The Wrath of Khan – politicalbetting.com

System · January 30

The Wrath of Khan – politicalbetting.com

Thursday's @CityAM front page pic.twitter.com/rdqoHEDpGF

Read the full story here

ClippP · January 30

Hmmmmm

viewcode · January 30

Epic article title!

Leon · January 30

Sweet Jesus surely khan will not stand for a 4th term?!

Indeed I don’t think he will even if he wants to. He would lose to almost anyone

carnforth · January 30

Five thai hostages released:

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cj48qxd7jq5o

One, ominously, "unaccounted for".

Taz · January 30

I wonder if he will boldy go.................to the supreme court to stop the third runway.

Sandpit · January 30

Washington DC rescue service press conference. Confirms that sadly they’re expecting 67 deaths and no survivors.

https://x.com/rawsalerts/status/1884950898708721850

Carnyx · January 30

" ...but that’s not something I am backing nor tipping."

(is it me or does the grammar need a teensy little bittie attention?)

CharlieShark · January 30

I'd keep hold of my money.

It's Khan's to win if it wants it. Value is more with Corbyn I'd say at 20/1. 50/1 for Green candidate who got 5.8% just last year, that's a no from me.

Gardenwalker · January 30

Obviously betting this far out is nuts.

It confuses me why Sir Sadiq Khan has come out against a third runway. It’s not like he’s had any concrete political position of anything of substance in the many many years he’s been bedblocking the mayoralty.

MaxPB · January 30

Leon said:
Sweet Jesus surely khan will not stand for a 4th term?!

Indeed I don’t think he will even if he wants to. He would lose to almost anyone

You underestimate his demographic advantage in London. If he runs it will be very difficult to beat him, the Tories will need a very good candidate, Cleverly might just be able to do it.

Fishing · January 30

Leon said:

kenObi said:

Leon said:

Fishing said:

Leon said:

Fishing said:

kenObi said:

Fishing said:

kinabalu said:

Leon said:

kinabalu said:

DecrepiterJohnL said:

Leon said:

kamski said:

Leon said:

Dopermean said:

carnforth said:

Leon said:

TheScreamingEagles said:

Leon said:

algarkirk said:

Leon said:

algarkirk said:

Leon said:
We will never Rejoin because it will never be worth any UK government expending the political capital required (and this is setting aside problems like the euro, Schenghen, a decade of negotiation, fisheries, migration, possible veto by any one of 27 EU nations)

Think about it. Why would you call a Rejoin referendum if you are doing well and you're high in the polls? You wouldn't take the risk, referendums are horribly risky, pointless

But then, why would you call a Rejoin referendum if you are doing badly and everyone hates you, again you are simply offering the voters a chance to give you a kicking and vote against anything you desire

The only way we might Rejoin is if we are literally starving to death and some national coalition proposes it as the only solution, but then the Europeans will surely veto us as a basket case that will drag down the EU economy

We are never going to Rejoin. It is not practical politics in the real world. Better to accept it
I think this looked to be true pre-Trump, and pre the time when Trumpism might shape the USA for the long term. I don't think it looks certain now.

Why? I know TRIP, the Rory and Campbell show, is not universally popular but the most recent discussion is pretty chilling on the evidence for the direction the USA is going in

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U0fdoOxkN4o
Rory fucking Stewart is a fucking imbecile. Really. Alistair Campbell is a depressed alcoholic with a huge guilt trip about Iraq. Together they have the political acuity of a cheese toastie

However, I said 95% certain we won't rejoin and not 100% because, black swans

A massive world war, or the USA become a hostile dictatorship would indeed be a very black swan and easily enough to see us back in the EU (and there would probably be even greater sequelae)

But, I don't any of these as more than 5% possibilities, combined
Point taken, though it is possible to miss the wood for your ad hominem trees. (And Rory was my MP, and I wish he still was, and he is genuinely interesting. They are both, in TS Eliot's words 'wounded surgeons').

In probabilities, I think the chance of straight Rejoin EU is fairly small, but the chance (say in the next generation) of some sort of deal, the Switzerland or Norway sort, is more like 30%.

Additionally, the chances of America ceasing to be an active ally and turning its attention away from Europe and NATO are not negligible. Wait and see. We are only 10 days in to the new reality.
Their analysis of Trump (I just watched ten minutes of it) is on the level of a quite bright sixth former. I am regularly astonished by the way apparently clever people - such as you - buy this intellectual pap tricked out as powerful insight
Says the guy who voted for Starmer.
I'm watching more of it now, it's pure midwittery and entirely shite

Stewart has just said "Trump is calling for the ethnic cleansing of Gaza" which is such a ridiculous misreading it is either a deliberate lie OR more evidence that they really are quite dim

Trump thinks outside the box. He is saying "maybe the Gazans would be better off giving up on their shit lives in Gaza and having a much richer, more peaceful life elsewhere". And, of course, Trump has a very good point. Hamas wants the Palestinians trapped in Gaza forever, their misery endless, their suffering a constant source of grevance and militancy - because we all know Israel will never agree to a 2 state solution, not now

And yet Trump saying "Hey here's a better choice for Gazans than the endless pain that Hamas offers" is somehow Trump calling for ethnic cleansing?! According to Rory "wow who knew immigration was so high" Stewart?

Enuff. Only idiots are taken in by this pabulum. I am disappointed @algarkirk is one of them
I know two otherwise-sensible people who have paid actual money to see Stewart and Campbell in a theatre.
Destroying a region's infrastructure, blocking supplies and encouraging the inhabitants to seek refuge elsewhere so that other people (of a different ethnicity) can move in and build their own homes and infrastructure funded by government isn't ethnic cleansing?
He may not be directly calling for it but he is tacitly supporting it.
Trump is offering a better future for Gazans than Hamas or the Palestinian Authority are offering. Its realpolitik

Also, it's not like this is some unprecedented evil; deliberate population movements - to solve intractable problems - happen all the time. Greeks and Turks after WW1, Muslims and Hindus at Partition, Germans after WW2, and many others

The alternative is that the Palestinians continue to squat there in perpetual misery because

1. Israel now won't ever yield to a two state solution

and

2. The Palestinians cannot defeat Israel, and nor can anyone else without nuking them (and getting nuked in return) and thereby rendering the entire Levant uninhabitable for 20,000 years

What wonderful examples of things that aren't 'ethnic cleansing'. Idiot.
Which is why I called it a “ridiculous misreading” of Trump

I mean, go ahead and call it “ethnic cleansing” if you want, that enables you to ignore the fact it’s actually an imaginative and humane solution to this hideous 70 year nightmare

In an ideal world Israelis would get over October 7 and ask for 2 states and Gazans would not be enraged anti Semites. But this is not an ideal world, and Trump has bruited the only possible solution that might make Palestinian lives a lot better and fast while giving Israel security
You and Trump may well be right, and this might be what happens. But as a thought experiment, post the same suggestion in reverse – that Israelis should abandon the Middle East and move en masse to set up a new state in America – and you will be cancelled for antisemitism. And that is what is wrong with Trump's idea.
The shoulder shrugging about Gaza and ideas like this from Trump rest on the belief that Palestinians are not 'proper people'.
Quite the opposite. It’s addressing them as human beings who want a life beyond eternal squalor poverty and martyrdom for Hamas

Yes it’s unideal for them. But it is the only idea out there that might radically improve their lives and in short order

Alternatively you can suggest your idea
I don't have anything new and wacky, I'm afraid. Boring old goal of a free and sovereign Palestine co-existing peacefully with Israel. It's never looked further off but it remains the only long-term sustainable outcome.
I doubt that a separate Palestinian state is viable - not geographically contiguous, the extreme Israelis and Palestinians would also constantly seek to undermine it and the Iranians would always to looking to cause trouble.

I think that the more sustainable outcome long term is for Israelis and Palestinian Arabs to coexist together in a Greater Israel/Palestine/Israeli-Palestinian Federation/whatever. Jews and Arabs coexisted in Palestine for centuries before Zionism (after the 8th century dispersals) and might be able to do so again. The 2 million Israeli Arabs whose ancestors survived ethnic cleansing in the 1940s show it is at least possible.

The extreme Israelis would have to give up the idea of Israeli as a Jewish state and move towards acceptance of multiculturalism and the extreme Palestinian juihadis would have to give up the idea of pushing the Jews out.

Would it be perfect or a panacea? No. Can I see an easy way to get there from here? Not really. But it would be a viable country with at least a chance of working.
I used to think this falls down on "they breed".

However Israel's birth rate is highest on OECD by a significant margin.
I think where it would fail is because of the 3 million or so Palestinian refugees who have been in Jordan (and Egypt and Lebanon) for 80 years and to whom the Israelis have always refused to grant a right of return. If there is a peaceful, multicultural federation, even the spurious pretexts the Israelis keep making for not allowing them their rights under international law would become untenable. Those refugees, added to the five million in the West Bank and Gaza and the two million Israeli Arabs would mean that the 7.2 million Jews would be in a minority in Israel and without some credible safeguards they would not be willing to accept that.

So I'm afraid my Utopian solution of a civilised, cosmopolitan state is unlikely and a continuation of the present situation of oppression punctuated by massacre is the most probable outcome.
Or, alternatively, the Donald J Trump solution. Which, however much you hate him, or Jews, or America, or Israel, is the only solution which offers anything to the Palestinians other than “more of the same, but probably worse”

Ethnic cleansing always looks deceptively simple and attractive to people sitting in armchairs in London or Washington with large scale maps, especially if they are basically ignorant of the region and its history, as Donald Trump clearly is.

Move people from Place A where they aren't having a good time to Place B where they can thrive. But I'm afraid when you have to inflict it on people who have lived in a place for generations, at the behest of a brutal occupying power, and force them to move to a much poorer place where they are not wanted and have no ancestral ties, it rather breaks down in practice. There are also lots of complicated questions about what do you do with people who are of mixed ancestry, or people who are too old or ill to move.

That is why it is rightly considered one of the four Mass Atrocity crimes, alongside genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity.
And the alternative is…

Well, you posted it, The situation as now - extreme squalor and deprivation - punctuated by massacres

I submit that this is worse, you are free to disagree
Funny how the dim witted right are all for self determination when it comes to their favoured peoples.

Not for Palestinians it seems.

I'm sure tens of thousands would jump at the chance to emigrate, but how about we ask them ?
I’m suggesting that the world community clubs together and gives every single Palestinian £100k and a condo

Literally

It can be slowly paid back from the profits as Gaza is developed into a kind of Monte Carlo on med. a freezone governed not by Isreal or Hamas or anyone.

It’s not like the Palestinians are losing much. They’re not from Gaza they’re mainly from Isreal, they were displaced from Israel by the nakba. Their homeland is already gone and they will never return

So what they will be giving up is a refugee camp/open prison

I apologise for wondering if there might just be a better future for them than that

The "better future" is that the Israelis finally live up to their obligations under the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, to which they are a signatory, and allow the Palestinians to return to their ancestral homelands from which they ethnically cleansed them in the 1940s and learn to live side by side with them, as they do with the 2 million Israeli Arabs.

Better than ethnic cleansing anyway.

Cookie · January 30

Carnyx said:
" ...but that’s not something I am backing nor tipping."

(is it me or does the grammar need a teensy little bittie attention?)

"Not something I am backing or tipping" or "something I am neither backing nor tipping".

Malmesbury · January 30

Gardenwalker said:
Obviously betting this far out is nuts.

It confuses me why Sir Sadiq Khan has come out against a third runway. It’s not like he’s had any concrete political position of anything of substance in the many many years he’s been bedblocking the mayoralty.

More people in West London are opposed to a third runway than are in favour.

Greenwashed NIMBYism, essentially.

Same kind of reasons the LibDems find to oppose any development. When that opposition has voted in it.

Gardenwalker · January 30

MaxPB said:

Leon said:
Sweet Jesus surely khan will not stand for a 4th term?!

Indeed I don’t think he will even if he wants to. He would lose to almost anyone
You underestimate his demographic advantage in London. If he runs it will be very difficult to beat him, the Tories will need a very good candidate, Cleverly might just be able to do it.

I don’t think the Tories can win.
The brand is trashed in London. Perhaps irrevocably.

An independent could thrash Khan if, god forbid, he wants to continue his somnambulent reign.

No_Offence_Alan · January 30

No odds for Ed Davey? if he stood, I am sure he would do better than any previous LD candidate for Mayor.

TheScreamingEagles · January 30

Find Out Now voting intention:
🟦 Reform UK: 27% (+1)
🔴 Labour: 23% (+1)
🔵 Conservatives: 21% (-2)
🟠 Lib Dems: 11% (-1)
🟢 Greens: 10% (-)

Changes from 22nd January
[Find Out Now, 29th January, N=2,487]

https://x.com/FindoutnowUK/status/1884969653639770528

Gardenwalker · January 30

Malmesbury said:

Gardenwalker said:
Obviously betting this far out is nuts.

It confuses me why Sir Sadiq Khan has come out against a third runway. It’s not like he’s had any concrete political position of anything of substance in the many many years he’s been bedblocking the mayoralty.
More people in West London are opposed to a third runway than are in favour.

Greenwashed NIMBYism, essentially.

Same kind of reasons the LibDems find to oppose any development. When that opposition has voted in it.

I’m completely aware of that.
And if I had a lovely back garden in Kew I might feel the same way.

I just don’t know why Khan has suddenly decided to take up the fight. His comfort zone is peddling tepidly woke nostra from a lay-by in Plaistow, or wherever “City Hall” is now based.

TheScreamingEagles · January 30

No_Offence_Alan said:
No odds for Ed Davey? if he stood, I am sure he would do better than any previous LD candidate for Mayor.

He's got bigger fish to fry, he could be leading the second largest party/going into coalition with Labour after the next election.

Leon · January 30

Fishing said:

Leon said:

kenObi said:

Leon said:

Fishing said:

Leon said:

Fishing said:

kenObi said:

Fishing said:

kinabalu said:

Leon said:

kinabalu said:

DecrepiterJohnL said:

Leon said:

kamski said:

Leon said:

Dopermean said:

carnforth said:

Leon said:

TheScreamingEagles said:

Leon said:

algarkirk said:

Leon said:

algarkirk said:

Leon said:
We will never Rejoin because it will never be worth any UK government expending the political capital required (and this is setting aside problems like the euro, Schenghen, a decade of negotiation, fisheries, migration, possible veto by any one of 27 EU nations)

Think about it. Why would you call a Rejoin referendum if you are doing well and you're high in the polls? You wouldn't take the risk, referendums are horribly risky, pointless

But then, why would you call a Rejoin referendum if you are doing badly and everyone hates you, again you are simply offering the voters a chance to give you a kicking and vote against anything you desire

The only way we might Rejoin is if we are literally starving to death and some national coalition proposes it as the only solution, but then the Europeans will surely veto us as a basket case that will drag down the EU economy

We are never going to Rejoin. It is not practical politics in the real world. Better to accept it
I think this looked to be true pre-Trump, and pre the time when Trumpism might shape the USA for the long term. I don't think it looks certain now.

Why? I know TRIP, the Rory and Campbell show, is not universally popular but the most recent discussion is pretty chilling on the evidence for the direction the USA is going in

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U0fdoOxkN4o
Rory fucking Stewart is a fucking imbecile. Really. Alistair Campbell is a depressed alcoholic with a huge guilt trip about Iraq. Together they have the political acuity of a cheese toastie

However, I said 95% certain we won't rejoin and not 100% because, black swans

A massive world war, or the USA become a hostile dictatorship would indeed be a very black swan and easily enough to see us back in the EU (and there would probably be even greater sequelae)

But, I don't any of these as more than 5% possibilities, combined
Point taken, though it is possible to miss the wood for your ad hominem trees. (And Rory was my MP, and I wish he still was, and he is genuinely interesting. They are both, in TS Eliot's words 'wounded surgeons').

In probabilities, I think the chance of straight Rejoin EU is fairly small, but the chance (say in the next generation) of some sort of deal, the Switzerland or Norway sort, is more like 30%.

Additionally, the chances of America ceasing to be an active ally and turning its attention away from Europe and NATO are not negligible. Wait and see. We are only 10 days in to the new reality.
Their analysis of Trump (I just watched ten minutes of it) is on the level of a quite bright sixth former. I am regularly astonished by the way apparently clever people - such as you - buy this intellectual pap tricked out as powerful insight
Says the guy who voted for Starmer.
I'm watching more of it now, it's pure midwittery and entirely shite

Stewart has just said "Trump is calling for the ethnic cleansing of Gaza" which is such a ridiculous misreading it is either a deliberate lie OR more evidence that they really are quite dim

Trump thinks outside the box. He is saying "maybe the Gazans would be better off giving up on their shit lives in Gaza and having a much richer, more peaceful life elsewhere". And, of course, Trump has a very good point. Hamas wants the Palestinians trapped in Gaza forever, their misery endless, their suffering a constant source of grevance and militancy - because we all know Israel will never agree to a 2 state solution, not now

And yet Trump saying "Hey here's a better choice for Gazans than the endless pain that Hamas offers" is somehow Trump calling for ethnic cleansing?! According to Rory "wow who knew immigration was so high" Stewart?

Enuff. Only idiots are taken in by this pabulum. I am disappointed @algarkirk is one of them
I know two otherwise-sensible people who have paid actual money to see Stewart and Campbell in a theatre.
Destroying a region's infrastructure, blocking supplies and encouraging the inhabitants to seek refuge elsewhere so that other people (of a different ethnicity) can move in and build their own homes and infrastructure funded by government isn't ethnic cleansing?
He may not be directly calling for it but he is tacitly supporting it.
Trump is offering a better future for Gazans than Hamas or the Palestinian Authority are offering. Its realpolitik

Also, it's not like this is some unprecedented evil; deliberate population movements - to solve intractable problems - happen all the time. Greeks and Turks after WW1, Muslims and Hindus at Partition, Germans after WW2, and many others

The alternative is that the Palestinians continue to squat there in perpetual misery because

1. Israel now won't ever yield to a two state solution

and

2. The Palestinians cannot defeat Israel, and nor can anyone else without nuking them (and getting nuked in return) and thereby rendering the entire Levant uninhabitable for 20,000 years

What wonderful examples of things that aren't 'ethnic cleansing'. Idiot.
Which is why I called it a “ridiculous misreading” of Trump

I mean, go ahead and call it “ethnic cleansing” if you want, that enables you to ignore the fact it’s actually an imaginative and humane solution to this hideous 70 year nightmare

In an ideal world Israelis would get over October 7 and ask for 2 states and Gazans would not be enraged anti Semites. But this is not an ideal world, and Trump has bruited the only possible solution that might make Palestinian lives a lot better and fast while giving Israel security
You and Trump may well be right, and this might be what happens. But as a thought experiment, post the same suggestion in reverse – that Israelis should abandon the Middle East and move en masse to set up a new state in America – and you will be cancelled for antisemitism. And that is what is wrong with Trump's idea.
The shoulder shrugging about Gaza and ideas like this from Trump rest on the belief that Palestinians are not 'proper people'.
Quite the opposite. It’s addressing them as human beings who want a life beyond eternal squalor poverty and martyrdom for Hamas

Yes it’s unideal for them. But it is the only idea out there that might radically improve their lives and in short order

Alternatively you can suggest your idea
I don't have anything new and wacky, I'm afraid. Boring old goal of a free and sovereign Palestine co-existing peacefully with Israel. It's never looked further off but it remains the only long-term sustainable outcome.
I doubt that a separate Palestinian state is viable - not geographically contiguous, the extreme Israelis and Palestinians would also constantly seek to undermine it and the Iranians would always to looking to cause trouble.

I think that the more sustainable outcome long term is for Israelis and Palestinian Arabs to coexist together in a Greater Israel/Palestine/Israeli-Palestinian Federation/whatever. Jews and Arabs coexisted in Palestine for centuries before Zionism (after the 8th century dispersals) and might be able to do so again. The 2 million Israeli Arabs whose ancestors survived ethnic cleansing in the 1940s show it is at least possible.

The extreme Israelis would have to give up the idea of Israeli as a Jewish state and move towards acceptance of multiculturalism and the extreme Palestinian juihadis would have to give up the idea of pushing the Jews out.

Would it be perfect or a panacea? No. Can I see an easy way to get there from here? Not really. But it would be a viable country with at least a chance of working.
I used to think this falls down on "they breed".

However Israel's birth rate is highest on OECD by a significant margin.
I think where it would fail is because of the 3 million or so Palestinian refugees who have been in Jordan (and Egypt and Lebanon) for 80 years and to whom the Israelis have always refused to grant a right of return. If there is a peaceful, multicultural federation, even the spurious pretexts the Israelis keep making for not allowing them their rights under international law would become untenable. Those refugees, added to the five million in the West Bank and Gaza and the two million Israeli Arabs would mean that the 7.2 million Jews would be in a minority in Israel and without some credible safeguards they would not be willing to accept that.

So I'm afraid my Utopian solution of a civilised, cosmopolitan state is unlikely and a continuation of the present situation of oppression punctuated by massacre is the most probable outcome.
Or, alternatively, the Donald J Trump solution. Which, however much you hate him, or Jews, or America, or Israel, is the only solution which offers anything to the Palestinians other than “more of the same, but probably worse”

Ethnic cleansing always looks deceptively simple and attractive to people sitting in armchairs in London or Washington with large scale maps, especially if they are basically ignorant of the region and its history, as Donald Trump clearly is.

Move people from Place A where they aren't having a good time to Place B where they can thrive. But I'm afraid when you have to inflict it on people who have lived in a place for generations, at the behest of a brutal occupying power, and force them to move to a much poorer place where they are not wanted and have no ancestral ties, it rather breaks down in practice. There are also lots of complicated questions about what do you do with people who are of mixed ancestry, or people who are too old or ill to move.

That is why it is rightly considered one of the four Mass Atrocity crimes, alongside genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity.
And the alternative is…

Well, you posted it, The situation as now - extreme squalor and deprivation - punctuated by massacres

I submit that this is worse, you are free to disagree
Funny how the dim witted right are all for self determination when it comes to their favoured peoples.

Not for Palestinians it seems.

I'm sure tens of thousands would jump at the chance to emigrate, but how about we ask them ?
I’m suggesting that the world community clubs together and gives every single Palestinian £100k and a condo

Literally

It can be slowly paid back from the profits as Gaza is developed into a kind of Monte Carlo on med. a freezone governed not by Isreal or Hamas or anyone.

It’s not like the Palestinians are losing much. They’re not from Gaza they’re mainly from Isreal, they were displaced from Israel by the nakba. Their homeland is already gone and they will never return

So what they will be giving up is a refugee camp/open prison

I apologise for wondering if there might just be a better future for them than that
The "better future" is that the Israelis finally live up to their obligations under the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, to which they are a signatory, and allow the Palestinians to return to their ancestral homelands from which they ethnically cleansed them in the 1940s and learn to live side by side with them, as they do with the 2 million Israeli Arabs.

Better than ethnic cleansing anyway.

But that’s not gonna happen. So what then?

I’m talking reality. Not what you want or wish to be the case

You guys are all the same

Malmesbury · January 30

Gardenwalker said:

Malmesbury said:

Gardenwalker said:
Obviously betting this far out is nuts.

It confuses me why Sir Sadiq Khan has come out against a third runway. It’s not like he’s had any concrete political position of anything of substance in the many many years he’s been bedblocking the mayoralty.
More people in West London are opposed to a third runway than are in favour.

Greenwashed NIMBYism, essentially.

Same kind of reasons the LibDems find to oppose any development. When that opposition has voted in it.
I’m completely aware of that.
And if I had a lovely back garden in Kew I might feel the same way.

I just don’t know why Khan has suddenly decided to take up the fight. His comfort zone is peddling tepidly woke nostra from a lay-by in Plaistow, or wherever “City Hall” is now based.

There’s also quite a lot of poorer people in the areas around the airport who will get the shitty end of the stick.

It’s about electoral viability.

He does nothing about the ending of late night licenses premises in central London - because the people who live there want them gone. The people who drink in them, come in from the suburbs, very often. Votes in doing nothing, in that case.

In this case, opposing the third runway secure votes and costs nothing.

Leon · January 30

TheScreamingEagles said:
Find Out Now voting intention:
🟦 Reform UK: 27% (+1)
🔴 Labour: 23% (+1)
🔵 Conservatives: 21% (-2)
🟠 Lib Dems: 11% (-1)
🟢 Greens: 10% (-)

Changes from 22nd January
[Find Out Now, 29th January, N=2,487]

https://x.com/FindoutnowUK/status/1884969653639770528

YES

We need BIG NIGEL in the 30s and the others on about 22. It’s happening

williamglenn · January 30

TheScreamingEagles said:

No_Offence_Alan said:
No odds for Ed Davey? if he stood, I am sure he would do better than any previous LD candidate for Mayor.
He's got bigger fish to fry, he could be leading the second largest party/going into coalition with Labour after the next election.

Is that Reform first, Lib Dems second?

TheScreamingEagles · January 30

williamglenn said:

TheScreamingEagles said:

No_Offence_Alan said:
No odds for Ed Davey? if he stood, I am sure he would do better than any previous LD candidate for Mayor.
He's got bigger fish to fry, he could be leading the second largest party/going into coalition with Labour after the next election.
Is that Reform first, Lib Dems second?

No.

Cookie · January 30

TheScreamingEagles said:
Find Out Now voting intention:
🟦 Reform UK: 27% (+1)
🔴 Labour: 23% (+1)
🔵 Conservatives: 21% (-2)
🟠 Lib Dems: 11% (-1)
🟢 Greens: 10% (-)

Changes from 22nd January
[Find Out Now, 29th January, N=2,487]

https://x.com/FindoutnowUK/status/1884969653639770528

This looks very similar to a poll yesterday (Greens on 10% stands out).

TheValiant · January 30

I'm sorry, that picture in the body of the article is wrong.

Please replace it immediately with:

(totally worth my 1 a day)

CharlieShark · January 30

Survation.
@Survation
New Westminster Voting Intention

LAB 27% (-3)
REF 24% (+4)
CON 22% (-3)
LD 13% (+2)
GRE 8% (+1)
SNP 3% (+1)
OTH 4% (-)

TheScreamingEagles · January 30

TheValiant said:
I'm sorry, that picture in the body of the article is wrong.

Please replace it immediately with:

(totally worth my 1 a day)

Yay, somebody spotted my subtle Star Trek reference.

Leon · January 30

We are very close to a tipping point where reform become the official opposition, in polls if not in practise

We are headed for a reform Tory coalition government with the Tories very much in the junior position

Pulpstar · January 30

Not sure if he'll win the mayoralty but he's going to win this fight.

Is a 3rd runway at Heathrow in line with our climate and net zero obligations ?
Well err... no. Obviously not.

Mr Justice of the rolls is obv going to side with Khan and his gang of lawyers when this gets before the courts.

williamglenn · January 30

TheScreamingEagles said:

williamglenn said:

TheScreamingEagles said:

No_Offence_Alan said:
No odds for Ed Davey? if he stood, I am sure he would do better than any previous LD candidate for Mayor.
He's got bigger fish to fry, he could be leading the second largest party/going into coalition with Labour after the next election.
Is that Reform first, Lib Dems second?
No.

How do you end up with the Lib Dems second then?

Pulpstar · January 30

CharlieShark said:

Survation.
@Survation
New Westminster Voting Intention

LAB 27% (-3)
REF 24% (+4)
CON 22% (-3)
LD 13% (+2)
GRE 8% (+1)
SNP 3% (+1)
OTH 4% (-)

The trend isn't Kemi or Keir's friend.

FeersumEnjineeya · January 30

Leon said:

Fishing said:

Leon said:

kenObi said:

Leon said:

Fishing said:

Leon said:

Fishing said:

kenObi said:

Fishing said:

kinabalu said:

Leon said:

kinabalu said:

DecrepiterJohnL said:

Leon said:

kamski said:

Leon said:

Dopermean said:

carnforth said:

Leon said:

TheScreamingEagles said:

Leon said:

algarkirk said:

Leon said:

algarkirk said:

Leon said:
We will never Rejoin because it will never be worth any UK government expending the political capital required (and this is setting aside problems like the euro, Schenghen, a decade of negotiation, fisheries, migration, possible veto by any one of 27 EU nations)

Think about it. Why would you call a Rejoin referendum if you are doing well and you're high in the polls? You wouldn't take the risk, referendums are horribly risky, pointless

But then, why would you call a Rejoin referendum if you are doing badly and everyone hates you, again you are simply offering the voters a chance to give you a kicking and vote against anything you desire

The only way we might Rejoin is if we are literally starving to death and some national coalition proposes it as the only solution, but then the Europeans will surely veto us as a basket case that will drag down the EU economy

We are never going to Rejoin. It is not practical politics in the real world. Better to accept it
I think this looked to be true pre-Trump, and pre the time when Trumpism might shape the USA for the long term. I don't think it looks certain now.

Why? I know TRIP, the Rory and Campbell show, is not universally popular but the most recent discussion is pretty chilling on the evidence for the direction the USA is going in

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U0fdoOxkN4o
Rory fucking Stewart is a fucking imbecile. Really. Alistair Campbell is a depressed alcoholic with a huge guilt trip about Iraq. Together they have the political acuity of a cheese toastie

However, I said 95% certain we won't rejoin and not 100% because, black swans

A massive world war, or the USA become a hostile dictatorship would indeed be a very black swan and easily enough to see us back in the EU (and there would probably be even greater sequelae)

But, I don't any of these as more than 5% possibilities, combined
Point taken, though it is possible to miss the wood for your ad hominem trees. (And Rory was my MP, and I wish he still was, and he is genuinely interesting. They are both, in TS Eliot's words 'wounded surgeons').

In probabilities, I think the chance of straight Rejoin EU is fairly small, but the chance (say in the next generation) of some sort of deal, the Switzerland or Norway sort, is more like 30%.

Additionally, the chances of America ceasing to be an active ally and turning its attention away from Europe and NATO are not negligible. Wait and see. We are only 10 days in to the new reality.
Their analysis of Trump (I just watched ten minutes of it) is on the level of a quite bright sixth former. I am regularly astonished by the way apparently clever people - such as you - buy this intellectual pap tricked out as powerful insight
Says the guy who voted for Starmer.
I'm watching more of it now, it's pure midwittery and entirely shite

Stewart has just said "Trump is calling for the ethnic cleansing of Gaza" which is such a ridiculous misreading it is either a deliberate lie OR more evidence that they really are quite dim

Trump thinks outside the box. He is saying "maybe the Gazans would be better off giving up on their shit lives in Gaza and having a much richer, more peaceful life elsewhere". And, of course, Trump has a very good point. Hamas wants the Palestinians trapped in Gaza forever, their misery endless, their suffering a constant source of grevance and militancy - because we all know Israel will never agree to a 2 state solution, not now

And yet Trump saying "Hey here's a better choice for Gazans than the endless pain that Hamas offers" is somehow Trump calling for ethnic cleansing?! According to Rory "wow who knew immigration was so high" Stewart?

Enuff. Only idiots are taken in by this pabulum. I am disappointed @algarkirk is one of them
I know two otherwise-sensible people who have paid actual money to see Stewart and Campbell in a theatre.
Destroying a region's infrastructure, blocking supplies and encouraging the inhabitants to seek refuge elsewhere so that other people (of a different ethnicity) can move in and build their own homes and infrastructure funded by government isn't ethnic cleansing?
He may not be directly calling for it but he is tacitly supporting it.
Trump is offering a better future for Gazans than Hamas or the Palestinian Authority are offering. Its realpolitik

Also, it's not like this is some unprecedented evil; deliberate population movements - to solve intractable problems - happen all the time. Greeks and Turks after WW1, Muslims and Hindus at Partition, Germans after WW2, and many others

The alternative is that the Palestinians continue to squat there in perpetual misery because

1. Israel now won't ever yield to a two state solution

and

2. The Palestinians cannot defeat Israel, and nor can anyone else without nuking them (and getting nuked in return) and thereby rendering the entire Levant uninhabitable for 20,000 years

What wonderful examples of things that aren't 'ethnic cleansing'. Idiot.
Which is why I called it a “ridiculous misreading” of Trump

I mean, go ahead and call it “ethnic cleansing” if you want, that enables you to ignore the fact it’s actually an imaginative and humane solution to this hideous 70 year nightmare

In an ideal world Israelis would get over October 7 and ask for 2 states and Gazans would not be enraged anti Semites. But this is not an ideal world, and Trump has bruited the only possible solution that might make Palestinian lives a lot better and fast while giving Israel security
You and Trump may well be right, and this might be what happens. But as a thought experiment, post the same suggestion in reverse – that Israelis should abandon the Middle East and move en masse to set up a new state in America – and you will be cancelled for antisemitism. And that is what is wrong with Trump's idea.
The shoulder shrugging about Gaza and ideas like this from Trump rest on the belief that Palestinians are not 'proper people'.
Quite the opposite. It’s addressing them as human beings who want a life beyond eternal squalor poverty and martyrdom for Hamas

Yes it’s unideal for them. But it is the only idea out there that might radically improve their lives and in short order

Alternatively you can suggest your idea
I don't have anything new and wacky, I'm afraid. Boring old goal of a free and sovereign Palestine co-existing peacefully with Israel. It's never looked further off but it remains the only long-term sustainable outcome.
I doubt that a separate Palestinian state is viable - not geographically contiguous, the extreme Israelis and Palestinians would also constantly seek to undermine it and the Iranians would always to looking to cause trouble.

I think that the more sustainable outcome long term is for Israelis and Palestinian Arabs to coexist together in a Greater Israel/Palestine/Israeli-Palestinian Federation/whatever. Jews and Arabs coexisted in Palestine for centuries before Zionism (after the 8th century dispersals) and might be able to do so again. The 2 million Israeli Arabs whose ancestors survived ethnic cleansing in the 1940s show it is at least possible.

The extreme Israelis would have to give up the idea of Israeli as a Jewish state and move towards acceptance of multiculturalism and the extreme Palestinian juihadis would have to give up the idea of pushing the Jews out.

Would it be perfect or a panacea? No. Can I see an easy way to get there from here? Not really. But it would be a viable country with at least a chance of working.
I used to think this falls down on "they breed".

However Israel's birth rate is highest on OECD by a significant margin.
I think where it would fail is because of the 3 million or so Palestinian refugees who have been in Jordan (and Egypt and Lebanon) for 80 years and to whom the Israelis have always refused to grant a right of return. If there is a peaceful, multicultural federation, even the spurious pretexts the Israelis keep making for not allowing them their rights under international law would become untenable. Those refugees, added to the five million in the West Bank and Gaza and the two million Israeli Arabs would mean that the 7.2 million Jews would be in a minority in Israel and without some credible safeguards they would not be willing to accept that.

So I'm afraid my Utopian solution of a civilised, cosmopolitan state is unlikely and a continuation of the present situation of oppression punctuated by massacre is the most probable outcome.
Or, alternatively, the Donald J Trump solution. Which, however much you hate him, or Jews, or America, or Israel, is the only solution which offers anything to the Palestinians other than “more of the same, but probably worse”

Ethnic cleansing always looks deceptively simple and attractive to people sitting in armchairs in London or Washington with large scale maps, especially if they are basically ignorant of the region and its history, as Donald Trump clearly is.

Move people from Place A where they aren't having a good time to Place B where they can thrive. But I'm afraid when you have to inflict it on people who have lived in a place for generations, at the behest of a brutal occupying power, and force them to move to a much poorer place where they are not wanted and have no ancestral ties, it rather breaks down in practice. There are also lots of complicated questions about what do you do with people who are of mixed ancestry, or people who are too old or ill to move.

That is why it is rightly considered one of the four Mass Atrocity crimes, alongside genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity.
And the alternative is…

Well, you posted it, The situation as now - extreme squalor and deprivation - punctuated by massacres

I submit that this is worse, you are free to disagree
Funny how the dim witted right are all for self determination when it comes to their favoured peoples.

Not for Palestinians it seems.

I'm sure tens of thousands would jump at the chance to emigrate, but how about we ask them ?
I’m suggesting that the world community clubs together and gives every single Palestinian £100k and a condo

Literally

It can be slowly paid back from the profits as Gaza is developed into a kind of Monte Carlo on med. a freezone governed not by Isreal or Hamas or anyone.

It’s not like the Palestinians are losing much. They’re not from Gaza they’re mainly from Isreal, they were displaced from Israel by the nakba. Their homeland is already gone and they will never return

So what they will be giving up is a refugee camp/open prison

I apologise for wondering if there might just be a better future for them than that
The "better future" is that the Israelis finally live up to their obligations under the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, to which they are a signatory, and allow the Palestinians to return to their ancestral homelands from which they ethnically cleansed them in the 1940s and learn to live side by side with them, as they do with the 2 million Israeli Arabs.

Better than ethnic cleansing anyway.
But that’s not gonna happen. So what then?

I’m talking reality. Not what you want or wish to be the case

You guys are all the same

Your vision of reality appears to be one in which fighting is avoided by the weak simply submitting to the strong. Israel is given Gaza; presumably Russia is given half of Ukraine and the US gets Greenland. Yes, if people would just give up when faced with stronger foe, a lot of bloodshed could be saved. I see where you're going with this.

TheScreamingEagles · January 30

williamglenn said:

TheScreamingEagles said:

williamglenn said:

TheScreamingEagles said:

No_Offence_Alan said:
No odds for Ed Davey? if he stood, I am sure he would do better than any previous LD candidate for Mayor.
He's got bigger fish to fry, he could be leading the second largest party/going into coalition with Labour after the next election.
Is that Reform first, Lib Dems second?
No.
How do you end up with the Lib Dems second then?

First past the post.

https://bsky.app/profile/gsoh31.bsky.social/post/3lgnwwtye4k27

https://bsky.app/profile/gsoh31.bsky.social/post/3lgnwrsjibk27

https://bsky.app/profile/gsoh31.bsky.social/post/3lgnwndangk27

Gardenwalker · January 30

Certain pollsters seem to find Reform ahead.
I don’t really trust them.

Our gold standards show Labour still clinging on to the top, with Reform and Tories duking it out three or four points behind.

Eabhal · January 30

Khan can't in good conscience support a third runway after a long difficult campaign for ULEZ, which has overwhelming support in the Labour supporting bits of London.

And if Farage becomes the primary opposition leader and the Conservatives are in the low teens, you'll see the lefty vote consolidate and grow in inner cities. I can see Khan winning another term in that scenario.

Pulpstar · January 30

TheScreamingEagles said:

williamglenn said:

TheScreamingEagles said:

williamglenn said:

TheScreamingEagles said:

No_Offence_Alan said:
No odds for Ed Davey? if he stood, I am sure he would do better than any previous LD candidate for Mayor.
He's got bigger fish to fry, he could be leading the second largest party/going into coalition with Labour after the next election.
Is that Reform first, Lib Dems second?
No.
How do you end up with the Lib Dems second then?
First past the post.

https://bsky.app/profile/gsoh31.bsky.social/post/3lgnwwtye4k27

https://bsky.app/profile/gsoh31.bsky.social/post/3lgnwrsjibk27

https://bsky.app/profile/gsoh31.bsky.social/post/3lgnwndangk27

11% in the polls can only go so far even if it is hyperefficiently allocated. 100 seats tops for the LDs which won't be 2nd in seats.

Mexicanpete · January 30

TheScreamingEagles said:
Find Out Now voting intention:
🟦 Reform UK: 27% (+1)
🔴 Labour: 23% (+1)
🔵 Conservatives: 21% (-2)
🟠 Lib Dems: 11% (-1)
🟢 Greens: 10% (-)

Changes from 22nd January
[Find Out Now, 29th January, N=2,487]

https://x.com/FindoutnowUK/status/1884969653639770528

Is this Goodwin's poll?

williamglenn · January 30

TheScreamingEagles said:

williamglenn said:

TheScreamingEagles said:

williamglenn said:

TheScreamingEagles said:

No_Offence_Alan said:
No odds for Ed Davey? if he stood, I am sure he would do better than any previous LD candidate for Mayor.
He's got bigger fish to fry, he could be leading the second largest party/going into coalition with Labour after the next election.
Is that Reform first, Lib Dems second?
No.
How do you end up with the Lib Dems second then?
First past the post.

https://bsky.app/profile/gsoh31.bsky.social/post/3lgnwwtye4k27

https://bsky.app/profile/gsoh31.bsky.social/post/3lgnwrsjibk27

https://bsky.app/profile/gsoh31.bsky.social/post/3lgnwndangk27

You need to account for the unwinding of the "get the Tories out" tactical voters. The Lib Dems won't be anywhere near in most of these target seats.

TheScreamingEagles · January 30

Mexicanpete said:

TheScreamingEagles said:
Find Out Now voting intention:
🟦 Reform UK: 27% (+1)
🔴 Labour: 23% (+1)
🔵 Conservatives: 21% (-2)
🟠 Lib Dems: 11% (-1)
🟢 Greens: 10% (-)

Changes from 22nd January
[Find Out Now, 29th January, N=2,487]

https://x.com/FindoutnowUK/status/1884969653639770528
Is this Goodwin's poll?

This poll was initiated solely by Find Out Now and not funded by any third party

https://x.com/FindoutnowUK/status/1884969658400260418

Gardenwalker · January 30

Squizzing at the Wikipedia page on UK polling, it’s kind of fascinating that Reform are polling ~15% in Scotland, chiefly it seems by attracting votes from Scottish Labour.

Apologies if this has already been discussed to death.

TheScreamingEagles · January 30

williamglenn said:

TheScreamingEagles said:

williamglenn said:

TheScreamingEagles said:

williamglenn said:

TheScreamingEagles said:

No_Offence_Alan said:
No odds for Ed Davey? if he stood, I am sure he would do better than any previous LD candidate for Mayor.
He's got bigger fish to fry, he could be leading the second largest party/going into coalition with Labour after the next election.
Is that Reform first, Lib Dems second?
No.
How do you end up with the Lib Dems second then?
First past the post.

https://bsky.app/profile/gsoh31.bsky.social/post/3lgnwwtye4k27

https://bsky.app/profile/gsoh31.bsky.social/post/3lgnwrsjibk27

https://bsky.app/profile/gsoh31.bsky.social/post/3lgnwndangk27
You need to account for the unwinding of the "get the Tories out" tactical voters. The Lib Dems won't be anywhere near in most of these target seats.

A heroic assumption on your part.

The get the Tories out unwind will go to the stop Farage movement.

CharlieShark · January 30

Pulpstar said:

CharlieShark said:

Survation.
@Survation
New Westminster Voting Intention

LAB 27% (-3)
REF 24% (+4)
CON 22% (-3)
LD 13% (+2)
GRE 8% (+1)
SNP 3% (+1)
OTH 4% (-)
The trend isn't Kemi or Keir's friend.

A lot of interesting stuff behind that headline though.

'Just 24% of those who do not currently intend to vote Labour would consider doing so, with comparable figures of 29% for the Conservatives and 26% for Reform UK. Strikingly, more than two-thirds of voters say they would not consider voting Labour—a stark finding for a party governing with a 174-seat majority.'

Kemi beats Starmer on doing well as leader (33 to 31...) and not doing well (36 to 55).

Trust on economy, Kemi wins 35 to 32%. Stride beats Reeves 38 to 34%.

Net confidence on economy - Badenoch -10, Farage -16, Starmer & gov - 25%

All to play for, for everyone on these figures.

TimS · January 30

Those all important bloc scores on the doors:

Find out now:

LLG 44 RefCon 48
LabCon 44 the SPLORG 56(!)

Survation:

LLG 48 RefCon 46
LabCon 49 the SPLORG 51

So find out now is much more positive for Nige and his crew on both measures.

Eabhal · January 30

Gardenwalker said:
Squizzing at the Wikipedia page on UK polling, it’s kind of fascinating that Reform are polling ~15% in Scotland, chiefly it seems by attracting votes from Scottish Labour.

Apologies if this has already been discussed to death.

Where are you seeing the stats for the support coming from Labour voters?

TheScreamingEagles · January 30

Gardenwalker said:
Squizzing at the Wikipedia page on UK polling, it’s kind of fascinating that Reform are polling ~15% in Scotland, chiefly it seems by attracting votes from Scottish Labour.

Apologies if this has already been discussed to death.

I need to do a thread on this, I am awaiting a poll Scottish poll with a lot of supplementaries on this matter.

Hopefully see something early next month.

kamski · January 30

Leon said:

Fishing said:

Leon said:

kenObi said:

Leon said:

Fishing said:

Leon said:

Fishing said:

kenObi said:

Fishing said:

kinabalu said:

Leon said:

kinabalu said:

DecrepiterJohnL said:

Leon said:

kamski said:

Leon said:

Dopermean said:

carnforth said:

Leon said:

TheScreamingEagles said:

Leon said:

algarkirk said:

Leon said:

algarkirk said:

Leon said:
We will never Rejoin because it will never be worth any UK government expending the political capital required (and this is setting aside problems like the euro, Schenghen, a decade of negotiation, fisheries, migration, possible veto by any one of 27 EU nations)

Think about it. Why would you call a Rejoin referendum if you are doing well and you're high in the polls? You wouldn't take the risk, referendums are horribly risky, pointless

But then, why would you call a Rejoin referendum if you are doing badly and everyone hates you, again you are simply offering the voters a chance to give you a kicking and vote against anything you desire

The only way we might Rejoin is if we are literally starving to death and some national coalition proposes it as the only solution, but then the Europeans will surely veto us as a basket case that will drag down the EU economy

We are never going to Rejoin. It is not practical politics in the real world. Better to accept it
I think this looked to be true pre-Trump, and pre the time when Trumpism might shape the USA for the long term. I don't think it looks certain now.

Why? I know TRIP, the Rory and Campbell show, is not universally popular but the most recent discussion is pretty chilling on the evidence for the direction the USA is going in

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U0fdoOxkN4o
Rory fucking Stewart is a fucking imbecile. Really. Alistair Campbell is a depressed alcoholic with a huge guilt trip about Iraq. Together they have the political acuity of a cheese toastie

However, I said 95% certain we won't rejoin and not 100% because, black swans

A massive world war, or the USA become a hostile dictatorship would indeed be a very black swan and easily enough to see us back in the EU (and there would probably be even greater sequelae)

But, I don't any of these as more than 5% possibilities, combined
Point taken, though it is possible to miss the wood for your ad hominem trees. (And Rory was my MP, and I wish he still was, and he is genuinely interesting. They are both, in TS Eliot's words 'wounded surgeons').

In probabilities, I think the chance of straight Rejoin EU is fairly small, but the chance (say in the next generation) of some sort of deal, the Switzerland or Norway sort, is more like 30%.

Additionally, the chances of America ceasing to be an active ally and turning its attention away from Europe and NATO are not negligible. Wait and see. We are only 10 days in to the new reality.
Their analysis of Trump (I just watched ten minutes of it) is on the level of a quite bright sixth former. I am regularly astonished by the way apparently clever people - such as you - buy this intellectual pap tricked out as powerful insight
Says the guy who voted for Starmer.
I'm watching more of it now, it's pure midwittery and entirely shite

Stewart has just said "Trump is calling for the ethnic cleansing of Gaza" which is such a ridiculous misreading it is either a deliberate lie OR more evidence that they really are quite dim

Trump thinks outside the box. He is saying "maybe the Gazans would be better off giving up on their shit lives in Gaza and having a much richer, more peaceful life elsewhere". And, of course, Trump has a very good point. Hamas wants the Palestinians trapped in Gaza forever, their misery endless, their suffering a constant source of grevance and militancy - because we all know Israel will never agree to a 2 state solution, not now

And yet Trump saying "Hey here's a better choice for Gazans than the endless pain that Hamas offers" is somehow Trump calling for ethnic cleansing?! According to Rory "wow who knew immigration was so high" Stewart?

Enuff. Only idiots are taken in by this pabulum. I am disappointed @algarkirk is one of them
I know two otherwise-sensible people who have paid actual money to see Stewart and Campbell in a theatre.
Destroying a region's infrastructure, blocking supplies and encouraging the inhabitants to seek refuge elsewhere so that other people (of a different ethnicity) can move in and build their own homes and infrastructure funded by government isn't ethnic cleansing?
He may not be directly calling for it but he is tacitly supporting it.
Trump is offering a better future for Gazans than Hamas or the Palestinian Authority are offering. Its realpolitik

Also, it's not like this is some unprecedented evil; deliberate population movements - to solve intractable problems - happen all the time. Greeks and Turks after WW1, Muslims and Hindus at Partition, Germans after WW2, and many others

The alternative is that the Palestinians continue to squat there in perpetual misery because

1. Israel now won't ever yield to a two state solution

and

2. The Palestinians cannot defeat Israel, and nor can anyone else without nuking them (and getting nuked in return) and thereby rendering the entire Levant uninhabitable for 20,000 years

What wonderful examples of things that aren't 'ethnic cleansing'. Idiot.
Which is why I called it a “ridiculous misreading” of Trump

I mean, go ahead and call it “ethnic cleansing” if you want, that enables you to ignore the fact it’s actually an imaginative and humane solution to this hideous 70 year nightmare

In an ideal world Israelis would get over October 7 and ask for 2 states and Gazans would not be enraged anti Semites. But this is not an ideal world, and Trump has bruited the only possible solution that might make Palestinian lives a lot better and fast while giving Israel security
You and Trump may well be right, and this might be what happens. But as a thought experiment, post the same suggestion in reverse – that Israelis should abandon the Middle East and move en masse to set up a new state in America – and you will be cancelled for antisemitism. And that is what is wrong with Trump's idea.
The shoulder shrugging about Gaza and ideas like this from Trump rest on the belief that Palestinians are not 'proper people'.
Quite the opposite. It’s addressing them as human beings who want a life beyond eternal squalor poverty and martyrdom for Hamas

Yes it’s unideal for them. But it is the only idea out there that might radically improve their lives and in short order

Alternatively you can suggest your idea
I don't have anything new and wacky, I'm afraid. Boring old goal of a free and sovereign Palestine co-existing peacefully with Israel. It's never looked further off but it remains the only long-term sustainable outcome.
I doubt that a separate Palestinian state is viable - not geographically contiguous, the extreme Israelis and Palestinians would also constantly seek to undermine it and the Iranians would always to looking to cause trouble.

I think that the more sustainable outcome long term is for Israelis and Palestinian Arabs to coexist together in a Greater Israel/Palestine/Israeli-Palestinian Federation/whatever. Jews and Arabs coexisted in Palestine for centuries before Zionism (after the 8th century dispersals) and might be able to do so again. The 2 million Israeli Arabs whose ancestors survived ethnic cleansing in the 1940s show it is at least possible.

The extreme Israelis would have to give up the idea of Israeli as a Jewish state and move towards acceptance of multiculturalism and the extreme Palestinian juihadis would have to give up the idea of pushing the Jews out.

Would it be perfect or a panacea? No. Can I see an easy way to get there from here? Not really. But it would be a viable country with at least a chance of working.
I used to think this falls down on "they breed".

However Israel's birth rate is highest on OECD by a significant margin.
I think where it would fail is because of the 3 million or so Palestinian refugees who have been in Jordan (and Egypt and Lebanon) for 80 years and to whom the Israelis have always refused to grant a right of return. If there is a peaceful, multicultural federation, even the spurious pretexts the Israelis keep making for not allowing them their rights under international law would become untenable. Those refugees, added to the five million in the West Bank and Gaza and the two million Israeli Arabs would mean that the 7.2 million Jews would be in a minority in Israel and without some credible safeguards they would not be willing to accept that.

So I'm afraid my Utopian solution of a civilised, cosmopolitan state is unlikely and a continuation of the present situation of oppression punctuated by massacre is the most probable outcome.
Or, alternatively, the Donald J Trump solution. Which, however much you hate him, or Jews, or America, or Israel, is the only solution which offers anything to the Palestinians other than “more of the same, but probably worse”

Ethnic cleansing always looks deceptively simple and attractive to people sitting in armchairs in London or Washington with large scale maps, especially if they are basically ignorant of the region and its history, as Donald Trump clearly is.

Move people from Place A where they aren't having a good time to Place B where they can thrive. But I'm afraid when you have to inflict it on people who have lived in a place for generations, at the behest of a brutal occupying power, and force them to move to a much poorer place where they are not wanted and have no ancestral ties, it rather breaks down in practice. There are also lots of complicated questions about what do you do with people who are of mixed ancestry, or people who are too old or ill to move.

That is why it is rightly considered one of the four Mass Atrocity crimes, alongside genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity.
And the alternative is…

Well, you posted it, The situation as now - extreme squalor and deprivation - punctuated by massacres

I submit that this is worse, you are free to disagree
Funny how the dim witted right are all for self determination when it comes to their favoured peoples.

Not for Palestinians it seems.

I'm sure tens of thousands would jump at the chance to emigrate, but how about we ask them ?
I’m suggesting that the world community clubs together and gives every single Palestinian £100k and a condo

Literally

It can be slowly paid back from the profits as Gaza is developed into a kind of Monte Carlo on med. a freezone governed not by Isreal or Hamas or anyone.

It’s not like the Palestinians are losing much. They’re not from Gaza they’re mainly from Isreal, they were displaced from Israel by the nakba. Their homeland is already gone and they will never return

So what they will be giving up is a refugee camp/open prison

I apologise for wondering if there might just be a better future for them than that
The "better future" is that the Israelis finally live up to their obligations under the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, to which they are a signatory, and allow the Palestinians to return to their ancestral homelands from which they ethnically cleansed them in the 1940s and learn to live side by side with them, as they do with the 2 million Israeli Arabs.

Better than ethnic cleansing anyway.
But that’s not gonna happen. So what then?

I’m talking reality. Not what you want or wish to be the case

You guys are all the same

Your plan is a bit sketchy. What does 'every single Palestinian' mean (Wikipedia says there are 14.3 million)? Where are the condos? Who is the world community? Who's in charge of the borders of Gaza? Who's taking care of security? What happens to the West Bank? How are you going to divide the cost up/get people to pay?

Are you really sure you're closer to reality than anyone advocating a one-state, two-state, or three-state solution?

Leon · January 30

TheScreamingEagles said:

williamglenn said:

TheScreamingEagles said:

williamglenn said:

TheScreamingEagles said:

williamglenn said:

TheScreamingEagles said:

No_Offence_Alan said:
No odds for Ed Davey? if he stood, I am sure he would do better than any previous LD candidate for Mayor.
He's got bigger fish to fry, he could be leading the second largest party/going into coalition with Labour after the next election.
Is that Reform first, Lib Dems second?
No.
How do you end up with the Lib Dems second then?
First past the post.

https://bsky.app/profile/gsoh31.bsky.social/post/3lgnwwtye4k27

https://bsky.app/profile/gsoh31.bsky.social/post/3lgnwrsjibk27

https://bsky.app/profile/gsoh31.bsky.social/post/3lgnwndangk27
You need to account for the unwinding of the "get the Tories out" tactical voters. The Lib Dems won't be anywhere near in most of these target seats.
A heroic assumption on your part.

The get the Tories out unwind will go to the stop Farage movement.

Nah

Gardenwalker · January 30

Eabhal said:

Gardenwalker said:
Squizzing at the Wikipedia page on UK polling, it’s kind of fascinating that Reform are polling ~15% in Scotland, chiefly it seems by attracting votes from Scottish Labour.

Apologies if this has already been discussed to death.
Where are you seeing the stats for the support coming from Labour voters?

Very roughly, SLAB have declined, Reform have increased, and the other parties have been largely flat.

Leon · January 30

There are WAY too many flashbacks in Black Doves

Gardenwalker · January 30

Leon said:

TheScreamingEagles said:

williamglenn said:

TheScreamingEagles said:

williamglenn said:

TheScreamingEagles said:

williamglenn said:

TheScreamingEagles said:

No_Offence_Alan said:
No odds for Ed Davey? if he stood, I am sure he would do better than any previous LD candidate for Mayor.
He's got bigger fish to fry, he could be leading the second largest party/going into coalition with Labour after the next election.
Is that Reform first, Lib Dems second?
No.
How do you end up with the Lib Dems second then?
First past the post.

https://bsky.app/profile/gsoh31.bsky.social/post/3lgnwwtye4k27

https://bsky.app/profile/gsoh31.bsky.social/post/3lgnwrsjibk27

https://bsky.app/profile/gsoh31.bsky.social/post/3lgnwndangk27
You need to account for the unwinding of the "get the Tories out" tactical voters. The Lib Dems won't be anywhere near in most of these target seats.
A heroic assumption on your part.

The get the Tories out unwind will go to the stop Farage movement.
Nah

The “stop Farage” coalition is why I think a second Labour term is the most probable outcome at present.

williamglenn · January 30

Gardenwalker said:

Eabhal said:

Gardenwalker said:
Squizzing at the Wikipedia page on UK polling, it’s kind of fascinating that Reform are polling ~15% in Scotland, chiefly it seems by attracting votes from Scottish Labour.

Apologies if this has already been discussed to death.
Where are you seeing the stats for the support coming from Labour voters?
Very rightly, SLAB have declined, Reform have increased, and the other parties have been largely flat.

In my Tory vs Reform two-horse race theory, the Tories will end up as essentially the SNP of England with Reform as the party with the broadest support across Britain as a whole.

CharlieShark · January 30

Gardenwalker said:
Certain pollsters seem to find Reform ahead.
I don’t really trust them.

Our gold standards show Labour still clinging on to the top, with Reform and Tories duking it out three or four points behind.

Only one pollster has had Reform in an outright lead (FON).

Would love to know who your gold standard ones are and how they got on at the very last test they had at the 2024 general election?

Northern_Al · January 30

TheScreamingEagles said:

Mexicanpete said:

TheScreamingEagles said:
Find Out Now voting intention:
🟦 Reform UK: 27% (+1)
🔴 Labour: 23% (+1)
🔵 Conservatives: 21% (-2)
🟠 Lib Dems: 11% (-1)
🟢 Greens: 10% (-)

Changes from 22nd January
[Find Out Now, 29th January, N=2,487]

https://x.com/FindoutnowUK/status/1884969653639770528
Is this Goodwin's poll?
This poll was initiated solely by Find Out Now and not funded by any third party

https://x.com/FindoutnowUK/status/1884969658400260418

Find Out Now?
Find out in four years time, methinks.

kamski · January 30

Leon said:
We are very close to a tipping point where reform become the official opposition, in polls if not in practise

We are headed for a reform Tory coalition government with the Tories very much in the junior position

Didn't know there was an official polling opposition. You really do learn something new here every day.

williamglenn · January 30

Gardenwalker said:

Leon said:

TheScreamingEagles said:

williamglenn said:

TheScreamingEagles said:

williamglenn said:

TheScreamingEagles said:

williamglenn said:

TheScreamingEagles said:

No_Offence_Alan said:
No odds for Ed Davey? if he stood, I am sure he would do better than any previous LD candidate for Mayor.
He's got bigger fish to fry, he could be leading the second largest party/going into coalition with Labour after the next election.
Is that Reform first, Lib Dems second?
No.
How do you end up with the Lib Dems second then?
First past the post.

https://bsky.app/profile/gsoh31.bsky.social/post/3lgnwwtye4k27

https://bsky.app/profile/gsoh31.bsky.social/post/3lgnwrsjibk27

https://bsky.app/profile/gsoh31.bsky.social/post/3lgnwndangk27
You need to account for the unwinding of the "get the Tories out" tactical voters. The Lib Dems won't be anywhere near in most of these target seats.
A heroic assumption on your part.

The get the Tories out unwind will go to the stop Farage movement.
Nah
The “stop Farage” coalition is why I think a second Labour term is the most probable outcome at present.

That doesn't make sense from a FPTP perspective. For Farage to be in contention, he has to be on course to rout Labour in their heatlands, so Labour cannot be the "stop Farage" vehicle.

No-one will take the Lib Dems seriously after Jo Swinson if they try to pose as a viable government, so that leaves the Tories as the last non-Farage force left standing.

TheScreamingEagles · January 30

Northern_Al said:

TheScreamingEagles said:

Mexicanpete said:

TheScreamingEagles said:
Find Out Now voting intention:
🟦 Reform UK: 27% (+1)
🔴 Labour: 23% (+1)
🔵 Conservatives: 21% (-2)
🟠 Lib Dems: 11% (-1)
🟢 Greens: 10% (-)

Changes from 22nd January
[Find Out Now, 29th January, N=2,487]

https://x.com/FindoutnowUK/status/1884969653639770528
Is this Goodwin's poll?
This poll was initiated solely by Find Out Now and not funded by any third party

https://x.com/FindoutnowUK/status/1884969658400260418
Find Out Now?
Find out in four years time, methinks.

I call them FAFO.

kamski · January 30

Leon said:
There are WAY too many flashbacks in Black Doves

Black Doves is shit. Shitter than pyramids.

bondegezou · January 30

Gardenwalker said:

MaxPB said:

Leon said:
Sweet Jesus surely khan will not stand for a 4th term?!

Indeed I don’t think he will even if he wants to. He would lose to almost anyone
You underestimate his demographic advantage in London. If he runs it will be very difficult to beat him, the Tories will need a very good candidate, Cleverly might just be able to do it.
I don’t think the Tories can win.
The brand is trashed in London. Perhaps irrevocably.

An independent could thrash Khan if, god forbid, he wants to continue his somnambulent reign.

There have been 7 elections for London Mayor, which were won by Labour 4 times (Livingstone, Khan, Khan, Khan), the Conservatives twice (Johnson, Johnson) and an independent (Livingstone) once. I think it would be foolish to think that the Conservatives couldn't win again at some point. Their reputation is trashed at the moment, but it will probably recover. 2028 is a fair way away.

If Labour leaves mayoral elections as FPTP, that may make it easier for a Conservative or independent candidate to win.

But are any of the odds on offer worth it? Probably not. Maybe Garbett at 50/1, as TSE says.

Leon · January 30

Gardenwalker said:

Leon said:

TheScreamingEagles said:

williamglenn said:

TheScreamingEagles said:

williamglenn said:

TheScreamingEagles said:

williamglenn said:

TheScreamingEagles said:

No_Offence_Alan said:
No odds for Ed Davey? if he stood, I am sure he would do better than any previous LD candidate for Mayor.
He's got bigger fish to fry, he could be leading the second largest party/going into coalition with Labour after the next election.
Is that Reform first, Lib Dems second?
No.
How do you end up with the Lib Dems second then?
First past the post.

https://bsky.app/profile/gsoh31.bsky.social/post/3lgnwwtye4k27

https://bsky.app/profile/gsoh31.bsky.social/post/3lgnwrsjibk27

https://bsky.app/profile/gsoh31.bsky.social/post/3lgnwndangk27
You need to account for the unwinding of the "get the Tories out" tactical voters. The Lib Dems won't be anywhere near in most of these target seats.
A heroic assumption on your part.

The get the Tories out unwind will go to the stop Farage movement.
Nah
The “stop Farage” coalition is why I think a second Labour term is the most probable outcome at present.

Farage is more popular and less unpopular than you realise. He is no longer the fringe UKIPPER

The British people feel utterly betrayed on immigration (and they are right to feel that). Farage is the only guy that’s been honest about it and willing to talk about it

He’s gonna win as things stand. BUT there’s a long way to go of course. We could all be living on Neptune by 2029

TimS · January 30

TimS said:
Those all important bloc scores on the doors:

Find out now:

LLG 44 RefCon 48
LabCon 44 the SPLORG 56(!)

Survation:

LLG 48 RefCon 46
LabCon 49 the SPLORG 51

So find out now is much more positive for Nige and his crew on both measures.

I’m tempted to introduce a new stat: the rebel voter ratio (RVR) for each bloc. This compares the vote count for each main party with the votes for its competitors on the same side of the left-right axis. I’ve left out the nationalist parties so this is just based on LLG and RefCon. Arguably this slightly overstates left consolidation as most SNP and Plaid voters are probably left of centre.

On the Survation numbers, for example, LLG has a 27/22 ratio (1.23:1), and RefCon has a 22/24 = 0.92 ratio. That means the right is more split than the left. In find out now it’s 1.1 for the left and 0.78 for the right.

Once a ratio dips under 0.66:1 it then reverses, becoming 1.5:1, because at that stage the vote is consolidating under the challenger party.

bondegezou · January 30

No_Offence_Alan said:
No odds for Ed Davey? if he stood, I am sure he would do better than any previous LD candidate for Mayor.

Simon Hughes' 15.3% in 2004 was the previous best LD performance.

TheScreamingEagles · January 30

Taz said:
I wonder if he will boldy go.................to the supreme court to stop the third runway.

Relax, Jolyon Maugham is bringing a case to stop the third runaway, this alone means Heathrow is going to end up with a minimum of five runways now.

Leon · January 30

kamski said:

Leon said:
We are very close to a tipping point where reform become the official opposition, in polls if not in practise

We are headed for a reform Tory coalition government with the Tories very much in the junior position
Didn't know there was an official polling opposition. You really do learn something new here every day.

Oh god whatever you tedious humourless witless fucking kartoffelsalat

Mexicanpete · January 30

TheScreamingEagles said:

Mexicanpete said:

TheScreamingEagles said:
Find Out Now voting intention:
🟦 Reform UK: 27% (+1)
🔴 Labour: 23% (+1)
🔵 Conservatives: 21% (-2)
🟠 Lib Dems: 11% (-1)
🟢 Greens: 10% (-)

Changes from 22nd January
[Find Out Now, 29th January, N=2,487]

https://x.com/FindoutnowUK/status/1884969653639770528
Is this Goodwin's poll?
This poll was initiated solely by Find Out Now and not funded by any third party

https://x.com/FindoutnowUK/status/1884969658400260418

This is why I asked.

https://www.gbnews.com/politics/matt-goodwin-pollster-damning-labour-statistic-reform-uk

TheScreamingEagles · January 30

Leon said:

Gardenwalker said:

Leon said:

TheScreamingEagles said:

williamglenn said:

TheScreamingEagles said:

williamglenn said:

TheScreamingEagles said:

williamglenn said:

TheScreamingEagles said:

No_Offence_Alan said:
No odds for Ed Davey? if he stood, I am sure he would do better than any previous LD candidate for Mayor.
He's got bigger fish to fry, he could be leading the second largest party/going into coalition with Labour after the next election.
Is that Reform first, Lib Dems second?
No.
How do you end up with the Lib Dems second then?
First past the post.

https://bsky.app/profile/gsoh31.bsky.social/post/3lgnwwtye4k27

https://bsky.app/profile/gsoh31.bsky.social/post/3lgnwrsjibk27

https://bsky.app/profile/gsoh31.bsky.social/post/3lgnwndangk27
You need to account for the unwinding of the "get the Tories out" tactical voters. The Lib Dems won't be anywhere near in most of these target seats.
A heroic assumption on your part.

The get the Tories out unwind will go to the stop Farage movement.
Nah
The “stop Farage” coalition is why I think a second Labour term is the most probable outcome at present.
Farage is more popular and less unpopular than you realise. He is no longer the fringe UKIPPER

The British people feel utterly betrayed on immigration (and they are right to feel that). Farage is the only guy that’s been honest about it and willing to talk about it

He’s gonna win as things stand. BUT there’s a long way to go of course. We could all be living on Neptune by 2029

A couple of things, Farage wanting the UK to take back Shamima Begum is going to get plastered all over the airwaves during a campaign.

TimS · January 30

So let’s watch out for Con to Reform dipping to 0.66:1. At that stage we can call a tipping point. I think we’re a way off yet.

bondegezou · January 30

FeersumEnjineeya said:

Leon said:

Fishing said:

Leon said:

kenObi said:

Leon said:

Fishing said:

Leon said:

Fishing said:

kenObi said:

Fishing said:

kinabalu said:

Leon said:

kinabalu said:

DecrepiterJohnL said:

Leon said:

kamski said:

Leon said:

Dopermean said:

carnforth said:

Leon said:

TheScreamingEagles said:

Leon said:

algarkirk said:

Leon said:

algarkirk said:

Leon said:
We will never Rejoin because it will never be worth any UK government expending the political capital required (and this is setting aside problems like the euro, Schenghen, a decade of negotiation, fisheries, migration, possible veto by any one of 27 EU nations)

Think about it. Why would you call a Rejoin referendum if you are doing well and you're high in the polls? You wouldn't take the risk, referendums are horribly risky, pointless

But then, why would you call a Rejoin referendum if you are doing badly and everyone hates you, again you are simply offering the voters a chance to give you a kicking and vote against anything you desire

The only way we might Rejoin is if we are literally starving to death and some national coalition proposes it as the only solution, but then the Europeans will surely veto us as a basket case that will drag down the EU economy

We are never going to Rejoin. It is not practical politics in the real world. Better to accept it
I think this looked to be true pre-Trump, and pre the time when Trumpism might shape the USA for the long term. I don't think it looks certain now.

Why? I know TRIP, the Rory and Campbell show, is not universally popular but the most recent discussion is pretty chilling on the evidence for the direction the USA is going in

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U0fdoOxkN4o
Rory fucking Stewart is a fucking imbecile. Really. Alistair Campbell is a depressed alcoholic with a huge guilt trip about Iraq. Together they have the political acuity of a cheese toastie

However, I said 95% certain we won't rejoin and not 100% because, black swans

A massive world war, or the USA become a hostile dictatorship would indeed be a very black swan and easily enough to see us back in the EU (and there would probably be even greater sequelae)

But, I don't any of these as more than 5% possibilities, combined
Point taken, though it is possible to miss the wood for your ad hominem trees. (And Rory was my MP, and I wish he still was, and he is genuinely interesting. They are both, in TS Eliot's words 'wounded surgeons').

In probabilities, I think the chance of straight Rejoin EU is fairly small, but the chance (say in the next generation) of some sort of deal, the Switzerland or Norway sort, is more like 30%.

Additionally, the chances of America ceasing to be an active ally and turning its attention away from Europe and NATO are not negligible. Wait and see. We are only 10 days in to the new reality.
Their analysis of Trump (I just watched ten minutes of it) is on the level of a quite bright sixth former. I am regularly astonished by the way apparently clever people - such as you - buy this intellectual pap tricked out as powerful insight
Says the guy who voted for Starmer.
I'm watching more of it now, it's pure midwittery and entirely shite

Stewart has just said "Trump is calling for the ethnic cleansing of Gaza" which is such a ridiculous misreading it is either a deliberate lie OR more evidence that they really are quite dim

Trump thinks outside the box. He is saying "maybe the Gazans would be better off giving up on their shit lives in Gaza and having a much richer, more peaceful life elsewhere". And, of course, Trump has a very good point. Hamas wants the Palestinians trapped in Gaza forever, their misery endless, their suffering a constant source of grevance and militancy - because we all know Israel will never agree to a 2 state solution, not now

And yet Trump saying "Hey here's a better choice for Gazans than the endless pain that Hamas offers" is somehow Trump calling for ethnic cleansing?! According to Rory "wow who knew immigration was so high" Stewart?

Enuff. Only idiots are taken in by this pabulum. I am disappointed @algarkirk is one of them
I know two otherwise-sensible people who have paid actual money to see Stewart and Campbell in a theatre.
Destroying a region's infrastructure, blocking supplies and encouraging the inhabitants to seek refuge elsewhere so that other people (of a different ethnicity) can move in and build their own homes and infrastructure funded by government isn't ethnic cleansing?
He may not be directly calling for it but he is tacitly supporting it.
Trump is offering a better future for Gazans than Hamas or the Palestinian Authority are offering. Its realpolitik

Also, it's not like this is some unprecedented evil; deliberate population movements - to solve intractable problems - happen all the time. Greeks and Turks after WW1, Muslims and Hindus at Partition, Germans after WW2, and many others

The alternative is that the Palestinians continue to squat there in perpetual misery because

1. Israel now won't ever yield to a two state solution

and

2. The Palestinians cannot defeat Israel, and nor can anyone else without nuking them (and getting nuked in return) and thereby rendering the entire Levant uninhabitable for 20,000 years

What wonderful examples of things that aren't 'ethnic cleansing'. Idiot.
Which is why I called it a “ridiculous misreading” of Trump

I mean, go ahead and call it “ethnic cleansing” if you want, that enables you to ignore the fact it’s actually an imaginative and humane solution to this hideous 70 year nightmare

In an ideal world Israelis would get over October 7 and ask for 2 states and Gazans would not be enraged anti Semites. But this is not an ideal world, and Trump has bruited the only possible solution that might make Palestinian lives a lot better and fast while giving Israel security
You and Trump may well be right, and this might be what happens. But as a thought experiment, post the same suggestion in reverse – that Israelis should abandon the Middle East and move en masse to set up a new state in America – and you will be cancelled for antisemitism. And that is what is wrong with Trump's idea.
The shoulder shrugging about Gaza and ideas like this from Trump rest on the belief that Palestinians are not 'proper people'.
Quite the opposite. It’s addressing them as human beings who want a life beyond eternal squalor poverty and martyrdom for Hamas

Yes it’s unideal for them. But it is the only idea out there that might radically improve their lives and in short order

Alternatively you can suggest your idea
I don't have anything new and wacky, I'm afraid. Boring old goal of a free and sovereign Palestine co-existing peacefully with Israel. It's never looked further off but it remains the only long-term sustainable outcome.
I doubt that a separate Palestinian state is viable - not geographically contiguous, the extreme Israelis and Palestinians would also constantly seek to undermine it and the Iranians would always to looking to cause trouble.

I think that the more sustainable outcome long term is for Israelis and Palestinian Arabs to coexist together in a Greater Israel/Palestine/Israeli-Palestinian Federation/whatever. Jews and Arabs coexisted in Palestine for centuries before Zionism (after the 8th century dispersals) and might be able to do so again. The 2 million Israeli Arabs whose ancestors survived ethnic cleansing in the 1940s show it is at least possible.

The extreme Israelis would have to give up the idea of Israeli as a Jewish state and move towards acceptance of multiculturalism and the extreme Palestinian juihadis would have to give up the idea of pushing the Jews out.

Would it be perfect or a panacea? No. Can I see an easy way to get there from here? Not really. But it would be a viable country with at least a chance of working.
I used to think this falls down on "they breed".

However Israel's birth rate is highest on OECD by a significant margin.
I think where it would fail is because of the 3 million or so Palestinian refugees who have been in Jordan (and Egypt and Lebanon) for 80 years and to whom the Israelis have always refused to grant a right of return. If there is a peaceful, multicultural federation, even the spurious pretexts the Israelis keep making for not allowing them their rights under international law would become untenable. Those refugees, added to the five million in the West Bank and Gaza and the two million Israeli Arabs would mean that the 7.2 million Jews would be in a minority in Israel and without some credible safeguards they would not be willing to accept that.

So I'm afraid my Utopian solution of a civilised, cosmopolitan state is unlikely and a continuation of the present situation of oppression punctuated by massacre is the most probable outcome.
Or, alternatively, the Donald J Trump solution. Which, however much you hate him, or Jews, or America, or Israel, is the only solution which offers anything to the Palestinians other than “more of the same, but probably worse”

Ethnic cleansing always looks deceptively simple and attractive to people sitting in armchairs in London or Washington with large scale maps, especially if they are basically ignorant of the region and its history, as Donald Trump clearly is.

Move people from Place A where they aren't having a good time to Place B where they can thrive. But I'm afraid when you have to inflict it on people who have lived in a place for generations, at the behest of a brutal occupying power, and force them to move to a much poorer place where they are not wanted and have no ancestral ties, it rather breaks down in practice. There are also lots of complicated questions about what do you do with people who are of mixed ancestry, or people who are too old or ill to move.

That is why it is rightly considered one of the four Mass Atrocity crimes, alongside genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity.
And the alternative is…

Well, you posted it, The situation as now - extreme squalor and deprivation - punctuated by massacres

I submit that this is worse, you are free to disagree
Funny how the dim witted right are all for self determination when it comes to their favoured peoples.

Not for Palestinians it seems.

I'm sure tens of thousands would jump at the chance to emigrate, but how about we ask them ?
I’m suggesting that the world community clubs together and gives every single Palestinian £100k and a condo

Literally

It can be slowly paid back from the profits as Gaza is developed into a kind of Monte Carlo on med. a freezone governed not by Isreal or Hamas or anyone.

It’s not like the Palestinians are losing much. They’re not from Gaza they’re mainly from Isreal, they were displaced from Israel by the nakba. Their homeland is already gone and they will never return

So what they will be giving up is a refugee camp/open prison

I apologise for wondering if there might just be a better future for them than that
The "better future" is that the Israelis finally live up to their obligations under the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, to which they are a signatory, and allow the Palestinians to return to their ancestral homelands from which they ethnically cleansed them in the 1940s and learn to live side by side with them, as they do with the 2 million Israeli Arabs.

Better than ethnic cleansing anyway.
But that’s not gonna happen. So what then?

I’m talking reality. Not what you want or wish to be the case

You guys are all the same
Your vision of reality appears to be one in which fighting is avoided by the weak simply submitting to the strong. Israel is given Gaza; presumably Russia is given half of Ukraine and the US gets Greenland. Yes, if people would just give up when faced with stronger foe, a lot of bloodshed could be saved. I see where you're going with this.

That's certainly Trump's view.

"Zelenskyy was fighting a much bigger entity, much bigger, much more powerful," Trump told Fox News' Sean Hannity. "He shouldn’t have done that, because we could have made a deal."

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/white-house/trump-suggests-ukraine-not-fought-back-russia-rcna189071

Scott_xP · January 30

TheScreamingEagles said:

Taz said:
I wonder if he will boldy go.................to the supreme court to stop the third runway.
Relax, Jolyon Maugham is bringing a case to stop the third runaway, this alone means Heathrow is going to end up with a minimum of five runways now.

It used to have 6

TimS · January 30

bondegezou said:

No_Offence_Alan said:
No odds for Ed Davey? if he stood, I am sure he would do better than any previous LD candidate for Mayor.
Simon Hughes' 15.3% in 2004 was the previous best LD performance.

LD’s best chance would be with a celeb, but they are too far off the pace to ever be in contention, particularly now it’s FPTP.

TimS · January 30

bondegezou said:

FeersumEnjineeya said:

Leon said:

Fishing said:

Leon said:

kenObi said:

Leon said:

Fishing said:

Leon said:

Fishing said:

kenObi said:

Fishing said:

kinabalu said:

Leon said:

kinabalu said:

DecrepiterJohnL said:

Leon said:

kamski said:

Leon said:

Dopermean said:

carnforth said:

Leon said:

TheScreamingEagles said:

Leon said:

algarkirk said:

Leon said:

algarkirk said:

Leon said:
We will never Rejoin because it will never be worth any UK government expending the political capital required (and this is setting aside problems like the euro, Schenghen, a decade of negotiation, fisheries, migration, possible veto by any one of 27 EU nations)

Think about it. Why would you call a Rejoin referendum if you are doing well and you're high in the polls? You wouldn't take the risk, referendums are horribly risky, pointless

But then, why would you call a Rejoin referendum if you are doing badly and everyone hates you, again you are simply offering the voters a chance to give you a kicking and vote against anything you desire

The only way we might Rejoin is if we are literally starving to death and some national coalition proposes it as the only solution, but then the Europeans will surely veto us as a basket case that will drag down the EU economy

We are never going to Rejoin. It is not practical politics in the real world. Better to accept it
I think this looked to be true pre-Trump, and pre the time when Trumpism might shape the USA for the long term. I don't think it looks certain now.

Why? I know TRIP, the Rory and Campbell show, is not universally popular but the most recent discussion is pretty chilling on the evidence for the direction the USA is going in

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U0fdoOxkN4o
Rory fucking Stewart is a fucking imbecile. Really. Alistair Campbell is a depressed alcoholic with a huge guilt trip about Iraq. Together they have the political acuity of a cheese toastie

However, I said 95% certain we won't rejoin and not 100% because, black swans

A massive world war, or the USA become a hostile dictatorship would indeed be a very black swan and easily enough to see us back in the EU (and there would probably be even greater sequelae)

But, I don't any of these as more than 5% possibilities, combined
Point taken, though it is possible to miss the wood for your ad hominem trees. (And Rory was my MP, and I wish he still was, and he is genuinely interesting. They are both, in TS Eliot's words 'wounded surgeons').

In probabilities, I think the chance of straight Rejoin EU is fairly small, but the chance (say in the next generation) of some sort of deal, the Switzerland or Norway sort, is more like 30%.

Additionally, the chances of America ceasing to be an active ally and turning its attention away from Europe and NATO are not negligible. Wait and see. We are only 10 days in to the new reality.
Their analysis of Trump (I just watched ten minutes of it) is on the level of a quite bright sixth former. I am regularly astonished by the way apparently clever people - such as you - buy this intellectual pap tricked out as powerful insight
Says the guy who voted for Starmer.
I'm watching more of it now, it's pure midwittery and entirely shite

Stewart has just said "Trump is calling for the ethnic cleansing of Gaza" which is such a ridiculous misreading it is either a deliberate lie OR more evidence that they really are quite dim

Trump thinks outside the box. He is saying "maybe the Gazans would be better off giving up on their shit lives in Gaza and having a much richer, more peaceful life elsewhere". And, of course, Trump has a very good point. Hamas wants the Palestinians trapped in Gaza forever, their misery endless, their suffering a constant source of grevance and militancy - because we all know Israel will never agree to a 2 state solution, not now

And yet Trump saying "Hey here's a better choice for Gazans than the endless pain that Hamas offers" is somehow Trump calling for ethnic cleansing?! According to Rory "wow who knew immigration was so high" Stewart?

Enuff. Only idiots are taken in by this pabulum. I am disappointed @algarkirk is one of them
I know two otherwise-sensible people who have paid actual money to see Stewart and Campbell in a theatre.
Destroying a region's infrastructure, blocking supplies and encouraging the inhabitants to seek refuge elsewhere so that other people (of a different ethnicity) can move in and build their own homes and infrastructure funded by government isn't ethnic cleansing?
He may not be directly calling for it but he is tacitly supporting it.
Trump is offering a better future for Gazans than Hamas or the Palestinian Authority are offering. Its realpolitik

Also, it's not like this is some unprecedented evil; deliberate population movements - to solve intractable problems - happen all the time. Greeks and Turks after WW1, Muslims and Hindus at Partition, Germans after WW2, and many others

The alternative is that the Palestinians continue to squat there in perpetual misery because

1. Israel now won't ever yield to a two state solution

and

2. The Palestinians cannot defeat Israel, and nor can anyone else without nuking them (and getting nuked in return) and thereby rendering the entire Levant uninhabitable for 20,000 years

What wonderful examples of things that aren't 'ethnic cleansing'. Idiot.
Which is why I called it a “ridiculous misreading” of Trump

I mean, go ahead and call it “ethnic cleansing” if you want, that enables you to ignore the fact it’s actually an imaginative and humane solution to this hideous 70 year nightmare

In an ideal world Israelis would get over October 7 and ask for 2 states and Gazans would not be enraged anti Semites. But this is not an ideal world, and Trump has bruited the only possible solution that might make Palestinian lives a lot better and fast while giving Israel security
You and Trump may well be right, and this might be what happens. But as a thought experiment, post the same suggestion in reverse – that Israelis should abandon the Middle East and move en masse to set up a new state in America – and you will be cancelled for antisemitism. And that is what is wrong with Trump's idea.
The shoulder shrugging about Gaza and ideas like this from Trump rest on the belief that Palestinians are not 'proper people'.
Quite the opposite. It’s addressing them as human beings who want a life beyond eternal squalor poverty and martyrdom for Hamas

Yes it’s unideal for them. But it is the only idea out there that might radically improve their lives and in short order

Alternatively you can suggest your idea
I don't have anything new and wacky, I'm afraid. Boring old goal of a free and sovereign Palestine co-existing peacefully with Israel. It's never looked further off but it remains the only long-term sustainable outcome.
I doubt that a separate Palestinian state is viable - not geographically contiguous, the extreme Israelis and Palestinians would also constantly seek to undermine it and the Iranians would always to looking to cause trouble.

I think that the more sustainable outcome long term is for Israelis and Palestinian Arabs to coexist together in a Greater Israel/Palestine/Israeli-Palestinian Federation/whatever. Jews and Arabs coexisted in Palestine for centuries before Zionism (after the 8th century dispersals) and might be able to do so again. The 2 million Israeli Arabs whose ancestors survived ethnic cleansing in the 1940s show it is at least possible.

The extreme Israelis would have to give up the idea of Israeli as a Jewish state and move towards acceptance of multiculturalism and the extreme Palestinian juihadis would have to give up the idea of pushing the Jews out.

Would it be perfect or a panacea? No. Can I see an easy way to get there from here? Not really. But it would be a viable country with at least a chance of working.
I used to think this falls down on "they breed".

However Israel's birth rate is highest on OECD by a significant margin.
I think where it would fail is because of the 3 million or so Palestinian refugees who have been in Jordan (and Egypt and Lebanon) for 80 years and to whom the Israelis have always refused to grant a right of return. If there is a peaceful, multicultural federation, even the spurious pretexts the Israelis keep making for not allowing them their rights under international law would become untenable. Those refugees, added to the five million in the West Bank and Gaza and the two million Israeli Arabs would mean that the 7.2 million Jews would be in a minority in Israel and without some credible safeguards they would not be willing to accept that.

So I'm afraid my Utopian solution of a civilised, cosmopolitan state is unlikely and a continuation of the present situation of oppression punctuated by massacre is the most probable outcome.
Or, alternatively, the Donald J Trump solution. Which, however much you hate him, or Jews, or America, or Israel, is the only solution which offers anything to the Palestinians other than “more of the same, but probably worse”

Ethnic cleansing always looks deceptively simple and attractive to people sitting in armchairs in London or Washington with large scale maps, especially if they are basically ignorant of the region and its history, as Donald Trump clearly is.

Move people from Place A where they aren't having a good time to Place B where they can thrive. But I'm afraid when you have to inflict it on people who have lived in a place for generations, at the behest of a brutal occupying power, and force them to move to a much poorer place where they are not wanted and have no ancestral ties, it rather breaks down in practice. There are also lots of complicated questions about what do you do with people who are of mixed ancestry, or people who are too old or ill to move.

That is why it is rightly considered one of the four Mass Atrocity crimes, alongside genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity.
And the alternative is…

Well, you posted it, The situation as now - extreme squalor and deprivation - punctuated by massacres

I submit that this is worse, you are free to disagree
Funny how the dim witted right are all for self determination when it comes to their favoured peoples.

Not for Palestinians it seems.

I'm sure tens of thousands would jump at the chance to emigrate, but how about we ask them ?
I’m suggesting that the world community clubs together and gives every single Palestinian £100k and a condo

Literally

It can be slowly paid back from the profits as Gaza is developed into a kind of Monte Carlo on med. a freezone governed not by Isreal or Hamas or anyone.

It’s not like the Palestinians are losing much. They’re not from Gaza they’re mainly from Isreal, they were displaced from Israel by the nakba. Their homeland is already gone and they will never return

So what they will be giving up is a refugee camp/open prison

I apologise for wondering if there might just be a better future for them than that
The "better future" is that the Israelis finally live up to their obligations under the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, to which they are a signatory, and allow the Palestinians to return to their ancestral homelands from which they ethnically cleansed them in the 1940s and learn to live side by side with them, as they do with the 2 million Israeli Arabs.

Better than ethnic cleansing anyway.
But that’s not gonna happen. So what then?

I’m talking reality. Not what you want or wish to be the case

You guys are all the same
Your vision of reality appears to be one in which fighting is avoided by the weak simply submitting to the strong. Israel is given Gaza; presumably Russia is given half of Ukraine and the US gets Greenland. Yes, if people would just give up when faced with stronger foe, a lot of bloodshed could be saved. I see where you're going with this.
That's certainly Trump's view.

"Zelenskyy was fighting a much bigger entity, much bigger, much more powerful," Trump told Fox News' Sean Hannity. "He shouldn’t have done that, because we could have made a deal."

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/white-house/trump-suggests-ukraine-not-fought-back-russia-rcna189071

It’s part of the problem. Trump still has 1980s ideas about the size and power of Russia.

williamglenn · January 30

TheScreamingEagles said:

Leon said:

Gardenwalker said:

Leon said:

TheScreamingEagles said:

williamglenn said:

TheScreamingEagles said:

williamglenn said:

TheScreamingEagles said:

williamglenn said:

TheScreamingEagles said:

No_Offence_Alan said:
No odds for Ed Davey? if he stood, I am sure he would do better than any previous LD candidate for Mayor.
He's got bigger fish to fry, he could be leading the second largest party/going into coalition with Labour after the next election.
Is that Reform first, Lib Dems second?
No.
How do you end up with the Lib Dems second then?
First past the post.

https://bsky.app/profile/gsoh31.bsky.social/post/3lgnwwtye4k27

https://bsky.app/profile/gsoh31.bsky.social/post/3lgnwrsjibk27

https://bsky.app/profile/gsoh31.bsky.social/post/3lgnwndangk27
You need to account for the unwinding of the "get the Tories out" tactical voters. The Lib Dems won't be anywhere near in most of these target seats.
A heroic assumption on your part.

The get the Tories out unwind will go to the stop Farage movement.
Nah
The “stop Farage” coalition is why I think a second Labour term is the most probable outcome at present.
Farage is more popular and less unpopular than you realise. He is no longer the fringe UKIPPER

The British people feel utterly betrayed on immigration (and they are right to feel that). Farage is the only guy that’s been honest about it and willing to talk about it

He’s gonna win as things stand. BUT there’s a long way to go of course. We could all be living on Neptune by 2029
A couple of things, Farage wanting the UK to take back Shamima Begum is going to get plastered all over the airwaves during a campaign.

Because his opponents are stupid enough to undermine their own fearmongering by presenting him as being a moderate who thinks we should take responsibility for our own citizens?

RandallFlagg · January 30

williamglenn said:

Gardenwalker said:

Leon said:

TheScreamingEagles said:

williamglenn said:

TheScreamingEagles said:

williamglenn said:

TheScreamingEagles said:

williamglenn said:

TheScreamingEagles said:

No_Offence_Alan said:
No odds for Ed Davey? if he stood, I am sure he would do better than any previous LD candidate for Mayor.
He's got bigger fish to fry, he could be leading the second largest party/going into coalition with Labour after the next election.
Is that Reform first, Lib Dems second?
No.
How do you end up with the Lib Dems second then?
First past the post.

https://bsky.app/profile/gsoh31.bsky.social/post/3lgnwwtye4k27

https://bsky.app/profile/gsoh31.bsky.social/post/3lgnwrsjibk27

https://bsky.app/profile/gsoh31.bsky.social/post/3lgnwndangk27
You need to account for the unwinding of the "get the Tories out" tactical voters. The Lib Dems won't be anywhere near in most of these target seats.
A heroic assumption on your part.

The get the Tories out unwind will go to the stop Farage movement.
Nah
The “stop Farage” coalition is why I think a second Labour term is the most probable outcome at present.
That doesn't make sense from a FPTP perspective. For Farage to be in contention, he has to be on course to rout Labour in their heatlands, so Labour cannot be the "stop Farage" vehicle.

No-one will take the Lib Dems seriously after Jo Swinson if they try to pose as a viable government, so that leaves the Tories as the last non-Farage force left standing.

Labour have more 'heartlands' than the Red Wall. London, the big cities, university towns... that's 100+ seats.

bondegezou · January 30

TimS said:

bondegezou said:

No_Offence_Alan said:
No odds for Ed Davey? if he stood, I am sure he would do better than any previous LD candidate for Mayor.
Simon Hughes' 15.3% in 2004 was the previous best LD performance.
LD’s best chance would be with a celeb, but they are too far off the pace to ever be in contention, particularly now it’s FPTP.

FPTP might make it easier to win if the vote is as split as current polling is. The 2028 winner (if still under FPTP) will probably win with under 40% of the vote. They could win with under 30% of the vote.

Luckyguy1983 · January 30

CharlieShark said:

Survation.
@Survation
New Westminster Voting Intention

LAB 27% (-3)
REF 24% (+4)
CON 22% (-3)
LD 13% (+2)
GRE 8% (+1)
SNP 3% (+1)
OTH 4% (-)

Just rejoice at that news.

bondegezou · January 30

TimS said:

bondegezou said:

FeersumEnjineeya said:

Leon said:

Fishing said:

Leon said:

kenObi said:

Leon said:

Fishing said:

Leon said:

Fishing said:

kenObi said:

Fishing said:

kinabalu said:

Leon said:

kinabalu said:

DecrepiterJohnL said:

Leon said:

kamski said:

Leon said:

Dopermean said:

carnforth said:

Leon said:

TheScreamingEagles said:

Leon said:

algarkirk said:

Leon said:

algarkirk said:

Leon said:
We will never Rejoin because it will never be worth any UK government expending the political capital required (and this is setting aside problems like the euro, Schenghen, a decade of negotiation, fisheries, migration, possible veto by any one of 27 EU nations)

Think about it. Why would you call a Rejoin referendum if you are doing well and you're high in the polls? You wouldn't take the risk, referendums are horribly risky, pointless

But then, why would you call a Rejoin referendum if you are doing badly and everyone hates you, again you are simply offering the voters a chance to give you a kicking and vote against anything you desire

The only way we might Rejoin is if we are literally starving to death and some national coalition proposes it as the only solution, but then the Europeans will surely veto us as a basket case that will drag down the EU economy

We are never going to Rejoin. It is not practical politics in the real world. Better to accept it
I think this looked to be true pre-Trump, and pre the time when Trumpism might shape the USA for the long term. I don't think it looks certain now.

Why? I know TRIP, the Rory and Campbell show, is not universally popular but the most recent discussion is pretty chilling on the evidence for the direction the USA is going in

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U0fdoOxkN4o
Rory fucking Stewart is a fucking imbecile. Really. Alistair Campbell is a depressed alcoholic with a huge guilt trip about Iraq. Together they have the political acuity of a cheese toastie

However, I said 95% certain we won't rejoin and not 100% because, black swans

A massive world war, or the USA become a hostile dictatorship would indeed be a very black swan and easily enough to see us back in the EU (and there would probably be even greater sequelae)

But, I don't any of these as more than 5% possibilities, combined
Point taken, though it is possible to miss the wood for your ad hominem trees. (And Rory was my MP, and I wish he still was, and he is genuinely interesting. They are both, in TS Eliot's words 'wounded surgeons').

In probabilities, I think the chance of straight Rejoin EU is fairly small, but the chance (say in the next generation) of some sort of deal, the Switzerland or Norway sort, is more like 30%.

Additionally, the chances of America ceasing to be an active ally and turning its attention away from Europe and NATO are not negligible. Wait and see. We are only 10 days in to the new reality.
Their analysis of Trump (I just watched ten minutes of it) is on the level of a quite bright sixth former. I am regularly astonished by the way apparently clever people - such as you - buy this intellectual pap tricked out as powerful insight
Says the guy who voted for Starmer.
I'm watching more of it now, it's pure midwittery and entirely shite

Stewart has just said "Trump is calling for the ethnic cleansing of Gaza" which is such a ridiculous misreading it is either a deliberate lie OR more evidence that they really are quite dim

Trump thinks outside the box. He is saying "maybe the Gazans would be better off giving up on their shit lives in Gaza and having a much richer, more peaceful life elsewhere". And, of course, Trump has a very good point. Hamas wants the Palestinians trapped in Gaza forever, their misery endless, their suffering a constant source of grevance and militancy - because we all know Israel will never agree to a 2 state solution, not now

And yet Trump saying "Hey here's a better choice for Gazans than the endless pain that Hamas offers" is somehow Trump calling for ethnic cleansing?! According to Rory "wow who knew immigration was so high" Stewart?

Enuff. Only idiots are taken in by this pabulum. I am disappointed @algarkirk is one of them
I know two otherwise-sensible people who have paid actual money to see Stewart and Campbell in a theatre.
Destroying a region's infrastructure, blocking supplies and encouraging the inhabitants to seek refuge elsewhere so that other people (of a different ethnicity) can move in and build their own homes and infrastructure funded by government isn't ethnic cleansing?
He may not be directly calling for it but he is tacitly supporting it.
Trump is offering a better future for Gazans than Hamas or the Palestinian Authority are offering. Its realpolitik

Also, it's not like this is some unprecedented evil; deliberate population movements - to solve intractable problems - happen all the time. Greeks and Turks after WW1, Muslims and Hindus at Partition, Germans after WW2, and many others

The alternative is that the Palestinians continue to squat there in perpetual misery because

1. Israel now won't ever yield to a two state solution

and

2. The Palestinians cannot defeat Israel, and nor can anyone else without nuking them (and getting nuked in return) and thereby rendering the entire Levant uninhabitable for 20,000 years

What wonderful examples of things that aren't 'ethnic cleansing'. Idiot.
Which is why I called it a “ridiculous misreading” of Trump

I mean, go ahead and call it “ethnic cleansing” if you want, that enables you to ignore the fact it’s actually an imaginative and humane solution to this hideous 70 year nightmare

In an ideal world Israelis would get over October 7 and ask for 2 states and Gazans would not be enraged anti Semites. But this is not an ideal world, and Trump has bruited the only possible solution that might make Palestinian lives a lot better and fast while giving Israel security
You and Trump may well be right, and this might be what happens. But as a thought experiment, post the same suggestion in reverse – that Israelis should abandon the Middle East and move en masse to set up a new state in America – and you will be cancelled for antisemitism. And that is what is wrong with Trump's idea.
The shoulder shrugging about Gaza and ideas like this from Trump rest on the belief that Palestinians are not 'proper people'.
Quite the opposite. It’s addressing them as human beings who want a life beyond eternal squalor poverty and martyrdom for Hamas

Yes it’s unideal for them. But it is the only idea out there that might radically improve their lives and in short order

Alternatively you can suggest your idea
I don't have anything new and wacky, I'm afraid. Boring old goal of a free and sovereign Palestine co-existing peacefully with Israel. It's never looked further off but it remains the only long-term sustainable outcome.
I doubt that a separate Palestinian state is viable - not geographically contiguous, the extreme Israelis and Palestinians would also constantly seek to undermine it and the Iranians would always to looking to cause trouble.

I think that the more sustainable outcome long term is for Israelis and Palestinian Arabs to coexist together in a Greater Israel/Palestine/Israeli-Palestinian Federation/whatever. Jews and Arabs coexisted in Palestine for centuries before Zionism (after the 8th century dispersals) and might be able to do so again. The 2 million Israeli Arabs whose ancestors survived ethnic cleansing in the 1940s show it is at least possible.

The extreme Israelis would have to give up the idea of Israeli as a Jewish state and move towards acceptance of multiculturalism and the extreme Palestinian juihadis would have to give up the idea of pushing the Jews out.

Would it be perfect or a panacea? No. Can I see an easy way to get there from here? Not really. But it would be a viable country with at least a chance of working.
I used to think this falls down on "they breed".

However Israel's birth rate is highest on OECD by a significant margin.
I think where it would fail is because of the 3 million or so Palestinian refugees who have been in Jordan (and Egypt and Lebanon) for 80 years and to whom the Israelis have always refused to grant a right of return. If there is a peaceful, multicultural federation, even the spurious pretexts the Israelis keep making for not allowing them their rights under international law would become untenable. Those refugees, added to the five million in the West Bank and Gaza and the two million Israeli Arabs would mean that the 7.2 million Jews would be in a minority in Israel and without some credible safeguards they would not be willing to accept that.

So I'm afraid my Utopian solution of a civilised, cosmopolitan state is unlikely and a continuation of the present situation of oppression punctuated by massacre is the most probable outcome.
Or, alternatively, the Donald J Trump solution. Which, however much you hate him, or Jews, or America, or Israel, is the only solution which offers anything to the Palestinians other than “more of the same, but probably worse”

Ethnic cleansing always looks deceptively simple and attractive to people sitting in armchairs in London or Washington with large scale maps, especially if they are basically ignorant of the region and its history, as Donald Trump clearly is.

Move people from Place A where they aren't having a good time to Place B where they can thrive. But I'm afraid when you have to inflict it on people who have lived in a place for generations, at the behest of a brutal occupying power, and force them to move to a much poorer place where they are not wanted and have no ancestral ties, it rather breaks down in practice. There are also lots of complicated questions about what do you do with people who are of mixed ancestry, or people who are too old or ill to move.

That is why it is rightly considered one of the four Mass Atrocity crimes, alongside genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity.
And the alternative is…

Well, you posted it, The situation as now - extreme squalor and deprivation - punctuated by massacres

I submit that this is worse, you are free to disagree
Funny how the dim witted right are all for self determination when it comes to their favoured peoples.

Not for Palestinians it seems.

I'm sure tens of thousands would jump at the chance to emigrate, but how about we ask them ?
I’m suggesting that the world community clubs together and gives every single Palestinian £100k and a condo

Literally

It can be slowly paid back from the profits as Gaza is developed into a kind of Monte Carlo on med. a freezone governed not by Isreal or Hamas or anyone.

It’s not like the Palestinians are losing much. They’re not from Gaza they’re mainly from Isreal, they were displaced from Israel by the nakba. Their homeland is already gone and they will never return

So what they will be giving up is a refugee camp/open prison

I apologise for wondering if there might just be a better future for them than that
The "better future" is that the Israelis finally live up to their obligations under the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, to which they are a signatory, and allow the Palestinians to return to their ancestral homelands from which they ethnically cleansed them in the 1940s and learn to live side by side with them, as they do with the 2 million Israeli Arabs.

Better than ethnic cleansing anyway.
But that’s not gonna happen. So what then?

I’m talking reality. Not what you want or wish to be the case

You guys are all the same
Your vision of reality appears to be one in which fighting is avoided by the weak simply submitting to the strong. Israel is given Gaza; presumably Russia is given half of Ukraine and the US gets Greenland. Yes, if people would just give up when faced with stronger foe, a lot of bloodshed could be saved. I see where you're going with this.
That's certainly Trump's view.

"Zelenskyy was fighting a much bigger entity, much bigger, much more powerful," Trump told Fox News' Sean Hannity. "He shouldn’t have done that, because we could have made a deal."

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/white-house/trump-suggests-ukraine-not-fought-back-russia-rcna189071
It’s part of the problem. Trump still has 1980s ideas about the size and power of Russia.

I guess 1980s ideas is the best one can hope for from Trump. He has 1950s ideas on race relations.

TheScreamingEagles · January 30

williamglenn said:

TheScreamingEagles said:

Leon said:

Gardenwalker said:

Leon said:

TheScreamingEagles said:

williamglenn said:

TheScreamingEagles said:

williamglenn said:

TheScreamingEagles said:

williamglenn said:

TheScreamingEagles said:

No_Offence_Alan said:
No odds for Ed Davey? if he stood, I am sure he would do better than any previous LD candidate for Mayor.
He's got bigger fish to fry, he could be leading the second largest party/going into coalition with Labour after the next election.
Is that Reform first, Lib Dems second?
No.
How do you end up with the Lib Dems second then?
First past the post.

https://bsky.app/profile/gsoh31.bsky.social/post/3lgnwwtye4k27

https://bsky.app/profile/gsoh31.bsky.social/post/3lgnwrsjibk27

https://bsky.app/profile/gsoh31.bsky.social/post/3lgnwndangk27
You need to account for the unwinding of the "get the Tories out" tactical voters. The Lib Dems won't be anywhere near in most of these target seats.
A heroic assumption on your part.

The get the Tories out unwind will go to the stop Farage movement.
Nah
The “stop Farage” coalition is why I think a second Labour term is the most probable outcome at present.
Farage is more popular and less unpopular than you realise. He is no longer the fringe UKIPPER

The British people feel utterly betrayed on immigration (and they are right to feel that). Farage is the only guy that’s been honest about it and willing to talk about it

He’s gonna win as things stand. BUT there’s a long way to go of course. We could all be living on Neptune by 2029
A couple of things, Farage wanting the UK to take back Shamima Begum is going to get plastered all over the airwaves during a campaign.
Because his opponents are stupid enough to undermine their own fearmongering by presenting him as being a moderate who thinks we should take responsibility for our own citizens?

Fuck me WIlliam, Farage could soil himself on live TV and you'd be spinning it as a positive for him.

Eabhal · January 30

Gardenwalker said:

Eabhal said:

Gardenwalker said:
Squizzing at the Wikipedia page on UK polling, it’s kind of fascinating that Reform are polling ~15% in Scotland, chiefly it seems by attracting votes from Scottish Labour.

Apologies if this has already been discussed to death.
Where are you seeing the stats for the support coming from Labour voters?
Very roughly, SLAB have declined, Reform have increased, and the other parties have been largely flat.

Sorry but that's a little naive. I've had a quick look at the Survation tables and (Scottish subsample KLAXON), finds that the primary reason the SNP and Reform are doing well in Scotland is because they have retained so much of their '24 vote, with lots of Green, LD and Labour voters moving to the undecided column.

Labour voters only represent 20% of ScotForm support at the moment, compared with 40% from their own '24 voters, 16% new voters, and 24% from the other parties.

bondegezou · January 30

TheScreamingEagles said:

williamglenn said:

TheScreamingEagles said:

Leon said:

Gardenwalker said:

Leon said:

TheScreamingEagles said:

williamglenn said:

TheScreamingEagles said:

williamglenn said:

TheScreamingEagles said:

williamglenn said:

TheScreamingEagles said:

No_Offence_Alan said:
No odds for Ed Davey? if he stood, I am sure he would do better than any previous LD candidate for Mayor.
He's got bigger fish to fry, he could be leading the second largest party/going into coalition with Labour after the next election.
Is that Reform first, Lib Dems second?
No.
How do you end up with the Lib Dems second then?
First past the post.

https://bsky.app/profile/gsoh31.bsky.social/post/3lgnwwtye4k27

https://bsky.app/profile/gsoh31.bsky.social/post/3lgnwrsjibk27

https://bsky.app/profile/gsoh31.bsky.social/post/3lgnwndangk27
You need to account for the unwinding of the "get the Tories out" tactical voters. The Lib Dems won't be anywhere near in most of these target seats.
A heroic assumption on your part.

The get the Tories out unwind will go to the stop Farage movement.
Nah
The “stop Farage” coalition is why I think a second Labour term is the most probable outcome at present.
Farage is more popular and less unpopular than you realise. He is no longer the fringe UKIPPER

The British people feel utterly betrayed on immigration (and they are right to feel that). Farage is the only guy that’s been honest about it and willing to talk about it

He’s gonna win as things stand. BUT there’s a long way to go of course. We could all be living on Neptune by 2029
A couple of things, Farage wanting the UK to take back Shamima Begum is going to get plastered all over the airwaves during a campaign.
Because his opponents are stupid enough to undermine their own fearmongering by presenting him as being a moderate who thinks we should take responsibility for our own citizens?
Fuck me WIlliam, Farage could soil himself on live TV and you'd be spinning it as a positive for him.

It would show Farage's commitment to the use of organic fertilisers.

williamglenn · January 30

RandallFlagg said:

williamglenn said:

Gardenwalker said:

Leon said:

TheScreamingEagles said:

williamglenn said:

TheScreamingEagles said:

williamglenn said:

TheScreamingEagles said:

williamglenn said:

TheScreamingEagles said:

No_Offence_Alan said:
No odds for Ed Davey? if he stood, I am sure he would do better than any previous LD candidate for Mayor.
He's got bigger fish to fry, he could be leading the second largest party/going into coalition with Labour after the next election.
Is that Reform first, Lib Dems second?
No.
How do you end up with the Lib Dems second then?
First past the post.

https://bsky.app/profile/gsoh31.bsky.social/post/3lgnwwtye4k27

https://bsky.app/profile/gsoh31.bsky.social/post/3lgnwrsjibk27

https://bsky.app/profile/gsoh31.bsky.social/post/3lgnwndangk27
You need to account for the unwinding of the "get the Tories out" tactical voters. The Lib Dems won't be anywhere near in most of these target seats.
A heroic assumption on your part.

The get the Tories out unwind will go to the stop Farage movement.
Nah
The “stop Farage” coalition is why I think a second Labour term is the most probable outcome at present.
That doesn't make sense from a FPTP perspective. For Farage to be in contention, he has to be on course to rout Labour in their heatlands, so Labour cannot be the "stop Farage" vehicle.

No-one will take the Lib Dems seriously after Jo Swinson if they try to pose as a viable government, so that leaves the Tories as the last non-Farage force left standing.
Labour have more 'heartlands' than the Red Wall. London, the big cities, university towns... that's 100+ seats.

Starmer doing his bit for the special relationship with Trump won't exactly help Labour in some of those constituencies either.

RandallFlagg · January 30

Leon said:

Gardenwalker said:

Leon said:

TheScreamingEagles said:

williamglenn said:

TheScreamingEagles said:

williamglenn said:

TheScreamingEagles said:

williamglenn said:

TheScreamingEagles said:

No_Offence_Alan said:
No odds for Ed Davey? if he stood, I am sure he would do better than any previous LD candidate for Mayor.
He's got bigger fish to fry, he could be leading the second largest party/going into coalition with Labour after the next election.
Is that Reform first, Lib Dems second?
No.
How do you end up with the Lib Dems second then?
First past the post.

https://bsky.app/profile/gsoh31.bsky.social/post/3lgnwwtye4k27

https://bsky.app/profile/gsoh31.bsky.social/post/3lgnwrsjibk27

https://bsky.app/profile/gsoh31.bsky.social/post/3lgnwndangk27
You need to account for the unwinding of the "get the Tories out" tactical voters. The Lib Dems won't be anywhere near in most of these target seats.
A heroic assumption on your part.

The get the Tories out unwind will go to the stop Farage movement.
Nah
The “stop Farage” coalition is why I think a second Labour term is the most probable outcome at present.
Farage is more popular and less unpopular than you realise. He is no longer the fringe UKIPPER

The British people feel utterly betrayed on immigration (and they are right to feel that). Farage is the only guy that’s been honest about it and willing to talk about it

He’s gonna win as things stand. BUT there’s a long way to go of course. We could all be living on Neptune by 2029

More people thinking Brexit is a mistake vs isn't a mistake suggestions otherwise. If you think the main thing he's known for was a disaster, you probably don't like the guy and you won't want him to be PM.

Dopermean · January 30

williamglenn said:

TheScreamingEagles said:

williamglenn said:

TheScreamingEagles said:

No_Offence_Alan said:
No odds for Ed Davey? if he stood, I am sure he would do better than any previous LD candidate for Mayor.
He's got bigger fish to fry, he could be leading the second largest party/going into coalition with Labour after the next election.
Is that Reform first, Lib Dems second?
No.
How do you end up with the Lib Dems second then?

Vote efficiency under FPTP?
The point of inflexion when the LDs with 100+ MPs on 12% of the vote drop support for PR is approaching

Scott_xP · January 30

“I heard a very good joke yesterday, someone said: ‘Musk is not a Nazi, Nazis made really good cars.’”

williamglenn · January 30

RandallFlagg said:

Leon said:

Gardenwalker said:

Leon said:

TheScreamingEagles said:

williamglenn said:

TheScreamingEagles said:

williamglenn said:

TheScreamingEagles said:

williamglenn said:

TheScreamingEagles said:

No_Offence_Alan said:
No odds for Ed Davey? if he stood, I am sure he would do better than any previous LD candidate for Mayor.
He's got bigger fish to fry, he could be leading the second largest party/going into coalition with Labour after the next election.
Is that Reform first, Lib Dems second?
No.
How do you end up with the Lib Dems second then?
First past the post.

https://bsky.app/profile/gsoh31.bsky.social/post/3lgnwwtye4k27

https://bsky.app/profile/gsoh31.bsky.social/post/3lgnwrsjibk27

https://bsky.app/profile/gsoh31.bsky.social/post/3lgnwndangk27
You need to account for the unwinding of the "get the Tories out" tactical voters. The Lib Dems won't be anywhere near in most of these target seats.
A heroic assumption on your part.

The get the Tories out unwind will go to the stop Farage movement.
Nah
The “stop Farage” coalition is why I think a second Labour term is the most probable outcome at present.
Farage is more popular and less unpopular than you realise. He is no longer the fringe UKIPPER

The British people feel utterly betrayed on immigration (and they are right to feel that). Farage is the only guy that’s been honest about it and willing to talk about it

He’s gonna win as things stand. BUT there’s a long way to go of course. We could all be living on Neptune by 2029
More people thinking Brexit is a mistake vs isn't a mistake suggestions otherwise. If you think the main thing he's known for was a disaster, you probably don't like the guy and you won't want him to be PM.

You shouldn’t assume people think it was a mistake for the same reasons as you. It may have more to do with things like this, with Priti Patel using Brexit to justify massively increased immigration:

https://x.com/basil_tgmd/status/1884946480244412416

algarkirk · January 30

TheScreamingEagles said:

Leon said:

Gardenwalker said:

Leon said:

TheScreamingEagles said:

williamglenn said:

TheScreamingEagles said:

williamglenn said:

TheScreamingEagles said:

williamglenn said:

TheScreamingEagles said:

No_Offence_Alan said:
No odds for Ed Davey? if he stood, I am sure he would do better than any previous LD candidate for Mayor.
He's got bigger fish to fry, he could be leading the second largest party/going into coalition with Labour after the next election.
Is that Reform first, Lib Dems second?
No.
How do you end up with the Lib Dems second then?
First past the post.

https://bsky.app/profile/gsoh31.bsky.social/post/3lgnwwtye4k27

https://bsky.app/profile/gsoh31.bsky.social/post/3lgnwrsjibk27

https://bsky.app/profile/gsoh31.bsky.social/post/3lgnwndangk27
You need to account for the unwinding of the "get the Tories out" tactical voters. The Lib Dems won't be anywhere near in most of these target seats.
A heroic assumption on your part.

The get the Tories out unwind will go to the stop Farage movement.
Nah
The “stop Farage” coalition is why I think a second Labour term is the most probable outcome at present.
Farage is more popular and less unpopular than you realise. He is no longer the fringe UKIPPER

The British people feel utterly betrayed on immigration (and they are right to feel that). Farage is the only guy that’s been honest about it and willing to talk about it

He’s gonna win as things stand. BUT there’s a long way to go of course. We could all be living on Neptune by 2029
A couple of things, Farage wanting the UK to take back Shamima Begum is going to get plastered all over the airwaves during a campaign.

Just to remind traditional constitutionalist rule of law people that he is, while usually wrong, sometimes right?

TheScreamingEagles · January 30

algarkirk said:

TheScreamingEagles said:

Leon said:

Gardenwalker said:

Leon said:

TheScreamingEagles said:

williamglenn said:

TheScreamingEagles said:

williamglenn said:

TheScreamingEagles said:

williamglenn said:

TheScreamingEagles said:

No_Offence_Alan said:
No odds for Ed Davey? if he stood, I am sure he would do better than any previous LD candidate for Mayor.
He's got bigger fish to fry, he could be leading the second largest party/going into coalition with Labour after the next election.
Is that Reform first, Lib Dems second?
No.
How do you end up with the Lib Dems second then?
First past the post.

https://bsky.app/profile/gsoh31.bsky.social/post/3lgnwwtye4k27

https://bsky.app/profile/gsoh31.bsky.social/post/3lgnwrsjibk27

https://bsky.app/profile/gsoh31.bsky.social/post/3lgnwndangk27
You need to account for the unwinding of the "get the Tories out" tactical voters. The Lib Dems won't be anywhere near in most of these target seats.
A heroic assumption on your part.

The get the Tories out unwind will go to the stop Farage movement.
Nah
The “stop Farage” coalition is why I think a second Labour term is the most probable outcome at present.
Farage is more popular and less unpopular than you realise. He is no longer the fringe UKIPPER

The British people feel utterly betrayed on immigration (and they are right to feel that). Farage is the only guy that’s been honest about it and willing to talk about it

He’s gonna win as things stand. BUT there’s a long way to go of course. We could all be living on Neptune by 2029
A couple of things, Farage wanting the UK to take back Shamima Begum is going to get plastered all over the airwaves during a campaign.
Just to remind traditional constitutionalist rule of law people that he is, while usually wrong, sometimes right?

Given his past comments on it, it damages him.

kinabalu · January 30

kamski said:

Leon said:
There are WAY too many flashbacks in Black Doves
Black Doves is shit. Shitter than pyramids.

I hate pyramids now because of you.

williamglenn · January 30

TheScreamingEagles said:

algarkirk said:

TheScreamingEagles said:

Leon said:

Gardenwalker said:

Leon said:

TheScreamingEagles said:

williamglenn said:

TheScreamingEagles said:

williamglenn said:

TheScreamingEagles said:

williamglenn said:

TheScreamingEagles said:

No_Offence_Alan said:
No odds for Ed Davey? if he stood, I am sure he would do better than any previous LD candidate for Mayor.
He's got bigger fish to fry, he could be leading the second largest party/going into coalition with Labour after the next election.
Is that Reform first, Lib Dems second?
No.
How do you end up with the Lib Dems second then?
First past the post.

https://bsky.app/profile/gsoh31.bsky.social/post/3lgnwwtye4k27

https://bsky.app/profile/gsoh31.bsky.social/post/3lgnwrsjibk27

https://bsky.app/profile/gsoh31.bsky.social/post/3lgnwndangk27
You need to account for the unwinding of the "get the Tories out" tactical voters. The Lib Dems won't be anywhere near in most of these target seats.
A heroic assumption on your part.

The get the Tories out unwind will go to the stop Farage movement.
Nah
The “stop Farage” coalition is why I think a second Labour term is the most probable outcome at present.
Farage is more popular and less unpopular than you realise. He is no longer the fringe UKIPPER

The British people feel utterly betrayed on immigration (and they are right to feel that). Farage is the only guy that’s been honest about it and willing to talk about it

He’s gonna win as things stand. BUT there’s a long way to go of course. We could all be living on Neptune by 2029
A couple of things, Farage wanting the UK to take back Shamima Begum is going to get plastered all over the airwaves during a campaign.
Just to remind traditional constitutionalist rule of law people that he is, while usually wrong, sometimes right?
Given his past comments on it, it damages him.

That's like thinking Trump would be damaged by equivocating on abortion.

algarkirk · January 30

TimS said:
Those all important bloc scores on the doors:

Find out now:

LLG 44 RefCon 48
LabCon 44 the SPLORG 56(!)

Survation:

LLG 48 RefCon 46
LabCon 49 the SPLORG 51

So find out now is much more positive for Nige and his crew on both measures.

Lab/Con 44% looks like a new low for recent times, though I don't know if FON is a proper pollster. Lab/Con on 4th July was 59%. At GE 2017 it was 82%. This is truly change making if anywhere close to correct.

GIN1138 · January 30

Are Keir, Rachel and Sadiq the next Dave, George and Boris? 🤔

eek · January 30

algarkirk said:

TheScreamingEagles said:

Leon said:

Gardenwalker said:

Leon said:

TheScreamingEagles said:

williamglenn said:

TheScreamingEagles said:

williamglenn said:

TheScreamingEagles said:

williamglenn said:

TheScreamingEagles said:

No_Offence_Alan said:
No odds for Ed Davey? if he stood, I am sure he would do better than any previous LD candidate for Mayor.
He's got bigger fish to fry, he could be leading the second largest party/going into coalition with Labour after the next election.
Is that Reform first, Lib Dems second?
No.
How do you end up with the Lib Dems second then?
First past the post.

https://bsky.app/profile/gsoh31.bsky.social/post/3lgnwwtye4k27

https://bsky.app/profile/gsoh31.bsky.social/post/3lgnwrsjibk27

https://bsky.app/profile/gsoh31.bsky.social/post/3lgnwndangk27
You need to account for the unwinding of the "get the Tories out" tactical voters. The Lib Dems won't be anywhere near in most of these target seats.
A heroic assumption on your part.

The get the Tories out unwind will go to the stop Farage movement.
Nah
The “stop Farage” coalition is why I think a second Labour term is the most probable outcome at present.
Farage is more popular and less unpopular than you realise. He is no longer the fringe UKIPPER

The British people feel utterly betrayed on immigration (and they are right to feel that). Farage is the only guy that’s been honest about it and willing to talk about it

He’s gonna win as things stand. BUT there’s a long way to go of course. We could all be living on Neptune by 2029
A couple of things, Farage wanting the UK to take back Shamima Begum is going to get plastered all over the airwaves during a campaign.
Just to remind traditional constitutionalist rule of law people that he is, while usually wrong, sometimes right?

Yep - it's worth repeating that I don't think it would cost Nigel any votes and would actually win him some from people who understand that you shouldn't dump your problems on other people.

Scott_xP · January 30

@gregdoucette.bsky.social‬

➡️ January 20: FAA director fired
➡️ January 21: Air Traffic Controller hiring frozen
➡️ January 22: Aviation Safety Advisory Committee disbanded
➡️ January 28: Buyout/retirement demand sent to existing employees
➡️ January 29: First American mid-air collision in 16 years

Making America Great Again!

algarkirk · January 30

Have we noted this? (Well publicised Quran burner shot dead in Sweden)

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cpdx2wqpg7zo

GIN1138 · January 30

CharlieShark said:

Survation.
@Survation
New Westminster Voting Intention

LAB 27% (-3)
REF 24% (+4)
CON 22% (-3)
LD 13% (+2)
GRE 8% (+1)
SNP 3% (+1)
OTH 4% (-)

I think we may see REF hitting 30% by Easter!

kinabalu · January 30

bondegezou said:

TimS said:

bondegezou said:

FeersumEnjineeya said:

Leon said:

Fishing said:

Leon said:

kenObi said:

Leon said:

Fishing said:

Leon said:

Fishing said:

kenObi said:

Fishing said:

kinabalu said:

Leon said:

kinabalu said:

DecrepiterJohnL said:

Leon said:

kamski said:

Leon said:

Dopermean said:

carnforth said:

Leon said:

TheScreamingEagles said:

Leon said:

algarkirk said:

Leon said:

algarkirk said:

Leon said:
We will never Rejoin because it will never be worth any UK government expending the political capital required (and this is setting aside problems like the euro, Schenghen, a decade of negotiation, fisheries, migration, possible veto by any one of 27 EU nations)

Think about it. Why would you call a Rejoin referendum if you are doing well and you're high in the polls? You wouldn't take the risk, referendums are horribly risky, pointless

But then, why would you call a Rejoin referendum if you are doing badly and everyone hates you, again you are simply offering the voters a chance to give you a kicking and vote against anything you desire

The only way we might Rejoin is if we are literally starving to death and some national coalition proposes it as the only solution, but then the Europeans will surely veto us as a basket case that will drag down the EU economy

We are never going to Rejoin. It is not practical politics in the real world. Better to accept it
I think this looked to be true pre-Trump, and pre the time when Trumpism might shape the USA for the long term. I don't think it looks certain now.

Why? I know TRIP, the Rory and Campbell show, is not universally popular but the most recent discussion is pretty chilling on the evidence for the direction the USA is going in

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U0fdoOxkN4o
Rory fucking Stewart is a fucking imbecile. Really. Alistair Campbell is a depressed alcoholic with a huge guilt trip about Iraq. Together they have the political acuity of a cheese toastie

However, I said 95% certain we won't rejoin and not 100% because, black swans

A massive world war, or the USA become a hostile dictatorship would indeed be a very black swan and easily enough to see us back in the EU (and there would probably be even greater sequelae)

But, I don't any of these as more than 5% possibilities, combined
Point taken, though it is possible to miss the wood for your ad hominem trees. (And Rory was my MP, and I wish he still was, and he is genuinely interesting. They are both, in TS Eliot's words 'wounded surgeons').

In probabilities, I think the chance of straight Rejoin EU is fairly small, but the chance (say in the next generation) of some sort of deal, the Switzerland or Norway sort, is more like 30%.

Additionally, the chances of America ceasing to be an active ally and turning its attention away from Europe and NATO are not negligible. Wait and see. We are only 10 days in to the new reality.
Their analysis of Trump (I just watched ten minutes of it) is on the level of a quite bright sixth former. I am regularly astonished by the way apparently clever people - such as you - buy this intellectual pap tricked out as powerful insight
Says the guy who voted for Starmer.
I'm watching more of it now, it's pure midwittery and entirely shite

Stewart has just said "Trump is calling for the ethnic cleansing of Gaza" which is such a ridiculous misreading it is either a deliberate lie OR more evidence that they really are quite dim

Trump thinks outside the box. He is saying "maybe the Gazans would be better off giving up on their shit lives in Gaza and having a much richer, more peaceful life elsewhere". And, of course, Trump has a very good point. Hamas wants the Palestinians trapped in Gaza forever, their misery endless, their suffering a constant source of grevance and militancy - because we all know Israel will never agree to a 2 state solution, not now

And yet Trump saying "Hey here's a better choice for Gazans than the endless pain that Hamas offers" is somehow Trump calling for ethnic cleansing?! According to Rory "wow who knew immigration was so high" Stewart?

Enuff. Only idiots are taken in by this pabulum. I am disappointed @algarkirk is one of them
I know two otherwise-sensible people who have paid actual money to see Stewart and Campbell in a theatre.
Destroying a region's infrastructure, blocking supplies and encouraging the inhabitants to seek refuge elsewhere so that other people (of a different ethnicity) can move in and build their own homes and infrastructure funded by government isn't ethnic cleansing?
He may not be directly calling for it but he is tacitly supporting it.
Trump is offering a better future for Gazans than Hamas or the Palestinian Authority are offering. Its realpolitik

Also, it's not like this is some unprecedented evil; deliberate population movements - to solve intractable problems - happen all the time. Greeks and Turks after WW1, Muslims and Hindus at Partition, Germans after WW2, and many others

The alternative is that the Palestinians continue to squat there in perpetual misery because

1. Israel now won't ever yield to a two state solution

and

2. The Palestinians cannot defeat Israel, and nor can anyone else without nuking them (and getting nuked in return) and thereby rendering the entire Levant uninhabitable for 20,000 years

What wonderful examples of things that aren't 'ethnic cleansing'. Idiot.
Which is why I called it a “ridiculous misreading” of Trump

I mean, go ahead and call it “ethnic cleansing” if you want, that enables you to ignore the fact it’s actually an imaginative and humane solution to this hideous 70 year nightmare

In an ideal world Israelis would get over October 7 and ask for 2 states and Gazans would not be enraged anti Semites. But this is not an ideal world, and Trump has bruited the only possible solution that might make Palestinian lives a lot better and fast while giving Israel security
You and Trump may well be right, and this might be what happens. But as a thought experiment, post the same suggestion in reverse – that Israelis should abandon the Middle East and move en masse to set up a new state in America – and you will be cancelled for antisemitism. And that is what is wrong with Trump's idea.
The shoulder shrugging about Gaza and ideas like this from Trump rest on the belief that Palestinians are not 'proper people'.
Quite the opposite. It’s addressing them as human beings who want a life beyond eternal squalor poverty and martyrdom for Hamas

Yes it’s unideal for them. But it is the only idea out there that might radically improve their lives and in short order

Alternatively you can suggest your idea
I don't have anything new and wacky, I'm afraid. Boring old goal of a free and sovereign Palestine co-existing peacefully with Israel. It's never looked further off but it remains the only long-term sustainable outcome.
I doubt that a separate Palestinian state is viable - not geographically contiguous, the extreme Israelis and Palestinians would also constantly seek to undermine it and the Iranians would always to looking to cause trouble.

I think that the more sustainable outcome long term is for Israelis and Palestinian Arabs to coexist together in a Greater Israel/Palestine/Israeli-Palestinian Federation/whatever. Jews and Arabs coexisted in Palestine for centuries before Zionism (after the 8th century dispersals) and might be able to do so again. The 2 million Israeli Arabs whose ancestors survived ethnic cleansing in the 1940s show it is at least possible.

The extreme Israelis would have to give up the idea of Israeli as a Jewish state and move towards acceptance of multiculturalism and the extreme Palestinian juihadis would have to give up the idea of pushing the Jews out.

Would it be perfect or a panacea? No. Can I see an easy way to get there from here? Not really. But it would be a viable country with at least a chance of working.
I used to think this falls down on "they breed".

However Israel's birth rate is highest on OECD by a significant margin.
I think where it would fail is because of the 3 million or so Palestinian refugees who have been in Jordan (and Egypt and Lebanon) for 80 years and to whom the Israelis have always refused to grant a right of return. If there is a peaceful, multicultural federation, even the spurious pretexts the Israelis keep making for not allowing them their rights under international law would become untenable. Those refugees, added to the five million in the West Bank and Gaza and the two million Israeli Arabs would mean that the 7.2 million Jews would be in a minority in Israel and without some credible safeguards they would not be willing to accept that.

So I'm afraid my Utopian solution of a civilised, cosmopolitan state is unlikely and a continuation of the present situation of oppression punctuated by massacre is the most probable outcome.
Or, alternatively, the Donald J Trump solution. Which, however much you hate him, or Jews, or America, or Israel, is the only solution which offers anything to the Palestinians other than “more of the same, but probably worse”

Ethnic cleansing always looks deceptively simple and attractive to people sitting in armchairs in London or Washington with large scale maps, especially if they are basically ignorant of the region and its history, as Donald Trump clearly is.

Move people from Place A where they aren't having a good time to Place B where they can thrive. But I'm afraid when you have to inflict it on people who have lived in a place for generations, at the behest of a brutal occupying power, and force them to move to a much poorer place where they are not wanted and have no ancestral ties, it rather breaks down in practice. There are also lots of complicated questions about what do you do with people who are of mixed ancestry, or people who are too old or ill to move.

That is why it is rightly considered one of the four Mass Atrocity crimes, alongside genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity.
And the alternative is…

Well, you posted it, The situation as now - extreme squalor and deprivation - punctuated by massacres

I submit that this is worse, you are free to disagree
Funny how the dim witted right are all for self determination when it comes to their favoured peoples.

Not for Palestinians it seems.

I'm sure tens of thousands would jump at the chance to emigrate, but how about we ask them ?
I’m suggesting that the world community clubs together and gives every single Palestinian £100k and a condo

Literally

It can be slowly paid back from the profits as Gaza is developed into a kind of Monte Carlo on med. a freezone governed not by Isreal or Hamas or anyone.

It’s not like the Palestinians are losing much. They’re not from Gaza they’re mainly from Isreal, they were displaced from Israel by the nakba. Their homeland is already gone and they will never return

So what they will be giving up is a refugee camp/open prison

I apologise for wondering if there might just be a better future for them than that
The "better future" is that the Israelis finally live up to their obligations under the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, to which they are a signatory, and allow the Palestinians to return to their ancestral homelands from which they ethnically cleansed them in the 1940s and learn to live side by side with them, as they do with the 2 million Israeli Arabs.

Better than ethnic cleansing anyway.
But that’s not gonna happen. So what then?

I’m talking reality. Not what you want or wish to be the case

You guys are all the same
Your vision of reality appears to be one in which fighting is avoided by the weak simply submitting to the strong. Israel is given Gaza; presumably Russia is given half of Ukraine and the US gets Greenland. Yes, if people would just give up when faced with stronger foe, a lot of bloodshed could be saved. I see where you're going with this.
That's certainly Trump's view.

"Zelenskyy was fighting a much bigger entity, much bigger, much more powerful," Trump told Fox News' Sean Hannity. "He shouldn’t have done that, because we could have made a deal."

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/white-house/trump-suggests-ukraine-not-fought-back-russia-rcna189071
It’s part of the problem. Trump still has 1980s ideas about the size and power of Russia.
I guess 1980s ideas is the best one can hope for from Trump. He has 1950s ideas on race relations.

It could be that those (as we thought) defining civil rights battles of the 60s and 70s are going to have to be refought. Will the music be as good this time?

Dopermean · January 30

bondegezou said:

TheScreamingEagles said:

williamglenn said:

TheScreamingEagles said:

Leon said:

Gardenwalker said:

Leon said:

TheScreamingEagles said:

williamglenn said:

TheScreamingEagles said:

williamglenn said:

TheScreamingEagles said:

williamglenn said:

TheScreamingEagles said:

No_Offence_Alan said:
No odds for Ed Davey? if he stood, I am sure he would do better than any previous LD candidate for Mayor.
He's got bigger fish to fry, he could be leading the second largest party/going into coalition with Labour after the next election.
Is that Reform first, Lib Dems second?
No.
How do you end up with the Lib Dems second then?
First past the post.

https://bsky.app/profile/gsoh31.bsky.social/post/3lgnwwtye4k27

https://bsky.app/profile/gsoh31.bsky.social/post/3lgnwrsjibk27

https://bsky.app/profile/gsoh31.bsky.social/post/3lgnwndangk27
You need to account for the unwinding of the "get the Tories out" tactical voters. The Lib Dems won't be anywhere near in most of these target seats.
A heroic assumption on your part.

The get the Tories out unwind will go to the stop Farage movement.
Nah
The “stop Farage” coalition is why I think a second Labour term is the most probable outcome at present.
Farage is more popular and less unpopular than you realise. He is no longer the fringe UKIPPER

The British people feel utterly betrayed on immigration (and they are right to feel that). Farage is the only guy that’s been honest about it and willing to talk about it

He’s gonna win as things stand. BUT there’s a long way to go of course. We could all be living on Neptune by 2029
A couple of things, Farage wanting the UK to take back Shamima Begum is going to get plastered all over the airwaves during a campaign.
Because his opponents are stupid enough to undermine their own fearmongering by presenting him as being a moderate who thinks we should take responsibility for our own citizens?
Fuck me WIlliam, Farage could soil himself on live TV and you'd be spinning it as a positive for him.
It would show Farage's commitment to the use of organic fertilisers.

His position on Shamima Begum is consistent with his overall position on grooming of teenagers

Fairliered · January 30

The politician who has been kicked out of Reform for being too extremist. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cx2kl2nmzrvo If Reform want to be seen as a serious party worthy of government they are correct to get rid of such pople.

No_Offence_Alan · January 30

Leon said:
We are very close to a tipping point where reform become the official opposition, in polls if not in practise

We are headed for a reform Tory coalition government with the Tories very much in the junior position

How can a party that wants to conserve things (it's in the name) work with a party that wants to reform things?

CharlieShark · January 30

Apologies, if this has been mentioned already (not seen it). Could get interesting on interconnectors.

Javier Blas
@JavierBlas
Political crisis in Norway due to -- wait for it -- high electricity prices linked to exports to the rest of Europe via interconnectors.

The coalition gov collapsed Thursday, leaving the center-left Labour Party to govern alone for 1st time in 25 years.

Taz · January 30

TheScreamingEagles said:

TheValiant said:
I'm sorry, that picture in the body of the article is wrong.

Please replace it immediately with:

(totally worth my 1 a day)
Yay, somebody spotted my subtle Star Trek reference.

Ahem, I'd refer you to my post at 2.34 PM !!!!!

bondegezou · January 30

algarkirk said:

TimS said:
Those all important bloc scores on the doors:

Find out now:

LLG 44 RefCon 48
LabCon 44 the SPLORG 56(!)

Survation:

LLG 48 RefCon 46
LabCon 49 the SPLORG 51

So find out now is much more positive for Nige and his crew on both measures.
Lab/Con 44% looks like a new low for recent times, though I don't know if FON is a proper pollster. Lab/Con on 4th July was 59%. At GE 2017 it was 82%. This is truly change making if anywhere close to correct.

We need a real election to see how this actually plays out. The London Mayoral election would be an interesting case study were it sooner! You can see Lab, Con, LD, Ref and Green all potentially doing well (or badly), and an independent could make a splash.

But are the 2025 local elections going to be relatively dull? (Maybe Reform UK could do well in the Doncaster mayoral?)

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