I really hope there's a higher bar for defamation than that you are 'incorrectly portrayed' in a work of fiction. Feels like a waste of time for lawyers (if that's not an oxymoron). Georgian chess icon Nona Gaprindashvili has filed a defamation lawsuit against Netflix, saying she was incorrectly portrayed in the hit series The Queen's Gambit.
The case refers to a sequence in the drama's final episode which says Gaprindashvili, now 80, had never played competitive chess with men.
The document says that by 1968, the year in which the episode is set, she had faced at least 59 male players.
'In the final episode, a commentator mentions Gaprindashvili when describing Harmon: "The only unusual thing about her, really, is her sex. And even that's not unique in Russia. There's Nona Gaprindashvili, but she's the female world champion and has never faced men."'
That is a statement about a real world person - not even a fictional character based in part on that person. It seems pretty clear to me. Unless there was some subtle point about the fictional commentator being wrong, on a par with some character in a novel talking about Queen Mary III banning her eldest son from Windsor Castle for having pineapple pizzas delivered. But that seems unlikely, not least because most readers wouldn't spot it.
They got a fact wrong, who gives a crap? Is every statement about a real world person going to need to be rigorously fact checked? Does it really equal defamation to get that point wrong, without some personal attack to make it more serious?
I don't think it is trivial. It basically massively downgrades Ms Gaprindashvili in her chosen profession, given the sex/gender bias in chess espwecially in the C20. And that is in a context of a film which is all about female chess players and their achievement. That is a very specific and significant allusion rather than, say, a contemporary allusion to Ginger Rogers' dancing in a film.
Imagine if the film the Battle of Britain had a character that referred to Guy Gibson as a coward [which he most certainly was not].
Whether it is enough to be regarded as defamation, IANAL.
Interesting news on the covid test changes. No need for PCR before travelling home? Good. Still need to have booked a Day 2 Piracy PCR test because you need the barcode number for the locator form? Lets see if they scrub that as well in a few weeks.
Interesting news on the covid test changes. No need for PCR before travelling home? Good. Still need to have booked a Day 2 Piracy PCR test because you need the barcode number for the locator form? Lets see if they scrub that as well in a few weeks.
I stand to be corrected but somewhere in the travel announcements I heard they will be free on the NHS
Yeah I really don't think that any politician would trust Johnson to form a pact with him. He s&&t the bed with his border in the Irish Sea which no British PM could ever agree to and standing staring business people in the eye saying there will be no checks between NI and GB.
You would have to be a special type of stupid to believe anything he said when offering a pact with the political party you lead.
I think that if Johnson lost his majority, there would be a new leader to negotiate with.
That said, there is no way that the Lib Dems would support the party of Brexit. We want closer economic, social and cultural links with the EU. EEA or similar.
Yes absolutely but look at the Cons now - flying high why would there be a new leader? Sure the Cons/BJ's numbers are slipping but this is mid-term they should be shocking instead they are bobbing around parity with Lab and still generally 5pts ahead.
I just don't see a new leader. And I backed Boris to be out by, er, Sep 2021 god help me.
My point is that if Johnson were needing to negotiate a coalition or C and S, he would be doing so because he lost more seats than his current majority. There would be a new Con leader, sure as eggs is eggs. Probably not quickly enough to negotiate though possibly that would be done by an acting leader.
Didn't the LibDems make clear in 2010 that while they might go into coalition with Labour, the price would be replacing Brown? (Not that the maths would have worked).
Yes, I don't think it tenable to support a PM who has just been rejected. Only the DUP make that mistake!
May wasnt rejected, she led the most popularly supported UK wide party.
It was a failure for her as she went backwards but it gets a but overegged.
There's an old saying that Success = Performance - Expectations
There is. And it's the very saying that you reject whenever I try to explain to you why GE17 was a success for Jeremy Corbyn.
It was a relative success but he still lost.
If Accrington Stanley hold Liverpool to a draw, earn a replay at Anfield where they again hold them to a draw, it's still a draw after stoppage time and they only get knocked out via penalties then that would be a great relative success for Accrington Stanley. But they'd still be knocked out and Liverpool would still progress to the next round.
Yes, a success relative to expectations but a technical loss. That's the saying put another way and applied to Corbyn's GE17. Ditto and opposite, with May, a failure relative to expectations but a technical win. Liverpool, Accrington Stanley, May, Corbyn, football, politics, whatever, one just needs to be consistent with it.
And while we're in ticking off mode, I noticed your mask slipped yesterday and you succumbed to "cheese eating surrender monkeys" syntax for France and the French, whilst glorying in this latest Anglosphere v China nonsense. Another outing for "Frogs" was clearly only just resisted.
It was noted. That's all I'll say for now.
I have no qualms and no masks in calling the Frogs cheese eating surrender monkeys. If it's good enough for The Simpsons, it's good enough for me.
Stop being so pretentious.
Impressive.
Bit unnecessary, though. PT is himself a member of the infraorder Simiiformes = monkeys - more specifically than that, an ape - anglice, a jumped-up monkey (like you and me). And I'm sure he eats cheese (ditto).
Yeah I really don't think that any politician would trust Johnson to form a pact with him. He s&&t the bed with his border in the Irish Sea which no British PM could ever agree to and standing staring business people in the eye saying there will be no checks between NI and GB.
You would have to be a special type of stupid to believe anything he said when offering a pact with the political party you lead.
I think that if Johnson lost his majority, there would be a new leader to negotiate with.
That said, there is no way that the Lib Dems would support the party of Brexit. We want closer economic, social and cultural links with the EU. EEA or similar.
Yes absolutely but look at the Cons now - flying high why would there be a new leader? Sure the Cons/BJ's numbers are slipping but this is mid-term they should be shocking instead they are bobbing around parity with Lab and still generally 5pts ahead.
I just don't see a new leader. And I backed Boris to be out by, er, Sep 2021 god help me.
My point is that if Johnson were needing to negotiate a coalition or C and S, he would be doing so because he lost more seats than his current majority. There would be a new Con leader, sure as eggs is eggs. Probably not quickly enough to negotiate though possibly that would be done by an acting leader.
Didn't the LibDems make clear in 2010 that while they might go into coalition with Labour, the price would be replacing Brown? (Not that the maths would have worked).
Yes, I don't think it tenable to support a PM who has just been rejected. Only the DUP make that mistake!
May wasnt rejected, she led the most popularly supported UK wide party.
It was a failure for her as she went backwards but it gets a but overegged.
There's an old saying that Success = Performance - Expectations
There is. And it's the very saying that you reject whenever I try to explain to you why GE17 was a success for Jeremy Corbyn.
It was a relative success but he still lost.
If Accrington Stanley hold Liverpool to a draw, earn a replay at Anfield where they again hold them to a draw, it's still a draw after stoppage time and they only get knocked out via penalties then that would be a great relative success for Accrington Stanley. But they'd still be knocked out and Liverpool would still progress to the next round.
Yes, a success relative to expectations but a technical loss. That's the saying put another way and applied to Corbyn's GE17. Ditto and opposite, with May, a failure relative to expectations but a technical win. Liverpool, Accrington Stanley, May, Corbyn, football, politics, whatever, one just needs to be consistent with it.
And while we're in ticking off mode, I noticed your mask slipped yesterday and you succumbed to "cheese eating surrender monkeys" syntax for France and the French, whilst glorying in this latest Anglosphere v China nonsense. Another outing for "Frogs" was clearly only just resisted.
It was noted. That's all I'll say for now.
"cheese eating surrender monkeys" is an impressive moral vacuity indicator when youi think for 2 seconds why they got called that. I wish my country was cowardly like that.
Becaus But why was France reluctant to get involved? Because it was concerned about civilian damages? Because it was concerned the war was unwinnable? Or because Saddam was France's tame source of oil and weapons contracts?
Granted, being right for the wrong reasons is being still being right. But it doesn't necessarily give any reassurance about its future commitment to a common cause.
If Saddam was France's poodle, then the "common cause" for Britain and America was to leave Iraq alone. Whichever why you slice it, France was right and we were wrong.
Getting rid of Saddam was the right thing to do.
It's a shame what happened afterwards had so many avoidable mistakes. But no regrets that Saddam is gone.
It's disturbing that you have no idea what a breathtakingly inadequate response that is.
Jimmy Savile lived in Leeds. So if we had struck it with shock and awe in say 2005 and then put in an army of occupation, and killed a good 100,000 civilians, would "no regrets that Savile is gone" put the whole issue to bed?
Interesting news on the covid test changes. No need for PCR before travelling home? Good. Still need to have booked a Day 2 Piracy PCR test because you need the barcode number for the locator form? Lets see if they scrub that as well in a few weeks.
I stand to be corrected but somewhere in the travel announcements I heard they will be free on the NHS
Fat chance. This is a massive scam, hence my description of it as "pirate". Read Twitter and it is clear that nobody in the UK cares about actual day 2 tests - they just want you to show you have paid some spiv company for a test before they let you back in.
Think about it. If you fly in with Covid then you develop symptoms and go for a test like anyone else. A separate mandatory test on day 2 doesn't stop you going for an NHS test on day 3 or 5 or whenever you show actual symptoms. And supposedly the same test number can be quoted on repeated locator forms without anyone batting an eyelid.
Seems perfectly feasible to me. Both Starmer and Johnson lose their seats but Rishi Sunak survives as do Liz Truss and Priti Patel so a big battle for the Conservative leadership.
Yeah I really don't think that any politician would trust Johnson to form a pact with him. He s&&t the bed with his border in the Irish Sea which no British PM could ever agree to and standing staring business people in the eye saying there will be no checks between NI and GB.
You would have to be a special type of stupid to believe anything he said when offering a pact with the political party you lead.
I think that if Johnson lost his majority, there would be a new leader to negotiate with.
That said, there is no way that the Lib Dems would support the party of Brexit. We want closer economic, social and cultural links with the EU. EEA or similar.
Yes absolutely but look at the Cons now - flying high why would there be a new leader? Sure the Cons/BJ's numbers are slipping but this is mid-term they should be shocking instead they are bobbing around parity with Lab and still generally 5pts ahead.
I just don't see a new leader. And I backed Boris to be out by, er, Sep 2021 god help me.
My point is that if Johnson were needing to negotiate a coalition or C and S, he would be doing so because he lost more seats than his current majority. There would be a new Con leader, sure as eggs is eggs. Probably not quickly enough to negotiate though possibly that would be done by an acting leader.
Didn't the LibDems make clear in 2010 that while they might go into coalition with Labour, the price would be replacing Brown? (Not that the maths would have worked).
Yes, I don't think it tenable to support a PM who has just been rejected. Only the DUP make that mistake!
May wasnt rejected, she led the most popularly supported UK wide party.
It was a failure for her as she went backwards but it gets a but overegged.
There's an old saying that Success = Performance - Expectations
There is. And it's the very saying that you reject whenever I try to explain to you why GE17 was a success for Jeremy Corbyn.
It was a relative success but he still lost.
If Accrington Stanley hold Liverpool to a draw, earn a replay at Anfield where they again hold them to a draw, it's still a draw after stoppage time and they only get knocked out via penalties then that would be a great relative success for Accrington Stanley. But they'd still be knocked out and Liverpool would still progress to the next round.
Yes, a success relative to expectations but a technical loss. That's the saying put another way and applied to Corbyn's GE17. Ditto and opposite, with May, a failure relative to expectations but a technical win. Liverpool, Accrington Stanley, May, Corbyn, football, politics, whatever, one just needs to be consistent with it.
And while we're in ticking off mode, I noticed your mask slipped yesterday and you succumbed to "cheese eating surrender monkeys" syntax for France and the French, whilst glorying in this latest Anglosphere v China nonsense. Another outing for "Frogs" was clearly only just resisted.
It was noted. That's all I'll say for now.
If you think this Anglosphere v China nonsense is as you describe I would suggest you listen to Japan, South Korea, India, and the Trans Pacific countries to which this is very real, and the reason it is widely backed including by the HoC and even some EU countries
It's above my paygrade, Big G. But my thing is detecting "chaps we can trust" type sentimental belicosity dressed up as geopolitical analysis, and I detected some.
In simple terms Australia wants nuclear powered subs and France was supplying diesel
(Snip)
AIUI it was more complex than that. If Australia had wanted nuclear powered subs, they would have put that in the proposals back when the project started - many aeons ago now.
They've recently changed their minds, and have decided against conventional power in favour of nuclear. In some ways this makes sense, given the area of water they will have to patrol. But France doesn't want to sell its nuclear tech, so something has to give.
Cancelling the contract with Naval Group will be fraught and possibly expensive; however I have little sympathy with NG and France: they really have mucked things up.
However it could stay in power with the 8 DUP MPs if they back the Tories again, assuming SF do not take their seats.
What better way to win over our DUP friends than promising to reduce the abortion time limit to 22 weeks for the whole UK as a bonus while Lord Frost continues to work to remove the Irish Sea border?
If the Conservatives have 316 seats, then they will remain in Government. No government without them is really possible.
Labour + SNP + LD + SDLP + Green + PC + Alliance comes to 318 seats on the new poll average, so the Conservatives would still need the 8 DUP MPs to get to 324 and stay in power
I agree - but that wasn't my point.
The DUP are not going to abstain on a Labour + SNP + LD + SDLP + Green + PC + Alliance confidence motion. Therefore, it is not possible to have a government that did not include the Conservatives.
If the Conservative total was a few seats less (say 312), then a coalition like the one above would be possible, albeit not particularly stable.
I agree but would put the threshold just a tad lower, perhaps 310 in which the Tories could just about stagger on as a deflated minority government surviv
Anyway, there’s not the slightest chance of the next Conservative manifesto containing a commitment to restrict abortions to 22 weeks or any other level. It might conceivably pledge to have another vote on the matter (like Cameron did over hunting…did that ever happen?) but it will be a free vote as it has always been.
But even that is lower than 5%: I doubt the Prime Minister will want to be reminded on the campaign trail of his relationship with Petronnella Wyatt and his encouraging her….
Given the latest polling average gives a hung parliament with the Tories needing DUP support to stay in power, offering the DUP the carrot of a reduction in the abortion limit to 22 weeks for the whole UK as well as lots of dosh for NI while Lord Frost works on trying to remove the Irish Sea border with the EU may be the only way Boris stays in No 10.
In those circumstances, sure, they could offer a vote but no Tory MP will be whipped to support it.
And you were talking about the manifesto which patently is published before the election. That will emphatically not contain any commitment to 22 weeks or any figure. Can you see Boris Johnson even giving it half a second’s thought bearing in mind his past? Be serious.
Then the DUP would likely not give C and S then and Starmer becomes PM.
Donaldson and the DUP are extremely hard and tough negotiators, they will not make the same mistake Clegg did with AV getting a vote out of Cameron but with no promise of support to get it passed.
If there is no Tory majority then the manifesto will not have received a full mandate and have to be adapted, Boris will do so and whatever necessary to stay in power including a whipped vote to get the 22 weeks through and DUP C and S
You have now not only crashed into the buffers but catapulted the train to the road outside the station. Utterly absurd. There is no way that Conservative MPs will be dragooned into voting for something so contentious and that wasn’t even in the manifesto on which they’d campaigned only a couple of weeks earlier. If Johnson tried, which he wouldn’t, the proposal would be overwhelmingly defeated in the Commons and the Tories further weakened.
The DUP will have more important fish to fry if negotiations take place.
OK then, Starmer becomes PM.
Given the Irish Sea border is not going to be removed anytime soon the DUP will refuse to keep Boris and the Tories in power in the meantime unless they not only get vast sums of extra cash for NI but a reduction in the abortion timeframe for the whole UK to partly make up for the legalisation of abortion in NI Westminster imposed on them.
Most Conservative MPs would also support the abortion reduction anyway and especially if it is the only way to keep a Tory government in power so you are wrong
Many Tory MPs might support a reduction but a significant number would not and of those who do, a lot would be horrified that it would be a whipped vote. The proposal would crash and burn (majority against probably 80?) in the Commons and the DUP know that too.
Furthermore, you completely ignore the likely political context. The Tories would have surrendered a majority of 80, a disaster even more profound than 2017. The party would be shattered and I suspect there would be a clamour to accept defeat and go into opposition, rather than staggering on deflated and dejected and at the mercy of the DUP.
I’m afraid you are totally off the wall on this one.
No, a tiny minority might not, mainly social liberals from wealthy commuter Remain areas like yours which are heading LD and may well elect LD MPs anyway.
Social liberals are in decline in the party from a decade ago, social conservatives from the North and Midlands and small town and rural areas are becoming increasingly prominent. The new Tory base and most of the new Tory Parliamentary Party will happily deal with the DUP and happily cut the abortion time limit to 22 weeks to stay in power.
No, we would not accept opposition, though if social liberals prefer to join the LDs in opposition to a Tory-DUP alliance fine, bye then
Where is the slightest shred of evidence among current Conservative MPs, or even the Prime Minister himself, that they would support manifesto commitment that would bind them all to supporting a specified time limit. None whatsoever and it would be the first time ever that the party would do that. Even votes on hanging in the 1950s were free.
You are spouting nonsense and pernicious nonsense at that with all the ugly hallmarks of intolerance and sectarianism that fortunately still has no place whatever in the broad political church that is the Conservative Party. And Boris is with me!
By the way, it is distressing in the extreme that you seem to be gloating at the prospect of Mr Raab’s political demise.
Are non-tories allowed to gloat about Raab?
I’m just catching up with this conversation
Reading it back in two posts @HYUFD moves from abortion term limits being something that the Tories could offer the DUP (wacky idea) to it being something that the DUP would absolutely insist on and would never do a deal without.
Interesting news on the covid test changes. No need for PCR before travelling home? Good. Still need to have booked a Day 2 Piracy PCR test because you need the barcode number for the locator form? Lets see if they scrub that as well in a few weeks.
I stand to be corrected but somewhere in the travel announcements I heard they will be free on the NHS
Fat chance. This is a massive scam, hence my description of it as "pirate". Read Twitter and it is clear that nobody in the UK cares about actual day 2 tests - they just want you to show you have paid some spiv company for a test before they let you back in.
Think about it. If you fly in with Covid then you develop symptoms and go for a test like anyone else. A separate mandatory test on day 2 doesn't stop you going for an NHS test on day 3 or 5 or whenever you show actual symptoms. And supposedly the same test number can be quoted on repeated locator forms without anyone batting an eyelid.
Are you sure as I know it was said tests will be fee on the NHS
However it could stay in power with the 8 DUP MPs if they back the Tories again, assuming SF do not take their seats.
What better way to win over our DUP friends than promising to reduce the abortion time limit to 22 weeks for the whole UK as a bonus while Lord Frost continues to work to remove the Irish Sea border?
If the Conservatives have 316 seats, then they will remain in Government. No government without them is really possible.
Labour + SNP + LD + SDLP + Green + PC + Alliance comes to 318 seats on the new poll average, so the Conservatives would still need the 8 DUP MPs to get to 324 and stay in power
I agree - but that wasn't my point.
The DUP are not going to abstain on a Labour + SNP + LD + SDLP + Green + PC + Alliance confidence motion. Therefore, it is not possible to have a government that did not include the Conservatives.
If the Conservative total was a few seats less (say 312), then a coalition like the one above would be possible, albeit not particularly stable.
I agree but would put the threshold just a tad lower, perhaps 310 in which the Tories could just about stagger on as a deflated minority government surviv
Anyway, there’s not the slightest chance of the next Conservative manifesto containing a commitment to restrict abortions to 22 weeks or any other level. It might conceivably pledge to have another vote on the matter (like Cameron did over hunting…did that ever happen?) but it will be a free vote as it has always been.
But even that is lower than 5%: I doubt the Prime Minister will want to be reminded on the campaign trail of his relationship with Petronnella Wyatt and his encouraging her….
Given the latest polling average gives a hung parliament with the Tories needing DUP support to stay in power, offering the DUP the carrot of a reduction in the abortion limit to 22 weeks for the whole UK as well as lots of dosh for NI while Lord Frost works on trying to remove the Irish Sea border with the EU may be the only way Boris stays in No 10.
In those circumstances, sure, they could offer a vote but no Tory MP will be whipped to support it.
And you were talking about the manifesto which patently is published before the election. That will emphatically not contain any commitment to 22 weeks or any figure. Can you see Boris Johnson even giving it half a second’s thought bearing in mind his past? Be serious.
Then the DUP would likely not give C and S then and Starmer becomes PM.
Donaldson and the DUP are extremely hard and tough negotiators, they will not make the same mistake Clegg did with AV getting a vote out of Cameron but with no promise of support to get it passed.
If there is no Tory majority then the manifesto will not have received a full mandate and have to be adapted, Boris will do so and whatever necessary to stay in power including a whipped vote to get the 22 weeks through and DUP C and S
You have now not only crashed into the buffers but catapulted the train to the road outside the station. Utterly absurd. There is no way that Conservative MPs will be dragooned into voting for something so contentious and that wasn’t even in the manifesto on which they’d campaigned only a couple of weeks earlier. If Johnson tried, which he wouldn’t, the proposal would be overwhelmingly defeated in the Commons and the Tories further weakened.
The DUP will have more important fish to fry if negotiations take place.
OK then, Starmer becomes PM.
Given the Irish Sea border is not going to be removed anytime soon the DUP will refuse to keep Boris and the Tories in power in the meantime unless they not only get vast sums of extra cash for NI but a reduction in the abortion timeframe for the whole UK to partly make up for the legalisation of abortion in NI Westminster imposed on them.
Most Conservative MPs would also support the abortion reduction anyway and especially if it is the only way to keep a Tory government in power so you are wrong
Many Tory MPs might support a reduction but a significant number would not and of those who do, a lot would be horrified that it would be a whipped vote. The proposal would crash and burn (majority against probably 80?) in the Commons and the DUP know that too.
Furthermore, you completely ignore the likely political context. The Tories would have surrendered a majority of 80, a disaster even more profound than 2017. The party would be shattered and I suspect there would be a clamour to accept defeat and go into opposition, rather than staggering on deflated and dejected and at the mercy of the DUP.
I’m afraid you are totally off the wall on this one.
No, a tiny minority might not, mainly social liberals from wealthy commuter Remain areas like yours which are heading LD and may well elect LD MPs anyway.
Social liberals are in decline in the party from a decade ago, social conservatives from the North and Midlands and small town and rural areas are becoming increasingly prominent. The new Tory base and most of the new Tory Parliamentary Party will happily deal with the DUP and happily cut the abortion time limit to 22 weeks to stay in power.
No, we would not accept opposition, though if social liberals prefer to join the LDs in opposition to a Tory-DUP alliance fine, bye then
Where is the slightest shred of evidence among current Conservative MPs, or even the Prime Minister himself, that they would support manifesto commitment that would bind them all to supporting a specified time limit. None whatsoever and it would be the first time ever that the party would do that. Even votes on hanging in the 1950s were free.
You are spouting nonsense and pernicious nonsense at that with all the ugly hallmarks of intolerance and sectarianism that fortunately still has no place whatever in the broad political church that is the Conservative Party. And Boris is with me!
By the way, it is distressing in the extreme that you seem to be gloating at the prospect of Mr Raab’s political demise.
Are non-tories allowed to gloat about Raab?
I’m just catching up with this conversation
Reading it back in two posts @HYUFD moves from abortion term limits being something that the Tories could offer the DUP (wacky idea) to it being something that the DUP would absolutely insist on and would never do a deal without.
Commendable mental agility!
He'll be suggesting closing down the dinosaur and rock dating galleries in the Natural History Museum next.
Yeah I really don't think that any politician would trust Johnson to form a pact with him. He s&&t the bed with his border in the Irish Sea which no British PM could ever agree to and standing staring business people in the eye saying there will be no checks between NI and GB.
You would have to be a special type of stupid to believe anything he said when offering a pact with the political party you lead.
I think that if Johnson lost his majority, there would be a new leader to negotiate with.
That said, there is no way that the Lib Dems would support the party of Brexit. We want closer economic, social and cultural links with the EU. EEA or similar.
Yes absolutely but look at the Cons now - flying high why would there be a new leader? Sure the Cons/BJ's numbers are slipping but this is mid-term they should be shocking instead they are bobbing around parity with Lab and still generally 5pts ahead.
I just don't see a new leader. And I backed Boris to be out by, er, Sep 2021 god help me.
My point is that if Johnson were needing to negotiate a coalition or C and S, he would be doing so because he lost more seats than his current majority. There would be a new Con leader, sure as eggs is eggs. Probably not quickly enough to negotiate though possibly that would be done by an acting leader.
Didn't the LibDems make clear in 2010 that while they might go into coalition with Labour, the price would be replacing Brown? (Not that the maths would have worked).
Yes, I don't think it tenable to support a PM who has just been rejected. Only the DUP make that mistake!
May wasnt rejected, she led the most popularly supported UK wide party.
It was a failure for her as she went backwards but it gets a but overegged.
There's an old saying that Success = Performance - Expectations
There is. And it's the very saying that you reject whenever I try to explain to you why GE17 was a success for Jeremy Corbyn.
It was a relative success but he still lost.
If Accrington Stanley hold Liverpool to a draw, earn a replay at Anfield where they again hold them to a draw, it's still a draw after stoppage time and they only get knocked out via penalties then that would be a great relative success for Accrington Stanley. But they'd still be knocked out and Liverpool would still progress to the next round.
Yes, a success relative to expectations but a technical loss. That's the saying put another way and applied to Corbyn's GE17. Ditto and opposite, with May, a failure relative to expectations but a technical win. Liverpool, Accrington Stanley, May, Corbyn, football, politics, whatever, one just needs to be consistent with it.
And while we're in ticking off mode, I noticed your mask slipped yesterday and you succumbed to "cheese eating surrender monkeys" syntax for France and the French, whilst glorying in this latest Anglosphere v China nonsense. Another outing for "Frogs" was clearly only just resisted.
It was noted. That's all I'll say for now.
If you think this Anglosphere v China nonsense is as you describe I would suggest you listen to Japan, South Korea, India, and the Trans Pacific countries to which this is very real, and the reason it is widely backed including by the HoC and even some EU countries
It's above my paygrade, Big G. But my thing is detecting "chaps we can trust" type sentimental belicosity dressed up as geopolitical analysis, and I detected some.
In simple terms Australia wants nuclear powered subs and France was supplying diesel
Australia agreed with the US to supply the technology which is shared only by the UK to build the subs in Adelaide
The Trans Pacific are building an alliance CPTPP to combat China in trade and with the UK and now US seeking to join
France will be included along with Canada at some point but not in the exclusive AUKUS deal
While I hope the US joins the CPTPP, it is far from certain.
Yes, it’s going to take time, and require Congress to give some latitude to the negotiators - their usual attitude of negotiating international treaties one line at a time isn’t going to work on this one.
In a perfect world, we end up with something that looks a bit like the WTO before they admitted China.
However it could stay in power with the 8 DUP MPs if they back the Tories again, assuming SF do not take their seats.
What better way to win over our DUP friends than promising to reduce the abortion time limit to 22 weeks for the whole UK as a bonus while Lord Frost continues to work to remove the Irish Sea border?
If the Conservatives have 316 seats, then they will remain in Government. No government without them is really possible.
Labour + SNP + LD + SDLP + Green + PC + Alliance comes to 318 seats on the new poll average, so the Conservatives would still need the 8 DUP MPs to get to 324 and stay in power
I agree - but that wasn't my point.
The DUP are not going to abstain on a Labour + SNP + LD + SDLP + Green + PC + Alliance confidence motion. Therefore, it is not possible to have a government that did not include the Conservatives.
If the Conservative total was a few seats less (say 312), then a coalition like the one above would be possible, albeit not particularly stable.
I agree but would put the threshold just a tad lower, perhaps 310 in which the Tories could just about stagger on as a deflated minority government surviv
Anyway, there’s not the slightest chance of the next Conservative manifesto containing a commitment to restrict abortions to 22 weeks or any other level. It might conceivably pledge to have another vote on the matter (like Cameron did over hunting…did that ever happen?) but it will be a free vote as it has always been.
But even that is lower than 5%: I doubt the Prime Minister will want to be reminded on the campaign trail of his relationship with Petronnella Wyatt and his encouraging her….
Given the latest polling average gives a hung parliament with the Tories needing DUP support to stay in power, offering the DUP the carrot of a reduction in the abortion limit to 22 weeks for the whole UK as well as lots of dosh for NI while Lord Frost works on trying to remove the Irish Sea border with the EU may be the only way Boris stays in No 10.
In those circumstances, sure, they could offer a vote but no Tory MP will be whipped to support it.
And you were talking about the manifesto which patently is published before the election. That will emphatically not contain any commitment to 22 weeks or any figure. Can you see Boris Johnson even giving it half a second’s thought bearing in mind his past? Be serious.
Then the DUP would likely not give C and S then and Starmer becomes PM.
Donaldson and the DUP are extremely hard and tough negotiators, they will not make the same mistake Clegg did with AV getting a vote out of Cameron but with no promise of support to get it passed.
If there is no Tory majority then the manifesto will not have received a full mandate and have to be adapted, Boris will do so and whatever necessary to stay in power including a whipped vote to get the 22 weeks through and DUP C and S
You have now not only crashed into the buffers but catapulted the train to the road outside the station. Utterly absurd. There is no way that Conservative MPs will be dragooned into voting for something so contentious and that wasn’t even in the manifesto on which they’d campaigned only a couple of weeks earlier. If Johnson tried, which he wouldn’t, the proposal would be overwhelmingly defeated in the Commons and the Tories further weakened.
The DUP will have more important fish to fry if negotiations take place.
OK then, Starmer becomes PM.
Given the Irish Sea border is not going to be removed anytime soon the DUP will refuse to keep Boris and the Tories in power in the meantime unless they not only get vast sums of extra cash for NI but a reduction in the abortion timeframe for the whole UK to partly make up for the legalisation of abortion in NI Westminster imposed on them.
Most Conservative MPs would also support the abortion reduction anyway and especially if it is the only way to keep a Tory government in power so you are wrong
Many Tory MPs might support a reduction but a significant number would not and of those who do, a lot would be horrified that it would be a whipped vote. The proposal would crash and burn (majority against probably 80?) in the Commons and the DUP know that too.
Furthermore, you completely ignore the likely political context. The Tories would have surrendered a majority of 80, a disaster even more profound than 2017. The party would be shattered and I suspect there would be a clamour to accept defeat and go into opposition, rather than staggering on deflated and dejected and at the mercy of the DUP.
I’m afraid you are totally off the wall on this one.
No, a tiny minority might not, mainly social liberals from wealthy commuter Remain areas like yours which are heading LD and may well elect LD MPs anyway.
Social liberals are in decline in the party from a decade ago, social conservatives from the North and Midlands and small town and rural areas are becoming increasingly prominent. The new Tory base and most of the new Tory Parliamentary Party will happily deal with the DUP and happily cut the abortion time limit to 22 weeks to stay in power.
No, we would not accept opposition, though if social liberals prefer to join the LDs in opposition to a Tory-DUP alliance fine, bye then
Where is the slightest shred of evidence among current Conservative MPs, or even the Prime Minister himself, that they would support manifesto commitment that would bind them all to supporting a specified time limit. None whatsoever and it would be the first time ever that the party would do that. Even votes on hanging in the 1950s were free.
You are spouting nonsense and pernicious nonsense at that with all the ugly hallmarks of intolerance and sectarianism that fortunately still has no place whatever in the broad political church that is the Conservative Party. And Boris is with me!
By the way, it is distressing in the extreme that you seem to be gloating at the prospect of Mr Raab’s political demise.
Are non-tories allowed to gloat about Raab?
I’m just catching up with this conversation
Reading it back in two posts @HYUFD moves from abortion term limits being something that the Tories could offer the DUP (wacky idea) to it being something that the DUP would absolutely insist on and would never do a deal without.
Commendable mental agility!
He'll be suggesting closing down the dinosaur and rock dating galleries in the Natural History Museum next.
The earth is 30 years old and the things people claim are older (like the ZX81) were just put here by Allah to test us.
Interesting news on the covid test changes. No need for PCR before travelling home? Good. Still need to have booked a Day 2 Piracy PCR test because you need the barcode number for the locator form? Lets see if they scrub that as well in a few weeks.
I stand to be corrected but somewhere in the travel announcements I heard they will be free on the NHS
Fat chance. This is a massive scam, hence my description of it as "pirate". Read Twitter and it is clear that nobody in the UK cares about actual day 2 tests - they just want you to show you have paid some spiv company for a test before they let you back in.
Think about it. If you fly in with Covid then you develop symptoms and go for a test like anyone else. A separate mandatory test on day 2 doesn't stop you going for an NHS test on day 3 or 5 or whenever you show actual symptoms. And supposedly the same test number can be quoted on repeated locator forms without anyone batting an eyelid.
Are you sure as I know it was said tests will be fee on the NHS
Might help. Thing is that currently they aren't even tests. So many people seem to be waltzing through with just a test number and zero interest in actually needing to get the thing done. Someone rang LBC, their day 2 test kit didn't arrive til day 6 and nobody cares.
As we have never been interested in staffing the border properly this isn't a surprise. Mandatory locator forms seem to have only been intermittently collected, tests that are just a revenue stream for scammers etc etc. As always, do it properly or don't bother.
Yeah I really don't think that any politician would trust Johnson to form a pact with him. He s&&t the bed with his border in the Irish Sea which no British PM could ever agree to and standing staring business people in the eye saying there will be no checks between NI and GB.
You would have to be a special type of stupid to believe anything he said when offering a pact with the political party you lead.
I think that if Johnson lost his majority, there would be a new leader to negotiate with.
That said, there is no way that the Lib Dems would support the party of Brexit. We want closer economic, social and cultural links with the EU. EEA or similar.
Yes absolutely but look at the Cons now - flying high why would there be a new leader? Sure the Cons/BJ's numbers are slipping but this is mid-term they should be shocking instead they are bobbing around parity with Lab and still generally 5pts ahead.
I just don't see a new leader. And I backed Boris to be out by, er, Sep 2021 god help me.
My point is that if Johnson were needing to negotiate a coalition or C and S, he would be doing so because he lost more seats than his current majority. There would be a new Con leader, sure as eggs is eggs. Probably not quickly enough to negotiate though possibly that would be done by an acting leader.
Didn't the LibDems make clear in 2010 that while they might go into coalition with Labour, the price would be replacing Brown? (Not that the maths would have worked).
Yes, I don't think it tenable to support a PM who has just been rejected. Only the DUP make that mistake!
May wasnt rejected, she led the most popularly supported UK wide party.
It was a failure for her as she went backwards but it gets a but overegged.
There's an old saying that Success = Performance - Expectations
There is. And it's the very saying that you reject whenever I try to explain to you why GE17 was a success for Jeremy Corbyn.
It was a relative success but he still lost.
If Accrington Stanley hold Liverpool to a draw, earn a replay at Anfield where they again hold them to a draw, it's still a draw after stoppage time and they only get knocked out via penalties then that would be a great relative success for Accrington Stanley. But they'd still be knocked out and Liverpool would still progress to the next round.
Yes, a success relative to expectations but a technical loss. That's the saying put another way and applied to Corbyn's GE17. Ditto and opposite, with May, a failure relative to expectations but a technical win. Liverpool, Accrington Stanley, May, Corbyn, football, politics, whatever, one just needs to be consistent with it.
And while we're in ticking off mode, I noticed your mask slipped yesterday and you succumbed to "cheese eating surrender monkeys" syntax for France and the French, whilst glorying in this latest Anglosphere v China nonsense. Another outing for "Frogs" was clearly only just resisted.
It was noted. That's all I'll say for now.
"cheese eating surrender monkeys" is an impressive moral vacuity indicator when youi think for 2 seconds why they got called that. I wish my country was cowardly like that.
Becaus But why was France reluctant to get involved? Because it was concerned about civilian damages? Because it was concerned the war was unwinnable? Or because Saddam was France's tame source of oil and weapons contracts?
Granted, being right for the wrong reasons is being still being right. But it doesn't necessarily give any reassurance about its future commitment to a common cause.
If Saddam was France's poodle, then the "common cause" for Britain and America was to leave Iraq alone. Whichever why you slice it, France was right and we were wrong.
Getting rid of Saddam was the right thing to do.
It's a shame what happened afterwards had so many avoidable mistakes. But no regrets that Saddam is gone.
It's disturbing that you have no idea what a breathtakingly inadequate response that is.
Jimmy Savile lived in Leeds. So if we had struck it with shock and awe in say 2005 and then put in an army of occupation, and killed a good 100,000 civilians, would "no regrets that Savile is gone" put the whole issue to bed?
Last I checked Leeds isn't a foreign country of which Saville was its unelected dictator suppressing his own citizens.
I'd like to see a citation on the claim the UK has killed 100k civilians. I call BS on that.
However it could stay in power with the 8 DUP MPs if they back the Tories again, assuming SF do not take their seats.
What better way to win over our DUP friends than promising to reduce the abortion time limit to 22 weeks for the whole UK as a bonus while Lord Frost continues to work to remove the Irish Sea border?
If the Conservatives have 316 seats, then they will remain in Government. No government without them is really possible.
Labour + SNP + LD + SDLP + Green + PC + Alliance comes to 318 seats on the new poll average, so the Conservatives would still need the 8 DUP MPs to get to 324 and stay in power
I agree - but that wasn't my point.
The DUP are not going to abstain on a Labour + SNP + LD + SDLP + Green + PC + Alliance confidence motion. Therefore, it is not possible to have a government that did not include the Conservatives.
If the Conservative total was a few seats less (say 312), then a coalition like the one above would be possible, albeit not particularly stable.
I agree but would put the threshold just a tad lower, perhaps 310 in which the Tories could just about stagger on as a deflated minority government surviv
Anyway, there’s not the slightest chance of the next Conservative manifesto containing a commitment to restrict abortions to 22 weeks or any other level. It might conceivably pledge to have another vote on the matter (like Cameron did over hunting…did that ever happen?) but it will be a free vote as it has always been.
But even that is lower than 5%: I doubt the Prime Minister will want to be reminded on the campaign trail of his relationship with Petronnella Wyatt and his encouraging her….
Given the latest polling average gives a hung parliament with the Tories needing DUP support to stay in power, offering the DUP the carrot of a reduction in the abortion limit to 22 weeks for the whole UK as well as lots of dosh for NI while Lord Frost works on trying to remove the Irish Sea border with the EU may be the only way Boris stays in No 10.
In those circumstances, sure, they could offer a vote but no Tory MP will be whipped to support it.
And you were talking about the manifesto which patently is published before the election. That will emphatically not contain any commitment to 22 weeks or any figure. Can you see Boris Johnson even giving it half a second’s thought bearing in mind his past? Be serious.
Then the DUP would likely not give C and S then and Starmer becomes PM.
Donaldson and the DUP are extremely hard and tough negotiators, they will not make the same mistake Clegg did with AV getting a vote out of Cameron but with no promise of support to get it passed.
If there is no Tory majority then the manifesto will not have received a full mandate and have to be adapted, Boris will do so and whatever necessary to stay in power including a whipped vote to get the 22 weeks through and DUP C and S
You have now not only crashed into the buffers but catapulted the train to the road outside the station. Utterly absurd. There is no way that Conservative MPs will be dragooned into voting for something so contentious and that wasn’t even in the manifesto on which they’d campaigned only a couple of weeks earlier. If Johnson tried, which he wouldn’t, the proposal would be overwhelmingly defeated in the Commons and the Tories further weakened.
The DUP will have more important fish to fry if negotiations take place.
OK then, Starmer becomes PM.
Given the Irish Sea border is not going to be removed anytime soon the DUP will refuse to keep Boris and the Tories in power in the meantime unless they not only get vast sums of extra cash for NI but a reduction in the abortion timeframe for the whole UK to partly make up for the legalisation of abortion in NI Westminster imposed on them.
Most Conservative MPs would also support the abortion reduction anyway and especially if it is the only way to keep a Tory government in power so you are wrong
Many Tory MPs might support a reduction but a significant number would not and of those who do, a lot would be horrified that it would be a whipped vote. The proposal would crash and burn (majority against probably 80?) in the Commons and the DUP know that too.
Furthermore, you completely ignore the likely political context. The Tories would have surrendered a majority of 80, a disaster even more profound than 2017. The party would be shattered and I suspect there would be a clamour to accept defeat and go into opposition, rather than staggering on deflated and dejected and at the mercy of the DUP.
I’m afraid you are totally off the wall on this one.
No, a tiny minority might not, mainly social liberals from wealthy commuter Remain areas like yours which are heading LD and may well elect LD MPs anyway.
Social liberals are in decline in the party from a decade ago, social conservatives from the North and Midlands and small town and rural areas are becoming increasingly prominent. The new Tory base and most of the new Tory Parliamentary Party will happily deal with the DUP and happily cut the abortion time limit to 22 weeks to stay in power.
No, we would not accept opposition, though if social liberals prefer to join the LDs in opposition to a Tory-DUP alliance fine, bye then
Where is the slightest shred of evidence among current Conservative MPs, or even the Prime Minister himself, that they would support manifesto commitment that would bind them all to supporting a specified time limit. None whatsoever and it would be the first time ever that the party would do that. Even votes on hanging in the 1950s were free.
You are spouting nonsense and pernicious nonsense at that with all the ugly hallmarks of intolerance and sectarianism that fortunately still has no place whatever in the broad political church that is the Conservative Party. And Boris is with me!
By the way, it is distressing in the extreme that you seem to be gloating at the prospect of Mr Raab’s political demise.
Are non-tories allowed to gloat about Raab?
I’m just catching up with this conversation
Reading it back in two posts @HYUFD moves from abortion term limits being something that the Tories could offer the DUP (wacky idea) to it being something that the DUP would absolutely insist on and would never do a deal without.
Commendable mental agility!
He'll be suggesting closing down the dinosaur and rock dating galleries in the Natural History Museum next.
The earth is 30 years old and the things people claim are older (like the ZX81) were just put here by Allah to test us.
Does that mean the death of Sir Clive Sinclair is actually The Rapture?
Hospital did not refer husband urgently to ENT. After calling them endlessly, still no answer from ENT service. GP has no urgent appointments. NHS 111 promised to get a duty doctor to call. No call.
Now Husband running temperature, feeling worse and throat really quite painful. He has not eaten since Wednesday evening. So he needs some medication, some useful help and it is Friday evening. We are about to embark on our third trip in as many days to A&E and this time I am going inside and will be kicking up a fuss until they do something useful.
If necessary I will drive him to Manchester or Preston or London come to that.
This is just not good enough. It is scary. He is scared. I am furious.
Hospital did not refer husband urgently to ENT. After calling them endlessly, still no answer from ENT service. GP has no urgent appointments. NHS 111 promised to get a duty doctor to call. No call.
Now Husband running temperature, feeling worse and throat really quite painful. He has not eaten since Wednesday evening. So he needs some medication, some useful help and it is Friday evening. We are about to embark on our third trip in as many days to A&E and this time I am going inside and will be kicking up a fuss until they do something useful.
If necessary I will drive him to Manchester or Preston or London come to that.
This is just not good enough. It is scary. He is scared. I am furious.
Some really bold leaks coming from State Department. In one France was not informed because “we knew they would go ballistic.” In another France was not informed “because we thought it was no big deal.” In a third the whole idea came from Australia
According to Le Monde, Mons. Macron himself was warned.
The way Paris says it learned the news is revealing and feeds the anger of French officials. According to our information, it was during a meeting on Wednesday morning, just hours before the official White House press conference, that Emmanuel Macron was formally warned, by his Australian counterpart, who wanted to speak to him as soon as possible. . Around the table are notably the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Jean-Yves Le Drian, and the Minister of the Armed Forces, Florence Parly. Both are also informed by their entourage that their Australian counterparts wish to reach them urgently. Eyes meet and everyone quickly understands that the Naval Group submarine contract is in peril. The Council of Ministers is held in the wake, in a hectic atmosphere. https://www.lemonde.fr/international/article/2021/09/17/la-diplomatie-militaire-francaise-mise-en-echec_6095012_3210.html
Am I a bad person for laughing at Laura Loomer catching Covid-19?
The far-right, anti-Muslim, anti-vaccine conspiracy theorist Laura Loomer says she’s tested positive for the coronavirus, after suffering from severe symptoms that she wrote left her feeling like she “got hit by a bus.”
In a post on the Trumpist social network Gettr, Loomer complained that she started suffering from “fever, chills, a runny nose, sore throat, nausea and severe body aches” on Wednesday that she said felt like “a bad case of the flu... So I took a COVID test and it came back POSITIVE.”
She added: “I have not taken the COVID-19 vaccine, and I don’t plan on ever taking it because it is unsafe and ineffective. Today, I immediately started a treatment of Azithromyacin and Hydroxychloroquine. I’m also taking the OrthoMune dietary supplement.” She said she’s also received the Regeneron antibody treatment used by ex-President Donald Trump.
Last year, Loomer expressed a wish that she could catch COVID to show everyone that it was no big deal. She wrote on Parler in December 2020: “I hope I get COVID just so I can prove to people I’ve had bouts of food poisoning that are more serious and life threatening than a hyped up virus. Have you ever eaten bad fajitas? That will kill you faster than COVID.”
However, in follow-up messages on her Telegram channel late Thursday, she made it clear that she was suffering severe symptoms. “Just pray for me please,” she wrote. “Can’t even begin to explain how brutal the body aches and nausea that come with COVID are. I am in so much pain.”
She then posted more vaccine conspiracy theories, writing that the government “doesn’t want you to know what it really does,” despite the scientific fact that it would have offered her some protection.
Baffling. Scepticism is fine, but how can someone be so convinced, when what evidence we have disagrees? I have a couple of mates like this, I find it strange…
However it could stay in power with the 8 DUP MPs if they back the Tories again, assuming SF do not take their seats.
What better way to win over our DUP friends than promising to reduce the abortion time limit to 22 weeks for the whole UK as a bonus while Lord Frost continues to work to remove the Irish Sea border?
If the Conservatives have 316 seats, then they will remain in Government. No government without them is really possible.
Labour + SNP + LD + SDLP + Green + PC + Alliance comes to 318 seats on the new poll average, so the Conservatives would still need the 8 DUP MPs to get to 324 and stay in power
I agree - but that wasn't my point.
The DUP are not going to abstain on a Labour + SNP + LD + SDLP + Green + PC + Alliance confidence motion. Therefore, it is not possible to have a government that did not include the Conservatives.
If the Conservative total was a few seats less (say 312), then a coalition like the one above would be possible, albeit not particularly stable.
I agree but would put the threshold just a tad lower, perhaps 310 in which the Tories could just about stagger on as a deflated minority government surviv
Anyway, there’s not the slightest chance of the next Conservative manifesto containing a commitment to restrict abortions to 22 weeks or any other level. It might conceivably pledge to have another vote on the matter (like Cameron did over hunting…did that ever happen?) but it will be a free vote as it has always been.
But even that is lower than 5%: I doubt the Prime Minister will want to be reminded on the campaign trail of his relationship with Petronnella Wyatt and his encouraging her….
Given the latest polling average gives a hung parliament with the Tories needing DUP support to stay in power, offering the DUP the carrot of a reduction in the abortion limit to 22 weeks for the whole UK as well as lots of dosh for NI while Lord Frost works on trying to remove the Irish Sea border with the EU may be the only way Boris stays in No 10.
In those circumstances, sure, they could offer a vote but no Tory MP will be whipped to support it.
And you were talking about the manifesto which patently is published before the election. That will emphatically not contain any commitment to 22 weeks or any figure. Can you see Boris Johnson even giving it half a second’s thought bearing in mind his past? Be serious.
Then the DUP would likely not give C and S then and Starmer becomes PM.
Donaldson and the DUP are extremely hard and tough negotiators, they will not make the same mistake Clegg did with AV getting a vote out of Cameron but with no promise of support to get it passed.
If there is no Tory majority then the manifesto will not have received a full mandate and have to be adapted, Boris will do so and whatever necessary to stay in power including a whipped vote to get the 22 weeks through and DUP C and S
You have now not only crashed into the buffers but catapulted the train to the road outside the station. Utterly absurd. There is no way that Conservative MPs will be dragooned into voting for something so contentious and that wasn’t even in the manifesto on which they’d campaigned only a couple of weeks earlier. If Johnson tried, which he wouldn’t, the proposal would be overwhelmingly defeated in the Commons and the Tories further weakened.
The DUP will have more important fish to fry if negotiations take place.
OK then, Starmer becomes PM.
Given the Irish Sea border is not going to be removed anytime soon the DUP will refuse to keep Boris and the Tories in power in the meantime unless they not only get vast sums of extra cash for NI but a reduction in the abortion timeframe for the whole UK to partly make up for the legalisation of abortion in NI Westminster imposed on them.
Most Conservative MPs would also support the abortion reduction anyway and especially if it is the only way to keep a Tory government in power so you are wrong
Many Tory MPs might support a reduction but a significant number would not and of those who do, a lot would be horrified that it would be a whipped vote. The proposal would crash and burn (majority against probably 80?) in the Commons and the DUP know that too.
Furthermore, you completely ignore the likely political context. The Tories would have surrendered a majority of 80, a disaster even more profound than 2017. The party would be shattered and I suspect there would be a clamour to accept defeat and go into opposition, rather than staggering on deflated and dejected and at the mercy of the DUP.
I’m afraid you are totally off the wall on this one.
No, a tiny minority might not, mainly social liberals from wealthy commuter Remain areas like yours which are heading LD and may well elect LD MPs anyway.
Social liberals are in decline in the party from a decade ago, social conservatives from the North and Midlands and small town and rural areas are becoming increasingly prominent. The new Tory base and most of the new Tory Parliamentary Party will happily deal with the DUP and happily cut the abortion time limit to 22 weeks to stay in power.
No, we would not accept opposition, though if social liberals prefer to join the LDs in opposition to a Tory-DUP alliance fine, bye then
Where is the slightest shred of evidence among current Conservative MPs, or even the Prime Minister himself, that they would support manifesto commitment that would bind them all to supporting a specified time limit. None whatsoever and it would be the first time ever that the party would do that. Even votes on hanging in the 1950s were free.
You are spouting nonsense and pernicious nonsense at that with all the ugly hallmarks of intolerance and sectarianism that fortunately still has no place whatever in the broad political church that is the Conservative Party. And Boris is with me!
By the way, it is distressing in the extreme that you seem to be gloating at the prospect of Mr Raab’s political demise.
Are non-tories allowed to gloat about Raab?
I’m just catching up with this conversation
Reading it back in two posts @HYUFD moves from abortion term limits being something that the Tories could offer the DUP (wacky idea) to it being something that the DUP would absolutely insist on and would never do a deal without.
Commendable mental agility!
He'll be suggesting closing down the dinosaur and rock dating galleries in the Natural History Museum next.
The earth is 30 years old and the things people claim are older (like the ZX81) were just put here by Allah to test us.
Does that mean the death of Sir Clive Sinclair is actually The Rapture?
Yes. Are you still here? That means you were not chosen. Now you have to stay here and watch GB News with the rest of us sinners.
Interesting news on the covid test changes. No need for PCR before travelling home? Good. Still need to have booked a Day 2 Piracy PCR test because you need the barcode number for the locator form? Lets see if they scrub that as well in a few weeks.
I stand to be corrected but somewhere in the travel announcements I heard they will be free on the NHS
Fat chance. This is a massive scam, hence my description of it as "pirate". Read Twitter and it is clear that nobody in the UK cares about actual day 2 tests - they just want you to show you have paid some spiv company for a test before they let you back in.
Think about it. If you fly in with Covid then you develop symptoms and go for a test like anyone else. A separate mandatory test on day 2 doesn't stop you going for an NHS test on day 3 or 5 or whenever you show actual symptoms. And supposedly the same test number can be quoted on repeated locator forms without anyone batting an eyelid.
Are you sure as I know it was said tests will be fee on the NHS
Might help. Thing is that currently they aren't even tests. So many people seem to be waltzing through with just a test number and zero interest in actually needing to get the thing done. Someone rang LBC, their day 2 test kit didn't arrive til day 6 and nobody cares.
As we have never been interested in staffing the border properly this isn't a surprise. Mandatory locator forms seem to have only been intermittently collected, tests that are just a revenue stream for scammers etc etc. As always, do it properly or don't bother.
This is from Sky
'From 4 October, the current traffic light system of red, amber and green countries will be scrapped and replaced with one red list only.
Anywhere not on the red list is considered green and clear for travel - there will no longer be an amber list.
Also from that date, passengers who are fully vaccinated will no longer need to take a pre-departure test for travelling into England from non-red list countries.
Then, from the end of October, they will be able to replace their day-two PCR test with a cheaper lateral flow test'.
Not sure where the free NHS test came from but it does look much cheaper unless you are unvaccinated
However it could stay in power with the 8 DUP MPs if they back the Tories again, assuming SF do not take their seats.
What better way to win over our DUP friends than promising to reduce the abortion time limit to 22 weeks for the whole UK as a bonus while Lord Frost continues to work to remove the Irish Sea border?
If the Conservatives have 316 seats, then they will remain in Government. No government without them is really possible.
Labour + SNP + LD + SDLP + Green + PC + Alliance comes to 318 seats on the new poll average, so the Conservatives would still need the 8 DUP MPs to get to 324 and stay in power
I agree - but that wasn't my point.
The DUP are not going to abstain on a Labour + SNP + LD + SDLP + Green + PC + Alliance confidence motion. Therefore, it is not possible to have a government that did not include the Conservatives.
If the Conservative total was a few seats less (say 312), then a coalition like the one above would be possible, albeit not particularly stable.
I agree but would put the threshold just a tad lower, perhaps 310 in which the Tories could just about stagger on as a deflated minority government surviv
Anyway, there’s not the slightest chance of the next Conservative manifesto containing a commitment to restrict abortions to 22 weeks or any other level. It might conceivably pledge to have another vote on the matter (like Cameron did over hunting…did that ever happen?) but it will be a free vote as it has always been.
But even that is lower than 5%: I doubt the Prime Minister will want to be reminded on the campaign trail of his relationship with Petronnella Wyatt and his encouraging her….
Given the latest polling average gives a hung parliament with the Tories needing DUP support to stay in power, offering the DUP the carrot of a reduction in the abortion limit to 22 weeks for the whole UK as well as lots of dosh for NI while Lord Frost works on trying to remove the Irish Sea border with the EU may be the only way Boris stays in No 10.
In those circumstances, sure, they could offer a vote but no Tory MP will be whipped to support it.
And you were talking about the manifesto which patently is published before the election. That will emphatically not contain any commitment to 22 weeks or any figure. Can you see Boris Johnson even giving it half a second’s thought bearing in mind his past? Be serious.
Then the DUP would likely not give C and S then and Starmer becomes PM.
Donaldson and the DUP are extremely hard and tough negotiators, they will not make the same mistake Clegg did with AV getting a vote out of Cameron but with no promise of support to get it passed.
If there is no Tory majority then the manifesto will not have received a full mandate and have to be adapted, Boris will do so and whatever necessary to stay in power including a whipped vote to get the 22 weeks through and DUP C and S
You have now not only crashed into the buffers but catapulted the train to the road outside the station. Utterly absurd. There is no way that Conservative MPs will be dragooned into voting for something so contentious and that wasn’t even in the manifesto on which they’d campaigned only a couple of weeks earlier. If Johnson tried, which he wouldn’t, the proposal would be overwhelmingly defeated in the Commons and the Tories further weakened.
The DUP will have more important fish to fry if negotiations take place.
OK then, Starmer becomes PM.
Given the Irish Sea border is not going to be removed anytime soon the DUP will refuse to keep Boris and the Tories in power in the meantime unless they not only get vast sums of extra cash for NI but a reduction in the abortion timeframe for the whole UK to partly make up for the legalisation of abortion in NI Westminster imposed on them.
Most Conservative MPs would also support the abortion reduction anyway and especially if it is the only way to keep a Tory government in power so you are wrong
Many Tory MPs might support a reduction but a significant number would not and of those who do, a lot would be horrified that it would be a whipped vote. The proposal would crash and burn (majority against probably 80?) in the Commons and the DUP know that too.
Furthermore, you completely ignore the likely political context. The Tories would have surrendered a majority of 80, a disaster even more profound than 2017. The party would be shattered and I suspect there would be a clamour to accept defeat and go into opposition, rather than staggering on deflated and dejected and at the mercy of the DUP.
I’m afraid you are totally off the wall on this one.
No, a tiny minority might not, mainly social liberals from wealthy commuter Remain areas like yours which are heading LD and may well elect LD MPs anyway.
Social liberals are in decline in the party from a decade ago, social conservatives from the North and Midlands and small town and rural areas are becoming increasingly prominent. The new Tory base and most of the new Tory Parliamentary Party will happily deal with the DUP and happily cut the abortion time limit to 22 weeks to stay in power.
No, we would not accept opposition, though if social liberals prefer to join the LDs in opposition to a Tory-DUP alliance fine, bye then
Where is the slightest shred of evidence among current Conservative MPs, or even the Prime Minister himself, that they would support manifesto commitment that would bind them all to supporting a specified time limit. None whatsoever and it would be the first time ever that the party would do that. Even votes on hanging in the 1950s were free.
You are spouting nonsense and pernicious nonsense at that with all the ugly hallmarks of intolerance and sectarianism that fortunately still has no place whatever in the broad political church that is the Conservative Party. And Boris is with me!
By the way, it is distressing in the extreme that you seem to be gloating at the prospect of Mr Raab’s political demise.
Are non-tories allowed to gloat about Raab?
I’m just catching up with this conversation
Reading it back in two posts @HYUFD moves from abortion term limits being something that the Tories could offer the DUP (wacky idea) to it being something that the DUP would absolutely insist on and would never do a deal without.
Commendable mental agility!
He'll be suggesting closing down the dinosaur and rock dating galleries in the Natural History Museum next.
The earth is 30 years old and the things people claim are older (like the ZX81) were just put here by Allah to test us.
That's basically what Philip Gosse the zoologist wrote ca 1850 (I forget the exact date), though his timing was more like the DUP's. Did not go down well even then.
Yeah I really don't think that any politician would trust Johnson to form a pact with him. He s&&t the bed with his border in the Irish Sea which no British PM could ever agree to and standing staring business people in the eye saying there will be no checks between NI and GB.
You would have to be a special type of stupid to believe anything he said when offering a pact with the political party you lead.
I think that if Johnson lost his majority, there would be a new leader to negotiate with.
That said, there is no way that the Lib Dems would support the party of Brexit. We want closer economic, social and cultural links with the EU. EEA or similar.
Yes absolutely but look at the Cons now - flying high why would there be a new leader? Sure the Cons/BJ's numbers are slipping but this is mid-term they should be shocking instead they are bobbing around parity with Lab and still generally 5pts ahead.
I just don't see a new leader. And I backed Boris to be out by, er, Sep 2021 god help me.
My point is that if Johnson were needing to negotiate a coalition or C and S, he would be doing so because he lost more seats than his current majority. There would be a new Con leader, sure as eggs is eggs. Probably not quickly enough to negotiate though possibly that would be done by an acting leader.
Didn't the LibDems make clear in 2010 that while they might go into coalition with Labour, the price would be replacing Brown? (Not that the maths would have worked).
Yes, I don't think it tenable to support a PM who has just been rejected. Only the DUP make that mistake!
May wasnt rejected, she led the most popularly supported UK wide party.
It was a failure for her as she went backwards but it gets a but overegged.
There's an old saying that Success = Performance - Expectations
There is. And it's the very saying that you reject whenever I try to explain to you why GE17 was a success for Jeremy Corbyn.
It was a relative success but he still lost.
If Accrington Stanley hold Liverpool to a draw, earn a replay at Anfield where they again hold them to a draw, it's still a draw after stoppage time and they only get knocked out via penalties then that would be a great relative success for Accrington Stanley. But they'd still be knocked out and Liverpool would still progress to the next round.
Yes, a success relative to expectations but a technical loss. That's the saying put another way and applied to Corbyn's GE17. Ditto and opposite, with May, a failure relative to expectations but a technical win. Liverpool, Accrington Stanley, May, Corbyn, football, politics, whatever, one just needs to be consistent with it.
And while we're in ticking off mode, I noticed your mask slipped yesterday and you succumbed to "cheese eating surrender monkeys" syntax for France and the French, whilst glorying in this latest Anglosphere v China nonsense. Another outing for "Frogs" was clearly only just resisted.
It was noted. That's all I'll say for now.
"cheese eating surrender monkeys" is an impressive moral vacuity indicator when youi think for 2 seconds why they got called that. I wish my country was cowardly like that.
Becaus But why was France reluctant to get involved? Because it was concerned about civilian damages? Because it was concerned the war was unwinnable? Or because Saddam was France's tame source of oil and weapons contracts?
Granted, being right for the wrong reasons is being still being right. But it doesn't necessarily give any reassurance about its future commitment to a common cause.
If Saddam was France's poodle, then the "common cause" for Britain and America was to leave Iraq alone. Whichever why you slice it, France was right and we were wrong.
Getting rid of Saddam was the right thing to do.
It's a shame what happened afterwards had so many avoidable mistakes. But no regrets that Saddam is gone.
It's disturbing that you have no idea what a breathtakingly inadequate response that is.
Jimmy Savile lived in Leeds. So if we had struck it with shock and awe in say 2005 and then put in an army of occupation, and killed a good 100,000 civilians, would "no regrets that Savile is gone" put the whole issue to bed?
Last I checked Leeds isn't a foreign country of which Saville was its unelected dictator suppressing his own citizens.
I'd like to see a citation on the claim the UK has killed 100k civilians. I call BS on that.
It's a shame what happened afterwards had so many avoidable mistakes. But no regrets that Saddam is gone.
The first problem was Washington's appointed successor (Chalabi) had absolutely no support on the ground. Once that little nugget emerged, the Americans were stuck because they had no alternative coherent plan for the Government of Iraq and the governing of the country.
The fall of the Ba'athists not only removed Saddam but also created a dangerous power vacuum which allowed for the re-emergence of old vendettas and the settling of old scores.
The other problem was the over-rapid dismantling of the Ba'athist command and control structures further left the country bereft of any central Government or control allowing local warlords and religious leaders to establish their own fiefdoms in the chaos.
However it could stay in power with the 8 DUP MPs if they back the Tories again, assuming SF do not take their seats.
What better way to win over our DUP friends than promising to reduce the abortion time limit to 22 weeks for the whole UK as a bonus while Lord Frost continues to work to remove the Irish Sea border?
If the Conservatives have 316 seats, then they will remain in Government. No government without them is really possible.
Labour + SNP + LD + SDLP + Green + PC + Alliance comes to 318 seats on the new poll average, so the Conservatives would still need the 8 DUP MPs to get to 324 and stay in power
I agree - but that wasn't my point.
The DUP are not going to abstain on a Labour + SNP + LD + SDLP + Green + PC + Alliance confidence motion. Therefore, it is not possible to have a government that did not include the Conservatives.
If the Conservative total was a few seats less (say 312), then a coalition like the one above would be possible, albeit not particularly stable.
I agree but would put the threshold just a tad lower, perhaps 310 in which the Tories could just about stagger on as a deflated minority government surviv
Anyway, there’s not the slightest chance of the next Conservative manifesto containing a commitment to restrict abortions to 22 weeks or any other level. It might conceivably pledge to have another vote on the matter (like Cameron did over hunting…did that ever happen?) but it will be a free vote as it has always been.
But even that is lower than 5%: I doubt the Prime Minister will want to be reminded on the campaign trail of his relationship with Petronnella Wyatt and his encouraging her….
Given the latest polling average gives a hung parliament with the Tories needing DUP support to stay in power, offering the DUP the carrot of a reduction in the abortion limit to 22 weeks for the whole UK as well as lots of dosh for NI while Lord Frost works on trying to remove the Irish Sea border with the EU may be the only way Boris stays in No 10.
In those circumstances, sure, they could offer a vote but no Tory MP will be whipped to support it.
And you were talking about the manifesto which patently is published before the election. That will emphatically not contain any commitment to 22 weeks or any figure. Can you see Boris Johnson even giving it half a second’s thought bearing in mind his past? Be serious.
Then the DUP would likely not give C and S then and Starmer becomes PM.
Donaldson and the DUP are extremely hard and tough negotiators, they will not make the same mistake Clegg did with AV getting a vote out of Cameron but with no promise of support to get it passed.
If there is no Tory majority then the manifesto will not have received a full mandate and have to be adapted, Boris will do so and whatever necessary to stay in power including a whipped vote to get the 22 weeks through and DUP C and S
You have now not only crashed into the buffers but catapulted the train to the road outside the station. Utterly absurd. There is no way that Conservative MPs will be dragooned into voting for something so contentious and that wasn’t even in the manifesto on which they’d campaigned only a couple of weeks earlier. If Johnson tried, which he wouldn’t, the proposal would be overwhelmingly defeated in the Commons and the Tories further weakened.
The DUP will have more important fish to fry if negotiations take place.
OK then, Starmer becomes PM.
Given the Irish Sea border is not going to be removed anytime soon the DUP will refuse to keep Boris and the Tories in power in the meantime unless they not only get vast sums of extra cash for NI but a reduction in the abortion timeframe for the whole UK to partly make up for the legalisation of abortion in NI Westminster imposed on them.
Most Conservative MPs would also support the abortion reduction anyway and especially if it is the only way to keep a Tory government in power so you are wrong
Many Tory MPs might support a reduction but a significant number would not and of those who do, a lot would be horrified that it would be a whipped vote. The proposal would crash and burn (majority against probably 80?) in the Commons and the DUP know that too.
Furthermore, you completely ignore the likely political context. The Tories would have surrendered a majority of 80, a disaster even more profound than 2017. The party would be shattered and I suspect there would be a clamour to accept defeat and go into opposition, rather than staggering on deflated and dejected and at the mercy of the DUP.
I’m afraid you are totally off the wall on this one.
No, a tiny minority might not, mainly social liberals from wealthy commuter Remain areas like yours which are heading LD and may well elect LD MPs anyway.
Social liberals are in decline in the party from a decade ago, social conservatives from the North and Midlands and small town and rural areas are becoming increasingly prominent. The new Tory base and most of the new Tory Parliamentary Party will happily deal with the DUP and happily cut the abortion time limit to 22 weeks to stay in power.
No, we would not accept opposition, though if social liberals prefer to join the LDs in opposition to a Tory-DUP alliance fine, bye then
Where is the slightest shred of evidence among current Conservative MPs, or even the Prime Minister himself, that they would support manifesto commitment that would bind them all to supporting a specified time limit. None whatsoever and it would be the first time ever that the party would do that. Even votes on hanging in the 1950s were free.
You are spouting nonsense and pernicious nonsense at that with all the ugly hallmarks of intolerance and sectarianism that fortunately still has no place whatever in the broad political church that is the Conservative Party. And Boris is with me!
By the way, it is distressing in the extreme that you seem to be gloating at the prospect of Mr Raab’s political demise.
Are non-tories allowed to gloat about Raab?
I’m just catching up with this conversation
Reading it back in two posts @HYUFD moves from abortion term limits being something that the Tories could offer the DUP (wacky idea) to it being something that the DUP would absolutely insist on and would never do a deal without.
Commendable mental agility!
He'll be suggesting closing down the dinosaur and rock dating galleries in the Natural History Museum next.
The earth is 30 years old and the things people claim are older (like the ZX81) were just put here by Allah to test us.
Does that mean the death of Sir Clive Sinclair is actually The Rapture?
Yes. Are you still here? That means you were not chosen. Now you have to stay here and watch GB News with the rest of us sinners.
Watch GB News? Truly is the End of Times for us sinners...
However it could stay in power with the 8 DUP MPs if they back the Tories again, assuming SF do not take their seats.
What better way to win over our DUP friends than promising to reduce the abortion time limit to 22 weeks for the whole UK as a bonus while Lord Frost continues to work to remove the Irish Sea border?
If the Conservatives have 316 seats, then they will remain in Government. No government without them is really possible.
Labour + SNP + LD + SDLP + Green + PC + Alliance comes to 318 seats on the new poll average, so the Conservatives would still need the 8 DUP MPs to get to 324 and stay in power
I agree - but that wasn't my point.
The DUP are not going to abstain on a Labour + SNP + LD + SDLP + Green + PC + Alliance confidence motion. Therefore, it is not possible to have a government that did not include the Conservatives.
If the Conservative total was a few seats less (say 312), then a coalition like the one above would be possible, albeit not particularly stable.
I agree but would put the threshold just a tad lower, perhaps 310 in which the Tories could just about stagger on as a deflated minority government surviv
Anyway, there’s not the slightest chance of the next Conservative manifesto containing a commitment to restrict abortions to 22 weeks or any other level. It might conceivably pledge to have another vote on the matter (like Cameron did over hunting…did that ever happen?) but it will be a free vote as it has always been.
But even that is lower than 5%: I doubt the Prime Minister will want to be reminded on the campaign trail of his relationship with Petronnella Wyatt and his encouraging her….
Given the latest polling average gives a hung parliament with the Tories needing DUP support to stay in power, offering the DUP the carrot of a reduction in the abortion limit to 22 weeks for the whole UK as well as lots of dosh for NI while Lord Frost works on trying to remove the Irish Sea border with the EU may be the only way Boris stays in No 10.
In those circumstances, sure, they could offer a vote but no Tory MP will be whipped to support it.
And you were talking about the manifesto which patently is published before the election. That will emphatically not contain any commitment to 22 weeks or any figure. Can you see Boris Johnson even giving it half a second’s thought bearing in mind his past? Be serious.
Then the DUP would likely not give C and S then and Starmer becomes PM.
Donaldson and the DUP are extremely hard and tough negotiators, they will not make the same mistake Clegg did with AV getting a vote out of Cameron but with no promise of support to get it passed.
If there is no Tory majority then the manifesto will not have received a full mandate and have to be adapted, Boris will do so and whatever necessary to stay in power including a whipped vote to get the 22 weeks through and DUP C and S
You have now not only crashed into the buffers but catapulted the train to the road outside the station. Utterly absurd. There is no way that Conservative MPs will be dragooned into voting for something so contentious and that wasn’t even in the manifesto on which they’d campaigned only a couple of weeks earlier. If Johnson tried, which he wouldn’t, the proposal would be overwhelmingly defeated in the Commons and the Tories further weakened.
The DUP will have more important fish to fry if negotiations take place.
OK then, Starmer becomes PM.
Given the Irish Sea border is not going to be removed anytime soon the DUP will refuse to keep Boris and the Tories in power in the meantime unless they not only get vast sums of extra cash for NI but a reduction in the abortion timeframe for the whole UK to partly make up for the legalisation of abortion in NI Westminster imposed on them.
Most Conservative MPs would also support the abortion reduction anyway and especially if it is the only way to keep a Tory government in power so you are wrong
Many Tory MPs might support a reduction but a significant number would not and of those who do, a lot would be horrified that it would be a whipped vote. The proposal would crash and burn (majority against probably 80?) in the Commons and the DUP know that too.
Furthermore, you completely ignore the likely political context. The Tories would have surrendered a majority of 80, a disaster even more profound than 2017. The party would be shattered and I suspect there would be a clamour to accept defeat and go into opposition, rather than staggering on deflated and dejected and at the mercy of the DUP.
I’m afraid you are totally off the wall on this one.
No, a tiny minority might not, mainly social liberals from wealthy commuter Remain areas like yours which are heading LD and may well elect LD MPs anyway.
Social liberals are in decline in the party from a decade ago, social conservatives from the North and Midlands and small town and rural areas are becoming increasingly prominent. The new Tory base and most of the new Tory Parliamentary Party will happily deal with the DUP and happily cut the abortion time limit to 22 weeks to stay in power.
No, we would not accept opposition, though if social liberals prefer to join the LDs in opposition to a Tory-DUP alliance fine, bye then
Where is the slightest shred of evidence among current Conservative MPs, or even the Prime Minister himself, that they would support manifesto commitment that would bind them all to supporting a specified time limit. None whatsoever and it would be the first time ever that the party would do that. Even votes on hanging in the 1950s were free.
You are spouting nonsense and pernicious nonsense at that with all the ugly hallmarks of intolerance and sectarianism that fortunately still has no place whatever in the broad political church that is the Conservative Party. And Boris is with me!
By the way, it is distressing in the extreme that you seem to be gloating at the prospect of Mr Raab’s political demise.
Are non-tories allowed to gloat about Raab?
I’m just catching up with this conversation
Reading it back in two posts @HYUFD moves from abortion term limits being something that the Tories could offer the DUP (wacky idea) to it being something that the DUP would absolutely insist on and would never do a deal without.
Commendable mental agility!
He'll be suggesting closing down the dinosaur and rock dating galleries in the Natural History Museum next.
The earth is 30 years old and the things people claim are older (like the ZX81) were just put here by Allah to test us.
ZX81 was definitely around in, well, ‘81.
I think I first saw one in ‘83, as an inquisitive primary-schooler. The first family computer was the Spectrum +2, in 1985.
RIP Sir Clive, and thanks for inspiring this 43 year old IT guy.
What does that mean? I mean I know it's something to do with the Tavvy but what are the implications?
Overturns a ruling which said you can't give under 16s puberty blockers without parental permission.
[deleted - happily Selebian has commented learnedly.]
That's overstating my second-hand tea room chatter (now that we're back in the office again a bit and even allowed more than two in the tea room, so we can chat).
Reflecting on how badly the Iraq occupation went feels like a good shot of 80 proof reality in the week that some of the more excitable people are licking their lips at the prospect of taking on China.
It's a shame what happened afterwards had so many avoidable mistakes. But no regrets that Saddam is gone.
The first problem was Washington's appointed successor (Chalabi) had absolutely no support on the ground. Once that little nugget emerged, the Americans were stuck because they had no alternative coherent plan for the Government of Iraq and the governing of the country.
The fall of the Ba'athists not only removed Saddam but also created a dangerous power vacuum which allowed for the re-emergence of old vendettas and the settling of old scores.
The other problem was the over-rapid dismantling of the Ba'athist command and control structures further left the country bereft of any central Government or control allowing local warlords and religious leaders to establish their own fiefdoms in the chaos.
Agreed. The total dismantling of government was a horrendous unforced error. A bit like that American country (I forget which) that expelled anyone who'd worked in its oil industry then realised they couldn't operate the oil industry effectively. 🤦♂️
Removing Saddam was the right thing to do. What came next was not.
Yeah I really don't think that any politician would trust Johnson to form a pact with him. He s&&t the bed with his border in the Irish Sea which no British PM could ever agree to and standing staring business people in the eye saying there will be no checks between NI and GB.
You would have to be a special type of stupid to believe anything he said when offering a pact with the political party you lead.
I think that if Johnson lost his majority, there would be a new leader to negotiate with.
That said, there is no way that the Lib Dems would support the party of Brexit. We want closer economic, social and cultural links with the EU. EEA or similar.
Yes absolutely but look at the Cons now - flying high why would there be a new leader? Sure the Cons/BJ's numbers are slipping but this is mid-term they should be shocking instead they are bobbing around parity with Lab and still generally 5pts ahead.
I just don't see a new leader. And I backed Boris to be out by, er, Sep 2021 god help me.
My point is that if Johnson were needing to negotiate a coalition or C and S, he would be doing so because he lost more seats than his current majority. There would be a new Con leader, sure as eggs is eggs. Probably not quickly enough to negotiate though possibly that would be done by an acting leader.
Didn't the LibDems make clear in 2010 that while they might go into coalition with Labour, the price would be replacing Brown? (Not that the maths would have worked).
Yes, I don't think it tenable to support a PM who has just been rejected. Only the DUP make that mistake!
May wasnt rejected, she led the most popularly supported UK wide party.
It was a failure for her as she went backwards but it gets a but overegged.
There's an old saying that Success = Performance - Expectations
There is. And it's the very saying that you reject whenever I try to explain to you why GE17 was a success for Jeremy Corbyn.
It was a relative success but he still lost.
If Accrington Stanley hold Liverpool to a draw, earn a replay at Anfield where they again hold them to a draw, it's still a draw after stoppage time and they only get knocked out via penalties then that would be a great relative success for Accrington Stanley. But they'd still be knocked out and Liverpool would still progress to the next round.
Yes, a success relative to expectations but a technical loss. That's the saying put another way and applied to Corbyn's GE17. Ditto and opposite, with May, a failure relative to expectations but a technical win. Liverpool, Accrington Stanley, May, Corbyn, football, politics, whatever, one just needs to be consistent with it.
And while we're in ticking off mode, I noticed your mask slipped yesterday and you succumbed to "cheese eating surrender monkeys" syntax for France and the French, whilst glorying in this latest Anglosphere v China nonsense. Another outing for "Frogs" was clearly only just resisted.
It was noted. That's all I'll say for now.
"cheese eating surrender monkeys" is an impressive moral vacuity indicator when youi think for 2 seconds why they got called that. I wish my country was cowardly like that.
Becaus But why was France reluctant to get involved? Because it was concerned about civilian damages? Because it was concerned the war was unwinnable? Or because Saddam was France's tame source of oil and weapons contracts?
Granted, being right for the wrong reasons is being still being right. But it doesn't necessarily give any reassurance about its future commitment to a common cause.
If Saddam was France's poodle, then the "common cause" for Britain and America was to leave Iraq alone. Whichever why you slice it, France was right and we were wrong.
Getting rid of Saddam was the right thing to do.
It's a shame what happened afterwards had so many avoidable mistakes. But no regrets that Saddam is gone.
It's disturbing that you have no idea what a breathtakingly inadequate response that is.
Jimmy Savile lived in Leeds. So if we had struck it with shock and awe in say 2005 and then put in an army of occupation, and killed a good 100,000 civilians, would "no regrets that Savile is gone" put the whole issue to bed?
That's a fine point; do you have a more persuasive example?
Yeah I really don't think that any politician would trust Johnson to form a pact with him. He s&&t the bed with his border in the Irish Sea which no British PM could ever agree to and standing staring business people in the eye saying there will be no checks between NI and GB.
You would have to be a special type of stupid to believe anything he said when offering a pact with the political party you lead.
I think that if Johnson lost his majority, there would be a new leader to negotiate with.
That said, there is no way that the Lib Dems would support the party of Brexit. We want closer economic, social and cultural links with the EU. EEA or similar.
Yes absolutely but look at the Cons now - flying high why would there be a new leader? Sure the Cons/BJ's numbers are slipping but this is mid-term they should be shocking instead they are bobbing around parity with Lab and still generally 5pts ahead.
I just don't see a new leader. And I backed Boris to be out by, er, Sep 2021 god help me.
My point is that if Johnson were needing to negotiate a coalition or C and S, he would be doing so because he lost more seats than his current majority. There would be a new Con leader, sure as eggs is eggs. Probably not quickly enough to negotiate though possibly that would be done by an acting leader.
Didn't the LibDems make clear in 2010 that while they might go into coalition with Labour, the price would be replacing Brown? (Not that the maths would have worked).
Yes, I don't think it tenable to support a PM who has just been rejected. Only the DUP make that mistake!
May wasnt rejected, she led the most popularly supported UK wide party.
It was a failure for her as she went backwards but it gets a but overegged.
There's an old saying that Success = Performance - Expectations
There is. And it's the very saying that you reject whenever I try to explain to you why GE17 was a success for Jeremy Corbyn.
It was a relative success but he still lost.
If Accrington Stanley hold Liverpool to a draw, earn a replay at Anfield where they again hold them to a draw, it's still a draw after stoppage time and they only get knocked out via penalties then that would be a great relative success for Accrington Stanley. But they'd still be knocked out and Liverpool would still progress to the next round.
Yes, a success relative to expectations but a technical loss. That's the saying put another way and applied to Corbyn's GE17. Ditto and opposite, with May, a failure relative to expectations but a technical win. Liverpool, Accrington Stanley, May, Corbyn, football, politics, whatever, one just needs to be consistent with it.
And while we're in ticking off mode, I noticed your mask slipped yesterday and you succumbed to "cheese eating surrender monkeys" syntax for France and the French, whilst glorying in this latest Anglosphere v China nonsense. Another outing for "Frogs" was clearly only just resisted.
It was noted. That's all I'll say for now.
I have no qualms and no masks in calling the Frogs cheese eating surrender monkeys. If it's good enough for The Simpsons, it's good enough for me.
Stop being so pretentious.
I'm from Yorkshire, Philip, blood & soil, and we don't mince about. When we see bad and fruity takes such as "English speaking family uniting against the Chinese" we don't just shake our heads and keep quiet, we call it out.
It's a shame what happened afterwards had so many avoidable mistakes. But no regrets that Saddam is gone.
The first problem was Washington's appointed successor (Chalabi) had absolutely no support on the ground. Once that little nugget emerged, the Americans were stuck because they had no alternative coherent plan for the Government of Iraq and the governing of the country.
The fall of the Ba'athists not only removed Saddam but also created a dangerous power vacuum which allowed for the re-emergence of old vendettas and the settling of old scores.
The other problem was the over-rapid dismantling of the Ba'athist command and control structures further left the country bereft of any central Government or control allowing local warlords and religious leaders to establish their own fiefdoms in the chaos.
Not only that, but is clear from recent events and commentary that the whole Iraq escapade critically distracted from making anything of the Afghan occupations
Am I a bad person for laughing at Laura Loomer catching Covid-19?
The far-right, anti-Muslim, anti-vaccine conspiracy theorist Laura Loomer says she’s tested positive for the coronavirus, after suffering from severe symptoms that she wrote left her feeling like she “got hit by a bus.”
In a post on the Trumpist social network Gettr, Loomer complained that she started suffering from “fever, chills, a runny nose, sore throat, nausea and severe body aches” on Wednesday that she said felt like “a bad case of the flu... So I took a COVID test and it came back POSITIVE.”
She added: “I have not taken the COVID-19 vaccine, and I don’t plan on ever taking it because it is unsafe and ineffective. Today, I immediately started a treatment of Azithromyacin and Hydroxychloroquine. I’m also taking the OrthoMune dietary supplement.” She said she’s also received the Regeneron antibody treatment used by ex-President Donald Trump.
Last year, Loomer expressed a wish that she could catch COVID to show everyone that it was no big deal. She wrote on Parler in December 2020: “I hope I get COVID just so I can prove to people I’ve had bouts of food poisoning that are more serious and life threatening than a hyped up virus. Have you ever eaten bad fajitas? That will kill you faster than COVID.”
However, in follow-up messages on her Telegram channel late Thursday, she made it clear that she was suffering severe symptoms. “Just pray for me please,” she wrote. “Can’t even begin to explain how brutal the body aches and nausea that come with COVID are. I am in so much pain.”
She then posted more vaccine conspiracy theories, writing that the government “doesn’t want you to know what it really does,” despite the scientific fact that it would have offered her some protection.
Baffling. Scepticism is fine, but how can someone be so convinced, when what evidence we have disagrees? I have a couple of mates like this, I find it strange…
But maybe they’re right!
Never heard of Orthomune so had a quick google while waiting on dinner to cook. Basically it is massive extra doses of certain stuff [edit] over and above the daily dose, and that is when you know what the recommended dose is. And apparently quercetin is the red stuff, or a red stuff, in red wine, berries etc.
And I hadn't heard of azithromyacin before - turns out to be an antibiotic. Really useful for viruses, eh. And the NHS website says "The most common side effects of azithromycin are feeling or being sick, diarrhoea, headaches, or changes to your sense of taste."
Yeah I really don't think that any politician would trust Johnson to form a pact with him. He s&&t the bed with his border in the Irish Sea which no British PM could ever agree to and standing staring business people in the eye saying there will be no checks between NI and GB.
You would have to be a special type of stupid to believe anything he said when offering a pact with the political party you lead.
I think that if Johnson lost his majority, there would be a new leader to negotiate with.
That said, there is no way that the Lib Dems would support the party of Brexit. We want closer economic, social and cultural links with the EU. EEA or similar.
Yes absolutely but look at the Cons now - flying high why would there be a new leader? Sure the Cons/BJ's numbers are slipping but this is mid-term they should be shocking instead they are bobbing around parity with Lab and still generally 5pts ahead.
I just don't see a new leader. And I backed Boris to be out by, er, Sep 2021 god help me.
My point is that if Johnson were needing to negotiate a coalition or C and S, he would be doing so because he lost more seats than his current majority. There would be a new Con leader, sure as eggs is eggs. Probably not quickly enough to negotiate though possibly that would be done by an acting leader.
Didn't the LibDems make clear in 2010 that while they might go into coalition with Labour, the price would be replacing Brown? (Not that the maths would have worked).
Yes, I don't think it tenable to support a PM who has just been rejected. Only the DUP make that mistake!
May wasnt rejected, she led the most popularly supported UK wide party.
It was a failure for her as she went backwards but it gets a but overegged.
There's an old saying that Success = Performance - Expectations
There is. And it's the very saying that you reject whenever I try to explain to you why GE17 was a success for Jeremy Corbyn.
It was a relative success but he still lost.
If Accrington Stanley hold Liverpool to a draw, earn a replay at Anfield where they again hold them to a draw, it's still a draw after stoppage time and they only get knocked out via penalties then that would be a great relative success for Accrington Stanley. But they'd still be knocked out and Liverpool would still progress to the next round.
Yes, a success relative to expectations but a technical loss. That's the saying put another way and applied to Corbyn's GE17. Ditto and opposite, with May, a failure relative to expectations but a technical win. Liverpool, Accrington Stanley, May, Corbyn, football, politics, whatever, one just needs to be consistent with it.
And while we're in ticking off mode, I noticed your mask slipped yesterday and you succumbed to "cheese eating surrender monkeys" syntax for France and the French, whilst glorying in this latest Anglosphere v China nonsense. Another outing for "Frogs" was clearly only just resisted.
It was noted. That's all I'll say for now.
I have no qualms and no masks in calling the Frogs cheese eating surrender monkeys. If it's good enough for The Simpsons, it's good enough for me.
Stop being so pretentious.
I'm from Yorkshire, Philip, blood & soil, and we don't mince about. When we see bad and fruity takes such as "English speaking family uniting against the Chinese" we don't just shake our heads and keep quiet, we call it out.
Well then you're bloody stupid apologists and useful idiots for a Communist dictatorship. But you'd have probably done the same backing the USSR so why change?
Have there been any polls on AUKUS? It strikes me as stark raving bonkers!
Anyone think it's a good idea except for Duncan Smith and provisional wing of the Tory Party?
I should have thought it would be over 75% in favour. It was terrific theatre for Boris, zooming with Biden and Morrison, and underscores the logic of Brexit and breaking out of the EU. Even if it is bonkers.
However it could stay in power with the 8 DUP MPs if they back the Tories again, assuming SF do not take their seats.
What better way to win over our DUP friends than promising to reduce the abortion time limit to 22 weeks for the whole UK as a bonus while Lord Frost continues to work to remove the Irish Sea border?
If the Conservatives have 316 seats, then they will remain in Government. No government without them is really possible.
Labour + SNP + LD + SDLP + Green + PC + Alliance comes to 318 seats on the new poll average, so the Conservatives would still need the 8 DUP MPs to get to 324 and stay in power
I agree - but that wasn't my point.
The DUP are not going to abstain on a Labour + SNP + LD + SDLP + Green + PC + Alliance confidence motion. Therefore, it is not possible to have a government that did not include the Conservatives.
If the Conservative total was a few seats less (say 312), then a coalition like the one above would be possible, albeit not particularly stable.
I agree but would put the threshold just a tad lower, perhaps 310 in which the Tories could just about stagger on as a deflated minority government surviv
Anyway, there’s not the slightest chance of the next Conservative manifesto containing a commitment to restrict abortions to 22 weeks or any other level. It might conceivably pledge to have another vote on the matter (like Cameron did over hunting…did that ever happen?) but it will be a free vote as it has always been.
But even that is lower than 5%: I doubt the Prime Minister will want to be reminded on the campaign trail of his relationship with Petronnella Wyatt and his encouraging her….
Given the latest polling average gives a hung parliament with the Tories needing DUP support to stay in power, offering the DUP the carrot of a reduction in the abortion limit to 22 weeks for the whole UK as well as lots of dosh for NI while Lord Frost works on trying to remove the Irish Sea border with the EU may be the only way Boris stays in No 10.
In those circumstances, sure, they could offer a vote but no Tory MP will be whipped to support it.
And you were talking about the manifesto which patently is published before the election. That will emphatically not contain any commitment to 22 weeks or any figure. Can you see Boris Johnson even giving it half a second’s thought bearing in mind his past? Be serious.
Then the DUP would likely not give C and S then and Starmer becomes PM.
Donaldson and the DUP are extremely hard and tough negotiators, they will not make the same mistake Clegg did with AV getting a vote out of Cameron but with no promise of support to get it passed.
If there is no Tory majority then the manifesto will not have received a full mandate and have to be adapted, Boris will do so and whatever necessary to stay in power including a whipped vote to get the 22 weeks through and DUP C and S
You have now not only crashed into the buffers but catapulted the train to the road outside the station. Utterly absurd. There is no way that Conservative MPs will be dragooned into voting for something so contentious and that wasn’t even in the manifesto on which they’d campaigned only a couple of weeks earlier. If Johnson tried, which he wouldn’t, the proposal would be overwhelmingly defeated in the Commons and the Tories further weakened.
The DUP will have more important fish to fry if negotiations take place.
OK then, Starmer becomes PM.
Given the Irish Sea border is not going to be removed anytime soon the DUP will refuse to keep Boris and the Tories in power in the meantime unless they not only get vast sums of extra cash for NI but a reduction in the abortion timeframe for the whole UK to partly make up for the legalisation of abortion in NI Westminster imposed on them.
Most Conservative MPs would also support the abortion reduction anyway and especially if it is the only way to keep a Tory government in power so you are wrong
Many Tory MPs might support a reduction but a significant number would not and of those who do, a lot would be horrified that it would be a whipped vote. The proposal would crash and burn (majority against probably 80?) in the Commons and the DUP know that too.
Furthermore, you completely ignore the likely political context. The Tories would have surrendered a majority of 80, a disaster even more profound than 2017. The party would be shattered and I suspect there would be a clamour to accept defeat and go into opposition, rather than staggering on deflated and dejected and at the mercy of the DUP.
I’m afraid you are totally off the wall on this one.
No, a tiny minority might not, mainly social liberals from wealthy commuter Remain areas like yours which are heading LD and may well elect LD MPs anyway.
Social liberals are in decline in the party from a decade ago, social conservatives from the North and Midlands and small town and rural areas are becoming increasingly prominent. The new Tory base and most of the new Tory Parliamentary Party will happily deal with the DUP and happily cut the abortion time limit to 22 weeks to stay in power.
No, we would not accept opposition, though if social liberals prefer to join the LDs in opposition to a Tory-DUP alliance fine, bye then
Where is the slightest shred of evidence among current Conservative MPs, or even the Prime Minister himself, that they would support manifesto commitment that would bind them all to supporting a specified time limit. None whatsoever and it would be the first time ever that the party would do that. Even votes on hanging in the 1950s were free.
You are spouting nonsense and pernicious nonsense at that with all the ugly hallmarks of intolerance and sectarianism that fortunately still has no place whatever in the broad political church that is the Conservative Party. And Boris is with me!
By the way, it is distressing in the extreme that you seem to be gloating at the prospect of Mr Raab’s political demise.
Are non-tories allowed to gloat about Raab?
I’m just catching up with this conversation
Reading it back in two posts @HYUFD moves from abortion term limits being something that the Tories could offer the DUP (wacky idea) to it being something that the DUP would absolutely insist on and would never do a deal without.
Commendable mental agility!
He'll be suggesting closing down the dinosaur and rock dating galleries in the Natural History Museum next.
Am I a bad person for laughing at Laura Loomer catching Covid-19?
The far-right, anti-Muslim, anti-vaccine conspiracy theorist Laura Loomer says she’s tested positive for the coronavirus, after suffering from severe symptoms that she wrote left her feeling like she “got hit by a bus.”
In a post on the Trumpist social network Gettr, Loomer complained that she started suffering from “fever, chills, a runny nose, sore throat, nausea and severe body aches” on Wednesday that she said felt like “a bad case of the flu... So I took a COVID test and it came back POSITIVE.”
She added: “I have not taken the COVID-19 vaccine, and I don’t plan on ever taking it because it is unsafe and ineffective. Today, I immediately started a treatment of Azithromyacin and Hydroxychloroquine. I’m also taking the OrthoMune dietary supplement.” She said she’s also received the Regeneron antibody treatment used by ex-President Donald Trump.
Last year, Loomer expressed a wish that she could catch COVID to show everyone that it was no big deal. She wrote on Parler in December 2020: “I hope I get COVID just so I can prove to people I’ve had bouts of food poisoning that are more serious and life threatening than a hyped up virus. Have you ever eaten bad fajitas? That will kill you faster than COVID.”
However, in follow-up messages on her Telegram channel late Thursday, she made it clear that she was suffering severe symptoms. “Just pray for me please,” she wrote. “Can’t even begin to explain how brutal the body aches and nausea that come with COVID are. I am in so much pain.”
She then posted more vaccine conspiracy theories, writing that the government “doesn’t want you to know what it really does,” despite the scientific fact that it would have offered her some protection.
Baffling. Scepticism is fine, but how can someone be so convinced, when what evidence we have disagrees? I have a couple of mates like this, I find it strange…
But maybe they’re right!
Never heard of Orthomune so had a quick google while waiting on dinner to cook. Basically it is massive extra doses of certain stuff [edit] over and above the daily dose, and that is when you know what the recommended dose is. And apparently quercetin is the red stuff, or a red stuff, in red wine, berries etc.
And I hadn't heard of azithromyacin before - turns out to be an antibiotic. Really useful for viruses, eh. And the NHS website says "The most common side effects of azithromycin are feeling or being sick, diarrhoea, headaches, or changes to your sense of taste."
PS And if she doesn't like vaccines, why is she taking the antibody treatment then??
Reflecting on how badly the Iraq occupation went feels like a good shot of 80 proof reality in the week that some of the more excitable people are licking their lips at the prospect of taking on China.
No one is "licking their lips about taking on China"
Any war with China would be hideously destructive, dangerous and potentially apocalyptic. On the other hand we cannot just sit back and let China take over the world: starting with Taiwan (having already devoured Hong Kong as an appetiser). China is a brutal autocratic aggressive regime, it has to be contained, for the sake of us all
The point of AUKUS is to DETER China so there is no war. So it won't invade Taiwan. So it will understand serious enemies are united against it, and there is hard pushback.
The first problem was Washington's appointed successor (Chalabi) had absolutely no support on the ground. Once that little nugget emerged, the Americans were stuck because they had no alternative coherent plan for the Government of Iraq and the governing of the country.
The fall of the Ba'athists not only removed Saddam but also created a dangerous power vacuum which allowed for the re-emergence of old vendettas and the settling of old scores.
The other problem was the over-rapid dismantling of the Ba'athist command and control structures further left the country bereft of any central Government or control allowing local warlords and religious leaders to establish their own fiefdoms in the chaos.
Agreed. The total dismantling of government was a horrendous unforced error. A bit like that American country (I forget which) that expelled anyone who'd worked in its oil industry then realised they couldn't operate the oil industry effectively. 🤦♂️
Removing Saddam was the right thing to do. What came next was not.
Had they treated Iraq in 2003 as Germany in 1945, they'd have been more successful.
Removing Nazis from positions of power and influence was a necessity but any number of lower level bureaucrats, officials and lower-ranking soldiers went on to find and enjoy peace and prosperity in West Germany.
Indeed, I'd argue the maintenance of the pre-existing bureaucratic infrastructure, initially under allied military but after 1949 civilian political control was at the foundation of West Germany's success in the 1950s and beyond.
I am guessing that the history US kids get taught in school skips over the bit part the French played in their revolutionary war? As I recall, the bit without which it would have failed.
However it could stay in power with the 8 DUP MPs if they back the Tories again, assuming SF do not take their seats.
What better way to win over our DUP friends than promising to reduce the abortion time limit to 22 weeks for the whole UK as a bonus while Lord Frost continues to work to remove the Irish Sea border?
If the Conservatives have 316 seats, then they will remain in Government. No government without them is really possible.
Labour + SNP + LD + SDLP + Green + PC + Alliance comes to 318 seats on the new poll average, so the Conservatives would still need the 8 DUP MPs to get to 324 and stay in power
I agree - but that wasn't my point.
The DUP are not going to abstain on a Labour + SNP + LD + SDLP + Green + PC + Alliance confidence motion. Therefore, it is not possible to have a government that did not include the Conservatives.
If the Conservative total was a few seats less (say 312), then a coalition like the one above would be possible, albeit not particularly stable.
I agree but would put the threshold just a tad lower, perhaps 310 in which the Tories could just about stagger on as a deflated minority government surviv
Anyway, there’s not the slightest chance of the next Conservative manifesto containing a commitment to restrict abortions to 22 weeks or any other level. It might conceivably pledge to have another vote on the matter (like Cameron did over hunting…did that ever happen?) but it will be a free vote as it has always been.
But even that is lower than 5%: I doubt the Prime Minister will want to be reminded on the campaign trail of his relationship with Petronnella Wyatt and his encouraging her….
Given the latest polling average gives a hung parliament with the Tories needing DUP support to stay in power, offering the DUP the carrot of a reduction in the abortion limit to 22 weeks for the whole UK as well as lots of dosh for NI while Lord Frost works on trying to remove the Irish Sea border with the EU may be the only way Boris stays in No 10.
In those circumstances, sure, they could offer a vote but no Tory MP will be whipped to support it.
And you were talking about the manifesto which patently is published before the election. That will emphatically not contain any commitment to 22 weeks or any figure. Can you see Boris Johnson even giving it half a second’s thought bearing in mind his past? Be serious.
Then the DUP would likely not give C and S then and Starmer becomes PM.
Donaldson and the DUP are extremely hard and tough negotiators, they will not make the same mistake Clegg did with AV getting a vote out of Cameron but with no promise of support to get it passed.
If there is no Tory majority then the manifesto will not have received a full mandate and have to be adapted, Boris will do so and whatever necessary to stay in power including a whipped vote to get the 22 weeks through and DUP C and S
You have now not only crashed into the buffers but catapulted the train to the road outside the station. Utterly absurd. There is no way that Conservative MPs will be dragooned into voting for something so contentious and that wasn’t even in the manifesto on which they’d campaigned only a couple of weeks earlier. If Johnson tried, which he wouldn’t, the proposal would be overwhelmingly defeated in the Commons and the Tories further weakened.
The DUP will have more important fish to fry if negotiations take place.
OK then, Starmer becomes PM.
Given the Irish Sea border is not going to be removed anytime soon the DUP will refuse to keep Boris and the Tories in power in the meantime unless they not only get vast sums of extra cash for NI but a reduction in the abortion timeframe for the whole UK to partly make up for the legalisation of abortion in NI Westminster imposed on them.
Most Conservative MPs would also support the abortion reduction anyway and especially if it is the only way to keep a Tory government in power so you are wrong
Many Tory MPs might support a reduction but a significant number would not and of those who do, a lot would be horrified that it would be a whipped vote. The proposal would crash and burn (majority against probably 80?) in the Commons and the DUP know that too.
Furthermore, you completely ignore the likely political context. The Tories would have surrendered a majority of 80, a disaster even more profound than 2017. The party would be shattered and I suspect there would be a clamour to accept defeat and go into opposition, rather than staggering on deflated and dejected and at the mercy of the DUP.
I’m afraid you are totally off the wall on this one.
No, a tiny minority might not, mainly social liberals from wealthy commuter Remain areas like yours which are heading LD and may well elect LD MPs anyway.
Social liberals are in decline in the party from a decade ago, social conservatives from the North and Midlands and small town and rural areas are becoming increasingly prominent. The new Tory base and most of the new Tory Parliamentary Party will happily deal with the DUP and happily cut the abortion time limit to 22 weeks to stay in power.
No, we would not accept opposition, though if social liberals prefer to join the LDs in opposition to a Tory-DUP alliance fine, bye then
Where is the slightest shred of evidence among current Conservative MPs, or even the Prime Minister himself, that they would support manifesto commitment that would bind them all to supporting a specified time limit. None whatsoever and it would be the first time ever that the party would do that. Even votes on hanging in the 1950s were free.
You are spouting nonsense and pernicious nonsense at that with all the ugly hallmarks of intolerance and sectarianism that fortunately still has no place whatever in the broad political church that is the Conservative Party. And Boris is with me!
By the way, it is distressing in the extreme that you seem to be gloating at the prospect of Mr Raab’s political demise.
Are non-tories allowed to gloat about Raab?
I’m just catching up with this conversation
Reading it back in two posts @HYUFD moves from abortion term limits being something that the Tories could offer the DUP (wacky idea) to it being something that the DUP would absolutely insist on and would never do a deal without.
Commendable mental agility!
He'll be suggesting closing down the dinosaur and rock dating galleries in the Natural History Museum next.
Rocks DATING?! Before they are MARRIED!?
Burn them. Burn them all!
Friend worked in a museum. They had occasionally to flush out, from the corners of the quieter galleries, pairs of visitors, never mind rocks, who would not have met the standards being preached here.
However it could stay in power with the 8 DUP MPs if they back the Tories again, assuming SF do not take their seats.
What better way to win over our DUP friends than promising to reduce the abortion time limit to 22 weeks for the whole UK as a bonus while Lord Frost continues to work to remove the Irish Sea border?
If the Conservatives have 316 seats, then they will remain in Government. No government without them is really possible.
Labour + SNP + LD + SDLP + Green + PC + Alliance comes to 318 seats on the new poll average, so the Conservatives would still need the 8 DUP MPs to get to 324 and stay in power
I agree - but that wasn't my point.
The DUP are not going to abstain on a Labour + SNP + LD + SDLP + Green + PC + Alliance confidence motion. Therefore, it is not possible to have a government that did not include the Conservatives.
If the Conservative total was a few seats less (say 312), then a coalition like the one above would be possible, albeit not particularly stable.
If the DUP do not get serious concessions from the Conservatives they will threaten to abstain until they do, guaranteed.
As seen from 2017-19 the DUP are notoriously stubborn
Again, you're answering a different point to the one I made.
If the Conservatives have 316 seats, and the DUP 8, it is not possible that there will be a Starmer led government.
That's it. It's not a complex point. You can agree with it or disagree with it. But I cannot see a situation where the DUP does not vote against a government with SDLP and Alliance support.
The DUP would abstain in such a scenario, after all Starmer would at least partly remove the Irish Sea border through closer SM and CU alignment.
So in that case until the Tories remove the border they have to offer the DUP something else eg a reduction in the abortion time limit to win them over while Frost works on the Irish Sea border
You honestly think the DUP would abstain; that they would choose to allow the SDLP to help set UK government policy in Northern Ireland?
That's not stubborn, that's surrender. It would be the end of the DUP.
They would not vote for an SDLP backed government no but they would not vote for a Tory government which put a border in the Irish Sea and imposed abortion on Northern Ireland either without concessions
You seem to think that there are two options: Conservative led government or Labour led one.
That's not true.
If the Conservatives were unwilling to make sufficient concessions to the DUP, the consequence would be another General Election, not a Starmer-led government.
It was suggested in the last Parliament that without Corbyn the DUP might have been prepared to back an anti-Tory alliance on a C&S basis. They are less natural Tory allies than the UUP.
Yeah I really don't think that any politician would trust Johnson to form a pact with him. He s&&t the bed with his border in the Irish Sea which no British PM could ever agree to and standing staring business people in the eye saying there will be no checks between NI and GB.
You would have to be a special type of stupid to believe anything he said when offering a pact with the political party you lead.
I think that if Johnson lost his majority, there would be a new leader to negotiate with.
That said, there is no way that the Lib Dems would support the party of Brexit. We want closer economic, social and cultural links with the EU. EEA or similar.
Yes absolutely but look at the Cons now - flying high why would there be a new leader? Sure the Cons/BJ's numbers are slipping but this is mid-term they should be shocking instead they are bobbing around parity with Lab and still generally 5pts ahead.
I just don't see a new leader. And I backed Boris to be out by, er, Sep 2021 god help me.
My point is that if Johnson were needing to negotiate a coalition or C and S, he would be doing so because he lost more seats than his current majority. There would be a new Con leader, sure as eggs is eggs. Probably not quickly enough to negotiate though possibly that would be done by an acting leader.
Didn't the LibDems make clear in 2010 that while they might go into coalition with Labour, the price would be replacing Brown? (Not that the maths would have worked).
Yes, I don't think it tenable to support a PM who has just been rejected. Only the DUP make that mistake!
May wasnt rejected, she led the most popularly supported UK wide party.
It was a failure for her as she went backwards but it gets a but overegged.
There's an old saying that Success = Performance - Expectations
There is. And it's the very saying that you reject whenever I try to explain to you why GE17 was a success for Jeremy Corbyn.
It was a relative success but he still lost.
If Accrington Stanley hold Liverpool to a draw, earn a replay at Anfield where they again hold them to a draw, it's still a draw after stoppage time and they only get knocked out via penalties then that would be a great relative success for Accrington Stanley. But they'd still be knocked out and Liverpool would still progress to the next round.
Yes, a success relative to expectations but a technical loss. That's the saying put another way and applied to Corbyn's GE17. Ditto and opposite, with May, a failure relative to expectations but a technical win. Liverpool, Accrington Stanley, May, Corbyn, football, politics, whatever, one just needs to be consistent with it.
And while we're in ticking off mode, I noticed your mask slipped yesterday and you succumbed to "cheese eating surrender monkeys" syntax for France and the French, whilst glorying in this latest Anglosphere v China nonsense. Another outing for "Frogs" was clearly only just resisted.
It was noted. That's all I'll say for now.
If you think this Anglosphere v China nonsense is as you describe I would suggest you listen to Japan, South Korea, India, and the Trans Pacific countries to which this is very real, and the reason it is widely backed including by the HoC and even some EU countries
It's above my paygrade, Big G. But my thing is detecting "chaps we can trust" type sentimental belicosity dressed up as geopolitical analysis, and I detected some.
In simple terms Australia wants nuclear powered subs and France was supplying diesel
Australia agreed with the US to supply the technology which is shared only by the UK to build the subs in Adelaide
The Trans Pacific are building an alliance CPTPP to combat China in trade and with the UK and now US seeking to join
France will be included along with Canada at some point but not in the exclusive AUKUS deal
Well I hope it's not going to be another cold war. Or worse.
It sometimes seems to me that the post WW2 world needs these big conflict narratives to keep people busy. The "military industrial complex" and whatnot. The USSR thing finishes, you think it's all over, the End of History bla bla, and BANG, along comes Islamic fundamentalism. Then that fades away - although it hasn't really - and the US and us pull out of all that, so can we relax now and just concentrate on building Jerusalem at home? - no we damn well cannot because now it's CHINA! Etc Etc Etc.
The first problem was Washington's appointed successor (Chalabi) had absolutely no support on the ground. Once that little nugget emerged, the Americans were stuck because they had no alternative coherent plan for the Government of Iraq and the governing of the country.
The fall of the Ba'athists not only removed Saddam but also created a dangerous power vacuum which allowed for the re-emergence of old vendettas and the settling of old scores.
The other problem was the over-rapid dismantling of the Ba'athist command and control structures further left the country bereft of any central Government or control allowing local warlords and religious leaders to establish their own fiefdoms in the chaos.
Agreed. The total dismantling of government was a horrendous unforced error. A bit like that American country (I forget which) that expelled anyone who'd worked in its oil industry then realised they couldn't operate the oil industry effectively. 🤦♂️
Removing Saddam was the right thing to do. What came next was not.
Had they treated Iraq in 2003 as Germany in 1945, they'd have been more successful.
Removing Nazis from positions of power and influence was a necessity but any number of lower level bureaucrats, officials and lower-ranking soldiers went on to find and enjoy peace and prosperity in West Germany.
Indeed, I'd argue the maintenance of the pre-existing bureaucratic infrastructure, initially under allied military but after 1949 civilian political control was at the foundation of West Germany's success in the 1950s and beyond.
Completely agreed.
Plus if post 1945 we'd screwed up Germany's reconstruction and it had degenerated into a medieval civil war then that would have been a real shame but not made removing Hitler the wrong thing to do.
The technology is a specific US-UK technology, and Canada can’t announce anything major during an election campaign becuase of their purdah rules - but even so, you’d expect the Yanks to have given them a nudge.
Social Democrats: 27% (+6) Union CDU/CSU: 21% (-12) Greens: 18% (+9) Alternative for Germany: 11% (-2) Free Democrats: 10% (-1) Linke: 7% (-2)
Another very good poll for the SPD - a solid 9% swing from 2017 with the Greens holding up well suggesting the Union could be caught between a Social Democratic rock and a Green hard place.
There are regional elections being held alongside the federal election. In Mecklenburg, the SPD are polling at 40% with the Union and AfD on 15%. It looks as though the SPD will gain five of the six constituencies from the Union who will be left with their Greifswald stronghold.
In Berlin, the SPD-Green-Linke regional Government looks set for re-election. The 12 constituencies in the city split Union 4 Linke 4 SPD 3 Green 1 in 2017. Entirely possible the SPD will pick up another two or three seats.
Does that mean the seat currently held by Angela Merkel will go to the SPD, or is that the Greifswald one.
Yes, it's the Greifswald one. Stodge is right about the likely Berlin outcome, but curiously, the CDU-SPD swing in Berlin is tiny - just 2%. The FDP have eaten the Pirates (though no doubt it's more complicated than that) but otherwise very little change
The national poll is the first for a while showing SPD/Green/Linke with a solid majority. But the FDP partnership still looks both even more solid and more likely. That said, if I was in the Linke leadership I'd prefer that - being the only party to the left of a government with business-driven FDP Ministers sounds pretty good for the medium term. Being a very junior partner to the SPD would be an existential gamble - might make or break them.
However it could stay in power with the 8 DUP MPs if they back the Tories again, assuming SF do not take their seats.
What better way to win over our DUP friends than promising to reduce the abortion time limit to 22 weeks for the whole UK as a bonus while Lord Frost continues to work to remove the Irish Sea border?
If the Conservatives have 316 seats, then they will remain in Government. No government without them is really possible.
Labour + SNP + LD + SDLP + Green + PC + Alliance comes to 318 seats on the new poll average, so the Conservatives would still need the 8 DUP MPs to get to 324 and stay in power
I agree - but that wasn't my point.
The DUP are not going to abstain on a Labour + SNP + LD + SDLP + Green + PC + Alliance confidence motion. Therefore, it is not possible to have a government that did not include the Conservatives.
If the Conservative total was a few seats less (say 312), then a coalition like the one above would be possible, albeit not particularly stable.
I agree but would put the threshold just a tad lower, perhaps 310 in which the Tories could just about stagger on as a deflated minority government surviv
Anyway, there’s not the slightest chance of the next Conservative manifesto containing a commitment to restrict abortions to 22 weeks or any other level. It might conceivably pledge to have another vote on the matter (like Cameron did over hunting…did that ever happen?) but it will be a free vote as it has always been.
But even that is lower than 5%: I doubt the Prime Minister will want to be reminded on the campaign trail of his relationship with Petronnella Wyatt and his encouraging her….
Given the latest polling average gives a hung parliament with the Tories needing DUP support to stay in power, offering the DUP the carrot of a reduction in the abortion limit to 22 weeks for the whole UK as well as lots of dosh for NI while Lord Frost works on trying to remove the Irish Sea border with the EU may be the only way Boris stays in No 10.
In those circumstances, sure, they could offer a vote but no Tory MP will be whipped to support it.
And you were talking about the manifesto which patently is published before the election. That will emphatically not contain any commitment to 22 weeks or any figure. Can you see Boris Johnson even giving it half a second’s thought bearing in mind his past? Be serious.
Then the DUP would likely not give C and S then and Starmer becomes PM.
Donaldson and the DUP are extremely hard and tough negotiators, they will not make the same mistake Clegg did with AV getting a vote out of Cameron but with no promise of support to get it passed.
If there is no Tory majority then the manifesto will not have received a full mandate and have to be adapted, Boris will do so and whatever necessary to stay in power including a whipped vote to get the 22 weeks through and DUP C and S
You have now not only crashed into the buffers but catapulted the train to the road outside the station. Utterly absurd. There is no way that Conservative MPs will be dragooned into voting for something so contentious and that wasn’t even in the manifesto on which they’d campaigned only a couple of weeks earlier. If Johnson tried, which he wouldn’t, the proposal would be overwhelmingly defeated in the Commons and the Tories further weakened.
The DUP will have more important fish to fry if negotiations take place.
OK then, Starmer becomes PM.
Given the Irish Sea border is not going to be removed anytime soon the DUP will refuse to keep Boris and the Tories in power in the meantime unless they not only get vast sums of extra cash for NI but a reduction in the abortion timeframe for the whole UK to partly make up for the legalisation of abortion in NI Westminster imposed on them.
Most Conservative MPs would also support the abortion reduction anyway and especially if it is the only way to keep a Tory government in power so you are wrong
Many Tory MPs might support a reduction but a significant number would not and of those who do, a lot would be horrified that it would be a whipped vote. The proposal would crash and burn (majority against probably 80?) in the Commons and the DUP know that too.
Furthermore, you completely ignore the likely political context. The Tories would have surrendered a majority of 80, a disaster even more profound than 2017. The party would be shattered and I suspect there would be a clamour to accept defeat and go into opposition, rather than staggering on deflated and dejected and at the mercy of the DUP.
I’m afraid you are totally off the wall on this one.
No, a tiny minority might not, mainly social liberals from wealthy commuter Remain areas like yours which are heading LD and may well elect LD MPs anyway.
Social liberals are in decline in the party from a decade ago, social conservatives from the North and Midlands and small town and rural areas are becoming increasingly prominent. The new Tory base and most of the new Tory Parliamentary Party will happily deal with the DUP and happily cut the abortion time limit to 22 weeks to stay in power.
No, we would not accept opposition, though if social liberals prefer to join the LDs in opposition to a Tory-DUP alliance fine, bye then
Where is the slightest shred of evidence among current Conservative MPs, or even the Prime Minister himself, that they would support manifesto commitment that would bind them all to supporting a specified time limit. None whatsoever and it would be the first time ever that the party would do that. Even votes on hanging in the 1950s were free.
You are spouting nonsense and pernicious nonsense at that with all the ugly hallmarks of intolerance and sectarianism that fortunately still has no place whatever in the broad political church that is the Conservative Party. And Boris is with me!
By the way, it is distressing in the extreme that you seem to be gloating at the prospect of Mr Raab’s political demise.
Are non-tories allowed to gloat about Raab?
I’m just catching up with this conversation
Reading it back in two posts @HYUFD moves from abortion term limits being something that the Tories could offer the DUP (wacky idea) to it being something that the DUP would absolutely insist on and would never do a deal without.
Commendable mental agility!
He'll be suggesting closing down the dinosaur and rock dating galleries in the Natural History Museum next.
Rocks DATING?! Before they are MARRIED!?
Burn them. Burn them all!
Friend worked in a museum. They had occasionally to flush out, from the corners of the quieter galleries, pairs of visitors, never mind rocks, who would not have met the standards being preached here.
My museum is far more sedate.
Although Kate Winslet did have a nap there and pinched one of my dad’s books.
Yeah I really don't think that any politician would trust Johnson to form a pact with him. He s&&t the bed with his border in the Irish Sea which no British PM could ever agree to and standing staring business people in the eye saying there will be no checks between NI and GB.
You would have to be a special type of stupid to believe anything he said when offering a pact with the political party you lead.
I think that if Johnson lost his majority, there would be a new leader to negotiate with.
That said, there is no way that the Lib Dems would support the party of Brexit. We want closer economic, social and cultural links with the EU. EEA or similar.
Yes absolutely but look at the Cons now - flying high why would there be a new leader? Sure the Cons/BJ's numbers are slipping but this is mid-term they should be shocking instead they are bobbing around parity with Lab and still generally 5pts ahead.
I just don't see a new leader. And I backed Boris to be out by, er, Sep 2021 god help me.
My point is that if Johnson were needing to negotiate a coalition or C and S, he would be doing so because he lost more seats than his current majority. There would be a new Con leader, sure as eggs is eggs. Probably not quickly enough to negotiate though possibly that would be done by an acting leader.
Didn't the LibDems make clear in 2010 that while they might go into coalition with Labour, the price would be replacing Brown? (Not that the maths would have worked).
Yes, I don't think it tenable to support a PM who has just been rejected. Only the DUP make that mistake!
May wasnt rejected, she led the most popularly supported UK wide party.
It was a failure for her as she went backwards but it gets a but overegged.
There's an old saying that Success = Performance - Expectations
There is. And it's the very saying that you reject whenever I try to explain to you why GE17 was a success for Jeremy Corbyn.
It was a relative success but he still lost.
If Accrington Stanley hold Liverpool to a draw, earn a replay at Anfield where they again hold them to a draw, it's still a draw after stoppage time and they only get knocked out via penalties then that would be a great relative success for Accrington Stanley. But they'd still be knocked out and Liverpool would still progress to the next round.
Yes, a success relative to expectations but a technical loss. That's the saying put another way and applied to Corbyn's GE17. Ditto and opposite, with May, a failure relative to expectations but a technical win. Liverpool, Accrington Stanley, May, Corbyn, football, politics, whatever, one just needs to be consistent with it.
And while we're in ticking off mode, I noticed your mask slipped yesterday and you succumbed to "cheese eating surrender monkeys" syntax for France and the French, whilst glorying in this latest Anglosphere v China nonsense. Another outing for "Frogs" was clearly only just resisted.
It was noted. That's all I'll say for now.
If you think this Anglosphere v China nonsense is as you describe I would suggest you listen to Japan, South Korea, India, and the Trans Pacific countries to which this is very real, and the reason it is widely backed including by the HoC and even some EU countries
It's above my paygrade, Big G. But my thing is detecting "chaps we can trust" type sentimental belicosity dressed up as geopolitical analysis, and I detected some.
In simple terms Australia wants nuclear powered subs and France was supplying diesel
Australia agreed with the US to supply the technology which is shared only by the UK to build the subs in Adelaide
The Trans Pacific are building an alliance CPTPP to combat China in trade and with the UK and now US seeking to join
France will be included along with Canada at some point but not in the exclusive AUKUS deal
Well I hope it's not going to be another cold war. Or worse.
It sometimes seems to me that the post WW2 world needs these big conflict narratives to keep people busy. The "military industrial complex" and whatnot. The USSR thing finishes, you think it's all over, the End of History bla bla, and BANG, along comes Islamic fundamentalism. Then that fades away - although it hasn't really - and the US and us pull out of all that, so can we relax now and just concentrate on building Jerusalem at home? - no we damn well cannot because now it's CHINA! Etc Etc Etc.
If the choice is Cold War versus China, or stand back and watch as China swallows Hong Kong, Taiwan (plus let's not forget Tibet and Xinjiang) and progressively and aggressively expands across the Pacific then which would you prefer?
From Tibet to Hong Kong to Xinjiang China has already shown itself to be a new Evil Empire and it has no intentions of stopping there.
If we can contain China with a Cold not Hot war then that is a good thing.
Reflecting on how badly the Iraq occupation went feels like a good shot of 80 proof reality in the week that some of the more excitable people are licking their lips at the prospect of taking on China.
No one is "licking their lips about taking on China"
Any war with China would be hideously destructive, dangerous and potentially apocalyptic. On the other hand we cannot just sit back and let China take over the world: starting with Taiwan (having already devoured Hong Kong as an appetiser). China is a brutal autocratic aggressive regime, it has to be contained, for the sake of us all
The point of AUKUS is to DETER China so there is no war. So it won't invade Taiwan. So it will understand serious enemies are united against it, and there is hard pushback.
You'll notice I said "take on", not "attack". The point is we've made such a bad mess of our major foreign policy excursions this century, and China is orders of magnitudes more capable and prepared. You can assure me that we know what we're doing, but two days ago you were talking about the announcement being about aliens, so it's tricky to know* when to take you seriously.
Reflecting on how badly the Iraq occupation went feels like a good shot of 80 proof reality in the week that some of the more excitable people are licking their lips at the prospect of taking on China.
No one is "licking their lips about taking on China"
Any war with China would be hideously destructive, dangerous and potentially apocalyptic. On the other hand we cannot just sit back and let China take over the world: starting with Taiwan (having already devoured Hong Kong as an appetiser). China is a brutal autocratic aggressive regime, it has to be contained, for the sake of us all
The point of AUKUS is to DETER China so there is no war. So it won't invade Taiwan. So it will understand serious enemies are united against it, and there is hard pushback.
If the Taiwanese are relying on us for their defence then they really are fucked. It's hard to imagine that our puny ability to project military power in the South China Sea, compared to US firepower, can really move the needle in turns of deterrence. And what exactly are we getting out of this? I mean, apart from the unquantifiable benefit of Boris Johnson getting Zoom time with Biden and providing PB's batallion of armchair generals with a welcome rush of blood to their nether regions?
However it could stay in power with the 8 DUP MPs if they back the Tories again, assuming SF do not take their seats.
What better way to win over our DUP friends than promising to reduce the abortion time limit to 22 weeks for the whole UK as a bonus while Lord Frost continues to work to remove the Irish Sea border?
If the Conservatives have 316 seats, then they will remain in Government. No government without them is really possible.
Labour + SNP + LD + SDLP + Green + PC + Alliance comes to 318 seats on the new poll average, so the Conservatives would still need the 8 DUP MPs to get to 324 and stay in power
I agree - but that wasn't my point.
The DUP are not going to abstain on a Labour + SNP + LD + SDLP + Green + PC + Alliance confidence motion. Therefore, it is not possible to have a government that did not include the Conservatives.
If the Conservative total was a few seats less (say 312), then a coalition like the one above would be possible, albeit not particularly stable.
I agree but would put the threshold just a tad lower, perhaps 310 in which the Tories could just about stagger on as a deflated minority government surviv
Anyway, there’s not the slightest chance of the next Conservative manifesto containing a commitment to restrict abortions to 22 weeks or any other level. It might conceivably pledge to have another vote on the matter (like Cameron did over hunting…did that ever happen?) but it will be a free vote as it has always been.
But even that is lower than 5%: I doubt the Prime Minister will want to be reminded on the campaign trail of his relationship with Petronnella Wyatt and his encouraging her….
Given the latest polling average gives a hung parliament with the Tories needing DUP support to stay in power, offering the DUP the carrot of a reduction in the abortion limit to 22 weeks for the whole UK as well as lots of dosh for NI while Lord Frost works on trying to remove the Irish Sea border with the EU may be the only way Boris stays in No 10.
In those circumstances, sure, they could offer a vote but no Tory MP will be whipped to support it.
And you were talking about the manifesto which patently is published before the election. That will emphatically not contain any commitment to 22 weeks or any figure. Can you see Boris Johnson even giving it half a second’s thought bearing in mind his past? Be serious.
Then the DUP would likely not give C and S then and Starmer becomes PM.
Donaldson and the DUP are extremely hard and tough negotiators, they will not make the same mistake Clegg did with AV getting a vote out of Cameron but with no promise of support to get it passed.
If there is no Tory majority then the manifesto will not have received a full mandate and have to be adapted, Boris will do so and whatever necessary to stay in power including a whipped vote to get the 22 weeks through and DUP C and S
You have now not only crashed into the buffers but catapulted the train to the road outside the station. Utterly absurd. There is no way that Conservative MPs will be dragooned into voting for something so contentious and that wasn’t even in the manifesto on which they’d campaigned only a couple of weeks earlier. If Johnson tried, which he wouldn’t, the proposal would be overwhelmingly defeated in the Commons and the Tories further weakened.
The DUP will have more important fish to fry if negotiations take place.
OK then, Starmer becomes PM.
Given the Irish Sea border is not going to be removed anytime soon the DUP will refuse to keep Boris and the Tories in power in the meantime unless they not only get vast sums of extra cash for NI but a reduction in the abortion timeframe for the whole UK to partly make up for the legalisation of abortion in NI Westminster imposed on them.
Most Conservative MPs would also support the abortion reduction anyway and especially if it is the only way to keep a Tory government in power so you are wrong
Many Tory MPs might support a reduction but a significant number would not and of those who do, a lot would be horrified that it would be a whipped vote. The proposal would crash and burn (majority against probably 80?) in the Commons and the DUP know that too.
Furthermore, you completely ignore the likely political context. The Tories would have surrendered a majority of 80, a disaster even more profound than 2017. The party would be shattered and I suspect there would be a clamour to accept defeat and go into opposition, rather than staggering on deflated and dejected and at the mercy of the DUP.
I’m afraid you are totally off the wall on this one.
No, a tiny minority might not, mainly social liberals from wealthy commuter Remain areas like yours which are heading LD and may well elect LD MPs anyway.
Social liberals are in decline in the party from a decade ago, social conservatives from the North and Midlands and small town and rural areas are becoming increasingly prominent. The new Tory base and most of the new Tory Parliamentary Party will happily deal with the DUP and happily cut the abortion time limit to 22 weeks to stay in power.
No, we would not accept opposition, though if social liberals prefer to join the LDs in opposition to a Tory-DUP alliance fine, bye then
Where is the slightest shred of evidence among current Conservative MPs, or even the Prime Minister himself, that they would support manifesto commitment that would bind them all to supporting a specified time limit. None whatsoever and it would be the first time ever that the party would do that. Even votes on hanging in the 1950s were free.
You are spouting nonsense and pernicious nonsense at that with all the ugly hallmarks of intolerance and sectarianism that fortunately still has no place whatever in the broad political church that is the Conservative Party. And Boris is with me!
By the way, it is distressing in the extreme that you seem to be gloating at the prospect of Mr Raab’s political demise.
Are non-tories allowed to gloat about Raab?
I’m just catching up with this conversation
Reading it back in two posts @HYUFD moves from abortion term limits being something that the Tories could offer the DUP (wacky idea) to it being something that the DUP would absolutely insist on and would never do a deal without.
Commendable mental agility!
He'll be suggesting closing down the dinosaur and rock dating galleries in the Natural History Museum next.
The earth is 30 years old and the things people claim are older (like the ZX81) were just put here by Allah to test us.
Does that mean the death of Sir Clive Sinclair is actually The Rapture?
I was an Acorn kid (literally, later on...), so Sinclair was the anti-Christ...
I had the pleasure of working with Jim Westwood, the tech genius behind the ZX80. He's a great guy; totally self-effacing and down to earth. Although he was working for a real computer company by then.
Yeah I really don't think that any politician would trust Johnson to form a pact with him. He s&&t the bed with his border in the Irish Sea which no British PM could ever agree to and standing staring business people in the eye saying there will be no checks between NI and GB.
You would have to be a special type of stupid to believe anything he said when offering a pact with the political party you lead.
I think that if Johnson lost his majority, there would be a new leader to negotiate with.
That said, there is no way that the Lib Dems would support the party of Brexit. We want closer economic, social and cultural links with the EU. EEA or similar.
Yes absolutely but look at the Cons now - flying high why would there be a new leader? Sure the Cons/BJ's numbers are slipping but this is mid-term they should be shocking instead they are bobbing around parity with Lab and still generally 5pts ahead.
I just don't see a new leader. And I backed Boris to be out by, er, Sep 2021 god help me.
My point is that if Johnson were needing to negotiate a coalition or C and S, he would be doing so because he lost more seats than his current majority. There would be a new Con leader, sure as eggs is eggs. Probably not quickly enough to negotiate though possibly that would be done by an acting leader.
Didn't the LibDems make clear in 2010 that while they might go into coalition with Labour, the price would be replacing Brown? (Not that the maths would have worked).
Yes, I don't think it tenable to support a PM who has just been rejected. Only the DUP make that mistake!
May wasnt rejected, she led the most popularly supported UK wide party.
It was a failure for her as she went backwards but it gets a but overegged.
There's an old saying that Success = Performance - Expectations
There is. And it's the very saying that you reject whenever I try to explain to you why GE17 was a success for Jeremy Corbyn.
It was a relative success but he still lost.
If Accrington Stanley hold Liverpool to a draw, earn a replay at Anfield where they again hold them to a draw, it's still a draw after stoppage time and they only get knocked out via penalties then that would be a great relative success for Accrington Stanley. But they'd still be knocked out and Liverpool would still progress to the next round.
Yes, a success relative to expectations but a technical loss. That's the saying put another way and applied to Corbyn's GE17. Ditto and opposite, with May, a failure relative to expectations but a technical win. Liverpool, Accrington Stanley, May, Corbyn, football, politics, whatever, one just needs to be consistent with it.
And while we're in ticking off mode, I noticed your mask slipped yesterday and you succumbed to "cheese eating surrender monkeys" syntax for France and the French, whilst glorying in this latest Anglosphere v China nonsense. Another outing for "Frogs" was clearly only just resisted.
It was noted. That's all I'll say for now.
If you think this Anglosphere v China nonsense is as you describe I would suggest you listen to Japan, South Korea, India, and the Trans Pacific countries to which this is very real, and the reason it is widely backed including by the HoC and even some EU countries
It's above my paygrade, Big G. But my thing is detecting "chaps we can trust" type sentimental belicosity dressed up as geopolitical analysis, and I detected some.
In simple terms Australia wants nuclear powered subs and France was supplying diesel
Australia agreed with the US to supply the technology which is shared only by the UK to build the subs in Adelaide
The Trans Pacific are building an alliance CPTPP to combat China in trade and with the UK and now US seeking to join
France will be included along with Canada at some point but not in the exclusive AUKUS deal
Well I hope it's not going to be another cold war. Or worse.
It sometimes seems to me that the post WW2 world needs these big conflict narratives to keep people busy. The "military industrial complex" and whatnot. The USSR thing finishes, you think it's all over, the End of History bla bla, and BANG, along comes Islamic fundamentalism. Then that fades away - although it hasn't really - and the US and us pull out of all that, so can we relax now and just concentrate on building Jerusalem at home? - no we damn well cannot because now it's CHINA! Etc Etc Etc.
The world is always full of threats. Sometimes it's actual war, sometimes it is just menace.
The rise of an aggressive, hostile China is an unfortunate fact. It would be great if wasn't happening. But it is
However it could stay in power with the 8 DUP MPs if they back the Tories again, assuming SF do not take their seats.
What better way to win over our DUP friends than promising to reduce the abortion time limit to 22 weeks for the whole UK as a bonus while Lord Frost continues to work to remove the Irish Sea border?
If the Conservatives have 316 seats, then they will remain in Government. No government without them is really possible.
Labour + SNP + LD + SDLP + Green + PC + Alliance comes to 318 seats on the new poll average, so the Conservatives would still need the 8 DUP MPs to get to 324 and stay in power
I agree - but that wasn't my point.
The DUP are not going to abstain on a Labour + SNP + LD + SDLP + Green + PC + Alliance confidence motion. Therefore, it is not possible to have a government that did not include the Conservatives.
If the Conservative total was a few seats less (say 312), then a coalition like the one above would be possible, albeit not particularly stable.
I agree but would put the threshold just a tad lower, perhaps 310 in which the Tories could just about stagger on as a deflated minority government surviv
Anyway, there’s not the slightest chance of the next Conservative manifesto containing a commitment to restrict abortions to 22 weeks or any other level. It might conceivably pledge to have another vote on the matter (like Cameron did over hunting…did that ever happen?) but it will be a free vote as it has always been.
But even that is lower than 5%: I doubt the Prime Minister will want to be reminded on the campaign trail of his relationship with Petronnella Wyatt and his encouraging her….
Given the latest polling average gives a hung parliament with the Tories needing DUP support to stay in power, offering the DUP the carrot of a reduction in the abortion limit to 22 weeks for the whole UK as well as lots of dosh for NI while Lord Frost works on trying to remove the Irish Sea border with the EU may be the only way Boris stays in No 10.
In those circumstances, sure, they could offer a vote but no Tory MP will be whipped to support it.
And you were talking about the manifesto which patently is published before the election. That will emphatically not contain any commitment to 22 weeks or any figure. Can you see Boris Johnson even giving it half a second’s thought bearing in mind his past? Be serious.
Then the DUP would likely not give C and S then and Starmer becomes PM.
Donaldson and the DUP are extremely hard and tough negotiators, they will not make the same mistake Clegg did with AV getting a vote out of Cameron but with no promise of support to get it passed.
If there is no Tory majority then the manifesto will not have received a full mandate and have to be adapted, Boris will do so and whatever necessary to stay in power including a whipped vote to get the 22 weeks through and DUP C and S
You have now not only crashed into the buffers but catapulted the train to the road outside the station. Utterly absurd. There is no way that Conservative MPs will be dragooned into voting for something so contentious and that wasn’t even in the manifesto on which they’d campaigned only a couple of weeks earlier. If Johnson tried, which he wouldn’t, the proposal would be overwhelmingly defeated in the Commons and the Tories further weakened.
The DUP will have more important fish to fry if negotiations take place.
OK then, Starmer becomes PM.
Given the Irish Sea border is not going to be removed anytime soon the DUP will refuse to keep Boris and the Tories in power in the meantime unless they not only get vast sums of extra cash for NI but a reduction in the abortion timeframe for the whole UK to partly make up for the legalisation of abortion in NI Westminster imposed on them.
Most Conservative MPs would also support the abortion reduction anyway and especially if it is the only way to keep a Tory government in power so you are wrong
Many Tory MPs might support a reduction but a significant number would not and of those who do, a lot would be horrified that it would be a whipped vote. The proposal would crash and burn (majority against probably 80?) in the Commons and the DUP know that too.
Furthermore, you completely ignore the likely political context. The Tories would have surrendered a majority of 80, a disaster even more profound than 2017. The party would be shattered and I suspect there would be a clamour to accept defeat and go into opposition, rather than staggering on deflated and dejected and at the mercy of the DUP.
I’m afraid you are totally off the wall on this one.
No, a tiny minority might not, mainly social liberals from wealthy commuter Remain areas like yours which are heading LD and may well elect LD MPs anyway.
Social liberals are in decline in the party from a decade ago, social conservatives from the North and Midlands and small town and rural areas are becoming increasingly prominent. The new Tory base and most of the new Tory Parliamentary Party will happily deal with the DUP and happily cut the abortion time limit to 22 weeks to stay in power.
No, we would not accept opposition, though if social liberals prefer to join the LDs in opposition to a Tory-DUP alliance fine, bye then
Where is the slightest shred of evidence among current Conservative MPs, or even the Prime Minister himself, that they would support manifesto commitment that would bind them all to supporting a specified time limit. None whatsoever and it would be the first time ever that the party would do that. Even votes on hanging in the 1950s were free.
You are spouting nonsense and pernicious nonsense at that with all the ugly hallmarks of intolerance and sectarianism that fortunately still has no place whatever in the broad political church that is the Conservative Party. And Boris is with me!
By the way, it is distressing in the extreme that you seem to be gloating at the prospect of Mr Raab’s political demise.
Are non-tories allowed to gloat about Raab?
I’m just catching up with this conversation
Reading it back in two posts @HYUFD moves from abortion term limits being something that the Tories could offer the DUP (wacky idea) to it being something that the DUP would absolutely insist on and would never do a deal without.
Commendable mental agility!
He'll be suggesting closing down the dinosaur and rock dating galleries in the Natural History Museum next.
The earth is 30 years old and the things people claim are older (like the ZX81) were just put here by Allah to test us.
Does that mean the death of Sir Clive Sinclair is actually The Rapture?
I was an Acorn kid (literally, later on...), so Sinclair was the anti-Christ...
I had the pleasure of working with Jim Westwood, the tech genius behind the ZX80. He's a great guy; totally self-effacing and down to earth. Although he was working for a real computer company by then.
A link to a relevant ten-year-old Register article deserves a like. So you met Sinclair’s #2, and a doctor who decided that playing golf with Ayrton Senna was more important than seeing you.
Reflecting on how badly the Iraq occupation went feels like a good shot of 80 proof reality in the week that some of the more excitable people are licking their lips at the prospect of taking on China.
No one is "licking their lips about taking on China"
Any war with China would be hideously destructive, dangerous and potentially apocalyptic. On the other hand we cannot just sit back and let China take over the world: starting with Taiwan (having already devoured Hong Kong as an appetiser). China is a brutal autocratic aggressive regime, it has to be contained, for the sake of us all
The point of AUKUS is to DETER China so there is no war. So it won't invade Taiwan. So it will understand serious enemies are united against it, and there is hard pushback.
If the Taiwanese are relying on us for their defence then they really are fucked. It's hard to imagine that our puny ability to project military power in the South China Sea, compared to US firepower, can really move the needle in turns of deterrence. And what exactly are we getting out of this? I mean, apart from the unquantifiable benefit of Boris Johnson getting Zoom time with Biden and providing PB's batallion of armchair generals with a welcome rush of blood to their nether regions?
Our role in this is to supply some of the sub tech to Australia and help with the building.
Otherwise, yes, our ability to project power in distant Taiwan is small (but not invisible, we have aircraft carriers)
But you are missing much of the point. The Aukus Treaty is about way more than subs for the Aussies and Taiwan. It talks of extremely close collaboration on AI, quantum tech, cyberstuff - all the future ways wars will be fought, and in this our distance from China is largely irrelevant (except maybe for that handy British base in Diego Garcia). And in some of this Britain excels.
This is a Treaty meant to last 50 years, and to future-proof the Anglosphere
Reflecting on how badly the Iraq occupation went feels like a good shot of 80 proof reality in the week that some of the more excitable people are licking their lips at the prospect of taking on China.
No one is "licking their lips about taking on China"
Any war with China would be hideously destructive, dangerous and potentially apocalyptic. On the other hand we cannot just sit back and let China take over the world: starting with Taiwan (having already devoured Hong Kong as an appetiser). China is a brutal autocratic aggressive regime, it has to be contained, for the sake of us all
The point of AUKUS is to DETER China so there is no war. So it won't invade Taiwan. So it will understand serious enemies are united against it, and there is hard pushback.
If the Taiwanese are relying on us for their defence then they really are fucked. It's hard to imagine that our puny ability to project military power in the South China Sea, compared to US firepower, can really move the needle in turns of deterrence. And what exactly are we getting out of this? I mean, apart from the unquantifiable benefit of Boris Johnson getting Zoom time with Biden and providing PB's batallion of armchair generals with a welcome rush of blood to their nether regions?
Can I respectively suggest it is Australia and the US together with other Trans Pacific nations that will be at the forefront of this though our carrier will be involved and we get high tech jobs here in the UK through our close involvement in the production of these subs which are built at Barrow
No one is "licking their lips about taking on China"
Any war with China would be hideously destructive, dangerous and potentially apocalyptic. On the other hand we cannot just sit back and let China take over the world: starting with Taiwan (having already devoured Hong Kong as an appetiser). China is a brutal autocratic aggressive regime, it has to be contained, for the sake of us all
The point of AUKUS is to DETER China so there is no war. So it won't invade Taiwan. So it will understand serious enemies are united against it, and there is hard pushback.
To be fair, we only leased a part of Hong Kong for 99 years and at the end of that lease (1997) it reverted to China. It was an international agreement and not to have honoured it would have been ridiculous. Even Margaret Thatcher recognised we would have to hand back Hong Kong and I suspect all UK leaders knew there was very little they could practically do if China chose to bend the notion of "one country, two systems".
Macau is another interesting case - the Chinese seem quite happy to have the casinos and the tourist revenue and the opportunity for their own people to do some gambling.
China isn't going to "take over the world", at least not in the way the other Marxist revolutionaries in Moscow wanted. The "revolution" has been far more insidious - based oddly enough on money, capital and the market. China has brought infrastructure to Africa in exchange for resources - much easier and more productive than landing divisions of the PLA.
"Deterring" China can't just be about Taiwan? What of India, Vietnam and Russia - all of whom share borders with Beijing? Do we think China has military designs on any of these - we saw a flare up with India just last year?
I can't see "No War over the Spratley Islands" having much resonance.
Reflecting on how badly the Iraq occupation went feels like a good shot of 80 proof reality in the week that some of the more excitable people are licking their lips at the prospect of taking on China.
No one is "licking their lips about taking on China"
Any war with China would be hideously destructive, dangerous and potentially apocalyptic. On the other hand we cannot just sit back and let China take over the world: starting with Taiwan (having already devoured Hong Kong as an appetiser). China is a brutal autocratic aggressive regime, it has to be contained, for the sake of us all
The point of AUKUS is to DETER China so there is no war. So it won't invade Taiwan. So it will understand serious enemies are united against it, and there is hard pushback.
If the Taiwanese are relying on us for their defence then they really are fucked. It's hard to imagine that our puny ability to project military power in the South China Sea, compared to US firepower, can really move the needle in turns of deterrence. And what exactly are we getting out of this? I mean, apart from the unquantifiable benefit of Boris Johnson getting Zoom time with Biden and providing PB's batallion of armchair generals with a welcome rush of blood to their nether regions?
Can I respectively suggest it is Australia and the US together with other Trans Pacific nations that will be at the forefront of this though our carrier will be involves and we get high tech jobs here in the UK through our close involvement in the product of these subs which are built at Barrow
The Australians are quite likely to want to build them with tech transfer, so don't get your hopes up too much just yet. Some specialist kit, oh yes, I can imagine.
However it could stay in power with the 8 DUP MPs if they back the Tories again, assuming SF do not take their seats.
What better way to win over our DUP friends than promising to reduce the abortion time limit to 22 weeks for the whole UK as a bonus while Lord Frost continues to work to remove the Irish Sea border?
If the Conservatives have 316 seats, then they will remain in Government. No government without them is really possible.
Labour + SNP + LD + SDLP + Green + PC + Alliance comes to 318 seats on the new poll average, so the Conservatives would still need the 8 DUP MPs to get to 324 and stay in power
I agree - but that wasn't my point.
The DUP are not going to abstain on a Labour + SNP + LD + SDLP + Green + PC + Alliance confidence motion. Therefore, it is not possible to have a government that did not include the Conservatives.
If the Conservative total was a few seats less (say 312), then a coalition like the one above would be possible, albeit not particularly stable.
I agree but would put the threshold just a tad lower, perhaps 310 in which the Tories could just about stagger on as a deflated minority government surviv
Anyway, there’s not the slightest chance of the next Conservative manifesto containing a commitment to restrict abortions to 22 weeks or any other level. It might conceivably pledge to have another vote on the matter (like Cameron did over hunting…did that ever happen?) but it will be a free vote as it has always been.
But even that is lower than 5%: I doubt the Prime Minister will want to be reminded on the campaign trail of his relationship with Petronnella Wyatt and his encouraging her….
Given the latest polling average gives a hung parliament with the Tories needing DUP support to stay in power, offering the DUP the carrot of a reduction in the abortion limit to 22 weeks for the whole UK as well as lots of dosh for NI while Lord Frost works on trying to remove the Irish Sea border with the EU may be the only way Boris stays in No 10.
In those circumstances, sure, they could offer a vote but no Tory MP will be whipped to support it.
And you were talking about the manifesto which patently is published before the election. That will emphatically not contain any commitment to 22 weeks or any figure. Can you see Boris Johnson even giving it half a second’s thought bearing in mind his past? Be serious.
Then the DUP would likely not give C and S then and Starmer becomes PM.
Donaldson and the DUP are extremely hard and tough negotiators, they will not make the same mistake Clegg did with AV getting a vote out of Cameron but with no promise of support to get it passed.
If there is no Tory majority then the manifesto will not have received a full mandate and have to be adapted, Boris will do so and whatever necessary to stay in power including a whipped vote to get the 22 weeks through and DUP C and S
You have now not only crashed into the buffers but catapulted the train to the road outside the station. Utterly absurd. There is no way that Conservative MPs will be dragooned into voting for something so contentious and that wasn’t even in the manifesto on which they’d campaigned only a couple of weeks earlier. If Johnson tried, which he wouldn’t, the proposal would be overwhelmingly defeated in the Commons and the Tories further weakened.
The DUP will have more important fish to fry if negotiations take place.
OK then, Starmer becomes PM.
Given the Irish Sea border is not going to be removed anytime soon the DUP will refuse to keep Boris and the Tories in power in the meantime unless they not only get vast sums of extra cash for NI but a reduction in the abortion timeframe for the whole UK to partly make up for the legalisation of abortion in NI Westminster imposed on them.
Most Conservative MPs would also support the abortion reduction anyway and especially if it is the only way to keep a Tory government in power so you are wrong
Many Tory MPs might support a reduction but a significant number would not and of those who do, a lot would be horrified that it would be a whipped vote. The proposal would crash and burn (majority against probably 80?) in the Commons and the DUP know that too.
Furthermore, you completely ignore the likely political context. The Tories would have surrendered a majority of 80, a disaster even more profound than 2017. The party would be shattered and I suspect there would be a clamour to accept defeat and go into opposition, rather than staggering on deflated and dejected and at the mercy of the DUP.
I’m afraid you are totally off the wall on this one.
No, a tiny minority might not, mainly social liberals from wealthy commuter Remain areas like yours which are heading LD and may well elect LD MPs anyway.
Social liberals are in decline in the party from a decade ago, social conservatives from the North and Midlands and small town and rural areas are becoming increasingly prominent. The new Tory base and most of the new Tory Parliamentary Party will happily deal with the DUP and happily cut the abortion time limit to 22 weeks to stay in power.
No, we would not accept opposition, though if social liberals prefer to join the LDs in opposition to a Tory-DUP alliance fine, bye then
Where is the slightest shred of evidence among current Conservative MPs, or even the Prime Minister himself, that they would support manifesto commitment that would bind them all to supporting a specified time limit. None whatsoever and it would be the first time ever that the party would do that. Even votes on hanging in the 1950s were free.
You are spouting nonsense and pernicious nonsense at that with all the ugly hallmarks of intolerance and sectarianism that fortunately still has no place whatever in the broad political church that is the Conservative Party. And Boris is with me!
By the way, it is distressing in the extreme that you seem to be gloating at the prospect of Mr Raab’s political demise.
Are non-tories allowed to gloat about Raab?
I’m just catching up with this conversation
Reading it back in two posts @HYUFD moves from abortion term limits being something that the Tories could offer the DUP (wacky idea) to it being something that the DUP would absolutely insist on and would never do a deal without.
Commendable mental agility!
He'll be suggesting closing down the dinosaur and rock dating galleries in the Natural History Museum next.
The earth is 30 years old and the things people claim are older (like the ZX81) were just put here by Allah to test us.
Does that mean the death of Sir Clive Sinclair is actually The Rapture?
I was an Acorn kid (literally, later on...), so Sinclair was the anti-Christ...
I had the pleasure of working with Jim Westwood, the tech genius behind the ZX80. He's a great guy; totally self-effacing and down to earth. Although he was working for a real computer company by then.
A link to a relevant ten-year-old Register article deserves a like. So you met Sinclair’s #2, and a doctor who decided that playing golf with Ayrton Senna was more important than seeing you.
Given the performance of the Sinclair C5, I suspect that JJ was the closest connexion Messrs Senna and Sinclair ever had.
However it could stay in power with the 8 DUP MPs if they back the Tories again, assuming SF do not take their seats.
What better way to win over our DUP friends than promising to reduce the abortion time limit to 22 weeks for the whole UK as a bonus while Lord Frost continues to work to remove the Irish Sea border?
If the Conservatives have 316 seats, then they will remain in Government. No government without them is really possible.
Labour + SNP + LD + SDLP + Green + PC + Alliance comes to 318 seats on the new poll average, so the Conservatives would still need the 8 DUP MPs to get to 324 and stay in power
I agree - but that wasn't my point.
The DUP are not going to abstain on a Labour + SNP + LD + SDLP + Green + PC + Alliance confidence motion. Therefore, it is not possible to have a government that did not include the Conservatives.
If the Conservative total was a few seats less (say 312), then a coalition like the one above would be possible, albeit not particularly stable.
I agree but would put the threshold just a tad lower, perhaps 310 in which the Tories could just about stagger on as a deflated minority government surviv
Anyway, there’s not the slightest chance of the next Conservative manifesto containing a commitment to restrict abortions to 22 weeks or any other level. It might conceivably pledge to have another vote on the matter (like Cameron did over hunting…did that ever happen?) but it will be a free vote as it has always been.
But even that is lower than 5%: I doubt the Prime Minister will want to be reminded on the campaign trail of his relationship with Petronnella Wyatt and his encouraging her….
Given the latest polling average gives a hung parliament with the Tories needing DUP support to stay in power, offering the DUP the carrot of a reduction in the abortion limit to 22 weeks for the whole UK as well as lots of dosh for NI while Lord Frost works on trying to remove the Irish Sea border with the EU may be the only way Boris stays in No 10.
In those circumstances, sure, they could offer a vote but no Tory MP will be whipped to support it.
And you were talking about the manifesto which patently is published before the election. That will emphatically not contain any commitment to 22 weeks or any figure. Can you see Boris Johnson even giving it half a second’s thought bearing in mind his past? Be serious.
Then the DUP would likely not give C and S then and Starmer becomes PM.
Donaldson and the DUP are extremely hard and tough negotiators, they will not make the same mistake Clegg did with AV getting a vote out of Cameron but with no promise of support to get it passed.
If there is no Tory majority then the manifesto will not have received a full mandate and have to be adapted, Boris will do so and whatever necessary to stay in power including a whipped vote to get the 22 weeks through and DUP C and S
You have now not only crashed into the buffers but catapulted the train to the road outside the station. Utterly absurd. There is no way that Conservative MPs will be dragooned into voting for something so contentious and that wasn’t even in the manifesto on which they’d campaigned only a couple of weeks earlier. If Johnson tried, which he wouldn’t, the proposal would be overwhelmingly defeated in the Commons and the Tories further weakened.
The DUP will have more important fish to fry if negotiations take place.
OK then, Starmer becomes PM.
Given the Irish Sea border is not going to be removed anytime soon the DUP will refuse to keep Boris and the Tories in power in the meantime unless they not only get vast sums of extra cash for NI but a reduction in the abortion timeframe for the whole UK to partly make up for the legalisation of abortion in NI Westminster imposed on them.
Most Conservative MPs would also support the abortion reduction anyway and especially if it is the only way to keep a Tory government in power so you are wrong
Many Tory MPs might support a reduction but a significant number would not and of those who do, a lot would be horrified that it would be a whipped vote. The proposal would crash and burn (majority against probably 80?) in the Commons and the DUP know that too.
Furthermore, you completely ignore the likely political context. The Tories would have surrendered a majority of 80, a disaster even more profound than 2017. The party would be shattered and I suspect there would be a clamour to accept defeat and go into opposition, rather than staggering on deflated and dejected and at the mercy of the DUP.
I’m afraid you are totally off the wall on this one.
No, a tiny minority might not, mainly social liberals from wealthy commuter Remain areas like yours which are heading LD and may well elect LD MPs anyway.
Social liberals are in decline in the party from a decade ago, social conservatives from the North and Midlands and small town and rural areas are becoming increasingly prominent. The new Tory base and most of the new Tory Parliamentary Party will happily deal with the DUP and happily cut the abortion time limit to 22 weeks to stay in power.
No, we would not accept opposition, though if social liberals prefer to join the LDs in opposition to a Tory-DUP alliance fine, bye then
Where is the slightest shred of evidence among current Conservative MPs, or even the Prime Minister himself, that they would support manifesto commitment that would bind them all to supporting a specified time limit. None whatsoever and it would be the first time ever that the party would do that. Even votes on hanging in the 1950s were free.
You are spouting nonsense and pernicious nonsense at that with all the ugly hallmarks of intolerance and sectarianism that fortunately still has no place whatever in the broad political church that is the Conservative Party. And Boris is with me!
By the way, it is distressing in the extreme that you seem to be gloating at the prospect of Mr Raab’s political demise.
Are non-tories allowed to gloat about Raab?
I’m just catching up with this conversation
Reading it back in two posts @HYUFD moves from abortion term limits being something that the Tories could offer the DUP (wacky idea) to it being something that the DUP would absolutely insist on and would never do a deal without.
Commendable mental agility!
He'll be suggesting closing down the dinosaur and rock dating galleries in the Natural History Museum next.
The earth is 30 years old and the things people claim are older (like the ZX81) were just put here by Allah to test us.
Does that mean the death of Sir Clive Sinclair is actually The Rapture?
I was an Acorn kid (literally, later on...), so Sinclair was the anti-Christ...
I had the pleasure of working with Jim Westwood, the tech genius behind the ZX80. He's a great guy; totally self-effacing and down to earth. Although he was working for a real computer company by then.
A link to a relevant ten-year-old Register article deserves a like. So you met Sinclair’s #2, and a doctor who decided that playing golf with Ayrton Senna was more important than seeing you.
Yep. And I've worked with the creator of the ARM instruction set.
I've been lucky enough to fluke into many things in life. A day here, a day there; a phone call missed; and my life might be very different due to missed and gained opportunities. I suppose that's true of most people.
Reflecting on how badly the Iraq occupation went feels like a good shot of 80 proof reality in the week that some of the more excitable people are licking their lips at the prospect of taking on China.
No one is "licking their lips about taking on China"
Any war with China would be hideously destructive, dangerous and potentially apocalyptic. On the other hand we cannot just sit back and let China take over the world: starting with Taiwan (having already devoured Hong Kong as an appetiser). China is a brutal autocratic aggressive regime, it has to be contained, for the sake of us all
The point of AUKUS is to DETER China so there is no war. So it won't invade Taiwan. So it will understand serious enemies are united against it, and there is hard pushback.
If the Taiwanese are relying on us for their defence then they really are fucked. It's hard to imagine that our puny ability to project military power in the South China Sea, compared to US firepower, can really move the needle in turns of deterrence. And what exactly are we getting out of this? I mean, apart from the unquantifiable benefit of Boris Johnson getting Zoom time with Biden and providing PB's batallion of armchair generals with a welcome rush of blood to their nether regions?
Can I respectively suggest it is Australia and the US together with other Trans Pacific nations that will be at the forefront of this though our carrier will be involves and we get high tech jobs here in the UK through our close involvement in the product of these subs which are built at Barrow
The Australians are quite likely to want to build them with tech transfer, so don't get your hopes up too much just yet. Some specialist kit, oh yes, I can imagine.
There will be jobs in the UK and it is churlish to say otherwise
Reflecting on how badly the Iraq occupation went feels like a good shot of 80 proof reality in the week that some of the more excitable people are licking their lips at the prospect of taking on China.
No one is "licking their lips about taking on China"
Any war with China would be hideously destructive, dangerous and potentially apocalyptic. On the other hand we cannot just sit back and let China take over the world: starting with Taiwan (having already devoured Hong Kong as an appetiser). China is a brutal autocratic aggressive regime, it has to be contained, for the sake of us all
The point of AUKUS is to DETER China so there is no war. So it won't invade Taiwan. So it will understand serious enemies are united against it, and there is hard pushback.
If the Taiwanese are relying on us for their defence then they really are fucked. It's hard to imagine that our puny ability to project military power in the South China Sea, compared to US firepower, can really move the needle in turns of deterrence. And what exactly are we getting out of this? I mean, apart from the unquantifiable benefit of Boris Johnson getting Zoom time with Biden and providing PB's batallion of armchair generals with a welcome rush of blood to their nether regions?
We're the old impecunious Count whose name can still add lustre to events and so he attends in exchange for his supper.
Love my country, though, don't get me wrong. I just want to see it focus and thrive rather than thrash about wastefully.
Flash of weird deja vu. I've had this EXACT exchange with you yonks ago. Really must take a break!
No one is "licking their lips about taking on China"
Any war with China would be hideously destructive, dangerous and potentially apocalyptic. On the other hand we cannot just sit back and let China take over the world: starting with Taiwan (having already devoured Hong Kong as an appetiser). China is a brutal autocratic aggressive regime, it has to be contained, for the sake of us all
The point of AUKUS is to DETER China so there is no war. So it won't invade Taiwan. So it will understand serious enemies are united against it, and there is hard pushback.
To be fair, we only leased a part of Hong Kong for 99 years and at the end of that lease (1997) it reverted to China. It was an international agreement and not to have honoured it would have been ridiculous. Even Margaret Thatcher recognised we would have to hand back Hong Kong and I suspect all UK leaders knew there was very little they could practically do if China chose to bend the notion of "one country, two systems".
Macau is another interesting case - the Chinese seem quite happy to have the casinos and the tourist revenue and the opportunity for their own people to do some gambling.
China isn't going to "take over the world", at least not in the way the other Marxist revolutionaries in Moscow wanted. The "revolution" has been far more insidious - based oddly enough on money, capital and the market. China has brought infrastructure to Africa in exchange for resources - much easier and more productive than landing divisions of the PLA.
"Deterring" China can't just be about Taiwan? What of India, Vietnam and Russia - all of whom share borders with Beijing? Do we think China has military designs on any of these - we saw a flare up with India just last year?
I can't see "No War over the Spratley Islands" having much resonance.
I wonder if Five Eyes intelligence is saying Yes, Covid came from the lab, yes the virus was altered for extra virulence, and yes, it was linked in part to research into bioweaponry (which, I stress, is a long way from the mad theory Covid 19 was a "deliberately released bioweapon).
There is plentiful evidence for all of this now. It would explain a suddenly much more hostile stance against China.
They wouldn't say all of this in public, because it would be too explosive
However it could stay in power with the 8 DUP MPs if they back the Tories again, assuming SF do not take their seats.
What better way to win over our DUP friends than promising to reduce the abortion time limit to 22 weeks for the whole UK as a bonus while Lord Frost continues to work to remove the Irish Sea border?
If the Conservatives have 316 seats, then they will remain in Government. No government without them is really possible.
Labour + SNP + LD + SDLP + Green + PC + Alliance comes to 318 seats on the new poll average, so the Conservatives would still need the 8 DUP MPs to get to 324 and stay in power
I agree - but that wasn't my point.
The DUP are not going to abstain on a Labour + SNP + LD + SDLP + Green + PC + Alliance confidence motion. Therefore, it is not possible to have a government that did not include the Conservatives.
If the Conservative total was a few seats less (say 312), then a coalition like the one above would be possible, albeit not particularly stable.
I agree but would put the threshold just a tad lower, perhaps 310 in which the Tories could just about stagger on as a deflated minority government surviv
Anyway, there’s not the slightest chance of the next Conservative manifesto containing a commitment to restrict abortions to 22 weeks or any other level. It might conceivably pledge to have another vote on the matter (like Cameron did over hunting…did that ever happen?) but it will be a free vote as it has always been.
But even that is lower than 5%: I doubt the Prime Minister will want to be reminded on the campaign trail of his relationship with Petronnella Wyatt and his encouraging her….
Given the latest polling average gives a hung parliament with the Tories needing DUP support to stay in power, offering the DUP the carrot of a reduction in the abortion limit to 22 weeks for the whole UK as well as lots of dosh for NI while Lord Frost works on trying to remove the Irish Sea border with the EU may be the only way Boris stays in No 10.
In those circumstances, sure, they could offer a vote but no Tory MP will be whipped to support it.
And you were talking about the manifesto which patently is published before the election. That will emphatically not contain any commitment to 22 weeks or any figure. Can you see Boris Johnson even giving it half a second’s thought bearing in mind his past? Be serious.
Then the DUP would likely not give C and S then and Starmer becomes PM.
Donaldson and the DUP are extremely hard and tough negotiators, they will not make the same mistake Clegg did with AV getting a vote out of Cameron but with no promise of support to get it passed.
If there is no Tory majority then the manifesto will not have received a full mandate and have to be adapted, Boris will do so and whatever necessary to stay in power including a whipped vote to get the 22 weeks through and DUP C and S
You have now not only crashed into the buffers but catapulted the train to the road outside the station. Utterly absurd. There is no way that Conservative MPs will be dragooned into voting for something so contentious and that wasn’t even in the manifesto on which they’d campaigned only a couple of weeks earlier. If Johnson tried, which he wouldn’t, the proposal would be overwhelmingly defeated in the Commons and the Tories further weakened.
The DUP will have more important fish to fry if negotiations take place.
OK then, Starmer becomes PM.
Given the Irish Sea border is not going to be removed anytime soon the DUP will refuse to keep Boris and the Tories in power in the meantime unless they not only get vast sums of extra cash for NI but a reduction in the abortion timeframe for the whole UK to partly make up for the legalisation of abortion in NI Westminster imposed on them.
Most Conservative MPs would also support the abortion reduction anyway and especially if it is the only way to keep a Tory government in power so you are wrong
Many Tory MPs might support a reduction but a significant number would not and of those who do, a lot would be horrified that it would be a whipped vote. The proposal would crash and burn (majority against probably 80?) in the Commons and the DUP know that too.
Furthermore, you completely ignore the likely political context. The Tories would have surrendered a majority of 80, a disaster even more profound than 2017. The party would be shattered and I suspect there would be a clamour to accept defeat and go into opposition, rather than staggering on deflated and dejected and at the mercy of the DUP.
I’m afraid you are totally off the wall on this one.
No, a tiny minority might not, mainly social liberals from wealthy commuter Remain areas like yours which are heading LD and may well elect LD MPs anyway.
Social liberals are in decline in the party from a decade ago, social conservatives from the North and Midlands and small town and rural areas are becoming increasingly prominent. The new Tory base and most of the new Tory Parliamentary Party will happily deal with the DUP and happily cut the abortion time limit to 22 weeks to stay in power.
No, we would not accept opposition, though if social liberals prefer to join the LDs in opposition to a Tory-DUP alliance fine, bye then
Where is the slightest shred of evidence among current Conservative MPs, or even the Prime Minister himself, that they would support manifesto commitment that would bind them all to supporting a specified time limit. None whatsoever and it would be the first time ever that the party would do that. Even votes on hanging in the 1950s were free.
You are spouting nonsense and pernicious nonsense at that with all the ugly hallmarks of intolerance and sectarianism that fortunately still has no place whatever in the broad political church that is the Conservative Party. And Boris is with me!
By the way, it is distressing in the extreme that you seem to be gloating at the prospect of Mr Raab’s political demise.
Are non-tories allowed to gloat about Raab?
I’m just catching up with this conversation
Reading it back in two posts @HYUFD moves from abortion term limits being something that the Tories could offer the DUP (wacky idea) to it being something that the DUP would absolutely insist on and would never do a deal without.
Commendable mental agility!
He'll be suggesting closing down the dinosaur and rock dating galleries in the Natural History Museum next.
The earth is 30 years old and the things people claim are older (like the ZX81) were just put here by Allah to test us.
Does that mean the death of Sir Clive Sinclair is actually The Rapture?
I was an Acorn kid (literally, later on...), so Sinclair was the anti-Christ...
I had the pleasure of working with Jim Westwood, the tech genius behind the ZX80. He's a great guy; totally self-effacing and down to earth. Although he was working for a real computer company by then.
A link to a relevant ten-year-old Register article deserves a like. So you met Sinclair’s #2, and a doctor who decided that playing golf with Ayrton Senna was more important than seeing you.
Yep. And I've worked with the creator of the ARM instruction set.
I've been lucky enough to fluke into many things in life. A day here, a day there; a phone call missed; and my life might be very different due to missed and gained opportunities. I suppose that's true of most people.
Oh yes, but you make your own luck.
A friend who lived down the road from me had a Sinclair C5, that I got to play with in the ‘90s. Actually a fun vehicle for someone who didn’t have a driving licence at the time. The problem was their battery, which was a standard 12v car battery but with a proprietary connector on it, so I couldn’t get a new one for £30 at Halford’s.
No one is "licking their lips about taking on China"
Any war with China would be hideously destructive, dangerous and potentially apocalyptic. On the other hand we cannot just sit back and let China take over the world: starting with Taiwan (having already devoured Hong Kong as an appetiser). China is a brutal autocratic aggressive regime, it has to be contained, for the sake of us all
The point of AUKUS is to DETER China so there is no war. So it won't invade Taiwan. So it will understand serious enemies are united against it, and there is hard pushback.
To be fair, we only leased a part of Hong Kong for 99 years and at the end of that lease (1997) it reverted to China. It was an international agreement and not to have honoured it would have been ridiculous. Even Margaret Thatcher recognised we would have to hand back Hong Kong and I suspect all UK leaders knew there was very little they could practically do if China chose to bend the notion of "one country, two systems".
Macau is another interesting case - the Chinese seem quite happy to have the casinos and the tourist revenue and the opportunity for their own people to do some gambling.
Reflecting on how badly the Iraq occupation went feels like a good shot of 80 proof reality in the week that some of the more excitable people are licking their lips at the prospect of taking on China.
No one is "licking their lips about taking on China"
Any war with China would be hideously destructive, dangerous and potentially apocalyptic. On the other hand we cannot just sit back and let China take over the world: starting with Taiwan (having already devoured Hong Kong as an appetiser). China is a brutal autocratic aggressive regime, it has to be contained, for the sake of us all
The point of AUKUS is to DETER China so there is no war. So it won't invade Taiwan. So it will understand serious enemies are united against it, and there is hard pushback.
If the Taiwanese are relying on us for their defence then they really are fucked. It's hard to imagine that our puny ability to project military power in the South China Sea, compared to US firepower, can really move the needle in turns of deterrence. And what exactly are we getting out of this? I mean, apart from the unquantifiable benefit of Boris Johnson getting Zoom time with Biden and providing PB's batallion of armchair generals with a welcome rush of blood to their nether regions?
Can I respectively suggest it is Australia and the US together with other Trans Pacific nations that will be at the forefront of this though our carrier will be involves and we get high tech jobs here in the UK through our close involvement in the product of these subs which are built at Barrow
The Australians are quite likely to want to build them with tech transfer, so don't get your hopes up too much just yet. Some specialist kit, oh yes, I can imagine.
There will be jobs in the UK and it is churlish to say otherwise
It also places us on the stage to join the CPTPP
I'm not being nasty to you, I hasten to add - just realistic. It depends if the Aussies feel able to do the specialist hull construction. But there should certainly be a fair bit of work on specialist equipment to fit out the subs even then.
No one is "licking their lips about taking on China"
Any war with China would be hideously destructive, dangerous and potentially apocalyptic. On the other hand we cannot just sit back and let China take over the world: starting with Taiwan (having already devoured Hong Kong as an appetiser). China is a brutal autocratic aggressive regime, it has to be contained, for the sake of us all
The point of AUKUS is to DETER China so there is no war. So it won't invade Taiwan. So it will understand serious enemies are united against it, and there is hard pushback.
To be fair, we only leased a part of Hong Kong for 99 years and at the end of that lease (1997) it reverted to China. It was an international agreement and not to have honoured it would have been ridiculous. Even Margaret Thatcher recognised we would have to hand back Hong Kong and I suspect all UK leaders knew there was very little they could practically do if China chose to bend the notion of "one country, two systems".
Macau is another interesting case - the Chinese seem quite happy to have the casinos and the tourist revenue and the opportunity for their own people to do some gambling.
Oh wow. Buy shares in Sands Singapore casino then. Last time I went there, in 2013, the lowest tables were $100 a bet, and there were lots of Chinese guys with $10k chips throwing them around like confetti.
No one is "licking their lips about taking on China"
Any war with China would be hideously destructive, dangerous and potentially apocalyptic. On the other hand we cannot just sit back and let China take over the world: starting with Taiwan (having already devoured Hong Kong as an appetiser). China is a brutal autocratic aggressive regime, it has to be contained, for the sake of us all
The point of AUKUS is to DETER China so there is no war. So it won't invade Taiwan. So it will understand serious enemies are united against it, and there is hard pushback.
To be fair, we only leased a part of Hong Kong for 99 years and at the end of that lease (1997) it reverted to China. It was an international agreement and not to have honoured it would have been ridiculous. Even Margaret Thatcher recognised we would have to hand back Hong Kong and I suspect all UK leaders knew there was very little they could practically do if China chose to bend the notion of "one country, two systems".
Macau is another interesting case - the Chinese seem quite happy to have the casinos and the tourist revenue and the opportunity for their own people to do some gambling.
China isn't going to "take over the world", at least not in the way the other Marxist revolutionaries in Moscow wanted. The "revolution" has been far more insidious - based oddly enough on money, capital and the market. China has brought infrastructure to Africa in exchange for resources - much easier and more productive than landing divisions of the PLA.
"Deterring" China can't just be about Taiwan? What of India, Vietnam and Russia - all of whom share borders with Beijing? Do we think China has military designs on any of these - we saw a flare up with India just last year?
I can't see "No War over the Spratley Islands" having much resonance.
I wonder if Five Eyes intelligence is saying Yes, Covid came from the lab, yes the virus was altered for extra virulence, and yes, it was linked in part to research into bioweaponry (which, I stress, is a long way from the mad theory Covid 19 was a "deliberately released bioweapon).
There is plentiful evidence for all of this now. It would explain a suddenly much more hostile stance against China.
They wouldn't say all of this in public, because it would be too explosive
Maybe the more hostile stance towards China is just a result of no longer having the orange man-child in the WH?
I was quite unaware of that - thanks very much. I've been to Macau a few times - last was in 2016. An extraordinary place.
I believe it generated more revenue from gaming than Vegas but if the Chinese Government starts moving in, the American casino operators will be looking carefully.
It was my experience, unlike Vegas, where the non-gambling side was growing in importance, Macau was all about the gambling. For every busload of "foreigners" from Hong Kong coming in to one entrance of the Wynn, six busloads of Chinese were coming in from the mainland to another entrance.
Hospital did not refer husband urgently to ENT. After calling them endlessly, still no answer from ENT service. GP has no urgent appointments. NHS 111 promised to get a duty doctor to call. No call.
Now Husband running temperature, feeling worse and throat really quite painful. He has not eaten since Wednesday evening. So he needs some medication, some useful help and it is Friday evening. We are about to embark on our third trip in as many days to A&E and this time I am going inside and will be kicking up a fuss until they do something useful.
If necessary I will drive him to Manchester or Preston or London come to that.
This is just not good enough. It is scary. He is scared. I am furious.
Is there a Patient Advice and Liaison Service (PALS) at the hospital in question? Giving them a hard time would at least relieve the tension. Doesdn't help being Friday, obvfs
Best wishes
We are in A&E now. In front of me there is a "How are we doing?" board. Don't tempt me!
The priority is getting something to deal with the infection. He can't even swallow a paracetamol. Then we will find an ENT specialist and go private if necessary. Important to find out if there is some underlying reason why this has happened.
Then a letter of complaint will go in. Though as the hospital is in special measures already, they know they're not up to it.
And it's not just the hospital at fault here. All day we have been given the runaround by NHS 111 and the GP with each saying the other should do something and neither accepting responsibility to do anything. Calls are promised but not made.
It's a collective shambles which has made a small problem worse than it should have been.
I was quite unaware of that - thanks very much. I've been to Macau a few times - last was in 2016. An extraordinary place.
I believe it generated more revenue from gaming than Vegas but if the Chinese Government starts moving in, the American casino operators will be looking carefully.
It was my experience, unlike Vegas, where the non-gambling side was growing in importance, Macau was all about the gambling. For every busload of "foreigners" from Hong Kong coming in to one entrance of the Wynn, six busloads of Chinese were coming in from the mainland to another entrance.
It is obviously big for gambling, but also as a way for rich mainland Chinese to move some of their wealth off shore as an insurance policy vs the state. Hence the tension, which is nothing new really.
No one is "licking their lips about taking on China"
Any war with China would be hideously destructive, dangerous and potentially apocalyptic. On the other hand we cannot just sit back and let China take over the world: starting with Taiwan (having already devoured Hong Kong as an appetiser). China is a brutal autocratic aggressive regime, it has to be contained, for the sake of us all
The point of AUKUS is to DETER China so there is no war. So it won't invade Taiwan. So it will understand serious enemies are united against it, and there is hard pushback.
To be fair, we only leased a part of Hong Kong for 99 years and at the end of that lease (1997) it reverted to China. It was an international agreement and not to have honoured it would have been ridiculous. Even Margaret Thatcher recognised we would have to hand back Hong Kong and I suspect all UK leaders knew there was very little they could practically do if China chose to bend the notion of "one country, two systems".
Macau is another interesting case - the Chinese seem quite happy to have the casinos and the tourist revenue and the opportunity for their own people to do some gambling.
China isn't going to "take over the world", at least not in the way the other Marxist revolutionaries in Moscow wanted. The "revolution" has been far more insidious - based oddly enough on money, capital and the market. China has brought infrastructure to Africa in exchange for resources - much easier and more productive than landing divisions of the PLA.
"Deterring" China can't just be about Taiwan? What of India, Vietnam and Russia - all of whom share borders with Beijing? Do we think China has military designs on any of these - we saw a flare up with India just last year?
I can't see "No War over the Spratley Islands" having much resonance.
I wonder if Five Eyes intelligence is saying Yes, Covid came from the lab, yes the virus was altered for extra virulence, and yes, it was linked in part to research into bioweaponry (which, I stress, is a long way from the mad theory Covid 19 was a "deliberately released bioweapon).
There is plentiful evidence for all of this now. It would explain a suddenly much more hostile stance against China.
They wouldn't say all of this in public, because it would be too explosive
Maybe the more hostile stance towards China is just a result of no longer having the orange man-child in the WH?
Indeed. What people like @kinabalu fail to comprehend is that while the bad orange man was outwardly bellicose towards foreign countries he was actually quite a supplicant willing to go along with the world's worst despots. Because he admired them and wanted to be one.
Toughening up our stance to China now is in part undoing Trump's damage. His pulling out of the TPP, which was designed to counter China over a decade ago, was one of the greatest mistakes of the modern era that will hopefully get reversed now the grown ups are back.
Reflecting on how badly the Iraq occupation went feels like a good shot of 80 proof reality in the week that some of the more excitable people are licking their lips at the prospect of taking on China.
No one is "licking their lips about taking on China"
Any war with China would be hideously destructive, dangerous and potentially apocalyptic. On the other hand we cannot just sit back and let China take over the world: starting with Taiwan (having already devoured Hong Kong as an appetiser). China is a brutal autocratic aggressive regime, it has to be contained, for the sake of us all
The point of AUKUS is to DETER China so there is no war. So it won't invade Taiwan. So it will understand serious enemies are united against it, and there is hard pushback.
If the Taiwanese are relying on us for their defence then they really are fucked. It's hard to imagine that our puny ability to project military power in the South China Sea, compared to US firepower, can really move the needle in turns of deterrence. And what exactly are we getting out of this? I mean, apart from the unquantifiable benefit of Boris Johnson getting Zoom time with Biden and providing PB's batallion of armchair generals with a welcome rush of blood to their nether regions?
Our role in this is to supply some of the sub tech to Australia and help with the building.
Otherwise, yes, our ability to project power in distant Taiwan is small (but not invisible, we have aircraft carriers)
But you are missing much of the point. The Aukus Treaty is about way more than subs for the Aussies and Taiwan. It talks of extremely close collaboration on AI, quantum tech, cyberstuff - all the future ways wars will be fought, and in this our distance from China is largely irrelevant (except maybe for that handy British base in Diego Garcia). And in some of this Britain excels.
This is a Treaty meant to last 50 years, and to future-proof the Anglosphere
Awks but important question: Do deals like this come from nowhere in 18 months, or is this a Trumpian masterplan coming to fruition?
Yeah I really don't think that any politician would trust Johnson to form a pact with him. He s&&t the bed with his border in the Irish Sea which no British PM could ever agree to and standing staring business people in the eye saying there will be no checks between NI and GB.
You would have to be a special type of stupid to believe anything he said when offering a pact with the political party you lead.
I think that if Johnson lost his majority, there would be a new leader to negotiate with.
That said, there is no way that the Lib Dems would support the party of Brexit. We want closer economic, social and cultural links with the EU. EEA or similar.
Yes absolutely but look at the Cons now - flying high why would there be a new leader? Sure the Cons/BJ's numbers are slipping but this is mid-term they should be shocking instead they are bobbing around parity with Lab and still generally 5pts ahead.
I just don't see a new leader. And I backed Boris to be out by, er, Sep 2021 god help me.
My point is that if Johnson were needing to negotiate a coalition or C and S, he would be doing so because he lost more seats than his current majority. There would be a new Con leader, sure as eggs is eggs. Probably not quickly enough to negotiate though possibly that would be done by an acting leader.
Didn't the LibDems make clear in 2010 that while they might go into coalition with Labour, the price would be replacing Brown? (Not that the maths would have worked).
Yes, I don't think it tenable to support a PM who has just been rejected. Only the DUP make that mistake!
May wasnt rejected, she led the most popularly supported UK wide party.
It was a failure for her as she went backwards but it gets a but overegged.
There's an old saying that Success = Performance - Expectations
There is. And it's the very saying that you reject whenever I try to explain to you why GE17 was a success for Jeremy Corbyn.
It was a relative success but he still lost.
If Accrington Stanley hold Liverpool to a draw, earn a replay at Anfield where they again hold them to a draw, it's still a draw after stoppage time and they only get knocked out via penalties then that would be a great relative success for Accrington Stanley. But they'd still be knocked out and Liverpool would still progress to the next round.
Yes, a success relative to expectations but a technical loss. That's the saying put another way and applied to Corbyn's GE17. Ditto and opposite, with May, a failure relative to expectations but a technical win. Liverpool, Accrington Stanley, May, Corbyn, football, politics, whatever, one just needs to be consistent with it.
And while we're in ticking off mode, I noticed your mask slipped yesterday and you succumbed to "cheese eating surrender monkeys" syntax for France and the French, whilst glorying in this latest Anglosphere v China nonsense. Another outing for "Frogs" was clearly only just resisted.
It was noted. That's all I'll say for now.
If you think this Anglosphere v China nonsense is as you describe I would suggest you listen to Japan, South Korea, India, and the Trans Pacific countries to which this is very real, and the reason it is widely backed including by the HoC and even some EU countries
It's above my paygrade, Big G. But my thing is detecting "chaps we can trust" type sentimental belicosity dressed up as geopolitical analysis, and I detected some.
In simple terms Australia wants nuclear powered subs and France was supplying diesel
Australia agreed with the US to supply the technology which is shared only by the UK to build the subs in Adelaide
The Trans Pacific are building an alliance CPTPP to combat China in trade and with the UK and now US seeking to join
France will be included along with Canada at some point but not in the exclusive AUKUS deal
Well I hope it's not going to be another cold war. Or worse.
It sometimes seems to me that the post WW2 world needs these big conflict narratives to keep people busy. The "military industrial complex" and whatnot. The USSR thing finishes, you think it's all over, the End of History bla bla, and BANG, along comes Islamic fundamentalism. Then that fades away - although it hasn't really - and the US and us pull out of all that, so can we relax now and just concentrate on building Jerusalem at home? - no we damn well cannot because now it's CHINA! Etc Etc Etc.
Orwell of course captured this concept of perpetual war well in Nineteen Eighty-Four.
Spookily, his Oceania included the US, Australia and the UK, whilst mainland Europe has come under the control of Russia. All written over 70 years ago too.
No one is "licking their lips about taking on China"
Any war with China would be hideously destructive, dangerous and potentially apocalyptic. On the other hand we cannot just sit back and let China take over the world: starting with Taiwan (having already devoured Hong Kong as an appetiser). China is a brutal autocratic aggressive regime, it has to be contained, for the sake of us all
The point of AUKUS is to DETER China so there is no war. So it won't invade Taiwan. So it will understand serious enemies are united against it, and there is hard pushback.
To be fair, we only leased a part of Hong Kong for 99 years and at the end of that lease (1997) it reverted to China. It was an international agreement and not to have honoured it would have been ridiculous. Even Margaret Thatcher recognised we would have to hand back Hong Kong and I suspect all UK leaders knew there was very little they could practically do if China chose to bend the notion of "one country, two systems".
Macau is another interesting case - the Chinese seem quite happy to have the casinos and the tourist revenue and the opportunity for their own people to do some gambling.
China isn't going to "take over the world", at least not in the way the other Marxist revolutionaries in Moscow wanted. The "revolution" has been far more insidious - based oddly enough on money, capital and the market. China has brought infrastructure to Africa in exchange for resources - much easier and more productive than landing divisions of the PLA.
"Deterring" China can't just be about Taiwan? What of India, Vietnam and Russia - all of whom share borders with Beijing? Do we think China has military designs on any of these - we saw a flare up with India just last year?
I can't see "No War over the Spratley Islands" having much resonance.
I wonder if Five Eyes intelligence is saying Yes, Covid came from the lab, yes the virus was altered for extra virulence, and yes, it was linked in part to research into bioweaponry (which, I stress, is a long way from the mad theory Covid 19 was a "deliberately released bioweapon).
There is plentiful evidence for all of this now. It would explain a suddenly much more hostile stance against China.
They wouldn't say all of this in public, because it would be too explosive
Maybe the more hostile stance towards China is just a result of no longer having the orange man-child in the WH?
Indeed. What people like @kinabalu fail to comprehend is that while the bad orange man was outwardly bellicose towards foreign countries he was actually quite a supplicant willing to go along with the world's worst despots. Because he admired them and wanted to be one.
Toughening up our stance to China now is in part undoing Trump's damage. His pulling out of the TPP, which was designed to counter China over a decade ago, was one of the greatest mistakes of the modern era that will hopefully get reversed now the grown ups are back.
Oi. I can hardly fail to comprehend the very point (about Trump) I've made more than anybody else on this site and before anybody else on this site. Behave.
However it could stay in power with the 8 DUP MPs if they back the Tories again, assuming SF do not take their seats.
What better way to win over our DUP friends than promising to reduce the abortion time limit to 22 weeks for the whole UK as a bonus while Lord Frost continues to work to remove the Irish Sea border?
If the Conservatives have 316 seats, then they will remain in Government. No government without them is really possible.
Labour + SNP + LD + SDLP + Green + PC + Alliance comes to 318 seats on the new poll average, so the Conservatives would still need the 8 DUP MPs to get to 324 and stay in power
I agree - but that wasn't my point.
The DUP are not going to abstain on a Labour + SNP + LD + SDLP + Green + PC + Alliance confidence motion. Therefore, it is not possible to have a government that did not include the Conservatives.
If the Conservative total was a few seats less (say 312), then a coalition like the one above would be possible, albeit not particularly stable.
I agree but would put the threshold just a tad lower, perhaps 310 in which the Tories could just about stagger on as a deflated minority government surviv
Anyway, there’s not the slightest chance of the next Conservative manifesto containing a commitment to restrict abortions to 22 weeks or any other level. It might conceivably pledge to have another vote on the matter (like Cameron did over hunting…did that ever happen?) but it will be a free vote as it has always been.
But even that is lower than 5%: I doubt the Prime Minister will want to be reminded on the campaign trail of his relationship with Petronnella Wyatt and his encouraging her….
Given the latest polling average gives a hung parliament with the Tories needing DUP support to stay in power, offering the DUP the carrot of a reduction in the abortion limit to 22 weeks for the whole UK as well as lots of dosh for NI while Lord Frost works on trying to remove the Irish Sea border with the EU may be the only way Boris stays in No 10.
In those circumstances, sure, they could offer a vote but no Tory MP will be whipped to support it.
And you were talking about the manifesto which patently is published before the election. That will emphatically not contain any commitment to 22 weeks or any figure. Can you see Boris Johnson even giving it half a second’s thought bearing in mind his past? Be serious.
Then the DUP would likely not give C and S then and Starmer becomes PM.
Donaldson and the DUP are extremely hard and tough negotiators, they will not make the same mistake Clegg did with AV getting a vote out of Cameron but with no promise of support to get it passed.
If there is no Tory majority then the manifesto will not have received a full mandate and have to be adapted, Boris will do so and whatever necessary to stay in power including a whipped vote to get the 22 weeks through and DUP C and S
You have now not only crashed into the buffers but catapulted the train to the road outside the station. Utterly absurd. There is no way that Conservative MPs will be dragooned into voting for something so contentious and that wasn’t even in the manifesto on which they’d campaigned only a couple of weeks earlier. If Johnson tried, which he wouldn’t, the proposal would be overwhelmingly defeated in the Commons and the Tories further weakened.
The DUP will have more important fish to fry if negotiations take place.
OK then, Starmer becomes PM.
Given the Irish Sea border is not going to be removed anytime soon the DUP will refuse to keep Boris and the Tories in power in the meantime unless they not only get vast sums of extra cash for NI but a reduction in the abortion timeframe for the whole UK to partly make up for the legalisation of abortion in NI Westminster imposed on them.
Most Conservative MPs would also support the abortion reduction anyway and especially if it is the only way to keep a Tory government in power so you are wrong
Many Tory MPs might support a reduction but a significant number would not and of those who do, a lot would be horrified that it would be a whipped vote. The proposal would crash and burn (majority against probably 80?) in the Commons and the DUP know that too.
Furthermore, you completely ignore the likely political context. The Tories would have surrendered a majority of 80, a disaster even more profound than 2017. The party would be shattered and I suspect there would be a clamour to accept defeat and go into opposition, rather than staggering on deflated and dejected and at the mercy of the DUP.
I’m afraid you are totally off the wall on this one.
No, a tiny minority might not, mainly social liberals from wealthy commuter Remain areas like yours which are heading LD and may well elect LD MPs anyway.
Social liberals are in decline in the party from a decade ago, social conservatives from the North and Midlands and small town and rural areas are becoming increasingly prominent. The new Tory base and most of the new Tory Parliamentary Party will happily deal with the DUP and happily cut the abortion time limit to 22 weeks to stay in power.
No, we would not accept opposition, though if social liberals prefer to join the LDs in opposition to a Tory-DUP alliance fine, bye then
Where is the slightest shred of evidence among current Conservative MPs, or even the Prime Minister himself, that they would support manifesto commitment that would bind them all to supporting a specified time limit. None whatsoever and it would be the first time ever that the party would do that. Even votes on hanging in the 1950s were free.
You are spouting nonsense and pernicious nonsense at that with all the ugly hallmarks of intolerance and sectarianism that fortunately still has no place whatever in the broad political church that is the Conservative Party. And Boris is with me!
By the way, it is distressing in the extreme that you seem to be gloating at the prospect of Mr Raab’s political demise.
Are non-tories allowed to gloat about Raab?
I’m just catching up with this conversation
Reading it back in two posts @HYUFD moves from abortion term limits being something that the Tories could offer the DUP (wacky idea) to it being something that the DUP would absolutely insist on and would never do a deal without.
Commendable mental agility!
He'll be suggesting closing down the dinosaur and rock dating galleries in the Natural History Museum next.
The earth is 30 years old and the things people claim are older (like the ZX81) were just put here by Allah to test us.
Does that mean the death of Sir Clive Sinclair is actually The Rapture?
I was an Acorn kid (literally, later on...), so Sinclair was the anti-Christ...
I had the pleasure of working with Jim Westwood, the tech genius behind the ZX80. He's a great guy; totally self-effacing and down to earth. Although he was working for a real computer company by then.
A link to a relevant ten-year-old Register article deserves a like. So you met Sinclair’s #2, and a doctor who decided that playing golf with Ayrton Senna was more important than seeing you.
Given the performance of the Sinclair C5, I suspect that JJ was the closest connexion Messrs Senna and Sinclair ever had.
I thought that was worth a Google, and came across this:
Reflecting on how badly the Iraq occupation went feels like a good shot of 80 proof reality in the week that some of the more excitable people are licking their lips at the prospect of taking on China.
No one is "licking their lips about taking on China"
Any war with China would be hideously destructive, dangerous and potentially apocalyptic. On the other hand we cannot just sit back and let China take over the world: starting with Taiwan (having already devoured Hong Kong as an appetiser). China is a brutal autocratic aggressive regime, it has to be contained, for the sake of us all
The point of AUKUS is to DETER China so there is no war. So it won't invade Taiwan. So it will understand serious enemies are united against it, and there is hard pushback.
If the Taiwanese are relying on us for their defence then they really are fucked. It's hard to imagine that our puny ability to project military power in the South China Sea, compared to US firepower, can really move the needle in turns of deterrence. And what exactly are we getting out of this? I mean, apart from the unquantifiable benefit of Boris Johnson getting Zoom time with Biden and providing PB's batallion of armchair generals with a welcome rush of blood to their nether regions?
Our role in this is to supply some of the sub tech to Australia and help with the building.
Otherwise, yes, our ability to project power in distant Taiwan is small (but not invisible, we have aircraft carriers)
But you are missing much of the point. The Aukus Treaty is about way more than subs for the Aussies and Taiwan. It talks of extremely close collaboration on AI, quantum tech, cyberstuff - all the future ways wars will be fought, and in this our distance from China is largely irrelevant (except maybe for that handy British base in Diego Garcia). And in some of this Britain excels.
This is a Treaty meant to last 50 years, and to future-proof the Anglosphere
Awks but important question: Do deals like this come from nowhere in 18 months, or is this a Trumpian masterplan coming to fruition?
Apparently the first Australian approach was to the DoD under Trump, but it did not actually reach him. It only got as high as the POTUS (by then Biden) in Carbis Bay
No one is "licking their lips about taking on China"
Any war with China would be hideously destructive, dangerous and potentially apocalyptic. On the other hand we cannot just sit back and let China take over the world: starting with Taiwan (having already devoured Hong Kong as an appetiser). China is a brutal autocratic aggressive regime, it has to be contained, for the sake of us all
The point of AUKUS is to DETER China so there is no war. So it won't invade Taiwan. So it will understand serious enemies are united against it, and there is hard pushback.
To be fair, we only leased a part of Hong Kong for 99 years and at the end of that lease (1997) it reverted to China. It was an international agreement and not to have honoured it would have been ridiculous. Even Margaret Thatcher recognised we would have to hand back Hong Kong and I suspect all UK leaders knew there was very little they could practically do if China chose to bend the notion of "one country, two systems".
Macau is another interesting case - the Chinese seem quite happy to have the casinos and the tourist revenue and the opportunity for their own people to do some gambling.
China isn't going to "take over the world", at least not in the way the other Marxist revolutionaries in Moscow wanted. The "revolution" has been far more insidious - based oddly enough on money, capital and the market. China has brought infrastructure to Africa in exchange for resources - much easier and more productive than landing divisions of the PLA.
"Deterring" China can't just be about Taiwan? What of India, Vietnam and Russia - all of whom share borders with Beijing? Do we think China has military designs on any of these - we saw a flare up with India just last year?
I can't see "No War over the Spratley Islands" having much resonance.
I wonder if Five Eyes intelligence is saying Yes, Covid came from the lab, yes the virus was altered for extra virulence, and yes, it was linked in part to research into bioweaponry (which, I stress, is a long way from the mad theory Covid 19 was a "deliberately released bioweapon).
There is plentiful evidence for all of this now. It would explain a suddenly much more hostile stance against China.
They wouldn't say all of this in public, because it would be too explosive
Maybe the more hostile stance towards China is just a result of no longer having the orange man-child in the WH?
Indeed. What people like @kinabalu fail to comprehend is that while the bad orange man was outwardly bellicose towards foreign countries he was actually quite a supplicant willing to go along with the world's worst despots. Because he admired them and wanted to be one.
Toughening up our stance to China now is in part undoing Trump's damage. His pulling out of the TPP, which was designed to counter China over a decade ago, was one of the greatest mistakes of the modern era that will hopefully get reversed now the grown ups are back.
Oi. I can hardly fail to comprehend the very point (about Trump) I've made more than anybody else on this site and before anybody else on this site. Behave.
So why are you mocking our closest allies and us getting back to dealing closely and professionally as "the chaps you can trust"?
Would you really rather we had another bad orange man who was happier dealing with chaps you can't trust?
Reflecting on how badly the Iraq occupation went feels like a good shot of 80 proof reality in the week that some of the more excitable people are licking their lips at the prospect of taking on China.
No one is "licking their lips about taking on China"
Any war with China would be hideously destructive, dangerous and potentially apocalyptic. On the other hand we cannot just sit back and let China take over the world: starting with Taiwan (having already devoured Hong Kong as an appetiser). China is a brutal autocratic aggressive regime, it has to be contained, for the sake of us all
The point of AUKUS is to DETER China so there is no war. So it won't invade Taiwan. So it will understand serious enemies are united against it, and there is hard pushback.
If the Taiwanese are relying on us for their defence then they really are fucked. It's hard to imagine that our puny ability to project military power in the South China Sea, compared to US firepower, can really move the needle in turns of deterrence. And what exactly are we getting out of this? I mean, apart from the unquantifiable benefit of Boris Johnson getting Zoom time with Biden and providing PB's batallion of armchair generals with a welcome rush of blood to their nether regions?
Our role in this is to supply some of the sub tech to Australia and help with the building.
Otherwise, yes, our ability to project power in distant Taiwan is small (but not invisible, we have aircraft carriers)
But you are missing much of the point. The Aukus Treaty is about way more than subs for the Aussies and Taiwan. It talks of extremely close collaboration on AI, quantum tech, cyberstuff - all the future ways wars will be fought, and in this our distance from China is largely irrelevant (except maybe for that handy British base in Diego Garcia). And in some of this Britain excels.
This is a Treaty meant to last 50 years, and to future-proof the Anglosphere
Awks but important question: Do deals like this come from nowhere in 18 months, or is this a Trumpian masterplan coming to fruition?
Hah! Good question, but honestly if Trump had been the mastermind of this:
(a) he'd have been saying so loud and clear, (b) Biden would have dropped it like a hot potato, and (c) Trump would have to have some kind of (hitherto completely hidden) ability to plan something.
Reflecting on how badly the Iraq occupation went feels like a good shot of 80 proof reality in the week that some of the more excitable people are licking their lips at the prospect of taking on China.
No one is "licking their lips about taking on China"
Any war with China would be hideously destructive, dangerous and potentially apocalyptic. On the other hand we cannot just sit back and let China take over the world: starting with Taiwan (having already devoured Hong Kong as an appetiser). China is a brutal autocratic aggressive regime, it has to be contained, for the sake of us all
The point of AUKUS is to DETER China so there is no war. So it won't invade Taiwan. So it will understand serious enemies are united against it, and there is hard pushback.
If the Taiwanese are relying on us for their defence then they really are fucked. It's hard to imagine that our puny ability to project military power in the South China Sea, compared to US firepower, can really move the needle in turns of deterrence. And what exactly are we getting out of this? I mean, apart from the unquantifiable benefit of Boris Johnson getting Zoom time with Biden and providing PB's batallion of armchair generals with a welcome rush of blood to their nether regions?
Our role in this is to supply some of the sub tech to Australia and help with the building.
Otherwise, yes, our ability to project power in distant Taiwan is small (but not invisible, we have aircraft carriers)
But you are missing much of the point. The Aukus Treaty is about way more than subs for the Aussies and Taiwan. It talks of extremely close collaboration on AI, quantum tech, cyberstuff - all the future ways wars will be fought, and in this our distance from China is largely irrelevant (except maybe for that handy British base in Diego Garcia). And in some of this Britain excels.
This is a Treaty meant to last 50 years, and to future-proof the Anglosphere
Awks but important question: Do deals like this come from nowhere in 18 months, or is this a Trumpian masterplan coming to fruition?
Apparently the first Australian approach was to the DoD under Trump, but it did not actually reach him. It only got as high as the POTUS (by then Biden) in Carbis Bay
Reflecting on how badly the Iraq occupation went feels like a good shot of 80 proof reality in the week that some of the more excitable people are licking their lips at the prospect of taking on China.
No one is "licking their lips about taking on China"
Any war with China would be hideously destructive, dangerous and potentially apocalyptic. On the other hand we cannot just sit back and let China take over the world: starting with Taiwan (having already devoured Hong Kong as an appetiser). China is a brutal autocratic aggressive regime, it has to be contained, for the sake of us all
The point of AUKUS is to DETER China so there is no war. So it won't invade Taiwan. So it will understand serious enemies are united against it, and there is hard pushback.
If the Taiwanese are relying on us for their defence then they really are fucked. It's hard to imagine that our puny ability to project military power in the South China Sea, compared to US firepower, can really move the needle in turns of deterrence. And what exactly are we getting out of this? I mean, apart from the unquantifiable benefit of Boris Johnson getting Zoom time with Biden and providing PB's batallion of armchair generals with a welcome rush of blood to their nether regions?
Can I respectively suggest it is Australia and the US together with other Trans Pacific nations that will be at the forefront of this though our carrier will be involves and we get high tech jobs here in the UK through our close involvement in the product of these subs which are built at Barrow
The Australians are quite likely to want to build them with tech transfer, so don't get your hopes up too much just yet. Some specialist kit, oh yes, I can imagine.
There will be jobs in the UK and it is churlish to say otherwise
It also places us on the stage to join the CPTPP
I'm not being nasty to you, I hasten to add - just realistic. It depends if the Aussies feel able to do the specialist hull construction. But there should certainly be a fair bit of work on specialist equipment to fit out the subs even then.
I know you are not and this is tugging at a lot of emotions
I just believe it is good for all of us that a stance is made v China and of course it is hugely relevant to Australia, Japan and others
However it could stay in power with the 8 DUP MPs if they back the Tories again, assuming SF do not take their seats.
What better way to win over our DUP friends than promising to reduce the abortion time limit to 22 weeks for the whole UK as a bonus while Lord Frost continues to work to remove the Irish Sea border?
If the Conservatives have 316 seats, then they will remain in Government. No government without them is really possible.
Labour + SNP + LD + SDLP + Green + PC + Alliance comes to 318 seats on the new poll average, so the Conservatives would still need the 8 DUP MPs to get to 324 and stay in power
I agree - but that wasn't my point.
The DUP are not going to abstain on a Labour + SNP + LD + SDLP + Green + PC + Alliance confidence motion. Therefore, it is not possible to have a government that did not include the Conservatives.
If the Conservative total was a few seats less (say 312), then a coalition like the one above would be possible, albeit not particularly stable.
I agree but would put the threshold just a tad lower, perhaps 310 in which the Tories could just about stagger on as a deflated minority government surviv
Anyway, there’s not the slightest chance of the next Conservative manifesto containing a commitment to restrict abortions to 22 weeks or any other level. It might conceivably pledge to have another vote on the matter (like Cameron did over hunting…did that ever happen?) but it will be a free vote as it has always been.
But even that is lower than 5%: I doubt the Prime Minister will want to be reminded on the campaign trail of his relationship with Petronnella Wyatt and his encouraging her….
Given the latest polling average gives a hung parliament with the Tories needing DUP support to stay in power, offering the DUP the carrot of a reduction in the abortion limit to 22 weeks for the whole UK as well as lots of dosh for NI while Lord Frost works on trying to remove the Irish Sea border with the EU may be the only way Boris stays in No 10.
In those circumstances, sure, they could offer a vote but no Tory MP will be whipped to support it.
And you were talking about the manifesto which patently is published before the election. That will emphatically not contain any commitment to 22 weeks or any figure. Can you see Boris Johnson even giving it half a second’s thought bearing in mind his past? Be serious.
Then the DUP would likely not give C and S then and Starmer becomes PM.
Donaldson and the DUP are extremely hard and tough negotiators, they will not make the same mistake Clegg did with AV getting a vote out of Cameron but with no promise of support to get it passed.
If there is no Tory majority then the manifesto will not have received a full mandate and have to be adapted, Boris will do so and whatever necessary to stay in power including a whipped vote to get the 22 weeks through and DUP C and S
You have now not only crashed into the buffers but catapulted the train to the road outside the station. Utterly absurd. There is no way that Conservative MPs will be dragooned into voting for something so contentious and that wasn’t even in the manifesto on which they’d campaigned only a couple of weeks earlier. If Johnson tried, which he wouldn’t, the proposal would be overwhelmingly defeated in the Commons and the Tories further weakened.
The DUP will have more important fish to fry if negotiations take place.
OK then, Starmer becomes PM.
Given the Irish Sea border is not going to be removed anytime soon the DUP will refuse to keep Boris and the Tories in power in the meantime unless they not only get vast sums of extra cash for NI but a reduction in the abortion timeframe for the whole UK to partly make up for the legalisation of abortion in NI Westminster imposed on them.
Most Conservative MPs would also support the abortion reduction anyway and especially if it is the only way to keep a Tory government in power so you are wrong
Many Tory MPs might support a reduction but a significant number would not and of those who do, a lot would be horrified that it would be a whipped vote. The proposal would crash and burn (majority against probably 80?) in the Commons and the DUP know that too.
Furthermore, you completely ignore the likely political context. The Tories would have surrendered a majority of 80, a disaster even more profound than 2017. The party would be shattered and I suspect there would be a clamour to accept defeat and go into opposition, rather than staggering on deflated and dejected and at the mercy of the DUP.
I’m afraid you are totally off the wall on this one.
No, a tiny minority might not, mainly social liberals from wealthy commuter Remain areas like yours which are heading LD and may well elect LD MPs anyway.
Social liberals are in decline in the party from a decade ago, social conservatives from the North and Midlands and small town and rural areas are becoming increasingly prominent. The new Tory base and most of the new Tory Parliamentary Party will happily deal with the DUP and happily cut the abortion time limit to 22 weeks to stay in power.
No, we would not accept opposition, though if social liberals prefer to join the LDs in opposition to a Tory-DUP alliance fine, bye then
Where is the slightest shred of evidence among current Conservative MPs, or even the Prime Minister himself, that they would support manifesto commitment that would bind them all to supporting a specified time limit. None whatsoever and it would be the first time ever that the party would do that. Even votes on hanging in the 1950s were free.
You are spouting nonsense and pernicious nonsense at that with all the ugly hallmarks of intolerance and sectarianism that fortunately still has no place whatever in the broad political church that is the Conservative Party. And Boris is with me!
By the way, it is distressing in the extreme that you seem to be gloating at the prospect of Mr Raab’s political demise.
Are non-tories allowed to gloat about Raab?
I’m just catching up with this conversation
Reading it back in two posts @HYUFD moves from abortion term limits being something that the Tories could offer the DUP (wacky idea) to it being something that the DUP would absolutely insist on and would never do a deal without.
Commendable mental agility!
He'll be suggesting closing down the dinosaur and rock dating galleries in the Natural History Museum next.
The earth is 30 years old and the things people claim are older (like the ZX81) were just put here by Allah to test us.
Does that mean the death of Sir Clive Sinclair is actually The Rapture?
I was an Acorn kid (literally, later on...), so Sinclair was the anti-Christ...
I had the pleasure of working with Jim Westwood, the tech genius behind the ZX80. He's a great guy; totally self-effacing and down to earth. Although he was working for a real computer company by then.
A link to a relevant ten-year-old Register article deserves a like. So you met Sinclair’s #2, and a doctor who decided that playing golf with Ayrton Senna was more important than seeing you.
Given the performance of the Sinclair C5, I suspect that JJ was the closest connexion Messrs Senna and Sinclair ever had.
I thought that was worth a Google, and came across this:
Comments
Imagine if the film the Battle of Britain had a character that referred to Guy Gibson as a coward [which he most certainly was not].
Whether it is enough to be regarded as defamation, IANAL.
Jimmy Savile lived in Leeds. So if we had struck it with shock and awe in say 2005 and then put in an army of occupation, and killed a good 100,000 civilians, would "no regrets that Savile is gone" put the whole issue to bed?
Think about it. If you fly in with Covid then you develop symptoms and go for a test like anyone else. A separate mandatory test on day 2 doesn't stop you going for an NHS test on day 3 or 5 or whenever you show actual symptoms. And supposedly the same test number can be quoted on repeated locator forms without anyone batting an eyelid.
Conservative: 93 seats (-272)
Labour: 36 seats (-167)
Liberal Democrats: 444 (+433)
SNP: 55 (+7)
Others: 22
Seems perfectly feasible to me. Both Starmer and Johnson lose their seats but Rishi Sunak survives as do Liz Truss and Priti Patel so a big battle for the Conservative leadership.
Reading it back in two posts @HYUFD moves from abortion term limits being something that the Tories could offer the DUP (wacky idea) to it being something that the DUP would absolutely insist on and would never do a deal without.
Commendable mental agility!
https://www.campaignresearch.com/single-post/a-vote-for-the-ppc-instead-of-the-cpc-will-give-trudeau-a-minority-and-potentially-a-majority-gov
Will the PPC do for the CPC? Revenge would be sweet for Mr Bernier I imagine.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1lFqOeWEmXq3pG12WN2kNw3VzSzUJllJs/view
Liberals five points ahead in Ontario and Quebec but third behind the NDP and Conservatives in British Columbia.
Remember, Ontario, Quebec and British Columbia account for three quarters of the ridings in the Canadian Parliament.
Survation.
@Survation
·
1h
NEW – Best Prime Minister:
Boris Johnson45% (+5)
Keir Starmer 28% (-7)
Don't know 28% (+1)
Survation.
@Survation
·
1h
Replying to
@Survation
NEW – Leadership Favourability Ratings:
Boris Johnson / Keir Starmer
Net Rating: -6% (+4) / -9% (-7)
Favourable 38% (+1) / 29% (-4)
Unfavourable 44% (-3) / 38% (+3)
2164, online, UK adults aged 18+, 10-14 Sept 21. Changes w/ 23 July 21
In a perfect world, we end up with something that looks a bit like the WTO before they admitted China.
As we have never been interested in staffing the border properly this isn't a surprise. Mandatory locator forms seem to have only been intermittently collected, tests that are just a revenue stream for scammers etc etc. As always, do it properly or don't bother.
I'd like to see a citation on the claim the UK has killed 100k civilians. I call BS on that.
But maybe they’re right!
'From 4 October, the current traffic light system of red, amber and green countries will be scrapped and replaced with one red list only.
Anywhere not on the red list is considered green and clear for travel - there will no longer be an amber list.
Also from that date, passengers who are fully vaccinated will no longer need to take a pre-departure test for travelling into England from non-red list countries.
Then, from the end of October, they will be able to replace their day-two PCR test with a cheaper lateral flow test'.
Not sure where the free NHS test came from but it does look much cheaper unless you are unvaccinated
The fall of the Ba'athists not only removed Saddam but also created a dangerous power vacuum which allowed for the re-emergence of old vendettas and the settling of old scores.
The other problem was the over-rapid dismantling of the Ba'athist command and control structures further left the country bereft of any central Government or control allowing local warlords and religious leaders to establish their own fiefdoms in the chaos.
I think I first saw one in ‘83, as an inquisitive primary-schooler. The first family computer was the Spectrum +2, in 1985.
RIP Sir Clive, and thanks for inspiring this 43 year old IT guy.
Removing Saddam was the right thing to do. What came next was not.
https://www.orthomolecularproducts.com/product/orthomune
And I hadn't heard of azithromyacin before - turns out to be an antibiotic. Really useful for viruses, eh. And the NHS website says "The most common side effects of azithromycin are feeling or being sick, diarrhoea, headaches, or changes to your sense of taste."
Burn them. Burn them all!
Any war with China would be hideously destructive, dangerous and potentially apocalyptic. On the other hand we cannot just sit back and let China take over the world: starting with Taiwan (having already devoured Hong Kong as an appetiser). China is a brutal autocratic aggressive regime, it has to be contained, for the sake of us all
The point of AUKUS is to DETER China so there is no war. So it won't invade Taiwan. So it will understand serious enemies are united against it, and there is hard pushback.
Removing Nazis from positions of power and influence was a necessity but any number of lower level bureaucrats, officials and lower-ranking soldiers went on to find and enjoy peace and prosperity in West Germany.
Indeed, I'd argue the maintenance of the pre-existing bureaucratic infrastructure, initially under allied military but after 1949 civilian political control was at the foundation of West Germany's success in the 1950s and beyond.
They didn't refuse an offer; they weren't even in the loop
https://www.theglobeandmail.com/politics/article-canadian-government-surprised-by-new-indo-pacific-security-pact/?utm_medium=Referrer:+Social+Network+/+Media&utm_campaign=Shared+Web+Article+Links
It sometimes seems to me that the post WW2 world needs these big conflict narratives to keep people busy. The "military industrial complex" and whatnot. The USSR thing finishes, you think it's all over, the End of History bla bla, and BANG, along comes Islamic fundamentalism. Then that fades away - although it hasn't really - and the US and us pull out of all that, so can we relax now and just concentrate on building Jerusalem at home? - no we damn well cannot because now it's CHINA! Etc Etc Etc.
Plus if post 1945 we'd screwed up Germany's reconstruction and it had degenerated into a medieval civil war then that would have been a real shame but not made removing Hitler the wrong thing to do.
https://www.wahlrecht.de/umfragen/landtage/berlin.htm
The national poll is the first for a while showing SPD/Green/Linke with a solid majority. But the FDP partnership still looks both even more solid and more likely. That said, if I was in the Linke leadership I'd prefer that - being the only party to the left of a government with business-driven FDP Ministers sounds pretty good for the medium term. Being a very junior partner to the SPD would be an existential gamble - might make or break them.
Although Kate Winslet did have a nap there and pinched one of my dad’s books.
From Tibet to Hong Kong to Xinjiang China has already shown itself to be a new Evil Empire and it has no intentions of stopping there.
If we can contain China with a Cold not Hot war then that is a good thing.
The point is we've made such a bad mess of our major foreign policy excursions this century, and China is orders of magnitudes more capable and prepared. You can assure me that we know what we're doing, but two days ago you were talking about the announcement being about aliens, so it's tricky to know* when to take you seriously.
*although I do have a rule of thumb
I had the pleasure of working with Jim Westwood, the tech genius behind the ZX80. He's a great guy; totally self-effacing and down to earth. Although he was working for a real computer company by then.
https://www.theregister.com/2011/11/15/heroes_of_tech_jim_westwood/
https://www.afr.com/politics/federal/most-australians-approve-of-nuclear-subs-deal-20210917-p58si8
The rise of an aggressive, hostile China is an unfortunate fact. It would be great if wasn't happening. But it is
Otherwise, yes, our ability to project power in distant Taiwan is small (but not invisible, we have aircraft carriers)
But you are missing much of the point. The Aukus Treaty is about way more than subs for the Aussies and Taiwan. It talks of extremely close collaboration on AI, quantum tech, cyberstuff - all the future ways wars will be fought, and in this our distance from China is largely irrelevant (except maybe for that handy British base in Diego Garcia). And in some of this Britain excels.
This is a Treaty meant to last 50 years, and to future-proof the Anglosphere
Macau is another interesting case - the Chinese seem quite happy to have the casinos and the tourist revenue and the opportunity for their own people to do some gambling.
China isn't going to "take over the world", at least not in the way the other Marxist revolutionaries in Moscow wanted. The "revolution" has been far more insidious - based oddly enough on money, capital and the market. China has brought infrastructure to Africa in exchange for resources - much easier and more productive than landing divisions of the PLA.
"Deterring" China can't just be about Taiwan? What of India, Vietnam and Russia - all of whom share borders with Beijing? Do we think China has military designs on any of these - we saw a flare up with India just last year?
I can't see "No War over the Spratley Islands" having much resonance.
I've been lucky enough to fluke into many things in life. A day here, a day there; a phone call missed; and my life might be very different due to missed and gained opportunities. I suppose that's true of most people.
It also places us on the stage to join the CPTPP
Love my country, though, don't get me wrong. I just want to see it focus and thrive rather than thrash about wastefully.
Flash of weird deja vu. I've had this EXACT exchange with you yonks ago. Really must take a break!
There is plentiful evidence for all of this now. It would explain a suddenly much more hostile stance against China.
They wouldn't say all of this in public, because it would be too explosive
A friend who lived down the road from me had a Sinclair C5, that I got to play with in the ‘90s. Actually a fun vehicle for someone who didn’t have a driving licence at the time. The problem was their battery, which was a standard 12v car battery but with a proprietary connector on it, so I couldn’t get a new one for £30 at Halford’s.
https://www.google.co.uk/amp/s/www.bbc.com/news/business-58579830.amp
I believe it generated more revenue from gaming than Vegas but if the Chinese Government starts moving in, the American casino operators will be looking carefully.
It was my experience, unlike Vegas, where the non-gambling side was growing in importance, Macau was all about the gambling. For every busload of "foreigners" from Hong Kong coming in to one entrance of the Wynn, six busloads of Chinese were coming in from the mainland to another entrance.
The priority is getting something to deal with the infection. He can't even swallow a paracetamol. Then we will find an ENT specialist and go private if necessary. Important to find out if there is some underlying reason why this has happened.
Then a letter of complaint will go in. Though as the hospital is in special measures already, they know they're not up to it.
And it's not just the hospital at fault here. All day we have been given the runaround by NHS 111 and the GP with each saying the other should do something and neither accepting responsibility to do anything. Calls are promised but not made.
It's a collective shambles which has made a small problem worse than it should have been.
Toughening up our stance to China now is in part undoing Trump's damage. His pulling out of the TPP, which was designed to counter China over a decade ago, was one of the greatest mistakes of the modern era that will hopefully get reversed now the grown ups are back.
British Electoral Politics
@electpoliticsuk
·
2h
Westminster Voting Intention:
CON: 40% (+1)
LAB: 36% (-1)
LDM: 9% (-1)
GRN: 5% (=)
SNP: 4% (=)
Via
@Survation
, 10-14 September,
Changes w/ 23 July.
Spookily, his Oceania included the US, Australia and the UK, whilst mainland Europe has come under the control of Russia. All written over 70 years ago too.
https://www.pinterest.co.uk/pin/216172850835110581/
https://mobile.twitter.com/FreemanLowell01/status/1140908309412814848
Would you really rather we had another bad orange man who was happier dealing with chaps you can't trust?
Or do you just like to complain?
(a) he'd have been saying so loud and clear,
(b) Biden would have dropped it like a hot potato, and
(c) Trump would have to have some kind of (hitherto completely hidden) ability to plan something.
I just believe it is good for all of us that a stance is made v China and of course it is hugely relevant to Australia, Japan and others
"China appeals for global unity in wake of US-led Aukus security alliance
"Xi Jinping tells SCO summit that international issues can’t be solved by bullying"
BULLYING IS BAD, SAYS CHINA, WHILE DOING A CHINESE BURN ON LITTLE VIETNAM
https://www.scmp.com/news/china/diplomacy/article/3149196/china-appeals-global-unity-wake-us-led-aukus-security-alliance