cheapo workers live further and further out.
Which is why the chain shops are automating ordering and tills, monitored by a couple of staff, for instance.
In small and medium construction, the adamant refusal to automate is beginning to break down.
It isn't really hard to say because more jobs are available and domestic workers aren't applying for them.
We are seeing a problem, in Central London, of *no-one* offering to do jobs at the rate. Even the cash-in-hand-illegals can't afford to.
It's reached the point where solutions that were regarded as impossible or extreme are being implemented - such as automation.
But the former frequently give the impression that they place the interests of foreigners above the interests of their own people.
Often, they do because their own kind give them the ick factor, and reeks of nationalism rather than internationalism, and they don't identify with them, instead defining themselves through their education and those who share that status internationally.
Leadership of mainstream political parties has often been quite similar in this because they draw from a similar social group.
It's a time of considerable turmoil and it seems to me that, after such a long time in government, the Conservatives should be focussing on what they truly believe. Sorting themselves out, as @Alanbrooke says.
And what would that be ? You'd get very different answers from (say) TSE, HYUFD, Casino and PtP.
The last decade has fragmented their coalition - and some of those fragments may permanently be lost to them.
That's interesting - are Ref UK Ltd more fissiparous than the current Conservative Party, or not?
We know about the Cons - the moderate end are weaker, and there are several different directions being pulled by others: Kemikaze vs BobbyG vs others vs Noises Off (all those ex-MPs have to do something)?
I also see that Liz Truss appeared alongside Nigel Farage at the launch of the Heartland Institute UK - perhaps we are going to see Tory Trumpists linking up with RefUK wannabe Respectables?
From Sunder Katwala's Bluesky Feed, Reform voters less favourable to Elon Musk than in November - good for Nigel probably. The biggest growth is in "unfavourable view of Musk" amongst Con and RefUK. L/LD were already at 80%+. Sunder has a whole Musk / Reform thread:
Is it a surprise, when Farage is obviously such a draw for Reform supporters, and Musk has been so critical? My surprise, and probably Farage's worry, is that so many still have a favourable view of Musk.
Given the Guardian article you linked to, it's interesting to see that Reform voters are SO much less likely to believe in man-made climate change than any of the other parties.
There's always talk about Reform/Tory pacts and mergers, which tend to ignore the polling suggesting Reform voters would be just as likely to move to Lib/Lab/Green. Is the mistake that people are putting them in a box marked 'right wing', when really they should be in a box marked 'most likely to believe lies on the internet'?
There's also Farage's declared intention to destroy the Conservative Party, unless he has undeclared it and I did not notice.
That's one context for a Trumpist-Tories-Reform-Respectables link.
I have seen a couple of ex-Tory MPs showing some leg to Reform, but nothing serious yet afaics.
Establishment centrists and populist insurgents are about equal, in terms of being self-serving and duplicitous, and selling snake oil.
But the former frequently give the impression that they place the interests of foreigners above the interests of their own people.
The default assumption is that Establishment Centrists must be the more pragmatic and moderate option. But, in recent years, they have taken dogmatic and 'extreme' positions against new nuclear power, the need for a strong defence, and put ideological commitments to free movement, hyper social liberalism and human rights over the pragmatic political and social consequences that causes on the ground.
That's why the noises about them being centrist and sensible don't always resonate.
There is definitely confusion about centrism and being moderate or for the status quo. I'm a radical centrist, I think we are on the wrong track and collectively as a nation deluded about our future, but think the solutions will be a mix of those from the left and right, and we should pick'n'mix what works best, for us, at the moment, from the widest range of policy options, whether mostly socialist or mostly capitalist.
It's a time of considerable turmoil and it seems to me that, after such a long time in government, the Conservatives should be focussing on what they truly believe. Sorting themselves out, as @Alanbrooke says.
And what would that be ? You'd get very different answers from (say) TSE, HYUFD, Casino and PtP.
The last decade has fragmented their coalition - and some of those fragments may permanently be lost to them.
Shocked by the accusation that PtP is a Tory I always rather liked him. Or do you mean Cameron-era Tory, somewhat homeless since then?
That might make him one of the never to return fragments ?
This is the problem with university free speech. How do universities guarantee it against this sort of mass protest?
Is that a free speech problem or a public order problem? The RAF were going about their lawful business having obtained the necessary consents and should be allowed to do so unimpeded.
Surely the protestors were the ones exercising free speech.
What would you feel if a bunch of Netanyahu supporters forced pro-palestinians to close their stall?
Would you be suggesting that was free speech?
The classic philosophical boundaries on free speech are the point where it shuts down the speech of others. That goes back to the ancient Greeks. At least in written form...
Yes, it comes down to “free speech for people I like.”
University authorities usually adopt the line of least resistance.
Exactly.
People have free speech to support the government and institutions, but are frowned upon when they express contrary opinions.
It's a bit like democracy. In that case the test is - If the Other Lot win the election, what happens?
1) Order the removal people round. Leave a note. Democracy 2) Order the army to shoot the Other Lot. Not-democracy.
For free speech - do the people I dislike get to speak?
And in what circumstances. I personally think the church is, on balance, a blight on the country. But I wouldn't support someone's right to "free speech" to stand in the porch of a church and harangue everyone on the way in and out about why they shouldn't believe this nonsense. Outside the church, fine, unless/until they cause an obstruction or similar.
Likewise, I think that this RAF situation is a public order problem. They can have a protest around the corner / outside the building as long as they don't impede people's lawful right to go about their business.
Similarly, I had no problem with animal rights protestors outside my favourite restaurant. I had to put up with fairly-loud protest which others moaned about but, hey, suck it up and eat your legal foie if that's ethically OK by you. On the other hand, when they started threatening staff and damaging property, that's that.
It's a time of considerable turmoil and it seems to me that, after such a long time in government, the Conservatives should be focussing on what they truly believe. Sorting themselves out, as @Alanbrooke says.
I think people know what the Conservatives believe. It is just they have spent 14 years not doing what they claim to believe, so why should the voters trust them?
2010 - 2015 were spent in coalition with the LibDems. Should they have spent those years doing Conservatve stuff?
Once you get to 2016, you have the political turmoil that dispatched Cameron and Osborne. Then May lingered in an ever weakened state because Parliament was deadlocked.
A deadlock broken by Boris winning in December 2019. But then you get to the start of 2020, and Covid - when the decision was taken by the government to max out the credit card protecting the private sector from destruction (and the massive overtime bill for the NHS).
Then funding lecky bills to mitigate the Cost of Living Crisis.
About the only time in those 14 years there was scope for a proper Conservative agenda was what Sunak and Hunt were trying to implement from 2022 onwards. Albeit, hideously boxed in by what had gone before.
That’s such a load of old cobblers. Cameron won the 2015 election. He was king of all he surveyed, he had it all in front of him and then proceeded to screw it up. An unforced error.
No one forced May to call a GE in 2017 and Boris brought himself down by being Boris. Truss had the opportunity to reset again, but blew it.
Cameron won in 2015 because the Conservative manifesto committed to "a straight in-out referendum on our membership of the European Union by the end of 2017". (Labour, in an echo of its Ming vase strategy of 2024, did not support this, but did commit to an EU membership referendum if any further powers were transferred to the European Union.)
How long would the King of All He Surveys have lasted if he had not delivered the Referendum?
Having a Referendum was voted for by the population in the 2015 General Election.
Leaving the EU was voted for by the population in 2016.
So a load of old cobblers backatcher....
Cameron wrote the manifesto. He could have taken a different route. He chose the timing and terms of the referendum. He could have bought off Boris and run a different campaign. His hubris got in the way.
He was not a passive consumer of events out of his control. This was his priority, enacted by him in the way he saw as most advantageous to him and his party. The fact he screwed up is irrelevant.
He had a huge opportunity to set his form of Conservatism up for years and blew it.
There wasn't an option to ignore the EU as a political issue. The Overton Window had shifted too far.
If all three mainstream parties had done so then the insurgency would have happened earlier, not later, and it would have dominated our domestic politics anyway.
I don’t see this as passive. The Overton window shifted in large part because the Conservatives shifted it. They wanted UKIP votes, so brought marginal ideas into the mainstream.
It would be poetic justice that the embers they stocked for tactical gain end up consuming them. However the damage to our country far outweighs the joy of any partisan schadenfreude.
I don't think our full membership of the EU in its confederal structure was political sustainable in the long-term in any event. Even you questioned it.
I wouldn't begrudge a UK political party making the full-throated case for federalism, as Edward Heath, Michael Heseltine or Charles Kennedy would have done, even if I vociferously disagreed, but there wasn't much evidence for its success.
Labour had arrived at a place where they sort of talked a bit about Rights and otherwise tried to ignore it.
This is the problem with university free speech. How do universities guarantee it against this sort of mass protest?
Is that a free speech problem or a public order problem? The RAF were going about their lawful business having obtained the necessary consents and should be allowed to do so unimpeded.
Surely the protestors were the ones exercising free speech.
What would you feel if a bunch of Netanyahu supporters forced pro-palestinians to close their stall?
Would you be suggesting that was free speech?
The classic philosophical boundaries on free speech are the point where it shuts down the speech of others. That goes back to the ancient Greeks. At least in written form...
Yes, it comes down to “free speech for people I like.”
University authorities usually adopt the line of least resistance.
Exactly.
People have free speech to support the government and institutions, but are frowned upon when they express contrary opinions.
It's a bit like democracy. In that case the test is - If the Other Lot win the election, what happens?
1) Order the removal people round. Leave a note. Democracy 2) Order the army to shoot the Other Lot. Not-democracy.
For free speech - do the people I dislike get to speak?
It's interesting to consider where the USA now slots into this:
Lose an election and ... try like hell to overturn it using violence, intimidation and blackmail. Fail in this but leave office without conceding or cooperating in the transition of power. Convince half the country the election was rigged, scare your own party into letting you run again in the next election, win it, take back control and go after your internal enemies, aka the people who stood up to you last time.
Are we nearer 1 or nearer 2 - incredible to have to ask but we do.
Establishment centrists and populist insurgents are about equal, in terms of being self-serving and duplicitous, and selling snake oil.
But the former frequently give the impression that they place the interests of foreigners above the interests of their own people.
The default assumption is that Establishment Centrists must be the more pragmatic and moderate option. But, in recent years, they have taken dogmatic and 'extreme' positions against new nuclear power, the need for a strong defence, and put ideological commitments to free movement, hyper social liberalism and human rights over the pragmatic political and social consequences that causes on the ground.
That's why the noises about them being centrist and sensible don't always resonate.
“The right to a family life”, for example, now trumps any consideration of placing other citizens in danger of harm.
The evidence from abroad is that centre right voters shift towards the insurgent right wing party, once it leads consistently, rather than shifting leftwards.
Never Trump Republicans amounted to very little; Les Republicans now poll one sixth of the vote of RN; those Prog Cons who refused to merge with Reform in Canada got a derisory vote; the once-dominant Dutch CDA are now a fringe party.
So, if Reform become dominant on the Right, most Conservatives in “nice Britain” will back them.
I agree. If the strength of feeling is anti-Labour in 2028 and Reform have become the leading right wing voice, I absolutely believe that a lot of the Tory vote would move over. Not all of it. Some would be lost to the LDs, and have the long term effect of pulling that party back towards the centre. There are “never-Farage-s”. But i think the effect is overstated.
Establishment centrists and populist insurgents are about equal, in terms of being self-serving and duplicitous, and selling snake oil.
But the former frequently give the impression that they place the interests of foreigners above the interests of their own people.
The default assumption is that Establishment Centrists must be the more pragmatic and moderate option. But, in recent years, they have taken dogmatic and 'extreme' positions against new nuclear power, the need for a strong defence, and put ideological commitments to free movement, hyper social liberalism and human rights over the pragmatic political and social consequences that causes on the ground.
That's why the noises about them being centrist and sensible don't always resonate.
You would probably label me a centrist. But I've long argued in favour of nuclear power (just not our crap way of doing it), and in favour of strong defence (but again not managed competently). And I'd take issue with your labelling yourself a social/political pragmatist. You're as much a dogmatist as those you label as "hyper social liberals", whatever that might mean.
The evidence from abroad is that centre right voters shift towards the insurgent right wing party, once it leads consistently, rather than shifting leftwards.
Never Trump Republicans amounted to very little; Les Republicans now poll one sixth of the vote of RN; those Prog Cons who refused to merge with Reform in Canada got a derisory vote; the once-dominant Dutch CDA are now a fringe party.
So, if Reform become dominant on the Right, most Conservatives in “nice Britain” will back them.
I'd say Badenoch has less than 4 months before the Conservatives are out of the picture.
It's a time of considerable turmoil and it seems to me that, after such a long time in government, the Conservatives should be focussing on what they truly believe. Sorting themselves out, as @Alanbrooke says.
I think people know what the Conservatives believe. It is just they have spent 14 years not doing what they claim to believe, so why should the voters trust them?
2010 - 2015 were spent in coalition with the LibDems. Should they have spent those years doing Conservatve stuff?
Once you get to 2016, you have the political turmoil that dispatched Cameron and Osborne. Then May lingered in an ever weakened state because Parliament was deadlocked.
A deadlock broken by Boris winning in December 2019. But then you get to the start of 2020, and Covid - when the decision was taken by the government to max out the credit card protecting the private sector from destruction (and the massive overtime bill for the NHS).
Then funding lecky bills to mitigate the Cost of Living Crisis.
About the only time in those 14 years there was scope for a proper Conservative agenda was what Sunak and Hunt were trying to implement from 2022 onwards. Albeit, hideously boxed in by what had gone before.
That’s such a load of old cobblers. Cameron won the 2015 election. He was king of all he surveyed, he had it all in front of him and then proceeded to screw it up. An unforced error.
No one forced May to call a GE in 2017 and Boris brought himself down by being Boris. Truss had the opportunity to reset again, but blew it.
Cameron won in 2015 because the Conservative manifesto committed to "a straight in-out referendum on our membership of the European Union by the end of 2017". (Labour, in an echo of its Ming vase strategy of 2024, did not support this, but did commit to an EU membership referendum if any further powers were transferred to the European Union.)
How long would the King of All He Surveys have lasted if he had not delivered the Referendum?
Having a Referendum was voted for by the population in the 2015 General Election.
Leaving the EU was voted for by the population in 2016.
So a load of old cobblers backatcher....
Cameron wrote the manifesto. He could have taken a different route. He chose the timing and terms of the referendum. He could have bought off Boris and run a different campaign. His hubris got in the way.
He was not a passive consumer of events out of his control. This was his priority, enacted by him in the way he saw as most advantageous to him and his party. The fact he screwed up is irrelevant.
He had a huge opportunity to set his form of Conservatism up for years and blew it.
There wasn't an option to ignore the EU as a political issue. The Overton Window had shifted too far.
If all three mainstream parties had done so then the insurgency would have happened earlier, not later, and it would have dominated our domestic politics anyway.
I don’t see this as passive. The Overton window shifted in large part because the Conservatives shifted it. They wanted UKIP votes, so brought marginal ideas into the mainstream.
It would be poetic justice that the embers they stocked for tactical gain end up consuming them. However the damage to our country far outweighs the joy of any partisan schadenfreude.
I don't think our full membership of the EU in its confederal structure was political sustainable in the long-term in any event. Even you questioned it.
I wouldn't begrudge a UK political party making the full-throated case for federalism, as Edward Heath, Michael Heseltine or Charles Kennedy would have done, even if I vociferously disagreed, but there wasn't much evidence for its success.
Labour had arrived at a place where they sort of talked a bit about Rights and otherwise tried to ignore it.
By the time a Conservative leader could say “Fuck Business” you were done.
In a parallel universe, or in the far future, there’s a UK centre right party that prioritises entrepreneurship and trade.
This is the problem with university free speech. How do universities guarantee it against this sort of mass protest?
Is that a free speech problem or a public order problem? The RAF were going about their lawful business having obtained the necessary consents and should be allowed to do so unimpeded.
Surely the protestors were the ones exercising free speech.
I draw the line where it involves impeding or preventing others from going about their lawful business.
At the very least the protestors are breaching the peace, though other offences could apply. I'd suggest a suitable remedy would be a night or two in a police cell and a conditional discharge by the Magistrate the next court day.
Establishment centrists and populist insurgents are about equal, in terms of being self-serving and duplicitous, and selling snake oil.
But the former frequently give the impression that they place the interests of foreigners above the interests of their own people.
The default assumption is that Establishment Centrists must be the more pragmatic and moderate option. But, in recent years, they have taken dogmatic and 'extreme' positions against new nuclear power, the need for a strong defence, and put ideological commitments to free movement, hyper social liberalism and human rights over the pragmatic political and social consequences that causes on the ground.
That's why the noises about them being centrist and sensible don't always resonate.
There is definitely confusion about centrism and being moderate or for the status quo. I'm a radical centrist, I think we are on the wrong track and collectively as a nation deluded about our future, but think the solutions will be a mix of those from the left and right, and we should pick'n'mix what works best, for us, at the moment, from the widest range of policy options, whether mostly socialist or mostly capitalist.
I think that is an under-explored position, and one that broadly reflects my view.
While we see the successes of socially-moderated market economies (whether that moderation is right-paternalist or left-socialist) in bringing comparative stability and prosperity wherever they are able to manifest over the past couple of hundred years, there is patently an issue with finance capitalism, as it has evolved since WW2; particularly with respect to concentration of wealth and power at the expense of the majority; and no-one is proposing solutions from right or left.
This is the problem with university free speech. How do universities guarantee it against this sort of mass protest?
Is that a free speech problem or a public order problem? The RAF were going about their lawful business having obtained the necessary consents and should be allowed to do so unimpeded.
Surely the protestors were the ones exercising free speech.
Free speech is the absence of a negative - i.e. it means you are not persecuted for making your point - not that you have the right to do it when and where wherever you like and disrupt others doing the same or going about their lawful business.
It's a time of considerable turmoil and it seems to me that, after such a long time in government, the Conservatives should be focussing on what they truly believe. Sorting themselves out, as @Alanbrooke says.
And what would that be ? You'd get very different answers from (say) TSE, HYUFD, Casino and PtP.
The last decade has fragmented their coalition - and some of those fragments may permanently be lost to them.
Suella was on LBC yesterday doubling down on going full frontal Reform with a view to either a coalition or tacit mutual benefit arrangements. Personally, I would have thought that peels off the left flank to the LDs.
Where do people like Cameron, Osborne or May go on that scenario. A new “Coalition” party would become their natural home.
This is classic 'centrist' establishment thinking.
People want immigration brought under control. End of.
But it's not end of, is it? They also want functioning public services, more housing, people to look after their elderly relatives and so on. So what does immigration control actually look like in those circumstances?
You just don't get it.
You never will.
I get that you do not want to engage with difficult conversations and would prefer everything to be black and white. I also get that black and white is a very compelling political argument. But it does not solve deep-seated economic challenges.
So more than enough Unionist MSPs for a majority, blocking indyref2. So Swinney and SNP would be in office but Nats would not be in power
Somebody would have to abstain or support an SNP budget otherwise there would be a second election, where an outright SNP majority would be the best way to break the deadlock.
The SNP could get Tory or LD confidence and supply in return for no indyref2, as Salmond did in 2007.
Otherwise Sarwar FM could equally break the deadlock
This is the problem with university free speech. How do universities guarantee it against this sort of mass protest?
Is that a free speech problem or a public order problem? The RAF were going about their lawful business having obtained the necessary consents and should be allowed to do so unimpeded.
Yep, different things. Free speech - students should be completely free to protest outside the venue while not impeding anyone's access. I don't have the details of this story (no subscription) but if they forced closure of stalls then it seems a lot more than exercising a right to free speech.
The chap from confused.com on R4 Today at around 06:25 noting that 20mph limits are making a contribution to reductions in car insurance premiums because they make our roads safer.
We'll get real data from places like Wales in the next year or two.
Though where should already be data in the record, from places like Portsmouth, Cambridge, Nottingham, and possibly Hull.
London and Birmingham may be supplying data in 2-5 years.
Aren't the countervailing trends raising our premiums (electric cars being less repairable and so on) much larger?
Picking this up from earlier.
Yes different factors affect insurance prices, but multivariable analysis and different data sets allow the impacts to be teased out.
The data is that there were major increases (31%) 2 years ago on average, and a fall back (~17%) last year. That is part frequency of claims, and part the cost of repair.
The speed limiter technology that has come in is interesting - we may get premiums related to agreeing to obey speed limits one level more than the 'black box monitoing' done previously.
The evidence from abroad is that centre right voters shift towards the insurgent right wing party, once it leads consistently, rather than shifting leftwards.
Never Trump Republicans amounted to very little; Les Republicans now poll one sixth of the vote of RN; those Prog Cons who refused to merge with Reform in Canada got a derisory vote; the once-dominant Dutch CDA are now a fringe party.
So, if Reform become dominant on the Right, most Conservatives in “nice Britain” will back them.
To an extent but in France many former Les Republicans vote for Macron and his party not RN, certainly in the run off elections. Some former Prog Cons went Liberal in Canada once the Prog Cons merged with the Canadian Alliance (Canada's Reform party's successor) and in Italy Forza Italia are in government with Meloni's Brothers of Italy despite the latter being the largest party, same for centre right in government with populist right in Sweden and the Netherlands and maybe soon Austria despite being smaller.
It also requires Reform to overtake the Tories on seats as well as votes first of course
This is the problem with university free speech. How do universities guarantee it against this sort of mass protest?
Is that a free speech problem or a public order problem? The RAF were going about their lawful business having obtained the necessary consents and should be allowed to do so unimpeded.
Surely the protestors were the ones exercising free speech.
I draw the line where it involves impeding or preventing others from going about their lawful business.
At the very least the protestors are breaching the peace, though other offences could apply. I'd suggest a suitable remedy would be a night or two in a police cell and a conditional discharge by the Magistrate the next court day.
And that would apply to farmers driving their tractors down motorways or through London to deliberate slowdown or halt traffic just as much as it would apply to Just Stop Oil protestors.
Lots of excitable people on here. None of the leaders are going anywhere for some years. Don't tie up your money, Badenoch is not going any time soon, no reason for it. Far from it.
This is probably about where I suspect things are:
Election Maps UK @ElectionMapsUK · 48m Westminster Voting Intention:
This is the problem with university free speech. How do universities guarantee it against this sort of mass protest?
Is that a free speech problem or a public order problem? The RAF were going about their lawful business having obtained the necessary consents and should be allowed to do so unimpeded.
Surely the protestors were the ones exercising free speech.
I draw the line where it involves impeding or preventing others from going about their lawful business.
At the very least the protestors are breaching the peace, though other offences could apply. I'd suggest a suitable remedy would be a night or two in a police cell and a conditional discharge by the Magistrate the next court day.
And that would apply to farmers driving their tractors down motorways or through London to deliberate slowdown or halt traffic just as much as it would apply to Just Stop Oil protestors.
Although when arranged with the police as an organized protest, that would still be fine by me.
It's a time of considerable turmoil and it seems to me that, after such a long time in government, the Conservatives should be focussing on what they truly believe. Sorting themselves out, as @Alanbrooke says.
I think people know what the Conservatives believe. It is just they have spent 14 years not doing what they claim to believe, so why should the voters trust them?
2010 - 2015 were spent in coalition with the LibDems. Should they have spent those years doing Conservatve stuff?
Once you get to 2016, you have the political turmoil that dispatched Cameron and Osborne. Then May lingered in an ever weakened state because Parliament was deadlocked.
A deadlock broken by Boris winning in December 2019. But then you get to the start of 2020, and Covid - when the decision was taken by the government to max out the credit card protecting the private sector from destruction (and the massive overtime bill for the NHS).
Then funding lecky bills to mitigate the Cost of Living Crisis.
About the only time in those 14 years there was scope for a proper Conservative agenda was what Sunak and Hunt were trying to implement from 2022 onwards. Albeit, hideously boxed in by what had gone before.
That’s such a load of old cobblers. Cameron won the 2015 election. He was king of all he surveyed, he had it all in front of him and then proceeded to screw it up. An unforced error.
No one forced May to call a GE in 2017 and Boris brought himself down by being Boris. Truss had the opportunity to reset again, but blew it.
Cameron won in 2015 because the Conservative manifesto committed to "a straight in-out referendum on our membership of the European Union by the end of 2017". (Labour, in an echo of its Ming vase strategy of 2024, did not support this, but did commit to an EU membership referendum if any further powers were transferred to the European Union.)
How long would the King of All He Surveys have lasted if he had not delivered the Referendum?
Having a Referendum was voted for by the population in the 2015 General Election.
Leaving the EU was voted for by the population in 2016.
So a load of old cobblers backatcher....
Cameron wrote the manifesto. He could have taken a different route. He chose the timing and terms of the referendum. He could have bought off Boris and run a different campaign. His hubris got in the way.
He was not a passive consumer of events out of his control. This was his priority, enacted by him in the way he saw as most advantageous to him and his party. The fact he screwed up is irrelevant.
He had a huge opportunity to set his form of Conservatism up for years and blew it.
There wasn't an option to ignore the EU as a political issue. The Overton Window had shifted too far.
If all three mainstream parties had done so then the insurgency would have happened earlier, not later, and it would have dominated our domestic politics anyway.
I don’t see this as passive. The Overton window shifted in large part because the Conservatives shifted it. They wanted UKIP votes, so brought marginal ideas into the mainstream.
It would be poetic justice that the embers they stocked for tactical gain end up consuming them. However the damage to our country far outweighs the joy of any partisan schadenfreude.
I don't think our full membership of the EU in its confederal structure was political sustainable in the long-term in any event. Even you questioned it.
I wouldn't begrudge a UK political party making the full-throated case for federalism, as Edward Heath, Michael Heseltine or Charles Kennedy would have done, even if I vociferously disagreed, but there wasn't much evidence for its success.
Labour had arrived at a place where they sort of talked a bit about Rights and otherwise tried to ignore it.
By the time a Conservative leader could say “Fuck Business” you were done.
In a parallel universe, or in the far future, there’s a UK centre right party that prioritises entrepreneurship and trade.
This is the problem with university free speech. How do universities guarantee it against this sort of mass protest?
Is that a free speech problem or a public order problem? The RAF were going about their lawful business having obtained the necessary consents and should be allowed to do so unimpeded.
Surely the protestors were the ones exercising free speech.
What would you feel if a bunch of Netanyahu supporters forced pro-palestinians to close their stall?
Would you be suggesting that was free speech?
The classic philosophical boundaries on free speech are the point where it shuts down the speech of others. That goes back to the ancient Greeks. At least in written form...
Yes, it comes down to “free speech for people I like.”
University authorities usually adopt the line of least resistance.
Exactly.
People have free speech to support the government and institutions, but are frowned upon when they express contrary opinions.
It's a bit like democracy. In that case the test is - If the Other Lot win the election, what happens?
1) Order the removal people round. Leave a note. Democracy 2) Order the army to shoot the Other Lot. Not-democracy.
For free speech - do the people I dislike get to speak?
And in what circumstances. I personally think the church is, on balance, a blight on the country. But I wouldn't support someone's right to "free speech" to stand in the porch of a church and harangue everyone on the way in and out about why they shouldn't believe this nonsense. Outside the church, fine, unless/until they cause an obstruction or similar.
Likewise, I think that this RAF situation is a public order problem. They can have a protest around the corner / outside the building as long as they don't impede people's lawful right to go about their business.
Similarly, I had no problem with animal rights protestors outside my favourite restaurant. I had to put up with fairly-loud protest which others moaned about but, hey, suck it up and eat your legal foie if that's ethically OK by you. On the other hand, when they started threatening staff and damaging property, that's that.
As the old, small "l" libertarian quip put it - "Your freedom to wave your fist stops where my nose begins."
The problem here is the "The hurtfulness of your existence" - to some people the existence of a counter argument if terrifying and painful. See religion. See also the cases where, in universities, the presence of Germaine Greer in a meeting room required safe spaces and counselling for opponents.
Lots of excitable people on here. None of the leaders are going anywhere for some years. Don't tie up your money, Badenoch is not going any time soon, no reason for it. Far from it.
This is probably about where I suspect things are:
Election Maps UK @ElectionMapsUK · 48m Westminster Voting Intention:
Interestingly, low 20s would be enough for leadership talk in any party in a pure 2 party/minnows politics situation. But with 3 parties now vying for polling LEADS, and the gap between 1st and 3rd at 1%, it probably means they're all more secure....
This is the problem with university free speech. How do universities guarantee it against this sort of mass protest?
Is that a free speech problem or a public order problem? The RAF were going about their lawful business having obtained the necessary consents and should be allowed to do so unimpeded.
Yep, different things. Free speech - students should be completely free to protest outside the venue while not impeding anyone's access. I don't have the details of this story (no subscription) but if they forced closure of stalls then it seems a lot more than exercising a right to free speech.
It can be a fine line. Imagine a large and noisy group of people getting in your face as you make to enter something. They aren't physically stopping you but it's unpleasant and you think, "no, not worth it, I'll go do something else". So then whatever the event is is severely compromised.
This is the problem with university free speech. How do universities guarantee it against this sort of mass protest?
Is that a free speech problem or a public order problem? The RAF were going about their lawful business having obtained the necessary consents and should be allowed to do so unimpeded.
Surely the protestors were the ones exercising free speech.
Free speech is the absence of a negative - i.e. it means you are not persecuted for making your point - not that you have the right to do it when and where wherever you like and disrupt others doing the same or going about their lawful business.
It's a time of considerable turmoil and it seems to me that, after such a long time in government, the Conservatives should be focussing on what they truly believe. Sorting themselves out, as @Alanbrooke says.
And what would that be ? You'd get very different answers from (say) TSE, HYUFD, Casino and PtP.
The last decade has fragmented their coalition - and some of those fragments may permanently be lost to them.
Suella was on LBC yesterday doubling down on going full frontal Reform with a view to either a coalition or tacit mutual benefit arrangements. Personally, I would have thought that peels off the left flank to the LDs.
Where do people like Cameron, Osborne or May go on that scenario. A new “Coalition” party would become their natural home.
This is classic 'centrist' establishment thinking.
People want immigration brought under control. End of.
But it's not end of, is it? They also want functioning public services, more housing, people to look after their elderly relatives and so on. So what does immigration control actually look like in those circumstances?
You just don't get it.
You never will.
I get that you do not want to engage with difficult conversations and would prefer everything to be black and white. I also get that black and white is a very compelling political argument. But it does not solve deep-seated economic challenges.
I engage in difficult conversations on here all the time, but you won't brook anything that goes against your world view - which is that you only want immigration to be about economic benefits.
Comments
You said: 'we do not venerate the sacking of Rome or the more recent destruction of the Buddhas by the Taliban, we mourn these things.'
And I completely agree, but we are not comparing like with like here.
You are comparing individual objects to the hundreds of similar objects concentrated in a place to intimidate. Do you think it wrong that statues of Stalin or Hussein were toppled by the dozen? Would you have liked to see a statue of Hitler in every German square to this day? That is what was happening in the Jim Crow era and in that time to deliberately intimidate the black population. To put the fear of god into them by the 'superior' white population who enforced segregation.
I have no problem with statues of Stalin, Hussein, Hitler (although I am not aware there are any then or now) or Confederate memorials as they are important times in history, but the scale is important.
To black people in these towns in the South this is equivalent to statues of Hitler in every German town squares. It is important we remember and learn, but we don't have to ram it down the throats of innocent people daily.
https://www.thetimes.com/uk/defence/article/student-activists-force-raf-to-close-stalls-at-university-job-fairs-dr9q2th6v (£££)
This is the problem with university free speech. How do universities guarantee it against this sort of mass protest?
(FYI it's already a SNP minority administration, with Green support not guaranteed. It would just be a smaller minority).
Can't realistically see the Greens or the SLDs (even in their Cole-Hamilton comedy incarnation) associating themselves witn Reform. SLab otoh seem able to persuade themselves of anything.
Blair was more classic establishment thinker than Maggie and Johnson were as indeed is Starmer. Yet Johnson and Thatcher won 4/6 of the general election majorities the Conservatives won in the last 50 years while Starmer and Blair won 4/5 of the general election majorities Labour won in the last 50 years, only Wilson in Oct 1974 the exception.
Suggesting that while classic establishment thinking is what the median UK general election winner has, it is more a quality of Labour than Tory general election winners
We know about the Cons - the moderate end are weaker, and there are several different directions being pulled by others: Kemikaze vs BobbyG vs others vs Noises Off (all those ex-MPs have to do something)?
I also see that Liz Truss appeared alongside Nigel Farage at the launch of the Heartland Institute UK - perhaps we are going to see Tory Trumpists linking up with RefUK wannabe Respectables?
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2025/jan/15/farage-and-truss-attend-uk-launch-of-us-climate-denial-group-heartland
From Sunder Katwala's Bluesky Feed, Reform voters less favourable to Elon Musk than in November - good for Nigel probably. The biggest growth is in "unfavourable view of Musk" amongst Con and RefUK. L/LD were already at 80%+. Sunder has a whole Musk / Reform thread:
https://bsky.app/profile/sundersays.bsky.social/post/3lfmx5wzvdc2i
He was not a passive consumer of events out of his control. This was his priority, enacted by him in the way he saw as most advantageous to him and his party. The fact he screwed up is irrelevant.
He had a huge opportunity to set his form of Conservatism up for years and blew it.
If not even if Kemi loses the next GE the Tories could then pick a leader like Jenrick (or even Rees Mogg if he wins back a North Somerset seat) who would be more likely to squeeze back the Reform vote after the relatively more centrist Sunak and Badenoch both failed to beat Labour and Reform grew at their expense
Longer term you could encourage more people into those jobs by paying more (in the case of care that would be tax rises) but it is not going to happen overnight and it won't be at all easy. Personally to do a care type job I would want to be paid at least double what I can get elsewhere, I doubt that is unusual for many Brits.
People are not stupid. They know things aren’t working the way they want or need them to. Some of this is deeply structural and relates to the way we have been governed at least since the 1980s and in some cases far earlier. Attlee, Thatcher and Blair, who are probably the biggest architects of our current system, did much right but a lot of their ideas are now outdated in the circumstances we find ourselves in, 25 years into the 21st Century.
Unfortunately our political classes continue to maintain that a lot of these structures and models are sacred cows and untouchable. The problem is that by delaying reform the eventual solutions to “fix” the problems will become much more extreme.
I can see a small flaw in that plan.
https://www.politico.eu/article/decolonizing-cities-hitler-stalin-fascism-history-nazism/
What should be done with this -
Never Trump Republicans amounted to very little; Les Republicans now poll one sixth of the vote of RN; those Prog Cons who refused to merge with Reform in Canada got a derisory vote; the once-dominant Dutch CDA are now a fringe party.
So, if Reform become dominant on the Right, most Conservatives in “nice Britain” will back them.
As I keep saying to the NIMBY types I know - accept planning changes and building now. Otherwise the FuckTheGreenBeltAndEspeciallyTheNewts Party will get power. Primary legislation in the Commons for whole cities.
But the former frequently give the impression that they place the interests of foreigners above the interests of their own people.
'I once played table tennis ' klaxon, inevitably.
They were just illustrative examples rather than any kind of pointed barb.
My general point was that all parties - and doubly so under FPTP - are necessarily coalitions. Labour saw off the comparable challenge to their coalition from the (then) SDP back in the 80s.
It was potentially existential to their position as one of the governing duopoly. The same is now true if the Tories and Reform.
The belief that "Brits are too posh to do the jobs that Proper Immigrants will do" reminds me of Oriental Lassitude. The belief, by pith helmeted men in shorts, sipping G&T, that the locals in Thailand, Malaysia etc were irredeemably lazy.
To be fair, a large part of the belief that Brits Do Not Work comes from opinion formers being in Central London, where the demographics & economics mean that much of the bottom end work *is* done by recent immigrants.
Eastern Europe has lots of it.
I'm deeply suspicious of these free speech laws. I think they'll do more to curtail it than to "free" it, and there will be a *surprised Pikachu* moment when it's used against the far right to close down meeting or something.
(See also all the stuff used again JSO, which curiously hasn't been used against the farmer protests - yet).
Would you be suggesting that was free speech?
The classic philosophical boundaries on free speech are the point where it shuts down the speech of others. That goes back to the ancient Greeks. At least in written form...
I am fair and balanced.
You never will.
Classic.
A fanatic is one who can't change his mind and won't change the subject.
However every ex Communist square does not and should not contain a statue of Stalin or Lenin to remind people of the horrors and every Southern American town doesn't need an absolutely monumental statue, that was deliberately placed there to intimidate blacks in the Jim Crow era. However examples of all, probably the most prominent, should stay with a plaque giving the context.
Thanks for that link @Malmesbury. Appreciated.
Something Tories need to really think about.
University authorities usually adopt the line of least resistance.
If all three mainstream parties had done so then the insurgency would have happened earlier, not later, and it would have dominated our domestic politics anyway.
People have free speech to support the government and institutions, but are frowned upon when they express contrary opinions.
The problem there, in London, is that the housing costs are pricing even "the multiple adults living in each room" type accommodation out of existence. So the cheapo workers live further and further out.
Which is why the chain shops are automating ordering and tills, monitored by a couple of staff, for instance.
In small and medium construction, the adamant refusal to automate is beginning to break down.
(I am not saying I agree with Euro membership; I was against it. Just positing that anti-EU sentiment increased over the years.)
The only thing that could make Russia's prospects any brighter would be if Ambrose Evans-Pritchard and Peter Zeihan start forecasting economic doom there.
Given the Guardian article you linked to, it's interesting to see that Reform voters are SO much less likely to believe in man-made climate change than any of the other parties.
https://yougov.co.uk/politics/articles/50971-what-do-reform-uk-voters-believe-on-climate-change
There's always talk about Reform/Tory pacts and mergers, which tend to ignore the polling suggesting Reform voters would be just as likely to move to Lib/Lab/Green. Is the mistake that people are putting them in a box marked 'right wing', when really they should be in a box marked 'most likely to believe lies on the internet'?
1) Order the removal people round. Leave a note. Democracy
2) Order the army to shoot the Other Lot. Not-democracy.
For free speech - do the people I dislike get to speak?
That's why the noises about them being centrist and sensible don't always resonate.
Not popular with me today - to access their cafe one has to do the show. And nice cafes are thin on the ground hereabouts.
https://www.tripadvisor.co.uk/Attraction_Review-g504075-d12309797-Reviews-Sherwood_Observatory-Sutton_in_Ashfield_Nottinghamshire_England.html
It would be poetic justice that the embers they stocked for tactical gain end up consuming them. However the damage to our country far outweighs the joy of any partisan schadenfreude.
Not sure what it would cost - there's the working at height, plus specialist construction techniques. But you could definitely get it removed and you'd never know.
That's obviously true of the ubiquitous Stalin representations, or the post-Reconstruction Civil War hagiography of Confederate generals.
How we should treat with them now is as much a political as historical question.
It's reached the point where solutions that were regarded as impossible or extreme are being implemented - such as automation.
Leadership of mainstream political parties has often been quite similar in this because they draw from a similar social group.
That's one context for a Trumpist-Tories-Reform-Respectables link.
I have seen a couple of ex-Tory MPs showing some leg to Reform, but nothing serious yet afaics.
Likewise, I think that this RAF situation is a public order problem. They can have a protest around the corner / outside the building as long as they don't impede people's lawful right to go about their business.
Similarly, I had no problem with animal rights protestors outside my favourite restaurant. I had to put up with fairly-loud protest which others moaned about but, hey, suck it up and eat your legal foie if that's ethically OK by you. On the other hand, when they started threatening staff and damaging property, that's that.
I wouldn't begrudge a UK political party making the full-throated case for federalism, as Edward Heath, Michael Heseltine or Charles Kennedy would have done, even if I vociferously disagreed, but there wasn't much evidence for its success.
Labour had arrived at a place where they sort of talked a bit about Rights and otherwise tried to ignore it.
Lose an election and ... try like hell to overturn it using violence, intimidation and blackmail. Fail in this but leave office without conceding or cooperating in the transition of power. Convince half the country the election was rigged, scare your own party into letting you run again in the next election, win it, take back control and go after your internal enemies, aka the people who stood up to you last time.
Are we nearer 1 or nearer 2 - incredible to have to ask but we do.
But I've long argued in favour of nuclear power (just not our crap way of doing it), and in favour of strong defence (but again not managed competently).
And I'd take issue with your labelling yourself a social/political pragmatist. You're as much a dogmatist as those you label as "hyper social liberals", whatever that might mean.
In a parallel universe, or in the far future, there’s a UK centre right party that prioritises entrepreneurship and trade.
At the very least the protestors are breaching the peace, though other offences could apply. I'd suggest a suitable remedy would be a night or two in a police cell and a conditional discharge by the Magistrate the next court day.
While we see the successes of socially-moderated market economies (whether that moderation is right-paternalist or left-socialist) in bringing comparative stability and prosperity wherever they are able to manifest over the past couple of hundred years, there is patently an issue with finance capitalism, as it has evolved since WW2; particularly with respect to concentration of wealth and power at the expense of the majority; and no-one is proposing solutions from right or left.
Otherwise Sarwar FM could equally break the deadlock
Yes different factors affect insurance prices, but multivariable analysis and different data sets allow the impacts to be teased out.
The data is that there were major increases (31%) 2 years ago on average, and a fall back (~17%) last year. That is part frequency of claims, and part the cost of repair.
The speed limiter technology that has come in is interesting - we may get premiums related to agreeing to obey speed limits one level more than the 'black box monitoing' done previously.
It also requires Reform to overtake the Tories on seats as well as votes first of course
This is probably about where I suspect things are:
Election Maps UK
@ElectionMapsUK
·
48m
Westminster Voting Intention:
CON: 25% (-1)
LAB: 24% (-2)
RFM: 24% (+2)
LDM: 12% (=)
GRN: 8% (+1)
SNP: 3% (=)
Via @Moreincommon_
, 10-13 Jan.
The problem here is the "The hurtfulness of your existence" - to some people the existence of a counter argument if terrifying and painful. See religion. See also the cases where, in universities, the presence of Germaine Greer in a meeting room required safe spaces and counselling for opponents.