"More people now prefer Rishi Sunak’s government to Sir Keir Starmer’s administration, a poll has found.
A survey by think tank More in Common shows the Labour Government is already less liked than the previous Tory one, despite taking power less than three months ago.
The poll of 2,080 adults showed that 31 per cent preferred Mr Sunak’s government, while 29 per cent preferred the current one."
How fucking shite can you get. Already more unpopular than a government 14 years in.
That's absolutely delicious.
They've been in power for, checks notes.. 89 days
Miliband led Cameron in the polls in September 2010.
He led the polls in 2015 too, the polls have always overstated Labour, this could in fact be much worse for Labour than people realise. Sentiment is very poor right now. Don't get me wrong the Tories will contrive to blow it by putting up Jenrick or Kemi but they've got time on their side to find a formula that works. Labour have got no time, people expect results and for things in the country to change for the better, yet they're talking about managed decline.
I don’t think Starmer is trying to win votes right now. He has deliberately set out to be unpopular. Well, he’s achieved his objective. Played for and got.
Will be interesting to see what happens next.
I don't think he set out to be unpopular because of dodgy donations and freebies though. If he was unpopular because of delivering a big dose of horrible medicine then sure, but Labour haven't even really made any tough decisions other than the WFA withdrawal, there's at least 10-15x as many left before the next election if Labour are serious about fixing the NHS and public services because it involves mass public sector redundancies and spending cuts.
Yes, exactly. If Labour had "set out to be unpopular" then why are they looking so totally panicked and frightened by the attack from all sides, and their plunging polling?
They expected they would have to take tough economic choices, they certainly did not expect to be condemned as spiteful lying thieves in the first three months
Other bits from the telegraph - The research found that out of the million-plus Britons who opted to stay at home having voted Tory in 2019, it was the first time that three quarters (77 per cent) had not voted Tory.
And - When asked whether they regretted their vote, 33 per cent of Labour voters said they did, while 5 per cent of Conservative voters said that they regretted backing the Tories.
This is dire stuff for Labour. Those 770k who didn't vote Tory for the first time must be feeling pretty stupid right now, their obstinacy was the difference between ~120 seats and ~200 seats in such a tight election and giving Labour a much tougher 5 years with a much smaller majority.
Well, I did try and warn them.
No-one wanted to listen.
Quite rightly too.
Given how utterly incompetent the Tories had become that they launched the campaign banging on about National Service, there was absolutely no reason to listen.
Now that doesn't mean Starmer gets a decade, he could be out after the same amount of time as Boris if he does badly, and Labour have no divine right to win the next election - but the Tories have no divine right to recover either.
Sort your party out and give working people under the age of 68 a reason to vote for you. Until you do that, you don't deserve to be listened to.
That strategy, by the ex-MP Jacob Rees-Mogg, has two problems:
(1) It permanently creates a party to the Right of the Conservatives, with whom they will constantly fight for votes.
(2) In Remainia, it it allows the LibDems and Labour to paint the Conservatives and Reform as one and the same, which will worsen tactical voting against them.
My view is that the Conservative Party needs to extinguish Reform by (a) stealing their most popular policies, and (b) ensuring they don't get a significant local government base.
I don't agree with your conclusion - there are places where the Tories are unlikely to recover, but Reform can win. What you're saying is like saying the Tories should aim to extinguish the Ulster Unionists. Why? What's the point?
You are right about not having a big long-standing pact though - it bluntens the benefit of being two distinct parties. Any deal should be as informal and last minute as possible. Tactical voting advice might work better.
The truth is Jenrick is an odious scum sucking arsehole !
I am not sure he is quite as nice as that.
In fact the Tories are staring disaster in the face if this loathsome, crooked, creep gets to play act at being their leader. This drivel about the ECHR is childish and ridiculous politics and about as disreputable as any British politician has ever been, even including Johnson. Jenrick is more like a South American caudillo than any British politico.
It is now obvious that the Conservative Party really has lost the will to live. I for one am totally sick of this Tory crap. Just hurry up and die already. .
Oh do pipe down
The Conservative Party exists to propose Conservative, rightwing policies. Not policies that YOU, a whiney centrist Remoaner, find palatable. It's like me criticising the SNP for pursuing Scottish independence - I can argue that it is far harder to achieve than they will admit (and it is), but I can't expect them to argue for the Union and then get all huffy and angry when they don't
Oh come on. Jenrick is not offering a policy, he is offering a posture, like you do most of the time you are on here. However, you have license to posture and write provocative nonsense, because being court jester is kind of your job and a man has to eat and indeed drink to a reasonable standard.
Jenrick and the other pantomime villains in the Tory leadership race do not have that license. Kings do not get to wear motely. This isn´t even remotely serious politics, and the Tories are no longer a serious political party if they go down this sub MAGA road. Even you must admit they lost the plot under Truss and instead of trying to get together a coherent set of actual, you know, *Conservative* policies, they have struck off further and further into tin foil hat land. JRM suggesting that the Tories stand down in 100 seats? Um the Tories currently hold only 121 seats, so this is basically delusion or a death wish. Actually scratch that, its Rees Mogg, so its probably both.
This country is not going to elect a Tory party in thrall to this kind of twattery. They have had two strikes already, if they can not or will not grow up, then the Lib Dems, a party with a large and growing national organisation and a boat load of new and very good MPs as well as loads more money, that will be eating their lunch, not Reform, which is a Putin compromised, Alt-media led chimera,
I don't give a fuck what a fool like you thinks of the Tories and their policies, so you can spare yourself all this typing
Yeah yeah. Whatever.
Your idea of what passes for Conservative policies probably isn't the same as what it is for most Conservatives.
The conservative conference is putting the Labour conference into perspective. Whatever bullets Labour might have fired into their feet recently they are in a far better state than the Tories.
I was surprised that some of them were still banging on about Blair today. Like old lefties still going on about Thatcher. They can’t figure out if they want to defeat or become Farage.
Ironic you say this when tonight's poll puts Sunak’s government ahead of Starmer’s !!!!
I’m sure Sunak would be delighted to have Starmer problems today.
He wouldn't have his problems as he would have made different choices
Sure. Leaving personalities and politics aside and trying to view it objectively ( I know) you as a new leader were parachuted into any of the four parties, based on current voter preferences, party unity, seats in a five year Parliament and momentum you’d probably pick Labour, then the Lib Dem’s, then Reform and then the Tories.
"More people now prefer Rishi Sunak’s government to Sir Keir Starmer’s administration, a poll has found.
A survey by think tank More in Common shows the Labour Government is already less liked than the previous Tory one, despite taking power less than three months ago.
The poll of 2,080 adults showed that 31 per cent preferred Mr Sunak’s government, while 29 per cent preferred the current one."
How fucking shite can you get. Already more unpopular than a government 14 years in.
That's absolutely delicious.
They've been in power for, checks notes.. 89 days
Miliband led Cameron in the polls in September 2010.
He led the polls in 2015 too, the polls have always overstated Labour, this could in fact be much worse for Labour than people realise. Sentiment is very poor right now. Don't get me wrong the Tories will contrive to blow it by putting up Jenrick or Kemi but they've got time on their side to find a formula that works. Labour have got no time, people expect results and for things in the country to change for the better, yet they're talking about managed decline.
I don’t think Starmer is trying to win votes right now. He has deliberately set out to be unpopular. Well, he’s achieved his objective. Played for and got.
"More people now prefer Rishi Sunak’s government to Sir Keir Starmer’s administration, a poll has found.
A survey by think tank More in Common shows the Labour Government is already less liked than the previous Tory one, despite taking power less than three months ago.
The poll of 2,080 adults showed that 31 per cent preferred Mr Sunak’s government, while 29 per cent preferred the current one."
How fucking shite can you get. Already more unpopular than a government 14 years in.
That's absolutely delicious.
They've been in power for, checks notes.. 89 days
Miliband led Cameron in the polls in September 2010.
He led the polls in 2015 too, the polls have always overstated Labour, this could in fact be much worse for Labour than people realise. Sentiment is very poor right now. Don't get me wrong the Tories will contrive to blow it by putting up Jenrick or Kemi but they've got time on their side to find a formula that works. Labour have got no time, people expect results and for things in the country to change for the better, yet they're talking about managed decline.
I don’t think Starmer is trying to win votes right now. He has deliberately set out to be unpopular. Well, he’s achieved his objective. Played for and got.
Will be interesting to see what happens next.
I don't think he set out to be unpopular because of dodgy donations and freebies though. If he was unpopular because of delivering a big dose of horrible medicine then sure, but Labour haven't even really made any tough decisions other than the WFA withdrawal, there's at least 10-15x as many left before the next election if Labour are serious about fixing the NHS and public services because it involves mass public sector redundancies and spending cuts.
Yes, exactly. If Labour had "set out to be unpopular" then why are they looking so totally panicked and frightened by the attack from all sides, and their plunging polling?
They expected they would have to take tough economic choices, they certainly did not expect to be condemned as spiteful lying thieves in the first three months
Hasn't he dropped by something like -49% in popularity over the last 3 months?
I mean, that's pretty plunging. The maximum is -100% (where literally everyone hates you, including Victoria Starmer) so in theory he's still got some headroom left.
"More people now prefer Rishi Sunak’s government to Sir Keir Starmer’s administration, a poll has found.
A survey by think tank More in Common shows the Labour Government is already less liked than the previous Tory one, despite taking power less than three months ago.
The poll of 2,080 adults showed that 31 per cent preferred Mr Sunak’s government, while 29 per cent preferred the current one."
How fucking shite can you get. Already more unpopular than a government 14 years in.
That's absolutely delicious.
They've been in power for, checks notes.. 89 days
Miliband led Cameron in the polls in September 2010.
He led the polls in 2015 too, the polls have always overstated Labour, this could in fact be much worse for Labour than people realise. Sentiment is very poor right now. Don't get me wrong the Tories will contrive to blow it by putting up Jenrick or Kemi but they've got time on their side to find a formula that works. Labour have got no time, people expect results and for things in the country to change for the better, yet they're talking about managed decline.
I don’t think Starmer is trying to win votes right now. He has deliberately set out to be unpopular. Well, he’s achieved his objective. Played for and got.
Will be interesting to see what happens next.
Are you saying he has set out to take over £100,000 of freebies and be involved with cronyism from day one, withdraw the WFP while caving to train drivers on £65,000 pa, reverse the decision on non doms, and protect his sons education by accepting a gift of the use of an 18 million pound townhouse is deliberate
It's possible Labour are going on a accelerated path of the road the Conservatives went down.
Not being clear about what they stand for, with lots of inconsistent and unpopular policy choices that irritate almost every voter group, and with self-indulgence and sleaze on top.
Worse: Starmer has neither the charisma nor humour to bluster through it, and seems to alienate people faster than Theresa May did.
Now I'm imagining a weekly PMQ's between Theresa and Keir. That would be... exciting viewing.
"More people now prefer Rishi Sunak’s government to Sir Keir Starmer’s administration, a poll has found.
A survey by think tank More in Common shows the Labour Government is already less liked than the previous Tory one, despite taking power less than three months ago.
The poll of 2,080 adults showed that 31 per cent preferred Mr Sunak’s government, while 29 per cent preferred the current one."
How fucking shite can you get. Already more unpopular than a government 14 years in.
That's absolutely delicious.
They've been in power for, checks notes.. 89 days
Miliband led Cameron in the polls in September 2010.
He led the polls in 2015 too, the polls have always overstated Labour, this could in fact be much worse for Labour than people realise. Sentiment is very poor right now. Don't get me wrong the Tories will contrive to blow it by putting up Jenrick or Kemi but they've got time on their side to find a formula that works. Labour have got no time, people expect results and for things in the country to change for the better, yet they're talking about managed decline.
I don’t think Starmer is trying to win votes right now. He has deliberately set out to be unpopular. Well, he’s achieved his objective. Played for and got.
Will be interesting to see what happens next.
I don't think he set out to be unpopular because of dodgy donations and freebies though. If he was unpopular because of delivering a big dose of horrible medicine then sure, but Labour haven't even really made any tough decisions other than the WFA withdrawal, there's at least 10-15x as many left before the next election if Labour are serious about fixing the NHS and public services because it involves mass public sector redundancies and spending cuts.
Yes, exactly. If Labour had "set out to be unpopular" then why are they looking so totally panicked and frightened by the attack from all sides, and their plunging polling?
They expected they would have to take tough economic choices, they certainly did not expect to be condemned as spiteful lying thieves in the first three months
Hasn't he dropped by something like -49% in popularity over the last 3 months?
I mean, that's pretty plunging. The maximum is -100% (where literally everyone hates you, including Victoria Starmer) so in theory he's still got some headroom left.
Indeed. As I said the other day, he should be thankful for the example of Liz Truss. Otherwise he would be the world record breaker as "most unpopular PM in the shortest time"
The truth is Jenrick is an odious scum sucking arsehole !
I am not sure he is quite as nice as that.
In fact the Tories are staring disaster in the face if this loathsome, crooked, creep gets to play act at being their leader. This drivel about the ECHR is childish and ridiculous politics and about as disreputable as any British politician has ever been, even including Johnson. Jenrick is more like a South American caudillo than any British politico.
It is now obvious that the Conservative Party really has lost the will to live. I for one am totally sick of this Tory crap. Just hurry up and die already. .
Leaving the ECHR and querying migrant crime rates may be beyond uour particular pale, but I don't think either are particularly outside of mainstream opinion.
If leaving the ECHR solved it I'd have no problem leaving the ECHR.
Leaving the ECHR alone won't solve it. There are all sorts of UN conventions and international treaties we'd get caught up instead. And even if we did clear all that the Channel is pretty binary - UK or French waters - so we'd have to either ram them back into French seas over and over again until they got bored, or became casualties, ignore French sovereignty and dump them back at Dunkirk, or do a returns deal.
It's a massive tangled ball of wool. Unpicking a simple peripheral thread isn't an answer.
The ECHR interferes in numerous ways, its not just the dinghy people. It is stuffed with Woke lawyers and judges proactively making LAW not judgements - Jonathan Sumption is right. It is obscene that we can't deport murderers and rapists because "as they are rapists they will be in trouble back home". Give me strength
If Britain is ever going to return to health we have to destroy the Blob and the ECHR is part of that nexus of lefty agencies, laws, treaties, NGOs, that blobbily squats upon us
Fuck it. The ECHR is not Holy Writ. People said we could and should never leave the EU but we did, it can be done, and doing this thing won't be a fraction as painful as Brexit
But you are right in one regard. This is necessary but not sufficient. We need something close to a revolution now, a Thatcherite rampage through the institutions, overturning the tables of the moralising moneychangers. Enuff
The ruling earlier this year making a scientific impossibility a legal requirement was a particular lowlight.
The conservative conference is putting the Labour conference into perspective. Whatever bullets Labour might have fired into their feet recently they are in a far better state than the Tories.
I was surprised that some of them were still banging on about Blair today. Like old lefties still going on about Thatcher. They can’t figure out if they want to defeat or become Farage.
Ironic you say this when tonight's poll puts Sunak’s government ahead of Starmer’s !!!!
I’m sure Sunak would be delighted to have Starmer problems today.
He wouldn't have his problems as he would have made different choices
Sure. Leaving personalities and politics aside and trying to view it objectively ( I know) you as a new leader were parachuted into any of the four parties, based on current voter preferences, party unity, seats in a five year Parliament and momentum you’d probably pick Labour, then the Lib Dem’s, then Reform and then the Tories.
Frankly I would be happy to lead a conservative party over the others and move them to the centre over the next 5 years
The truth is Jenrick is an odious scum sucking arsehole !
I am not sure he is quite as nice as that.
In fact the Tories are staring disaster in the face if this loathsome, crooked, creep gets to play act at being their leader. This drivel about the ECHR is childish and ridiculous politics and about as disreputable as any British politician has ever been, even including Johnson. Jenrick is more like a South American caudillo than any British politico.
It is now obvious that the Conservative Party really has lost the will to live. I for one am totally sick of this Tory crap. Just hurry up and die already. .
Oh do pipe down
The Conservative Party exists to propose Conservative, rightwing policies. Not policies that YOU, a whiney centrist Remoaner, find palatable. It's like me criticising the SNP for pursuing Scottish independence - I can argue that it is far harder to achieve than they will admit (and it is), but I can't expect them to argue for the Union and then get all huffy and angry when they don't
Oh come on. Jenrick is not offering a policy, he is offering a posture, like you do most of the time you are on here. However, you have license to posture and write provocative nonsense, because being court jester is kind of your job and a man has to eat and indeed drink to a reasonable standard.
Jenrick and the other pantomime villains in the Tory leadership race do not have that license. Kings do not get to wear motely. This isn´t even remotely serious politics, and the Tories are no longer a serious political party if they go down this sub MAGA road. Even you must admit they lost the plot under Truss and instead of trying to get together a coherent set of actual, you know, *Conservative* policies, they have struck off further and further into tin foil hat land. JRM suggesting that the Tories stand down in 100 seats? Um the Tories currently hold only 121 seats, so this is basically delusion or a death wish. Actually scratch that, its Rees Mogg, so its probably both.
This country is not going to elect a Tory party in thrall to this kind of entitled twattery. They have had two strikes already, if they can not or will not grow up, then the Lib Dems, a party with a large and growing national organisation and a boat load of new and very good MPs as well as loads more money, that will be eating their lunch, not Reform, which is a Putin compromised, Alt-media led chimera,
The truth is Jenrick is an odious scum sucking arsehole !
I am not sure he is quite as nice as that.
In fact the Tories are staring disaster in the face if this loathsome, crooked, creep gets to play act at being their leader. This drivel about the ECHR is childish and ridiculous politics and about as disreputable as any British politician has ever been, even including Johnson. Jenrick is more like a South American caudillo than any British politico.
It is now obvious that the Conservative Party really has lost the will to live. I for one am totally sick of this Tory crap. Just hurry up and die already. .
Leaving the ECHR and querying migrant crime rates may be beyond uour particular pale, but I don't think either are particularly outside of mainstream opinion.
If leaving the ECHR solved it I'd have no problem leaving the ECHR.
Leaving the ECHR alone won't solve it. There are all sorts of UN conventions and international treaties we'd get caught up instead. And even if we did clear all that the Channel is pretty binary - UK or French waters - so we'd have to either ram them back into French seas over and over again until they got bored, or became casualties, ignore French sovereignty and dump them back at Dunkirk, or do a returns deal.
It's a massive tangled ball of wool. Unpicking a simple peripheral thread isn't an answer.
The ECHR interferes in numerous ways, its not just the dinghy people. It is stuffed with Woke lawyers and judges proactively making LAW not judgements - Jonathan Sumption is right. It is obscene that we can't deport murderers and rapists because "as they are rapists they will be in trouble back home". Give me strength
If Britain is ever going to return to health we have to destroy the Blob and the ECHR is part of that nexus of lefty agencies, laws, treaties, NGOs, that blobbily squats upon us
Fuck it. The ECHR is not Holy Writ. People said we could and should never leave the EU but we did, it can be done, and doing this thing won't be a fraction as painful as Brexit
But you are right in one regard. This is necessary but not sufficient. We need something close to a revolution now, a Thatcherite rampage through the institutions, overturning the tables of the moralising moneychangers. Enuff
I think what we need to do is talk to the other major European countries who are all also now rethinking on illegal immigration, deportation and asylum seeking to reform the ECHR for the modern era and kill the idea that unelected judges can modify it at will. Fundamentally sovereignty must sit with voters and having unelected judges being able to just modify the remit of the ECHR is a pretty outrageous violation of democracy across all of Europe.
Italy, France, Germany, Austria and many other European countries will be up for it too because the ECHR interferes in their own efforts to deport illegal and foreign criminals. Now would be the right time to do it too because Italy has got a right wing government, the French government has the fear of RN/Le Pen winning driving everything they do, Germany has got the fear of AfD etc...
It could actually be one of those areas where the UK could take the lead and make proposals to the other major nations, draft changes in consultation with them and then ram them through by forcing countries using EU and NATO membership.
The truth is Jenrick is an odious scum sucking arsehole !
I am not sure he is quite as nice as that.
In fact the Tories are staring disaster in the face if this loathsome, crooked, creep gets to play act at being their leader. This drivel about the ECHR is childish and ridiculous politics and about as disreputable as any British politician has ever been, even including Johnson. Jenrick is more like a South American caudillo than any British politico.
It is now obvious that the Conservative Party really has lost the will to live. I for one am totally sick of this Tory crap. Just hurry up and die already. .
Leaving the ECHR and querying migrant crime rates may be beyond uour particular pale, but I don't think either are particularly outside of mainstream opinion.
If leaving the ECHR solved it I'd have no problem leaving the ECHR.
Leaving the ECHR alone won't solve it. There are all sorts of UN conventions and international treaties we'd get caught up instead. And even if we did clear all that the Channel is pretty binary - UK or French waters - so we'd have to either ram them back into French seas over and over again until they got bored, or became casualties, ignore French sovereignty and dump them back at Dunkirk, or do a returns deal.
It's a massive tangled ball of wool. Unpicking a simple peripheral thread isn't an answer.
Hire the Libyan Coastguard.
The refugees would Boojum it, mid Channel.
The question then is the profit split between U.K. and the LC.
That strategy, by the ex-MP Jacob Rees-Mogg, has two problems:
(1) It permanently creates a party to the Right of the Conservatives, with whom they will constantly fight for votes.
(2) In Remainia, it it allows the LibDems and Labour to paint the Conservatives and Reform as one and the same, which will worsen tactical voting against them.
My view is that the Conservative Party needs to extinguish Reform by (a) stealing their most popular policies, and (b) ensuring they don't get a significant local government base.
If the Conservatives want to destroy Reform, they should ensure that Rees-Mogg defects to them.
Labour and the LibDems very successfully carved up the electoral map between them without any of the complications of a formal pact. Tories and Reform UK need to learn to do the same. Not campaigning much in 100 seats will work much better for them.
"More people now prefer Rishi Sunak’s government to Sir Keir Starmer’s administration, a poll has found.
A survey by think tank More in Common shows the Labour Government is already less liked than the previous Tory one, despite taking power less than three months ago.
The poll of 2,080 adults showed that 31 per cent preferred Mr Sunak’s government, while 29 per cent preferred the current one."
How fucking shite can you get. Already more unpopular than a government 14 years in.
Absence making the heart grow fonder, I see.
The one good thing Rishi did was call an election in July so little would/could get done until October
Speaking of healthcare, the UK is absolutely first rate for private health. I'm in the OneWelbeck centre right now and the consultant was able to pull in my MRI scans from 2021 and 2023 instantly, he rediagnosed them instantly and has come up with a hypothesis on why I'm feeling crummy. There's not many countries in the world where you can book an appointment with a globally recognised specialist consultant and get an appointment within three days.
The systems that they have in place should be standard for all patients and it's not as though it's incredibly difficult to achieve yet the NHS would take days to figure out where previous scan results lived etc...
My local GP surgery texted me recently about closing down for two days to do the upgrade from Windows XP. I'm hoping next time they print out a URL for me on a sheet of A4 rather than just email it to me that the upgrade was worth it.
Snark aside, this is one of the concrete areas where Google's AI work seems to be paying off. No idea if the NHS or wider bodies will accept it - but they are showing concrete results in improving diagnosis from top to bottom.
"More people now prefer Rishi Sunak’s government to Sir Keir Starmer’s administration, a poll has found.
A survey by think tank More in Common shows the Labour Government is already less liked than the previous Tory one, despite taking power less than three months ago.
The poll of 2,080 adults showed that 31 per cent preferred Mr Sunak’s government, while 29 per cent preferred the current one."
How fucking shite can you get. Already more unpopular than a government 14 years in.
Absence making the heart grow fonder, I see.
The one good thing Rishi did was call an election in July so little would/could get done until October
The truth is Jenrick is an odious scum sucking arsehole !
I am not sure he is quite as nice as that.
In fact the Tories are staring disaster in the face if this loathsome, crooked, creep gets to play act at being their leader. This drivel about the ECHR is childish and ridiculous politics and about as disreputable as any British politician has ever been, even including Johnson. Jenrick is more like a South American caudillo than any British politico.
It is now obvious that the Conservative Party really has lost the will to live. I for one am totally sick of this Tory crap. Just hurry up and die already. .
Leaving the ECHR and querying migrant crime rates may be beyond uour particular pale, but I don't think either are particularly outside of mainstream opinion.
If leaving the ECHR solved it I'd have no problem leaving the ECHR.
Leaving the ECHR alone won't solve it. There are all sorts of UN conventions and international treaties we'd get caught up instead. And even if we did clear all that the Channel is pretty binary - UK or French waters - so we'd have to either ram them back into French seas over and over again until they got bored, or became casualties, ignore French sovereignty and dump them back at Dunkirk, or do a returns deal.
It's a massive tangled ball of wool. Unpicking a simple peripheral thread isn't an answer.
The ECHR interferes in numerous ways, its not just the dinghy people. It is stuffed with Woke lawyers and judges proactively making LAW not judgements - Jonathan Sumption is right. It is obscene that we can't deport murderers and rapists because "as they are rapists they will be in trouble back home". Give me strength
If Britain is ever going to return to health we have to destroy the Blob and the ECHR is part of that nexus of lefty agencies, laws, treaties, NGOs, that blobbily squats upon us
Fuck it. The ECHR is not Holy Writ. People said we could and should never leave the EU but we did, it can be done, and doing this thing won't be a fraction as painful as Brexit
But you are right in one regard. This is necessary but not sufficient. We need something close to a revolution now, a Thatcherite rampage through the institutions, overturning the tables of the moralising moneychangers. Enuff
I think what we need to do is talk to the other major European countries who are all also now rethinking on illegal immigration, deportation and asylum seeking to reform the ECHR for the modern era and kill the idea that unelected judges can modify it at will. Fundamentally sovereignty must sit with voters and having unelected judges being able to just modify the remit of the ECHR is a pretty outrageous violation of democracy across all of Europe.
Italy, France, Germany, Austria and many other European countries will be up for it too because the ECHR interferes in their own efforts to deport illegal and foreign criminals. Now would be the right time to do it too because Italy has got a right wing government, the French government has the fear of RN/Le Pen winning driving everything they do, Germany has got the fear of AfD etc...
It could actually be one of those areas where the UK could take the lead and make proposals to the other major nations, draft changes in consultation with them and then ram them through by forcing countries using EU and NATO membership.
Yes. The blunt fact is that the hard right or even far right is advancing across Europe, with no signs of this surge coming to an end. If it continues we will see far right GOVERNMENTS in European capitals, much more radical than Meloni, and they will tear up the ECHR immediately, before moving on to bigger things. They are already tearing up the EU's asylum proposals
Personally, I don't want a far right government in London, something much more radical than Reform. That would be bad. But the best way to avoid that is to do what the Social Democrats in Denmark have done, accepted the right has a strong case on migration/asylum, and adopted vastly tougher policies on these issues. The Danish Social Democrats have just won an election by doing that, thereby fending off much nastier forces
That's the brutal choice. Grasp the nettle or allow the Fascists to win elections. Let's grasp the nettle
That strategy, by the ex-MP Jacob Rees-Mogg, has two problems:
(1) It permanently creates a party to the Right of the Conservatives, with whom they will constantly fight for votes.
(2) In Remainia, it it allows the LibDems and Labour to paint the Conservatives and Reform as one and the same, which will worsen tactical voting against them.
My view is that the Conservative Party needs to extinguish Reform by (a) stealing their most popular policies, and (b) ensuring they don't get a significant local government base.
If the Conservatives want to destroy Reform, they should ensure that Rees-Mogg defects to them.
He's not a MP any more. Neither is Steve Baker, the only other ex-Conservative MP in this palaver who's impressed me.
The truth is Jenrick is an odious scum sucking arsehole !
I am not sure he is quite as nice as that.
In fact the Tories are staring disaster in the face if this loathsome, crooked, creep gets to play act at being their leader. This drivel about the ECHR is childish and ridiculous politics and about as disreputable as any British politician has ever been, even including Johnson. Jenrick is more like a South American caudillo than any British politico.
It is now obvious that the Conservative Party really has lost the will to live. I for one am totally sick of this Tory crap. Just hurry up and die already. .
Leaving the ECHR and querying migrant crime rates may be beyond uour particular pale, but I don't think either are particularly outside of mainstream opinion.
If leaving the ECHR solved it I'd have no problem leaving the ECHR.
Leaving the ECHR alone won't solve it. There are all sorts of UN conventions and international treaties we'd get caught up instead. And even if we did clear all that the Channel is pretty binary - UK or French waters - so we'd have to either ram them back into French seas over and over again until they got bored, or became casualties, ignore French sovereignty and dump them back at Dunkirk, or do a returns deal.
It's a massive tangled ball of wool. Unpicking a simple peripheral thread isn't an answer.
The ECHR interferes in numerous ways, its not just the dinghy people. It is stuffed with Woke lawyers and judges proactively making LAW not judgements - Jonathan Sumption is right. It is obscene that we can't deport murderers and rapists because "as they are rapists they will be in trouble back home". Give me strength
If Britain is ever going to return to health we have to destroy the Blob and the ECHR is part of that nexus of lefty agencies, laws, treaties, NGOs, that blobbily squats upon us
Fuck it. The ECHR is not Holy Writ. People said we could and should never leave the EU but we did, it can be done, and doing this thing won't be a fraction as painful as Brexit
But you are right in one regard. This is necessary but not sufficient. We need something close to a revolution now, a Thatcherite rampage through the institutions, overturning the tables of the moralising moneychangers. Enuff
I think what we need to do is talk to the other major European countries who are all also now rethinking on illegal immigration, deportation and asylum seeking to reform the ECHR for the modern era and kill the idea that unelected judges can modify it at will. Fundamentally sovereignty must sit with voters and having unelected judges being able to just modify the remit of the ECHR is a pretty outrageous violation of democracy across all of Europe.
Italy, France, Germany, Austria and many other European countries will be up for it too because the ECHR interferes in their own efforts to deport illegal and foreign criminals. Now would be the right time to do it too because Italy has got a right wing government, the French government has the fear of RN/Le Pen winning driving everything they do, Germany has got the fear of AfD etc...
It could actually be one of those areas where the UK could take the lead and make proposals to the other major nations, draft changes in consultation with them and then ram them through by forcing countries using EU and NATO membership.
Yes. The blunt fact is that the hard right or even far right is advancing across Europe, with no signs of this surge coming to an end. If it continues we will see far right GOVERNMENTS in European capitals, much more radical than Meloni, and they will tear up the ECHR immediately, before moving on to bigger things. They are already tearing up the EU's asylum proposals
Personally, I don't want a far right government in London, something much more radical than Reform. That would be bad. But the best way to avoid that is to do what the Social Democrats in Denmark have done, accepted the right has a strong case on migration/asylum, and adopted vastly tougher policies on these issues. The Danish Social Democrats have just won an election by doing that, thereby fending off much nastier forces
That's the brutal choice. Grasp the nettle or allow the Fascists to win elections. Let's grasp the nettle
And this is why Labour should be making overtures on this now, make it the centrepiece of a 2029 election campaign that they reformed the ECHR and made it possible to stop the boats and send failed asylum seekers back and to deport foreign criminals and other illegal immigrants etc...
But Labour haven't got a clue and Nige will set his sights on Labour next time because they will be the party that has been letting hundreds of thousands of illegals cross into the UK by boat for 5 years.
The truth is Jenrick is an odious scum sucking arsehole !
I am not sure he is quite as nice as that.
In fact the Tories are staring disaster in the face if this loathsome, crooked, creep gets to play act at being their leader. This drivel about the ECHR is childish and ridiculous politics and about as disreputable as any British politician has ever been, even including Johnson. Jenrick is more like a South American caudillo than any British politico.
It is now obvious that the Conservative Party really has lost the will to live. I for one am totally sick of this Tory crap. Just hurry up and die already. .
Leaving the ECHR and querying migrant crime rates may be beyond uour particular pale, but I don't think either are particularly outside of mainstream opinion.
If leaving the ECHR solved it I'd have no problem leaving the ECHR.
Leaving the ECHR alone won't solve it. There are all sorts of UN conventions and international treaties we'd get caught up instead. And even if we did clear all that the Channel is pretty binary - UK or French waters - so we'd have to either ram them back into French seas over and over again until they got bored, or became casualties, ignore French sovereignty and dump them back at Dunkirk, or do a returns deal.
It's a massive tangled ball of wool. Unpicking a simple peripheral thread isn't an answer.
The ECHR interferes in numerous ways, its not just the dinghy people. It is stuffed with Woke lawyers and judges proactively making LAW not judgements - Jonathan Sumption is right. It is obscene that we can't deport murderers and rapists because "as they are rapists they will be in trouble back home". Give me strength
If Britain is ever going to return to health we have to destroy the Blob and the ECHR is part of that nexus of lefty agencies, laws, treaties, NGOs, that blobbily squats upon us
Fuck it. The ECHR is not Holy Writ. People said we could and should never leave the EU but we did, it can be done, and doing this thing won't be a fraction as painful as Brexit
But you are right in one regard. This is necessary but not sufficient. We need something close to a revolution now, a Thatcherite rampage through the institutions, overturning the tables of the moralising moneychangers. Enuff
I think what we need to do is talk to the other major European countries who are all also now rethinking on illegal immigration, deportation and asylum seeking to reform the ECHR for the modern era and kill the idea that unelected judges can modify it at will. Fundamentally sovereignty must sit with voters and having unelected judges being able to just modify the remit of the ECHR is a pretty outrageous violation of democracy across all of Europe.
Italy, France, Germany, Austria and many other European countries will be up for it too because the ECHR interferes in their own efforts to deport illegal and foreign criminals. Now would be the right time to do it too because Italy has got a right wing government, the French government has the fear of RN/Le Pen winning driving everything they do, Germany has got the fear of AfD etc...
It could actually be one of those areas where the UK could take the lead and make proposals to the other major nations, draft changes in consultation with them and then ram them through by forcing countries using EU and NATO membership.
Yes. The blunt fact is that the hard right or even far right is advancing across Europe, with no signs of this surge coming to an end. If it continues we will see far right GOVERNMENTS in European capitals, much more radical than Meloni, and they will tear up the ECHR immediately, before moving on to bigger things. They are already tearing up the EU's asylum proposals
Personally, I don't want a far right government in London, something much more radical than Reform. That would be bad. But the best way to avoid that is to do what the Social Democrats in Denmark have done, accepted the right has a strong case on migration/asylum, and adopted vastly tougher policies on these issues. The Danish Social Democrats have just won an election by doing that, thereby fending off much nastier forces
That's the brutal choice. Grasp the nettle or allow the Fascists to win elections. Let's grasp the nettle
As Jenrick states, you need unanimity from all 46 states to reform it. I find that unlikely.
Personally I am in favour of derogating/ignoring/fudging, but I admit that's hard with the UK legal establishment oriented toward a maximalist gold-plated approach. Jenrick says he has set out to persuade people that we must leave, and right now the argument looks persuasive. That's what politics is about - you decide what's right and you argue for your position.
"More people now prefer Rishi Sunak’s government to Sir Keir Starmer’s administration, a poll has found.
A survey by think tank More in Common shows the Labour Government is already less liked than the previous Tory one, despite taking power less than three months ago.
The poll of 2,080 adults showed that 31 per cent preferred Mr Sunak’s government, while 29 per cent preferred the current one."
How fucking shite can you get. Already more unpopular than a government 14 years in.
That's absolutely delicious.
They've been in power for, checks notes.. 89 days
Miliband led Cameron in the polls in September 2010.
He led the polls in 2015 too, the polls have always overstated Labour, this could in fact be much worse for Labour than people realise. Sentiment is very poor right now. Don't get me wrong the Tories will contrive to blow it by putting up Jenrick or Kemi but they've got time on their side to find a formula that works. Labour have got no time, people expect results and for things in the country to change for the better, yet they're talking about managed decline.
I don’t think Starmer is trying to win votes right now. He has deliberately set out to be unpopular. Well, he’s achieved his objective. Played for and got.
Will be interesting to see what happens next.
Are you saying he has set out to take over £100,000 of freebies and be involved with cronyism from day one, withdraw the WFP while caving to train drivers on £65,000 pa, reverse the decision on non doms, and protect his sons education by accepting a gift of the use of an 18 million pound townhouse is deliberate
Yes of course. It just like MUFC who have spent this season so far lulling the other teams into a false sense of security. It is all part of a cunning plan.
The fact that (a) the queue for Truss is so long (b) there remains so much interest in and sympathy for her take on events from conference delegates, and (c) that she seems so unwilling to retreat from Tory politics, would worry me if I were any of the potential Conservative leaders and delight me were I in No 10.
This is indeed extremely interesting news. Many have pondered a sensational return for Mary ‘Liz’ TRUSS - and who could blame them? The fact that she is out-booking the official runners and riders is telling. Maybe a new Trussian sunrise is just around the corner? Wow.
The truth is Jenrick is an odious scum sucking arsehole !
I am not sure he is quite as nice as that.
In fact the Tories are staring disaster in the face if this loathsome, crooked, creep gets to play act at being their leader. This drivel about the ECHR is childish and ridiculous politics and about as disreputable as any British politician has ever been, even including Johnson. Jenrick is more like a South American caudillo than any British politico.
It is now obvious that the Conservative Party really has lost the will to live. I for one am totally sick of this Tory crap. Just hurry up and die already. .
Leaving the ECHR and querying migrant crime rates may be beyond uour particular pale, but I don't think either are particularly outside of mainstream opinion.
If leaving the ECHR solved it I'd have no problem leaving the ECHR.
Leaving the ECHR alone won't solve it. There are all sorts of UN conventions and international treaties we'd get caught up instead. And even if we did clear all that the Channel is pretty binary - UK or French waters - so we'd have to either ram them back into French seas over and over again until they got bored, or became casualties, ignore French sovereignty and dump them back at Dunkirk, or do a returns deal.
That's my preference. The French won't do it voluntarily, so we need to give them a reason to do it involuntarily. Grounding Higgins boats full of refugees on French beaches will do the trick.
The fact that (a) the queue for Truss is so long (b) there remains so much interest in and sympathy for her take on events from conference delegates, and (c) that she seems so unwilling to retreat from Tory politics, would worry me if I were any of the potential Conservative leaders and delight me were I in No 10.
This is indeed extremely interesting news. Many have pondered a sensational return for Mary ‘Liz’ TRUSS - and who could blame them? The fact that she is out-booking the official runners and riders is telling. Maybe a new Trussian sunrise is just around the corner? Wow.
The truth is Jenrick is an odious scum sucking arsehole !
I am not sure he is quite as nice as that.
In fact the Tories are staring disaster in the face if this loathsome, crooked, creep gets to play act at being their leader. This drivel about the ECHR is childish and ridiculous politics and about as disreputable as any British politician has ever been, even including Johnson. Jenrick is more like a South American caudillo than any British politico.
It is now obvious that the Conservative Party really has lost the will to live. I for one am totally sick of this Tory crap. Just hurry up and die already. .
Leaving the ECHR and querying migrant crime rates may be beyond uour particular pale, but I don't think either are particularly outside of mainstream opinion.
If leaving the ECHR solved it I'd have no problem leaving the ECHR.
Leaving the ECHR alone won't solve it. There are all sorts of UN conventions and international treaties we'd get caught up instead. And even if we did clear all that the Channel is pretty binary - UK or French waters - so we'd have to either ram them back into French seas over and over again until they got bored, or became casualties, ignore French sovereignty and dump them back at Dunkirk, or do a returns deal.
It's a massive tangled ball of wool. Unpicking a simple peripheral thread isn't an answer.
The ECHR interferes in numerous ways, its not just the dinghy people. It is stuffed with Woke lawyers and judges proactively making LAW not judgements - Jonathan Sumption is right. It is obscene that we can't deport murderers and rapists because "as they are rapists they will be in trouble back home". Give me strength
If Britain is ever going to return to health we have to destroy the Blob and the ECHR is part of that nexus of lefty agencies, laws, treaties, NGOs, that blobbily squats upon us
Fuck it. The ECHR is not Holy Writ. People said we could and should never leave the EU but we did, it can be done, and doing this thing won't be a fraction as painful as Brexit
But you are right in one regard. This is necessary but not sufficient. We need something close to a revolution now, a Thatcherite rampage through the institutions, overturning the tables of the moralising moneychangers. Enuff
I think what we need to do is talk to the other major European countries who are all also now rethinking on illegal immigration, deportation and asylum seeking to reform the ECHR for the modern era and kill the idea that unelected judges can modify it at will. Fundamentally sovereignty must sit with voters and having unelected judges being able to just modify the remit of the ECHR is a pretty outrageous violation of democracy across all of Europe.
Italy, France, Germany, Austria and many other European countries will be up for it too because the ECHR interferes in their own efforts to deport illegal and foreign criminals. Now would be the right time to do it too because Italy has got a right wing government, the French government has the fear of RN/Le Pen winning driving everything they do, Germany has got the fear of AfD etc...
It could actually be one of those areas where the UK could take the lead and make proposals to the other major nations, draft changes in consultation with them and then ram them through by forcing countries using EU and NATO membership.
Yes. The blunt fact is that the hard right or even far right is advancing across Europe, with no signs of this surge coming to an end. If it continues we will see far right GOVERNMENTS in European capitals, much more radical than Meloni, and they will tear up the ECHR immediately, before moving on to bigger things. They are already tearing up the EU's asylum proposals
Personally, I don't want a far right government in London, something much more radical than Reform. That would be bad. But the best way to avoid that is to do what the Social Democrats in Denmark have done, accepted the right has a strong case on migration/asylum, and adopted vastly tougher policies on these issues. The Danish Social Democrats have just won an election by doing that, thereby fending off much nastier forces
That's the brutal choice. Grasp the nettle or allow the Fascists to win elections. Let's grasp the nettle
As Jenrick states, you need unanimity from all 46 states to reform it. I find that unlikely.
Personally I am in favour of derogating/ignoring/fudging, but I admit that's hard with the UK legal establishment oriented toward a maximalist gold-plated approach. Jenrick says he has set out to persuade people that we must leave, and right now the argument looks persuasive. That's what politics is about - you decide what's right and you argue for your position.
If the major nations in Europe presented reforms it would very quickly achieve unanimity because most of those countries in Eastern Europe rely on NATO or the EU. With Sweden now also in NATO they wouldn't be much of a blocker either. There are also big anti-illegal immigration pressures all over the continent, I think if the conversation was opened any dissent against plans presented will be to toughen them, rather than water anything down.
Speaking of healthcare, the UK is absolutely first rate for private health. I'm in the OneWelbeck centre right now and the consultant was able to pull in my MRI scans from 2021 and 2023 instantly, he rediagnosed them instantly and has come up with a hypothesis on why I'm feeling crummy. There's not many countries in the world where you can book an appointment with a globally recognised specialist consultant and get an appointment within three days.
The systems that they have in place should be standard for all patients and it's not as though it's incredibly difficult to achieve yet the NHS would take days to figure out where previous scan results lived etc...
My local GP surgery texted me recently about closing down for two days to do the upgrade from Windows XP. I'm hoping next time they print out a URL for me on a sheet of A4 rather than just email it to me that the upgrade was worth it.
Snark aside, this is one of the concrete areas where Google's AI work seems to be paying off. No idea if the NHS or wider bodies will accept it - but they are showing concrete results in improving diagnosis from top to bottom.
Top to bottom. Dandruff to colonoscopy.
The blurb for BoJo's biography, I noticed today, describes it as a "Soup to Nuts" account. I know he was born in Manhattan, but since when did we import that phrase? Pretty sure most readers won't know it.
The truth is Jenrick is an odious scum sucking arsehole !
I am not sure he is quite as nice as that.
In fact the Tories are staring disaster in the face if this loathsome, crooked, creep gets to play act at being their leader. This drivel about the ECHR is childish and ridiculous politics and about as disreputable as any British politician has ever been, even including Johnson. Jenrick is more like a South American caudillo than any British politico.
It is now obvious that the Conservative Party really has lost the will to live. I for one am totally sick of this Tory crap. Just hurry up and die already. .
Leaving the ECHR and querying migrant crime rates may be beyond uour particular pale, but I don't think either are particularly outside of mainstream opinion.
If leaving the ECHR solved it I'd have no problem leaving the ECHR.
Leaving the ECHR alone won't solve it. There are all sorts of UN conventions and international treaties we'd get caught up instead. And even if we did clear all that the Channel is pretty binary - UK or French waters - so we'd have to either ram them back into French seas over and over again until they got bored, or became casualties, ignore French sovereignty and dump them back at Dunkirk, or do a returns deal.
It's a massive tangled ball of wool. Unpicking a simple peripheral thread isn't an answer.
The ECHR interferes in numerous ways, its not just the dinghy people. It is stuffed with Woke lawyers and judges proactively making LAW not judgements - Jonathan Sumption is right. It is obscene that we can't deport murderers and rapists because "as they are rapists they will be in trouble back home". Give me strength
If Britain is ever going to return to health we have to destroy the Blob and the ECHR is part of that nexus of lefty agencies, laws, treaties, NGOs, that blobbily squats upon us
Fuck it. The ECHR is not Holy Writ. People said we could and should never leave the EU but we did, it can be done, and doing this thing won't be a fraction as painful as Brexit
But you are right in one regard. This is necessary but not sufficient. We need something close to a revolution now, a Thatcherite rampage through the institutions, overturning the tables of the moralising moneychangers. Enuff
I think what we need to do is talk to the other major European countries who are all also now rethinking on illegal immigration, deportation and asylum seeking to reform the ECHR for the modern era and kill the idea that unelected judges can modify it at will. Fundamentally sovereignty must sit with voters and having unelected judges being able to just modify the remit of the ECHR is a pretty outrageous violation of democracy across all of Europe.
Italy, France, Germany, Austria and many other European countries will be up for it too because the ECHR interferes in their own efforts to deport illegal and foreign criminals. Now would be the right time to do it too because Italy has got a right wing government, the French government has the fear of RN/Le Pen winning driving everything they do, Germany has got the fear of AfD etc...
It could actually be one of those areas where the UK could take the lead and make proposals to the other major nations, draft changes in consultation with them and then ram them through by forcing countries using EU and NATO membership.
Yes. The blunt fact is that the hard right or even far right is advancing across Europe, with no signs of this surge coming to an end. If it continues we will see far right GOVERNMENTS in European capitals, much more radical than Meloni, and they will tear up the ECHR immediately, before moving on to bigger things. They are already tearing up the EU's asylum proposals
Personally, I don't want a far right government in London, something much more radical than Reform. That would be bad. But the best way to avoid that is to do what the Social Democrats in Denmark have done, accepted the right has a strong case on migration/asylum, and adopted vastly tougher policies on these issues. The Danish Social Democrats have just won an election by doing that, thereby fending off much nastier forces
That's the brutal choice. Grasp the nettle or allow the Fascists to win elections. Let's grasp the nettle
And this is why Labour should be making overtures on this now, make it the centrepiece of a 2029 election campaign that they reformed the ECHR and made it possible to stop the boats and send failed asylum seekers back and to deport foreign criminals and other illegal immigrants etc...
But Labour haven't got a clue and Nige will set his sights on Labour next time because they will be the party that has been letting hundreds of thousands of illegals cross into the UK by boat for 5 years.
Step 1: make the supreme court of military justice in the UK the National Security Council instead of the Supreme Court. Then actions of the military outside the UK jurisdiction are not justiciable
Step 2: intercept undocumented migrants in the Channel and transfer them to landing craft
Step 3: drive the landing craft onto a French beach and leave it there
Having never come within UK jurisdiction, no treaties or laws need be changed.
Remember what I said about warfare being a matter of changing the legal frame? You are thinking legislation, I'm thinking jurisdiction. Lawyers only act within a jurisdiction, so if it's outside UK jurisdiction (ie the three mile limit or whatever) then the lawyers cannot act.
The truth is Jenrick is an odious scum sucking arsehole !
I am not sure he is quite as nice as that.
In fact the Tories are staring disaster in the face if this loathsome, crooked, creep gets to play act at being their leader. This drivel about the ECHR is childish and ridiculous politics and about as disreputable as any British politician has ever been, even including Johnson. Jenrick is more like a South American caudillo than any British politico.
It is now obvious that the Conservative Party really has lost the will to live. I for one am totally sick of this Tory crap. Just hurry up and die already. .
Leaving the ECHR and querying migrant crime rates may be beyond uour particular pale, but I don't think either are particularly outside of mainstream opinion.
If leaving the ECHR solved it I'd have no problem leaving the ECHR.
Leaving the ECHR alone won't solve it. There are all sorts of UN conventions and international treaties we'd get caught up instead. And even if we did clear all that the Channel is pretty binary - UK or French waters - so we'd have to either ram them back into French seas over and over again until they got bored, or became casualties, ignore French sovereignty and dump them back at Dunkirk, or do a returns deal.
It's a massive tangled ball of wool. Unpicking a simple peripheral thread isn't an answer.
The ECHR interferes in numerous ways, its not just the dinghy people. It is stuffed with Woke lawyers and judges proactively making LAW not judgements - Jonathan Sumption is right. It is obscene that we can't deport murderers and rapists because "as they are rapists they will be in trouble back home". Give me strength
If Britain is ever going to return to health we have to destroy the Blob and the ECHR is part of that nexus of lefty agencies, laws, treaties, NGOs, that blobbily squats upon us
Fuck it. The ECHR is not Holy Writ. People said we could and should never leave the EU but we did, it can be done, and doing this thing won't be a fraction as painful as Brexit
But you are right in one regard. This is necessary but not sufficient. We need something close to a revolution now, a Thatcherite rampage through the institutions, overturning the tables of the moralising moneychangers. Enuff
I think what we need to do is talk to the other major European countries who are all also now rethinking on illegal immigration, deportation and asylum seeking to reform the ECHR for the modern era and kill the idea that unelected judges can modify it at will. Fundamentally sovereignty must sit with voters and having unelected judges being able to just modify the remit of the ECHR is a pretty outrageous violation of democracy across all of Europe.
Italy, France, Germany, Austria and many other European countries will be up for it too because the ECHR interferes in their own efforts to deport illegal and foreign criminals. Now would be the right time to do it too because Italy has got a right wing government, the French government has the fear of RN/Le Pen winning driving everything they do, Germany has got the fear of AfD etc...
It could actually be one of those areas where the UK could take the lead and make proposals to the other major nations, draft changes in consultation with them and then ram them through by forcing countries using EU and NATO membership.
Yes. The blunt fact is that the hard right or even far right is advancing across Europe, with no signs of this surge coming to an end. If it continues we will see far right GOVERNMENTS in European capitals, much more radical than Meloni, and they will tear up the ECHR immediately, before moving on to bigger things. They are already tearing up the EU's asylum proposals
Personally, I don't want a far right government in London, something much more radical than Reform. That would be bad. But the best way to avoid that is to do what the Social Democrats in Denmark have done, accepted the right has a strong case on migration/asylum, and adopted vastly tougher policies on these issues. The Danish Social Democrats have just won an election by doing that, thereby fending off much nastier forces
That's the brutal choice. Grasp the nettle or allow the Fascists to win elections. Let's grasp the nettle
And this is why Labour should be making overtures on this now, make it the centrepiece of a 2029 election campaign that they reformed the ECHR and made it possible to stop the boats and send failed asylum seekers back and to deport foreign criminals and other illegal immigrants etc...
But Labour haven't got a clue and Nige will set his sights on Labour next time because they will be the party that has been letting hundreds of thousands of illegals cross into the UK by boat for 5 years.
Step 1: make the supreme court of military justice in the UK the National Security Council instead of the Supreme Court. Then actions of the military outside the UK jurisdiction are not justiciable
Step 2: intercept undocumented migrants in the Channel and transfer them to landing craft
Step 3: drive the landing craft onto a French beach and leave it there
Having never come within UK jurisdiction, no treaties or laws need be changed.
All a bit "enemy combatants" that. Mind you, the french would do it if the roles were reversed.
Speaking of healthcare, the UK is absolutely first rate for private health. I'm in the OneWelbeck centre right now and the consultant was able to pull in my MRI scans from 2021 and 2023 instantly, he rediagnosed them instantly and has come up with a hypothesis on why I'm feeling crummy. There's not many countries in the world where you can book an appointment with a globally recognised specialist consultant and get an appointment within three days.
The systems that they have in place should be standard for all patients and it's not as though it's incredibly difficult to achieve yet the NHS would take days to figure out where previous scan results lived etc...
My local GP surgery texted me recently about closing down for two days to do the upgrade from Windows XP. I'm hoping next time they print out a URL for me on a sheet of A4 rather than just email it to me that the upgrade was worth it.
Snark aside, this is one of the concrete areas where Google's AI work seems to be paying off. No idea if the NHS or wider bodies will accept it - but they are showing concrete results in improving diagnosis from top to bottom.
Top to bottom. Dandruff to colonoscopy.
The blurb for BoJo's biography, I noticed today, describes it as a "Soup to Nuts" account. I know he was born in Manhattan, but since when did we import that phrase? Pretty sure most readers won't know it.
I heard it used in the City quite a bit working there 20+ years ago.
"More people now prefer Rishi Sunak’s government to Sir Keir Starmer’s administration, a poll has found.
A survey by think tank More in Common shows the Labour Government is already less liked than the previous Tory one, despite taking power less than three months ago.
The poll of 2,080 adults showed that 31 per cent preferred Mr Sunak’s government, while 29 per cent preferred the current one."
How fucking shite can you get. Already more unpopular than a government 14 years in.
Absence making the heart grow fonder, I see.
The one good thing Rishi did was call an election in July so little would/could get done until October
The way it is working out it was a master stroke
Indeed. Rishi’s genius ploy restricted Sir Keir to a parliamentary majority of just 174 seats.
The truth is Jenrick is an odious scum sucking arsehole !
I am not sure he is quite as nice as that.
In fact the Tories are staring disaster in the face if this loathsome, crooked, creep gets to play act at being their leader. This drivel about the ECHR is childish and ridiculous politics and about as disreputable as any British politician has ever been, even including Johnson. Jenrick is more like a South American caudillo than any British politico.
It is now obvious that the Conservative Party really has lost the will to live. I for one am totally sick of this Tory crap. Just hurry up and die already. .
Leaving the ECHR and querying migrant crime rates may be beyond uour particular pale, but I don't think either are particularly outside of mainstream opinion.
If leaving the ECHR solved it I'd have no problem leaving the ECHR.
Leaving the ECHR alone won't solve it. There are all sorts of UN conventions and international treaties we'd get caught up instead. And even if we did clear all that the Channel is pretty binary - UK or French waters - so we'd have to either ram them back into French seas over and over again until they got bored, or became casualties, ignore French sovereignty and dump them back at Dunkirk, or do a returns deal.
It's a massive tangled ball of wool. Unpicking a simple peripheral thread isn't an answer.
The ECHR interferes in numerous ways, its not just the dinghy people. It is stuffed with Woke lawyers and judges proactively making LAW not judgements - Jonathan Sumption is right. It is obscene that we can't deport murderers and rapists because "as they are rapists they will be in trouble back home". Give me strength
If Britain is ever going to return to health we have to destroy the Blob and the ECHR is part of that nexus of lefty agencies, laws, treaties, NGOs, that blobbily squats upon us
Fuck it. The ECHR is not Holy Writ. People said we could and should never leave the EU but we did, it can be done, and doing this thing won't be a fraction as painful as Brexit
But you are right in one regard. This is necessary but not sufficient. We need something close to a revolution now, a Thatcherite rampage through the institutions, overturning the tables of the moralising moneychangers. Enuff
I think what we need to do is talk to the other major European countries who are all also now rethinking on illegal immigration, deportation and asylum seeking to reform the ECHR for the modern era and kill the idea that unelected judges can modify it at will. Fundamentally sovereignty must sit with voters and having unelected judges being able to just modify the remit of the ECHR is a pretty outrageous violation of democracy across all of Europe.
Italy, France, Germany, Austria and many other European countries will be up for it too because the ECHR interferes in their own efforts to deport illegal and foreign criminals. Now would be the right time to do it too because Italy has got a right wing government, the French government has the fear of RN/Le Pen winning driving everything they do, Germany has got the fear of AfD etc...
It could actually be one of those areas where the UK could take the lead and make proposals to the other major nations, draft changes in consultation with them and then ram them through by forcing countries using EU and NATO membership.
Yes. The blunt fact is that the hard right or even far right is advancing across Europe, with no signs of this surge coming to an end. If it continues we will see far right GOVERNMENTS in European capitals, much more radical than Meloni, and they will tear up the ECHR immediately, before moving on to bigger things. They are already tearing up the EU's asylum proposals
Personally, I don't want a far right government in London, something much more radical than Reform. That would be bad. But the best way to avoid that is to do what the Social Democrats in Denmark have done, accepted the right has a strong case on migration/asylum, and adopted vastly tougher policies on these issues. The Danish Social Democrats have just won an election by doing that, thereby fending off much nastier forces
That's the brutal choice. Grasp the nettle or allow the Fascists to win elections. Let's grasp the nettle
And this is why Labour should be making overtures on this now, make it the centrepiece of a 2029 election campaign that they reformed the ECHR and made it possible to stop the boats and send failed asylum seekers back and to deport foreign criminals and other illegal immigrants etc...
But Labour haven't got a clue and Nige will set his sights on Labour next time because they will be the party that has been letting hundreds of thousands of illegals cross into the UK by boat for 5 years.
Labour are clueless, but they also have no desire to do any of this, anyway
My guess is Starmer is quietly praying that tough EU action on EU borders will stem the tide of migrants who make it all the way to Calais
That's possible. However it is also very possible that, as Europe swings to the hard right, tougher European laws will acually shunt MORE migrants towards pushover Britain, so it could actually get WORSE
The truth is Jenrick is an odious scum sucking arsehole !
I am not sure he is quite as nice as that.
In fact the Tories are staring disaster in the face if this loathsome, crooked, creep gets to play act at being their leader. This drivel about the ECHR is childish and ridiculous politics and about as disreputable as any British politician has ever been, even including Johnson. Jenrick is more like a South American caudillo than any British politico.
It is now obvious that the Conservative Party really has lost the will to live. I for one am totally sick of this Tory crap. Just hurry up and die already. .
Leaving the ECHR and querying migrant crime rates may be beyond uour particular pale, but I don't think either are particularly outside of mainstream opinion.
If leaving the ECHR solved it I'd have no problem leaving the ECHR.
Leaving the ECHR alone won't solve it. There are all sorts of UN conventions and international treaties we'd get caught up instead. And even if we did clear all that the Channel is pretty binary - UK or French waters - so we'd have to either ram them back into French seas over and over again until they got bored, or became casualties, ignore French sovereignty and dump them back at Dunkirk, or do a returns deal.
It's a massive tangled ball of wool. Unpicking a simple peripheral thread isn't an answer.
The ECHR interferes in numerous ways, its not just the dinghy people. It is stuffed with Woke lawyers and judges proactively making LAW not judgements - Jonathan Sumption is right. It is obscene that we can't deport murderers and rapists because "as they are rapists they will be in trouble back home". Give me strength
If Britain is ever going to return to health we have to destroy the Blob and the ECHR is part of that nexus of lefty agencies, laws, treaties, NGOs, that blobbily squats upon us
Fuck it. The ECHR is not Holy Writ. People said we could and should never leave the EU but we did, it can be done, and doing this thing won't be a fraction as painful as Brexit
But you are right in one regard. This is necessary but not sufficient. We need something close to a revolution now, a Thatcherite rampage through the institutions, overturning the tables of the moralising moneychangers. Enuff
I think what we need to do is talk to the other major European countries who are all also now rethinking on illegal immigration, deportation and asylum seeking to reform the ECHR for the modern era and kill the idea that unelected judges can modify it at will. Fundamentally sovereignty must sit with voters and having unelected judges being able to just modify the remit of the ECHR is a pretty outrageous violation of democracy across all of Europe.
Italy, France, Germany, Austria and many other European countries will be up for it too because the ECHR interferes in their own efforts to deport illegal and foreign criminals. Now would be the right time to do it too because Italy has got a right wing government, the French government has the fear of RN/Le Pen winning driving everything they do, Germany has got the fear of AfD etc...
It could actually be one of those areas where the UK could take the lead and make proposals to the other major nations, draft changes in consultation with them and then ram them through by forcing countries using EU and NATO membership.
Yes. The blunt fact is that the hard right or even far right is advancing across Europe, with no signs of this surge coming to an end. If it continues we will see far right GOVERNMENTS in European capitals, much more radical than Meloni, and they will tear up the ECHR immediately, before moving on to bigger things. They are already tearing up the EU's asylum proposals
Personally, I don't want a far right government in London, something much more radical than Reform. That would be bad. But the best way to avoid that is to do what the Social Democrats in Denmark have done, accepted the right has a strong case on migration/asylum, and adopted vastly tougher policies on these issues. The Danish Social Democrats have just won an election by doing that, thereby fending off much nastier forces
That's the brutal choice. Grasp the nettle or allow the Fascists to win elections. Let's grasp the nettle
As Jenrick states, you need unanimity from all 46 states to reform it. I find that unlikely.
Personally I am in favour of derogating/ignoring/fudging, but I admit that's hard with the UK legal establishment oriented toward a maximalist gold-plated approach. Jenrick says he has set out to persuade people that we must leave, and right now the argument looks persuasive. That's what politics is about - you decide what's right and you argue for your position.
If the major nations in Europe presented reforms it would very quickly achieve unanimity because most of those countries in Eastern Europe rely on NATO or the EU. With Sweden now also in NATO they wouldn't be much of a blocker either. There are also big anti-illegal immigration pressures all over the continent, I think if the conversation was opened any dissent against plans presented will be to toughen them, rather than water anything down.
What would the critics like the law to say instead? (Generalised hand waving doesn't count).
War is horrific, but as horrors go this is impressively efficient
But it also begs the question: why was this chilling accuracy not used against Hamas, why instead did they carpet bomb civilians?
Because Bibi wants to commit genocide/ethnic cleansing in the occupied territories, if you follow that, he's not interested in a greater Israel.
Yes, that is my suspicion
If you look at some of the stuff his cabinet have said publicly, such as the below, you can only imagine what they say/do in private.
The EU, France and UK have condemned a senior Israeli minister for suggesting it might be “justified and moral” to starve people in Gaza.
Israel’s finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich, sparked international outrage after he said on Wednesday: “No one in the world will allow us to starve 2 million people, even though it might be justified and moral in order to free the hostages.”
Separately on Wednesday, Israel’s Channel 12 broadcasted security camera footage that reportedly showed the sexual assault of a Palestinian detainee from Gaza at Sde Teiman military detention camp. Last week, the detention of the soldiers accused of involvement in the alleged abuse sparked violent riots.
I said at the beginning I suspected this of Israel. It’s the only logic behind their behaviour in Gaza - a “final solution” to the Palestinian problem. Just cleanse them entirely: make Gaza uninhabitable and terrify them out of the West Bank
And if you’re an Israeli looking at October 7 I can see why you might feel that way. The Jewish state cannot tolerate the mere possibility it might happen again - it is existential. AND if you’re going to do this you have to get it done before Iran acquires nukes
So: this will end either with the elimination of any Palestinian homeland or the destruction of Israel
Israel can't defeat Hamas by invading and occupying the Palestinian Authority any more than the UK could defeat the IRA by invading and occupying the Republic of Ireland and West Belfast
They won’t occupy. They will just make Gaza an unliveable wasteland
It already was anyway largely, the West Bank however was perfectly liveable in
I don’t think the Israelis care any more. After October 7 they want to expel all Palestinians because they see them as an existential threat to Jews (and the October 7 attackers made it very clear they wanted to kill every Jew they encountered)
The logic is pretty brutal if you’re an Israeli. Israel can only continue if “Palestine” is extinguished. Hence Gaza. At the same time Israel is now securing its northern border with Lebanon and maybe even taking out the Iranian leadership: might as well get it all done in one go
This all makes perfect sense IF your overwhelming concern is the survival of Israel as a Jewish ethno-state. It is also horrendously cruel
It is also disastrous, if they kill lots of Palestinians, many of them innocent of any terrorist links and add lots of innocent Lebanese to the death toll too they will be creating generations of pro Hamas and pro Hezbollah terrorists who weren't there before.
We also need to remember 30% of the population of Lebanon are Christian and 6% of Palestinians are Christian too, they should be naturally pro Israel but won't be if all their churches are bombed and their families driven from their homes
Cut the crap, as long as Hamas and Hezbollah exist there will always be more people joining Hamas and Hezbollah.
As long as they exist, those regions will be blockaded and impoverished and as long as people are impoverished the only way out of poverty or to have any hope is to unfortunately join with Hamas and Hezbollah respectively.
The only way to end the cycle of violence is to metaphorically stuff people's faces with gold, the Marshall Plan works, but the prerequisite of that even being an option is to end the threat from Hamas and Hezbollah.
Not reduce it, not a temporary ceasefire, but to end the threat by destroying those organisations completely.
If that is done the cycle of violence can end, but if there's a ceasefire then it is inevitable that the fighting will resume as without a lasting peace, without development, without opportunities people will see no alternative but to continue the violence.
That isn't going to come from Bibi and/or Smotrich. Bibi is interested in starting in power and avoiding corruption charges: endless war suits him. Smotrich wants genocide, to clear out the non-Jewish populations and create a greater Israel.
Luckily Bibi is not a dictator and Israel is a democracy.
When the threat from the Palestinians is minimised then Israel has been willing to vote for the likes of Begin who negotiated peace with Egypt, or Peres who tried negotiating with the Palestinians, or Barak who was willing to create a Palestinian state as agreed with Clinton in Camp David but unfortunately Arafat walked away from it as he didn't actually want peace.
One of my biggest criticisms of Bibi is I agree he wants endless war and he's been far, far too soft on Hamas which allowed the attacks last year to happen.
Israel needs to defeat Hamas/Hezbollah, not have a ceasefire, then negotiate a peace agreement. Bibi doesn't want that, but most Israelis do, and Israel is a democracy.
Not a word about his assisting in the theft of West Bank land by illegal settlers? Not one?
And Britain never defetaed the Nationalist terrorists in Northern Ireland. We realised it was impossible and had a negotiated settlement. Which whilst far from perfect is sure as hell a lot better than seeing civilians murdered week in week out on the streets of British cities. Israel will never 'defeat' Hamas/Hezbollah unfortunately. All they will do is cause more death and misery and perpetuate the current hatreds in the Middle East.
Agree. However at the start of a real negotiation those who can take a wide and broad 'objective view from nowhere in particular' - something PB posters are good at - need to be able to give an outline idea of what a settlement which was reasonable and good for good people on all sides and in all relevant places, would look like, and if such a thing can be imagined.
Apart from a two state solution (which both sides appear to reject outright) I can't think of any. Whereas with the island of Ireland I can think of a few possibles.
I think you are right. The only solution is the two state one that is currently rejected - at least by Israel and the terrorist groups. It is not rejected by a lot of the more morderate Palestinians but for them it is a pipe dream as they see themselves being driven off their lands in the West Bank by settlers backed up by the Israeli military.
Is a two-state outcome a solution?
A free, sovereign, Palestine is potentially a grave threat to Israel's security. I don't see how it can be considered a potential solution when it violates the key objective for one of the parties to the potential agreement. The status quo, where the Palestinians are weaker and so less of a threat, will always be preferable to Israel than allowing a free, sovereign Palestine.
A free sovereign Ireland is no threat to the United Kingdom. There is absolutely no reason why the same should not apply to a future Palestinian state. Jordan is a good example of how a stable state that was once an enemy can become an asset to Israeli security. When Iran was firing missiles at Israel earlier this year, the Jordanians were using their miilitary to intecept and destroy them.
There is no reason that can't happen in the future, yes, if in the future the Palestinians are led by leaders who recognise Israel's right to exist.
That leadership is not Hamas.
Israel is at least in part responsible for it being Hamas because they failed to abide by the agreements they had with the more moderate Palestinian leaders. Hamas is a creation of both radical Palestinians and radical Israelis. Indeed as revealed by several Israeli newspapers earlier in the year, Netenyahu had an active policy of supporting Hamas and making them stronger as a means of undermining the more moderate Palestinian Authority. He wanted the conflict as it gave him the opportunity to be more extreme and destroyed any possibility of a peaceful resolution.
That is who you are shilling for, .
Except Richard I'm not shilling for Netanyahu, quite the opposite I've said I've no love lost for him and think he's a disgracefully bad leader who should be ousted and in prison.
I have criticised Netanyahu for being too weak on Hamas, so you saying that he is, is not news to me, nor is it changing my mind for you to make the exact same points I'd already made.
Netanyahu has been disgracefully weak in tackling Hamas and has stoked the conflict. I want a better leader who will end the conflict by ending Hamas.
Weakness had nothing to do with it. That is you trying to fit the facts to your world view and coming up with the wrong answer. Netenyahu actively promoted Hamas including ensuring they received funding, knowing how extreme they were and wanting them to displace the Palestinian Authority as the main political leadership of the Palestinians. He didn't do this because he was weak. He did it because he knew it would result in terrorist attacks on Israeli citizens and destroy any chance of a peace accord. This is not the action of a weak man. It is the action of a criminal. Hamas in its current form is as much Netenyahu's creation as it is the Palestinian extremists.
The fact that (a) the queue for Truss is so long (b) there remains so much interest in and sympathy for her take on events from conference delegates, and (c) that she seems so unwilling to retreat from Tory politics, would worry me if I were any of the potential Conservative leaders and delight me were I in No 10.
This is indeed extremely interesting news. Many have pondered a sensational return for Mary ‘Liz’ TRUSS - and who could blame them? The fact that she is out-booking the official runners and riders is telling. Maybe a new Trussian sunrise is just around the corner? Wow.
The truth is Jenrick is an odious scum sucking arsehole !
I am not sure he is quite as nice as that.
In fact the Tories are staring disaster in the face if this loathsome, crooked, creep gets to play act at being their leader. This drivel about the ECHR is childish and ridiculous politics and about as disreputable as any British politician has ever been, even including Johnson. Jenrick is more like a South American caudillo than any British politico.
It is now obvious that the Conservative Party really has lost the will to live. I for one am totally sick of this Tory crap. Just hurry up and die already. .
Leaving the ECHR and querying migrant crime rates may be beyond uour particular pale, but I don't think either are particularly outside of mainstream opinion.
If leaving the ECHR solved it I'd have no problem leaving the ECHR.
Leaving the ECHR alone won't solve it. There are all sorts of UN conventions and international treaties we'd get caught up instead. And even if we did clear all that the Channel is pretty binary - UK or French waters - so we'd have to either ram them back into French seas over and over again until they got bored, or became casualties, ignore French sovereignty and dump them back at Dunkirk, or do a returns deal.
It's a massive tangled ball of wool. Unpicking a simple peripheral thread isn't an answer.
The ECHR interferes in numerous ways, its not just the dinghy people. It is stuffed with Woke lawyers and judges proactively making LAW not judgements - Jonathan Sumption is right. It is obscene that we can't deport murderers and rapists because "as they are rapists they will be in trouble back home". Give me strength
If Britain is ever going to return to health we have to destroy the Blob and the ECHR is part of that nexus of lefty agencies, laws, treaties, NGOs, that blobbily squats upon us
Fuck it. The ECHR is not Holy Writ. People said we could and should never leave the EU but we did, it can be done, and doing this thing won't be a fraction as painful as Brexit
But you are right in one regard. This is necessary but not sufficient. We need something close to a revolution now, a Thatcherite rampage through the institutions, overturning the tables of the moralising moneychangers. Enuff
I think what we need to do is talk to the other major European countries who are all also now rethinking on illegal immigration, deportation and asylum seeking to reform the ECHR for the modern era and kill the idea that unelected judges can modify it at will. Fundamentally sovereignty must sit with voters and having unelected judges being able to just modify the remit of the ECHR is a pretty outrageous violation of democracy across all of Europe.
Italy, France, Germany, Austria and many other European countries will be up for it too because the ECHR interferes in their own efforts to deport illegal and foreign criminals. Now would be the right time to do it too because Italy has got a right wing government, the French government has the fear of RN/Le Pen winning driving everything they do, Germany has got the fear of AfD etc...
It could actually be one of those areas where the UK could take the lead and make proposals to the other major nations, draft changes in consultation with them and then ram them through by forcing countries using EU and NATO membership.
I'm not sure how you do it, though - the "living instrument" doctrine is embedded in the entire system. You'd need to wipe it out and start again.
The fact that (a) the queue for Truss is so long (b) there remains so much interest in and sympathy for her take on events from conference delegates, and (c) that she seems so unwilling to retreat from Tory politics, would worry me if I were any of the potential Conservative leaders and delight me were I in No 10.
This is indeed extremely interesting news. Many have pondered a sensational return for Mary ‘Liz’ TRUSS - and who could blame them? The fact that she is out-booking the official runners and riders is telling. Maybe a new Trussian sunrise is just around the corner? Wow.
She has to get back into the Commons first...
There's more chance of Anthony Eden making a comeback than there is Liz Truss.
Given the collapse in LAB's popularity I wouldn't be surprised if we see a very nervous Budget with lots of little changes eg CGT up 2% and tax on alcohol up by CPI + 5% but nothing which really makes a dramatic difference and which still ends up looking like a hotchpotch with no clear direction.
Speaking of healthcare, the UK is absolutely first rate for private health. I'm in the OneWelbeck centre right now and the consultant was able to pull in my MRI scans from 2021 and 2023 instantly, he rediagnosed them instantly and has come up with a hypothesis on why I'm feeling crummy. There's not many countries in the world where you can book an appointment with a globally recognised specialist consultant and get an appointment within three days.
The systems that they have in place should be standard for all patients and it's not as though it's incredibly difficult to achieve yet the NHS would take days to figure out where previous scan results lived etc...
My local GP surgery texted me recently about closing down for two days to do the upgrade from Windows XP. I'm hoping next time they print out a URL for me on a sheet of A4 rather than just email it to me that the upgrade was worth it.
Snark aside, this is one of the concrete areas where Google's AI work seems to be paying off. No idea if the NHS or wider bodies will accept it - but they are showing concrete results in improving diagnosis from top to bottom.
Top to bottom. Dandruff to colonoscopy.
The blurb for BoJo's biography, I noticed today, describes it as a "Soup to Nuts" account. I know he was born in Manhattan, but since when did we import that phrase? Pretty sure most readers won't know it.
I have never heard it before in my life. Nor was I able to infer any meaning from it.
Speaking of healthcare, the UK is absolutely first rate for private health. I'm in the OneWelbeck centre right now and the consultant was able to pull in my MRI scans from 2021 and 2023 instantly, he rediagnosed them instantly and has come up with a hypothesis on why I'm feeling crummy. There's not many countries in the world where you can book an appointment with a globally recognised specialist consultant and get an appointment within three days.
The systems that they have in place should be standard for all patients and it's not as though it's incredibly difficult to achieve yet the NHS would take days to figure out where previous scan results lived etc...
My local GP surgery texted me recently about closing down for two days to do the upgrade from Windows XP. I'm hoping next time they print out a URL for me on a sheet of A4 rather than just email it to me that the upgrade was worth it.
Snark aside, this is one of the concrete areas where Google's AI work seems to be paying off. No idea if the NHS or wider bodies will accept it - but they are showing concrete results in improving diagnosis from top to bottom.
Top to bottom. Dandruff to colonoscopy.
The blurb for BoJo's biography, I noticed today, describes it as a "Soup to Nuts" account. I know he was born in Manhattan, but since when did we import that phrase? Pretty sure most readers won't know it.
I heard it used in the City quite a bit working there 20+ years ago.
Found IIRC in the writings of P G Wodehouse. Somewhere in Jeeves I think (though Jeeves himself would of course never use such a phrase).
Bluntly put: my mother is quite gaga. Phone calls can be.... a trial... visits worse...
Terrible confession: the only advantage to her dementia is that when I do call I remind her that I called her "a few days ago", when in reality it is about six weeks since the last call; and she entirely believes this, so I don't have to feel guilty
Eeek. I'm a bad person
Sorry to hear that. Nothing much to say except dementia is an absolute bastard. There's no good way to manage it, just lots of bad ones.
The fact that (a) the queue for Truss is so long (b) there remains so much interest in and sympathy for her take on events from conference delegates, and (c) that she seems so unwilling to retreat from Tory politics, would worry me if I were any of the potential Conservative leaders and delight me were I in No 10.
This is indeed extremely interesting news. Many have pondered a sensational return for Mary ‘Liz’ TRUSS - and who could blame them? The fact that she is out-booking the official runners and riders is telling. Maybe a new Trussian sunrise is just around the corner? Wow.
She has to get back into the Commons first...
There's more chance of Anthony Eden making a comeback than there is Liz Truss.
Robert Blake wrote of Eden's 1955 election victory, 'Seldom can the euphoria of success have been followed so swiftly by the disillusionment of failure.'
The fact that (a) the queue for Truss is so long (b) there remains so much interest in and sympathy for her take on events from conference delegates, and (c) that she seems so unwilling to retreat from Tory politics, would worry me if I were any of the potential Conservative leaders and delight me were I in No 10.
This is indeed extremely interesting news. Many have pondered a sensational return for Mary ‘Liz’ TRUSS - and who could blame them? The fact that she is out-booking the official runners and riders is telling. Maybe a new Trussian sunrise is just around the corner? Wow.
She has to get back into the Commons first...
It will trigger many here. But we’re far more likely to see a second coming of Boris (sic) than Truss or Cameron.
Speaking of healthcare, the UK is absolutely first rate for private health. I'm in the OneWelbeck centre right now and the consultant was able to pull in my MRI scans from 2021 and 2023 instantly, he rediagnosed them instantly and has come up with a hypothesis on why I'm feeling crummy. There's not many countries in the world where you can book an appointment with a globally recognised specialist consultant and get an appointment within three days.
The systems that they have in place should be standard for all patients and it's not as though it's incredibly difficult to achieve yet the NHS would take days to figure out where previous scan results lived etc...
My local GP surgery texted me recently about closing down for two days to do the upgrade from Windows XP. I'm hoping next time they print out a URL for me on a sheet of A4 rather than just email it to me that the upgrade was worth it.
Snark aside, this is one of the concrete areas where Google's AI work seems to be paying off. No idea if the NHS or wider bodies will accept it - but they are showing concrete results in improving diagnosis from top to bottom.
Top to bottom. Dandruff to colonoscopy.
The blurb for BoJo's biography, I noticed today, describes it as a "Soup to Nuts" account. I know he was born in Manhattan, but since when did we import that phrase? Pretty sure most readers won't know it.
I have never heard it before in my life. Nor was I able to infer any meaning from it.
Refers to a meal. American joke books from the 1960s featured a surprising amount in my childhood, so I'm quite aware of it.
The truth is Jenrick is an odious scum sucking arsehole !
I am not sure he is quite as nice as that.
In fact the Tories are staring disaster in the face if this loathsome, crooked, creep gets to play act at being their leader. This drivel about the ECHR is childish and ridiculous politics and about as disreputable as any British politician has ever been, even including Johnson. Jenrick is more like a South American caudillo than any British politico.
It is now obvious that the Conservative Party really has lost the will to live. I for one am totally sick of this Tory crap. Just hurry up and die already. .
Leaving the ECHR and querying migrant crime rates may be beyond uour particular pale, but I don't think either are particularly outside of mainstream opinion.
If leaving the ECHR solved it I'd have no problem leaving the ECHR.
Leaving the ECHR alone won't solve it. There are all sorts of UN conventions and international treaties we'd get caught up instead. And even if we did clear all that the Channel is pretty binary - UK or French waters - so we'd have to either ram them back into French seas over and over again until they got bored, or became casualties, ignore French sovereignty and dump them back at Dunkirk, or do a returns deal.
It's a massive tangled ball of wool. Unpicking a simple peripheral thread isn't an answer.
The ECHR interferes in numerous ways, its not just the dinghy people. It is stuffed with Woke lawyers and judges proactively making LAW not judgements - Jonathan Sumption is right. It is obscene that we can't deport murderers and rapists because "as they are rapists they will be in trouble back home". Give me strength
If Britain is ever going to return to health we have to destroy the Blob and the ECHR is part of that nexus of lefty agencies, laws, treaties, NGOs, that blobbily squats upon us
Fuck it. The ECHR is not Holy Writ. People said we could and should never leave the EU but we did, it can be done, and doing this thing won't be a fraction as painful as Brexit
But you are right in one regard. This is necessary but not sufficient. We need something close to a revolution now, a Thatcherite rampage through the institutions, overturning the tables of the moralising moneychangers. Enuff
I think what we need to do is talk to the other major European countries who are all also now rethinking on illegal immigration, deportation and asylum seeking to reform the ECHR for the modern era and kill the idea that unelected judges can modify it at will. Fundamentally sovereignty must sit with voters and having unelected judges being able to just modify the remit of the ECHR is a pretty outrageous violation of democracy across all of Europe.
Italy, France, Germany, Austria and many other European countries will be up for it too because the ECHR interferes in their own efforts to deport illegal and foreign criminals. Now would be the right time to do it too because Italy has got a right wing government, the French government has the fear of RN/Le Pen winning driving everything they do, Germany has got the fear of AfD etc...
It could actually be one of those areas where the UK could take the lead and make proposals to the other major nations, draft changes in consultation with them and then ram them through by forcing countries using EU and NATO membership.
Yes. The blunt fact is that the hard right or even far right is advancing across Europe, with no signs of this surge coming to an end. If it continues we will see far right GOVERNMENTS in European capitals, much more radical than Meloni, and they will tear up the ECHR immediately, before moving on to bigger things. They are already tearing up the EU's asylum proposals
Personally, I don't want a far right government in London, something much more radical than Reform. That would be bad. But the best way to avoid that is to do what the Social Democrats in Denmark have done, accepted the right has a strong case on migration/asylum, and adopted vastly tougher policies on these issues. The Danish Social Democrats have just won an election by doing that, thereby fending off much nastier forces
That's the brutal choice. Grasp the nettle or allow the Fascists to win elections. Let's grasp the nettle
And this is why Labour should be making overtures on this now, make it the centrepiece of a 2029 election campaign that they reformed the ECHR and made it possible to stop the boats and send failed asylum seekers back and to deport foreign criminals and other illegal immigrants etc...
But Labour haven't got a clue and Nige will set his sights on Labour next time because they will be the party that has been letting hundreds of thousands of illegals cross into the UK by boat for 5 years.
Labour are clueless, but they also have no desire to do any of this, anyway
My guess is Starmer is quietly praying that tough EU action on EU borders will stem the tide of migrants who make it all the way to Calais
That's possible. However it is also very possible that, as Europe swings to the hard right, tougher European laws will acually shunt MORE migrants towards pushover Britain, so it could actually get WORSE
That will make it worse as they all rush to Calais to avoid being deported back to Africa, Pakistan, Syria etc...
The truth is Jenrick is an odious scum sucking arsehole !
I am not sure he is quite as nice as that.
In fact the Tories are staring disaster in the face if this loathsome, crooked, creep gets to play act at being their leader. This drivel about the ECHR is childish and ridiculous politics and about as disreputable as any British politician has ever been, even including Johnson. Jenrick is more like a South American caudillo than any British politico.
It is now obvious that the Conservative Party really has lost the will to live. I for one am totally sick of this Tory crap. Just hurry up and die already. .
Leaving the ECHR and querying migrant crime rates may be beyond uour particular pale, but I don't think either are particularly outside of mainstream opinion.
If leaving the ECHR solved it I'd have no problem leaving the ECHR.
Leaving the ECHR alone won't solve it. There are all sorts of UN conventions and international treaties we'd get caught up instead. And even if we did clear all that the Channel is pretty binary - UK or French waters - so we'd have to either ram them back into French seas over and over again until they got bored, or became casualties, ignore French sovereignty and dump them back at Dunkirk, or do a returns deal.
It's a massive tangled ball of wool. Unpicking a simple peripheral thread isn't an answer.
The ECHR interferes in numerous ways, its not just the dinghy people. It is stuffed with Woke lawyers and judges proactively making LAW not judgements - Jonathan Sumption is right. It is obscene that we can't deport murderers and rapists because "as they are rapists they will be in trouble back home". Give me strength
If Britain is ever going to return to health we have to destroy the Blob and the ECHR is part of that nexus of lefty agencies, laws, treaties, NGOs, that blobbily squats upon us
Fuck it. The ECHR is not Holy Writ. People said we could and should never leave the EU but we did, it can be done, and doing this thing won't be a fraction as painful as Brexit
But you are right in one regard. This is necessary but not sufficient. We need something close to a revolution now, a Thatcherite rampage through the institutions, overturning the tables of the moralising moneychangers. Enuff
I think what we need to do is talk to the other major European countries who are all also now rethinking on illegal immigration, deportation and asylum seeking to reform the ECHR for the modern era and kill the idea that unelected judges can modify it at will. Fundamentally sovereignty must sit with voters and having unelected judges being able to just modify the remit of the ECHR is a pretty outrageous violation of democracy across all of Europe.
Italy, France, Germany, Austria and many other European countries will be up for it too because the ECHR interferes in their own efforts to deport illegal and foreign criminals. Now would be the right time to do it too because Italy has got a right wing government, the French government has the fear of RN/Le Pen winning driving everything they do, Germany has got the fear of AfD etc...
It could actually be one of those areas where the UK could take the lead and make proposals to the other major nations, draft changes in consultation with them and then ram them through by forcing countries using EU and NATO membership.
Yes. The blunt fact is that the hard right or even far right is advancing across Europe, with no signs of this surge coming to an end. If it continues we will see far right GOVERNMENTS in European capitals, much more radical than Meloni, and they will tear up the ECHR immediately, before moving on to bigger things. They are already tearing up the EU's asylum proposals
Personally, I don't want a far right government in London, something much more radical than Reform. That would be bad. But the best way to avoid that is to do what the Social Democrats in Denmark have done, accepted the right has a strong case on migration/asylum, and adopted vastly tougher policies on these issues. The Danish Social Democrats have just won an election by doing that, thereby fending off much nastier forces
That's the brutal choice. Grasp the nettle or allow the Fascists to win elections. Let's grasp the nettle
As Jenrick states, you need unanimity from all 46 states to reform it. I find that unlikely.
Personally I am in favour of derogating/ignoring/fudging, but I admit that's hard with the UK legal establishment oriented toward a maximalist gold-plated approach. Jenrick says he has set out to persuade people that we must leave, and right now the argument looks persuasive. That's what politics is about - you decide what's right and you argue for your position.
If the major nations in Europe presented reforms it would very quickly achieve unanimity because most of those countries in Eastern Europe rely on NATO or the EU. With Sweden now also in NATO they wouldn't be much of a blocker either. There are also big anti-illegal immigration pressures all over the continent, I think if the conversation was opened any dissent against plans presented will be to toughen them, rather than water anything down.
The status of the convention as a 'living instrument' that means judges can effectively expand their own powers at will, and do stupid things like tell the Swiss Government it's not doing enough on Net Zero because a bunch of idiots claimed it was 'discrimination' is a core principle of the ECHR, and I find it implausible that there will be unanimity amongst all signatories to scrap that.
I am not out and out arguing that we must leave, but I respect the view of those who've concluded we must, and if reforming the convention is anything like 'reforming the EU from the inside'; it's not worth the effort. Certainly it looks unlikely to be able to deal with the migrant crisis we face *now*.
However, I don't have a closed mind on the issue. My instinct is toward fudge and compromise as I said, because I don't want a new Tory Government to spend all its political capital leaving something, that will cause massive opposition and brickbats for no reason.
The truth is Jenrick is an odious scum sucking arsehole !
I am not sure he is quite as nice as that.
In fact the Tories are staring disaster in the face if this loathsome, crooked, creep gets to play act at being their leader. This drivel about the ECHR is childish and ridiculous politics and about as disreputable as any British politician has ever been, even including Johnson. Jenrick is more like a South American caudillo than any British politico.
It is now obvious that the Conservative Party really has lost the will to live. I for one am totally sick of this Tory crap. Just hurry up and die already. .
Oh do pipe down
The Conservative Party exists to propose Conservative, rightwing policies. Not policies that YOU, a whiney centrist Remoaner, find palatable. It's like me criticising the SNP for pursuing Scottish independence - I can argue that it is far harder to achieve than they will admit (and it is), but I can't expect them to argue for the Union and then get all huffy and angry when they don't
Oh come on. Jenrick is not offering a policy, he is offering a posture, like you do most of the time you are on here. However, you have license to posture and write provocative nonsense, because being court jester is kind of your job and a man has to eat and indeed drink to a reasonable standard.
Jenrick and the other pantomime villains in the Tory leadership race do not have that license. Kings do not get to wear motely. This isn´t even remotely serious politics, and the Tories are no longer a serious political party if they go down this sub MAGA road. Even you must admit they lost the plot under Truss and instead of trying to get together a coherent set of actual, you know, *Conservative* policies, they have struck off further and further into tin foil hat land. JRM suggesting that the Tories stand down in 100 seats? Um the Tories currently hold only 121 seats, so this is basically delusion or a death wish. Actually scratch that, its Rees Mogg, so its probably both.
This country is not going to elect a Tory party in thrall to this kind of twattery. They have had two strikes already, if they can not or will not grow up, then the Lib Dems, a party with a large and growing national organisation and a boat load of new and very good MPs as well as loads more money, that will be eating their lunch, not Reform, which is a Putin compromised, Alt-media led chimera,
I don't give a fuck what a fool like you thinks of the Tories and their policies, so you can spare yourself all this typing
Yeah yeah. Whatever.
I could conceive of the current government being wiped out at the next election. Very easily.
The truth is Jenrick is an odious scum sucking arsehole !
I am not sure he is quite as nice as that.
In fact the Tories are staring disaster in the face if this loathsome, crooked, creep gets to play act at being their leader. This drivel about the ECHR is childish and ridiculous politics and about as disreputable as any British politician has ever been, even including Johnson. Jenrick is more like a South American caudillo than any British politico.
It is now obvious that the Conservative Party really has lost the will to live. I for one am totally sick of this Tory crap. Just hurry up and die already. .
Leaving the ECHR and querying migrant crime rates may be beyond uour particular pale, but I don't think either are particularly outside of mainstream opinion.
If leaving the ECHR solved it I'd have no problem leaving the ECHR.
Leaving the ECHR alone won't solve it. There are all sorts of UN conventions and international treaties we'd get caught up instead. And even if we did clear all that the Channel is pretty binary - UK or French waters - so we'd have to either ram them back into French seas over and over again until they got bored, or became casualties, ignore French sovereignty and dump them back at Dunkirk, or do a returns deal.
It's a massive tangled ball of wool. Unpicking a simple peripheral thread isn't an answer.
The ECHR interferes in numerous ways, its not just the dinghy people. It is stuffed with Woke lawyers and judges proactively making LAW not judgements - Jonathan Sumption is right. It is obscene that we can't deport murderers and rapists because "as they are rapists they will be in trouble back home". Give me strength
If Britain is ever going to return to health we have to destroy the Blob and the ECHR is part of that nexus of lefty agencies, laws, treaties, NGOs, that blobbily squats upon us
Fuck it. The ECHR is not Holy Writ. People said we could and should never leave the EU but we did, it can be done, and doing this thing won't be a fraction as painful as Brexit
But you are right in one regard. This is necessary but not sufficient. We need something close to a revolution now, a Thatcherite rampage through the institutions, overturning the tables of the moralising moneychangers. Enuff
I think what we need to do is talk to the other major European countries who are all also now rethinking on illegal immigration, deportation and asylum seeking to reform the ECHR for the modern era and kill the idea that unelected judges can modify it at will. Fundamentally sovereignty must sit with voters and having unelected judges being able to just modify the remit of the ECHR is a pretty outrageous violation of democracy across all of Europe.
Italy, France, Germany, Austria and many other European countries will be up for it too because the ECHR interferes in their own efforts to deport illegal and foreign criminals. Now would be the right time to do it too because Italy has got a right wing government, the French government has the fear of RN/Le Pen winning driving everything they do, Germany has got the fear of AfD etc...
It could actually be one of those areas where the UK could take the lead and make proposals to the other major nations, draft changes in consultation with them and then ram them through by forcing countries using EU and NATO membership.
Yes. The blunt fact is that the hard right or even far right is advancing across Europe, with no signs of this surge coming to an end. If it continues we will see far right GOVERNMENTS in European capitals, much more radical than Meloni, and they will tear up the ECHR immediately, before moving on to bigger things. They are already tearing up the EU's asylum proposals
Personally, I don't want a far right government in London, something much more radical than Reform. That would be bad. But the best way to avoid that is to do what the Social Democrats in Denmark have done, accepted the right has a strong case on migration/asylum, and adopted vastly tougher policies on these issues. The Danish Social Democrats have just won an election by doing that, thereby fending off much nastier forces
That's the brutal choice. Grasp the nettle or allow the Fascists to win elections. Let's grasp the nettle
And this is why Labour should be making overtures on this now, make it the centrepiece of a 2029 election campaign that they reformed the ECHR and made it possible to stop the boats and send failed asylum seekers back and to deport foreign criminals and other illegal immigrants etc...
But Labour haven't got a clue and Nige will set his sights on Labour next time because they will be the party that has been letting hundreds of thousands of illegals cross into the UK by boat for 5 years.
Labour are clueless, but they also have no desire to do any of this, anyway
My guess is Starmer is quietly praying that tough EU action on EU borders will stem the tide of migrants who make it all the way to Calais
That's possible. However it is also very possible that, as Europe swings to the hard right, tougher European laws will acually shunt MORE migrants towards pushover Britain, so it could actually get WORSE
That will make it worse as they all rush to Calais to avoid being deported back to Africa, Pakistan, Syria etc...
And the French will play Nelson back at the Brits: "We see no ships boats..."
"More people now prefer Rishi Sunak’s government to Sir Keir Starmer’s administration, a poll has found.
A survey by think tank More in Common shows the Labour Government is already less liked than the previous Tory one, despite taking power less than three months ago.
The poll of 2,080 adults showed that 31 per cent preferred Mr Sunak’s government, while 29 per cent preferred the current one."
How fucking shite can you get. Already more unpopular than a government 14 years in.
Absence making the heart grow fonder, I see.
The one good thing Rishi did was call an election in July so little would/could get done until October
The way it is working out it was a master stroke
Indeed. Rishi’s genius ploy restricted Sir Keir to a parliamentary majority of just 174 seats.
Now 157 and a large majority did not save the conservative party at the following election
The fact that (a) the queue for Truss is so long (b) there remains so much interest in and sympathy for her take on events from conference delegates, and (c) that she seems so unwilling to retreat from Tory politics, would worry me if I were any of the potential Conservative leaders and delight me were I in No 10.
This is indeed extremely interesting news. Many have pondered a sensational return for Mary ‘Liz’ TRUSS - and who could blame them? The fact that she is out-booking the official runners and riders is telling. Maybe a new Trussian sunrise is just around the corner? Wow.
Bluntly put: my mother is quite gaga. Phone calls can be.... a trial... visits worse...
Terrible confession: the only advantage to her dementia is that when I do call I remind her that I called her "a few days ago", when in reality it is about six weeks since the last call; and she entirely believes this, so I don't have to feel guilty
Eeek. I'm a bad person
Sorry to hear that. Nothing much to say except dementia is an absolute bastard. There's no good way to manage it, just lots of bad ones.
It's grim. No way around it
I'm at that awkward stage in life when the parents are going mental or conking out, and at the same time kids are going to uni and fledging, which is also pretty traumatic (albeit much more positive)
Labour and the LibDems very successfully carved up the electoral map between them without any of the complications of a formal pact. Tories and Reform UK need to learn to do the same. Not campaigning much in 100 seats will work much better for them.
Realistically, the Tories aren't going to be campaigning much in Barnsley and Hull.
On the general political point, all incumbent Governments of whatever stripe have suffered post-Covid. The Austrian election is just another example - the OVP-Green coalition lost 30 seats (from 97 to 67).
Denmark was quoted by @Leon but the most recent Voxmeter poll has the governing coalition of Social Democrats, Venstre and Moderates down from 50% to 35% with the main winner NOT the Denmark Democrats but the Green Left so perhaps Denmark will be the exception.
Norway is like Austria with the main Conservative Party facing a challenge from the Progress Party while the governing Social Democrats try to recover ground lost.
Germany will likely see the CDU/CSU top the poll and go back into Government but with whom is less clear. It's quite possible the FDP will lose all their seats and the other parties in the current governing coalition will go backward. It may be the Union and AfD will together poll over 50% but it seems Merz is unwilling to work with the AfD so coalition building will be interesting.
The question will be how the successors to the Governments which fell as a result of the post-Covid and Ukraine war experience will themselves fare over the next 2-4 years before they also face elections (Italy doesn't vote again until 2027).
Populism is easy in Opposition - you can criticise ad infinitum and promise the sun, the moon and the stars but in Government it's time to deliver. For example, the polls are currently showing the Dutch coalition has already lost its majority in Parliament with the main losers the more junior partners.
The "junior partner problem" which we saw in the 2010s is prevalent across western European politics - look at the Centre Party in Norway, the NSC in Holland, the Greens in Austria and even VOX in Spain.
The fact that (a) the queue for Truss is so long (b) there remains so much interest in and sympathy for her take on events from conference delegates, and (c) that she seems so unwilling to retreat from Tory politics, would worry me if I were any of the potential Conservative leaders and delight me were I in No 10.
This is indeed extremely interesting news. Many have pondered a sensational return for Mary ‘Liz’ TRUSS - and who could blame them? The fact that she is out-booking the official runners and riders is telling. Maybe a new Trussian sunrise is just around the corner? Wow.
She has to get back into the Commons first...
There's more chance of Anthony Eden making a comeback than there is Liz Truss.
Robert Blake wrote of Eden's 1955 election victory, 'Seldom can the euphoria of success have been followed so swiftly by the disillusionment of failure.'
Bluntly put: my mother is quite gaga. Phone calls can be.... a trial... visits worse...
Terrible confession: the only advantage to her dementia is that when I do call I remind her that I called her "a few days ago", when in reality it is about six weeks since the last call; and she entirely believes this, so I don't have to feel guilty
Eeek. I'm a bad person
Sorry to hear that. Nothing much to say except dementia is an absolute bastard. There's no good way to manage it, just lots of bad ones.
It's grim. No way around it
I'm at that awkward stage in life when the parents are going mental or conking out, and at the same time kids are going to uni and fledging, which is also pretty traumatic (albeit much more positive)
Hard pounding, gentlemen, hard pounding
A like feels wrong.
“A little bit off” - by Five Finger Death Punch, perhaps that meets the case….
The truth is Jenrick is an odious scum sucking arsehole !
I am not sure he is quite as nice as that.
In fact the Tories are staring disaster in the face if this loathsome, crooked, creep gets to play act at being their leader. This drivel about the ECHR is childish and ridiculous politics and about as disreputable as any British politician has ever been, even including Johnson. Jenrick is more like a South American caudillo than any British politico.
It is now obvious that the Conservative Party really has lost the will to live. I for one am totally sick of this Tory crap. Just hurry up and die already. .
Oh do pipe down
The Conservative Party exists to propose Conservative, rightwing policies. Not policies that YOU, a whiney centrist Remoaner, find palatable. It's like me criticising the SNP for pursuing Scottish independence - I can argue that it is far harder to achieve than they will admit (and it is), but I can't expect them to argue for the Union and then get all huffy and angry when they don't
Oh come on. Jenrick is not offering a policy, he is offering a posture, like you do most of the time you are on here. However, you have license to posture and write provocative nonsense, because being court jester is kind of your job and a man has to eat and indeed drink to a reasonable standard.
Jenrick and the other pantomime villains in the Tory leadership race do not have that license. Kings do not get to wear motely. This isn´t even remotely serious politics, and the Tories are no longer a serious political party if they go down this sub MAGA road. Even you must admit they lost the plot under Truss and instead of trying to get together a coherent set of actual, you know, *Conservative* policies, they have struck off further and further into tin foil hat land. JRM suggesting that the Tories stand down in 100 seats? Um the Tories currently hold only 121 seats, so this is basically delusion or a death wish. Actually scratch that, its Rees Mogg, so its probably both.
This country is not going to elect a Tory party in thrall to this kind of twattery. They have had two strikes already, if they can not or will not grow up, then the Lib Dems, a party with a large and growing national organisation and a boat load of new and very good MPs as well as loads more money, that will be eating their lunch, not Reform, which is a Putin compromised, Alt-media led chimera,
I don't give a fuck what a fool like you thinks of the Tories and their policies, so you can spare yourself all this typing
Yeah yeah. Whatever.
I could conceive of the current government being wiped out at the next election. Very easily.
The trouble is - what replaces them?
Well, it wont be Jenrick. He'll be out in two years.
War is horrific, but as horrors go this is impressively efficient
But it also begs the question: why was this chilling accuracy not used against Hamas, why instead did they carpet bomb civilians?
Because Bibi wants to commit genocide/ethnic cleansing in the occupied territories, if you follow that, he's not interested in a greater Israel.
Yes, that is my suspicion
If you look at some of the stuff his cabinet have said publicly, such as the below, you can only imagine what they say/do in private.
The EU, France and UK have condemned a senior Israeli minister for suggesting it might be “justified and moral” to starve people in Gaza.
Israel’s finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich, sparked international outrage after he said on Wednesday: “No one in the world will allow us to starve 2 million people, even though it might be justified and moral in order to free the hostages.”
Separately on Wednesday, Israel’s Channel 12 broadcasted security camera footage that reportedly showed the sexual assault of a Palestinian detainee from Gaza at Sde Teiman military detention camp. Last week, the detention of the soldiers accused of involvement in the alleged abuse sparked violent riots.
I said at the beginning I suspected this of Israel. It’s the only logic behind their behaviour in Gaza - a “final solution” to the Palestinian problem. Just cleanse them entirely: make Gaza uninhabitable and terrify them out of the West Bank
And if you’re an Israeli looking at October 7 I can see why you might feel that way. The Jewish state cannot tolerate the mere possibility it might happen again - it is existential. AND if you’re going to do this you have to get it done before Iran acquires nukes
So: this will end either with the elimination of any Palestinian homeland or the destruction of Israel
Israel can't defeat Hamas by invading and occupying the Palestinian Authority any more than the UK could defeat the IRA by invading and occupying the Republic of Ireland and West Belfast
They won’t occupy. They will just make Gaza an unliveable wasteland
It already was anyway largely, the West Bank however was perfectly liveable in
I don’t think the Israelis care any more. After October 7 they want to expel all Palestinians because they see them as an existential threat to Jews (and the October 7 attackers made it very clear they wanted to kill every Jew they encountered)
The logic is pretty brutal if you’re an Israeli. Israel can only continue if “Palestine” is extinguished. Hence Gaza. At the same time Israel is now securing its northern border with Lebanon and maybe even taking out the Iranian leadership: might as well get it all done in one go
This all makes perfect sense IF your overwhelming concern is the survival of Israel as a Jewish ethno-state. It is also horrendously cruel
It is also disastrous, if they kill lots of Palestinians, many of them innocent of any terrorist links and add lots of innocent Lebanese to the death toll too they will be creating generations of pro Hamas and pro Hezbollah terrorists who weren't there before.
We also need to remember 30% of the population of Lebanon are Christian and 6% of Palestinians are Christian too, they should be naturally pro Israel but won't be if all their churches are bombed and their families driven from their homes
Cut the crap, as long as Hamas and Hezbollah exist there will always be more people joining Hamas and Hezbollah.
As long as they exist, those regions will be blockaded and impoverished and as long as people are impoverished the only way out of poverty or to have any hope is to unfortunately join with Hamas and Hezbollah respectively.
The only way to end the cycle of violence is to metaphorically stuff people's faces with gold, the Marshall Plan works, but the prerequisite of that even being an option is to end the threat from Hamas and Hezbollah.
Not reduce it, not a temporary ceasefire, but to end the threat by destroying those organisations completely.
If that is done the cycle of violence can end, but if there's a ceasefire then it is inevitable that the fighting will resume as without a lasting peace, without development, without opportunities people will see no alternative but to continue the violence.
That isn't going to come from Bibi and/or Smotrich. Bibi is interested in starting in power and avoiding corruption charges: endless war suits him. Smotrich wants genocide, to clear out the non-Jewish populations and create a greater Israel.
Luckily Bibi is not a dictator and Israel is a democracy.
When the threat from the Palestinians is minimised then Israel has been willing to vote for the likes of Begin who negotiated peace with Egypt, or Peres who tried negotiating with the Palestinians, or Barak who was willing to create a Palestinian state as agreed with Clinton in Camp David but unfortunately Arafat walked away from it as he didn't actually want peace.
One of my biggest criticisms of Bibi is I agree he wants endless war and he's been far, far too soft on Hamas which allowed the attacks last year to happen.
Israel needs to defeat Hamas/Hezbollah, not have a ceasefire, then negotiate a peace agreement. Bibi doesn't want that, but most Israelis do, and Israel is a democracy.
Not a word about his assisting in the theft of West Bank land by illegal settlers? Not one?
And Britain never defetaed the Nationalist terrorists in Northern Ireland. We realised it was impossible and had a negotiated settlement. Which whilst far from perfect is sure as hell a lot better than seeing civilians murdered week in week out on the streets of British cities. Israel will never 'defeat' Hamas/Hezbollah unfortunately. All they will do is cause more death and misery and perpetuate the current hatreds in the Middle East.
Agree. However at the start of a real negotiation those who can take a wide and broad 'objective view from nowhere in particular' - something PB posters are good at - need to be able to give an outline idea of what a settlement which was reasonable and good for good people on all sides and in all relevant places, would look like, and if such a thing can be imagined.
Apart from a two state solution (which both sides appear to reject outright) I can't think of any. Whereas with the island of Ireland I can think of a few possibles.
I think you are right. The only solution is the two state one that is currently rejected - at least by Israel and the terrorist groups. It is not rejected by a lot of the more morderate Palestinians but for them it is a pipe dream as they see themselves being driven off their lands in the West Bank by settlers backed up by the Israeli military.
Is a two-state outcome a solution?
A free, sovereign, Palestine is potentially a grave threat to Israel's security. I don't see how it can be considered a potential solution when it violates the key objective for one of the parties to the potential agreement. The status quo, where the Palestinians are weaker and so less of a threat, will always be preferable to Israel than allowing a free, sovereign Palestine.
A free sovereign Ireland is no threat to the United Kingdom. There is absolutely no reason why the same should not apply to a future Palestinian state. Jordan is a good example of how a stable state that was once an enemy can become an asset to Israeli security. When Iran was firing missiles at Israel earlier this year, the Jordanians were using their miilitary to intecept and destroy them.
There is no reason that can't happen in the future, yes, if in the future the Palestinians are led by leaders who recognise Israel's right to exist.
That leadership is not Hamas.
Israel is at least in part responsible for it being Hamas because they failed to abide by the agreements they had with the more moderate Palestinian leaders. Hamas is a creation of both radical Palestinians and radical Israelis. Indeed as revealed by several Israeli newspapers earlier in the year, Netenyahu had an active policy of supporting Hamas and making them stronger as a means of undermining the more moderate Palestinian Authority. He wanted the conflict as it gave him the opportunity to be more extreme and destroyed any possibility of a peaceful resolution.
That is who you are shilling for, .
Except Richard I'm not shilling for Netanyahu, quite the opposite I've said I've no love lost for him and think he's a disgracefully bad leader who should be ousted and in prison.
I have criticised Netanyahu for being too weak on Hamas, so you saying that he is, is not news to me, nor is it changing my mind for you to make the exact same points I'd already made.
Netanyahu has been disgracefully weak in tackling Hamas and has stoked the conflict. I want a better leader who will end the conflict by ending Hamas.
Weakness had nothing to do with it. That is you trying to fit the facts to your world view and coming up with the wrong answer. Netenyahu actively promoted Hamas including ensuring they received funding, knowing how extreme they were and wanting them to displace the Palestinian Authority as the main political leadership of the Palestinians. He didn't do this because he was weak. He did it because he knew it would result in terrorist attacks on Israeli citizens and destroy any chance of a peace accord. This is not the action of a weak man. It is the action of a criminal. Hamas in its current form is as much Netenyahu's creation as it is the Palestinian extremists.
Hard to see it stopping now, Lebanon about to get a pounding. These boys have their minds set now it is no more mister nice guy, Iran will be bricking it.
The truth is Jenrick is an odious scum sucking arsehole !
I am not sure he is quite as nice as that.
In fact the Tories are staring disaster in the face if this loathsome, crooked, creep gets to play act at being their leader. This drivel about the ECHR is childish and ridiculous politics and about as disreputable as any British politician has ever been, even including Johnson. Jenrick is more like a South American caudillo than any British politico.
It is now obvious that the Conservative Party really has lost the will to live. I for one am totally sick of this Tory crap. Just hurry up and die already. .
Oh do pipe down
The Conservative Party exists to propose Conservative, rightwing policies. Not policies that YOU, a whiney centrist Remoaner, find palatable. It's like me criticising the SNP for pursuing Scottish independence - I can argue that it is far harder to achieve than they will admit (and it is), but I can't expect them to argue for the Union and then get all huffy and angry when they don't
Oh come on. Jenrick is not offering a policy, he is offering a posture, like you do most of the time you are on here. However, you have license to posture and write provocative nonsense, because being court jester is kind of your job and a man has to eat and indeed drink to a reasonable standard.
Jenrick and the other pantomime villains in the Tory leadership race do not have that license. Kings do not get to wear motely. This isn´t even remotely serious politics, and the Tories are no longer a serious political party if they go down this sub MAGA road. Even you must admit they lost the plot under Truss and instead of trying to get together a coherent set of actual, you know, *Conservative* policies, they have struck off further and further into tin foil hat land. JRM suggesting that the Tories stand down in 100 seats? Um the Tories currently hold only 121 seats, so this is basically delusion or a death wish. Actually scratch that, its Rees Mogg, so its probably both.
This country is not going to elect a Tory party in thrall to this kind of twattery. They have had two strikes already, if they can not or will not grow up, then the Lib Dems, a party with a large and growing national organisation and a boat load of new and very good MPs as well as loads more money, that will be eating their lunch, not Reform, which is a Putin compromised, Alt-media led chimera,
I don't give a fuck what a fool like you thinks of the Tories and their policies, so you can spare yourself all this typing
Yeah yeah. Whatever.
I could conceive of the current government being wiped out at the next election. Very easily.
The trouble is - what replaces them?
A Lab/LD/Green coalition is possible. At the moment they hold 487 seats between them.
Bluntly put: my mother is quite gaga. Phone calls can be.... a trial... visits worse...
Terrible confession: the only advantage to her dementia is that when I do call I remind her that I called her "a few days ago", when in reality it is about six weeks since the last call; and she entirely believes this, so I don't have to feel guilty
Eeek. I'm a bad person
Sorry to hear that. Nothing much to say except dementia is an absolute bastard. There's no good way to manage it, just lots of bad ones.
It's grim. No way around it
I'm at that awkward stage in life when the parents are going mental or conking out, and at the same time kids are going to uni and fledging, which is also pretty traumatic (albeit much more positive)
Hard pounding, gentlemen, hard pounding
I've managed to go a good twenty years without anyone I love dying or getting seriously ill or really having to be worried about in any way. But I am grimly aware of my luck and that filial responsibilities are large in my future. My parents too have both been through this. All I can offer is that none of the hard, unrewarding times my parents went through with their parents before they died diminished the fondness of the memories they now have of them when they were alive. It's hard work and I can only sympathise.
Speaking of healthcare, the UK is absolutely first rate for private health. I'm in the OneWelbeck centre right now and the consultant was able to pull in my MRI scans from 2021 and 2023 instantly, he rediagnosed them instantly and has come up with a hypothesis on why I'm feeling crummy. There's not many countries in the world where you can book an appointment with a globally recognised specialist consultant and get an appointment within three days.
The systems that they have in place should be standard for all patients and it's not as though it's incredibly difficult to achieve yet the NHS would take days to figure out where previous scan results lived etc...
My local GP surgery texted me recently about closing down for two days to do the upgrade from Windows XP. I'm hoping next time they print out a URL for me on a sheet of A4 rather than just email it to me that the upgrade was worth it.
Snark aside, this is one of the concrete areas where Google's AI work seems to be paying off. No idea if the NHS or wider bodies will accept it - but they are showing concrete results in improving diagnosis from top to bottom.
Top to bottom. Dandruff to colonoscopy.
The blurb for BoJo's biography, I noticed today, describes it as a "Soup to Nuts" account. I know he was born in Manhattan, but since when did we import that phrase? Pretty sure most readers won't know it.
I have never heard it before in my life. Nor was I able to infer any meaning from it.
you have not lived pal, get off your dummies phone and see the world.
You may recall one of the quiet triumphs of the previous Conservative government, the constant opening of nice new train stations. The latest is Ashley Down, and inevitably Geoff Marshall was there https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5fZr3lIMX78
War is horrific, but as horrors go this is impressively efficient
But it also begs the question: why was this chilling accuracy not used against Hamas, why instead did they carpet bomb civilians?
Because Bibi wants to commit genocide/ethnic cleansing in the occupied territories, if you follow that, he's not interested in a greater Israel.
Yes, that is my suspicion
If you look at some of the stuff his cabinet have said publicly, such as the below, you can only imagine what they say/do in private.
The EU, France and UK have condemned a senior Israeli minister for suggesting it might be “justified and moral” to starve people in Gaza.
Israel’s finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich, sparked international outrage after he said on Wednesday: “No one in the world will allow us to starve 2 million people, even though it might be justified and moral in order to free the hostages.”
Separately on Wednesday, Israel’s Channel 12 broadcasted security camera footage that reportedly showed the sexual assault of a Palestinian detainee from Gaza at Sde Teiman military detention camp. Last week, the detention of the soldiers accused of involvement in the alleged abuse sparked violent riots.
I said at the beginning I suspected this of Israel. It’s the only logic behind their behaviour in Gaza - a “final solution” to the Palestinian problem. Just cleanse them entirely: make Gaza uninhabitable and terrify them out of the West Bank
And if you’re an Israeli looking at October 7 I can see why you might feel that way. The Jewish state cannot tolerate the mere possibility it might happen again - it is existential. AND if you’re going to do this you have to get it done before Iran acquires nukes
So: this will end either with the elimination of any Palestinian homeland or the destruction of Israel
Israel can't defeat Hamas by invading and occupying the Palestinian Authority any more than the UK could defeat the IRA by invading and occupying the Republic of Ireland and West Belfast
They won’t occupy. They will just make Gaza an unliveable wasteland
It already was anyway largely, the West Bank however was perfectly liveable in
I don’t think the Israelis care any more. After October 7 they want to expel all Palestinians because they see them as an existential threat to Jews (and the October 7 attackers made it very clear they wanted to kill every Jew they encountered)
The logic is pretty brutal if you’re an Israeli. Israel can only continue if “Palestine” is extinguished. Hence Gaza. At the same time Israel is now securing its northern border with Lebanon and maybe even taking out the Iranian leadership: might as well get it all done in one go
This all makes perfect sense IF your overwhelming concern is the survival of Israel as a Jewish ethno-state. It is also horrendously cruel
It is also disastrous, if they kill lots of Palestinians, many of them innocent of any terrorist links and add lots of innocent Lebanese to the death toll too they will be creating generations of pro Hamas and pro Hezbollah terrorists who weren't there before.
We also need to remember 30% of the population of Lebanon are Christian and 6% of Palestinians are Christian too, they should be naturally pro Israel but won't be if all their churches are bombed and their families driven from their homes
Cut the crap, as long as Hamas and Hezbollah exist there will always be more people joining Hamas and Hezbollah.
As long as they exist, those regions will be blockaded and impoverished and as long as people are impoverished the only way out of poverty or to have any hope is to unfortunately join with Hamas and Hezbollah respectively.
The only way to end the cycle of violence is to metaphorically stuff people's faces with gold, the Marshall Plan works, but the prerequisite of that even being an option is to end the threat from Hamas and Hezbollah.
Not reduce it, not a temporary ceasefire, but to end the threat by destroying those organisations completely.
If that is done the cycle of violence can end, but if there's a ceasefire then it is inevitable that the fighting will resume as without a lasting peace, without development, without opportunities people will see no alternative but to continue the violence.
That isn't going to come from Bibi and/or Smotrich. Bibi is interested in starting in power and avoiding corruption charges: endless war suits him. Smotrich wants genocide, to clear out the non-Jewish populations and create a greater Israel.
Luckily Bibi is not a dictator and Israel is a democracy.
When the threat from the Palestinians is minimised then Israel has been willing to vote for the likes of Begin who negotiated peace with Egypt, or Peres who tried negotiating with the Palestinians, or Barak who was willing to create a Palestinian state as agreed with Clinton in Camp David but unfortunately Arafat walked away from it as he didn't actually want peace.
One of my biggest criticisms of Bibi is I agree he wants endless war and he's been far, far too soft on Hamas which allowed the attacks last year to happen.
Israel needs to defeat Hamas/Hezbollah, not have a ceasefire, then negotiate a peace agreement. Bibi doesn't want that, but most Israelis do, and Israel is a democracy.
Not a word about his assisting in the theft of West Bank land by illegal settlers? Not one?
And Britain never defetaed the Nationalist terrorists in Northern Ireland. We realised it was impossible and had a negotiated settlement. Which whilst far from perfect is sure as hell a lot better than seeing civilians murdered week in week out on the streets of British cities. Israel will never 'defeat' Hamas/Hezbollah unfortunately. All they will do is cause more death and misery and perpetuate the current hatreds in the Middle East.
Agree. However at the start of a real negotiation those who can take a wide and broad 'objective view from nowhere in particular' - something PB posters are good at - need to be able to give an outline idea of what a settlement which was reasonable and good for good people on all sides and in all relevant places, would look like, and if such a thing can be imagined.
Apart from a two state solution (which both sides appear to reject outright) I can't think of any. Whereas with the island of Ireland I can think of a few possibles.
I think you are right. The only solution is the two state one that is currently rejected - at least by Israel and the terrorist groups. It is not rejected by a lot of the more morderate Palestinians but for them it is a pipe dream as they see themselves being driven off their lands in the West Bank by settlers backed up by the Israeli military.
Is a two-state outcome a solution?
A free, sovereign, Palestine is potentially a grave threat to Israel's security. I don't see how it can be considered a potential solution when it violates the key objective for one of the parties to the potential agreement. The status quo, where the Palestinians are weaker and so less of a threat, will always be preferable to Israel than allowing a free, sovereign Palestine.
A free sovereign Ireland is no threat to the United Kingdom. There is absolutely no reason why the same should not apply to a future Palestinian state. Jordan is a good example of how a stable state that was once an enemy can become an asset to Israeli security. When Iran was firing missiles at Israel earlier this year, the Jordanians were using their miilitary to intecept and destroy them.
There is no reason that can't happen in the future, yes, if in the future the Palestinians are led by leaders who recognise Israel's right to exist.
That leadership is not Hamas.
Israel is at least in part responsible for it being Hamas because they failed to abide by the agreements they had with the more moderate Palestinian leaders. Hamas is a creation of both radical Palestinians and radical Israelis. Indeed as revealed by several Israeli newspapers earlier in the year, Netenyahu had an active policy of supporting Hamas and making them stronger as a means of undermining the more moderate Palestinian Authority. He wanted the conflict as it gave him the opportunity to be more extreme and destroyed any possibility of a peaceful resolution.
That is who you are shilling for, .
Except Richard I'm not shilling for Netanyahu, quite the opposite I've said I've no love lost for him and think he's a disgracefully bad leader who should be ousted and in prison.
I have criticised Netanyahu for being too weak on Hamas, so you saying that he is, is not news to me, nor is it changing my mind for you to make the exact same points I'd already made.
Netanyahu has been disgracefully weak in tackling Hamas and has stoked the conflict. I want a better leader who will end the conflict by ending Hamas.
Weakness had nothing to do with it. That is you trying to fit the facts to your world view and coming up with the wrong answer. Netenyahu actively promoted Hamas including ensuring they received funding, knowing how extreme they were and wanting them to displace the Palestinian Authority as the main political leadership of the Palestinians. He didn't do this because he was weak. He did it because he knew it would result in terrorist attacks on Israeli citizens and destroy any chance of a peace accord. This is not the action of a weak man. It is the action of a criminal. Hamas in its current form is as much Netenyahu's creation as it is the Palestinian extremists.
I said he was weak on Hamas, not that he was a weak man. He was.
It is extreme to suggest Hamas is Netanyahu's creation though, it was under Ehud Olmert who took over from Sharon who had unilaterally withdrawn from Gaza, that Hamas took over Gaza. Hamas where who they were, and were in power, before Netanyahu won office in recent times.
Netanyahu was completely wrong to underestimate Hamas and criminally wrong to not exert all pressure on them from the start. That he criminally underestimated them and facilitated them in the past does not make it any less right to seek to defeat them today though.
Bluntly put: my mother is quite gaga. Phone calls can be.... a trial... visits worse...
Terrible confession: the only advantage to her dementia is that when I do call I remind her that I called her "a few days ago", when in reality it is about six weeks since the last call; and she entirely believes this, so I don't have to feel guilty
Eeek. I'm a bad person
Sorry to hear that. Nothing much to say except dementia is an absolute bastard. There's no good way to manage it, just lots of bad ones.
It's grim. No way around it
I'm at that awkward stage in life when the parents are going mental or conking out, and at the same time kids are going to uni and fledging, which is also pretty traumatic (albeit much more positive)
Hard pounding, gentlemen, hard pounding
I've managed to go a good twenty years without anyone I love dying or getting seriously ill or really having to be worried about in any way. But I am grimly aware of my luck and that filial responsibilities are large in my future. My parents too have both been through this. All I can offer is that none of the hard, unrewarding times my parents went through with their parents before they died diminished the fondness of the memories they now have of them when they were alive. It's hard work and I can only sympathise.
I was the same, a long long period of untarnished good luck, 15-20 years. Now a lot tougher
But it could be far worse, of course
I try to remember the Buddhist saying: what is the definition of happiness? Grandfather dies, father dies, child dies - in that order
Labour and the LibDems very successfully carved up the electoral map between them without any of the complications of a formal pact. Tories and Reform UK need to learn to do the same. Not campaigning much in 100 seats will work much better for them.
Realistically, the Tories aren't going to be campaigning much in Barnsley and Hull.
How much campaigning are they doing at the moment?
The Lib-Lab carveup is much easier to manage because the LibDem campaign is predominantly powered by sandal leather- a ground war of attrition, pushing a billion Focus leaflets (Do they still use that branding? They're not really a thing round these parts) through letterboxes. If you are in a seat they want to win, you know about it.
Neither the Conservatives nor Reform have really gone in for that recently. Conservatives have always been a bit sniffy about that sort of thing, and now they don't really have enough bodies to do it anyway. Reform simply haven't been interested, which is why they turned more votes than the LibDems into far fewer seats.
The truth is Jenrick is an odious scum sucking arsehole !
I am not sure he is quite as nice as that.
In fact the Tories are staring disaster in the face if this loathsome, crooked, creep gets to play act at being their leader. This drivel about the ECHR is childish and ridiculous politics and about as disreputable as any British politician has ever been, even including Johnson. Jenrick is more like a South American caudillo than any British politico.
It is now obvious that the Conservative Party really has lost the will to live. I for one am totally sick of this Tory crap. Just hurry up and die already. .
Oh do pipe down
The Conservative Party exists to propose Conservative, rightwing policies. Not policies that YOU, a whiney centrist Remoaner, find palatable. It's like me criticising the SNP for pursuing Scottish independence - I can argue that it is far harder to achieve than they will admit (and it is), but I can't expect them to argue for the Union and then get all huffy and angry when they don't
Oh come on. Jenrick is not offering a policy, he is offering a posture, like you do most of the time you are on here. However, you have license to posture and write provocative nonsense, because being court jester is kind of your job and a man has to eat and indeed drink to a reasonable standard.
Jenrick and the other pantomime villains in the Tory leadership race do not have that license. Kings do not get to wear motely. This isn´t even remotely serious politics, and the Tories are no longer a serious political party if they go down this sub MAGA road. Even you must admit they lost the plot under Truss and instead of trying to get together a coherent set of actual, you know, *Conservative* policies, they have struck off further and further into tin foil hat land. JRM suggesting that the Tories stand down in 100 seats? Um the Tories currently hold only 121 seats, so this is basically delusion or a death wish. Actually scratch that, its Rees Mogg, so its probably both.
This country is not going to elect a Tory party in thrall to this kind of twattery. They have had two strikes already, if they can not or will not grow up, then the Lib Dems, a party with a large and growing national organisation and a boat load of new and very good MPs as well as loads more money, that will be eating their lunch, not Reform, which is a Putin compromised, Alt-media led chimera,
I don't give a fuck what a fool like you thinks of the Tories and their policies, so you can spare yourself all this typing
Yeah yeah. Whatever.
I could conceive of the current government being wiped out at the next election. Very easily.
The trouble is - what replaces them?
Well, it wont be Jenrick. He'll be out in two years.
Purely playing for domestic audience, no interest in seeing Hamas and Hezbollah defeated whatsoever.
A ceasefire and Hamas and Hezbollah surviving intact serves nobodies interests and just guarantees its a matter of when, not if, the cycle of violence continues.
The truth is Jenrick is an odious scum sucking arsehole !
I am not sure he is quite as nice as that.
In fact the Tories are staring disaster in the face if this loathsome, crooked, creep gets to play act at being their leader. This drivel about the ECHR is childish and ridiculous politics and about as disreputable as any British politician has ever been, even including Johnson. Jenrick is more like a South American caudillo than any British politico.
It is now obvious that the Conservative Party really has lost the will to live. I for one am totally sick of this Tory crap. Just hurry up and die already. .
Oh do pipe down
The Conservative Party exists to propose Conservative, rightwing policies. Not policies that YOU, a whiney centrist Remoaner, find palatable. It's like me criticising the SNP for pursuing Scottish independence - I can argue that it is far harder to achieve than they will admit (and it is), but I can't expect them to argue for the Union and then get all huffy and angry when they don't
Oh come on. Jenrick is not offering a policy, he is offering a posture, like you do most of the time you are on here. However, you have license to posture and write provocative nonsense, because being court jester is kind of your job and a man has to eat and indeed drink to a reasonable standard.
Jenrick and the other pantomime villains in the Tory leadership race do not have that license. Kings do not get to wear motely. This isn´t even remotely serious politics, and the Tories are no longer a serious political party if they go down this sub MAGA road. Even you must admit they lost the plot under Truss and instead of trying to get together a coherent set of actual, you know, *Conservative* policies, they have struck off further and further into tin foil hat land. JRM suggesting that the Tories stand down in 100 seats? Um the Tories currently hold only 121 seats, so this is basically delusion or a death wish. Actually scratch that, its Rees Mogg, so its probably both.
This country is not going to elect a Tory party in thrall to this kind of twattery. They have had two strikes already, if they can not or will not grow up, then the Lib Dems, a party with a large and growing national organisation and a boat load of new and very good MPs as well as loads more money, that will be eating their lunch, not Reform, which is a Putin compromised, Alt-media led chimera,
I don't give a fuck what a fool like you thinks of the Tories and their policies, so you can spare yourself all this typing
Yeah yeah. Whatever.
I could conceive of the current government being wiped out at the next election. Very easily.
The trouble is - what replaces them?
Well, it wont be Jenrick. He'll be out in two years.
THE UK SHUT DOWN THEIR LAST COAL POWER PLANT TODAY, WHICH MEANS THAT OVER THE COURSE OF THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION, THEY DUG UP AND BURNED AN AVERAGE OF 3 INCHES OF THEIR COUNTRY.
War is horrific, but as horrors go this is impressively efficient
But it also begs the question: why was this chilling accuracy not used against Hamas, why instead did they carpet bomb civilians?
Because Bibi wants to commit genocide/ethnic cleansing in the occupied territories, if you follow that, he's not interested in a greater Israel.
Yes, that is my suspicion
If you look at some of the stuff his cabinet have said publicly, such as the below, you can only imagine what they say/do in private.
The EU, France and UK have condemned a senior Israeli minister for suggesting it might be “justified and moral” to starve people in Gaza.
Israel’s finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich, sparked international outrage after he said on Wednesday: “No one in the world will allow us to starve 2 million people, even though it might be justified and moral in order to free the hostages.”
Separately on Wednesday, Israel’s Channel 12 broadcasted security camera footage that reportedly showed the sexual assault of a Palestinian detainee from Gaza at Sde Teiman military detention camp. Last week, the detention of the soldiers accused of involvement in the alleged abuse sparked violent riots.
I said at the beginning I suspected this of Israel. It’s the only logic behind their behaviour in Gaza - a “final solution” to the Palestinian problem. Just cleanse them entirely: make Gaza uninhabitable and terrify them out of the West Bank
And if you’re an Israeli looking at October 7 I can see why you might feel that way. The Jewish state cannot tolerate the mere possibility it might happen again - it is existential. AND if you’re going to do this you have to get it done before Iran acquires nukes
So: this will end either with the elimination of any Palestinian homeland or the destruction of Israel
Israel can't defeat Hamas by invading and occupying the Palestinian Authority any more than the UK could defeat the IRA by invading and occupying the Republic of Ireland and West Belfast
They won’t occupy. They will just make Gaza an unliveable wasteland
It already was anyway largely, the West Bank however was perfectly liveable in
I don’t think the Israelis care any more. After October 7 they want to expel all Palestinians because they see them as an existential threat to Jews (and the October 7 attackers made it very clear they wanted to kill every Jew they encountered)
The logic is pretty brutal if you’re an Israeli. Israel can only continue if “Palestine” is extinguished. Hence Gaza. At the same time Israel is now securing its northern border with Lebanon and maybe even taking out the Iranian leadership: might as well get it all done in one go
This all makes perfect sense IF your overwhelming concern is the survival of Israel as a Jewish ethno-state. It is also horrendously cruel
It is also disastrous, if they kill lots of Palestinians, many of them innocent of any terrorist links and add lots of innocent Lebanese to the death toll too they will be creating generations of pro Hamas and pro Hezbollah terrorists who weren't there before.
We also need to remember 30% of the population of Lebanon are Christian and 6% of Palestinians are Christian too, they should be naturally pro Israel but won't be if all their churches are bombed and their families driven from their homes
Cut the crap, as long as Hamas and Hezbollah exist there will always be more people joining Hamas and Hezbollah.
As long as they exist, those regions will be blockaded and impoverished and as long as people are impoverished the only way out of poverty or to have any hope is to unfortunately join with Hamas and Hezbollah respectively.
The only way to end the cycle of violence is to metaphorically stuff people's faces with gold, the Marshall Plan works, but the prerequisite of that even being an option is to end the threat from Hamas and Hezbollah.
Not reduce it, not a temporary ceasefire, but to end the threat by destroying those organisations completely.
If that is done the cycle of violence can end, but if there's a ceasefire then it is inevitable that the fighting will resume as without a lasting peace, without development, without opportunities people will see no alternative but to continue the violence.
That isn't going to come from Bibi and/or Smotrich. Bibi is interested in starting in power and avoiding corruption charges: endless war suits him. Smotrich wants genocide, to clear out the non-Jewish populations and create a greater Israel.
Luckily Bibi is not a dictator and Israel is a democracy.
When the threat from the Palestinians is minimised then Israel has been willing to vote for the likes of Begin who negotiated peace with Egypt, or Peres who tried negotiating with the Palestinians, or Barak who was willing to create a Palestinian state as agreed with Clinton in Camp David but unfortunately Arafat walked away from it as he didn't actually want peace.
One of my biggest criticisms of Bibi is I agree he wants endless war and he's been far, far too soft on Hamas which allowed the attacks last year to happen.
Israel needs to defeat Hamas/Hezbollah, not have a ceasefire, then negotiate a peace agreement. Bibi doesn't want that, but most Israelis do, and Israel is a democracy.
Not a word about his assisting in the theft of West Bank land by illegal settlers? Not one?
And Britain never defetaed the Nationalist terrorists in Northern Ireland. We realised it was impossible and had a negotiated settlement. Which whilst far from perfect is sure as hell a lot better than seeing civilians murdered week in week out on the streets of British cities. Israel will never 'defeat' Hamas/Hezbollah unfortunately. All they will do is cause more death and misery and perpetuate the current hatreds in the Middle East.
Agree. However at the start of a real negotiation those who can take a wide and broad 'objective view from nowhere in particular' - something PB posters are good at - need to be able to give an outline idea of what a settlement which was reasonable and good for good people on all sides and in all relevant places, would look like, and if such a thing can be imagined.
Apart from a two state solution (which both sides appear to reject outright) I can't think of any. Whereas with the island of Ireland I can think of a few possibles.
I think you are right. The only solution is the two state one that is currently rejected - at least by Israel and the terrorist groups. It is not rejected by a lot of the more morderate Palestinians but for them it is a pipe dream as they see themselves being driven off their lands in the West Bank by settlers backed up by the Israeli military.
Is a two-state outcome a solution?
A free, sovereign, Palestine is potentially a grave threat to Israel's security. I don't see how it can be considered a potential solution when it violates the key objective for one of the parties to the potential agreement. The status quo, where the Palestinians are weaker and so less of a threat, will always be preferable to Israel than allowing a free, sovereign Palestine.
A free sovereign Ireland is no threat to the United Kingdom. There is absolutely no reason why the same should not apply to a future Palestinian state. Jordan is a good example of how a stable state that was once an enemy can become an asset to Israeli security. When Iran was firing missiles at Israel earlier this year, the Jordanians were using their miilitary to intecept and destroy them.
There is no reason that can't happen in the future, yes, if in the future the Palestinians are led by leaders who recognise Israel's right to exist.
That leadership is not Hamas.
Israel is at least in part responsible for it being Hamas because they failed to abide by the agreements they had with the more moderate Palestinian leaders. Hamas is a creation of both radical Palestinians and radical Israelis. Indeed as revealed by several Israeli newspapers earlier in the year, Netenyahu had an active policy of supporting Hamas and making them stronger as a means of undermining the more moderate Palestinian Authority. He wanted the conflict as it gave him the opportunity to be more extreme and destroyed any possibility of a peaceful resolution.
That is who you are shilling for, .
Except Richard I'm not shilling for Netanyahu, quite the opposite I've said I've no love lost for him and think he's a disgracefully bad leader who should be ousted and in prison.
I have criticised Netanyahu for being too weak on Hamas, so you saying that he is, is not news to me, nor is it changing my mind for you to make the exact same points I'd already made.
Netanyahu has been disgracefully weak in tackling Hamas and has stoked the conflict. I want a better leader who will end the conflict by ending Hamas.
Weakness had nothing to do with it. That is you trying to fit the facts to your world view and coming up with the wrong answer. Netenyahu actively promoted Hamas including ensuring they received funding, knowing how extreme they were and wanting them to displace the Palestinian Authority as the main political leadership of the Palestinians. He didn't do this because he was weak. He did it because he knew it would result in terrorist attacks on Israeli citizens and destroy any chance of a peace accord. This is not the action of a weak man. It is the action of a criminal. Hamas in its current form is as much Netenyahu's creation as it is the Palestinian extremists.
I said he was weak on Hamas, not that he was a weak man. He was.
It is extreme to suggest Hamas is Netanyahu's creation though, it was under Ehud Olmert who took over from Sharon who had unilaterally withdrawn from Gaza, that Hamas took over Gaza. Hamas where who they were, and were in power, before Netanyahu won office in recent times.
Netanyahu was completely wrong to underestimate Hamas and criminally wrong to not exert all pressure on them from the start. That he criminally underestimated them and facilitated them in the past does not make it any less right to seek to defeat them today though.
You are being generous: Israel (Netanyahu) sent money to Hamas because he wanted them to them, not the Palestinian Authority, to be in power. They funded Hamas. And that has been extensively documented in the Israeli press.
Now, I wouldn't go as far as Richard in claiming that Israel wanted Hamas to attack Israel. But I do think it was in the interests of the Netanyahu administration propped up by Settler parties, to claim that the Palestinians were so extreme that a Two State solution was impossible. And they achieved this by undermining the more moderate elements in Palestine, and funding the more extreme ones.
Purely playing for domestic audience, no interest in seeing Hamas and Hezbollah defeated whatsoever.
A ceasefire and Hamas and Hezbollah surviving intact serves nobodies interests and just guarantees its a matter of when, not if, the cycle of violence continues.
I said this very early on, this time is different. People said Israel would have a month or so to batter Hamas then the Americans would tell them to pack it in and that would be that. We are now 11 months in and if anything Israel are escalating, Lammy can spout anything he likes, they aren't going to take a blind bit of notice of him.
The new grand wizard of the Hellbozah doing his zoom rant from his closet was looking like Prince Andrew getting grilled by Emily Mathis, sweating like a man who once visited Woking Pizza Express.
The truth is Jenrick is an odious scum sucking arsehole !
I am not sure he is quite as nice as that.
In fact the Tories are staring disaster in the face if this loathsome, crooked, creep gets to play act at being their leader. This drivel about the ECHR is childish and ridiculous politics and about as disreputable as any British politician has ever been, even including Johnson. Jenrick is more like a South American caudillo than any British politico.
It is now obvious that the Conservative Party really has lost the will to live. I for one am totally sick of this Tory crap. Just hurry up and die already. .
Oh do pipe down
The Conservative Party exists to propose Conservative, rightwing policies. Not policies that YOU, a whiney centrist Remoaner, find palatable. It's like me criticising the SNP for pursuing Scottish independence - I can argue that it is far harder to achieve than they will admit (and it is), but I can't expect them to argue for the Union and then get all huffy and angry when they don't
Oh come on. Jenrick is not offering a policy, he is offering a posture, like you do most of the time you are on here. However, you have license to posture and write provocative nonsense, because being court jester is kind of your job and a man has to eat and indeed drink to a reasonable standard.
Jenrick and the other pantomime villains in the Tory leadership race do not have that license. Kings do not get to wear motely. This isn´t even remotely serious politics, and the Tories are no longer a serious political party if they go down this sub MAGA road. Even you must admit they lost the plot under Truss and instead of trying to get together a coherent set of actual, you know, *Conservative* policies, they have struck off further and further into tin foil hat land. JRM suggesting that the Tories stand down in 100 seats? Um the Tories currently hold only 121 seats, so this is basically delusion or a death wish. Actually scratch that, its Rees Mogg, so its probably both.
This country is not going to elect a Tory party in thrall to this kind of twattery. They have had two strikes already, if they can not or will not grow up, then the Lib Dems, a party with a large and growing national organisation and a boat load of new and very good MPs as well as loads more money, that will be eating their lunch, not Reform, which is a Putin compromised, Alt-media led chimera,
I don't give a fuck what a fool like you thinks of the Tories and their policies, so you can spare yourself all this typing
Yeah yeah. Whatever.
I could conceive of the current government being wiped out at the next election. Very easily.
The trouble is - what replaces them?
Well, it wont be Jenrick. He'll be out in two years.
Purely playing for domestic audience, no interest in seeing Hamas and Hezbollah defeated whatsoever.
A ceasefire and Hamas and Hezbollah surviving intact serves nobodies interests and just guarantees its a matter of when, not if, the cycle of violence continues.
How the hell do you defeat an ideology? Bombing the fuck out of is like throwing a massive tank of gasoline over a fire.
Israel's actions are making its own people less safe, and much less safe.
The new grand wizard of the Hellbozah doing his zoom rant from his closet was looking like Prince Andrew getting grilled by Emily Mathis, sweating like a man who once visited Woking Pizza Express.
Purely playing for domestic audience, no interest in seeing Hamas and Hezbollah defeated whatsoever.
A ceasefire and Hamas and Hezbollah surviving intact serves nobodies interests and just guarantees its a matter of when, not if, the cycle of violence continues.
How the hell do you defeat an ideology? Bombing the fuck out of is like throwing a massive tank of gasoline over a fire.
Israel's actions are making its own people less safe, and much less safe.
How do you coexist peacefully with a neighbour committed to your removal from the map?
The new grand wizard of the Hellbozah doing his zoom rant from his closet was looking like Prince Andrew getting grilled by Emily Mathis, sweating like a man who once visited Woking Pizza Express.
So, not sweaty at all?
You didn't get the memo, that mystery condition fixed itself, hence why he was sweating like a mo-fo during his interview with Emily.
Purely playing for domestic audience, no interest in seeing Hamas and Hezbollah defeated whatsoever.
A ceasefire and Hamas and Hezbollah surviving intact serves nobodies interests and just guarantees its a matter of when, not if, the cycle of violence continues.
I said this very early on, this time is different. People said Israel would have a month or so to batter Hamas then the Americans would tell them to pack it in and that would be that. We are now 11 months in and if anything Israel are escalating, Lammy can spout anything he likes, they aren't going to take a blind bit of notice of him.
Seems Biden has called for a ceasefire and Israel is not listening
If they won't listen to the US they are not going to listen to the UK, especially as Lammy announced a weapons embargo on Israel and as a result Netanyahu refused to meet Starmer at the UN this weekend
Purely playing for domestic audience, no interest in seeing Hamas and Hezbollah defeated whatsoever.
A ceasefire and Hamas and Hezbollah surviving intact serves nobodies interests and just guarantees its a matter of when, not if, the cycle of violence continues.
I said this very early on, this time is different. People said Israel would have a month or so to batter Hamas then the Americans would tell them to pack it in and that would be that. We are now 11 months in and if anything Israel are escalating, Lammy can spout anything he likes, they aren't going to take a blind bit of notice of him.
Seems Biden has called for a ceasefire and Israel is not listening
If they won't listen to the US they are not going to listen to the UK, especially as Lammy announced a weapons embargo on Israel and as a result Netanyahu refused to meet Starmer at the UN this weekend
Israel have basically called US bluff. Now once the election is over that might change, maybe that is why Israel are going full pelt at the moment, because Biden administration is stuck between rock and a hard place domestically.
Comments
They expected they would have to take tough economic choices, they certainly did not expect to be condemned as spiteful lying thieves in the first three months
You are right about not having a big long-standing pact though - it bluntens the benefit of being two distinct parties. Any deal should be as informal and last minute as possible. Tactical voting advice might work better.
I mean, that's pretty plunging. The maximum is -100% (where literally everyone hates you, including Victoria Starmer) so in theory he's still got some headroom left.
Italy, France, Germany, Austria and many other European countries will be up for it too because the ECHR interferes in their own efforts to deport illegal and foreign criminals. Now would be the right time to do it too because Italy has got a right wing government, the French government has the fear of RN/Le Pen winning driving everything they do, Germany has got the fear of AfD etc...
It could actually be one of those areas where the UK could take the lead and make proposals to the other major nations, draft changes in consultation with them and then ram them through by forcing countries using EU and NATO membership.
The refugees would Boojum it, mid Channel.
The question then is the profit split between U.K. and the LC.
https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/politics/tories-secretly-plotted-30million-sweeteners-33773985
Civil servants went out offering £150,000 each to the first. 200 asylum seekers willing to go to Rwanda to make the scheme look like it was working
Personally, I don't want a far right government in London, something much more radical than Reform. That would be bad. But the best way to avoid that is to do what the Social Democrats in Denmark have done, accepted the right has a strong case on migration/asylum, and adopted vastly tougher policies on these issues. The Danish Social Democrats have just won an election by doing that, thereby fending off much nastier forces
That's the brutal choice. Grasp the nettle or allow the Fascists to win elections. Let's grasp the nettle
Boris Johnson: Rishi assassinated me like Brutus killed Caesar
In the latest excerpt from his memoirs, the former PM accuses his chancellor of a plot ‘worse than a crime’
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2024/09/30/boris-johnson-rishi-sunak-brutus-caesar/
But Labour haven't got a clue and Nige will set his sights on Labour next time because they will be the party that has been letting hundreds of thousands of illegals cross into the UK by boat for 5 years.
Personally I am in favour of derogating/ignoring/fudging, but I admit that's hard with the UK legal establishment oriented toward a maximalist gold-plated approach. Jenrick says he has set out to persuade people that we must leave, and right now the argument looks persuasive. That's what politics is about - you decide what's right and you argue for your position.
- Step 1: make the supreme court of military justice in the UK the National Security Council instead of the Supreme Court. Then actions of the military outside the UK jurisdiction are not justiciable
- Step 2: intercept undocumented migrants in the Channel and transfer them to landing craft
- Step 3: drive the landing craft onto a French beach and leave it there
Having never come within UK jurisdiction, no treaties or laws need be changed.Remember what I said about warfare being a matter of changing the legal frame? You are thinking legislation, I'm thinking jurisdiction. Lawyers only act within a jurisdiction, so if it's outside UK jurisdiction (ie the three mile limit or whatever) then the lawyers cannot act.
My guess is Starmer is quietly praying that tough EU action on EU borders will stem the tide of migrants who make it all the way to Calais
That's possible. However it is also very possible that, as Europe swings to the hard right, tougher European laws will acually shunt MORE migrants towards pushover Britain, so it could actually get WORSE
Asking for a friend...
But of course, Blake didn't live to see Truss...
American joke books from the 1960s featured a surprising amount in my childhood, so I'm quite aware of it.
Firstly, she was a spectacularly short-lived PM. Not just one of several failed PMs in history, but sui generis.
Secondly, because she was so brief, some people can fantasise that shed have been wonderful if only the deep state hadn't etc.
Thirdly, she keeps opening her mouth.
I am not out and out arguing that we must leave, but I respect the view of those who've concluded we must, and if reforming the convention is anything like 'reforming the EU from the inside'; it's not worth the effort. Certainly it looks unlikely to be able to deal with the migrant crisis we face *now*.
However, I don't have a closed mind on the issue. My instinct is toward fudge and compromise as I said, because I don't want a new Tory Government to spend all its political capital leaving something, that will cause massive opposition and brickbats for no reason.
The trouble is - what replaces them?
shipsboats..."I'm at that awkward stage in life when the parents are going mental or conking out, and at the same time kids are going to uni and fledging, which is also pretty traumatic (albeit much more positive)
Hard pounding, gentlemen, hard pounding
On the general political point, all incumbent Governments of whatever stripe have suffered post-Covid. The Austrian election is just another example - the OVP-Green coalition lost 30 seats (from 97 to 67).
Denmark was quoted by @Leon but the most recent Voxmeter poll has the governing coalition of Social Democrats, Venstre and Moderates down from 50% to 35% with the main winner NOT the Denmark Democrats but the Green Left so perhaps Denmark will be the exception.
Norway is like Austria with the main Conservative Party facing a challenge from the Progress Party while the governing Social Democrats try to recover ground lost.
Germany will likely see the CDU/CSU top the poll and go back into Government but with whom is less clear. It's quite possible the FDP will lose all their seats and the other parties in the current governing coalition will go backward. It may be the Union and AfD will together poll over 50% but it seems Merz is unwilling to work with the AfD so coalition building will be interesting.
The question will be how the successors to the Governments which fell as a result of the post-Covid and Ukraine war experience will themselves fare over the next 2-4 years before they also face elections (Italy doesn't vote again until 2027).
Populism is easy in Opposition - you can criticise ad infinitum and promise the sun, the moon and the stars but in Government it's time to deliver. For example, the polls are currently showing the Dutch coalition has already lost its majority in Parliament with the main losers the more junior partners.
The "junior partner problem" which we saw in the 2010s is prevalent across western European politics - look at the Centre Party in Norway, the NSC in Holland, the Greens in Austria and even VOX in Spain.
“A little bit off” - by Five Finger Death Punch, perhaps that meets the case….
He is not up to it.
This is getting biblical.
I have two buckets in use now.
I have no more buckets.
All I can offer is that none of the hard, unrewarding times my parents went through with their parents before they died diminished the fondness of the memories they now have of them when they were alive.
It's hard work and I can only sympathise.
How will they respond in their desperation?
It is extreme to suggest Hamas is Netanyahu's creation though, it was under Ehud Olmert who took over from Sharon who had unilaterally withdrawn from Gaza, that Hamas took over Gaza. Hamas where who they were, and were in power, before Netanyahu won office in recent times.
Netanyahu was completely wrong to underestimate Hamas and criminally wrong to not exert all pressure on them from the start. That he criminally underestimated them and facilitated them in the past does not make it any less right to seek to defeat them today though.
But it could be far worse, of course
I try to remember the Buddhist saying: what is the definition of happiness? Grandfather dies, father dies, child dies - in that order
The Lib-Lab carveup is much easier to manage because the LibDem campaign is predominantly powered by sandal leather- a ground war of attrition, pushing a billion Focus leaflets (Do they still use that branding? They're not really a thing round these parts) through letterboxes. If you are in a seat they want to win, you know about it.
Neither the Conservatives nor Reform have really gone in for that recently. Conservatives have always been a bit sniffy about that sort of thing, and now they don't really have enough bodies to do it anyway. Reform simply haven't been interested, which is why they turned more votes than the LibDems into far fewer seats.
No member of Iranian high command can be sleeping well at the moment.
What a joke this government is on this matter.
Purely playing for domestic audience, no interest in seeing Hamas and Hezbollah defeated whatsoever.
A ceasefire and Hamas and Hezbollah surviving intact serves nobodies interests and just guarantees its a matter of when, not if, the cycle of violence continues.
https://i.dailymail.co.uk/1s/2019/05/02/11/12997944-6984377-image-a-2_1556791577546.jpg
THE UK SHUT DOWN THEIR LAST COAL POWER PLANT TODAY, WHICH MEANS THAT OVER THE COURSE OF THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION, THEY
DUG UP AND BURNED AN AVERAGE OF 3 INCHES OF THEIR COUNTRY.
Now, I wouldn't go as far as Richard in claiming that Israel wanted Hamas to attack Israel. But I do think it was in the interests of the Netanyahu administration propped up by Settler parties, to claim that the Palestinians were so extreme that a Two State solution was impossible. And they achieved this by undermining the more moderate elements in Palestine, and funding the more extreme ones.
Israel's actions are making its own people less safe, and much less safe.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2024/09/30/sue-gray-took-free-football-tickets-labour-gifts/
If they won't listen to the US they are not going to listen to the UK, especially as Lammy announced a weapons embargo on Israel and as a result Netanyahu refused to meet Starmer at the UN this weekend