The only way Farage would likely become PM is if Reform won most seats and the Tories agreed to support a Reform government in a hung parliament.
I think Kemi stays, she won the Tory MPs and members votes. Jenrick wouldn't win over many Farage voters either, they would stick with Reform over an ex Remainer Reform lite. Jenrick would also risk leaking some current Tory voters to Labour and the LDs
The poll asks “within the next four years”, but Labour don’t need to hold an election for four and a half years. So the probably of Farage becoming PM in the next four years is much lower than in the next five years. Poorly phrased polling!
Fpt
“Number of migrants living in hotels soars under Labour as asylum costs top £5bn
The number of migrants living in hotels has risen by 20 per cent in three months, official data shows”
This is where expectation is so important in politics. Migrant hotels and high taxes simply does not matter for Labour's polling in the same way it does for the Conservatives.
Labour will be judged primarily on the NHS. And possibly economic growth given the rhetoric.
You think Labour voters - especially poor and wwc voters - don’t care that we are spending 5, 6, 9 billion a year on housing unwanted foreigners, who all get private health care?
You don’t think they might say Fuck this, I’m voting Farage?
Well, it’s a view. It’s a suicidally complacent view but a view nonetheless
Those people are already voting for Farage.
Labour got 33% at the election. According to the polls they are low on 23-28% - and falling. That’s partly because a lot of your voters are switching to reform
Or back to the SNP in Scotland
But do carry on. It’s fun watching a government commit suicide
For the umpteenth time - that's simply not true. They are primarily switching to lefty parties or DK/won't vote (90%), and that suppression inflates the Reform share as a proportion.
Very few numpties voted for Labour to crack down on immigration, or to lower tax. You would have voted Reform if that's what matters to you (and they did).
That’s why I said partly. Reform is drawing support from Tories and Labour. Going down your path of ignoring things like migration, asylum, etc - because our voters don’t care about this - is a sure way of driving further red wall voters, and the young, to Farage
The difference is that Conservative voters are transferring straight to Reform, and in much larger numbers, in a way that Labour voters are not. Reform's existing vote is highly resilient.
It's HYUFD-level manipulation of the numbers, but if you were to put the DKs and Won't Vote back to where they came from, Labour would have a substantial 7 points or so lead, and the Conservatives and Reform are at parity. That's the great source of optimism for Labour.
(FYI I didn't vote Labour)
The Conservatives’ poll ratings were likewise hit by don’t knows/won’t knows in 2022/24.
But, it turned out they knew one thing. They were not voting Conservative.
The absolute number of ex-Labour voters going to reform is not that different to the absolute number of ex-Conservatives.
Certainly true. I wouldn't say in 2022 that I was certain not to vote Tory, but I was certainly "wait and see" on Starmer as at that point he hadn't committed to pretty much anything. Then over the next two years the Tories kept making bad decisions (cancelling HS2 was the final nail in the coffin" but Starmer continued to offer nothing but a tax pledge with a loophole and some spite - and then parachuted in a Westminster councillor to be the candidate.
Betting on the next PM is, as Wodehouse put it in 'The Purity of the Turf' like betting on the fathers' obstacle race at the village fete, very hard to estimate form.
That Farage is favourite I think, counter intuitively is right. That is not because he probably will be next PM, but because all the other names even more probably won't. There are too many of them and none of them are Red Rum. 5/2 is not value.
If there is value in the market, it would be based on the next PM being Starmer's Labour successor. Streeting is the best but he is male and is very likely to lose his seat next time and is minister for a failing NHS. So apart from looking for a Foinavon there isn't much to look at.
The poll asks “within the next four years”, but Labour don’t need to hold an election for four and a half years. So the probably of Farage becoming PM in the next four years is much lower than in the next five years. Poorly phrased polling!
Fpt
“Number of migrants living in hotels soars under Labour as asylum costs top £5bn
The number of migrants living in hotels has risen by 20 per cent in three months, official data shows”
This is where expectation is so important in politics. Migrant hotels and high taxes simply does not matter for Labour's polling in the same way it does for the Conservatives.
Labour will be judged primarily on the NHS. And possibly economic growth given the rhetoric.
You think Labour voters - especially poor and wwc voters - don’t care that we are spending 5, 6, 9 billion a year on housing unwanted foreigners, who all get private health care?
You don’t think they might say Fuck this, I’m voting Farage?
Well, it’s a view. It’s a suicidally complacent view but a view nonetheless
There is a definite anti establishment mood in the country right now but many progressives seem deaf to it.
Tony Blair arguably still holds the best electoral mind in the country. Within days of the 2024 election he warned labour leadership that they were vulnerable on the flanks from Reform. But some anon acct on the internet probably knows better.
I think Starmer (or those around him) are - belatedly - starting to get it, a bit. The media management has been a little better of late. We also see Rachel’s damascene conversion from chief undertaker of the British economy to Mrs Boosterism. It remains to be seen what the fallout will be from Starmer’s Trump diplomacy but he seems to have handled that live wire ok so far.
We do however have the NI rise coming down the tracks and I’m far from convinced the British economy will turn a corner this year. That will be the big issue.
As well as the NI rise there is also a big jump in pensions coming, and big rise in the minimum wage. Both are going to put money into the high st economy.
There is a logic to all of this- very roughly to discourage low value-added jobs by increasing their cost through both NI and minimum wage. If you can do that, productivity goes up and the demand for foreign workers goes down.
Put like that, I can sort of see why it's tricky to tell the story out loud. It's a gamble and it might not work, but the government won the right to try it for a term.
Then they need to be more up front about it - swapping Deliveroo drivers for bots, automated warehouses, squeezing hand car washes. Start talking about what they're going to do to try and get Waymo's first European site in the UK (Milton Keynes would work well). There are votes - and hope - in all of that.
The other thing is that at some point to the transition to internet shopping will slow and end and the high street can size itself for the market that is - rather than the size of the market they'd hoped for five years previously. That should give us an automatic efficiency bump.
The poll asks “within the next four years”, but Labour don’t need to hold an election for four and a half years. So the probably of Farage becoming PM in the next four years is much lower than in the next five years. Poorly phrased polling!
Fpt
“Number of migrants living in hotels soars under Labour as asylum costs top £5bn
The number of migrants living in hotels has risen by 20 per cent in three months, official data shows”
This is where expectation is so important in politics. Migrant hotels and high taxes simply does not matter for Labour's polling in the same way it does for the Conservatives.
Labour will be judged primarily on the NHS. And possibly economic growth given the rhetoric.
You think Labour voters - especially poor and wwc voters - don’t care that we are spending 5, 6, 9 billion a year on housing unwanted foreigners, who all get private health care?
You don’t think they might say Fuck this, I’m voting Farage?
Well, it’s a view. It’s a suicidally complacent view but a view nonetheless
Those people are already voting for Farage.
Labour got 33% at the election. According to the polls they are low on 23-28% - and falling. That’s partly because a lot of your voters are switching to reform
Or back to the SNP in Scotland
But do carry on. It’s fun watching a government commit suicide
If there are many more stories like this, which just popped up in my feed, then Labour will certainly start to suffer from it. A family claiming of asylum seekers claiming to be Afghans but probably aren't, hosted in a £575K house at the taxpayers expense. Tried twice before to come here but were rejected but undeterred did. Trial put back to 2026. They will never go back We will just continue to pay taxes to fund this economically inactive foursome.
The anger growing around the country is palpable, even from here in Rangoon. It’s story after story after story. Thousands of them
The same dynamic is playing out across Western Europe and it is having the same consequences everywhere - ushering the hard right into power
I do believe Labour now has a sense of the danger. But I don’t believe they have any clue how to address it and all their instincts are to do the opposite
In some cases we are seeing left wing parties with a stronger line on immigration too and they are doing quite well.
There’s a clear Labour model that Starmer should be following but he needs to reach further back in the party’s history. Champion of the working class rather than metropolitan liberals. Pride in the British flag not the rainbow one. Money in people’s pockets. Armed forces on a pedestal with a prioritisation for national defence. And yes, going hard on immigration, to protect the social fabric of the country, lift the burden of creaking infrastructure and services and boost wages for the working class.
I don’t expect he’ll do any of this.
Problem is Starmer is a metropolitan liberal and voters know it. If he does that he might leak voters to the Greens without gaining any from Reform
The poll asks “within the next four years”, but Labour don’t need to hold an election for four and a half years. So the probably of Farage becoming PM in the next four years is much lower than in the next five years. Poorly phrased polling!
Fpt
“Number of migrants living in hotels soars under Labour as asylum costs top £5bn
The number of migrants living in hotels has risen by 20 per cent in three months, official data shows”
This is where expectation is so important in politics. Migrant hotels and high taxes simply does not matter for Labour's polling in the same way it does for the Conservatives.
Labour will be judged primarily on the NHS. And possibly economic growth given the rhetoric.
You think Labour voters - especially poor and wwc voters - don’t care that we are spending 5, 6, 9 billion a year on housing unwanted foreigners, who all get private health care?
You don’t think they might say Fuck this, I’m voting Farage?
Well, it’s a view. It’s a suicidally complacent view but a view nonetheless
There is a definite anti establishment mood in the country right now but many progressives seem deaf to it.
Tony Blair arguably still holds the best electoral mind in the country. Within days of the 2024 election he warned labour leadership that they were vulnerable on the flanks from Reform. But some anon acct on the internet probably knows better.
I think Starmer (or those around him) are - belatedly - starting to get it, a bit. The media management has been a little better of late. We also see Rachel’s damascene conversion from chief undertaker of the British economy to Mrs Boosterism. It remains to be seen what the fallout will be from Starmer’s Trump diplomacy but he seems to have handled that live wire ok so far.
We do however have the NI rise coming down the tracks and I’m far from convinced the British economy will turn a corner this year. That will be the big issue.
As well as the NI rise there is also a big jump in pensions coming, and big rise in the minimum wage. Both are going to put money into the high st economy.
No they are going to lead to further job cuts in the high street and small businesses
It's a long time ago now, but a guy I knew online had a father with Alzheimer's. While it moved rapidly, his father never had the anger that some (like my grandpa) developed, and even jokingly blamed the Alzheimer's for not doing chores etc so their relationship didn't suffer at all. While this seems, anecdotally, uncommon, it does at least suggest the irritation/anger aspect isn't universal.
It definitely isn't. My mum (89) has it but at least so far has retained her fundamentally sweet nature.
I'm sorry to hear your mother has it, but staying positive and 'herself' are, I hope, mitigating the worst of the situation.
Betting on the next PM is, as Wodehouse put it in 'The Purity of the Turf' like betting on the fathers' obstacle race at the village fete, very hard to estimate form.
That Farage is favourite I think, counter intuitively is right. That is not because he probably will be next PM, but because all the other names even more probably won't. There are too many of them and none of them are Red Rum. 5/2 is not value.
If there is value in the market, it would be based on the next PM being Starmer's Labour successor. Streeting is the best but he is male and is very likely to lose his seat next time and is minister for a failing NHS. So apart from looking for a Foinavon there isn't much to look at.
You’ve also got to factor in the chances of my standing as an independent and drawing vast numbers of votes from all corners of the UK, as a grateful, even enchanted Britain falls in love with me
I’m already getting messages from top people in my head and everywhere on the political spectrum
So then the question is: do I obey the call of patriotic duty
The only way Farage would likely become PM is if Reform won most seats and the Tories agreed to support a Reform government in a hung parliament.
I think Kemi stays, she won the Tory MPs and members votes. Jenrick wouldn't win over many Farage voters either, they would stick with Reform over an ex Remainer Reform lite. Jenrick would also risk leaking some current Tory voters to Labour and the LDs
The passage of time and its changes are important. At this moment if the Tories did not rule out an alliance with Reform, then traditional Tories would not vote for them. The populist right vote would be split between two parties, to the disadvantage of both.
But after a couple of years of Trumpism, Reform, if they can avoid being tainted by plutocratic gangsterism and Robinsonism and just be the ordinary bloke's common sense party, will start to look comparatively moderate.
The only way Farage would likely become PM is if Reform won most seats and the Tories agreed to support a Reform government in a hung parliament.
I think Kemi stays, she won the Tory MPs and members votes. Jenrick wouldn't win over many Farage voters either, they would stick with Reform over an ex Remainer Reform lite. Jenrick would also risk leaking some current Tory voters to Labour and the LDs
Makes sense - it always worth listening to HYUFD on the mood of the Tory party.
The poll asks “within the next four years”, but Labour don’t need to hold an election for four and a half years. So the probably of Farage becoming PM in the next four years is much lower than in the next five years. Poorly phrased polling!
Fpt
“Number of migrants living in hotels soars under Labour as asylum costs top £5bn
The number of migrants living in hotels has risen by 20 per cent in three months, official data shows”
This is where expectation is so important in politics. Migrant hotels and high taxes simply does not matter for Labour's polling in the same way it does for the Conservatives.
Labour will be judged primarily on the NHS. And possibly economic growth given the rhetoric.
You think Labour voters - especially poor and wwc voters - don’t care that we are spending 5, 6, 9 billion a year on housing unwanted foreigners, who all get private health care?
You don’t think they might say Fuck this, I’m voting Farage?
Well, it’s a view. It’s a suicidally complacent view but a view nonetheless
Those people are already voting for Farage.
Labour got 33% at the election. According to the polls they are low on 23-28% - and falling. That’s partly because a lot of your voters are switching to reform
Or back to the SNP in Scotland
But do carry on. It’s fun watching a government commit suicide
If there are many more stories like this, which just popped up in my feed, then Labour will certainly start to suffer from it. A family claiming of asylum seekers claiming to be Afghans but probably aren't, hosted in a £575K house at the taxpayers expense. Tried twice before to come here but were rejected but undeterred did. Trial put back to 2026. They will never go back We will just continue to pay taxes to fund this economically inactive foursome.
The anger growing around the country is palpable, even from here in Rangoon. It’s story after story after story. Thousands of them
The same dynamic is playing out across Western Europe and it is having the same consequences everywhere - ushering the hard right into power
I do believe Labour now has a sense of the danger. But I don’t believe they have any clue how to address it and all their instincts are to do the opposite
In some cases we are seeing left wing parties with a stronger line on immigration too and they are doing quite well.
There’s a clear Labour model that Starmer should be following but he needs to reach further back in the party’s history. Champion of the working class rather than metropolitan liberals. Pride in the British flag not the rainbow one. Money in people’s pockets. Armed forces on a pedestal with a prioritisation for national defence. And yes, going hard on immigration, to protect the social fabric of the country, lift the burden of creaking infrastructure and services and boost wages for the working class.
I don’t expect he’ll do any of this.
I agree with you on both counts. I suspect he wont as the party is now full of MP's who seem to think problems and communities are there to be managed not solved. Hence why so many MP's have come from charities and NGO's.
Look at the hysterical reaction from some on the left when labour spokespeople started to appear with the Union flag behind them. You'd think he was the next Tommy Robinson.
Betting on the next PM is, as Wodehouse put it in 'The Purity of the Turf' like betting on the fathers' obstacle race at the village fete, very hard to estimate form.
That Farage is favourite I think, counter intuitively is right. That is not because he probably will be next PM, but because all the other names even more probably won't. There are too many of them and none of them are Red Rum. 5/2 is not value.
If there is value in the market, it would be based on the next PM being Starmer's Labour successor. Streeting is the best but he is male and is very likely to lose his seat next time and is minister for a failing NHS. So apart from looking for a Foinavon there isn't much to look at.
You’ve also got to factor in the chances of my standing as an independent and drawing vast numbers of votes from all corners of the UK, as a grateful, even enchanted Britain falls in love with me
I’m already getting messages from top people in my head and everywhere on the political spectrum
So then the question is: do I obey the call of patriotic duty
LEON
REX QUONDAM REX FUTURAE
Rex tremandae maiestatis, qui salvandos salvas gratis, salva me, fons pietatis.
When he sets off his goons on full rampage, he'll get (and deserve) serious blowback.
From who?
It's a good question, and perhaps also depends on what we say is "serious blowback".
I can see him developing his own version of what Archbishop Desmond Tutu was to Apartheid South Africa, for one thought.
He's already getting strong moral pushback. The female Bishop who called him out politely had quite an impact on him, and he resorted to his usual demionisation of, and theats against, those who won't comply, rather than defending his policies and taking responsibility for himself. Trump deals in money and power; imo he's scared of ethics, principles and personal responsibility.
The more important practical impact would be on the onlookers, the watchers. and potentially eventually waking up the "nothing to do with me" enablers.
Betting on the next PM is, as Wodehouse put it in 'The Purity of the Turf' like betting on the fathers' obstacle race at the village fete, very hard to estimate form.
That Farage is favourite I think, counter intuitively is right. That is not because he probably will be next PM, but because all the other names even more probably won't. There are too many of them and none of them are Red Rum. 5/2 is not value.
If there is value in the market, it would be based on the next PM being Starmer's Labour successor. Streeting is the best but he is male and is very likely to lose his seat next time and is minister for a failing NHS. So apart from looking for a Foinavon there isn't much to look at.
You’ve also got to factor in the chances of my standing as an independent and drawing vast numbers of votes from all corners of the UK, as a grateful, even enchanted Britain falls in love with me
I’m already getting messages from top people in my head and everywhere on the political spectrum
So then the question is: do I obey the call of patriotic duty
LEON
REX QUONDAM REX FUTURAE
Just think the fortune Robert and myself can make from selling your comments on PB to the media.
Until the Donald decides to land anyway and do so with a fighter escort.
In which case Colombia could do absolutely nothing about it.
They could just park a few trucks on the runway. Ecuador did it to stop covid laden unauthorised flights landing at Quito.
What would you know anyway, on the last thread you were posting about the US planes turning back over some made up fake place called “The Gulf of Mexico”.
The City of London Police (CoLP) have arrested a 29-year-old man after a climate protest group claimed to have “[disrupted] the wifi systems of hundreds of insurance companies across the UK“, which they achieved by cutting key fibre optic cables in London (similar events are also said to have occurred in Leeds, Birmingham and Sheffield).
In a post on Instagram, the relatively new group, calling itself Shut the System, said on Monday that its “activists” were “demanding an immediate end to support for new fossil fuel projects and mandatory transition plans for all clients involved in the fossil fuel industry.”
Some businesses in the affected area(s) are understood to have suffered a significant slowdown in broadband and Ethernet connectivity, which has raised additional questions about the need for greater resilience within those companies. But that’s another story and one that all businesses have to consider, although many of the organisations hit did have an adequate backup in place.
I know a few companies that are using it as their backup to their backup for internet access in London.
Yes, performance is much lower in built up areas, due to contention. For consumer grade connections.
The thing is that these companies are paying a lot more for connectivity*. Assured performance levels. There is a limit on the number of such connections, but it is an option.
*There is a whole genre of jokes in IT that start with "A manager complained about how much we were paying for the connection - he thought it should cost the same as home broadband. Then...."
The high frequency traders are paying well into the five figures per month for city-based Starlink. It’s quite a few milliseconds faster for intercontinental latency, so if you’re in London and want to be a little bit closer to New York and Tokyo…
Yes, your home broadband has a contention ratio of 50/1 if you’re lucky, but they only every advertise the almost meaningless “speed” rather than the contention or latency.
Betting on the next PM is, as Wodehouse put it in 'The Purity of the Turf' like betting on the fathers' obstacle race at the village fete, very hard to estimate form.
That Farage is favourite I think, counter intuitively is right. That is not because he probably will be next PM, but because all the other names even more probably won't. There are too many of them and none of them are Red Rum. 5/2 is not value.
If there is value in the market, it would be based on the next PM being Starmer's Labour successor. Streeting is the best but he is male and is very likely to lose his seat next time and is minister for a failing NHS. So apart from looking for a Foinavon there isn't much to look at.
All good points. If I were a betting man (and I'm not for... reasons) I'd be taking a punt on Bridget Phillipson at 33/1.
File under what could possibly go wrong. I expect the main winners from this will be the non value added middlemen who make money come what may.
LONDON (Reuters) - British finance minister Rachel Reeves will later this week announce plans to allow corporate pension scheme surpluses worth tens of billions of pounds to be released and reinvested, Sky News reported on Sunday.
Reeves is seeking new sources of investment as she tries to breathe life into a stagnant British economy to fund Prime Minister Keir Starmer's plans to raise living standards and rebuild the country's creaking infrastructure.
The City of London Police (CoLP) have arrested a 29-year-old man after a climate protest group claimed to have “[disrupted] the wifi systems of hundreds of insurance companies across the UK“, which they achieved by cutting key fibre optic cables in London (similar events are also said to have occurred in Leeds, Birmingham and Sheffield).
In a post on Instagram, the relatively new group, calling itself Shut the System, said on Monday that its “activists” were “demanding an immediate end to support for new fossil fuel projects and mandatory transition plans for all clients involved in the fossil fuel industry.”
Some businesses in the affected area(s) are understood to have suffered a significant slowdown in broadband and Ethernet connectivity, which has raised additional questions about the need for greater resilience within those companies. But that’s another story and one that all businesses have to consider, although many of the organisations hit did have an adequate backup in place.
I know a few companies that are using it as their backup to their backup for internet access in London.
Yes, performance is much lower in built up areas, due to contention. For consumer grade connections.
The thing is that these companies are paying a lot more for connectivity*. Assured performance levels. There is a limit on the number of such connections, but it is an option.
*There is a whole genre of jokes in IT that start with "A manager complained about how much we were paying for the connection - he thought it should cost the same as home broadband. Then...."
The high frequency traders are paying well into the five figures per month for city-based Starlink. It’s quite a few milliseconds faster for intercontinental latency, so if you’re in London and want to be a little bit closer to New York and Tokyo…
At work we have at least four redundancies if our main system stops working plus Starlink.
I think there is a decent risk - perhaps 40% - that Reform take off in the polls during this parliament. All of the factors are in place: Labour doing little and the economy not improving Tories led by bonkers refusing to accept the mess they made Reform connecting with left behind voters and so far not saying anything crazy
The scenario is simple - Farage shows leadership, and points to the Trumpian successes in deporting migrants and clamping down on law and order issues and says we can have that. Labour wail about how nasty it is, the Tories cry about how they already did all that (stop laughing) and could do again. And the LibDems say Trump is awful we need to reverse course.
Farage PM would need various scenarios to play out. A leading one being that the rarely or non voters turn out and say they're backing him. We all know that non-voters don't vote, but they have occasionally and there is polling suggesting they are backing Reform now. Add them to the voting roll and all bets are off.
The others are that Labour meander along and fail the red wall as badly as the Tories did, the Tories leave bonkers in place or better still replace her with Jenrick (stop laughing) - both are diabolically bad for Tory prospects. And that the Davey "we can do better than this" message resonates and builds its own quiet momentum.
Result? Reform sweep the red wall, midlands and broken towns, LibDems add another slew of seats - into midlands and northern places they once held. Tories collapse still further, shrieking into their copies of the Daily Telegraph.
The Times is now the Tory house journal. The Telegraph is full of Reformers now anyway.
The LDs are now a party of posh Remainers and win few seats north of Watford
Don't you get any sleep? 1:00 am / 4:00 am / 7:00 am and then all of yesterday.
Is there more than one of you?
Interesting question. Did we get an answer from @williamglenn?
I'm sure Olgino produces lavishly tooled fluent 'legitmate concerns' guys as well as the lumbering twats that infest here on a Saturday morning. In fact I think the latter may be mostly home made jobs.
The City of London Police (CoLP) have arrested a 29-year-old man after a climate protest group claimed to have “[disrupted] the wifi systems of hundreds of insurance companies across the UK“, which they achieved by cutting key fibre optic cables in London (similar events are also said to have occurred in Leeds, Birmingham and Sheffield).
In a post on Instagram, the relatively new group, calling itself Shut the System, said on Monday that its “activists” were “demanding an immediate end to support for new fossil fuel projects and mandatory transition plans for all clients involved in the fossil fuel industry.”
Some businesses in the affected area(s) are understood to have suffered a significant slowdown in broadband and Ethernet connectivity, which has raised additional questions about the need for greater resilience within those companies. But that’s another story and one that all businesses have to consider, although many of the organisations hit did have an adequate backup in place.
Good call! This is why Farage is doomed. Far too woke and squeamish on capital sentences for climate protestors.
If that gets convictions, it will be serious sentences as it is an attack on the basic infra. It's in the same category as blocking transport links to create chaos.
That is, if the confused account has a real story behind it.
Don't you get any sleep? 1:00 am / 4:00 am / 7:00 am and then all of yesterday.
Is there more than one of you?
Interesting question. Did we get an answer from @williamglenn?
What business is it of anyone's what his habits are ?
It is a little odd checking someones posting times/habits then demanding answers from them on it.
Well yes, you have a point. I am perhaps unreasonably concerned that all is not what it seems on the internet and we have been plagued by bots of different types.
Don't you get any sleep? 1:00 am / 4:00 am / 7:00 am and then all of yesterday.
Is there more than one of you?
Interesting question. Did we get an answer from @williamglenn?
I'm sure Olgino produces lavishly tooled fluent 'legitmate concerns' guys as well as the lumbering twats that infest here on a Saturday morning. In fact I think the latter may be mostly home made jobs.
Betting on the next PM is, as Wodehouse put it in 'The Purity of the Turf' like betting on the fathers' obstacle race at the village fete, very hard to estimate form.
That Farage is favourite I think, counter intuitively is right. That is not because he probably will be next PM, but because all the other names even more probably won't. There are too many of them and none of them are Red Rum. 5/2 is not value.
If there is value in the market, it would be based on the next PM being Starmer's Labour successor. Streeting is the best but he is male and is very likely to lose his seat next time and is minister for a failing NHS. So apart from looking for a Foinavon there isn't much to look at.
All good points. If I were a betting man (and I'm not for... reasons) I'd be taking a punt on Bridget Phillipson at 33/1.
If not her, someone like her- low to mid ranking cabinet minister now, promoted to the top bit of the table in 2026 or so.
Who (outside Huntingdon or Lambeth) had heard of John Major in 1987?
Don't you get any sleep? 1:00 am / 4:00 am / 7:00 am and then all of yesterday.
Is there more than one of you?
Interesting question. Did we get an answer from @williamglenn?
We've been patting ourselves on the back for the ease with which we spot the Russian trolls. But maybe it's like cross-dressers - you only spot the bad ones!
Is it easier to change your political party or your Football/Rugby club? If I was in charge of long term planning in the Conservative party I would be worried that only 9% of under 50 year olds would currently vote Conservative.
The betting is significantly understating the chances of a Labour successor to Starmer, before they eventually go down to defeat. More likely after a second term.
On balance, I still expect Starmer to retire early, following Mr Wilson's example.
Complicating that are two reasons Starmer might not want to go. First, he will not want to be seen to have been forced out by Trump. Second, there is no obvious successor because neither the Chancellor nor Home Secretaries have made much progress. No-one has, except arguably Ed Miliband but he has failed already as leader.
But Wilson was suffering from the early stages of dementia. And knew it.
And I am trying to skirt the mods by not repeatedly drawing attention to Starmer's frequent verbal slips as a reason for him to follow Wilson.
The poll asks “within the next four years”, but Labour don’t need to hold an election for four and a half years. So the probably of Farage becoming PM in the next four years is much lower than in the next five years. Poorly phrased polling!
Fpt
“Number of migrants living in hotels soars under Labour as asylum costs top £5bn
The number of migrants living in hotels has risen by 20 per cent in three months, official data shows”
This is where expectation is so important in politics. Migrant hotels and high taxes simply does not matter for Labour's polling in the same way it does for the Conservatives.
Labour will be judged primarily on the NHS. And possibly economic growth given the rhetoric.
You think Labour voters - especially poor and wwc voters - don’t care that we are spending 5, 6, 9 billion a year on housing unwanted foreigners, who all get private health care?
You don’t think they might say Fuck this, I’m voting Farage?
Well, it’s a view. It’s a suicidally complacent view but a view nonetheless
Those people are already voting for Farage.
Labour got 33% at the election. According to the polls they are low on 23-28% - and falling. That’s partly because a lot of your voters are switching to reform
Or back to the SNP in Scotland
But do carry on. It’s fun watching a government commit suicide
Since you brought it up, what do you think PM Farage and a rebound to the SNP in Scotland would do for the Union?
On current Holyrood polls Reform will come third in the 2026 Scottish Parliament elections anyway and be the main opposition to a likely SNP minority government propped up by Scottish Labour
Don't you get any sleep? 1:00 am / 4:00 am / 7:00 am and then all of yesterday.
Is there more than one of you?
Interesting question. Did we get an answer from @williamglenn?
I'm sure Olgino produces lavishly tooled fluent 'legitmate concerns' guys as well as the lumbering twats that infest here on a Saturday morning. In fact I think the latter may be mostly home made jobs.
Don't you get any sleep? 1:00 am / 4:00 am / 7:00 am and then all of yesterday.
Is there more than one of you?
Interesting question. Did we get an answer from @williamglenn?
I'm sure Olgino produces lavishly tooled fluent 'legitmate concerns' guys as well as the lumbering twats that infest here on a Saturday morning. In fact I think the latter may be mostly home made jobs.
Don't you get any sleep? 1:00 am / 4:00 am / 7:00 am and then all of yesterday.
Is there more than one of you?
Interesting question. Did we get an answer from @williamglenn?
We've been patting ourselves on the back for the ease with which we spot the Russian trolls. But maybe it's like cross-dressers - you only spot the bad ones!
Don't you get any sleep? 1:00 am / 4:00 am / 7:00 am and then all of yesterday.
Is there more than one of you?
Interesting question. Did we get an answer from @williamglenn?
We've been patting ourselves on the back for the ease with which we spot the Russian trolls. But maybe it's like cross-dressers - you only spot the bad ones!
Don't you get any sleep? 1:00 am / 4:00 am / 7:00 am and then all of yesterday.
Is there more than one of you?
Interesting question. Did we get an answer from @williamglenn?
We've been patting ourselves on the back for the ease with which we spot the Russian trolls. But maybe it's like cross-dressers - you only spot the bad ones!
The City of London Police (CoLP) have arrested a 29-year-old man after a climate protest group claimed to have “[disrupted] the wifi systems of hundreds of insurance companies across the UK“, which they achieved by cutting key fibre optic cables in London (similar events are also said to have occurred in Leeds, Birmingham and Sheffield).
In a post on Instagram, the relatively new group, calling itself Shut the System, said on Monday that its “activists” were “demanding an immediate end to support for new fossil fuel projects and mandatory transition plans for all clients involved in the fossil fuel industry.”
Some businesses in the affected area(s) are understood to have suffered a significant slowdown in broadband and Ethernet connectivity, which has raised additional questions about the need for greater resilience within those companies. But that’s another story and one that all businesses have to consider, although many of the organisations hit did have an adequate backup in place.
Good call! This is why Farage is doomed. Far too woke and squeamish on capital sentences for climate protestors.
If that gets convictions, it will be serious sentences as it is an attack on the basic infra. It's in the same category as blocking transport links to create chaos.
That is, if the confused account has a real story behind it.
Meanwhile, the Swedes have accosted yet another ship originating from Russia, with a dodgy anchor suspiciously close to undersea communication cables.
The betting is significantly understating the chances of a Labour successor to Starmer, before they eventually go down to defeat. More likely after a second term.
On balance, I still expect Starmer to retire early, following Mr Wilson's example.
Complicating that are two reasons Starmer might not want to go. First, he will not want to be seen to have been forced out by Trump. Second, there is no obvious successor because neither the Chancellor nor Home Secretaries have made much progress. No-one has, except arguably Ed Miliband but he has failed already as leader.
But Wilson was suffering from the early stages of dementia. And knew it.
And I am trying to skirt the mods by not repeatedly drawing attention to Starmer's frequent verbal slips as a reason for him to follow Wilson.
If you manage to skirt @TSE , especially with those poncy boots, I insist on a photograph.
Don't you get any sleep? 1:00 am / 4:00 am / 7:00 am and then all of yesterday.
Is there more than one of you?
Interesting question. Did we get an answer from @williamglenn?
What business is it of anyone's what his habits are ?
It is a little odd checking someones posting times/habits then demanding answers from them on it.
Well yes, you have a point. I am perhaps unreasonably concerned that all is not what it seems on the internet and we have been plagued by bots of different types.
Trump would never be popular in the UK.....his policies, on the other hand....
Fascinating new polling from @OpiniumResearch & Nepean testing Trump policy positions in UK - even 'end Net Zero' and 'only two genders' get public support (and much higher support for deportations, merit-based society, restoring free speech and, er, tariffs...)
Is it easier to change your political party or your Football/Rugby club? If I was in charge of long term planning in the Conservative party I would be worried that only 9% of under 50 year olds would currently vote Conservative.
Most under 50's don't have much experience of Labour. A bit of Blair maybe, a bit of Brown. None of 1970's Labour and the unburied dead and piles of waste and nationalised industries. They need a period of Labour awfulness to get their political bearings.
Trump would never be popular in the UK.....his policies, on the other hand....
Fascinating new polling from @OpiniumResearch & Nepean testing Trump policy positions in UK - even 'end Net Zero' and 'only two genders' get public support (and much higher support for deportations, merit-based society, restoring free speech and, er, tariffs...)
Don't you get any sleep? 1:00 am / 4:00 am / 7:00 am and then all of yesterday.
Is there more than one of you?
Interesting question. Did we get an answer from @williamglenn?
We've been patting ourselves on the back for the ease with which we spot the Russian trolls. But maybe it's like cross-dressers - you only spot the bad ones!
Trump would never be popular in the UK.....his policies, on the other hand....
Fascinating new polling from @OpiniumResearch & Nepean testing Trump policy positions in UK - even 'end Net Zero' and 'only two genders' get public support (and much higher support for deportations, merit-based society, restoring free speech and, er, tariffs...)
Trump would never be popular in the UK.....his policies, on the other hand....
Fascinating new polling from @OpiniumResearch & Nepean testing Trump policy positions in UK - even 'end Net Zero' and 'only two genders' get public support (and much higher support for deportations, merit-based society, restoring free speech and, er, tariffs...)
Hardly neutral polling language there, but it’s true that there’s a real-time experiment of something very different just started in the US, and we will be hearing an awful lot about it in the next few weeks, months, and years.
If it comes to be seen as a success, then there is likely to be polling support for similar policies in other countries.
Trump would never be popular in the UK.....his policies, on the other hand....
Fascinating new polling from @OpiniumResearch & Nepean testing Trump policy positions in UK - even 'end Net Zero' and 'only two genders' get public support (and much higher support for deportations, merit-based society, restoring free speech and, er, tariffs...)
Trump would never be popular in the UK.....his policies, on the other hand....
Fascinating new polling from @OpiniumResearch & Nepean testing Trump policy positions in UK - even 'end Net Zero' and 'only two genders' get public support (and much higher support for deportations, merit-based society, restoring free speech and, er, tariffs...)
Having a meal out with visiting family last night, and it turns out that a relation has an Alzheimer's diagnosis at age 60.
Can anyone comment on experience of what happens with this condition, and what I can gently do now to help prepare for the future?
One impression I have is that instantiating memories is important as memory is lost progressively, so things like making sure that there are copies of childhood photo albums, familiar objects from earlier in life, and similar, around, may be beneficial.
To be honest, it depends how aggressive it is. I had a former housemate who was diagnosed with it in his mid-fifties. It was viciously aggressive and he was gone within two years. Hopefully your relative has a more sedate form.
Jesus. What a terrifying story - and sympathies to the relative of @MattW - let’s hope it’s much kinder there
Carpe fucking Diem, eh
What was even worse was he got fired from his solicitors practice because they took his first signs slurred words as drunkeness. Consequently didn't have their private healthcare.
It was grim in the extreme. Teenage son had to see his father disintegrate on fast forward. His wife tried to keep it together, but his home was the most depressing place.
Trump would never be popular in the UK.....his policies, on the other hand....
Fascinating new polling from @OpiniumResearch & Nepean testing Trump policy positions in UK - even 'end Net Zero' and 'only two genders' get public support (and much higher support for deportations, merit-based society, restoring free speech and, er, tariffs...)
Trump would never be popular in the UK.....his policies, on the other hand....
Fascinating new polling from @OpiniumResearch & Nepean testing Trump policy positions in UK - even 'end Net Zero' and 'only two genders' get public support (and much higher support for deportations, merit-based society, restoring free speech and, er, tariffs...)
Trump would never be popular in the UK.....his policies, on the other hand....
Fascinating new polling from @OpiniumResearch & Nepean testing Trump policy positions in UK - even 'end Net Zero' and 'only two genders' get public support (and much higher support for deportations, merit-based society, restoring free speech and, er, tariffs...)
Anyhoo if I was Kemi Badenoch I would be flooding the airwaves, social media, and GB News about Farage wanting the UK to take back Shamima Begum because Don told him.
Don't you get any sleep? 1:00 am / 4:00 am / 7:00 am and then all of yesterday.
Is there more than one of you?
Interesting question. Did we get an answer from @williamglenn?
We've been patting ourselves on the back for the ease with which we spot the Russian trolls. But maybe it's like cross-dressers - you only spot the bad ones!
Trump would never be popular in the UK.....his policies, on the other hand....
Fascinating new polling from @OpiniumResearch & Nepean testing Trump policy positions in UK - even 'end Net Zero' and 'only two genders' get public support (and much higher support for deportations, merit-based society, restoring free speech and, er, tariffs...)
Hardly neutral polling language there, but it’s true that there’s a real-time experiment of something very different just started in the US, and we will be hearing an awful lot about it in the next few weeks, months, and years.
If it comes to be seen as a success, then there is likely to be polling support for similar policies in other countries.
“One man’s dream is another man’s nightmare, his hope, the other’s damnation.”
There will be heart-rending tales of family break up, and businesses complaining of labour shortages, and at the same time, millions of Americans will cheer.
Trump would never be popular in the UK.....his policies, on the other hand....
Fascinating new polling from @OpiniumResearch & Nepean testing Trump policy positions in UK - even 'end Net Zero' and 'only two genders' get public support (and much higher support for deportations, merit-based society, restoring free speech and, er, tariffs...)
The reality is if Trump delivers on his tariffs then Brits will see first hand how shit they are and nobody will support the policy except a few low IQ people who watch GB News and/or read The Spectator.
Trump would never be popular in the UK.....his policies, on the other hand....
Fascinating new polling from @OpiniumResearch & Nepean testing Trump policy positions in UK - even 'end Net Zero' and 'only two genders' get public support (and much higher support for deportations, merit-based society, restoring free speech and, er, tariffs...)
Trump would never be popular in the UK.....his policies, on the other hand....
Fascinating new polling from @OpiniumResearch & Nepean testing Trump policy positions in UK - even 'end Net Zero' and 'only two genders' get public support (and much higher support for deportations, merit-based society, restoring free speech and, er, tariffs...)
Is that for real? I've never encountered a single Brit ever who would think that setting up an 'Office for Value for Money' would be anything other than an attempt at satire.
File under what could possibly go wrong. I expect the main winners from this will be the non value added middlemen who make money come what may.
LONDON (Reuters) - British finance minister Rachel Reeves will later this week announce plans to allow corporate pension scheme surpluses worth tens of billions of pounds to be released and reinvested, Sky News reported on Sunday.
Reeves is seeking new sources of investment as she tries to breathe life into a stagnant British economy to fund Prime Minister Keir Starmer's plans to raise living standards and rebuild the country's creaking infrastructure.
This makes no sense whatsoever for more reasons than can be put into a PB comment. At the moment that money is invested through the pension funds and a fair chunk of it is invested in the FTSE along with government bonds. If, say, Vodaphone, were allowed to remove that surplus what possible basis is there for assuming that this would be "invested" as opposed to, say, giving more dividends? It is more likely to be invested and available for investment right now.
Secondly, pension funds have in many cases swung from deficit to surplus because of the changes in gilt rates. Put simply, a pension fund needs a hell of a lot more capital to cover any pension when gilt rates are 0.5% than when they are 4.5%. In simple terms nearly 9x as much. Just as the reported deficits were grossly exaggerated by the inept regulatory system when interest rates were too low so are surpluses being exaggerated by high gilt rates currently. In other words these surpluses are every bit as exaggerated as the deficits were and if gilt rates fall they will disappear.
Trying to be constructive, what we actually need is for the classes of assets pension funds can invest in to be broadened. At the moment a lot of the available funds are simply in FTSE trackers. The regulatory structure should be tweaked so they are encouraged to invest more in startups, AIM investments etc.
Don't you get any sleep? 1:00 am / 4:00 am / 7:00 am and then all of yesterday.
Is there more than one of you?
Interesting question. Did we get an answer from @williamglenn?
We've been patting ourselves on the back for the ease with which we spot the Russian trolls. But maybe it's like cross-dressers - you only spot the bad ones!
Phew, thank goodness Putin's desire to influence Western politics and culture is a recent flash-in-the-pan kinda thing.
Well, you arrived in 2013.
Advocating breaking up the U.K. - which is a stated aim of the Putin snugglers on Russian TV.
I suggest you look at every card in a deck - just to see if you get a funny reaction to the Queen of Hearts, say.
The hosting/platform changed then, I was here a while before that. Unlike you.
Anyway, back to 2013. What are the chances?!!!
'Office of trolls Main article: Trolls from Olgino
From the summer of 2013, there was a base of at least hundred internet trolls in Olgino, who were paid for distributing messages via Internet to support Russian propaganda.[2][3][4][5][6] In October 2014 it became known that the trolls had moved to Savushkina street (Primorskiy district in St. Petersburg).'
Trump would never be popular in the UK.....his policies, on the other hand....
Fascinating new polling from @OpiniumResearch & Nepean testing Trump policy positions in UK - even 'end Net Zero' and 'only two genders' get public support (and much higher support for deportations, merit-based society, restoring free speech and, er, tariffs...)
Trump would never be popular in the UK.....his policies, on the other hand....
Fascinating new polling from @OpiniumResearch & Nepean testing Trump policy positions in UK - even 'end Net Zero' and 'only two genders' get public support (and much higher support for deportations, merit-based society, restoring free speech and, er, tariffs...)
They’re “meant” to be leading. This is polling these as manifesto policies, and thus testing for voter approval
The only surprising thing is the large numbers (23%-38%!!) who are nevertheless against things like 'free speech' 'merit' and reducing inflation.
Brits are bonkers.
I still haven’t recovered from the polling in 2020/21 where about a fifth of voters wanted nightclubs to remain closed even after the pandemic was over.
It's a long time ago now, but a guy I knew online had a father with Alzheimer's. While it moved rapidly, his father never had the anger that some (like my grandpa) developed, and even jokingly blamed the Alzheimer's for not doing chores etc so their relationship didn't suffer at all. While this seems, anecdotally, uncommon, it does at least suggest the irritation/anger aspect isn't universal.
It definitely isn't. My mum (89) has it but at least so far has retained her fundamentally sweet nature.
That was my experience with my father. As everything else went, he retained his essential character.
Trump would never be popular in the UK.....his policies, on the other hand....
Fascinating new polling from @OpiniumResearch & Nepean testing Trump policy positions in UK - even 'end Net Zero' and 'only two genders' get public support (and much higher support for deportations, merit-based society, restoring free speech and, er, tariffs...)
Trump would never be popular in the UK.....his policies, on the other hand....
Fascinating new polling from @OpiniumResearch & Nepean testing Trump policy positions in UK - even 'end Net Zero' and 'only two genders' get public support (and much higher support for deportations, merit-based society, restoring free speech and, er, tariffs...)
They’re “meant” to be leading. This is polling these as manifesto policies, and thus testing for voter approval
The only surprising thing is the large numbers (23%-38%!!) who are nevertheless against things like 'free speech' 'merit' and reducing inflation.
Brits are bonkers.
I still haven’t recovered from the polling in 2020/21 where about a fifth of voters wanted nightclubs to remain closed even after the pandemic was over.
It was a weird age thing.
Some people like strictness, and/or being in control to an extent they can impose their own views on other people.
It's wretched. Freedom is worth having, even if it enables silly people who think Julius Caesar was a better general than Hannibal Barca to regurgitate their nonsense.
Trump would never be popular in the UK.....his policies, on the other hand....
Fascinating new polling from @OpiniumResearch & Nepean testing Trump policy positions in UK - even 'end Net Zero' and 'only two genders' get public support (and much higher support for deportations, merit-based society, restoring free speech and, er, tariffs...)
They’re “meant” to be leading. This is polling these as manifesto policies, and thus testing for voter approval
The only surprising thing is the large numbers (23%-38%!!) who are nevertheless against things like 'free speech' 'merit' and reducing inflation.
Brits are bonkers.
I still haven’t recovered from the polling in 2020/21 where about a fifth of voters wanted nightclubs to remain closed even after the pandemic was over.
It was a weird age thing.
Some people like strictness, and/or being in control to an extent they can impose their own views on other people.
It's wretched. Freedom is worth having, even if it enables silly people who think Julius Caesar was a better general than Hannibal Barca to regurgitate their nonsense.
Caesar’s success led to his name becoming a word for emperor.
Hannibal led his nation to such an epic loss he committed suicide in shame as his nation was ultimately wiped from the map.
Having a meal out with visiting family last night, and it turns out that a relation has an Alzheimer's diagnosis at age 60.
Can anyone comment on experience of what happens with this condition, and what I can gently do now to help prepare for the future?
One impression I have is that instantiating memories is important as memory is lost progressively, so things like making sure that there are copies of childhood photo albums, familiar objects from earlier in life, and similar, around, may be beneficial.
Alzheimers at 60. So sorry to hear that. That is terribly young. One always thinks it is an oldpersons condition.
With my Mother she gets angry as she cannot remember.
I find it helps to go through old pictures with her. When I was down at Xmas she dug out lots of pics of her parents and family when young and I reminisced with her. She thought it was the first time I had seen them. It wasn't.
Yes. One of the things the person mentioned was turning old photo albums (their dad compiled one) into scanned photos via an app. I could not do it as it is still buried somewhere in the leftovers from their parent's estate, some of which I still have, and the dealing-with-the-will process has been somewhat disputaceous and has continued through COVID with various complicated circumstances.
It sounds like it is time to give it some focus this year.
Thanks.
I would advise against turning it into an app, my father now has no ability to use either phone or computer or indeed even recognise a phone, he now often tries to make calls on the tv remote. Make sure there is an album
I think there is a decent risk - perhaps 40% - that Reform take off in the polls during this parliament. All of the factors are in place: Labour doing little and the economy not improving Tories led by bonkers refusing to accept the mess they made Reform connecting with left behind voters and so far not saying anything crazy
The scenario is simple - Farage shows leadership, and points to the Trumpian successes in deporting migrants and clamping down on law and order issues and says we can have that. Labour wail about how nasty it is, the Tories cry about how they already did all that (stop laughing) and could do again. And the LibDems say Trump is awful we need to reverse course.
Farage PM would need various scenarios to play out. A leading one being that the rarely or non voters turn out and say they're backing him. We all know that non-voters don't vote, but they have occasionally and there is polling suggesting they are backing Reform now. Add them to the voting roll and all bets are off.
The others are that Labour meander along and fail the red wall as badly as the Tories did, the Tories leave bonkers in place or better still replace her with Jenrick (stop laughing) - both are diabolically bad for Tory prospects. And that the Davey "we can do better than this" message resonates and builds its own quiet momentum.
Result? Reform sweep the red wall, midlands and broken towns, LibDems add another slew of seats - into midlands and northern places they once held. Tories collapse still further, shrieking into their copies of the Daily Telegraph.
The Times is now the Tory house journal. The Telegraph is full of Reformers now anyway.
The LDs are now a party of posh Remainers and win few seats north of Watford
As a LibDem myself I love being referred to as a Posh Remainder. Also if you look at history, apart from Scotland the Lib Dem record has never been the best above Watford, though the Cambridgeshire, Stockport, Cumbria and Harrogate seats are quite pleasing.
Sir Keir needs to announce he's setting up an 'Office for Value for Money' then just sit back and watch the Reform voters stampede to Labour. I can promise you that would absolutely happen and no one on the Right would take the piss.
Trump would never be popular in the UK.....his policies, on the other hand....
Fascinating new polling from @OpiniumResearch & Nepean testing Trump policy positions in UK - even 'end Net Zero' and 'only two genders' get public support (and much higher support for deportations, merit-based society, restoring free speech and, er, tariffs...)
Is that for real? I've never encountered a single Brit ever who would think that setting up an 'Office for Value for Money' would be anything other than an attempt at satire.
We already have an OBR and a NAO both of which could be understood as having some analgous functions.
Trump would never be popular in the UK.....his policies, on the other hand....
Fascinating new polling from @OpiniumResearch & Nepean testing Trump policy positions in UK - even 'end Net Zero' and 'only two genders' get public support (and much higher support for deportations, merit-based society, restoring free speech and, er, tariffs...)
They’re “meant” to be leading. This is polling these as manifesto policies, and thus testing for voter approval
The only surprising thing is the large numbers (23%-38%!!) who are nevertheless against things like 'free speech' 'merit' and reducing inflation.
Brits are bonkers.
I still haven’t recovered from the polling in 2020/21 where about a fifth of voters wanted nightclubs to remain closed even after the pandemic was over.
It was a weird age thing.
Some people like strictness, and/or being in control to an extent they can impose their own views on other people.
It's wretched. Freedom is worth having, even if it enables silly people who think Julius Caesar was a better general than Hannibal Barca to regurgitate their nonsense.
Caesar’s success led to his name becoming a word for emperor.
Hannibal led his nation to such an epic loss he committed suicide in shame as his nation was ultimately wiped from the map.
Caesar's 'success' led to him being killed by his own side within a year.
Hannibal became leader of Carthage. His suicide came decades later, when Antiochus III, fearing Hannibal would outshine him, kept the Carthaginian out of strategic decision-making in his own war against the Romans and refused the advice to invade Italy. Antiochus then gave up Hannibal after the Seleucid leader's poor tactics at Magnesia (like Cannae, this involved altering the standard military formation with an innovation that dramatically backfired).
Hannibal lost a single battlefield encounter, at Zama, when he led a a newer force against experienced soldiers in a battle he could not avoid. Caesar lost at Gergovia and Dyrrachium, the latter when his own vaunted Tenth fled.
Sir Keir needs to announce he's setting up an 'Office for Value for Money' then just sit back and watch the Reform voters stampede to Labour. I can promise you that would absolutely happen and no one on the Right would take the piss.
Except that SKS would think of the creation of the office as the end in itself, and not the means to save a significant chunk of cash from the budget.
He’d staff it with lawyers and diversity managers, and it’ll be about as successful as when Rachel from accounts asked regulators to identify savings.
Having a meal out with visiting family last night, and it turns out that a relation has an Alzheimer's diagnosis at age 60.
Can anyone comment on experience of what happens with this condition, and what I can gently do now to help prepare for the future?
One impression I have is that instantiating memories is important as memory is lost progressively, so things like making sure that there are copies of childhood photo albums, familiar objects from earlier in life, and similar, around, may be beneficial.
Alzheimers at 60. So sorry to hear that. That is terribly young. One always thinks it is an oldpersons condition.
With my Mother she gets angry as she cannot remember.
I find it helps to go through old pictures with her. When I was down at Xmas she dug out lots of pics of her parents and family when young and I reminisced with her. She thought it was the first time I had seen them. It wasn't.
Yes. One of the things the person mentioned was turning old photo albums (their dad compiled one) into scanned photos via an app. I could not do it as it is still buried somewhere in the leftovers from their parent's estate, some of which I still have, and the dealing-with-the-will process has been somewhat disputaceous and has continued through COVID with various complicated circumstances.
It sounds like it is time to give it some focus this year.
Thanks.
I would advise against turning it into an app, my father now has no ability to use either phone or computer or indeed even recognise a phone, he now often tries to make calls on the tv remote. Make sure there is an album
The big win for digitisation is that lost or damaged hard copies of images can now be easily replaced. Also, scanning is a lot of tedious effort so try to make sure you have adequate backups.
Trump would never be popular in the UK.....his policies, on the other hand....
Fascinating new polling from @OpiniumResearch & Nepean testing Trump policy positions in UK - even 'end Net Zero' and 'only two genders' get public support (and much higher support for deportations, merit-based society, restoring free speech and, er, tariffs...)
Now re-poll those questions with some reality, like ‘Trade protection’ with ‘Do you favour tariffs that will increase your bills?’
Politely pointing that out in the US, however, didn’t seem to have an impact on the result.
The MAGA cult had a much stronger hold in the US.
The MAGA cult didn’t deliver the election for Trump though (the nomination, maybe, but that’s a separate issue).
Those voters were always going to vote Trump, but they don’t constitute all 49.8% of the participating electorate who voted for him. Whether we like it or not, he was also preferred by a lot of swing voters who were attracted to his messaging on the economy.
Don't you get any sleep? 1:00 am / 4:00 am / 7:00 am and then all of yesterday.
Is there more than one of you?
Interesting question. Did we get an answer from @williamglenn?
We've been patting ourselves on the back for the ease with which we spot the Russian trolls. But maybe it's like cross-dressers - you only spot the bad ones!
Having a meal out with visiting family last night, and it turns out that a relation has an Alzheimer's diagnosis at age 60.
Can anyone comment on experience of what happens with this condition, and what I can gently do now to help prepare for the future?
One impression I have is that instantiating memories is important as memory is lost progressively, so things like making sure that there are copies of childhood photo albums, familiar objects from earlier in life, and similar, around, may be beneficial.
Alzheimers at 60. So sorry to hear that. That is terribly young. One always thinks it is an oldpersons condition.
With my Mother she gets angry as she cannot remember.
I find it helps to go through old pictures with her. When I was down at Xmas she dug out lots of pics of her parents and family when young and I reminisced with her. She thought it was the first time I had seen them. It wasn't.
Yes. One of the things the person mentioned was turning old photo albums (their dad compiled one) into scanned photos via an app. I could not do it as it is still buried somewhere in the leftovers from their parent's estate, some of which I still have, and the dealing-with-the-will process has been somewhat disputaceous and has continued through COVID with various complicated circumstances.
It sounds like it is time to give it some focus this year.
Thanks.
I would advise against turning it into an app, my father now has no ability to use either phone or computer or indeed even recognise a phone, he now often tries to make calls on the tv remote. Make sure there is an album
OTOH my late MIL got a great deal of pleasure from live streaming the church services she was not well enough to get to. Someone had to do it for her, of course.
Don't you get any sleep? 1:00 am / 4:00 am / 7:00 am and then all of yesterday.
Is there more than one of you?
Interesting question. Did we get an answer from @williamglenn?
We've been patting ourselves on the back for the ease with which we spot the Russian trolls. But maybe it's like cross-dressers - you only spot the bad ones!
Phew, thank goodness Putin's desire to influence Western politics and culture is a recent flash-in-the-pan kinda thing.
Well, you arrived in 2013.
Advocating breaking up the U.K. - which is a stated aim of the Putin snugglers on Russian TV.
I suggest you look at every card in a deck - just to see if you get a funny reaction to the Queen of Hearts, say.
The hosting/platform changed then, I was here a while before that. Unlike you.
Anyway, back to 2013. What are the chances?!!!
'Office of trolls Main article: Trolls from Olgino
From the summer of 2013, there was a base of at least hundred internet trolls in Olgino, who were paid for distributing messages via Internet to support Russian propaganda.[2][3][4][5][6] In October 2014 it became known that the trolls had moved to Savushkina street (Primorskiy district in St. Petersburg).'
Trump would never be popular in the UK.....his policies, on the other hand....
Fascinating new polling from @OpiniumResearch & Nepean testing Trump policy positions in UK - even 'end Net Zero' and 'only two genders' get public support (and much higher support for deportations, merit-based society, restoring free speech and, er, tariffs...)
That shows the power of words. Expressed like that, I agree with them all. Reading deeper into them, though, the impractalities appear. I assume it was written by a lawyer.
Good call! This is why Farage is doomed. Far too woke and squeamish on capital sentences for climate protestors.
The people involved may be climate protestors, but the people egging on acts of sabotage may have far more malign intents and may not even be in the UK.
Trump would never be popular in the UK.....his policies, on the other hand....
Fascinating new polling from @OpiniumResearch & Nepean testing Trump policy positions in UK - even 'end Net Zero' and 'only two genders' get public support (and much higher support for deportations, merit-based society, restoring free speech and, er, tariffs...)
They’re “meant” to be leading. This is polling these as manifesto policies, and thus testing for voter approval
The only surprising thing is the large numbers (23%-38%!!) who are nevertheless against things like 'free speech' 'merit' and reducing inflation.
Brits are bonkers.
I still haven’t recovered from the polling in 2020/21 where about a fifth of voters wanted nightclubs to remain closed even after the pandemic was over.
It was a weird age thing.
Some people like strictness, and/or being in control to an extent they can impose their own views on other people.
It's wretched. Freedom is worth having, even if it enables silly people who think Julius Caesar was a better general than Hannibal Barca to regurgitate their nonsense.
Caesar’s success led to his name becoming a word for emperor.
Hannibal led his nation to such an epic loss he committed suicide in shame as his nation was ultimately wiped from the map.
Caesar's 'success' led to him being killed by his own side within a year.
Hannibal became leader of Carthage. His suicide came decades later, when Antiochus III, fearing Hannibal would outshine him, kept the Carthaginian out of strategic decision-making in his own war against the Romans and refused the advice to invade Italy. Antiochus then gave up Hannibal after the Seleucid leader's poor tactics at Magnesia (like Cannae, this involved altering the standard military formation with an innovation that dramatically backfired).
Hannibal lost a single battlefield encounter, at Zama, when he led a a newer force against experienced soldiers in a battle he could not avoid. Caesar lost at Gergovia and Dyrrachium, the latter when his own vaunted Tenth fled.
Dyrrachium was a stunning performance, Caesar was outnumbered 2:1 and still inflicted double the number of casualties on the Pompeians, it allowed Caesar open an absolute can of whoop ass at Pharsalus.
Having a meal out with visiting family last night, and it turns out that a relation has an Alzheimer's diagnosis at age 60.
Can anyone comment on experience of what happens with this condition, and what I can gently do now to help prepare for the future?
One impression I have is that instantiating memories is important as memory is lost progressively, so things like making sure that there are copies of childhood photo albums, familiar objects from earlier in life, and similar, around, may be beneficial.
Alzheimers at 60. So sorry to hear that. That is terribly young. One always thinks it is an oldpersons condition.
With my Mother she gets angry as she cannot remember.
I find it helps to go through old pictures with her. When I was down at Xmas she dug out lots of pics of her parents and family when young and I reminisced with her. She thought it was the first time I had seen them. It wasn't.
Yes. One of the things the person mentioned was turning old photo albums (their dad compiled one) into scanned photos via an app. I could not do it as it is still buried somewhere in the leftovers from their parent's estate, some of which I still have, and the dealing-with-the-will process has been somewhat disputaceous and has continued through COVID with various complicated circumstances.
It sounds like it is time to give it some focus this year.
Thanks.
I would advise against turning it into an app, my father now has no ability to use either phone or computer or indeed even recognise a phone, he now often tries to make calls on the tv remote. Make sure there is an album
OTOH my late MIL got a great deal of pleasure from live streaming the church services she was not well enough to get to. Someone had to do it for her, of course.
As it happens my relative is a senior PM with TFL, installing traffic type things, so quite au fait with technology.
I seem to recall an incident where someone was complaining about getting a camera fine, and the relative remarked "that was one of my projects" . A good deal less radical that I am these days, however.
As it happens I could do an album, as I have commercial quality printing facilities at home, in A3 (laser) or A2 (pigment inkjet) sizes, from my picture printing days.
Trump would never be popular in the UK.....his policies, on the other hand....
Fascinating new polling from @OpiniumResearch & Nepean testing Trump policy positions in UK - even 'end Net Zero' and 'only two genders' get public support (and much higher support for deportations, merit-based society, restoring free speech and, er, tariffs...)
Sir Keir needs to announce he's setting up an 'Office for Value for Money' then just sit back and watch the Reform voters stampede to Labour. I can promise you that would absolutely happen and no one on the Right would take the piss.
Except that SKS would think of the creation of the office as the end in itself, and not the means to save a significant chunk of cash from the budget.
He’d staff it with lawyers and diversity managers, and it’ll be about as successful as when Rachel from accounts asked regulators to identify savings.
I would be more drastic. I would fire all senior civil servants, and make them apply for their own jobs. The interview panel would consist of ordinary voters, with the proviso that public school alumni and HR professionals would not be considered.
Apologies to @williamglenn if I have offended him/her by drawing attention to his/her nocturnal activities (assuming he/she is in this time zone) but his/her style is quite distinct. It's almost as if there is a bot somewhere in the background selecting pro-Trump messages and then posting them automatically. But perhaps I need to lie down and stop seeing bots everywhere.
However it begs the question about those championing right / left philosophies without asking the question of whether those in power are actually competent or is the championing of a view sufficient excuse to excuse the balls up (see previous governments in the UK)
Where does the question of a basic competency lie when looking at the offerings from Farage or Kemi when they will be in the spotlight like Labour now? Trump 2.0 is going to be interesting looking at his team and it may be instructive, if anyone is seeking to answer the competency question.
Trump would never be popular in the UK.....his policies, on the other hand....
Fascinating new polling from @OpiniumResearch & Nepean testing Trump policy positions in UK - even 'end Net Zero' and 'only two genders' get public support (and much higher support for deportations, merit-based society, restoring free speech and, er, tariffs...)
That shows the power of words. Expressed like that, I agree with them all. Reading deeper into them, though, the impractalities appear. I assume it was written by a lawyer.
They look to be basically taken from the EOs with minimal adaptation to make them UK relevant.
Trump would never be popular in the UK.....his policies, on the other hand....
Fascinating new polling from @OpiniumResearch & Nepean testing Trump policy positions in UK - even 'end Net Zero' and 'only two genders' get public support (and much higher support for deportations, merit-based society, restoring free speech and, er, tariffs...)
Those are obviously very loaded questions, but then perhaps that's the point, to test out Trumpian rhetoric. How do parties containing rational individuals respond to that rhetoric?
"Do you support raising tariffs so that the things you buy in the shops are more expensive?" would get very different numbers.
Trump would never be popular in the UK.....his policies, on the other hand....
Fascinating new polling from @OpiniumResearch & Nepean testing Trump policy positions in UK - even 'end Net Zero' and 'only two genders' get public support (and much higher support for deportations, merit-based society, restoring free speech and, er, tariffs...)
Sir Keir needs to announce he's setting up an 'Office for Value for Money' then just sit back and watch the Reform voters stampede to Labour. I can promise you that would absolutely happen and no one on the Right would take the piss.
If they did such a thing the civil servants working in it would tend towards the mindset of finding things where we are getting value for money and altering them to ensure such a travesty does not occur
Good call! This is why Farage is doomed. Far too woke and squeamish on capital sentences for climate protestors.
The people involved may be climate protestors, but the people egging on acts of sabotage may have far more malign intents and may not even be in the UK.
It’s not as if there isn’t a long history of unfriendly nation states funding and supporting fringe groups such as climate protestors in the West.
If it’s not Russia then it’s going to be China or Iran, the same people responsible for ships dragging their anchors in very specific locations around the world at the moment.
Trump would never be popular in the UK.....his policies, on the other hand....
Fascinating new polling from @OpiniumResearch & Nepean testing Trump policy positions in UK - even 'end Net Zero' and 'only two genders' get public support (and much higher support for deportations, merit-based society, restoring free speech and, er, tariffs...)
Hardly neutral polling language there, but it’s true that there’s a real-time experiment of something very different just started in the US, and we will be hearing an awful lot about it in the next few weeks, months, and years.
If it comes to be seen as a success, then there is likely to be polling support for similar policies in other countries.
And it if comes to be seen as a failure, then there is likely not to be polling support for similar policies in other countries.
Having a meal out with visiting family last night, and it turns out that a relation has an Alzheimer's diagnosis at age 60.
Can anyone comment on experience of what happens with this condition, and what I can gently do now to help prepare for the future?
One impression I have is that instantiating memories is important as memory is lost progressively, so things like making sure that there are copies of childhood photo albums, familiar objects from earlier in life, and similar, around, may be beneficial.
Alzheimers at 60. So sorry to hear that. That is terribly young. One always thinks it is an oldpersons condition.
With my Mother she gets angry as she cannot remember.
I find it helps to go through old pictures with her. When I was down at Xmas she dug out lots of pics of her parents and family when young and I reminisced with her. She thought it was the first time I had seen them. It wasn't.
Yes. One of the things the person mentioned was turning old photo albums (their dad compiled one) into scanned photos via an app. I could not do it as it is still buried somewhere in the leftovers from their parent's estate, some of which I still have, and the dealing-with-the-will process has been somewhat disputaceous and has continued through COVID with various complicated circumstances.
It sounds like it is time to give it some focus this year.
Thanks.
I would advise against turning it into an app, my father now has no ability to use either phone or computer or indeed even recognise a phone, he now often tries to make calls on the tv remote. Make sure there is an album
OTOH my late MIL got a great deal of pleasure from live streaming the church services she was not well enough to get to. Someone had to do it for her, of course.
As it happens my relative is a senior PM with TFL, installing traffic type things, so quite au fait with technology.
I seem to recall an incident where someone was complaining about getting a camera fine, and the relative remarked "that was one of my projects" . A good deal less radical that I am these days, however.
As it happens I could do an album, as I have commercial quality printing facilities at home, in A3 (laser) or A2 (pigment inkjet) sizes, from my picture printing days.
We'll see.
I did recognise @Pagan2's description of trying to answer the phone with the TV remote however. Also trying to get the TV on with the phone. One thing that is worth investing in is as simple a phone as you can find with large, clear buttons. Although she was having problems by the end this kept my MIL in touch for much longer than anything more complex would have.
Trump would never be popular in the UK.....his policies, on the other hand....
Fascinating new polling from @OpiniumResearch & Nepean testing Trump policy positions in UK - even 'end Net Zero' and 'only two genders' get public support (and much higher support for deportations, merit-based society, restoring free speech and, er, tariffs...)
Those are obviously very loaded questions, but then perhaps that's the point, to test out Trumpian rhetoric. How do parties containing rational individuals respond to that rhetoric?
"Do you support raising tariffs so that the things you buy in the shops are more expensive?" would get very different numbers.
There is no such thing as neutral language in modern politicians speaking and writing of any contested matter, nor should we generally expect there to be. Much more dangerous is that this non neutrality is now normal in all forms of media, both in opinion pages - as is right - but also in news reporting and selection.
34% have a favourable rating for him though ie the same percentage as voted for Labour when they won a landslide majority last year.
If Farage squeezed the Tories and Labour both to 20% or so and got all that 34% to vote for him he likely would be PM of a Reform majority government. However Reform are a long way from that for now
Comments
I think Kemi stays, she won the Tory MPs and members votes. Jenrick wouldn't win over many Farage voters either, they would stick with Reform over an ex Remainer Reform lite. Jenrick would also risk leaking some current Tory voters to Labour and the LDs
That Farage is favourite I think, counter intuitively is right. That is not because he probably will be next PM, but because all the other names even more probably won't. There are too many of them and none of them are Red Rum. 5/2 is not value.
If there is value in the market, it would be based on the next PM being Starmer's Labour successor. Streeting is the best but he is male and is very likely to lose his seat next time and is minister for a failing NHS. So apart from looking for a Foinavon there isn't much to look at.
I’m already getting messages from top people in my head and everywhere on the political spectrum
So then the question is: do I obey the call of patriotic duty
LEON
REX QUONDAM REX FUTURAE
But after a couple of years of Trumpism, Reform, if they can avoid being tainted by plutocratic gangsterism and Robinsonism and just be the ordinary bloke's common sense party, will start to look comparatively moderate.
Look at the hysterical reaction from some on the left when labour spokespeople started to appear with the Union flag behind them. You'd think he was the next Tommy Robinson.
It is a little odd checking someones posting times/habits then demanding answers from them on it.
qui salvandos salvas gratis,
salva me, fons pietatis.
The next member for Bootle waits at the door.
I can see him developing his own version of what Archbishop Desmond Tutu was to Apartheid South Africa, for one thought.
He's already getting strong moral pushback. The female Bishop who called him out politely had quite an impact on him, and he resorted to his usual demionisation of, and theats against, those who won't comply, rather than defending his policies and taking responsibility for himself. Trump deals in money and power; imo he's scared of ethics, principles and personal responsibility.
The more important practical impact would be on the onlookers, the watchers. and potentially eventually waking up the "nothing to do with me" enablers.
I'm not sure if we posted the Bishop, but here's what she said:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=31ylIPemGlE
And here's the response from Trump's spiritual adviser:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6zNGgFkC_ZE
Yes, your home broadband has a contention ratio of 50/1 if you’re lucky, but they only every advertise the almost meaningless “speed” rather than the contention or latency.
LONDON (Reuters) - British finance minister Rachel Reeves will later this week announce plans to allow corporate pension scheme surpluses worth tens of billions of pounds to be released and reinvested, Sky News reported on Sunday.
Reeves is seeking new sources of investment as she tries to breathe life into a stagnant British economy to fund Prime Minister Keir Starmer's plans to raise living standards and rebuild the country's creaking infrastructure.
https://www.msn.com/en-gb/money/other/uk-to-release-pension-surpluses-to-fuel-growth-push-sky-news-reports/ar-AA1xTkFT?ocid=entnewsntp&pc=U531&cvid=73ad9fff979b4cd89f78b9dd0c21b5a9&ei=14
Unless Cr*wdstr*ke get involved.
https://x.com/thetimes/status/1883515240941604876
house journal. The Telegraph
is full of Reformers now
anyway.
The LDs are now a party of
posh Remainers and win few seats north of Watford
That is, if the confused account has a real story behind it.
But yes: apologies to @williamglenn
Who (outside Huntingdon or Lambeth) had heard of John Major in 1987?
https://x.com/nordic_news/status/1883798801422696517
I suspect that by next weeek half the naval ships in Europe are going to be closely ‘escorting’ any ships with links to Russia or China.
Fascinating new polling from @OpiniumResearch & Nepean testing Trump policy positions in UK - even 'end Net Zero' and 'only two genders' get public support (and much higher support for deportations, merit-based society, restoring free speech and, er, tariffs...)
https://x.com/rcolvile/status/1883812682077556823
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2025/01/27/deepseek-china-ai-artificial-intelligence-tech-stock-nvidia/
Cat among the pigeons it appears.
If it comes to be seen as a success, then there is likely to be polling support for similar policies in other countries.
It was grim in the extreme. Teenage son had to see his father disintegrate on fast forward. His wife tried to keep it together, but his home was the most depressing place.
Though the denial that action X is likely to have bad consequence Y is one of the reasons for all of... this.
I imagine Nigel is reading this with great eagerness. This is half his manifesto. Just adopt all of those
Advocating breaking up the U.K. - which is a stated aim of the Putin snugglers on Russian TV.
I suggest you look at every card in a deck - just to see if you get a funny reaction to the Queen of Hearts, say.
There will be heart-rending tales of family break up, and businesses complaining of labour shortages, and at the same time, millions of Americans will cheer.
Secondly, pension funds have in many cases swung from deficit to surplus because of the changes in gilt rates. Put simply, a pension fund needs a hell of a lot more capital to cover any pension when gilt rates are 0.5% than when they are 4.5%. In simple terms nearly 9x as much. Just as the reported deficits were grossly exaggerated by the inept regulatory system when interest rates were too low so are surpluses being exaggerated by high gilt rates currently. In other words these surpluses are every bit as exaggerated as the deficits were and if gilt rates fall they will disappear.
Trying to be constructive, what we actually need is for the classes of assets pension funds can invest in to be broadened. At the moment a lot of the available funds are simply in FTSE trackers. The regulatory structure should be tweaked so they are encouraged to invest more in startups, AIM investments etc.
Anyway, back to 2013. What are the chances?!!!
'Office of trolls
Main article: Trolls from Olgino
From the summer of 2013, there was a base of at least hundred internet trolls in Olgino, who were paid for distributing messages via Internet to support Russian propaganda.[2][3][4][5][6] In October 2014 it became known that the trolls had moved to Savushkina street (Primorskiy district in St. Petersburg).'
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olgino
I still haven’t recovered from the polling in 2020/21 where about a fifth of voters wanted nightclubs to remain closed even after the pandemic was over.
It was a weird age thing.
As everything else went, he retained his essential character.
It's wretched. Freedom is worth having, even if it enables silly people who think Julius Caesar was a better general than Hannibal Barca to regurgitate their nonsense.
Hannibal led his nation to such an epic loss he committed suicide in shame as his nation was ultimately wiped from the map.
Hannibal became leader of Carthage. His suicide came decades later, when Antiochus III, fearing Hannibal would outshine him, kept the Carthaginian out of strategic decision-making in his own war against the Romans and refused the advice to invade Italy. Antiochus then gave up Hannibal after the Seleucid leader's poor tactics at Magnesia (like Cannae, this involved altering the standard military formation with an innovation that dramatically backfired).
Hannibal lost a single battlefield encounter, at Zama, when he led a a newer force against experienced soldiers in a battle he could not avoid. Caesar lost at Gergovia and Dyrrachium, the latter when his own vaunted Tenth fled.
He’d staff it with lawyers and diversity managers, and it’ll be about as successful as when Rachel from accounts asked regulators to identify savings.
Those voters were always going to vote Trump, but they don’t constitute all 49.8% of the participating electorate who voted for him. Whether we like it or not, he was also preferred by a lot of swing voters who were attracted to his messaging on the economy.
I'm just wondering why you think @williamglenn could be a Russian bot, but you can't be?
I seem to recall an incident where someone was complaining about getting a camera fine, and the relative remarked "that was one of my projects"
As it happens I could do an album, as I have commercial quality printing facilities at home, in A3 (laser) or A2 (pigment inkjet) sizes, from my picture printing days.
We'll see.
However it begs the question about those championing right / left philosophies without asking the question of whether those in power are actually competent or is the championing of a view sufficient excuse to excuse the balls up (see previous governments in the UK)
Where does the question of a basic competency lie when looking at the offerings from Farage or Kemi when they will be in the spotlight like Labour now? Trump 2.0 is going to be interesting looking at his team and it may be instructive, if anyone is seeking to answer the competency question.
Those are obviously very loaded questions, but then perhaps that's the point, to test out Trumpian rhetoric. How do parties containing rational individuals respond to that rhetoric?
"Do you support raising tariffs so that the things you buy in the shops are more expensive?" would get very different numbers.
If it’s not Russia then it’s going to be China or Iran, the same people responsible for ships dragging their anchors in very specific locations around the world at the moment.
https://yougov.co.uk/topics/politics/explore/public_figure/Nigel_Farage
If Farage squeezed the Tories and Labour both to 20% or so and got all that 34% to vote for him he likely would be PM of a Reform majority government. However Reform are a long way from that for now