Can anyone give an example of a government with a working majority going to the country early when they don't think they could win it? Does anyone in Sunak's camp think they can win in May? Maybe something might happen between now and January? Unlikely but 1% chance is better than zero.
I agree with you, situations like this where an election is coming where the win won’t be contested is an odd event, 97 being the last example, perhaps 83 the only other similar one I can think of. No one in Sunak’s camp think they can actually win it either in May or Autumn, it’s about averting a meltdown. Conservatism in UK is under serious threat of being supplanted by populism, as has happened in notable continental countries - though associated with the right both these ideologies are so different as to be enemies of each other.
What does good look like for the Tories from here? Climbing from 25% to 31-34% for 160-220 MPs, bad is languishing 23-28% and going sub 150 MPs.
Hope this quick drawing of the picture helps.
Having inherited an understanding and liking of conservatism from my father, I don’t want to see it marginalised, weakened and supplanted by right wing populism in my homeland. This is very disconcerting times the more I think about it. 150 Conservative Party MPs won’t share much with the other 500 MPs in Parliament, so conservatism will be very marginalised. The current polling is in the middle of the 23-28% range, the MRP point to not much more than 100 MPs.
It’s like in F1 qualifying being in the danger zone and needing an excellent last lap to get out of it. There’s no room for anything to go wrong in that lap. That’s why I insist the decision on May or Autumn is very important - it’s not like “it doesn’t really make much difference, Autumn could hardly be worse than this” a lot of the thickest and stupidest PBers are posting.
Already in the drop zone, it’s about how to find that improved lap time, from a clear problem free run.
But Starmer's recent jibe- that the Conservatism of your parent (and mine) is dead- seems pretty accurate.
It's been on the critical list for a while, Johnson was a quack remedy which seemed to work for a bit but left the patient worse, Truss was the coup de grace.
It's a shame, because a lot of its insights are sorely needed. Sound money, eyes to the future and the less fortunate. Openness to the world, rooted in who we uniquely are. One nation, but not intrusively so.
But this half-assed Thatcherite cosplay that looks longingly at the harder right? That thinks Rishi is too wet?
Apart from not wanting Starmer to have too big a majority, is it even worth saving?
This is the most important point: the Tory party (large sections of the parliamentary party emboldened by the membership) did this to themselves. They drove out the Conservatives that held those values.
It wasn't entryism. It wasn't a determined campaign by a resurgent Labour Party to woo the centre right (far from it - this happened when Labour was at its weakest.)
It was the party itself.
The Conservative Party can recover, as long as their is some sanity. Similar was happening under Labour and Corbyn.
But the Conservatives have two major disadvantages: *) They were in power, not opposition, when they had their madness. This means the madness mattered more. *) Few, if any, mainstream 'Conservatives' seem to want to return to sanity. Unlike Labour in 2015-19.
Johnson purged the sane Tories in a way that Corbyn didn't purge the sane Labourites.
But, I still expect the Tories to recover, after a period in the wilderness. It would need a strong centre/centre-right party to be in a position to replace them after meltdown - the LDs are not that and there's no one else at present.
Or alternatively: sane Tories realised that they could not stand to be in the same party as the nutters, so they left.
Whilst 'sane' Labourites, such as Starmer, supported their anti-Semitic leader's platform.
Did anyone else notice that the BBC added the caveat to the comments made about Abbott by the Conservative's largest donor, Frank Hester, that the BBC "had not verified" the remarks made?
Can anyone give an example of a government with a working majority going to the country early when they don't think they could win it? Does anyone in Sunak's camp think they can win in May? Maybe something might happen between now and January? Unlikely but 1% chance is better than zero.
The problem with that analysis is no "government with a working majority" has faced the prospect of a Canada style wipeout if they delay too long.
May will be bad.
Autumn will be existential.
This is bollocks.
Autumn is no worse than May, they're doomed either way.
Well there's doomed and then there's DOOMED.
Yes but what's changing allegedly between May and Autumn to make them any more DOOMED?
The only people who are calling for a May election are acting like kids who wish for an early Christmas as they want their presents sooner.
It's not happening. It's never happening.
Well one change will be the results of the May locals. A slaughter that will produce more infighting.
Decision Desk HQ projects Donald Trump wins the Washington Republican Primary and has won enough delegates to secure the Republican Nomination for President
Let’s just pray he wins the presidency. Or the West is finished
Never knowingly short of hyperbole
If Trump wins, NATO falls and the EU and the US go their separate ways. That is the fall of "The West". Your "boy who cried woke" is is just right wing tosh.
You define “the West” as NATO? What does “Western civilisation” mean in that case?
I’d suggest a definition includes democracy and the rule of law, two things Trump opposes.
That definition rules out quite a lot of Western history. Was France not Western during the renovation of Paris?
Surely the proper comparison should be "was Germany not Western under Nazi rule?"
Your sophistry-for-Trump act is getting sillier by the day.
Can anyone give an example of a government with a working majority going to the country early when they don't think they could win it? Does anyone in Sunak's camp think they can win in May? Maybe something might happen between now and January? Unlikely but 1% chance is better than zero.
I agree with you, situations like this where an election is coming where the win won’t be contested is an odd event, 97 being the last example, perhaps 83 the only other similar one I can think of. No one in Sunak’s camp think they can actually win it either in May or Autumn, it’s about averting a meltdown. Conservatism in UK is under serious threat of being supplanted by populism, as has happened in notable continental countries - though associated with the right both these ideologies are so different as to be enemies of each other.
What does good look like for the Tories from here? Climbing from 25% to 31-34% for 160-220 MPs, bad is languishing 23-28% and going sub 150 MPs.
Hope this quick drawing of the picture helps.
Having inherited an understanding and liking of conservatism from my father, I don’t want to see it marginalised, weakened and supplanted by right wing populism in my homeland. This is very disconcerting times the more I think about it. 150 Conservative Party MPs won’t share much with the other 500 MPs in Parliament, so conservatism will be very marginalised. The current polling is in the middle of the 23-28% range, the MRP point to not much more than 100 MPs.
It’s like in F1 qualifying being in the danger zone and needing an excellent last lap to get out of it. There’s no room for anything to go wrong in that lap. That’s why I insist the decision on May or Autumn is very important - it’s not like “it doesn’t really make much difference, Autumn could hardly be worse than this” a lot of the thickest and stupidest PBers are posting.
Already in the drop zone, it’s about how to find that improved lap time, from a clear problem free run.
But Starmer's recent jibe- that the Conservatism of your parent (and mine) is dead- seems pretty accurate.
It's been on the critical list for a while, Johnson was a quack remedy which seemed to work for a bit but left the patient worse, Truss was the coup de grace.
It's a shame, because a lot of its insights are sorely needed. Sound money, eyes to the future and the less fortunate. Openness to the world, rooted in who we uniquely are. One nation, but not intrusively so.
But this half-assed Thatcherite cosplay that looks longingly at the harder right? That thinks Rishi is too wet?
Apart from not wanting Starmer to have too big a majority, is it even worth saving?
This is the most important point: the Tory party (large sections of the parliamentary party emboldened by the membership) did this to themselves. They drove out the Conservatives that held those values.
It wasn't entryism. It wasn't a determined campaign by a resurgent Labour Party to woo the centre right (far from it - this happened when Labour was at its weakest.)
It was the party itself.
The Conservative Party can recover, as long as their is some sanity. Similar was happening under Labour and Corbyn.
But the Conservatives have two major disadvantages: *) They were in power, not opposition, when they had their madness. This means the madness mattered more. *) Few, if any, mainstream 'Conservatives' seem to want to return to sanity. Unlike Labour in 2015-19.
Labour had a large body of MPs and activists who wanted to work to get the party back from the Corbynite wing. They also (AFAICT?) didn't have a huge disagreement with much of the policy platform, on an ideological level, just on a practical one.
It was narrowly divided, there was a problem of entryism and many issues bubbled to the surface.
But also Labour had an institutional memory of how to deal with this from the 1970s and 1980s and the party management never totally fell apart.
I would be fascinated to hear how that was all achieved so I hope I live long enough for the less self-serving histories to be written about it.
My belief, as a long standing but largely inactive member of the Labour Party who knows many Labour members including people who voted for Corbyn to be leader, is as follows. Corbyn didn't become leader because the Labour Party had moved massively to the left. The vast majority of Labour members are to the right of Corbyn and to the left of Blair. Just as they gave Blair a chance because they were sick of losing, they gave Corbyn a chance because they were sick of compromising. Plus Corbyn's actual manifesto wasn't massively left wing. And people admired his principled stance - and the reality is that Corbyn has been proven right on most of the foreign policy issues he took a stand on, from Ireland (do a deal with the Republicans) to Apartheid (get rid) and Iraq (a catastrophic failure). Over time though more members saw what people like me had seen from the start - that Corbyn was too left wing to win, was a bit of a stubborn and unimaginative old man, and had some unsavoury friends outside of Labour on the far left. And so the Corbyn era ended, hastened by the humiliating defeat of 2019. It was a whole lot less traumatic than the eighties because there wasn't a genuine split at the heart of Labour. Corbyn was a marginal figure who had been given a chance and failed, not the leader of a significant and powerful faction.
Why the fuck does Sunak give a tomato skin laden shit about any of that? Weighed in the balance of being PM for another 6-8 months, the richly deserved fate of the tory party means nothing.
He won't be PM for another 6-8 months
Morning Scott.
Are you suggesting the Conservatives will oust him with only 8 months max to the election? That would be [losing count] PMs this parliament.
I think @Dura_Ace makes a good point that at this stage Sunak’s longevity as PM may well mean a lot more to him than the fate of the tory party. They’re going to get a hammering either way so he may as well dribble on.
Decision Desk HQ projects Donald Trump wins the Washington Republican Primary and has won enough delegates to secure the Republican Nomination for President
Let’s just pray he wins the presidency. Or the West is finished
Never knowingly short of hyperbole
If Trump wins, NATO falls and the EU and the US go their separate ways. That is the fall of "The West". Your "boy who cried woke" is is just right wing tosh.
You define “the West” as NATO? What does “Western civilisation” mean in that case?
I’d suggest a definition includes democracy and the rule of law, two things Trump opposes.
That definition rules out quite a lot of Western history. Was France not Western during the renovation of Paris?
Surely the proper comparison should be "was Germany not Western under Nazi rule?"
Your sophistry-for-Trump act is getting sillier by the day.
No that doesn’t work because there was always some ambiguity about Germany vis-a-vis “the West”, but not France.
Decision Desk HQ projects Donald Trump wins the Washington Republican Primary and has won enough delegates to secure the Republican Nomination for President
Let’s just pray he wins the presidency. Or the West is finished
Never knowingly short of hyperbole
If Trump wins, NATO falls and the EU and the US go their separate ways. That is the fall of "The West". Your "boy who cried woke" is is just right wing tosh.
You define “the West” as NATO? What does “Western civilisation” mean in that case?
I’d suggest a definition includes democracy and the rule of law, two things Trump opposes.
That definition rules out quite a lot of Western history. Was France not Western during the renovation of Paris?
I presumed we were talking about the present day, not the mid 19th century.
Decision Desk HQ projects Donald Trump wins the Washington Republican Primary and has won enough delegates to secure the Republican Nomination for President
Let’s just pray he wins the presidency. Or the West is finished
Idiot.
It’s sad to see what has happened to @Leon. It’s reminiscent of Joey Barton or Laurence Fox.
I get it that no-one wants to read tawdry tales of male sexual exploitation any more but it’s possible to take a step back and re-cast yourself rather than disappearing down the rabbit hole.
Decision Desk HQ projects Donald Trump wins the Washington Republican Primary and has won enough delegates to secure the Republican Nomination for President
Let’s just pray he wins the presidency. Or the West is finished
Never knowingly short of hyperbole
If Trump wins, NATO falls and the EU and the US go their separate ways. That is the fall of "The West". Your "boy who cried woke" is is just right wing tosh.
You define “the West” as NATO? What does “Western civilisation” mean in that case?
I’d suggest a definition includes democracy and the rule of law, two things Trump opposes.
That definition rules out quite a lot of Western history. Was France not Western during the renovation of Paris?
I presumed we were talking about the present day, not the mid 19th century.
Then isn’t the West or Western civilisation the wrong term?
Maybe the American Empire would be a more accurate description of the present day entity whose future @Cicero worries about.
Can anyone give an example of a government with a working majority going to the country early when they don't think they could win it? Does anyone in Sunak's camp think they can win in May? Maybe something might happen between now and January? Unlikely but 1% chance is better than zero.
I agree with you, situations like this where an election is coming where the win won’t be contested is an odd event, 97 being the last example, perhaps 83 the only other similar one I can think of. No one in Sunak’s camp think they can actually win it either in May or Autumn, it’s about averting a meltdown. Conservatism in UK is under serious threat of being supplanted by populism, as has happened in notable continental countries - though associated with the right both these ideologies are so different as to be enemies of each other.
What does good look like for the Tories from here? Climbing from 25% to 31-34% for 160-220 MPs, bad is languishing 23-28% and going sub 150 MPs.
Hope this quick drawing of the picture helps.
Having inherited an understanding and liking of conservatism from my father, I don’t want to see it marginalised, weakened and supplanted by right wing populism in my homeland. This is very disconcerting times the more I think about it. 150 Conservative Party MPs won’t share much with the other 500 MPs in Parliament, so conservatism will be very marginalised. The current polling is in the middle of the 23-28% range, the MRP point to not much more than 100 MPs.
It’s like in F1 qualifying being in the danger zone and needing an excellent last lap to get out of it. There’s no room for anything to go wrong in that lap. That’s why I insist the decision on May or Autumn is very important - it’s not like “it doesn’t really make much difference, Autumn could hardly be worse than this” a lot of the thickest and stupidest PBers are posting.
Already in the drop zone, it’s about how to find that improved lap time, from a clear problem free run.
But Starmer's recent jibe- that the Conservatism of your parent (and mine) is dead- seems pretty accurate.
It's been on the critical list for a while, Johnson was a quack remedy which seemed to work for a bit but left the patient worse, Truss was the coup de grace.
It's a shame, because a lot of its insights are sorely needed. Sound money, eyes to the future and the less fortunate. Openness to the world, rooted in who we uniquely are. One nation, but not intrusively so.
But this half-assed Thatcherite cosplay that looks longingly at the harder right? That thinks Rishi is too wet?
Apart from not wanting Starmer to have too big a majority, is it even worth saving?
This is the most important point: the Tory party (large sections of the parliamentary party emboldened by the membership) did this to themselves. They drove out the Conservatives that held those values.
It wasn't entryism. It wasn't a determined campaign by a resurgent Labour Party to woo the centre right (far from it - this happened when Labour was at its weakest.)
It was the party itself.
The Conservative Party can recover, as long as their is some sanity. Similar was happening under Labour and Corbyn.
But the Conservatives have two major disadvantages: *) They were in power, not opposition, when they had their madness. This means the madness mattered more. *) Few, if any, mainstream 'Conservatives' seem to want to return to sanity. Unlike Labour in 2015-19.
Labour had a large body of MPs and activists who wanted to work to get the party back from the Corbynite wing. They also (AFAICT?) didn't have a huge disagreement with much of the policy platform, on an ideological level, just on a practical one.
It was narrowly divided, there was a problem of entryism and many issues bubbled to the surface.
But also Labour had an institutional memory of how to deal with this from the 1970s and 1980s and the party management never totally fell apart.
I would be fascinated to hear how that was all achieved so I hope I live long enough for the less self-serving histories to be written about it.
My belief, as a long standing but largely inactive member of the Labour Party who knows many Labour members including people who voted for Corbyn to be leader, is as follows. Corbyn didn't become leader because the Labour Party had moved massively to the left. The vast majority of Labour members are to the right of Corbyn and to the left of Blair. Just as they gave Blair a chance because they were sick of losing, they gave Corbyn a chance because they were sick of compromising. Plus Corbyn's actual manifesto wasn't massively left wing. And people admired his principled stance - and the reality is that Corbyn has been proven right on most of the foreign policy issues he took a stand on, from Ireland (do a deal with the Republicans) to Apartheid (get rid) and Iraq (a catastrophic failure). Over time though more members saw what people like me had seen from the start - that Corbyn was too left wing to win, was a bit of a stubborn and unimaginative old man, and had some unsavoury friends outside of Labour on the far left. And so the Corbyn era ended, hastened by the humiliating defeat of 2019. It was a whole lot less traumatic than the eighties because there wasn't a genuine split at the heart of Labour. Corbyn was a marginal figure who had been given a chance and failed, not the leader of a significant and powerful faction.
Yes, I think that true.
Additionally there was a desire in the 2015 leadership contest to move on from the stale and shopworn New Labour team that had just delivered a surprise defeat.
Decision Desk HQ projects Donald Trump wins the Washington Republican Primary and has won enough delegates to secure the Republican Nomination for President
Let’s just pray he wins the presidency. Or the West is finished
Never knowingly short of hyperbole
If Trump wins, NATO falls and the EU and the US go their separate ways. That is the fall of "The West". Your "boy who cried woke" is is just right wing tosh.
You define “the West” as NATO? What does “Western civilisation” mean in that case?
I’d suggest a definition includes democracy and the rule of law, two things Trump opposes.
That definition rules out quite a lot of Western history. Was France not Western during the renovation of Paris?
Surely the proper comparison should be "was Germany not Western under Nazi rule?"
Your sophistry-for-Trump act is getting sillier by the day.
No that doesn’t work because there was always some ambiguity about Germany vis-a-vis “the West”, but not France.
On a technical point, who is in charge when it comes to finances of a Party?
Can the leader, in this case Sunak, order the Conservative Party to return the money or is there a legal or regulatory structure where decisions about finances are out of MP’s hands and controlled by a CEO, CFO, Treasurer and requires certain actions and has certain responsibilities?
A Palestinian citizen of Israel has been granted asylum in the UK after claiming he would face persecution in his home country on the grounds of his race, his Muslim faith and his opinion that Israel “is governed by an apartheid regime”.
Did anyone else notice that the BBC added the caveat to the comments made about Abbott by the Conservative's largest donor, Frank Hester, that the BBC "had not verified" the remarks made?
Some days ago. We also noted that the reported remarks have not been denied.
Decision Desk HQ projects Donald Trump wins the Washington Republican Primary and has won enough delegates to secure the Republican Nomination for President
Let’s just pray he wins the presidency. Or the West is finished
Never knowingly short of hyperbole
If Trump wins, NATO falls and the EU and the US go their separate ways. That is the fall of "The West". Your "boy who cried woke" is is just right wing tosh.
You define “the West” as NATO? What does “Western civilisation” mean in that case?
I’d suggest a definition includes democracy and the rule of law, two things Trump opposes.
That definition rules out quite a lot of Western history. Was France not Western during the renovation of Paris?
I presumed we were talking about the present day, not the mid 19th century.
Then isn’t the West or Western civilisation the wrong term?
Maybe the American Empire would be a more accurate description of the present day entity whose future @Cicero worries about.
Trumpism is a return to the US Isolationism and insularity that dominated until WW2.
The ending of US Imperialism is not a bad thing, though the geo-political vacuum it leaves will be.
Did anyone else notice that the BBC added the caveat to the comments made about Abbott by the Conservative's largest donor, Frank Hester, that the BBC "had not verified" the remarks made?
Some days ago. We also noted that the reported remarks have not been denied.
Fair enough, but I still thought it weasel words from Tim Davie's auntie. No other broadcaster felt the need.
Seems Kevin Hollinrake now realises this stance was misguided. Asked again if Tories should accept more donations, he tells @BBCr4today: "I don't look after the donations in this party." That wd be a decision whether Hester's "the right person" based on events of "recent days"
Decision Desk HQ projects Donald Trump wins the Washington Republican Primary and has won enough delegates to secure the Republican Nomination for President
Let’s just pray he wins the presidency. Or the West is finished
Never knowingly short of hyperbole
If Trump wins, NATO falls and the EU and the US go their separate ways. That is the fall of "The West". Your "boy who cried woke" is is just right wing tosh.
You define “the West” as NATO? What does “Western civilisation” mean in that case?
I’d suggest a definition includes democracy and the rule of law, two things Trump opposes.
That definition rules out quite a lot of Western history. Was France not Western during the renovation of Paris?
I presumed we were talking about the present day, not the mid 19th century.
Then isn’t the West or Western civilisation the wrong term?
Maybe the American Empire would be a more accurate description of the present day entity whose future @Cicero worries about.
Trumpism is a return to the US Isolationism and insularity that dominated until WW2.
The ending of US Imperialism is not a bad thing, though the geo-political vacuum it leaves will be.
I heard all this before Dubya was elected. 911 changed all that.
Can anyone give an example of a government with a working majority going to the country early when they don't think they could win it? Does anyone in Sunak's camp think they can win in May? Maybe something might happen between now and January? Unlikely but 1% chance is better than zero.
The problem with that analysis is no "government with a working majority" has faced the prospect of a Canada style wipeout if they delay too long.
May will be bad.
Autumn will be existential.
This is bollocks.
Autumn is no worse than May, they're doomed either way.
But after a horror show in May at the locals they may get even more fractious and desperate, and lose even more support.
Why the fuck does Sunak give a tomato skin laden shit about any of that? Weighed in the balance of being PM for another 6-8 months, the richly deserved fate of the tory party means nothing.
He won't be PM for another 6-8 months
Morning Scott.
Are you suggesting the Conservatives will oust him with only 8 months max to the election? That would be [losing count] PMs this parliament.
I think @Dura_Ace makes a good point that at this stage Sunak’s longevity as PM may well mean a lot more to him than the fate of the tory party. They’re going to get a hammering either way so he may as well dribble on.
Will it? Why won't the UK continue its special relationship with the US? Only today we've got comments from PB's resident Trumpite standup that Germany (unlike France) has never been part of "the West". The ground is being prepared for the UK and US to do a deal with Putin to divide Europe between them. US-UK gets everything West of the Rhine/Alps, Russia can have the rest.
Decision Desk HQ projects Donald Trump wins the Washington Republican Primary and has won enough delegates to secure the Republican Nomination for President
Let’s just pray he wins the presidency. Or the West is finished
Never knowingly short of hyperbole
If Trump wins, NATO falls and the EU and the US go their separate ways. That is the fall of "The West". Your "boy who cried woke" is is just right wing tosh.
You define “the West” as NATO? What does “Western civilisation” mean in that case?
I’d suggest a definition includes democracy and the rule of law, two things Trump opposes.
That definition rules out quite a lot of Western history. Was France not Western during the renovation of Paris?
I presumed we were talking about the present day, not the mid 19th century.
Then isn’t the West or Western civilisation the wrong term?
Maybe the American Empire would be a more accurate description of the present day entity whose future @Cicero worries about.
Trumpism is a return to the US Isolationism and insularity that dominated until WW2.
The ending of US Imperialism is not a bad thing, though the geo-political vacuum it leaves will be.
I heard all this before Dubya was elected. 911 changed all that.
Will it? Why won't the UK continue its special relationship with the US? Only today we've got comments from PB's resident Trumpite standup that Germany (unlike France) has never been part of "the West". The ground is being prepared for the UK and US to do a deal with Putin to divide Europe between them. US-UK gets everything West of the Rhine/Alps, Russia can have the rest.
Because Trump is a grade A idiot who doesn't understand that 2 things working together can do better than 2 things competing.
Trump sees everything as winners and losers and defines winning as only when it's clear someone else has the worst side of the deal... And the only deals he cares about are ones where he explicitly gets something out of it.
NEW: Conservative mayor of the West Midlands Andy Street tells @BBCr4today if he'd received £10 million from Frank Hester he'd hand it back.
"I would think about the company I kept and I would give that money back."
No party would give back 10m without a fight. Morals and PR aside they just aren't so flush with cash they can reimburse that much without consequence.
Why the fuck does Sunak give a tomato skin laden shit about any of that? Weighed in the balance of being PM for another 6-8 months, the richly deserved fate of the tory party means nothing.
He won't be PM for another 6-8 months
Morning Scott.
Are you suggesting the Conservatives will oust him with only 8 months max to the election? That would be [losing count] PMs this parliament.
I think @Dura_Ace makes a good point that at this stage Sunak’s longevity as PM may well mean a lot more to him than the fate of the tory party. They’re going to get a hammering either way so he may as well dribble on.
He wants to get to 2 years, simple as.
I suppose it looks better on his silicon valley CV
NEW: Conservative mayor of the West Midlands Andy Street tells @BBCr4today if he'd received £10 million from Frank Hester he'd hand it back.
"I would think about the company I kept and I would give that money back."
The problem with that argument is that the people the tory party are currently tracing are those voters who say they are voting Reform and that party revealed themselves as (happy to contain) racists as recently as Monday morning.
Hence by keeping the £10m they keep the money and attract some of Reforms support because the tory party (insert reason why racist reform voter may switch to Tories here)...
NEW: Conservative mayor of the West Midlands Andy Street tells @BBCr4today if he'd received £10 million from Frank Hester he'd hand it back.
"I would think about the company I kept and I would give that money back."
No party would give back 10m without a fight. Morals and PR aside they just aren't so flush with cash they can reimburse that much without consequence.
The one advantage that the Tories have over Labour is that they have more cash available. Handing back £10m would eliminate even that slender hope. They are not going to do it.
Just imagine the scenario that a Labour donor was caught making anti-Semitic comments . And their response was the person apologized nothing to see and move on .
NEW: Conservative mayor of the West Midlands Andy Street tells @BBCr4today if he'd received £10 million from Frank Hester he'd hand it back.
"I would think about the company I kept and I would give that money back."
No party would give back 10m without a fight. Morals and PR aside they just aren't so flush with cash they can reimburse that much without consequence.
The one advantage that the Tories have over Labour is that they have more cash available. Handing back £10m would eliminate even that slender hope. They are not going to do it.
If only the person who reported these remarks to the Guardian had spoken up about the racist comments in 2019, Hester would have been a busted flush and not donated £10m over the last two years and nobody would have had to get upset.
Had the Guardian reported these comments in 2019 his company might not have got the government contracts they are complaining about as well.
I’m guessing the political calculation was more important than the enabling of someone with racist views to grow in influence.
The Tories need to get rid of this money either to good causes or back to Hester, he needs to be ostracised from the party but also the Guardian needs to rein in the outrage as they’ve been sitting on this and preferred political gains to stopping a bad situation as early as possible and removing someone with bad views from influence.
Why the fuck does Sunak give a tomato skin laden shit about any of that? Weighed in the balance of being PM for another 6-8 months, the richly deserved fate of the tory party means nothing.
He won't be PM for another 6-8 months
Morning Scott.
Are you suggesting the Conservatives will oust him with only 8 months max to the election? That would be [losing count] PMs this parliament.
I think @Dura_Ace makes a good point that at this stage Sunak’s longevity as PM may well mean a lot more to him than the fate of the tory party. They’re going to get a hammering either way so he may as well dribble on.
He wants to get to 2 years, simple as.
I suppose it looks better on his silicon valley CV
Well, five years as DPM worked well for Nick Clegg!
As a sometimes LD voter I wasn’t keen on Clegg, but he had, and gave the Party, a high public profile.
Did anyone else notice that the BBC added the caveat to the comments made about Abbott by the Conservative's largest donor, Frank Hester, that the BBC "had not verified" the remarks made?
Some days ago. We also noted that the reported remarks have not been denied.
Fair enough, but I still thought it weasel words from Tim Davie's auntie. No other broadcaster felt the need.
There's an election coming. The Tories have few weapons. Routine BBC bashing is one of them. The BBC is rightly sensitive both to this challenge and to verification issues. On the latter, it has a way to go. As to Hester's remarks, yes, I think they are being over cautious. This does no great harm in a world full of lies.
Can anyone give an example of a government with a working majority going to the country early when they don't think they could win it? Does anyone in Sunak's camp think they can win in May? Maybe something might happen between now and January? Unlikely but 1% chance is better than zero.
I agree with you, situations like this where an election is coming where the win won’t be contested is an odd event, 97 being the last example, perhaps 83 the only other similar one I can think of. No one in Sunak’s camp think they can actually win it either in May or Autumn, it’s about averting a meltdown. Conservatism in UK is under serious threat of being supplanted by populism, as has happened in notable continental countries - though associated with the right both these ideologies are so different as to be enemies of each other.
What does good look like for the Tories from here? Climbing from 25% to 31-34% for 160-220 MPs, bad is languishing 23-28% and going sub 150 MPs.
Hope this quick drawing of the picture helps.
Having inherited an understanding and liking of conservatism from my father, I don’t want to see it marginalised, weakened and supplanted by right wing populism in my homeland. This is very disconcerting times the more I think about it. 150 Conservative Party MPs won’t share much with the other 500 MPs in Parliament, so conservatism will be very marginalised. The current polling is in the middle of the 23-28% range, the MRP point to not much more than 100 MPs.
It’s like in F1 qualifying being in the danger zone and needing an excellent last lap to get out of it. There’s no room for anything to go wrong in that lap. That’s why I insist the decision on May or Autumn is very important - it’s not like “it doesn’t really make much difference, Autumn could hardly be worse than this” a lot of the thickest and stupidest PBers are posting.
Already in the drop zone, it’s about how to find that improved lap time, from a clear problem free run.
But Starmer's recent jibe- that the Conservatism of your parent (and mine) is dead- seems pretty accurate.
It's been on the critical list for a while, Johnson was a quack remedy which seemed to work for a bit but left the patient worse, Truss was the coup de grace.
It's a shame, because a lot of its insights are sorely needed. Sound money, eyes to the future and the less fortunate. Openness to the world, rooted in who we uniquely are. One nation, but not intrusively so.
But this half-assed Thatcherite cosplay that looks longingly at the harder right? That thinks Rishi is too wet?
Apart from not wanting Starmer to have too big a majority, is it even worth saving?
This is the most important point: the Tory party (large sections of the parliamentary party emboldened by the membership) did this to themselves. They drove out the Conservatives that held those values.
It wasn't entryism. It wasn't a determined campaign by a resurgent Labour Party to woo the centre right (far from it - this happened when Labour was at its weakest.)
It was the party itself.
The Conservative Party can recover, as long as their is some sanity. Similar was happening under Labour and Corbyn.
But the Conservatives have two major disadvantages: *) They were in power, not opposition, when they had their madness. This means the madness mattered more. *) Few, if any, mainstream 'Conservatives' seem to want to return to sanity. Unlike Labour in 2015-19.
Labour had a large body of MPs and activists who wanted to work to get the party back from the Corbynite wing. They also (AFAICT?) didn't have a huge disagreement with much of the policy platform, on an ideological level, just on a practical one.
It was narrowly divided, there was a problem of entryism and many issues bubbled to the surface.
But also Labour had an institutional memory of how to deal with this from the 1970s and 1980s and the party management never totally fell apart.
I would be fascinated to hear how that was all achieved so I hope I live long enough for the less self-serving histories to be written about it.
My belief, as a long standing but largely inactive member of the Labour Party who knows many Labour members including people who voted for Corbyn to be leader, is as follows. Corbyn didn't become leader because the Labour Party had moved massively to the left. The vast majority of Labour members are to the right of Corbyn and to the left of Blair. Just as they gave Blair a chance because they were sick of losing, they gave Corbyn a chance because they were sick of compromising. Plus Corbyn's actual manifesto wasn't massively left wing. And people admired his principled stance - and the reality is that Corbyn has been proven right on most of the foreign policy issues he took a stand on, from Ireland (do a deal with the Republicans) to Apartheid (get rid) and Iraq (a catastrophic failure). Over time though more members saw what people like me had seen from the start - that Corbyn was too left wing to win, was a bit of a stubborn and unimaginative old man, and had some unsavoury friends outside of Labour on the far left. And so the Corbyn era ended, hastened by the humiliating defeat of 2019. It was a whole lot less traumatic than the eighties because there wasn't a genuine split at the heart of Labour. Corbyn was a marginal figure who had been given a chance and failed, not the leader of a significant and powerful faction.
Yes, I think that true.
Additionally there was a desire in the 2015 leadership contest to move on from the stale and shopworn New Labour team that had just delivered a surprise defeat.
Ed Miliband wasn't New Labour either, he denounced the Iraq War as leader in a conference speech. David Miliband was the New Labour candidate in 2010. Corbyn just took Labour even further left back to the socialism of the Foot era
Why the fuck does Sunak give a tomato skin laden shit about any of that? Weighed in the balance of being PM for another 6-8 months, the richly deserved fate of the tory party means nothing.
He won't be PM for another 6-8 months
Morning Scott.
Are you suggesting the Conservatives will oust him with only 8 months max to the election? That would be [losing count] PMs this parliament.
I think @Dura_Ace makes a good point that at this stage Sunak’s longevity as PM may well mean a lot more to him than the fate of the tory party. They’re going to get a hammering either way so he may as well dribble on.
Ministers questioning Gov line in real time, advisors briefing they had a better plan but were ignored, a PM who seems to have retreated to a bunker just a week after Budget, an MP jumping ship...if it feels like it's fraying at the edges, that's because it is. Every edge at once
NEW: Conservative mayor of the West Midlands Andy Street tells @BBCr4today if he'd received £10 million from Frank Hester he'd hand it back.
"I would think about the company I kept and I would give that money back."
No party would give back 10m without a fight. Morals and PR aside they just aren't so flush with cash they can reimburse that much without consequence.
The one advantage that the Tories have over Labour is that they have more cash available. Handing back £10m would eliminate even that slender hope. They are not going to do it.
If only the person who reported these remarks to the Guardian had spoken up about the racist comments in 2019, Hester would have been a busted flush and not donated £10m over the last two years and nobody would have had to get upset.
Had the Guardian reported these comments in 2019 his company might not have got the government contracts they are complaining about as well.
I’m guessing the political calculation was more important than the enabling of someone with racist views to grow in influence.
The Tories need to get rid of this money either to good causes or back to Hester, he needs to be ostracised from the party but also the Guardian needs to rein in the outrage as they’ve been sitting on this and preferred political gains to stopping a bad situation as early as possible and removing someone with bad views from influence.
What makes you think the Guardian has sat on this story for 5 years? Maybe it only recently came to thir attention.
As it was also in the Telegraph then it was probably fed to the press recently.
Can anyone give an example of a government with a working majority going to the country early when they don't think they could win it? Does anyone in Sunak's camp think they can win in May? Maybe something might happen between now and January? Unlikely but 1% chance is better than zero.
I agree with you, situations like this where an election is coming where the win won’t be contested is an odd event, 97 being the last example, perhaps 83 the only other similar one I can think of. No one in Sunak’s camp think they can actually win it either in May or Autumn, it’s about averting a meltdown. Conservatism in UK is under serious threat of being supplanted by populism, as has happened in notable continental countries - though associated with the right both these ideologies are so different as to be enemies of each other.
What does good look like for the Tories from here? Climbing from 25% to 31-34% for 160-220 MPs, bad is languishing 23-28% and going sub 150 MPs.
Hope this quick drawing of the picture helps.
Having inherited an understanding and liking of conservatism from my father, I don’t want to see it marginalised, weakened and supplanted by right wing populism in my homeland. This is very disconcerting times the more I think about it. 150 Conservative Party MPs won’t share much with the other 500 MPs in Parliament, so conservatism will be very marginalised. The current polling is in the middle of the 23-28% range, the MRP point to not much more than 100 MPs.
It’s like in F1 qualifying being in the danger zone and needing an excellent last lap to get out of it. There’s no room for anything to go wrong in that lap. That’s why I insist the decision on May or Autumn is very important - it’s not like “it doesn’t really make much difference, Autumn could hardly be worse than this” a lot of the thickest and stupidest PBers are posting.
Already in the drop zone, it’s about how to find that improved lap time, from a clear problem free run.
But Starmer's recent jibe- that the Conservatism of your parent (and mine) is dead- seems pretty accurate.
It's been on the critical list for a while, Johnson was a quack remedy which seemed to work for a bit but left the patient worse, Truss was the coup de grace.
It's a shame, because a lot of its insights are sorely needed. Sound money, eyes to the future and the less fortunate. Openness to the world, rooted in who we uniquely are. One nation, but not intrusively so.
But this half-assed Thatcherite cosplay that looks longingly at the harder right? That thinks Rishi is too wet?
Apart from not wanting Starmer to have too big a majority, is it even worth saving?
This is the most important point: the Tory party (large sections of the parliamentary party emboldened by the membership) did this to themselves. They drove out the Conservatives that held those values.
It wasn't entryism. It wasn't a determined campaign by a resurgent Labour Party to woo the centre right (far from it - this happened when Labour was at its weakest.)
It was the party itself.
The Conservative Party can recover, as long as their is some sanity. Similar was happening under Labour and Corbyn.
But the Conservatives have two major disadvantages: *) They were in power, not opposition, when they had their madness. This means the madness mattered more. *) Few, if any, mainstream 'Conservatives' seem to want to return to sanity. Unlike Labour in 2015-19.
Labour had a large body of MPs and activists who wanted to work to get the party back from the Corbynite wing. They also (AFAICT?) didn't have a huge disagreement with much of the policy platform, on an ideological level, just on a practical one.
It was narrowly divided, there was a problem of entryism and many issues bubbled to the surface.
But also Labour had an institutional memory of how to deal with this from the 1970s and 1980s and the party management never totally fell apart.
I would be fascinated to hear how that was all achieved so I hope I live long enough for the less self-serving histories to be written about it.
My belief, as a long standing but largely inactive member of the Labour Party who knows many Labour members including people who voted for Corbyn to be leader, is as follows. Corbyn didn't become leader because the Labour Party had moved massively to the left. The vast majority of Labour members are to the right of Corbyn and to the left of Blair. Just as they gave Blair a chance because they were sick of losing, they gave Corbyn a chance because they were sick of compromising. Plus Corbyn's actual manifesto wasn't massively left wing. And people admired his principled stance - and the reality is that Corbyn has been proven right on most of the foreign policy issues he took a stand on, from Ireland (do a deal with the Republicans) to Apartheid (get rid) and Iraq (a catastrophic failure). Over time though more members saw what people like me had seen from the start - that Corbyn was too left wing to win, was a bit of a stubborn and unimaginative old man, and had some unsavoury friends outside of Labour on the far left. And so the Corbyn era ended, hastened by the humiliating defeat of 2019. It was a whole lot less traumatic than the eighties because there wasn't a genuine split at the heart of Labour. Corbyn was a marginal figure who had been given a chance and failed, not the leader of a significant and powerful faction.
Yes, I think that true.
Additionally there was a desire in the 2015 leadership contest to move on from the stale and shopworn New Labour team that had just delivered a surprise defeat.
Ed Miliband wasn't New Labour either, he denounced the Iraq War as leader in a conference speech. David Miliband was the New Labour candidate in 2010. Corbyn just took Labour even further left back to the socialism of the Foot era
Not really. Ed Miliband represented a slightly more left wing version of New Labour - to the extent that that label is useful rather than just being a marketing phrase. And Corbyn was not exactly a return to the Foot era. The 2017/19 manifestos were not much like the 1983 manifesto. It was the Tories after all who actioned the most radical item in Foot's platform.
Ministers questioning Gov line in real time, advisors briefing they had a better plan but were ignored, a PM who seems to have retreated to a bunker just a week after Budget, an MP jumping ship...if it feels like it's fraying at the edges, that's because it is. Every edge at once
NEW: Conservative mayor of the West Midlands Andy Street tells @BBCr4today if he'd received £10 million from Frank Hester he'd hand it back.
"I would think about the company I kept and I would give that money back."
No party would give back 10m without a fight. Morals and PR aside they just aren't so flush with cash they can reimburse that much without consequence.
The one advantage that the Tories have over Labour is that they have more cash available. Handing back £10m would eliminate even that slender hope. They are not going to do it.
If only the person who reported these remarks to the Guardian had spoken up about the racist comments in 2019, Hester would have been a busted flush and not donated £10m over the last two years and nobody would have had to get upset.
Had the Guardian reported these comments in 2019 his company might not have got the government contracts they are complaining about as well.
I’m guessing the political calculation was more important than the enabling of someone with racist views to grow in influence.
The Tories need to get rid of this money either to good causes or back to Hester, he needs to be ostracised from the party but also the Guardian needs to rein in the outrage as they’ve been sitting on this and preferred political gains to stopping a bad situation as early as possible and removing someone with bad views from influence.
Do you have any evidence that the Guardian sat on this story for 5 years? Or, indeed, even 5 weeks?
Will it? Why won't the UK continue its special relationship with the US? Only today we've got comments from PB's resident Trumpite standup that Germany (unlike France) has never been part of "the West". The ground is being prepared for the UK and US to do a deal with Putin to divide Europe between them. US-UK gets everything West of the Rhine/Alps, Russia can have the rest.
We now have better cheese, and much wine, than the French.
Can anyone give an example of a government with a working majority going to the country early when they don't think they could win it? Does anyone in Sunak's camp think they can win in May? Maybe something might happen between now and January? Unlikely but 1% chance is better than zero.
I agree with you, situations like this where an election is coming where the win won’t be contested is an odd event, 97 being the last example, perhaps 83 the only other similar one I can think of. No one in Sunak’s camp think they can actually win it either in May or Autumn, it’s about averting a meltdown. Conservatism in UK is under serious threat of being supplanted by populism, as has happened in notable continental countries - though associated with the right both these ideologies are so different as to be enemies of each other.
What does good look like for the Tories from here? Climbing from 25% to 31-34% for 160-220 MPs, bad is languishing 23-28% and going sub 150 MPs.
Hope this quick drawing of the picture helps.
Having inherited an understanding and liking of conservatism from my father, I don’t want to see it marginalised, weakened and supplanted by right wing populism in my homeland. This is very disconcerting times the more I think about it. 150 Conservative Party MPs won’t share much with the other 500 MPs in Parliament, so conservatism will be very marginalised. The current polling is in the middle of the 23-28% range, the MRP point to not much more than 100 MPs.
It’s like in F1 qualifying being in the danger zone and needing an excellent last lap to get out of it. There’s no room for anything to go wrong in that lap. That’s why I insist the decision on May or Autumn is very important - it’s not like “it doesn’t really make much difference, Autumn could hardly be worse than this” a lot of the thickest and stupidest PBers are posting.
Already in the drop zone, it’s about how to find that improved lap time, from a clear problem free run.
But Starmer's recent jibe- that the Conservatism of your parent (and mine) is dead- seems pretty accurate.
It's been on the critical list for a while, Johnson was a quack remedy which seemed to work for a bit but left the patient worse, Truss was the coup de grace.
It's a shame, because a lot of its insights are sorely needed. Sound money, eyes to the future and the less fortunate. Openness to the world, rooted in who we uniquely are. One nation, but not intrusively so.
But this half-assed Thatcherite cosplay that looks longingly at the harder right? That thinks Rishi is too wet?
Apart from not wanting Starmer to have too big a majority, is it even worth saving?
This is the most important point: the Tory party (large sections of the parliamentary party emboldened by the membership) did this to themselves. They drove out the Conservatives that held those values.
It wasn't entryism. It wasn't a determined campaign by a resurgent Labour Party to woo the centre right (far from it - this happened when Labour was at its weakest.)
It was the party itself.
The Conservative Party can recover, as long as their is some sanity. Similar was happening under Labour and Corbyn.
But the Conservatives have two major disadvantages: *) They were in power, not opposition, when they had their madness. This means the madness mattered more. *) Few, if any, mainstream 'Conservatives' seem to want to return to sanity. Unlike Labour in 2015-19.
Labour had a large body of MPs and activists who wanted to work to get the party back from the Corbynite wing. They also (AFAICT?) didn't have a huge disagreement with much of the policy platform, on an ideological level, just on a practical one.
It was narrowly divided, there was a problem of entryism and many issues bubbled to the surface.
But also Labour had an institutional memory of how to deal with this from the 1970s and 1980s and the party management never totally fell apart.
I would be fascinated to hear how that was all achieved so I hope I live long enough for the less self-serving histories to be written about it.
My belief, as a long standing but largely inactive member of the Labour Party who knows many Labour members including people who voted for Corbyn to be leader, is as follows. Corbyn didn't become leader because the Labour Party had moved massively to the left. The vast majority of Labour members are to the right of Corbyn and to the left of Blair. Just as they gave Blair a chance because they were sick of losing, they gave Corbyn a chance because they were sick of compromising. Plus Corbyn's actual manifesto wasn't massively left wing. And people admired his principled stance - and the reality is that Corbyn has been proven right on most of the foreign policy issues he took a stand on, from Ireland (do a deal with the Republicans) to Apartheid (get rid) and Iraq (a catastrophic failure). Over time though more members saw what people like me had seen from the start - that Corbyn was too left wing to win, was a bit of a stubborn and unimaginative old man, and had some unsavoury friends outside of Labour on the far left. And so the Corbyn era ended, hastened by the humiliating defeat of 2019. It was a whole lot less traumatic than the eighties because there wasn't a genuine split at the heart of Labour. Corbyn was a marginal figure who had been given a chance and failed, not the leader of a significant and powerful faction.
Yes, I think that true.
Additionally there was a desire in the 2015 leadership contest to move on from the stale and shopworn New Labour team that had just delivered a surprise defeat.
Ed Miliband wasn't New Labour either, he denounced the Iraq War as leader in a conference speech. David Miliband was the New Labour candidate in 2010. Corbyn just took Labour even further left back to the socialism of the Foot era
Not really. Ed Miliband represented a slightly more left wing version of New Labour - to the extent that that label is useful rather than just being a marketing phrase. And Corbyn was not exactly a return to the Foot era. The 2017/19 manifestos were not much like the 1983 manifesto. It was the Tories after all who actioned the most radical item in Foot's platform.
I wasn’t keen on Ed Milliband originally but listening to his podcast rather changed my view. For the better!
NEW: Conservative mayor of the West Midlands Andy Street tells @BBCr4today if he'd received £10 million from Frank Hester he'd hand it back.
"I would think about the company I kept and I would give that money back."
No party would give back 10m without a fight. Morals and PR aside they just aren't so flush with cash they can reimburse that much without consequence.
The one advantage that the Tories have over Labour is that they have more cash available. Handing back £10m would eliminate even that slender hope. They are not going to do it.
If only the person who reported these remarks to the Guardian had spoken up about the racist comments in 2019, Hester would have been a busted flush and not donated £10m over the last two years and nobody would have had to get upset.
Had the Guardian reported these comments in 2019 his company might not have got the government contracts they are complaining about as well.
I’m guessing the political calculation was more important than the enabling of someone with racist views to grow in influence.
The Tories need to get rid of this money either to good causes or back to Hester, he needs to be ostracised from the party but also the Guardian needs to rein in the outrage as they’ve been sitting on this and preferred political gains to stopping a bad situation as early as possible and removing someone with bad views from influence.
What makes you think the Guardian has sat on this story for 5 years? Maybe it only recently came to thir attention.
As it was also in the Telegraph then it was probably fed to the press recently.
It's highly unlikely that it was the Guardian that sat on the story. But quite likely someone else did for a while before giving to to them.
I assume there is nothing stopping Rishi personally giving £10m or more to replace the donation? His wifes monthly net worth volatilty would be more than that so it is unlikely to be particularly noticed or difficult for them.
If I were a PM with a net worth of $1bn or so and facing the biggest defeat for my party in a century it would seem a no brainer. I wonder if it has even been discussed?
NEW: Conservative mayor of the West Midlands Andy Street tells @BBCr4today if he'd received £10 million from Frank Hester he'd hand it back.
"I would think about the company I kept and I would give that money back."
No party would give back 10m without a fight. Morals and PR aside they just aren't so flush with cash they can reimburse that much without consequence.
The one advantage that the Tories have over Labour is that they have more cash available. Handing back £10m would eliminate even that slender hope. They are not going to do it.
If only the person who reported these remarks to the Guardian had spoken up about the racist comments in 2019, Hester would have been a busted flush and not donated £10m over the last two years and nobody would have had to get upset.
Had the Guardian reported these comments in 2019 his company might not have got the government contracts they are complaining about as well.
I’m guessing the political calculation was more important than the enabling of someone with racist views to grow in influence.
The Tories need to get rid of this money either to good causes or back to Hester, he needs to be ostracised from the party but also the Guardian needs to rein in the outrage as they’ve been sitting on this and preferred political gains to stopping a bad situation as early as possible and removing someone with bad views from influence.
This is deranged. What makes you think the Guardian knew about this in 2019?
It was nonsense when you said it and it's nonsense when he says it.
The UK will need to cooperate with allies, but those allies will not be the EU.
It will be some of the EU's nations but unless or until the EU nations choose to merge their armies, the nation state remains supreme when it comes to security.
And they're not changing that any time soon. Poland hasn't just spent a fortune building up their military and buying more tanks than the UK, France and Germany combined only to hand their keys over to Von Der Leyen.
A useful weapons system, as long as the enemy doesn't attack in a rainstorm...
(Lasers and moisture don't get on well. In the case of microwave systems, you just end up with warm rain)
So the BRITISH army have a weapon system that doesn't work in the rain? Jeez.
They have a system which can potentially knock down drones for £10 per shot. As opposed to thousands, or even tens of thousands. And needs reloading only with fuel.
Everyone is working on directed energy weapons, as they are remarkably cost effective, and you don't run out of munitions. The rain thing is... a technical hurdle.
Can anyone give an example of a government with a working majority going to the country early when they don't think they could win it? Does anyone in Sunak's camp think they can win in May? Maybe something might happen between now and January? Unlikely but 1% chance is better than zero.
I agree with you, situations like this where an election is coming where the win won’t be contested is an odd event, 97 being the last example, perhaps 83 the only other similar one I can think of. No one in Sunak’s camp think they can actually win it either in May or Autumn, it’s about averting a meltdown. Conservatism in UK is under serious threat of being supplanted by populism, as has happened in notable continental countries - though associated with the right both these ideologies are so different as to be enemies of each other.
What does good look like for the Tories from here? Climbing from 25% to 31-34% for 160-220 MPs, bad is languishing 23-28% and going sub 150 MPs.
Hope this quick drawing of the picture helps.
Having inherited an understanding and liking of conservatism from my father, I don’t want to see it marginalised, weakened and supplanted by right wing populism in my homeland. This is very disconcerting times the more I think about it. 150 Conservative Party MPs won’t share much with the other 500 MPs in Parliament, so conservatism will be very marginalised. The current polling is in the middle of the 23-28% range, the MRP point to not much more than 100 MPs.
It’s like in F1 qualifying being in the danger zone and needing an excellent last lap to get out of it. There’s no room for anything to go wrong in that lap. That’s why I insist the decision on May or Autumn is very important - it’s not like “it doesn’t really make much difference, Autumn could hardly be worse than this” a lot of the thickest and stupidest PBers are posting.
Already in the drop zone, it’s about how to find that improved lap time, from a clear problem free run.
But Starmer's recent jibe- that the Conservatism of your parent (and mine) is dead- seems pretty accurate.
It's been on the critical list for a while, Johnson was a quack remedy which seemed to work for a bit but left the patient worse, Truss was the coup de grace.
It's a shame, because a lot of its insights are sorely needed. Sound money, eyes to the future and the less fortunate. Openness to the world, rooted in who we uniquely are. One nation, but not intrusively so.
But this half-assed Thatcherite cosplay that looks longingly at the harder right? That thinks Rishi is too wet?
Apart from not wanting Starmer to have too big a majority, is it even worth saving?
This is the most important point: the Tory party (large sections of the parliamentary party emboldened by the membership) did this to themselves. They drove out the Conservatives that held those values.
It wasn't entryism. It wasn't a determined campaign by a resurgent Labour Party to woo the centre right (far from it - this happened when Labour was at its weakest.)
It was the party itself.
The Conservative Party can recover, as long as their is some sanity. Similar was happening under Labour and Corbyn.
But the Conservatives have two major disadvantages: *) They were in power, not opposition, when they had their madness. This means the madness mattered more. *) Few, if any, mainstream 'Conservatives' seem to want to return to sanity. Unlike Labour in 2015-19.
Labour had a large body of MPs and activists who wanted to work to get the party back from the Corbynite wing. They also (AFAICT?) didn't have a huge disagreement with much of the policy platform, on an ideological level, just on a practical one.
It was narrowly divided, there was a problem of entryism and many issues bubbled to the surface.
But also Labour had an institutional memory of how to deal with this from the 1970s and 1980s and the party management never totally fell apart.
I would be fascinated to hear how that was all achieved so I hope I live long enough for the less self-serving histories to be written about it.
My belief, as a long standing but largely inactive member of the Labour Party who knows many Labour members including people who voted for Corbyn to be leader, is as follows. Corbyn didn't become leader because the Labour Party had moved massively to the left. The vast majority of Labour members are to the right of Corbyn and to the left of Blair. Just as they gave Blair a chance because they were sick of losing, they gave Corbyn a chance because they were sick of compromising. Plus Corbyn's actual manifesto wasn't massively left wing. And people admired his principled stance - and the reality is that Corbyn has been proven right on most of the foreign policy issues he took a stand on, from Ireland (do a deal with the Republicans) to Apartheid (get rid) and Iraq (a catastrophic failure). Over time though more members saw what people like me had seen from the start - that Corbyn was too left wing to win, was a bit of a stubborn and unimaginative old man, and had some unsavoury friends outside of Labour on the far left. And so the Corbyn era ended, hastened by the humiliating defeat of 2019. It was a whole lot less traumatic than the eighties because there wasn't a genuine split at the heart of Labour. Corbyn was a marginal figure who had been given a chance and failed, not the leader of a significant and powerful faction.
Yes, I think that true.
Additionally there was a desire in the 2015 leadership contest to move on from the stale and shopworn New Labour team that had just delivered a surprise defeat.
Ed Miliband wasn't New Labour either, he denounced the Iraq War as leader in a conference speech. David Miliband was the New Labour candidate in 2010. Corbyn just took Labour even further left back to the socialism of the Foot era
Not really. Ed Miliband represented a slightly more left wing version of New Labour - to the extent that that label is useful rather than just being a marketing phrase. And Corbyn was not exactly a return to the Foot era. The 2017/19 manifestos were not much like the 1983 manifesto. It was the Tories after all who actioned the most radical item in Foot's platform.
So Ed Miliband was not New Labour then. The Corbyn manifestos including higher tax on the rich, increased union powers, nationalisation of utilities and rail it was a clear move back in the Foot direction while also being anti Israel and pro Russia
I assume there is nothing stopping Rishi personally giving £10m or more to replace the donation? His wifes monthly net worth volatilty would be more than that so it is unlikely to be particularly noticed or difficult for them.
If I were a PM with a net worth of $1bn or so and facing the biggest defeat for my party in a century it would seem a no brainer. I wonder if it has even been discussed?
The fact he could just hand over 10 million pounds would highlight just how much money he has . That’s a problem in itself for Sunak .
NEW: Conservative mayor of the West Midlands Andy Street tells @BBCr4today if he'd received £10 million from Frank Hester he'd hand it back.
"I would think about the company I kept and I would give that money back."
No party would give back 10m without a fight. Morals and PR aside they just aren't so flush with cash they can reimburse that much without consequence.
The one advantage that the Tories have over Labour is that they have more cash available. Handing back £10m would eliminate even that slender hope. They are not going to do it.
If only the person who reported these remarks to the Guardian had spoken up about the racist comments in 2019, Hester would have been a busted flush and not donated £10m over the last two years and nobody would have had to get upset.
Had the Guardian reported these comments in 2019 his company might not have got the government contracts they are complaining about as well.
I’m guessing the political calculation was more important than the enabling of someone with racist views to grow in influence.
The Tories need to get rid of this money either to good causes or back to Hester, he needs to be ostracised from the party but also the Guardian needs to rein in the outrage as they’ve been sitting on this and preferred political gains to stopping a bad situation as early as possible and removing someone with bad views from influence.
What makes you think the Guardian has sat on this story for 5 years? Maybe it only recently came to thir attention.
As it was also in the Telegraph then it was probably fed to the press recently.
It's highly unlikely that it was the Guardian that sat on the story. But quite likely someone else did for a while before giving to to them.
Which is, I think, what boulay suggested.
I don’t know who sat on this, an individual or the Guardian so am more interested in the fact that someone sat on this for some calculation when it should have been brought up at the time and then his influence would have been spiked.
The motives of not reporting it earlier are what I am interested in. Why not then, why now? Is it “Blue on Blue” or other for example.
Will it? Why won't the UK continue its special relationship with the US? Only today we've got comments from PB's resident Trumpite standup that Germany (unlike France) has never been part of "the West". The ground is being prepared for the UK and US to do a deal with Putin to divide Europe between them. US-UK gets everything West of the Rhine/Alps, Russia can have the rest.
Because Trump is a grade A idiot who doesn't understand that 2 things working together can do better than 2 things competing.
Trump sees everything as winners and losers and defines winning as only when it's clear someone else has the worst side of the deal... And the only deals he cares about are ones where he explicitly gets something out of it.
A useful weapons system, as long as the enemy doesn't attack in a rainstorm...
(Lasers and moisture don't get on well. In the case of microwave systems, you just end up with warm rain)
So the BRITISH army have a weapon system that doesn't work in the rain? Jeez.
They have a system which can potentially knock down drones for £10 per shot. As opposed to thousands, or even tens of thousands. And needs reloading only with fuel.
Everyone is working on directed energy weapons, as they are remarkably cost effective, and you don't run out of munitions. The rain thing is... a technical hurdle.
Canada and Turkey and Norway and Iceland are also in NATO but not in the EU like we are
Iceland and Norway are in the EEA. Turkey wanted to be in the EU. Canada is barred from EU membership on grounds of geography.
So HYUFD is right. There is no requirement to be in the EU or even the EEA to be part of NATO.
This is just more desperate arm waving by the Eurofanatics.
Where did anyone say there was a requirement to be in the EU or even the EEA to be part of NATO?
If Trump pulls out of or destabilises NATO, it stands to reason that we might look to alternative supranational structures for international collaboration.
I assume there is nothing stopping Rishi personally giving £10m or more to replace the donation? His wifes monthly net worth volatilty would be more than that so it is unlikely to be particularly noticed or difficult for them.
If I were a PM with a net worth of $1bn or so and facing the biggest defeat for my party in a century it would seem a no brainer. I wonder if it has even been discussed?
What always surprises me is how cheap UK politics is compared to the USA.
Someone willing to spend a few million can really have a significant influence whereas tens of millions can be spent every two years in a single US House district:
Decision Desk HQ projects Donald Trump wins the Washington Republican Primary and has won enough delegates to secure the Republican Nomination for President
Biden has also now won enough delegates to secure the Democratic nomination for President again
NEW: Conservative mayor of the West Midlands Andy Street tells @BBCr4today if he'd received £10 million from Frank Hester he'd hand it back.
"I would think about the company I kept and I would give that money back."
No party would give back 10m without a fight. Morals and PR aside they just aren't so flush with cash they can reimburse that much without consequence.
The one advantage that the Tories have over Labour is that they have more cash available. Handing back £10m would eliminate even that slender hope. They are not going to do it.
If only the person who reported these remarks to the Guardian had spoken up about the racist comments in 2019, Hester would have been a busted flush and not donated £10m over the last two years and nobody would have had to get upset.
Had the Guardian reported these comments in 2019 his company might not have got the government contracts they are complaining about as well.
I’m guessing the political calculation was more important than the enabling of someone with racist views to grow in influence.
The Tories need to get rid of this money either to good causes or back to Hester, he needs to be ostracised from the party but also the Guardian needs to rein in the outrage as they’ve been sitting on this and preferred political gains to stopping a bad situation as early as possible and removing someone with bad views from influence.
What makes you think the Guardian has sat on this story for 5 years? Maybe it only recently came to thir attention.
As it was also in the Telegraph then it was probably fed to the press recently.
It's highly unlikely that it was the Guardian that sat on the story. But quite likely someone else did for a while before giving to to them.
Which is, I think, what boulay suggested.
boulay wrote: "the Guardian needs to rein in the outrage as they’ve been sitting on this". Where is the evidence for this?
So the government line is no matter how many racist comments you make you can just apologize and that’s the end of it .
Actually I am OK with that, provided the apology is sincere, and there is visible making of amends.
Apologising and repenting is something to be encouraged and supported. Far better than a Social Media lynchmob.
That maybe true but in an election year the opposition parties aren’t going to accept that given if the situation was reversed the Tories and their right wing media arse lickers would be eviscerating them .
I assume there is nothing stopping Rishi personally giving £10m or more to replace the donation? His wifes monthly net worth volatilty would be more than that so it is unlikely to be particularly noticed or difficult for them.
If I were a PM with a net worth of $1bn or so and facing the biggest defeat for my party in a century it would seem a no brainer. I wonder if it has even been discussed?
The fact he could just hand over 10 million pounds would highlight just how much money he has . That’s a problem in itself for Sunak .
Does his wife get any say in how he spends her money?
So the government line is no matter how many racist comments you make you can just apologize and that’s the end of it .
Hester isn't a Conservative minister or MP. He's a donor. As long as he's not unduly influencing Conservative Party policy, what's the problem? Isn't it better than the £10 million is out of Hester's (a racist) hands and with a party (in their view!) committed to equality?
They've also not said anything about "how many racist comments you make". You've made that bit up.
NEW: Conservative mayor of the West Midlands Andy Street tells @BBCr4today if he'd received £10 million from Frank Hester he'd hand it back.
"I would think about the company I kept and I would give that money back."
No party would give back 10m without a fight. Morals and PR aside they just aren't so flush with cash they can reimburse that much without consequence.
The one advantage that the Tories have over Labour is that they have more cash available. Handing back £10m would eliminate even that slender hope. They are not going to do it.
If only the person who reported these remarks to the Guardian had spoken up about the racist comments in 2019, Hester would have been a busted flush and not donated £10m over the last two years and nobody would have had to get upset.
Had the Guardian reported these comments in 2019 his company might not have got the government contracts they are complaining about as well.
I’m guessing the political calculation was more important than the enabling of someone with racist views to grow in influence.
The Tories need to get rid of this money either to good causes or back to Hester, he needs to be ostracised from the party but also the Guardian needs to rein in the outrage as they’ve been sitting on this and preferred political gains to stopping a bad situation as early as possible and removing someone with bad views from influence.
What makes you think the Guardian has sat on this story for 5 years? Maybe it only recently came to thir attention.
As it was also in the Telegraph then it was probably fed to the press recently.
It's highly unlikely that it was the Guardian that sat on the story. But quite likely someone else did for a while before giving to to them.
Which is, I think, what boulay suggested.
boulay wrote: "the Guardian needs to rein in the outrage as they’ve been sitting on this". Where is the evidence for this?
You are right, I should really have thought about it more and wrote “if they’ve been sitting on this”. As unlikely as it is that they’ve known this since 2019 it’s not unknown for the media to hold stories for the future when they might have more impact.
As the guy below says, it's a bit like Eric Trump staking his reputation as a Chess Grandmaster.
Yet in 2015 said:
"Yes, we can officially confirm that our beloved Republican Tea Party is being led by the Mad Hatter and us millennials have been thrust into their wonderland.
The good news is, they will eventually die off (peacefully in their sleep, we hope), and then we can get right on with the OBVIOUS social change that needs to happen, IMMEDIATELY"
One has to wonder how society is set up in a manner which leads people down a rabbit hole, even when they know in advance its a crazy bat shit rabbit hole.
Can anyone give an example of a government with a working majority going to the country early when they don't think they could win it? Does anyone in Sunak's camp think they can win in May? Maybe something might happen between now and January? Unlikely but 1% chance is better than zero.
I agree with you, situations like this where an election is coming where the win won’t be contested is an odd event, 97 being the last example, perhaps 83 the only other similar one I can think of. No one in Sunak’s camp think they can actually win it either in May or Autumn, it’s about averting a meltdown. Conservatism in UK is under serious threat of being supplanted by populism, as has happened in notable continental countries - though associated with the right both these ideologies are so different as to be enemies of each other.
What does good look like for the Tories from here? Climbing from 25% to 31-34% for 160-220 MPs, bad is languishing 23-28% and going sub 150 MPs.
Hope this quick drawing of the picture helps.
Having inherited an understanding and liking of conservatism from my father, I don’t want to see it marginalised, weakened and supplanted by right wing populism in my homeland. This is very disconcerting times the more I think about it. 150 Conservative Party MPs won’t share much with the other 500 MPs in Parliament, so conservatism will be very marginalised. The current polling is in the middle of the 23-28% range, the MRP point to not much more than 100 MPs.
It’s like in F1 qualifying being in the danger zone and needing an excellent last lap to get out of it. There’s no room for anything to go wrong in that lap. That’s why I insist the decision on May or Autumn is very important - it’s not like “it doesn’t really make much difference, Autumn could hardly be worse than this” a lot of the thickest and stupidest PBers are posting.
Already in the drop zone, it’s about how to find that improved lap time, from a clear problem free run.
But Starmer's recent jibe- that the Conservatism of your parent (and mine) is dead- seems pretty accurate.
It's been on the critical list for a while, Johnson was a quack remedy which seemed to work for a bit but left the patient worse, Truss was the coup de grace.
It's a shame, because a lot of its insights are sorely needed. Sound money, eyes to the future and the less fortunate. Openness to the world, rooted in who we uniquely are. One nation, but not intrusively so.
But this half-assed Thatcherite cosplay that looks longingly at the harder right? That thinks Rishi is too wet?
Apart from not wanting Starmer to have too big a majority, is it even worth saving?
This is the most important point: the Tory party (large sections of the parliamentary party emboldened by the membership) did this to themselves. They drove out the Conservatives that held those values.
It wasn't entryism. It wasn't a determined campaign by a resurgent Labour Party to woo the centre right (far from it - this happened when Labour was at its weakest.)
It was the party itself.
The Conservative Party can recover, as long as their is some sanity. Similar was happening under Labour and Corbyn.
But the Conservatives have two major disadvantages: *) They were in power, not opposition, when they had their madness. This means the madness mattered more. *) Few, if any, mainstream 'Conservatives' seem to want to return to sanity. Unlike Labour in 2015-19.
Johnson purged the sane Tories in a way that Corbyn didn't purge the sane Labourites.
But, I still expect the Tories to recover, after a period in the wilderness. It would need a strong centre/centre-right party to be in a position to replace them after meltdown - the LDs are not that and there's no one else at present.
Or alternatively: sane Tories realised that they could not stand to be in the same party as the nutters, so they left.
Whilst 'sane' Labourites, such as Starmer, supported their anti-Semitic leader's platform.
Yes, possibly. Or probably partly. But I do think Johnson (and Starmer) were/are much more ruthless about dissent than Corbyn was (Corbyn had limited options, arguably, given the level of dissent).
Starmer may well be sane (and politically smart and - relatedly - at least two faced) but he wasn't one of the public dissenters under Corbyn. Plenty of Labour moderates refused to serve in Corbyn's shadow team.
Canada and Turkey and Norway and Iceland are also in NATO but not in the EU like we are
Iceland and Norway are in the EEA. Turkey wanted to be in the EU. Canada is barred from EU membership on grounds of geography.
So HYUFD is right. There is no requirement to be in the EU or even the EEA to be part of NATO.
This is just more desperate arm waving by the Eurofanatics.
Where did anyone say there was a requirement to be in the EU or even the EEA to be part of NATO?
If Trump pulls out of or destabilises NATO, it stands to reason that we might look to alternative supranational structures for international collaboration.
If DJT does pull the plug on NATO then Starmer would grovel and get some of shit basic bilateral defence deal with the US. That would suit both sides fine. The US gets continuity hegemony and the UK doesn't have to try and imagine any other status but satrapy.
Comments
Whilst 'sane' Labourites, such as Starmer, supported their anti-Semitic leader's platform.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-13189933/Jedward-hit-evil-manipulator-Louis-Walsh-claim-justice-served-respond-branded-vile-blistering-attack-Celebrity-Big-Brother.html
Your sophistry-for-Trump act is getting sillier by the day.
Over time though more members saw what people like me had seen from the start - that Corbyn was too left wing to win, was a bit of a stubborn and unimaginative old man, and had some unsavoury friends outside of Labour on the far left. And so the Corbyn era ended, hastened by the humiliating defeat of 2019. It was a whole lot less traumatic than the eighties because there wasn't a genuine split at the heart of Labour. Corbyn was a marginal figure who had been given a chance and failed, not the leader of a significant and powerful faction.
NEW: Postal affairs minister Kevin Hollinrake tells @bbcbreakfast the Conservative Party would take another £10 million from Frank Hester.
“On the basis that we don’t believe Mr Hester’s a racist, yes.”
🌹 LAB 43% (-1)
🔵 CON 25% (-2)
🔶LIB 11% (+1)
🔷 REF 9% (+1)
🟢 GRN 4% (=)
https://twitter.com/DominicPenna/status/1767821280688927010
Are you suggesting the Conservatives will oust him with only 8 months max to the election? That would be [losing count] PMs this parliament.
I think @Dura_Ace makes a good point that at this stage Sunak’s longevity as PM may well mean a lot more to him than the fate of the tory party. They’re going to get a hammering either way so he may as well dribble on.
And the Conservatives don't want to return that, because they like having the money.
I get it that no-one wants to read tawdry tales of male sexual exploitation any more but it’s possible to take a step back and re-cast yourself rather than disappearing down the rabbit hole.
Maybe the American Empire would be a more accurate description of the present day entity whose future @Cicero worries about.
UK will need closer EU relations if Trump wins US presidency, senior Tories say
The comments by Theresa May’s former de facto DPM comes as @ConsEurope launch a new report pushing for a softening of the Brexit deal
https://twitter.com/singharj/status/1767814173730250797
https://www1.politicalbetting.com/index.php/archives/2024/02/14/has-trump-ensured-the-uk-rejoins-the-eu/
Moffat and Nicola Coughlan, what's to like !!!!
Moffat's track record on Dr Who Xmas specials is utter cack.
Additionally there was a desire in the 2015 leadership contest to move on from the stale and shopworn New Labour team that had just delivered a surprise defeat.
https://www.msn.com/en-gb/money/other/i-paid-my-mortgage-for-36-years-and-still-lost-my-home-to-the-bank/ar-BB1jMdff?ocid=entnewsntp&pc=U531&cvid=746ae76f634e41baa1ffc65961bed424&ei=7
https://twitter.com/Rainmaker1973/status/1767473317718487540
Sadly, some of these are all too believable.
Can the leader, in this case Sunak, order the Conservative Party to return the money or is there a legal or regulatory structure where decisions about finances are out of MP’s hands and controlled by a CEO, CFO, Treasurer and requires certain actions and has certain responsibilities?
A Palestinian citizen of Israel has been granted asylum in the UK after claiming he would face persecution in his home country on the grounds of his race, his Muslim faith and his opinion that Israel “is governed by an apartheid regime”.
https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/uknews/palestinian-citizen-of-israel-granted-asylum-in-uk-in-case-said-to-be-unprecedented/ar-BB1jM60G?ocid=entnewsntp&pc=U531&cvid=50712b8b551147b995cfcd80577fa49f&ei=22
(runs for cover)
We also noted that the reported remarks have not been denied.
The ending of US Imperialism is not a bad thing, though the geo-political vacuum it leaves will be.
Wow, wagering her whole “professional reputation” on this conspiracy? That’s quite a lot to risk.
https://twitter.com/RonFilipkowski/status/1767700819896304066
"The 1865 version of Candace Owens would complain that Lincoln caused a huge jump in black unemployment."
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vg2IuPKqvt4
Fiction doesn't need to be consistent to be good. The Simpsons for example.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1vmurE_a9FE
They think it's a political self-confidence issue for Germany, with lot of nuances and unfortunate consequences.
Yeah, let's keep this guy for another 6-8 months...
“I don’t think we’re giving the money back, no” - minister Kevin Hollingrake tells
@BBCr4today about the Frank Hester donation to the Tory Party.
Will that line hold? Is yesterday about to repeat itself?
(Lasers and moisture don't get on well. In the case of microwave systems, you just end up with warm rain)
Seems Kevin Hollinrake now realises this stance was misguided.
Asked again if Tories should accept more donations, he tells
@BBCr4today: "I don't look after the donations in this party." That wd be a decision whether Hester's "the right person" based on events of "recent days"
We will see. Events.
NEW: Conservative mayor of the West Midlands Andy Street tells
@BBCr4today if he'd received £10 million from Frank Hester he'd hand it back.
"I would think about the company I kept and I would give that money back."
Trump sees everything as winners and losers and defines winning as only when it's clear someone else has the worst side of the deal... And the only deals he cares about are ones where he explicitly gets something out of it.
Hence by keeping the £10m they keep the money and attract some of Reforms support because the tory party (insert reason why racist reform voter may switch to Tories here)...
Just imagine the scenario that a Labour donor was caught making anti-Semitic comments . And their response was the person apologized nothing to see and move on .
Savanta does not prompt for Reform, there is a click through via "another party" so 9% is high for them.
Had the Guardian reported these comments in 2019 his company might not have got the government contracts they are complaining about as well.
I’m guessing the political calculation was more important than the enabling of someone with racist views to grow in influence.
The Tories need to get rid of this money either to good causes or back to Hester, he needs to be ostracised from the party but also the Guardian needs to rein in the outrage as they’ve been sitting on this and preferred political gains to stopping a bad situation as early as possible and removing someone with bad views from influence.
As a sometimes LD voter I wasn’t keen on Clegg, but he had, and gave the Party, a high public profile.
@KateEMcCann
Ministers questioning Gov line in real time, advisors briefing they had a better plan but were ignored, a PM who seems to have retreated to a bunker just a week after Budget, an MP jumping ship...if it feels like it's fraying at the edges, that's because it is. Every edge at once
As it was also in the Telegraph then it was probably fed to the press recently.
We are the real cheese-eating-monkeys.
This is just more desperate arm waving by the Eurofanatics.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Candace_Owens
As the guy below says, it's a bit like Eric Trump staking his reputation as a Chess Grandmaster.
But quite likely someone else did for a while before giving to to them.
Which is, I think, what boulay suggested.
If I were a PM with a net worth of $1bn or so and facing the biggest defeat for my party in a century it would seem a no brainer. I wonder if it has even been discussed?
The UK will need to cooperate with allies, but those allies will not be the EU.
It will be some of the EU's nations but unless or until the EU nations choose to merge their armies, the nation state remains supreme when it comes to security.
And they're not changing that any time soon. Poland hasn't just spent a fortune building up their military and buying more tanks than the UK, France and Germany combined only to hand their keys over to Von Der Leyen.
Everyone is working on directed energy weapons, as they are remarkably cost effective, and you don't run out of munitions.
The rain thing is... a technical hurdle.
Apologising and repenting is something to be encouraged and supported. Far better than a Social Media lynchmob.
The motives of not reporting it earlier are what I am interested in. Why not then, why now? Is it “Blue on Blue” or other for example.
If Trump pulls out of or destabilises NATO, it stands to reason that we might look to alternative supranational structures for international collaboration.
Someone willing to spend a few million can really have a significant influence whereas tens of millions can be spent every two years in a single US House district:
https://www.opensecrets.org/elections-overview/most-expensive-races
"Biden and Trump set for election rematch after securing party nominations - BBC News" https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-68550523
They've also not said anything about "how many racist comments you make". You've made that bit up.
"Yes, we can officially confirm that our beloved Republican Tea Party is being led by the Mad Hatter and us millennials have been thrust into their wonderland.
The good news is, they will eventually die off (peacefully in their sleep, we hope), and then we can get right on with the OBVIOUS social change that needs to happen, IMMEDIATELY"
One has to wonder how society is set up in a manner which leads people down a rabbit hole, even when they know in advance its a crazy bat shit rabbit hole.
Starmer may well be sane (and politically smart and - relatedly - at least two faced) but he wasn't one of the public dissenters under Corbyn. Plenty of Labour moderates refused to serve in Corbyn's shadow team.