Just in case an unexpected audience was needed...?
Yesterday the King was in Buck's Palace. Met some new ambassadors, meeting of the Privy Council, audience with the PM, an investiture and then a reception to recognise the work of local government employees.
Edit: The King has nothing in the Royal Diary for the next week. William is off to Saudi Arabia next week. Lucky him.
Nothing for the King published for the next two months. Perhaps that's a security thing, though they're happy to say where the other Royals will be in advance.
Simon Sebag Montefiore is one of the good guys. He just tweeted this. I make no apologies for its length. Everyone in the world should read it
The images emerging now from Iran of young people, older people, boys and girls, who were murdered in the last few weeks by the Iranian Islamic dictator, the Islamic Corps of Revolutionary Guards, Basij militia and imported killers from Iraq, are heartbreaking but also enraging.
Some depict beautiful people at play, at the gym, dancing, on motorbikes; some makeshift morgues full of bodies; some streetscenes where killers shoot down unarmed protesters; and many show families opening bodybags to find their dead children shot in the head; others discover bodies of protesters wounded then executed in hospital beds and particularly women with uteruses removed or other horrors to conceal brutal rapes... Many are not young but it looks like the slaughter of the best and brightest of Iran Gen Z. Ive tried to repost these here.
I have been contacted by people in Iran (who weirdly read my books in pirated Farsi editions) who manage to come online in various ways and they beg me to keep posting these images and faces and keep talking about them. Embarrassingly they thank me just for doing this! That is why i am writing this now. We must keep going and keep doing so.
The numbers killed are astonishing: based on sources within the murderous dictatorship, it may be as many as 36000 were murdered just in the first days of the terror 8/9 January and more later - making it likely that 40,000 is a horribly plausible estimate.
This makes this event the most greatest massacre in modern Iranian history by far, the greatest single event slaughter in modern MIddle Eastern history since 1900 - along with the Assad's liquidation of an entire town, site of Islamist insurgents, Hama, in 1982 when around 30,000 were killed. Both of them not taking place in wars but in cold blood - and this Iranian atrocity being far more terrible since none of the protesters were armed.
We live in a time of egregious comparisons to the Holocaust when the Holocaust is repellently abused and minimized by cynical cretins - radiohosts, podders, politicians- to criticize anything from vaccination to ICE raids. But here is a comparison that stands in its scale and horror: in size and horror this does resemble the two days of Babi Yar near Kiev in Sept 1941 where 33,000 Jews were killed. It is also worth pointing out that an entire progressive movement arose against the autocracy of the Shah.
And his was an autocracy. But in his forty year one reign, only around 3000 people were killed, mainly in the last year before his downfall.
It is very striking that the UN has barely commented on thiis…
He goes on in that vein. Excoriating the “progressives”
It's astonishing how everything can be shoehorned into "owning the libs" if that is one's monomania of choice. It shouldn't need pointing out, but the IRGC are not centrist dads.
Yet if some random hollywood celeb posted that, leon and sandpit and mr glenn would be moaning about 'virtue signalling'.
There was once a time when “Hollywood celebs” were edgy, would say things that the Establishment didn’t want them to say, and to things that the Establishment didn’t want to them to do.
Now they are the Establishment, pushing the Establishment narrative, saying “F*** ICE” to clapter from the seals in the audience, and not challenging anyone to change their existing opinion on anything.
Kemi fails to land any real blow on Starmer, he may be hiding behind the fact that Mandy lied to him but it's something she failed to make any progress on.
As he rightly points out this is now a Police matter.
She asks a specific question that she knows he cannot answer. Mandelson clearly told lies that's clear.
Her failure to accept national security issue demeans her, demeans protocol and is completely hypocritical.
Tory benches remarkably quiet given the circumstances, grandees sitting on their hands shaking heads.
Let's repeat Boris redacted 20 pages and released 2.
She's talking to 20 front benchetsbthe rest of her Party are aghast at her incompetence.
A resounding and statesman like win for Starmer.
Cleverly would have far better.
Tory benches sat on complete silence.
Open goal she puts the ball over the Stands
It's the way you tell 'em!
I think we might have found the new most hated poster on PB. You and me are now simply vying for silver and bronze.
Not hated - just ridiculed
So myself and Roger remain top dogs?
Leon is hated by the largest number of people. But he’s also loved by a lot of them. Roger is probably second in the hate stakes, he’s a consistent paedophile-phile after all, so doesn’t get much love away from the Oscars.
You probably come quite high in the contempt deserved table, but I doubt that you muster much hatred
I'll try and up my game then.
Does anyone really hate Leon? He's too much like a naughty puppy to be hate. Exasperated at the yapping from time to time certainly but the sheer enthusiasm impossible to hate.
I have, by far, the most Flags on my personal PB roster. But also one of the highest number of Likes
I live to serve
While you were banned, your absence was lauded several times a day
BTW I love your plans for another French hike, They are, as you must know, utterly insane, Vannes to Biarritz??? That’s like walking from Dover to Penzance
But way to go. It shows you have truly recuperated, as well, if you can do that
Something Grand Tour-ish in Italy towards Rome will create more memories, I'd have thought.
Kemi fails to land any real blow on Starmer, he may be hiding behind the fact that Mandy lied to him but it's something she failed to make any progress on.
As he rightly points out this is now a Police matter.
She asks a specific question that she knows he cannot answer. Mandelson clearly told lies that's clear.
Her failure to accept national security issue demeans her, demeans protocol and is completely hypocritical.
Tory benches remarkably quiet given the circumstances, grandees sitting on their hands shaking heads.
Let's repeat Boris redacted 20 pages and released 2.
She's talking to 20 front benchetsbthe rest of her Party are aghast at her incompetence.
A resounding and statesman like win for Starmer.
Cleverly would have far better.
Tory benches sat on complete silence.
Open goal she puts the ball over the Stands
It's the way you tell 'em!
I think we might have found the new most hated poster on PB. You and me are now simply vying for silver and bronze.
Not hated - just ridiculed
So myself and Roger remain top dogs?
Leon is hated by the largest number of people. But he’s also loved by a lot of them. Roger is probably second in the hate stakes, he’s a consistent paedophile-phile after all, so doesn’t get much love away from the Oscars.
You probably come quite high in the contempt deserved table, but I doubt that you muster much hatred
I'll try and up my game then.
Does anyone really hate Leon? He's too much like a naughty puppy to be hate. Exasperated at the yapping from time to time certainly but the sheer enthusiasm impossible to hate.
I have, by far, the most Flags on my personal PB roster. But also one of the highest number of Likes
I live to serve
42k likes / 66,388 posts = 0.63 likes per post.
It is not something I really measure but looking at my own its 22.6k likes / 27,308 posts = 0.83 likes per post.
Your figure does not look that impressive. Not that its really important either. Quality is more important than quantity.
@DrHoenderkamp Goodness me.... Current debate ongoing. Apparently...
During Starmers official trip to USA last year, he had an 'off the books' meeting with Palantir, not listed on any published diary, orchestrated by the man with close links to Palantir, Mandelson, and subsequently Palantir were awarded a £240m contract.... not a British company.
Simon Sebag Montefiore is one of the good guys. He just tweeted this. I make no apologies for its length. Everyone in the world should read it
The images emerging now from Iran of young people, older people, boys and girls, who were murdered in the last few weeks by the Iranian Islamic dictator, the Islamic Corps of Revolutionary Guards, Basij militia and imported killers from Iraq, are heartbreaking but also enraging.
Some depict beautiful people at play, at the gym, dancing, on motorbikes; some makeshift morgues full of bodies; some streetscenes where killers shoot down unarmed protesters; and many show families opening bodybags to find their dead children shot in the head; others discover bodies of protesters wounded then executed in hospital beds and particularly women with uteruses removed or other horrors to conceal brutal rapes... Many are not young but it looks like the slaughter of the best and brightest of Iran Gen Z. Ive tried to repost these here.
I have been contacted by people in Iran (who weirdly read my books in pirated Farsi editions) who manage to come online in various ways and they beg me to keep posting these images and faces and keep talking about them. Embarrassingly they thank me just for doing this! That is why i am writing this now. We must keep going and keep doing so.
The numbers killed are astonishing: based on sources within the murderous dictatorship, it may be as many as 36000 were murdered just in the first days of the terror 8/9 January and more later - making it likely that 40,000 is a horribly plausible estimate.
This makes this event the most greatest massacre in modern Iranian history by far, the greatest single event slaughter in modern MIddle Eastern history since 1900 - along with the Assad's liquidation of an entire town, site of Islamist insurgents, Hama, in 1982 when around 30,000 were killed. Both of them not taking place in wars but in cold blood - and this Iranian atrocity being far more terrible since none of the protesters were armed.
We live in a time of egregious comparisons to the Holocaust when the Holocaust is repellently abused and minimized by cynical cretins - radiohosts, podders, politicians- to criticize anything from vaccination to ICE raids. But here is a comparison that stands in its scale and horror: in size and horror this does resemble the two days of Babi Yar near Kiev in Sept 1941 where 33,000 Jews were killed. It is also worth pointing out that an entire progressive movement arose against the autocracy of the Shah.
And his was an autocracy. But in his forty year one reign, only around 3000 people were killed, mainly in the last year before his downfall.
It is very striking that the UN has barely commented on thiis…
He goes on in that vein. Excoriating the “progressives”
It's astonishing how everything can be shoehorned into "owning the libs" if that is one's monomania of choice. It shouldn't need pointing out, but the IRGC are not centrist dads.
Yet if some random hollywood celeb posted that, leon and sandpit and mr glenn would be moaning about 'virtue signalling'.
There was once a time when “Hollywood celebs” were edgy, would say things that the Establishment didn’t want them to say, and to things that the Establishment didn’t want to hem to do.
Now they are the Establishment, pushing the Establishment narrative, saying “F*** ICE” to clapter from the seals in the audience, and not challenging anyone to change their existing opinion on anything.
Ice are part of the establishment, they are Government Feds.
Hollywood are not the establishment, Trump and Ice are.
Saying "f*** ICE" absolutely is challenging the establishment.
Feels like the day the walls crumbled in on Starmer tbh.
Starmer is 1.58 to go this year on Betfair. Can he buy time by sacking Morgan McSweeney? Like Liz Truss and Kwasi, he might try. Although arguably it worked for Theresa May who lingered another couple of years after binning Nick and Fiona.
He has full confidence in McSweeney. He said as much today.
Feels like the day the walls crumbled in on Starmer tbh.
Starmer is 1.58 to go this year on Betfair. Can he buy time by sacking Morgan McSweeney? Like Liz Truss and Kwasi, he might try. Although arguably it worked for Theresa May who lingered another couple of years after binning Nick and Fiona.
He has full confidence in McSweeney. He said as much today.
Feels like the day the walls crumbled in on Starmer tbh.
Starmer is 1.58 to go this year on Betfair. Can he buy time by sacking Morgan McSweeney? Like Liz Truss and Kwasi, he might try. Although arguably it worked for Theresa May who lingered another couple of years after binning Nick and Fiona.
He has full confidence in McSweeney. He said as much today.
Starmer is a football fan. He knows what a vote of confidence from the chairman means.
Kemi fails to land any real blow on Starmer, he may be hiding behind the fact that Mandy lied to him but it's something she failed to make any progress on.
As he rightly points out this is now a Police matter.
She asks a specific question that she knows he cannot answer. Mandelson clearly told lies that's clear.
Her failure to accept national security issue demeans her, demeans protocol and is completely hypocritical.
Tory benches remarkably quiet given the circumstances, grandees sitting on their hands shaking heads.
Let's repeat Boris redacted 20 pages and released 2.
She's talking to 20 front benchetsbthe rest of her Party are aghast at her incompetence.
A resounding and statesman like win for Starmer.
Cleverly would have far better.
Tory benches sat on complete silence.
Open goal she puts the ball over the Stands
It's the way you tell 'em!
I think we might have found the new most hated poster on PB. You and me are now simply vying for silver and bronze.
Not hated - just ridiculed
So myself and Roger remain top dogs?
Leon is hated by the largest number of people. But he’s also loved by a lot of them. Roger is probably second in the hate stakes, he’s a consistent paedophile-phile after all, so doesn’t get much love away from the Oscars.
You probably come quite high in the contempt deserved table, but I doubt that you muster much hatred
I'll try and up my game then.
Does anyone really hate Leon? He's too much like a naughty puppy to be hate. Exasperated at the yapping from time to time certainly but the sheer enthusiasm impossible to hate.
I have, by far, the most Flags on my personal PB roster. But also one of the highest number of Likes
I live to serve
42k likes / 66,388 posts = 0.63 likes per post.
It is not something I really measure but looking at my own its 22.6k likes / 27,308 posts = 0.83 likes per post.
Your figure does not look that impressive. Not that its really important either. Quality is more important than quantity.
Swiftly checks and sees a turbotubbs ratio of 0.886. Happy with that.
Definite mood shift in Parliament today as Labour MPs report "end of days" feeling about Sir Keir Starmer's premiership, others comparing Mandelson scandal to Pincher, which brought down Boris Johnson.
+ Angela Rayner flexing and leading rebellion on evidence oversight
Rayner has native cunning
The Labour Party would be well advised to elect her and kick out the awful Starmer regime
She will almost certainly be even worse for the country than Skyr (although she does at least know how to talk and walk) but if I was a Labour member, or partisan voter, I’d go for her. She has the populist touch to challenge Farage and the leftist instincts to grab Green votes
She could actually win a GE, if she gets a favourable wind. I don’t think any of the other candidates have that capability
Biggest winner of a Rayner v Farage choice would be the Tories and LDs, though she might beat Starmer or then Streeting or Ed Miliband if she had enough Labour MPs behind her to be nominated to go to a membership vote
Kemi is unelctable as a PM to 85 % of the population.
30% of the population were quite happy to elect Ange as deputy pm
We must remember that Sir Keir arrived in full-time politics very late in life, having spent his life practising law, and the last few years in a job where everyone in the office was, more or less anyway, on his side. There might be disagreements, but it was very unlikely that anyone was either corrupt or working, secretly, for defendants.
Then he came into politics and before you could say 'knife', or see one in anyone's back, he was Party Leader, facing a Government lead by someone who was flagrantly dishonest, then someone temporary, then someone who was presiding over a fractious, mutinous party, and who was badly advised anyway.
And once he got into Government he discovered that some of his team were, shall we say, not very good at their jobs.
He'd be far better as Attorney general, or perhaps Home Secretary. Or, like Alec Douglas-Home back in the 60's, Foreign Secretary.
Kemi fails to land any real blow on Starmer, he may be hiding behind the fact that Mandy lied to him but it's something she failed to make any progress on.
As he rightly points out this is now a Police matter.
She asks a specific question that she knows he cannot answer. Mandelson clearly told lies that's clear.
Her failure to accept national security issue demeans her, demeans protocol and is completely hypocritical.
Tory benches remarkably quiet given the circumstances, grandees sitting on their hands shaking heads.
Let's repeat Boris redacted 20 pages and released 2.
She's talking to 20 front benchetsbthe rest of her Party are aghast at her incompetence.
A resounding and statesman like win for Starmer.
Cleverly would have far better.
Tory benches sat on complete silence.
Open goal she puts the ball over the Stands
It's the way you tell 'em!
I think we might have found the new most hated poster on PB. You and me are now simply vying for silver and bronze.
Not hated - just ridiculed
So myself and Roger remain top dogs?
Leon is hated by the largest number of people. But he’s also loved by a lot of them. Roger is probably second in the hate stakes, he’s a consistent paedophile-phile after all, so doesn’t get much love away from the Oscars.
You probably come quite high in the contempt deserved table, but I doubt that you muster much hatred
I'll try and up my game then.
Does anyone really hate Leon? He's too much like a naughty puppy to be hate. Exasperated at the yapping from time to time certainly but the sheer enthusiasm impossible to hate.
I have, by far, the most Flags on my personal PB roster. But also one of the highest number of Likes
I live to serve
While you were banned, your absence was lauded several times a day
BTW I love your plans for another French hike, They are, as you must know, utterly insane, Vannes to Biarritz??? That’s like walking from Dover to Penzance
But way to go. It shows you have truly recuperated, as well, if you can do that
It’s much easier than all of my previous walks; no mountains in the way and I won’t go 100 metres above sea level
I’ve managed the hardest time of year back at work, and have a couple of months more work-training for the holiday walk
And it doesn’t matter if I don’t make it all the way. I’m the only who cares at all, and only because it’ll join up my previous walks. Though I’m pretty sure that just that will be motivation enough for me to endure
Kemi fails to land any real blow on Starmer, he may be hiding behind the fact that Mandy lied to him but it's something she failed to make any progress on.
As he rightly points out this is now a Police matter.
She asks a specific question that she knows he cannot answer. Mandelson clearly told lies that's clear.
Her failure to accept national security issue demeans her, demeans protocol and is completely hypocritical.
Tory benches remarkably quiet given the circumstances, grandees sitting on their hands shaking heads.
Let's repeat Boris redacted 20 pages and released 2.
She's talking to 20 front benchetsbthe rest of her Party are aghast at her incompetence.
A resounding and statesman like win for Starmer.
Cleverly would have far better.
Tory benches sat on complete silence.
Open goal she puts the ball over the Stands
It's the way you tell 'em!
I think we might have found the new most hated poster on PB. You and me are now simply vying for silver and bronze.
Not hated - just ridiculed
So myself and Roger remain top dogs?
Leon is hated by the largest number of people. But he’s also loved by a lot of them. Roger is probably second in the hate stakes, he’s a consistent paedophile-phile after all, so doesn’t get much love away from the Oscars.
You probably come quite high in the contempt deserved table, but I doubt that you muster much hatred
I'll try and up my game then.
Does anyone really hate Leon? He's too much like a naughty puppy to be hate. Exasperated at the yapping from time to time certainly but the sheer enthusiasm impossible to hate.
I have, by far, the most Flags on my personal PB roster. But also one of the highest number of Likes
I live to serve
While you were banned, your absence was lauded several times a day
Kemi fails to land any real blow on Starmer, he may be hiding behind the fact that Mandy lied to him but it's something she failed to make any progress on.
As he rightly points out this is now a Police matter.
She asks a specific question that she knows he cannot answer. Mandelson clearly told lies that's clear.
Her failure to accept national security issue demeans her, demeans protocol and is completely hypocritical.
Tory benches remarkably quiet given the circumstances, grandees sitting on their hands shaking heads.
Let's repeat Boris redacted 20 pages and released 2.
She's talking to 20 front benchetsbthe rest of her Party are aghast at her incompetence.
A resounding and statesman like win for Starmer.
Cleverly would have far better.
Tory benches sat on complete silence.
Open goal she puts the ball over the Stands
It's the way you tell 'em!
I think we might have found the new most hated poster on PB. You and me are now simply vying for silver and bronze.
Not hated - just ridiculed
So myself and Roger remain top dogs?
Leon is hated by the largest number of people. But he’s also loved by a lot of them. Roger is probably second in the hate stakes, he’s a consistent paedophile-phile after all, so doesn’t get much love away from the Oscars.
You probably come quite high in the contempt deserved table, but I doubt that you muster much hatred
I'll try and up my game then.
Does anyone really hate Leon? He's too much like a naughty puppy to be hate. Exasperated at the yapping from time to time certainly but the sheer enthusiasm impossible to hate.
I have, by far, the most Flags on my personal PB roster. But also one of the highest number of Likes
I live to serve
42k likes / 66,388 posts = 0.63 likes per post.
It is not something I really measure but looking at my own its 22.6k likes / 27,308 posts = 0.83 likes per post.
Your figure does not look that impressive. Not that its really important either. Quality is more important than quantity.
Bah! I'm only on 0.81 likes per post. I know, I'll post some cat pictures...
This was one of the cats from June, which is why she's got her sleeves rolled up.
Feels like the day the walls crumbled in on Starmer tbh.
Starmer is 1.58 to go this year on Betfair. Can he buy time by sacking Morgan McSweeney? Like Liz Truss and Kwasi, he might try. Although arguably it worked for Theresa May who lingered another couple of years after binning Nick and Fiona.
It was down to 1.55, but has now creeped out to 1.61.
Kemi fails to land any real blow on Starmer, he may be hiding behind the fact that Mandy lied to him but it's something she failed to make any progress on.
As he rightly points out this is now a Police matter.
She asks a specific question that she knows he cannot answer. Mandelson clearly told lies that's clear.
Her failure to accept national security issue demeans her, demeans protocol and is completely hypocritical.
Tory benches remarkably quiet given the circumstances, grandees sitting on their hands shaking heads.
Let's repeat Boris redacted 20 pages and released 2.
She's talking to 20 front benchetsbthe rest of her Party are aghast at her incompetence.
A resounding and statesman like win for Starmer.
Cleverly would have far better.
Tory benches sat on complete silence.
Open goal she puts the ball over the Stands
It's the way you tell 'em!
I think we might have found the new most hated poster on PB. You and me are now simply vying for silver and bronze.
Not hated - just ridiculed
So myself and Roger remain top dogs?
Leon is hated by the largest number of people. But he’s also loved by a lot of them. Roger is probably second in the hate stakes, he’s a consistent paedophile-phile after all, so doesn’t get much love away from the Oscars.
You probably come quite high in the contempt deserved table, but I doubt that you muster much hatred
I'll try and up my game then.
Does anyone really hate Leon? He's too much like a naughty puppy to be hate. Exasperated at the yapping from time to time certainly but the sheer enthusiasm impossible to hate.
I have, by far, the most Flags on my personal PB roster. But also one of the highest number of Likes
I live to serve
42k likes / 66,388 posts = 0.63 likes per post.
It is not something I really measure but looking at my own its 22.6k likes / 27,308 posts = 0.83 likes per post.
Your figure does not look that impressive. Not that its really important either. Quality is more important than quantity.
Swiftly checks and sees a turbotubbs ratio of 0.886. Happy with that.
When [never did work out which poster] recently regenerated as @MelonB , in an (unsuccesful) attempt to discover his previous identity I looked at his profile and notices his likes:posts ratio was over 1. So he may be winninhlg, whoever he used to be.
Kemi fails to land any real blow on Starmer, he may be hiding behind the fact that Mandy lied to him but it's something she failed to make any progress on.
As he rightly points out this is now a Police matter.
She asks a specific question that she knows he cannot answer. Mandelson clearly told lies that's clear.
Her failure to accept national security issue demeans her, demeans protocol and is completely hypocritical.
Tory benches remarkably quiet given the circumstances, grandees sitting on their hands shaking heads.
Let's repeat Boris redacted 20 pages and released 2.
She's talking to 20 front benchetsbthe rest of her Party are aghast at her incompetence.
A resounding and statesman like win for Starmer.
Cleverly would have far better.
Tory benches sat on complete silence.
Open goal she puts the ball over the Stands
It's the way you tell 'em!
I think we might have found the new most hated poster on PB. You and me are now simply vying for silver and bronze.
Not hated - just ridiculed
So myself and Roger remain top dogs?
Leon is hated by the largest number of people. But he’s also loved by a lot of them. Roger is probably second in the hate stakes, he’s a consistent paedophile-phile after all, so doesn’t get much love away from the Oscars.
You probably come quite high in the contempt deserved table, but I doubt that you muster much hatred
I'll try and up my game then.
Does anyone really hate Leon? He's too much like a naughty puppy to be hate. Exasperated at the yapping from time to time certainly but the sheer enthusiasm impossible to hate.
I have, by far, the most Flags on my personal PB roster. But also one of the highest number of Likes
I live to serve
42k likes / 66,388 posts = 0.63 likes per post.
It is not something I really measure but looking at my own its 22.6k likes / 27,308 posts = 0.83 likes per post.
Your figure does not look that impressive. Not that its really important either. Quality is more important than quantity.
This is a fun ego massage game. I'm on 0.79 ( 10430 / 13206 ) likes per post. Not too shabby but I got a boost from the Truss comeback
Starmer — a prosecutor with a huge majority, coming in after years of sleaze and mendacity — could have weaponised the corruption of his opponents to incredible advantage. Instead he will be ruined by the living avatar of corruption in his own party. To not see that coming is a serious skill issue.
Seems part of the reason Mandelson was brought back in was factional. A declaration that New-new Labour was here and the left was to be treated as under Blair's terms. Guess MMS imagined it would end a little differently.
I still expect Starmer to fight the next election. Power seems to do something to our psychology, few leaders choose to leave and Labour will not throw him out.
Definite mood shift in Parliament today as Labour MPs report "end of days" feeling about Sir Keir Starmer's premiership, others comparing Mandelson scandal to Pincher, which brought down Boris Johnson.
+ Angela Rayner flexing and leading rebellion on evidence oversight
Rayner has native cunning
The Labour Party would be well advised to elect her and kick out the awful Starmer regime
She will almost certainly be even worse for the country than Skyr (although she does at least know how to talk and walk) but if I was a Labour member, or partisan voter, I’d go for her. She has the populist touch to challenge Farage and the leftist instincts to grab Green votes
She could actually win a GE, if she gets a favourable wind. I don’t think any of the other candidates have that capability
Biggest winner of a Rayner v Farage choice would be the Tories and LDs, though she might beat Starmer or then Streeting or Ed Miliband if she had enough Labour MPs behind her to be nominated to go to a membership vote
Kemi is unelctable as a PM to 85 % of the population.
30% of the population were quite happy to elect Ange as deputy pm
You really must be hurting as she has made Starmer's position impossible
Kemi fails to land any real blow on Starmer, he may be hiding behind the fact that Mandy lied to him but it's something she failed to make any progress on.
As he rightly points out this is now a Police matter.
She asks a specific question that she knows he cannot answer. Mandelson clearly told lies that's clear.
Her failure to accept national security issue demeans her, demeans protocol and is completely hypocritical.
Tory benches remarkably quiet given the circumstances, grandees sitting on their hands shaking heads.
Let's repeat Boris redacted 20 pages and released 2.
She's talking to 20 front benchetsbthe rest of her Party are aghast at her incompetence.
A resounding and statesman like win for Starmer.
Cleverly would have far better.
Tory benches sat on complete silence.
Open goal she puts the ball over the Stands
It's the way you tell 'em!
I think we might have found the new most hated poster on PB. You and me are now simply vying for silver and bronze.
Not hated - just ridiculed
So myself and Roger remain top dogs?
Leon is hated by the largest number of people. But he’s also loved by a lot of them. Roger is probably second in the hate stakes, he’s a consistent paedophile-phile after all, so doesn’t get much love away from the Oscars.
You probably come quite high in the contempt deserved table, but I doubt that you muster much hatred
I'll try and up my game then.
Does anyone really hate Leon? He's too much like a naughty puppy to be hate. Exasperated at the yapping from time to time certainly but the sheer enthusiasm impossible to hate.
I have, by far, the most Flags on my personal PB roster. But also one of the highest number of Likes
I live to serve
42k likes / 66,388 posts = 0.63 likes per post.
It is not something I really measure but looking at my own its 22.6k likes / 27,308 posts = 0.83 likes per post.
Your figure does not look that impressive. Not that its really important either. Quality is more important than quantity.
Bah! I'm only on 0.81 likes per post. I know, I'll post some cat pictures...
This was one of the cats from June, which is why she's got her sleeves rolled up.
Just as well for Labour they happily cancelled all those local elections in May where they would have been trounced.
Theres 33 Lab Majority councils still up outside of London, i think they'll lose control of everything not electing by thirds and any of the 'thirds' that arent red rosette on a donkey councils
Not many, if any, red rosette on a donkey wards in the entire country.
The sooner Starmer goes the better. What is the alternative on offer? More of the same 2016 to 2024 Conservative- Conservative broken Britain chaos or more of the same 2016-2024 Conservative -Reform broken Britain chaos.
Starmer isn't up to the job of either repairing Britain broken by Johnson, Truss and Farage or a World broken in two by Trump.
For the love of God, man, go!
We rarely agree @Mexicanpete - on anything - but on this we agree. Starmer is fucking detestable. He’s a traitor. He’s obnoxiously venal and narcissistic. He’s stupid. He’s stupefyingly embarrassing on the world stage, He can’t even walk down a fucking Chinese carpet without making me cringe to be British
So maybe Angela or Wes would be even more left wing or damaging. I DON’T FRIGGING CARE. I am so bone-achingly tired of having this gruesome dork represent my great country, Rayner would have more sass and basic inner patriotism, Wes would be smarter and more sensible or at least just NOT STARMER
Get rid of this hapless freak and wake us from this nightmare. And if it gives Labour a ten point boost in the polls, so be it. I’ll accept that as a price I had to pay to stop cringeing
(((Dan Hodges))) @DPJHodges 3 hours ago Keir Starmer claimed to the House of Commons he could not make concessions on publication for reasons of vital national security. So was he lying about that. Or is national security now getting thrown to the wind in a desperate attempt to save his skin.
Just in case an unexpected audience was needed...?
Yesterday the King was in Buck's Palace. Met some new ambassadors, meeting of the Privy Council, audience with the PM, an investiture and then a reception to recognise the work of local government employees.
Edit: The King has nothing in the Royal Diary for the next week. William is off to Saudi Arabia next week. Lucky him.
Nothing for the King published for the next two months. Perhaps that's a security thing, though they're happy to say where the other Royals will be in advance.
There will be no unexpected audience. Unless Starmer resigned and Labour MPs elected a new PM by coronation, any Labour leadership election would have to go to the members and take months and Starmer would stay PM in the meantime
Simon Sebag Montefiore is one of the good guys. He just tweeted this. I make no apologies for its length. Everyone in the world should read it
The images emerging now from Iran of young people, older people, boys and girls, who were murdered in the last few weeks by the Iranian Islamic dictator, the Islamic Corps of Revolutionary Guards, Basij militia and imported killers from Iraq, are heartbreaking but also enraging.
Some depict beautiful people at play, at the gym, dancing, on motorbikes; some makeshift morgues full of bodies; some streetscenes where killers shoot down unarmed protesters; and many show families opening bodybags to find their dead children shot in the head; others discover bodies of protesters wounded then executed in hospital beds and particularly women with uteruses removed or other horrors to conceal brutal rapes... Many are not young but it looks like the slaughter of the best and brightest of Iran Gen Z. Ive tried to repost these here.
I have been contacted by people in Iran (who weirdly read my books in pirated Farsi editions) who manage to come online in various ways and they beg me to keep posting these images and faces and keep talking about them. Embarrassingly they thank me just for doing this! That is why i am writing this now. We must keep going and keep doing so.
The numbers killed are astonishing: based on sources within the murderous dictatorship, it may be as many as 36000 were murdered just in the first days of the terror 8/9 January and more later - making it likely that 40,000 is a horribly plausible estimate.
This makes this event the most greatest massacre in modern Iranian history by far, the greatest single event slaughter in modern MIddle Eastern history since 1900 - along with the Assad's liquidation of an entire town, site of Islamist insurgents, Hama, in 1982 when around 30,000 were killed. Both of them not taking place in wars but in cold blood - and this Iranian atrocity being far more terrible since none of the protesters were armed.
We live in a time of egregious comparisons to the Holocaust when the Holocaust is repellently abused and minimized by cynical cretins - radiohosts, podders, politicians- to criticize anything from vaccination to ICE raids. But here is a comparison that stands in its scale and horror: in size and horror this does resemble the two days of Babi Yar near Kiev in Sept 1941 where 33,000 Jews were killed. It is also worth pointing out that an entire progressive movement arose against the autocracy of the Shah.
And his was an autocracy. But in his forty year one reign, only around 3000 people were killed, mainly in the last year before his downfall.
It is very striking that the UN has barely commented on thiis…
He goes on in that vein. Excoriating the “progressives”
It's astonishing how everything can be shoehorned into "owning the libs" if that is one's monomania of choice. It shouldn't need pointing out, but the IRGC are not centrist dads.
Yet if some random hollywood celeb posted that, leon and sandpit and mr glenn would be moaning about 'virtue signalling'.
There was once a time when “Hollywood celebs” were edgy, would say things that the Establishment didn’t want them to say, and to things that the Establishment didn’t want to hem to do.
Now they are the Establishment, pushing the Establishment narrative, saying “F*** ICE” to clapter from the seals in the audience, and not challenging anyone to change their existing opinion on anything.
Ice are part of the establishment, they are Government Feds.
Hollywood are not the establishment, Trump and Ice are.
Saying "f*** ICE" absolutely is challenging the establishment.
No, they’re saying the fashionable thing to say, not challenging the views of those in the room.
Hence no comments on the situation in Iran, which would be the unfashionable opinion to their own audience.
Starmer is b*ggered and rightly so. He rolled the dice and he lost.
All the frotting Tories should be allowed their day in the sun. But tomorrow perhaps we should remind them of austerity, Brexit, Boris Johnson, COVID PPE scandals, Partygate, Pincher and Liz Truss.
I'm off, too much from me today, but quick parting comment:
SKS looks done. doesn't he. In which case 1.6 to exit this year looks like trade of the century. But can people remember last June? Kemi was toast then. She was trading at 1.4 to exit that year.
Laying that was my most profitable political bet in ages. Because she wasn't toast.
Kemi fails to land any real blow on Starmer, he may be hiding behind the fact that Mandy lied to him but it's something she failed to make any progress on.
As he rightly points out this is now a Police matter.
She asks a specific question that she knows he cannot answer. Mandelson clearly told lies that's clear.
Her failure to accept national security issue demeans her, demeans protocol and is completely hypocritical.
Tory benches remarkably quiet given the circumstances, grandees sitting on their hands shaking heads.
Let's repeat Boris redacted 20 pages and released 2.
She's talking to 20 front benchetsbthe rest of her Party are aghast at her incompetence.
A resounding and statesman like win for Starmer.
Cleverly would have far better.
Tory benches sat on complete silence.
Open goal she puts the ball over the Stands
It's the way you tell 'em!
I think we might have found the new most hated poster on PB. You and me are now simply vying for silver and bronze.
Not hated - just ridiculed
So myself and Roger remain top dogs?
Leon is hated by the largest number of people. But he’s also loved by a lot of them. Roger is probably second in the hate stakes, he’s a consistent paedophile-phile after all, so doesn’t get much love away from the Oscars.
You probably come quite high in the contempt deserved table, but I doubt that you muster much hatred
I'll try and up my game then.
Does anyone really hate Leon? He's too much like a naughty puppy to be hate. Exasperated at the yapping from time to time certainly but the sheer enthusiasm impossible to hate.
I have, by far, the most Flags on my personal PB roster. But also one of the highest number of Likes
I live to serve
42k likes / 66,388 posts = 0.63 likes per post.
It is not something I really measure but looking at my own its 22.6k likes / 27,308 posts = 0.83 likes per post.
Your figure does not look that impressive. Not that its really important either. Quality is more important than quantity.
This is a fun ego massage game. I'm on 0.79 ( 10430 / 13206 ) likes per post. Not too shabby but I got a boost from the Truss comeback
Starmer still can't read the room or the country. His position at PMQs seemed to be it was OK for Mandelson to hang around with a convicted paedophilic sex trafficker, but what was beyond the pale was leaking government decisions after the GFC.
If Starmer knew now what he knows then – the new information is leaking from government and advising how to attack government policy. All the sex stuff and Mandelson's involvement was old news. Starmer said in his first reply: To learn that there was a Cabinet Minister leaking sensitive information at the height of the response to the 2008 crash is beyond infuriating, and I am as angry as the public and any Member of this House.
Starmer repeated this in his last answer to Kemi:-
I am as angry as anyone about what Mandelson has been up to. The disclosures that have been made this week of him passing on sensitive information at the height of the response to the 2008 financial crash are utterly shocking and appalling.
Starmer is b*ggered and rightly so. He rolled the dice and he lost.
All the frotting Tories should be allowed their day in the sun. But tomorrow perhaps we should remind them of austerity, Brexit, Boris Johnson, COVID PPE scandals, Partygate, Pincher and Liz Truss.
Feels like the day the walls crumbled in on Starmer tbh.
Starmer is 1.58 to go this year on Betfair. Can he buy time by sacking Morgan McSweeney? Like Liz Truss and Kwasi, he might try. Although arguably it worked for Theresa May who lingered another couple of years after binning Nick and Fiona.
He has full confidence in McSweeney. He said as much today.
If I was a Labour MP the thought on my mind is who I would want to appoint the fire McSweeney. I wouldn't want it to be Starmer.
I think Rayner’s a smart enough cookie to know she’d need support across the party were she to take office. I’m not sure the public will take further tax rises, I think she’d likely have to keep economic policy broadly as it is now - but the difference would be one of emphasis and messaging. Rayner can at least speak to the Labour message, Starmer finds it impossible
I thought they’d keep him to take the flak for May. I’m not so sure now.
80% of the angst is directed at McSweeney
If he's sacrificed and quickly and an acceptable replacement found he can buy time for a measured succession with an improvement on the economy,, inflation, cost of living, growth rates, interest rates factored in by many independent analysts for the summer and beyond.
Let the Mandelson shit show play out in terms of parliamentary and criminal action, let Trump do his worst.
Play his strengths on Ukraine, EU progress, get Netanyahu indicted for war crimes, get Jimmy Lai released then handover Autumn 2026 or Spring 2027
Farage more exposed James not so Cleverly as Tory leader
Nigel got his nose pressed against the glass yet, watching what real opposition actually is? Or has he got another irritable defection spaz to present at a press conference?
Just as well for Labour they happily cancelled all those local elections in May where they would have been trounced.
Theres 33 Lab Majority councils still up outside of London, i think they'll lose control of everything not electing by thirds and any of the 'thirds' that arent red rosette on a donkey councils
Not many, if any, red rosette on a donkey wards in the entire country.
The sooner Starmer goes the better. What is the alternative on offer? More of the same 2016 to 2024 Conservative- Conservative broken Britain chaos or more of the same 2016-2024 Conservative -Reform broken Britain chaos.
Starmer isn't up to the job of either repairing Britain broken by Johnson, Truss and Farage or a World broken in two by Trump.
For the love of God, man, go!
We rarely agree @Mexicanpete - on anything - but on this we agree. Starmer is fucking detestable. He’s a traitor. He’s obnoxiously venal and narcissistic. He’s stupid. He’s stupefyingly embarrassing on the world stage, He can’t even walk down a fucking Chinese carpet without making me cringe to be British
So maybe Angela or Wes would be even more left wing or damaging. I DON’T FRIGGING CARE. I am so bone-achingly tired of having this gruesome dork represent my great country, Rayner would have more sass and basic inner patriotism, Wes would be smarter and more sensible or at least just NOT STARMER
Get rid of this hapless freak and wake us from this nightmare. And if it gives Labour a ten point boost in the polls, so be it. I’ll accept that as a price I had to pay to stop cringeing
You think it couldn't get any worse but it really could. We face a very precarious global environment. I would trust Starmer a great deal more than Rayner to manage our way through that. Streeting could be okay but he's got a Gaza mob in his constituency breathing down his neck.
I thought they’d keep him to take the flak for May. I’m not so sure now.
I pity any sitting councillor seeking re-election with that going on in the background - We will get rid of him in May has very little electoral appeal, believe me as a former Tory Councillor, I know !
From a practical point of view he has to go before close of nominations, is that about 20 March ?
I thought they’d keep him to take the flak for May. I’m not so sure now.
I pity any sitting councillor seeking re-election with that going on in the background - We will get rid of him in May has very little electoral appeal, believe me as a former Tory Councillor, I know !
From a practical point of view he has to go before close of nominations, is that about 20 March ?
Massive backlash and disatisfaction must be already priced in?
We must remember that Sir Keir arrived in full-time politics very late in life, having spent his life practising law, and the last few years in a job where everyone in the office was, more or less anyway, on his side. There might be disagreements, but it was very unlikely that anyone was either corrupt or working, secretly, for defendants.
Then he came into politics and before you could say 'knife', or see one in anyone's back, he was Party Leader, facing a Government lead by someone who was flagrantly dishonest, then someone temporary, then someone who was presiding over a fractious, mutinous party, and who was badly advised anyway.
And once he got into Government he discovered that some of his team were, shall we say, not very good at their jobs.
He'd be far better as Attorney general, or perhaps Home Secretary. Or, like Alec Douglas-Home back in the 60's, Foreign Secretary.
I am wise enough to recognise that I would be a terrible PM. I'm not willing to have much sympathy for those who lack that degree of self-knowledge.
I thought they’d keep him to take the flak for May. I’m not so sure now.
I pity any sitting councillor seeking re-election with that going on in the background - We will get rid of him in May has very little electoral appeal, believe me as a former Tory Councillor, I know !
From a practical point of view he has to go before close of nominations, is that about 20 March ?
Simon Sebag Montefiore is one of the good guys. He just tweeted this. I make no apologies for its length. Everyone in the world should read it
The images emerging now from Iran of young people, older people, boys and girls, who were murdered in the last few weeks by the Iranian Islamic dictator, the Islamic Corps of Revolutionary Guards, Basij militia and imported killers from Iraq, are heartbreaking but also enraging.
Some depict beautiful people at play, at the gym, dancing, on motorbikes; some makeshift morgues full of bodies; some streetscenes where killers shoot down unarmed protesters; and many show families opening bodybags to find their dead children shot in the head; others discover bodies of protesters wounded then executed in hospital beds and particularly women with uteruses removed or other horrors to conceal brutal rapes... Many are not young but it looks like the slaughter of the best and brightest of Iran Gen Z. Ive tried to repost these here.
I have been contacted by people in Iran (who weirdly read my books in pirated Farsi editions) who manage to come online in various ways and they beg me to keep posting these images and faces and keep talking about them. Embarrassingly they thank me just for doing this! That is why i am writing this now. We must keep going and keep doing so.
The numbers killed are astonishing: based on sources within the murderous dictatorship, it may be as many as 36000 were murdered just in the first days of the terror 8/9 January and more later - making it likely that 40,000 is a horribly plausible estimate.
This makes this event the most greatest massacre in modern Iranian history by far, the greatest single event slaughter in modern MIddle Eastern history since 1900 - along with the Assad's liquidation of an entire town, site of Islamist insurgents, Hama, in 1982 when around 30,000 were killed. Both of them not taking place in wars but in cold blood - and this Iranian atrocity being far more terrible since none of the protesters were armed.
We live in a time of egregious comparisons to the Holocaust when the Holocaust is repellently abused and minimized by cynical cretins - radiohosts, podders, politicians- to criticize anything from vaccination to ICE raids. But here is a comparison that stands in its scale and horror: in size and horror this does resemble the two days of Babi Yar near Kiev in Sept 1941 where 33,000 Jews were killed. It is also worth pointing out that an entire progressive movement arose against the autocracy of the Shah.
And his was an autocracy. But in his forty year one reign, only around 3000 people were killed, mainly in the last year before his downfall.
It is very striking that the UN has barely commented on thiis…
He goes on in that vein. Excoriating the “progressives”
It's astonishing how everything can be shoehorned into "owning the libs" if that is one's monomania of choice. It shouldn't need pointing out, but the IRGC are not centrist dads.
Yet if some random hollywood celeb posted that, leon and sandpit and mr glenn would be moaning about 'virtue signalling'.
There was once a time when “Hollywood celebs” were edgy, would say things that the Establishment didn’t want them to say, and to things that the Establishment didn’t want to hem to do.
Now they are the Establishment, pushing the Establishment narrative, saying “F*** ICE” to clapter from the seals in the audience, and not challenging anyone to change their existing opinion on anything.
Ice are part of the establishment, they are Government Feds.
Hollywood are not the establishment, Trump and Ice are.
Saying "f*** ICE" absolutely is challenging the establishment.
No, they’re saying the fashionable thing to say, not challenging the views of those in the room.
Hence no comments on the situation in Iran, which would be the unfashionable opinion to their own audience.
I can see where you're coming from. If you were in the UK, for example, and, in fashionable left wing circles, expressed some opinion disparaging of, for example, an attempt to restrict immigration, you would absolutely not be challenging the establishment, for the reasons you set out. But I'd argue it's slightly difficult in the USA now: the balance of who holds power has very much shifted: the new right is very much in power, and speaking against that - while still fashionable - carries a small amount of personal risk. Whereas in relation to Iran: yes, granted, much more terrible things going on there, but I don't think anyone outside the Mullahs themselves is on the side of the Mullahs, and it's not something we can do a lot about anyway.
We must remember that Sir Keir arrived in full-time politics very late in life, having spent his life practising law, and the last few years in a job where everyone in the office was, more or less anyway, on his side. There might be disagreements, but it was very unlikely that anyone was either corrupt or working, secretly, for defendants.
Then he came into politics and before you could say 'knife', or see one in anyone's back, he was Party Leader, facing a Government lead by someone who was flagrantly dishonest, then someone temporary, then someone who was presiding over a fractious, mutinous party, and who was badly advised anyway.
And once he got into Government he discovered that some of his team were, shall we say, not very good at their jobs.
He'd be far better as Attorney general, or perhaps Home Secretary. Or, like Alec Douglas-Home back in the 60's, Foreign Secretary.
I am wise enough to recognise that I would be a terrible PM. I'm not willing to have much sympathy for those who lack that degree of self-knowledge.
The last one who thought he'd 'be rather good at it' was Cameron.
We must remember that Sir Keir arrived in full-time politics very late in life, having spent his life practising law, and the last few years in a job where everyone in the office was, more or less anyway, on his side. There might be disagreements, but it was very unlikely that anyone was either corrupt or working, secretly, for defendants.
Then he came into politics and before you could say 'knife', or see one in anyone's back, he was Party Leader, facing a Government lead by someone who was flagrantly dishonest, then someone temporary, then someone who was presiding over a fractious, mutinous party, and who was badly advised anyway.
And once he got into Government he discovered that some of his team were, shall we say, not very good at their jobs.
He'd be far better as Attorney general, or perhaps Home Secretary. Or, like Alec Douglas-Home back in the 60's, Foreign Secretary.
I am wise enough to recognise that I would be a terrible PM. I'm not willing to have much sympathy for those who lack that degree of self-knowledge.
The last one who thought he'd 'be rather good at it' was Cameron.
Who ran away when things really got nasty.
In hindsight, Cameron managed to hold together a coalition for five years and his party for a bit after that. Compared to how politics operates now, he did exceptionally well. I do think the job has become harder, but I think some of that is because the systems underpinning the operation of government make it hard. If we want to see PMs of the longevity of Cameron again I think we need wider reform.
I thought they’d keep him to take the flak for May. I’m not so sure now.
80% of the angst is directed at McSweeney
If he's sacrificed and quickly and an acceptable replacement found he can buy time for a measured succession with an improvement on the economy,, inflation, cost of living, growth rates, interest rates factored in by many independent analysts for the summer and beyond.
Let the Mandelson shit show play out in terms of parliamentary and criminal action, let Trump do his worst.
Play his strengths on Ukraine, EU progress, get Netanyahu indicted for war crimes, get Jimmy Lai released then handover Autumn 2026 or Spring 2027
Farage more exposed James not so Cleverly as Tory leader
Not improbable
Those having a go at McSweeney, are having a go at Starmer by proxy but without saying that bit out loud.
He can’t just have yet another change of Chief of Staff and then carry on as if nothing happened.
Kemi fails to land any real blow on Starmer, he may be hiding behind the fact that Mandy lied to him but it's something she failed to make any progress on.
As he rightly points out this is now a Police matter.
She asks a specific question that she knows he cannot answer. Mandelson clearly told lies that's clear.
Her failure to accept national security issue demeans her, demeans protocol and is completely hypocritical.
Tory benches remarkably quiet given the circumstances, grandees sitting on their hands shaking heads.
Let's repeat Boris redacted 20 pages and released 2.
She's talking to 20 front benchetsbthe rest of her Party are aghast at her incompetence.
A resounding and statesman like win for Starmer.
Cleverly would have far better.
Tory benches sat on complete silence.
Open goal she puts the ball over the Stands
It's the way you tell 'em!
I think we might have found the new most hated poster on PB. You and me are now simply vying for silver and bronze.
Not hated - just ridiculed
So myself and Roger remain top dogs?
Leon is hated by the largest number of people. But he’s also loved by a lot of them. Roger is probably second in the hate stakes, he’s a consistent paedophile-phile after all, so doesn’t get much love away from the Oscars.
You probably come quite high in the contempt deserved table, but I doubt that you muster much hatred
I'll try and up my game then.
Does anyone really hate Leon? He's too much like a naughty puppy to be hate. Exasperated at the yapping from time to time certainly but the sheer enthusiasm impossible to hate.
I have, by far, the most Flags on my personal PB roster. But also one of the highest number of Likes
I live to serve
42k likes / 66,388 posts = 0.63 likes per post.
It is not something I really measure but looking at my own its 22.6k likes / 27,308 posts = 0.83 likes per post.
Your figure does not look that impressive. Not that its really important either. Quality is more important than quantity.
Ooh I have 20k likes from 17.7k posts for a ratio of more than 1.1. And one flag for saying something mean about Leon! Do I win the internet today?
Feels like the day the walls crumbled in on Starmer tbh.
Starmer is 1.58 to go this year on Betfair. Can he buy time by sacking Morgan McSweeney? Like Liz Truss and Kwasi, he might try. Although arguably it worked for Theresa May who lingered another couple of years after binning Nick and Fiona.
The difference being TM sacked that pair at the weekend, maybe a day or so after the votes were counted. Starmer is prone to dithering, reversing previous decisions, and the drip feed of Epstein files is crucifying him.
He's surely done for now, I thought he may retire gracefully (September 2027), no chance he lasts beyond June 2026.
If/when a PM is needed, who are the best bets to back whilst a Labour leadership contest is ongoing? A lot of pundits may think Rayner, I prefer Lammy as he is the current Deputy PM. I don't he would win the leadership race though.
Lammy is 60 for next PM on betfair - for me that's value if Starmer resigns suddenly. I can't see him keeping going as a lame duck. As ever, DYOR
I'm sure it's a commonplace observation, but what an irony it will be, if a British Prime Minister who, personally, seems quite a decent person, is forced out due ultimately to Epstein, who he never met. While the egregiously indecent Trump, who was a close friend of Epstein (at the very least) remains securely in the White House.
We must remember that Sir Keir arrived in full-time politics very late in life, having spent his life practising law, and the last few years in a job where everyone in the office was, more or less anyway, on his side. There might be disagreements, but it was very unlikely that anyone was either corrupt or working, secretly, for defendants.
Then he came into politics and before you could say 'knife', or see one in anyone's back, he was Party Leader, facing a Government lead by someone who was flagrantly dishonest, then someone temporary, then someone who was presiding over a fractious, mutinous party, and who was badly advised anyway.
And once he got into Government he discovered that some of his team were, shall we say, not very good at their jobs.
He'd be far better as Attorney general, or perhaps Home Secretary. Or, like Alec Douglas-Home back in the 60's, Foreign Secretary.
I am wise enough to recognise that I would be a terrible PM. I'm not willing to have much sympathy for those who lack that degree of self-knowledge.
The last one who thought he'd 'be rather good at it' was Cameron.
Who ran away when things really got nasty.
In hindsight, Cameron managed to hold together a coalition for five years and his party for a bit after that. Compared to how politics operates now, he did exceptionally well. I do think the job has become harder, but I think some of that is because the systems underpinning the operation of government make it hard. If we want to see PMs of the longevity of Cameron again I think we need wider reform.
The Coalition held together because sides wanted it to; Clegg and the LibDems for the experience of being in Government and Cameron to give the Conservatives ample time to shaft his partners.
Just don’t see how Starmer survives these hourly revelations
***NEW*** Peter Mandelson had much deeper links to Russia than previously known, including potentially compromising activity, the Epstein files reveal, raising fresh questions about his vetting for the US ambassador job.
In one email in 2013, Mandelson tells Epstein he is travelling to St Petersburg. Mandelson says “it’s a rave” and there will be what he calls “tastey models and dancing.”
In another message from 2011, Mandelson tells Epstein he is sitting in a club in Moscow after receiving a massage.
In another Mandelson appears to joke about Epstein being accompanied by a woman who is “20 years old and Russian.”
The emails make repeated other references to Mandelson visiting Russia time and again over a period of several years. Several emails allude to extensive business activity in Russia.
Mandelson appears to have openly discussed what he was up to while in Russia on non-secure communications with Epstein.
It goes without saying that this is personally high-risk activity for anyone planning to return to public life, let alone to a sensitive diplomatic posting.
It raises further serious questions about the government vetting process for his appointment as US ambassador.
Kemi fails to land any real blow on Starmer, he may be hiding behind the fact that Mandy lied to him but it's something she failed to make any progress on.
As he rightly points out this is now a Police matter.
She asks a specific question that she knows he cannot answer. Mandelson clearly told lies that's clear.
Her failure to accept national security issue demeans her, demeans protocol and is completely hypocritical.
Tory benches remarkably quiet given the circumstances, grandees sitting on their hands shaking heads.
Let's repeat Boris redacted 20 pages and released 2.
She's talking to 20 front benchetsbthe rest of her Party are aghast at her incompetence.
A resounding and statesman like win for Starmer.
Cleverly would have far better.
Tory benches sat on complete silence.
Open goal she puts the ball over the Stands
It's the way you tell 'em!
I think we might have found the new most hated poster on PB. You and me are now simply vying for silver and bronze.
Not hated - just ridiculed
So myself and Roger remain top dogs?
Leon is hated by the largest number of people. But he’s also loved by a lot of them. Roger is probably second in the hate stakes, he’s a consistent paedophile-phile after all, so doesn’t get much love away from the Oscars.
You probably come quite high in the contempt deserved table, but I doubt that you muster much hatred
I'll try and up my game then.
Does anyone really hate Leon? He's too much like a naughty puppy to be hate. Exasperated at the yapping from time to time certainly but the sheer enthusiasm impossible to hate.
I have, by far, the most Flags on my personal PB roster. But also one of the highest number of Likes
I live to serve
42k likes / 66,388 posts = 0.63 likes per post.
It is not something I really measure but looking at my own its 22.6k likes / 27,308 posts = 0.83 likes per post.
Your figure does not look that impressive. Not that its really important either. Quality is more important than quantity.
Swiftly checks and sees a turbotubbs ratio of 0.886. Happy with that.
When [never did work out which poster] recently regenerated as @MelonB , in an (unsuccesful) attempt to discover his previous identity I looked at his profile and notices his likes:posts ratio was over 1. So he may be winninhlg, whoever he used to be.
Starmer is b*ggered and rightly so. He rolled the dice and he lost.
For me, that sums it up exactly. While people are working themselves up 'Why, oh, why, would Starmer appoint someone with so much obvious baggage to such a high profile role?' the answer is simple, he shares much of that baggage with the tempestuous, venal toddler in the White House. That's why Starmer ignored the risks and took the gamble. And he lost.
He probably didn't think it might end his premiership, otherwise he probably wouldn't have taken it, but that's the game.
Simon Sebag Montefiore is one of the good guys. He just tweeted this. I make no apologies for its length. Everyone in the world should read it
The images emerging now from Iran of young people, older people, boys and girls, who were murdered in the last few weeks by the Iranian Islamic dictator, the Islamic Corps of Revolutionary Guards, Basij militia and imported killers from Iraq, are heartbreaking but also enraging.
Some depict beautiful people at play, at the gym, dancing, on motorbikes; some makeshift morgues full of bodies; some streetscenes where killers shoot down unarmed protesters; and many show families opening bodybags to find their dead children shot in the head; others discover bodies of protesters wounded then executed in hospital beds and particularly women with uteruses removed or other horrors to conceal brutal rapes... Many are not young but it looks like the slaughter of the best and brightest of Iran Gen Z. Ive tried to repost these here.
I have been contacted by people in Iran (who weirdly read my books in pirated Farsi editions) who manage to come online in various ways and they beg me to keep posting these images and faces and keep talking about them. Embarrassingly they thank me just for doing this! That is why i am writing this now. We must keep going and keep doing so.
The numbers killed are astonishing: based on sources within the murderous dictatorship, it may be as many as 36000 were murdered just in the first days of the terror 8/9 January and more later - making it likely that 40,000 is a horribly plausible estimate.
This makes this event the most greatest massacre in modern Iranian history by far, the greatest single event slaughter in modern MIddle Eastern history since 1900 - along with the Assad's liquidation of an entire town, site of Islamist insurgents, Hama, in 1982 when around 30,000 were killed. Both of them not taking place in wars but in cold blood - and this Iranian atrocity being far more terrible since none of the protesters were armed.
We live in a time of egregious comparisons to the Holocaust when the Holocaust is repellently abused and minimized by cynical cretins - radiohosts, podders, politicians- to criticize anything from vaccination to ICE raids. But here is a comparison that stands in its scale and horror: in size and horror this does resemble the two days of Babi Yar near Kiev in Sept 1941 where 33,000 Jews were killed. It is also worth pointing out that an entire progressive movement arose against the autocracy of the Shah.
And his was an autocracy. But in his forty year one reign, only around 3000 people were killed, mainly in the last year before his downfall.
It is very striking that the UN has barely commented on thiis…
He goes on in that vein. Excoriating the “progressives”
It's astonishing how everything can be shoehorned into "owning the libs" if that is one's monomania of choice. It shouldn't need pointing out, but the IRGC are not centrist dads.
Yet if some random hollywood celeb posted that, leon and sandpit and mr glenn would be moaning about 'virtue signalling'.
There was once a time when “Hollywood celebs” were edgy, would say things that the Establishment didn’t want them to say, and to things that the Establishment didn’t want to hem to do.
Now they are the Establishment, pushing the Establishment narrative, saying “F*** ICE” to clapter from the seals in the audience, and not challenging anyone to change their existing opinion on anything.
Ice are part of the establishment, they are Government Feds.
Hollywood are not the establishment, Trump and Ice are.
Saying "f*** ICE" absolutely is challenging the establishment.
No, they’re saying the fashionable thing to say, not challenging the views of those in the room.
Hence no comments on the situation in Iran, which would be the unfashionable opinion to their own audience.
I can see where you're coming from. If you were in the UK, for example, and, in fashionable left wing circles, expressed some opinion disparaging of, for example, an attempt to restrict immigration, you would absolutely not be challenging the establishment, for the reasons you set out. But I'd argue it's slightly difficult in the USA now: the balance of who holds power has very much shifted: the new right is very much in power, and speaking against that - while still fashionable - carries a small amount of personal risk. Whereas in relation to Iran: yes, granted, much more terrible things going on there, but I don't think anyone outside the Mullahs themselves is on the side of the Mullahs, and it's not something we can do a lot about anyway.
If you know in advance that your political opinion will result in a round of applause or a standing ovation from the audience, then I would argue that opinion isn’t remotely controversial.
There were supporters of the Mullahs out in force in London on Saturday.
Kemi fails to land any real blow on Starmer, he may be hiding behind the fact that Mandy lied to him but it's something she failed to make any progress on.
As he rightly points out this is now a Police matter.
She asks a specific question that she knows he cannot answer. Mandelson clearly told lies that's clear.
Her failure to accept national security issue demeans her, demeans protocol and is completely hypocritical.
Tory benches remarkably quiet given the circumstances, grandees sitting on their hands shaking heads.
Let's repeat Boris redacted 20 pages and released 2.
She's talking to 20 front benchetsbthe rest of her Party are aghast at her incompetence.
A resounding and statesman like win for Starmer.
Cleverly would have far better.
Tory benches sat on complete silence.
Open goal she puts the ball over the Stands
It's the way you tell 'em!
I think we might have found the new most hated poster on PB. You and me are now simply vying for silver and bronze.
Not hated - just ridiculed
So myself and Roger remain top dogs?
Leon is hated by the largest number of people. But he’s also loved by a lot of them. Roger is probably second in the hate stakes, he’s a consistent paedophile-phile after all, so doesn’t get much love away from the Oscars.
You probably come quite high in the contempt deserved table, but I doubt that you muster much hatred
I'll try and up my game then.
Does anyone really hate Leon? He's too much like a naughty puppy to be hate. Exasperated at the yapping from time to time certainly but the sheer enthusiasm impossible to hate.
I have, by far, the most Flags on my personal PB roster. But also one of the highest number of Likes
I live to serve
42k likes / 66,388 posts = 0.63 likes per post.
It is not something I really measure but looking at my own its 22.6k likes / 27,308 posts = 0.83 likes per post.
Your figure does not look that impressive. Not that its really important either. Quality is more important than quantity.
Swiftly checks and sees a turbotubbs ratio of 0.886. Happy with that.
When [never did work out which poster] recently regenerated as @MelonB , in an (unsuccesful) attempt to discover his previous identity I looked at his profile and notices his likes:posts ratio was over 1. So he may be winninhlg, whoever he used to be.
Just don’t see how Starmer survives these hourly revelations
***NEW*** Peter Mandelson had much deeper links to Russia than previously known, including potentially compromising activity, the Epstein files reveal, raising fresh questions about his vetting for the US ambassador job.
In one email in 2013, Mandelson tells Epstein he is travelling to St Petersburg. Mandelson says “it’s a rave” and there will be what he calls “tastey models and dancing.”
In another message from 2011, Mandelson tells Epstein he is sitting in a club in Moscow after receiving a massage.
In another Mandelson appears to joke about Epstein being accompanied by a woman who is “20 years old and Russian.”
The emails make repeated other references to Mandelson visiting Russia time and again over a period of several years. Several emails allude to extensive business activity in Russia.
Mandelson appears to have openly discussed what he was up to while in Russia on non-secure communications with Epstein.
It goes without saying that this is personally high-risk activity for anyone planning to return to public life, let alone to a sensitive diplomatic posting.
It raises further serious questions about the government vetting process for his appointment as US ambassador.
I'll take my hat off to Kemi today, she did ask the right questions at PMQ's
If Starmer remains in post for 3 months, this will help obliterate any chances Labour have of a decent performance at the Senedd, Holyrood and (whats left of) the local elections
It's possible that in the long run the Palestine Action verdict could be more problematic for Labour than Mandelson.
This is the sort of thing that leads to hard right governments.
I can live with juries aquiting on the basis of the cause rather than because they didn't think them guilty (see Colston trial in Bristol) but that ought not happen when someone has been savagely assaulted, and I suspect/hope that there is a retrial for that.
Simon Sebag Montefiore is one of the good guys. He just tweeted this. I make no apologies for its length. Everyone in the world should read it
The images emerging now from Iran of young people, older people, boys and girls, who were murdered in the last few weeks by the Iranian Islamic dictator, the Islamic Corps of Revolutionary Guards, Basij militia and imported killers from Iraq, are heartbreaking but also enraging.
Some depict beautiful people at play, at the gym, dancing, on motorbikes; some makeshift morgues full of bodies; some streetscenes where killers shoot down unarmed protesters; and many show families opening bodybags to find their dead children shot in the head; others discover bodies of protesters wounded then executed in hospital beds and particularly women with uteruses removed or other horrors to conceal brutal rapes... Many are not young but it looks like the slaughter of the best and brightest of Iran Gen Z. Ive tried to repost these here.
I have been contacted by people in Iran (who weirdly read my books in pirated Farsi editions) who manage to come online in various ways and they beg me to keep posting these images and faces and keep talking about them. Embarrassingly they thank me just for doing this! That is why i am writing this now. We must keep going and keep doing so.
The numbers killed are astonishing: based on sources within the murderous dictatorship, it may be as many as 36000 were murdered just in the first days of the terror 8/9 January and more later - making it likely that 40,000 is a horribly plausible estimate.
This makes this event the most greatest massacre in modern Iranian history by far, the greatest single event slaughter in modern MIddle Eastern history since 1900 - along with the Assad's liquidation of an entire town, site of Islamist insurgents, Hama, in 1982 when around 30,000 were killed. Both of them not taking place in wars but in cold blood - and this Iranian atrocity being far more terrible since none of the protesters were armed.
We live in a time of egregious comparisons to the Holocaust when the Holocaust is repellently abused and minimized by cynical cretins - radiohosts, podders, politicians- to criticize anything from vaccination to ICE raids. But here is a comparison that stands in its scale and horror: in size and horror this does resemble the two days of Babi Yar near Kiev in Sept 1941 where 33,000 Jews were killed. It is also worth pointing out that an entire progressive movement arose against the autocracy of the Shah.
And his was an autocracy. But in his forty year one reign, only around 3000 people were killed, mainly in the last year before his downfall.
It is very striking that the UN has barely commented on thiis…
He goes on in that vein. Excoriating the “progressives”
It's astonishing how everything can be shoehorned into "owning the libs" if that is one's monomania of choice. It shouldn't need pointing out, but the IRGC are not centrist dads.
Yet if some random hollywood celeb posted that, leon and sandpit and mr glenn would be moaning about 'virtue signalling'.
There was once a time when “Hollywood celebs” were edgy, would say things that the Establishment didn’t want them to say, and to things that the Establishment didn’t want to hem to do.
Now they are the Establishment, pushing the Establishment narrative, saying “F*** ICE” to clapter from the seals in the audience, and not challenging anyone to change their existing opinion on anything.
Ice are part of the establishment, they are Government Feds.
Hollywood are not the establishment, Trump and Ice are.
Saying "f*** ICE" absolutely is challenging the establishment.
No, they’re saying the fashionable thing to say, not challenging the views of those in the room.
Hence no comments on the situation in Iran, which would be the unfashionable opinion to their own audience.
I can see where you're coming from. If you were in the UK, for example, and, in fashionable left wing circles, expressed some opinion disparaging of, for example, an attempt to restrict immigration, you would absolutely not be challenging the establishment, for the reasons you set out. But I'd argue it's slightly difficult in the USA now: the balance of who holds power has very much shifted: the new right is very much in power, and speaking against that - while still fashionable - carries a small amount of personal risk. Whereas in relation to Iran: yes, granted, much more terrible things going on there, but I don't think anyone outside the Mullahs themselves is on the side of the Mullahs, and it's not something we can do a lot about anyway.
If you know in advance that your political opinion will result in a round of applause or a standing ovation from the audience, then I would argue that opinion isn’t remotely controversial.
There were supporters of the Mullahs out in force in London on Saturday.
always heads i win, tails you lose with you on this.
Any how would you know what was going on in London?
Simon Sebag Montefiore is one of the good guys. He just tweeted this. I make no apologies for its length. Everyone in the world should read it
The images emerging now from Iran of young people, older people, boys and girls, who were murdered in the last few weeks by the Iranian Islamic dictator, the Islamic Corps of Revolutionary Guards, Basij militia and imported killers from Iraq, are heartbreaking but also enraging.
Some depict beautiful people at play, at the gym, dancing, on motorbikes; some makeshift morgues full of bodies; some streetscenes where killers shoot down unarmed protesters; and many show families opening bodybags to find their dead children shot in the head; others discover bodies of protesters wounded then executed in hospital beds and particularly women with uteruses removed or other horrors to conceal brutal rapes... Many are not young but it looks like the slaughter of the best and brightest of Iran Gen Z. Ive tried to repost these here.
I have been contacted by people in Iran (who weirdly read my books in pirated Farsi editions) who manage to come online in various ways and they beg me to keep posting these images and faces and keep talking about them. Embarrassingly they thank me just for doing this! That is why i am writing this now. We must keep going and keep doing so.
The numbers killed are astonishing: based on sources within the murderous dictatorship, it may be as many as 36000 were murdered just in the first days of the terror 8/9 January and more later - making it likely that 40,000 is a horribly plausible estimate.
This makes this event the most greatest massacre in modern Iranian history by far, the greatest single event slaughter in modern MIddle Eastern history since 1900 - along with the Assad's liquidation of an entire town, site of Islamist insurgents, Hama, in 1982 when around 30,000 were killed. Both of them not taking place in wars but in cold blood - and this Iranian atrocity being far more terrible since none of the protesters were armed.
We live in a time of egregious comparisons to the Holocaust when the Holocaust is repellently abused and minimized by cynical cretins - radiohosts, podders, politicians- to criticize anything from vaccination to ICE raids. But here is a comparison that stands in its scale and horror: in size and horror this does resemble the two days of Babi Yar near Kiev in Sept 1941 where 33,000 Jews were killed. It is also worth pointing out that an entire progressive movement arose against the autocracy of the Shah.
And his was an autocracy. But in his forty year one reign, only around 3000 people were killed, mainly in the last year before his downfall.
It is very striking that the UN has barely commented on thiis…
He goes on in that vein. Excoriating the “progressives”
It's astonishing how everything can be shoehorned into "owning the libs" if that is one's monomania of choice. It shouldn't need pointing out, but the IRGC are not centrist dads.
Yet if some random hollywood celeb posted that, leon and sandpit and mr glenn would be moaning about 'virtue signalling'.
There was once a time when “Hollywood celebs” were edgy, would say things that the Establishment didn’t want them to say, and to things that the Establishment didn’t want to hem to do.
Now they are the Establishment, pushing the Establishment narrative, saying “F*** ICE” to clapter from the seals in the audience, and not challenging anyone to change their existing opinion on anything.
Ice are part of the establishment, they are Government Feds.
Hollywood are not the establishment, Trump and Ice are.
Saying "f*** ICE" absolutely is challenging the establishment.
No, they’re saying the fashionable thing to say, not challenging the views of those in the room.
Hence no comments on the situation in Iran, which would be the unfashionable opinion to their own audience.
I can see where you're coming from. If you were in the UK, for example, and, in fashionable left wing circles, expressed some opinion disparaging of, for example, an attempt to restrict immigration, you would absolutely not be challenging the establishment, for the reasons you set out. But I'd argue it's slightly difficult in the USA now: the balance of who holds power has very much shifted: the new right is very much in power, and speaking against that - while still fashionable - carries a small amount of personal risk. Whereas in relation to Iran: yes, granted, much more terrible things going on there, but I don't think anyone outside the Mullahs themselves is on the side of the Mullahs, and it's not something we can do a lot about anyway.
If you know in advance that your political opinion will result in a round of applause or a standing ovation from the audience, then I would argue that opinion isn’t remotely controversial.
There were supporters of the Mullahs out in force in London on Saturday.
Well obviously the latter are fuckers of the first water. No arguments there.
I'm not saying speaking out against ICE is particularly brave, yet - certainly not as brave as speaking out against the mullahs in Iran. But the left are no longer the establishment in the USA.
Starmer is b*ggered and rightly so. He rolled the dice and he lost.
For me, that sums it up exactly. While people are working themselves up 'Why, oh, why, would Starmer appoint someone with so much obvious baggage to such a high profile role?' the answer is simple, he shares much of that baggage with the tempestuous, venal toddler in the White House. That's why Starmer ignored the risks and took the gamble. And he lost.
He probably didn't think it might end his premiership, otherwise he probably wouldn't have taken it, but that's the game.
The problem is that Mandelson wasn't some outsider but one of the handful of key figures responsible for shaping the modern Labour party. In that context, his appointment wasn't supposed to be a risky punt on someone with baggage but putting a safe pair of hands in a key role.
Just as well for Labour they happily cancelled all those local elections in May where they would have been trounced.
Theres 33 Lab Majority councils still up outside of London, i think they'll lose control of everything not electing by thirds and any of the 'thirds' that arent red rosette on a donkey councils
Not many, if any, red rosette on a donkey wards in the entire country.
The sooner Starmer goes the better. What is the alternative on offer? More of the same 2016 to 2024 Conservative- Conservative broken Britain chaos or more of the same 2016-2024 Conservative -Reform broken Britain chaos.
Starmer isn't up to the job of either repairing Britain broken by Johnson, Truss and Farage or a World broken in two by Trump.
For the love of God, man, go!
We rarely agree @Mexicanpete - on anything - but on this we agree. Starmer is fucking detestable. He’s a traitor. He’s obnoxiously venal and narcissistic. He’s stupid. He’s stupefyingly embarrassing on the world stage, He can’t even walk down a fucking Chinese carpet without making me cringe to be British
So maybe Angela or Wes would be even more left wing or damaging. I DON’T FRIGGING CARE. I am so bone-achingly tired of having this gruesome dork represent my great country, Rayner would have more sass and basic inner patriotism, Wes would be smarter and more sensible or at least just NOT STARMER
Get rid of this hapless freak and wake us from this nightmare. And if it gives Labour a ten point boost in the polls, so be it. I’ll accept that as a price I had to pay to stop cringeing
You think it couldn't get any worse but it really could. We face a very precarious global environment. I would trust Starmer a great deal more than Rayner to manage our way through that. Streeting could be okay but he's got a Gaza mob in his constituency breathing down his neck.
Indeed.
All too often people say "How could it possibly be any worse?" And then -lo- it is actually worse.
Simon Sebag Montefiore is one of the good guys. He just tweeted this. I make no apologies for its length. Everyone in the world should read it
The images emerging now from Iran of young people, older people, boys and girls, who were murdered in the last few weeks by the Iranian Islamic dictator, the Islamic Corps of Revolutionary Guards, Basij militia and imported killers from Iraq, are heartbreaking but also enraging.
Some depict beautiful people at play, at the gym, dancing, on motorbikes; some makeshift morgues full of bodies; some streetscenes where killers shoot down unarmed protesters; and many show families opening bodybags to find their dead children shot in the head; others discover bodies of protesters wounded then executed in hospital beds and particularly women with uteruses removed or other horrors to conceal brutal rapes... Many are not young but it looks like the slaughter of the best and brightest of Iran Gen Z. Ive tried to repost these here.
I have been contacted by people in Iran (who weirdly read my books in pirated Farsi editions) who manage to come online in various ways and they beg me to keep posting these images and faces and keep talking about them. Embarrassingly they thank me just for doing this! That is why i am writing this now. We must keep going and keep doing so.
The numbers killed are astonishing: based on sources within the murderous dictatorship, it may be as many as 36000 were murdered just in the first days of the terror 8/9 January and more later - making it likely that 40,000 is a horribly plausible estimate.
This makes this event the most greatest massacre in modern Iranian history by far, the greatest single event slaughter in modern MIddle Eastern history since 1900 - along with the Assad's liquidation of an entire town, site of Islamist insurgents, Hama, in 1982 when around 30,000 were killed. Both of them not taking place in wars but in cold blood - and this Iranian atrocity being far more terrible since none of the protesters were armed.
We live in a time of egregious comparisons to the Holocaust when the Holocaust is repellently abused and minimized by cynical cretins - radiohosts, podders, politicians- to criticize anything from vaccination to ICE raids. But here is a comparison that stands in its scale and horror: in size and horror this does resemble the two days of Babi Yar near Kiev in Sept 1941 where 33,000 Jews were killed. It is also worth pointing out that an entire progressive movement arose against the autocracy of the Shah.
And his was an autocracy. But in his forty year one reign, only around 3000 people were killed, mainly in the last year before his downfall.
It is very striking that the UN has barely commented on thiis…
He goes on in that vein. Excoriating the “progressives”
It's astonishing how everything can be shoehorned into "owning the libs" if that is one's monomania of choice. It shouldn't need pointing out, but the IRGC are not centrist dads.
Yet if some random hollywood celeb posted that, leon and sandpit and mr glenn would be moaning about 'virtue signalling'.
There was once a time when “Hollywood celebs” were edgy, would say things that the Establishment didn’t want them to say, and to things that the Establishment didn’t want to hem to do.
Now they are the Establishment, pushing the Establishment narrative, saying “F*** ICE” to clapter from the seals in the audience, and not challenging anyone to change their existing opinion on anything.
Ice are part of the establishment, they are Government Feds.
Hollywood are not the establishment, Trump and Ice are.
Saying "f*** ICE" absolutely is challenging the establishment.
No, they’re saying the fashionable thing to say, not challenging the views of those in the room.
Hence no comments on the situation in Iran, which would be the unfashionable opinion to their own audience.
I can see where you're coming from. If you were in the UK, for example, and, in fashionable left wing circles, expressed some opinion disparaging of, for example, an attempt to restrict immigration, you would absolutely not be challenging the establishment, for the reasons you set out. But I'd argue it's slightly difficult in the USA now: the balance of who holds power has very much shifted: the new right is very much in power, and speaking against that - while still fashionable - carries a small amount of personal risk. Whereas in relation to Iran: yes, granted, much more terrible things going on there, but I don't think anyone outside the Mullahs themselves is on the side of the Mullahs, and it's not something we can do a lot about anyway.
If you know in advance that your political opinion will result in a round of applause or a standing ovation from the audience, then I would argue that opinion isn’t remotely controversial.
There were supporters of the Mullahs out in force in London on Saturday.
Who are the audience? Eilish might have known that the audience in the room would applaud her, but the audience outside the room (Trump, the federal Govt, an army of MAGA trolls) she would’ve known would react badly.
And, also, so what? People are allowed to say uncontroversial things! Unless you actually think ICE shooting innocent people dead is a good thing, what’s the problem with her stating her opinion?
Just don’t see how Starmer survives these hourly revelations
***NEW*** Peter Mandelson had much deeper links to Russia than previously known, including potentially compromising activity, the Epstein files reveal, raising fresh questions about his vetting for the US ambassador job.
In one email in 2013, Mandelson tells Epstein he is travelling to St Petersburg. Mandelson says “it’s a rave” and there will be what he calls “tastey models and dancing.”
In another message from 2011, Mandelson tells Epstein he is sitting in a club in Moscow after receiving a massage.
In another Mandelson appears to joke about Epstein being accompanied by a woman who is “20 years old and Russian.”
The emails make repeated other references to Mandelson visiting Russia time and again over a period of several years. Several emails allude to extensive business activity in Russia.
Mandelson appears to have openly discussed what he was up to while in Russia on non-secure communications with Epstein.
It goes without saying that this is personally high-risk activity for anyone planning to return to public life, let alone to a sensitive diplomatic posting.
It raises further serious questions about the government vetting process for his appointment as US ambassador.
Have to laugh. Labour wrestle back control from Jezbollah. Installs Blairites all over the machinery of government.
Who sinks the government? The Prince of Darkness himself. Thus sinking his fellow Blairites and instigating the age of whatever we get next. Anyone seen to be associated with *that* will be out.
It's possible that in the long run the Palestine Action verdict could be more problematic for Labour than Mandelson.
This is the sort of thing that leads to hard right governments.
I can live with juries aquiting on the basis of the cause rather than because they didn't think them guilty (see Colston trial in Bristol) but that ought not happen when someone has been savagely assaulted, and I suspect/hope that there is a retrial for that.
Sorry but I can't agree on that. It would be open season on people to damage property so long as it aligns with their 'cause'. One reason I thought those on here championing the Colston acquittal were very silly. We can all have our causes. Some of the worst crimes in history were committed because people believed in causes. It's just a recipe for complete anarchy.
Comments
Edit: The King has nothing in the Royal Diary for the next week. William is off to Saudi Arabia next week. Lucky him.
Nothing for the King published for the next two months. Perhaps that's a security thing, though they're happy to say where the other Royals will be in advance.
NEW - A manuscript amendment has been agreed, govt source say.
It will give the papers that are prejudicial to national security or international relations to the Intelligence and Security Committee.
The government is proposing to amend its own amendment.
After the exemption for international relations it will add “which shall instead be referred to the Intelligence and Security Committee”
This will give the ISC powers to investigate what the Cabinet Secretary has withheld
Now they are the Establishment, pushing the Establishment narrative, saying “F*** ICE” to clapter from the seals in the audience, and not challenging anyone to change their existing opinion on anything.
Exactly. That’s the POINT, loser
@DrHoenderkamp
Goodness me.... Current debate ongoing. Apparently...
During Starmers official trip to USA last year, he had an 'off the books' meeting with Palantir, not listed on any published diary, orchestrated by the man with close links to Palantir, Mandelson, and subsequently Palantir were awarded a £240m contract.... not a British company.
Hollywood are not the establishment, Trump and Ice are.
Saying "f*** ICE" absolutely is challenging the establishment.
https://x.com/PatrickChristys/status/2019066986957824265
Great spot by @Con_Tomlinson - Starmer’s hands shaking whilst discussing Mandelson in the Commons. He knows he’s done.
The mood darkening among Labour backbenchers — and hardening against Starmer. There’s a ‘fin de siècle’ feel to his premiership now.
https://yougov.co.uk/politics/articles/53741-political-favourability-ratings-december-2025
Then he came into politics and before you could say 'knife', or see one in anyone's back, he was Party Leader, facing a Government lead by someone who was flagrantly dishonest, then someone temporary, then someone who was presiding over a fractious, mutinous party, and who was badly advised anyway.
And once he got into Government he discovered that some of his team were, shall we say, not very good at their jobs.
He'd be far better as Attorney general, or perhaps Home Secretary. Or, like Alec Douglas-Home back in the 60's, Foreign Secretary.
I’ve managed the hardest time of year back at work, and have a couple of months more work-training for the holiday walk
And it doesn’t matter if I don’t make it all the way. I’m the only who cares at all, and only because it’ll join up my previous walks. Though I’m pretty sure that just that will be motivation enough for me to endure
This was one of the cats from June, which is why she's got her sleeves rolled up.
I still expect Starmer to fight the next election. Power seems to do something to our psychology, few leaders choose to leave and Labour will not throw him out.
Who will come top?
So maybe Angela or Wes would be even more left wing or damaging. I DON’T FRIGGING CARE. I am so bone-achingly tired of having this gruesome dork represent my great country, Rayner would have more sass and basic inner patriotism, Wes would be smarter and more sensible or at least just NOT STARMER
Get rid of this hapless freak and wake us from this nightmare. And if it gives Labour a ten point boost in the polls, so be it. I’ll accept that as a price I had to pay to stop cringeing
(((Dan Hodges)))
@DPJHodges
3 hours ago Keir Starmer claimed to the House of Commons he could not make concessions on publication for reasons of vital national security. So was he lying about that. Or is national security now getting thrown to the wind in a desperate attempt to save his skin.
Hence no comments on the situation in Iran, which would be the unfashionable opinion to their own audience.
Starmer, when the walls fell.
All the frotting Tories should be allowed their day in the sun. But tomorrow perhaps we should remind them of austerity, Brexit, Boris Johnson, COVID PPE scandals, Partygate, Pincher and Liz Truss.
Nah.
SKS looks done. doesn't he. In which case 1.6 to exit this year looks like trade of the century. But can people remember last June? Kemi was toast then. She was trading at 1.4 to exit that year.
Laying that was my most profitable political bet in ages. Because she wasn't toast.
I am as angry as anyone about what Mandelson has been up to. The disclosures that have been made this week of him passing on sensitive information at the height of the response to the 2008 financial crash are utterly shocking and appalling.
Starmer's not acknowledging the nonce aspect.
Kiazis children, their faces wet
Her bar since 2016 is incredibly low.
If he's sacrificed and quickly and an acceptable replacement found he can buy time for a measured succession with an improvement on the economy,, inflation, cost of living, growth rates, interest rates factored in by many independent analysts for the summer and beyond.
Let the Mandelson shit show play out in terms of parliamentary and criminal action, let Trump do his worst.
Play his strengths on Ukraine, EU progress, get Netanyahu indicted for war crimes, get Jimmy Lai released then handover Autumn 2026 or Spring 2027
Farage more exposed
James not so Cleverly as Tory leader
Not improbable
From a practical point of view he has to go before close of nominations, is that about 20 March ?
https://edition.cnn.com/2026/02/03/europe/meloni-fresco-angel-rome-scli-intl
Whereas in relation to Iran: yes, granted, much more terrible things going on there, but I don't think anyone outside the Mullahs themselves is on the side of the Mullahs, and it's not something we can do a lot about anyway.
Who ran away when things really got nasty.
He can’t just have yet another change of Chief of Staff and then carry on as if nothing happened.
He's surely done for now, I thought he may retire gracefully (September 2027), no chance he lasts beyond June 2026.
If/when a PM is needed, who are the best bets to back whilst a Labour leadership contest is ongoing? A lot of pundits may think Rayner, I prefer Lammy as he is the current Deputy PM. I don't he would win the leadership race though.
Lammy is 60 for next PM on betfair - for me that's value if Starmer resigns suddenly. I can't see him keeping going as a lame duck. As ever, DYOR
***NEW*** Peter Mandelson had much deeper links to Russia than previously known, including potentially compromising activity, the Epstein files reveal, raising fresh questions about his vetting for the US ambassador job.
In one email in 2013, Mandelson tells Epstein he is travelling to St Petersburg. Mandelson says “it’s a rave” and there will be what he calls “tastey models and dancing.”
In another message from 2011, Mandelson tells Epstein he is sitting in a club in Moscow after receiving a massage.
In another Mandelson appears to joke about Epstein being accompanied by a woman who is “20 years old and Russian.”
The emails make repeated other references to Mandelson visiting Russia time and again over a period of several years. Several emails allude to extensive business activity in Russia.
Mandelson appears to have openly discussed what he was up to while in Russia on non-secure communications with Epstein.
It goes without saying that this is personally high-risk activity for anyone planning to return to public life, let alone to a sensitive diplomatic posting.
It raises further serious questions about the government vetting process for his appointment as US ambassador.
Story with @Joe_Mayes @LucyGJWhite >>> bloomberg.com/news/articles/…
He probably didn't think it might end his premiership, otherwise he probably wouldn't have taken it, but that's the game.
There were supporters of the Mullahs out in force in London on Saturday.
This is the sort of thing that leads to hard right governments.
It is mildly amusing that it could be Mandelson that brings down Starmer.
If Starmer remains in post for 3 months, this will help obliterate any chances Labour have of a decent performance at the Senedd, Holyrood and (whats left of) the local elections
Peter Mandelson’s appointment as US ambassador was a political appointment by the PM.
Therefore, there was no “fireside chat” to check things out.
Civil servants told it was the decision of PM and to be enacted.
(Revealed to Commons by John Whittingdale from FCO committee)
Scotland is a Country
Any how would you know what was going on in London?
One easy way to cure them in this situation - resign
Proclamation by the King confirms that Monday 15th June will be a bank holiday in Scotland to celebrate Scotland’s first World Cup match.
I'm not saying speaking out against ICE is particularly brave, yet - certainly not as brave as speaking out against the mullahs in Iran. But the left are no longer the establishment in the USA.
All too often people say "How could it possibly be any worse?" And then -lo- it is actually worse.
And, also, so what? People are allowed to say uncontroversial things! Unless you actually think ICE shooting innocent people dead is a good thing, what’s the problem with her stating her opinion?
NEW THREAD
He is a lame duck PM with questionable time left in office
Who sinks the government? The Prince of Darkness himself. Thus sinking his fellow Blairites and instigating the age of whatever we get next. Anyone seen to be associated with *that* will be out.
https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/paisley-abbey-gargoyle